NBS recommends gripping masterpieces

THE VALLEY

OF AMAZEMENT

By Amy Tan

P415

MANILA, Philippines - Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the daughter of the American madam of the city’s most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother and forced to become a “virgin courtesan.”

THE GOLDFINCH

By Donna Tartt

P399

 Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her — a mysteriously captivating painting.

MR. PENUMBRA’S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE

By Robin Sloan

P415

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest.

SYCAMORE ROW

By John Grisham

P299

 Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.

THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS

By Elizabeth Gilbert

P355

 Born in 1800, the daughter of a charismatic botanical explorer, Alma Whittaker quickly comes into her own within the world of plants and science. But as her research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man who draws her in the opposite direction — into the realm of the spiritual, the divine and the magical.