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BITTER BRONX: Thirteen Stories by Jerome Charyn (Fiction/Short Stories)
BITTER BRONX, Jerome Charyn's new collection, is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with the author's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
CONSTANT FEAR by Daniel Palmer (Thriller)
When Jake Dent’s dreams of baseball glory fell apart, his marriage did too. A popular survivalist blog ended up helping to restore his sense of control, and he raised his diabetic son, Andy, to be ready for any sudden catastrophe. Now a student at a prestigious academy where Jake works as a custodian, Andy has a secret --- he’s part of a computer club that redistributes money from the obscenely wealthy to the needy. But this time, they’ve stolen from the wrong people: a vicious drug cartel that is coming to get its money back. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
DIETLAND by Sarai Walker (Fiction)
Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed --- because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged, mocked, or worse. With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girls’ magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Then, when a mysterious woman starts following her, Plum finds herself falling down a rabbit hole and into an underground community of women who live life on their own terms. There Plum agrees to a series of challenges that force her to deal with her past, her doubts, and the real costs of becoming “beautiful.” Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES by Laura Dave (Fiction)
Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: 800. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands. But just a week before her wedding, 30-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever. Reviewed by Kate Ayers.
FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King (Thriller)
John Rothstein is an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel. Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then is locked away for another crime. Decades later, Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson must rescue Pete and his family from Morris when he’s released from prison after 35 years. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
GHOSTHEART by R.J. Ellory (Thriller)
Annie O'Neill seemingly has it all, but at the heart of her life is a hole --- a place vacated by her father when he died in her childhood. So when a mysterious man named Forrester enters her bookshop and claims to be her father's oldest friend, she jumps at the chance to find out more of her own past. But Forrester is much more interested in telling her a story about a ruthless ganglord and a 50-year-old betrayal --- a betrayal that she will realize has something very much to do with her. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
THE ICE TWINS by S. K. Tremayne (Psychological Thriller)
A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcroft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity --- that she, in fact, is Lydia --- their world comes crashing down once again. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT by Judy Blume (Fiction)
In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was 15, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Judy Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on. Reviewed by Jana Siciliano.
INDEPENDENCE DAY: A Dewey Andreas Novel by Ben Coes (Thriller)
Dewey Andreas, former Delta and newly recruited intelligence agent, is sidelined after screwing up his last two operations. A high-level Russian hacker, known only as Cloud, is believed to be routing large amounts of money to various Al Qaeda terror cells, and the mission is to capture and render harmless Cloud. At the same time, a back-up team is sent after the only known associate of Cloud, a ballerina believed to be his girlfriend. Unwilling to sit out the mission as ordered, Dewey defies his superiors, surreptitiously following and tracking the two teams. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
MOLINA: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty by Bengie Molina, with Joan Ryan (Memoir)
A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina’s father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina’s memoir about his father, who through baseball taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage and the true meaning of success. Reviewed by Miriam Tuliao.
NIGHT TREMORS by Matt Coyle (Mystery/Thriller)
Nightmares of the man he killed two years ago still chase Rick Cahill through his sleep, and the memory of his murdered wife haunts him during waking hours. When an old nemesis asks for his help to free a man from prison, a man he thinks is wrongly convicted of murder, Rick grabs at the chance to turn his life around. With the police on one side of the law and a vicious biker gang on the other, all trying to stop him from freeing this individual, Rick risks his life to uncover the truth that only the real killer knows --- what happened one bloody night eight years earlier. Reviewed by Dean Murphy.
REMEMBER ME THIS WAY by Sabine Durrant (Psychological Thriller)
A year after her husband Zach’s death, Lizzie goes to lay flowers where his fatal accident took place. As she makes her way along the road, she thinks about their life together. She wonders if she has changed since Zach died and if she will ever feel whole again. At last she reaches the spot. And there, tied to a tree, is a bunch of lilies. The flowers are addressed to her husband. Someone has been there before her. Lizzie loved Zach, but she’s starting to realize she didn’t really know him. Or what he was capable of. Reviewed by Stephen Febick.
STAY by Victor Gischler (Crime Fiction)
David Sparrow is a stay-at-home dad, while his wife, Amy, commutes to New York City, where she was recently promoted to Deputy District Attorney. In fact, she just inherited a major case: prosecuting crime lord Dante Payne. But when Dante takes the fight directly to Amy, David is forced to "reactivate" himself, revealing a history and deadly skill set his wife knew nothing about. And he'll do anything to protect his family. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
TIME OF DEATH: A Tom Thorne Novel by Mark Billingham (Mystery/Thriller)
Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend, DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect’s wife as an old school friend and returns home for the first time in 25 years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have the wrong man. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
TRAUMA by Michael Palmer and Daniel Palmer (Thriller)
After quitting her residency following two operations gone terribly wrong, Dr. Carrie Bryant learns about an experimental program exploring the use of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) that could forever cure the emotional and memory trauma of PTSD. Her first surgery appears to be a success until her patient mysteriously vanishes. When a second patient also goes missing, Carrie employs the investigative skills of reporter David Hoffman, and together they descend into a labyrinth of murder and corruption. Reviewed by Ray Palen.
UNDIVIDED: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace by Patricia Raybon and Alana Raybon (Memoir)
They didn’t talk. Not for 10 years. Not about faith anyway. Instead, a mother and daughter tiptoed with pain around the deepest gulf in their lives --- the daughter’s choice to leave the church, convert to Islam and become a practicing Muslim. UNDIVIDED is a real-time story of healing and understanding with alternating narratives from each as they struggle to learn how to love each other in a whole new way. Reviewed by Evelyn Bence.
UPROOTED by Naomi Novik (Fantasy/Romance)
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for 10 years. Agnieszka is afraid that the Dragon will take Kasia, her dearest friend in the world. But when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose. Reviewed by Kathy Weissman.
THE WONDER GARDEN by Lauren Acampora (Fiction)
A man strikes an under-the-table deal with a surgeon to spend a few quiet seconds closer to his wife than he's ever been; a young soon-to-be mother looks on in paralyzing astonishment as her husband walks away from a 20-year career in advertising at the urging of his spirit animal; an elderly artist risks more than he knows when he's commissioned by his newly arrived neighbors to produce the work of a lifetime. In her debut collection, Lauren Acampora brings to the page the myriad lives of a suburban town and lays them bare. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
WRITTEN IN THE BLOOD by Stephen Lloyd Jones (Thriller/Horror)
See the girl. Leah Wilde is 24, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town. See the man, Izsák, having come of age in extraordinary suffering and tragedy in 19th-century Budapest; witness to horror, love, death, and the wrath of a true monster. See the monster, a beautiful, seemingly young woman who stalks the American West, seeking the young and the strong to feed upon, desperate to return to Europe where her coven calls. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
YOU CAN TRUST ME by Sophie McKenzie (Psychological Thriller)
Livy arrives at her best friend Julia's flat for a lunch date only to find her dead. Though all the evidence supports it, Livy cannot accept the official ruling of suicide. The suspicious circumstances cause Livy to dig further, and she is suddenly forced to confront a horrifying possibility: that Julia was murdered, by the same man who killed Livy's sister, Kara, 18 years ago. When Livy finally faces her sister's killer, and he traps her with one horrible, impossible choice, she must finally decide: Is she strong enough to trust herself? Reviewed by Jana Siciliano.
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