Looking to beat those St. Patrick's Day pinches? Carry a green book!
Here's a selection of fun fiction titles perfect for March reading. All titles are available from WV as ebooks or eaudiobooks or at one of our locations!
The Woman in the Green Dress by Tea Cooper
After her husband’s death in World War I, Fleur’s surprising inheritance takes her deep into the past—and could unravel a mystery surrounding a cursed opal, a gnarled family tree, and a sinister woman in a green dress.
1919: After a whirlwind romance, London teashop waitress Fleur Richards can’t wait for her new husband, Hugh, to return from the Great War. But when word of his death arrives on Armistice Day, Fleur learns he has left her a sizable family fortune. Refusing to accept the inheritance, she heads to his beloved home country of Australia in search of the relatives who deserve it more. In spite of her reluctance, she soon finds herself the sole owner of a remote farm and a dilapidated curio shop full of long-forgotten artifacts, remarkable preserved creatures, and a mystery that began more than sixty-five years ago. With the help of Kip, a repatriated soldier dealing with the sobering aftereffects of war, Fleur finds herself unable to resist pulling on the threads of the past. What she finds is a shocking story surrounding an opal and a woman in a green dress. . . a story that, nevertheless, offers hope and healing for the future.
Always Green by Patti Hill
Mibby Garrett isn't asking for much, just a white knight to rescue her from lonely widowhood, her faltering garden design business, and an unrelenting drought. Or she???d settle for a super dad to guide her son, Ky, through the harrowing years of adolescence. Instead, her free-spirited mother and acerbic sister show up on her doorstep, only magnifying her loneliness. Mentor and friend Louise reminds Mibby that God??'s blessings flow during droughts of the land and droughts of the heart. Can Mibby put her confidence in Him and discover what it means to be always green and growing?
Death of a Green-Eyed Monster by MC Beaton
Sergeant Hamish Macbeth , Scotland's most quick-witted but unambitious policeman is back and may have finally met the woman of his dreams in this new mystery in M.C. Beaton's beloved, 'New York Times' bestselling series. Hamish's new constable, Dorothy McIver, may be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Completely bewitched by her sparkling blue eyes, Hamish spends the summer traveling with her up and down Sutherland until finally, he can take it no longer. He gets down on one knee beside the Land Rover and begs her to marry him—and to his amazement and delight, she says yes. But just as the town of Lochdubh gets ready to celebrate, Hamish finds himself with a new murder on his hands. If he doesn't find the killer fast, Hamish's dream wedding could become a nightmare.
The Emerald Tide by Davis Bunn
Just when he thought he’d buried his past and was moving on… Four years after his wife’s death, art history teacher Derek Gaines has finally made a kind of peace with himself. He tries his best to stave off memories. His days are ones of familiar routine. Guarded against further pain, he keeps relationships at a safe distance. It’s all part of his necessary transition to surviving alone. If anything is truly responsible for Derek making it back from the brink it’s his edifying work as a consultant for auction houses—and indulging a consuming sideline job: tracking stolen art. But Derek’s latest hunt will lead him toward challenges both professional and personal—that he’s not prepared to face.
He discovered the art of falling in love again… Joining Derek on his quest is Kelly Reid, the new junior vice president of gallery operations at Christies Los Angeles. She is driven, ambitious, fiercely passionate about her work—and a fellow wounded kindred spirit. Bitterly immune to men’s promises, she’s never letting herself be vulnerable again. Yet even as trust and affection remain frightening territory, a tenuous start to her partnership with Derek slowly builds toward something more.
The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman
Originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine, Lippman's Tess Monaghan novella turns the intrepid Baltimore PI's at-risk late-pregnancy bed rest into a compellingly edgy riff on Hitchcock's Rear Window. Lovingly tucked up on her winterized sun porch, Tess marshals her forces-doting artist boyfriend Crow, best friend Whitney Talbot, middle-aged assistant gumshoe Mrs. Blossom, and researcher Dorie Starnes - to probe the disappearance of a chic blonde green-raincoated dog walker she'd been watching from her comfy prison. Tess also takes in the missing woman's abandoned green-slickered Italian greyhound from hell, a miniature canine terrorist whose anti-housebreaking vendetta offers comic relief from Tess's threatened pre-eclampsia, her obsessive unraveling of a complex scam, and her last-trimester spats with Crow about their future. Though postpartum Tess turns alternately weepy and shrill, that condition won't last, and this entertaining romp leaves plenty of hints of detective-mother exploits to come.
