Book cover of The Night Gardener

Book description

A great novel from one of America's finest literary crime writers...

They never found the killer.

All they knew, back in the winter of 1985, was that someone was taking teenagers, killing them and leaving their abused bodies in public parks. Three victims in all, with no link between them…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Night Gardener as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Pelecanos is the poet of how a city carries its grief.

A long-cold case pulls three D.C. cops back to the night their lives forked, and what stays with me isn’t the killer. It’s his eye for which deaths get worked and which get filed, who gets remembered and who becomes a name in a closed folder. He writes Washington as a real place with its own gravity, its institutions pressing on ordinary lives.

He taught me you can be quiet and humane and still devastating, and that a city should never be a backdrop. It should be the thing…

If you love The Night Gardener...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…

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