Randolph's Top 100 of 2022

Imagine everyone's surprise when Carter von Oehson, a sophomore in Dr. Dylan Reinhart's Abnormal Psychology class, posts on Instagram that he plans to kill himself. 24 hours later and still no one has seen him. Release the hounds. A massive search ensues. But when Carter's sailboat rolls in with the tide without him or anyone else on it, the worst seems to be confirmed. He really did it... Or did he? The one person convinced he's still alive is his...

"An evocative new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins. Beware the wrath of a woman scorned-she just might save the world. Lillie knew the empty nest would be hard when her son left for college, but she had no idea of the full extent to which her world would come crashing down-until her husband announced out of the blue that he was in love with another woman, and he would be leaving, too. Besides the fact that this announcement...

"'Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes . . . ' Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling an unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the...

Malibu 1983. Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of one night, each of their lives will be changed forever in this propulsive novel. Malibu is buzzing with anticipation for Nina Riva's annual party. Everyone wants to be in the company of the famous Rivas: Nina, the surfer and model; her brothers, Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other his renowned photographer; and Kit, the adored...

"'Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn't get fixed.' So says Pauline Green, president of the United States. A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country's secret stash of deadly chemical poisons: all these play roles in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Struggling to prevent the outbreak of a world war are a young woman intelligence officer; a spy working undercover...

"When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah's mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family's beach house on Cape Cod. Ruby has always known exactly what she wants, but as the wedding date approaches, she finds herself grappling...

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she's inherited an overbearing secretary and a legacy of neglect and possible corruption. She and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria where she's headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in...

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story. The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are children trying to figure out the world around them, and to survive. In the besieged city of Constantinople in 1453, in a public library in Lakeport,...

"2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer on Makeover Mansion, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historical houses. Andie's latest project features the once glorious but now crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport ... But the mansion's reclusive owner, Lucia 'Lucky' Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse....

"Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did? From the New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project, a heartwarming novel about unexpected friendships and the joy of connecting. Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she...