Sterling Staff Picks - Alex

Staying busy has helped Tova cope ever since her son disappeared decades ago. So when her husband dies, she takes a job at the aquarium, where she meets Marcellus, an octopus that deduces what happened to her son. For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began...

"Clumsy, earnest baker Sylvie West has worked at the Christmas Café in Silver Bells, Wyoming, ever since her boozy eggnog fruitcake won the town's annual holiday bake-off. Her forever happy place, the café complements her sweet, well-ordered life with her roommates: recently widowed Gramps and her yappy chihuahua-pug, Crumpet. So, when Sylvie learns the café might be sold, she's determined to save it the only way she can: by getting the Holiday...

"Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it's been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening. Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother's...

"From the author of Pack Up the Moon comes a funny, romantic, and deeply moving novel about the unexpected rewards that come from life's swerves. Lark Smith was planning a fairy-tale wedding to her high school sweetheart when, in the blink of an eye, everything she dreamed of was suddenly gone. That day, Lark decided the best way to deal with loss was to prevent others from ever having to. Five years later, her goal of becoming a doctor--the best...

"No man truly fears a woman. Not even one who is her father's daughter. The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. She had called herself "death," but people called her the devil. Despite the media's chronicling of her tragic circumstances--the childhood spent with a violent father--no one could find sympathy for "the Beautiful Butcher" who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously...

"Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam "West" Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she'd signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the...

"Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. How they met, fell in love, and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. Too bad it turned out to be more of a prequel, a complication to Peter's actual love story, the one that ends with him dumping Daphne before their wedding to begin a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Petra. And so that's how Daphne's story really begins: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan,...

"Their name? The objectors. Their job? To break off weddings as hired. Their dilemma? They might just be in love with each other. When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her wedding that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad's cutthroat boss, she doesn't want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show...

"Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home. What happened to Nina? Nobody knows. Simon's explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn't add up. Nina's parents push the police for answers, and Simon's parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits...

"The 6:20 Man is back, dropped by his handlers into a small coastal town in Maine to solve the murder of a CIA agent who knew America's dirtiest secrets--can Travis Devine uncover the truth before his time runs out? When CIA operative Jenny Sikwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless...