New Fiction
The Ambler warning by Robert Ludlum.
On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, there is a little known and never visited psychiatric facility. There, far from prying eyes, the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state make them a danger to their own government, people whose ramblings might endanger ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient.
One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there's one difference between Hal and the other patients—Hal isn't crazy. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Hal manages to first clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and then pulls off a daring escape. Free, he's out to discover who stashed him there and why—but the world he returns to isn't the one he remembers. Friends and longtime associates don't remember him, there are no official records of Hal Ambler, and when he first sees himself in the mirror, the face that looks back at him is not the one he knows as his own.
At first sight by Nicholas Sparks.
Nicholas Sparks brings back two characters from his beloved bestseller, TRUE BELIEVER, in this continuing saga of extraordinary love.
The color of law by Mark Gimenez.
It's a tasty plot -- big money, political intrigue, sexy wives, precocious little girls -- but the novel would be a lot less fun without Gimenez's scathing portrait of the city and its most powerful citizens. We're told that lawyers regard rich clients as chickens to be plucked and that judges are there to be bought by campaign contributions. Fenney reflects that every lawyer goes through a metamorphosis "like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, only in reverse: from a beautiful human being to a slimy lawyer."