Reading Ahead: November 2016, part 4

Perhaps a little easy reading or a mystery  (or something that qualifies as both!) is just what you're craving as we (I'm sorry!) start heading into the holiday season. Sure, it's been 80 degrees out the last few days, but that doesn't mean that November isn't just around the corner! In any case, if you're looking to steal away for a little reading to decompress next month, here are a few titles to choose from.

The Award, by Danielle Steel. Gaëlle de Barbet is sixteen years old in 1940 when the German army occupies France and frightening changes begin to occur. She is shocked and powerless when French gendarmes take away her closest friend, Rebekah Feldmann, and her family for deportation to an unknown, ominous fate. The local German military commandant makes Gaëlle’s family estate outside Lyon into his headquarters. Her father and brother are killed by the Germans; her mother fades away into madness. Trusted friends and employees become traitors. And Gaëlle begins a perilous journey with the French Resistance, hoping to save lives to make up for the beloved friend she could do nothing to help. This is a little outside Steel's ordinary comfort zone, but my guess is fans will lap it right up. Also available in Large Print. 

The Mistletoe Secret, by Richard Paul Evans. I've had readers clamoring for holiday reads for a couple of months already (I'll admit, I'm nowhere near ready), so if you're among them, please add this to your list!
Thinking no one is reading, a blogger who calls herself LBH writes about her most personal feelings, especially her overwhelming loneliness. Alex Bartlett feels her pain. He’s reading her posts in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he nurses his own broken heart and slowly falls in love with this mystery woman. He follows a trail of clues she has unwittingly shared and makes his way to the town where she lives. But a discovery he makes upon arrival may change everything for him.

A Christmas Message, by Anne Perry. The year is 1900, and Victor Narraway is giving his wife, Vespasia, an unforgettable Christmas present—a trip to Jerusalem. Vespasia is enchanted by the exotic landscape of Palestine, and charmed by a fellow traveler the Narraways meet at their hotel in Jaffa. But when the man is murdered over a torn piece of ancient parchment he was taking to Jerusalem, Victor and Vespasia risk their lives to finish his mission and deliver the puzzling document to its home. Pursued by a shadowy figure with evil intent, they embark on a dangerous yet ultimately enlightening pilgrimage to the holy city, where the mysterious message on the parchment may finally be revealed.

Turbo Twenty-Three, by Janet Evanovich. Larry Virgil skipped out on his latest court date after he was arrested for hijacking an eighteen-wheeler full of premium bourbon. Fortunately for bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, Larry is just stupid enough to attempt almost the exact same crime again. Only this time he flees the scene, leaving behind a freezer truck loaded with Bogart ice cream and a dead body—frozen solid and covered in chocolate and chopped pecans. As fate would have it, Stephanie’s mentor and occasional employer, Ranger, needs her to go undercover at the Bogart factory to find out who’s putting their employees on ice and sabotaging the business. It’s going to be hard for Stephanie to keep her hands off all that ice cream, and even harder for her to keep her hands off Ranger... Also available in Large Print.