On the shelves — Aug. 3

The following books are available for checkout:

Portales Public Library

The One and Only by Emily Giffin: Shea Rigsby was born and raised in Walker, Texas, a small college town that loves its football team. Shea, too, loves both football and her home team, and because of this and her life-long friendship with Lucy, the daughter of Walker’s head football coach, Clive Carr, she has never been able to leave Walker, nor has she ever wanted to. After staying in Walker to attend college, she takes a job after graduation in the athletic department, and now, years later at age 33, Shea has never regretted not leaving. However, when an unexpected tragedy strikes the town, Shea begins to wonder whether or not this life of college football it truly enough to make her happy, and as she explorers new possibilities and makes decisions about what to do with her future, she uncovers secrets about the town and people she loves that will force her to confront her own hopes and fear for the first time.

Hounded by David Rosenfelt: Defense attorney Andy Carpenter doesn’t know what to expect when his good friend Pete Stanton calls him and asks him to drive to a stranger’s house with his girlfriend Laurie Collins. But when Andy and Laurie get there, they find themselves at a crime scene that Pete, a local cop, has just discovered. The house belongs to ex-convict Danny Diaz, who Pete found dead inside, with his son Ricky and their pet basset hound alone upstairs. Pete asks Andy and Laurie to take care of Ricky while he is working to solve his father’s murder, but then when Pete himself becomes a suspect in the case, he asks Andy to defend him. With evidence piling up against Pete, the case appears to be airtight, but Andy has a feeling that things are not as they seem, and it is down to him alone to clear Pete’s name, as well as find out what exactly happened to Danny.

The Forsaken by Ace Atkins: Thirty-seven years ago in Jericho, Mississippi, a stranger held two teenage girls at gunpoint, then raped and shot them, leaving them for dead. One died, but the other, Diane Tull, survived. The stranger responsible for the crime was never found, but an unknown black man who came into town was blamed for the crime and was lynched by a mob out for blood, and the incident was never talked about again. Diane, now in her fifties and suffering from years of guilt, wants desperately to right this wrong by identifying the black man’s remains and tracking down those who had taken part in the lynching, and she asks the sheriff, Quinn Colson, and his deputy, Lillie Virgil, to help her solve the mystery. As Colson and Lillie dig deeper into the town’s guilty secret, they find themselves in the middle of two opposing sides involving the case, and they are both soon accused of crimes that may ruin their careers in law enforcement.