Monroe Free Library

Daunted by the singular sexual tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house.

"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker...

Over ten years, Kay Wilkinson watched as Alzheimer's steadily eroded her father into a paranoid lunatic. Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal: To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline,...

Alexander Karpenko is no ordinary child, and from an early age, it is clear he is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, he and his mother will have to escape from Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they are confronted with an irreversible choice: should they board a container ship bound for America, or Great Britain? Alexander leaves that choice to the toss of a coin. In a...

The Carsons of Mustang Creek: three men who embody the West and define what it means to be a rancher, a cowboy and a hero in this brand-new series from the queen of Western romance ... Slater Carson might be a filmmaker by trade, but he's still a cowboy at heart -- and he knows the value of a hard day's work under the hot Wyoming sun. So when he sees troubled teen Ryder heading down a dangerous path, he offers the boy a job on the ranch he shares...

"Ann Workman is a naive student. A misfit of sorts, she's traveled all the way from rural Kentucky to graduate school in literature in 1967. But Anne wants more than a good education-she wants a boyfriend. Ann wants the 'Real Thing', to be in love with someone who loves her. Jimmy appears as if by magic, and is everything Ann's been looking for. Although he is from a very different place, a privileged background in suburban Chicago, he is a misfit...

"From "a writer at the top of her game" (The New York Times) comes a bighearted and sharply funny debut novel about two estranged sisters and the crossroads they face after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at the same time. Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband,...

"Returning to the sweeping romantic saga, Colleen McCullough presents a new major work: the story of four unforgettable sisters navigating work, love, and their dreams in 1920s Australia. Because they are two sets of twins, the four Latimer sisters are as close as can be. They are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit, and ambition, but as they step into womanhood, they are not enthusiastic about the limited prospects life holds...

"April and Mae are best friends (and so are their pets). On Saturdays they have a movie night: Mae brings pizza she knows April will like and April picks a movie she knows Mae will like. When the movie is too scary for April, the friends realize that it is OK to like different things as long as they like each other"-- Best friends April and Mae are having a Saturday movie night at April's house: Mae brings the pizza, half pineapple for April, half...