Gates Mills Branch Library

06/23/2026

The story of two women whose secrets and desires entrap them in a deadly love triangle.

Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, knows she lives a charmed life, and she’s not about to risk losing any part of it. That’s why she tried to convince Richard, her devoted husband and father to their three children, not to join his old college friends on an expedition almost eight thousand miles away, to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Little did she know the beautiful artist climbing alongside him might prove the far greater danger.

Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. If all goes well, the show will leave her financially independent, free of the tainted money that ties her to a past—and a man—she’s desperate to escape. To mark the end of this chapter, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro. But when she learns she’s the sole female accompanying a group of male friends, Frankie realizes that nothing about the trip will be as she expected. She certainly hasn’t counted on meeting anyone like the very charismatic, very rich, very married Richard Falk. By the time the group descends—with one fewer than when they began—they have lost more than they ever could have imagined.

Now, just two weeks after returning to New York, Frankie is dead, her East Village loft a blood-soaked crime scene. When Richard is charged in Frankie’s death, it falls to Gretchen to piece together how the life she so carefully constructed could have imploded so completely. There are only two things Gretchen knows: she’s the only woman Richard has ever loved, and he would never hurt anyone.

Someone Else’s Husband is the sweeping and suspenseful story of two women on a collision course with love—and with each other—in which no one is right and everyone is very, very wrong. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/496340

06/22/2026

06/22/2026

A novel following a backlot fixer’s daring investigation into the suspicious death of a closeted Black actor within the glamorous world of Hollywood.

Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier's burgeoning success. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.

But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.

There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood is a searing portrait of the movie industry as a manicured minefield and a compelling journey into the q***r history of Los Angeles. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/513782

06/20/2026

A coming-of-age novel, a love story and a tale of life-enhancing in this magical tale set amidst the Tuscan hills.

Broke and directionless, our young man takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco - a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown.

Trained as an archivist, he thinks he's been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills... but what are his actual duties? Days are spent ridding the house of a marten - whatever that is - locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn, and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco's great and final plan-to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it's too late.

As summer turns into autumn and the Italian countryside begins to work its magic on our protagonist, the secrets of Villa Coco and its inhabitants are slowly brought to light - and with them, an unforgettable story of the enduring power of friendship. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/493074

06/19/2026

Decoding the Devil tells the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units in the Army's intelligence agencies during World War II and the Cold War.

The result of a racial hiring quota, the Commercial Code unit freed the US from relying on British intelligence on the Axis powers’ trade relations and broke critical Japanese codes.

Led by William Coffee, the unit employed professors, college graduates, and other professionals who decrypted and translated messages from Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.

After World War II, the Russian Plaintext Unit countered the growing threat of Soviet nuclear war. A top-secret operation, the all-Black unit worked under armed guard and was the Allies’ main source of intelligence on the Soviet atomic program from 1947 until the early 1950s.

Decoding the Devil highlights the Black cryptologists’ critical contribution to national security in the civil rights era and promises to captivate readers with its fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American history. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/492511

06/18/2026

An Emmy Award-winning director chronicles his struggle to break free from—and live outside of—the prescribed paradigms of Blackness and masculinity that shaped him.

Long before every moment of our lives was tracked by technology, Phill Branch was under surveillance. His father was a football-playing, weed-smoking, Army vet—the guy men wanted to be around, and women loved. Phill was different. His father treated him as if he were defective and continually searched for proof to support this belief. Phill paid greatly for his failures at boyhood, especially when he was caught playing jump rope with girls. This taught him there were standards to be met, codes that were not to be violated, and strict punishment for any deviation from a Black man’s assigned position in the world.

In this poignant, illuminating personal narrative, Branch reckons with the patriarchy and tradition of these social structures in Black America, their legacy, and how they molded and silenced him. Taking us from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, California, Branch writes unflinchingly about growing up as the q***r black son of a complicated and often absent father with rigid ideas of masculinity. From early inappropriate relationships with men twice his age, to his successful rebranding at Hampton University, to the dichotomy of Hollywood—living in a world of wealthy celebrities while struggling to survive as a writer—Branch navigates his complex emotions surrounding success, perceptions of manhood, and ultimately his father.

The Double Dutch Fuss recounts growing up under the heavy burden of expectation—to be a boy, to be Black, and to be q***r in ways that conform to rigid, often unforgiving norms. It is about the knotted path of becoming, while navigating the always-present fear of emotional and physical violence, and the threat of isolation for simply being who you are. Branch explores the cosmic pull between fathers and sons, and how healing wounds can open a pathway toward freedom and wholeness. His is an insightful and surprisingly humorous reflection on identity, masculinity, and the quiet, radical act of choosing to exist on your own terms. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/481279

06/17/2026

A small-town detective reopens an unsolved case, sending shock waves across generations of women.

1994. In the myth-riddled woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, sixteen-year-old Annabelle Riley’s twin sister, Sabrina, has been having an affair with a mysterious older man, and Annabelle is determined to uncover what’s going on. Then, inexplicably, both sisters disappear.

In this same town years later, newly instated Police Chief Callie Hauser makes an arrest that unexpectedly resurrects details from a heartbreaking cold case. As she digs deeper, the past and the present collide, challenging everything Callie believes about right and wrong, about who she is, and about the town she’s always called home.

Heather bears a visceral reminder that the truth of a woman’s life is often complicated and unknowable—to those on the outside, and sometimes even to herself. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/506776

06/16/2026

A novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York.

Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosecutors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the Mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.

Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.

Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/481281