We’ve started featuring different paperback books every Thursday. This week, we’re getting ready for Valentine’s Day with Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Ed Tarkington.

“Love can make people do terrible things.”

Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick. Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears.

Seven years later, Rocky, now a teenager himself, must reckon with the past after a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town, and to their broken family.

Called “interesting, readable, and beautifully written” by NPR Books, Only Love Can Break Your Heart is both a thrilling mystery and a powerful tribute to the importance of love.