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Reviews

Reviews

by Matthew Dicks - Fiction

Daniel Mayrock's life is at a crossroads. He knows the following to be true: 1) He loves his wife, Jill, more than anything. 2) He only regrets quitting his job and opening a bookshop a little (maybe more than a little). 3) Jill is ready to have a baby. 4) The bookshop isn’t doing well. Financial crisis is imminent. Dan doesn't know how to fix it. 5) Dan hasn’t told Jill about their financial trouble. 6) Then Jill gets pregnant. This heartfelt story is about the lengths to which one man will go and the risks he will take to save his family. But Dan doesn’t just want to save his failing bookstore and his family’s finances: 1) Dan wants to do something special. 2) He’s a man who is tired of feeling ordinary. 3) He’s sick of feeling like a failure. 4) He doesn't want to live in the shadow of his wife’s deceased first husband.

by Lyssa Kay Adams - Comedy, Fiction, Romance, Women's Fiction

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife, Thea, has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

by Daniel José Older - Fiction

Marisol vanished during the Cuban Revolution, disappearing with hardly a trace. Now, shaped by atrocities long-forgotten, her tenacious spirit visits her nephew, Ramón, in modern-day New Jersey. Her hope: that her presence will prompt him to unearth their painful family history. Ramón launches a haphazard investigation into the story of his ancestor, unaware of the forces driving him on his search. Along the way, he falls in love, faces a run-in with a murderous gangster, and uncovers the lives of the lost saints who helped Marisol during her imprisonment.

by Jaquira Díaz - Memoir, Nonfiction

While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of ORDINARY GIRLS vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.

by Alix E. Harrow - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book --- a book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

by Augusten Burroughs - Memoir, Nonfiction

For as long as Augusten Burroughs could remember, he knew things he shouldn't have known. He manifested things that shouldn't have come to pass. And he told exactly no one about this, save one person: his mother. His mother reassured him that it was all perfectly normal, that he was descended from a long line of witches, going back to the days of the early American colonies. And that this family tree was filled with witches. It was a bond that he and his mother shared --- until the day she left him in the care of her psychiatrist to be raised in his family (but that's a whole other story). After that, Augusten was on his own. On his own to navigate the world of this tricky power; on his own to either use or misuse this gift.

by Carol Anshaw - Fiction

It’s the fall of 2016. Cate, a set designer, lives and works in Chicago’s theater community. She has stayed too long at the fair and knows it’s time to get past her prolonged adolescence and stop taking handouts from her parents. Only a few blocks away, but in a parallel universe, we find Nathan and Irene --- casual sociopaths, drug addicts and small-time criminals. Their world and Cate’s intersect the day she finds these strangers assaulting her friend, Neale. Forced to take fast, spontaneous action, Cate does something she’s never even considered. She now also knows the violence she is capable of, as does everyone else in her life, and overnight, their world has changed.

by Leigh Bardugo - Fantasy, Fiction, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs and much, much worse. In fact, by age 20, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. She arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, but their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

by Kira Peikoff - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Claire Abrams' dreams became a nightmare when she passed on a genetic mutation that killed her little boy. Now she wants a second chance to be a mother, and finds it in Robert Nash, a maverick fertility doctor who works under the radar with Jillian Hendricks, a cunning young scientist bent on making her mark. Claire, Robert and Jillian work together to create the world's first baby with three genetic parents --- an unprecedented feat that could eliminate inherited disease. But when word of their illegal experiment leaks to the wrong person, Robert escapes into hiding with the now-pregnant Claire, leaving Jillian to serve out a prison sentence that destroys her future. Ten years later, Jillian will stop at nothing to reunite with the man and daughter who should have been hers.

by Angie Cruz - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan’s free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay. As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan comes back to protect his family’s assets, leaving Cesar to take care of Ana. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family.