What seemingly begins as a tense dinner between two couples at a posh Dutch restaurant, soon evolves into something much more sinister.  Brothers Serge and Paul have come together with their wives to discuss a matter involving their sons: a disturbing video has been leaked on the internet. This video has the potential to become quite the scandal and a strategy to control the damage must be discussed. The brothers soon give up hiding their utter contempt for each other, and the dinner soon becomes a battle of ideologies in which privilege, mental illness and violence all play a part. The Dinner, with its dark humor and expertly-paced plot, is a psychological thriller you won't be able to stop thinking about.

The winner of several awards including Library Journal's Best YA Lit for Adults 2012, Code Name Verity is the story of a friendship that remains strong through the dangers and upheavals of WWII. A female British spy is captured in Nazi-occupied France, tortured and forced to reveal all the information she knows. Her writings become an enthralling account of the woman whose identification card she happened to be carrying, her best friend, Maddie. Together, they ended up working for the British war effort, although in two very different ways, one as a transport pilot and the other as an intelligence officer.  The narrator remains cryptic until the story switches to Maddie's point of view and we find out she is closer than her best friend thinks and trying her hardest to find her.

This tale is fascinating and keeps up a good pace all the way through. If you have the chance, check out the audiobook. One narrator especially brings the story to life with her soft Scottish accent.

Fiction

Lunatics by Dave Barry

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

Nonficiton

8 by Dustin Lance Black

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

American Sniper by Chris Kyle

Why Read Moby-Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick

Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

Sixteen year old Rue Silver thinks she might be going crazy.  Her mother vanished a few weeks ago, her father has been acting very strangely, and now Rue has started to see things…strange beings walking among the people of her town.  But then Rue learns that not only are those strange beings real, but she herself is one of them. Her mother is a faerie, one of the Good Neighbors of human folklore, and Rue herself is half-faerie as well.  Not only that, but Rue’s grandfather has a sinister plot to steal the entire town away to create a new faerie realm and a prophecy has declared that only his own flesh can stop him. Since Rue’s mother shows no signs of doing so, Rue has to take it upon herself to save both her peoples from each other.

The three volumes of this urban fantasy graphic novel (Kin, Kith, and Kind) are a fascinating self-contained story of the fair folk in the modern world. Rue is a sympathetic character, and her assortment of friends and family members add depth and interest to the story. The illustrations, all black and white, are detailed and switch easily between the mundane and the bizarre as Rue moves between the worlds.