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Week of August 30, 2021

New in Paperback

Week of August 30, 2021

Paperback releases for the week of August 30th include HOME BEFORE DARK by Riley Sager, the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman’s quest to uncover them --- even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting; Liese O’Halloran Schwarz's WHAT COULD BE SAVED, in which a woman must confront her family’s closely guarded secrets when a mysterious man claims to be her long-missing brother; ELI'S PROMISE, a masterful work of historical fiction from Ronald H. Balson that spans three eras --- Nazi-occupied Poland, the American Zone of post-war Germany, and Chicago at the height of the Vietnam War; and THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS by A. N. Wilson, a lively and insightful biographical celebration of the imaginative genius of Charles Dickens, published in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his death.

Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink - Horror/Thriller

August 31, 2021

Keisha Taylor lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn’t dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country. Following a line of clues, Keisha takes a job with a trucking company and begins searching for Alice. She eventually stumbles on an otherworldly conflict being waged in the quiet corners of our nation’s highway system --- uncovering a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman.

The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh - Fiction

August 31, 2021

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. Its promise is amazing: With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys and athletes --- including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more.

The Butterfly House by Katrine Engberg - Literary Thriller/Mystery

August 31, 2021

In the coronary care unit at one of Copenhagen’s leading medical centers, a nurse fills a syringe with an overdose of heart medication and stealthily enters the room of an older male patient. Six days earlier, a paperboy on his route in central Copenhagen stumbles upon the naked body of a dead woman. The cause of death is exsanguination, the draining of all the blood in her body. Lead investigator Jeppe Kørner takes on the investigation. His partner, Anette Werner, is restless at home with a demanding newborn and an equally demanding husband. While Jeppe pounds the streets looking for answers, Anette decides to do a little freelance sleuthing. But operating on her own exposes her to dangers she can’t even begin to fathom.

Eli's Promise by Ronald H. Balson - Historical Fiction

August 31, 2021

1939: Eli Rosen lives with his wife, Esther, and their young son in the Polish town of Lublin, where his family owns a construction company. As a consequence of the Nazi occupation, Eli’s company is Aryanized, appropriated and transferred to Maximilian Poleski, an unprincipled profiteer who will keep the Rosen family safe if Eli will manage the business. 1946: Eli resides with his son in a displaced persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany hoping for a visa to America. His wife has been missing since the war. One man is sneaking around the camps selling illegal visas. Might he know what has happened to her? 1965: Eli rents a room in Albany Park, Chicago. He navigates unfamiliar streets and dangerous political backrooms, searching for the truth.

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss - Social Science

August 31, 2021

“My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges, she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager - Supernatural Thriller/Gothic Horror

August 31, 2021

Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. Three weeks later they fled in the dead of night, an ordeal her father recounted in a memoir called House of Horrors. Maggie was too young to remember any of the horrific events that supposedly took place, and as an adult she doesn’t believe a word of her father’s claims. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When she inherits Baneberry Hall after his death and returns to renovate the place and sell it, her homecoming is anything but warm. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself. As Maggie starts to experience strange occurrences ripped from the pages of her father’s book, the truth she uncovers about the house’s dark history will challenge everything she believes.

The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson - Fiction

August 31, 2021

Shy and reclusive, 30-year-old librarian June Jones would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, she is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother. Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend, Alex Chen, is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.

Make Them Cry by Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith - Thriller

August 31, 2021

A former prosecutor notorious for her aggressive tactics, Diane Harbaugh is now a DEA agent. But when she hears from Gustavo, a high-ranking cartel member with an invaluable secret about the international black market, her entire understanding of justice and duty is thrown into question. Gustavo sends her down a rabbit hole that leads to a criminal conspiracy more pervasive than anything she and the DEA ever suspected. She teams up with Ian Carver, a disillusioned CIA agent, and begins to unravel layers of deceptions, grifts and schemes that date back to the beginnings of the Afghanistan War. As they learn more, they become the target of cartel assassins, embittered spies and even their own government.

Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston - Fantasy

August 31, 2021

The world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find. Djola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire, is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile. Awa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating cities, kindly beasts and uncertain men.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A. N. Wilson - Biography

August 31, 2021

Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his 58 years when he died. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, award-winning biographer A. N. Wilson seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity.

Quotients by Tracy O'Neill - Fiction

August 31, 2021

Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen hope to make a quiet home together but struggle to find a space safe from their personal secrets. For Jeremy, this means leaving behind his former life as an intelligence operative during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For Alexandra, a high-powered job in image management for whole countries cannot prepare her for her missing brother’s sudden reappearance. In a culture of limitless surveillance, Jeremy and Alexandra will go to great lengths to protect what is closest to them. Spanning decades and continents, their saga brings them into contact with a down-and-out online journalist, shadowy security professionals, and jockeying technology experts, each of whom has a different understanding of whether information really protects us.

Red Pill by Hari Kunzru - Fiction

August 31, 2021

After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of RED PILL arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches “Blue Lives” --- a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life --- and soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. When some friends drag him to a party where he meets Anton, the creator of “Blue Lives,” the narrator starts to believe that the two of them are involved in a cosmic battle, and that Anton is "red-pilling" his viewers --- turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview --- ultimately forcing the narrator to wonder if he is losing his mind.

The Riviera House by Natasha Lester - Historical Fiction

August 31, 2021

Paris, 1939: The Nazis think that Éliane is merely cataloging art in the Louvre and unaware they’re stealing national treasures for their private collections. They have no idea she’s carefully decoding their notes and smuggling information to the Resistance. But Éliane is playing a dangerous game, and a trip to a stunning home on the French Riviera brings a whole new level of peril. Present Day: Remy Lang heads to a home she’s mysteriously inherited on the Riviera. While working on her vintage fashion business, she discovers a catalog of the artworks stolen during World War II and is shocked to see a painting that hung on her childhood bedroom wall. Who is her family, really? And does the Riviera house hold more secrets than Remy is ready to face?

Strung Out: A Memoir of Overcoming Addiction by Erin Khar - Memoir

August 31, 2021

Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was 13. The drug allowed her to escape from pressures to be perfect and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn’t understand. STRUNG OUT explores how heroin shaped every aspect of her life for the next 15 years and details the various lies she told herself, and others, about her drug use. With enormous heart and wisdom, she shows how the shame and stigma surrounding addiction, which fuels denial and deceit, is so often what keeps addicts from getting help.

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams - Fiction

August 31, 2021

The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started. Now --- just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity --- it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity --- a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.

What Could Be Saved by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz - Fiction

August 31, 2021

Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston raise their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand.