What's New on the Library Shelves?

 Check out these new books at the Exeter Public Library.

The Rainy Day Bookshop by RaeAnne Thayne

Sandwiched between caring for her mother and rebuilding the relationship with her estranged daughter, Emma, Rosie Lucas’s life is full. In the best way. With Emma and her 3-year old daughter, Olive, back home, Rosie has a partner for The Rainy Day Bookshop, the family business, and a chance to fix the past. What she doesn’t have time for is a romantic relationship. And even if she did, Andrew Morgan is the last person she’d choose. Not only is he an arrogant and reclusive writer, but he’s a single dad with two young kids. She’s already been there, done that. Still as an irresistible flirtation builds between them, he becomes her unexpected confidante on the distance Rosie can’t seem to overcome with Emma, a secret she can’t quite unravel…

Emma isn’t proud of her past. But she’s pulled herself up by the bootstraps, caring for her own daughter, and protecting her mom at all costs. Just as she always has. She never told Rosie what she saw all those years ago and she never will. But some secrets refuse to stay buried, and sometimes the truth is more shocking than fiction. Rosie and Emma will have to navigate an unimaginable path forward. Together.

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell

Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate when a small white terrier appears, alone and with no sign of the teenaged girl he’d been staying with nearby. When the teenager is reported missing, Jane offers to return the dog to his registered owner, hours away in London. Arriving at a run-down house called Thornwood in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead, she is immediately on alert—because Jane has a dark history with this house.

The man who answers the door is not the man that Jane remembers from her past. He is cagey, and claims to know nothing about the missing teenage girl. Then, through the window of the house, Jane catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman.

Conjuring her memories from twenty-five years ago, Jane knows this unsettling house holds the key—to the missing teenager, to her own traumatic story, and to the dark secrets of the past.

Down with the Shipmans by Meg Mitchell Moore

It’s the week after Fourth of July, and the Shipman sisters are returning to their picturesque summer home on the New Hampshire coast for what they believe is a family reunion, the first without their late mother. However, their tranquil setting quickly becomes a stage for drama when their father, Calvin, drops the bombshell news that he plans to sell the cherished beach house.

Mae, the youngest daughter, who has a newfound penchant for attracting trouble, is distraught, already dealing with her own emotional scars and a problematic rescue dog. Natalie, the middle sister and social media darling known for her seemingly idyllic life as a tradwife, is equally anxious, especially since her flawless public image is on the verge of imploding. Meanwhile, Jordan, the eldest, a high-powered crisis communications expert, is ready to be rid of the house so she can tend to her own professional disaster.

As old memories are stirred up and the sisters navigate both the packing of the house and their personal crises, the arrival of Calvin’s new wife pushes Jordan, Natalie, and Mae to decide how far they’re willing to go to preserve the Shipman bond.

A delicious summer read that explores the enduring power of family and sister connections, Down with the Shipmans is a humorous, heartfelt reminder that home is not a place, but the people who love you, no matter how imperfectly.

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

When Caroline Lash arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, she falls head-over-heels for Van Whittaker, a fleece-wearing, litter-collecting kayak enthusiast with long, floppy hair and the personality of a Border collie. Born and raised in this picturesque coastal village, Van runs with the same crowd he did as a kid: His ex-girlfriend, Bailey, a beautiful girl who attracts men like moths to a flame; Augusta, old money, horsey, and snobbish; and Fran, surrounded by brothers and sons, too fed up with boys to ever consider marrying one.

Together, the group runs wild through the marshes, beaches, and bars of Greenhead, drinking on houseboats, spending long afternoons sunbathing with their children, and playing games the way they always have. But when Bailey discovers that she is pregnant with Van’s baby, the delicate balance of the group’s friendship is thrown off. Soon Caroline is cast out of the circle and what she does next—in a potent mix of fury and heartbreak—exposes long-held secrets and works the entire town of Greenhead into a lather.

Dazzlingly funny, sexy, and as juicy as it is astute, The Shampoo Effect is a story of late-night parties, early mornings with small children, the dawn of midlife, and a group of old friends finally growing up despite all their best efforts to the contrary.

Land by Maggie O'Farrell

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?

Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times and for all time.

An Inconvenient Widow by Lois Romano

Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society’s expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary’s early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.

But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies—influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.