Cranston Public Library

Richard Russo has celebrated Monica Wood's fiction as 'thoroughly captivating...warm and wise and beautifully written,' and Andre Dubus III praised it as 'luminous and graceful...entertaining yet transcendent.' Any Bitter Thing, Wood's brilliant new novel, is her breakout book, a timely, gripping, and compassionate tale of family, faith, and deeply hidden truths. One of its greatest strengths is its continuous ability to defy expectations.

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A child psychologist investigates a case of child sexual abuse.

Jonah Steel has fallen in love with Melanie Carmichael but still lives with the guilt that consumes him as he tries to unravel the mystery of his family's past. A new threat has surfaced, and he finds himself trapped in a web of deceit and lies.

Just a teenager, Joseph becomes determined to protect his community from the killer, but he is powerless in preventing more murders-and no one is ever caught. Ten years later one of his neighbors is found hanging from a rope, surrounded by belongings of the dead girls; the killings cease, and the nightmare appears to be over. Desperate and plagued by everything he has witnessed, Joseph sets out to forge a new life in New York. But even there the past...

"Ryan Steel, his world recently upended by an earth-shattering secret, now faces yet another potential revelation surrounding the Steel family mystery. He no longer fully trusts his siblings or the woman he loves. He's alone---alone and terrified and immersed in a conundrum that becomes more twisted each day. Ruby Lee loves Ryan and desperately wants to help him. She'll do whatever she must to see him through this troubling time, but her own shrouded...

"A kidnapped girl returns home after twelve years away--but coming home may not be as easy as she thought in this roller coaster ride of lies, betrayal, and secrets that just might be the twistiest thriller you'll read all year. Jenny Kristal was six years old when she was snatched off the sidewalk from her quiet suburban neighborhood. Twelve years later, she's miraculously returned home after escaping her kidnappers--but as her parents and younger...

"Viewed from above, Gotham City by night resembles nothing so much as a ribbon of diamonds on a pad of deep, rich, black velvet. But in the heart of Gotham's darkness glow the cold garish neon of the sex industry, the feverish eyes of desperate drug addicts, the streetlights creating shadows in which muggers patiently wait. This is where Batman's most personal--and most savage--battle begins. But the fire-zone will shift to thousands of miles and...

"Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his...

Maureen Pierce works the night shift in a convenience store, carries a .38 Smith & Wesson in her pocket, and talks to trees. She knows enough clinical psychology to think that when the trees answer, it proves she's crazy. She can live with that. She manages to get by in a world where she doesn't really fit, until the truth reaches out to touch her as she slogs home through the slushy midnight sidewalks of a February sleet storm. That truth offers...

An eleven-year-old boy tries to cope with being sexually abused, neglected, and treated cruelly at school.