Green Calder Grass by Janet Dailey
Jessy Niles Calder isn‘t the sort of woman to lead a man or be led by him. Headstrong and proud, with her roots stuck deep in Calder soil, she always knew that Ty Calder was the man for her, even if she had to wait for him to leave behind his loveless marriage to glamorous, poor little rich girl, Tara. Now, as Ty‘s wife, Jessy finally has everything she‘s ever wanted—the strong bonds of family, a thriving ranch, and the long-awaited promise of a new life growing within her…proof of her love for Ty. And then Tara returns. As manipulative as she is beautiful, Tara has never brought anything with her but trouble, and Jessy can only wonder what she wants this time. But when Tara‘s powerful father dies, she seems genuinely shattered and leans on Ty and his sister, Cat, for comfort and strength. Soon, Tara‘s back on the land and in their lives, and nothing is the same. As days give way to months, Tara‘s very presence divides the ranch, replacing long-held bonds of trust between employer and employees, friends and relatives—husband and wife—with new seeds of suspicion and simmering jealousies that endanger Jessy‘s happiness and the Calder‘s claim on their land. With everything at risk—from the ranch she loves to the name she proudly calls her own—Jessy Calder is in for the fight of her life…a fight that is turning deadly. Determined to make Ty Calder hers at all costs, Tara has stirred a lust for revenge from an old danger—a secret link to the past that will test the fabric of the Calder clan, threatening their very lives—and culminating in a loss more heartbreaking than any of them could imagine.
Leave the Grave Green by Deborah Crombie
When Connor Swann, the dissolute son-in-law of renowned and influential Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline Asherton, is found floating in a Thames River lock, the circumstances eerily recall a strangely similar tragedy. Twenty years ago, the Ashertons' young son, Matthew, a musical prodigy, drowned in a swollen stream while in the company of his sister Julia -- Connor Swann's wife. Police Superintendant Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James quickly discover that Connor's death was no accident, and that nothing in the Asherton family is as it seems. Connor, though estranged from Julia for more than a year, still lives in her London apartment, where his exploits with women and gambling suggest plenty of motives. The Ashertons are far more attached to Connor than to their own daughter, and these are only the first of the secrets that haunt the suspects. New lies cover older lies, as Kincaid finds himself dangerously drawn to Julia Swann, and Gemma must confront her own troubling feelings for Kincaid.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter—even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.
The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan
In late March 1944, as Stalin’s forces push into Ukraine, young Emil and Adeline Martel must make a terrible decision: Do they wait for the Soviet bear’s intrusion and risk being sent to Siberia? Or do they reluctantly follow the wolves—murderous Nazi officers who have pledged to protect “pure-blood” Germans? The Martels are one of many families of German heritage whose ancestors have farmed in Ukraine for more than a century. But after already living under Stalin’s horrifying regime, Emil and Adeline decide they must run in retreat from their land with the wolves they despise to escape the Soviets and go in search of freedom.
Caught between two warring forces and overcoming horrific trials to pursue their hope of immigrating to the West, the Martels’ story is a brutal, complex, and ultimately triumphant tale that illuminates the extraordinary power of love, faith, and one family’s incredible will to survive and see their dreams realized.
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon
For years, Mitford's sixtysomething rector has been happily married to his parish. Now he's also married to Cynthia, his vivacious next-door neighbor. For Father Tim, life in Mitford has never been so full of surprises. His wife is "aging" his already ancient kitchen walls, not to mention burning his draperies. The mountain boy he's learned to love as his own makes a heartrending decision. And the agony of mastering the church computer system is as boggling as the pandemonium that breaks loose when his quiet rectory becomes a nursery. All this, however, is small potatoes compared to what happens on a wilderness camping trip that sends him home a changed man.
The Green Revolution by Ralph McInerny
Any year when the Fighting Irish don’t go undefeated is a disappointment, but to turn in a losing football season is unheard of. This year the faithful are refusing to admit defeat even as the losses start to pile up. With the students in a funk and the alumni in an uproar, something must be done, or more precisely, somebody has to go. Since they can’t expel the team, they’ll have to settle for firing the multimillion-dollar head coach---but will a new coach satisfy everyone?
There are some---namely faculty members with a distaste for university athletics---who see this as their chance to refocus the school on academics. When the battle between Notre Dame’s academic and athletic traditions turns deadly, however, Roger Knight, professor of Catholic Studies, becomes a marked man.
The Green Trap by Ben Bova
Microbiologist Michael Cochrane has been murdered. His brother Paul wants to find out who did it…and why. Accompanied by a beautiful industrial spy, Elena Sandoval, Paul follows the trail from California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, a lot of people seem to be interested in getting in their way, or discovering what they know. It's clear that Michael was working with cyanobacteria, the bacteria that crack water molecules and release free oxygen. It's less clear why this would get anybody killed. Or why oil billionaire Lionel Gould wants to pay Paul and Elena big money for the details of Michael's work.
Then the truth emerges: Michael had found a way to get cyanobacteria to crack hydrogen out of simple water molecules. A process that could be industrialized, producing enough hydrogen to cleanly power the world. Practically free fuel, out of one of the planet's most abundant resources: water. No wonder everyone, from Middle Eastern heavies to hired domestic muscle, suddenly seems to be trying to get in Paul and Elena's way. As the world's secrets--and their own--teeter in the balance, both Paul and Elena must decide what to do before it's too late.
Did any of these stories make you green with envy? Did we leave out any of your favorite verdant titles? Let us know! We love to hear from our readers.
As always, images and info are courtesy of other websites such as WV Reads, Google, Goodreads, etc.