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Week of May 12, 2025

New in Paperback

Week of May 12, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of May 12th include THE ROM-COMMERS, Katherine Center's rom-com about writing a rom-com, which our reviewer Pamela Kramer thinks is one of Center’s best books yet and assures readers that they will fall in love with the two protagonists; ALL FOURS by Miranda July, an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life; WE SOLVE MURDERS, which kicks off a brand-new mystery series from Richard Osman and introduces readers to a detective duo who appear to be mismatched; Frank Figliuzzi's LONG HAUL, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for the long-haul truckers behind an astonishing 850 murders --- and counting; and LEFT FOR DEAD by Eric Jay Dolin, a tale of intriguing complexity that tells the true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812.

All Fours by Miranda July - Fiction

May 13, 2025

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. With Miranda July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, ALL FOURS tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, the book transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.

All the Summers in Between by Brooke Lea Foster - Historical Fiction

May 13, 2025

When wealthy, impulsive summer girl Margot meets hardworking and steady local girl Thea in the summer of 1967, the unlikely pair become fast friends, working alongside one another in a record store and spending every spare moment together. But after an unspeakable incident on one devastating August night, they don’t see one another for 10 years…until Margot suddenly reappears in Thea’s life, begging for help and harboring more than one dangerous secret. Thea can’t bring herself to refuse her beloved friend, but she also knows she can’t fully trust her either. Unfulfilled as a housewife, Thea enjoys the dazzling sense of adventure Margot brings to her life. But will the truth of what happened to them that fateful summer ruin everything?

Ambition Monster: A Memoir by Jennifer Romolini - Memoir

May 13, 2025

After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow. AMBITION MONSTER is a gutsy and powerful look at workaholism, the lingering effect of childhood trauma, and the failures of our modern rat race. This is a Cinderella story of success and a brutal appraisal of the cost of capitalism --- perfect for people pleasers, overachievers, and those whose traumas have driven them to be perfect, no matter the cost.

Ash Dark as Night: A Harry Ingram Mystery by Gary Phillips - Historical Mystery

May 13, 2025

Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost --- until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate, Moses “Mose” Tolbert, who was last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash and clandestine agendas.

The Country Under Heaven by Frederic S. Durbin - Western

May 13, 2025

Set in the 1880s, THE COUNTRY UNDER HEAVEN follows Ovid Vesper, a former Union soldier who has been having enigmatic visions after surviving the Battle of Antietam. As he travels across the country following those visions, he finds himself in stranger and increasingly more dangerous encounters with other worlds hidden in the spaces of his own mind, not to mention the dangers of the Wild West. Ovid brings his steady calm and compassion as he helps the people of a broken country still reeling and wounded from the war. He assists with matters of all sorts, from odd jobs around the house, to guiding children back to their own universe, to hunting down unnatural creatures that stalk the night --- all the while seeking his own personal resolution and peace from his visions.

Death on the Island by Eliza Reid - Mystery

May 13, 2025

A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There's Kristján, the mayor, who is reeling from a personal tragedy; Graeme, the ambassador, who has an agenda to push; Jane, his wife, who is along for the ride on another one of her husband's many business trips; and several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador's wife to figure out how --- and why. What Jane soon comes to realize is that small communities can be the most dangerous of them all…and no one in their group is safe.

Don't Let the Devil Ride by Ace Atkins - Thriller

May 13, 2025

Addison McKellar knows she and her husband, Dean, don’t have the perfect marriage, but she’s still shocked when he completely vanishes from her life. As days stretch into a week and she’s repeatedly stonewalled by Dean’s friends and associates, her frustration turns into genuine alarm. When even the police seem dismissive of her concerns, Addison turns to her father’s old friend, legendary Memphis PI Porter Hayes. Porter and Addison quickly discover that Dean was never the hardworking business owner and family man he pretended to be. As they piece together the connections between a hook-handed mercenary, one of Elvis’ former leading ladies, and a man posing as an FBI agent, it becomes clear that Dean was deeply enmeshed in a high-stakes web of international intrigue, and Porter and Addison aren’t the only ones looking for him.

Dream On, Ramona Riley by Ashley Herring Blake - Romantic Comedy

May 13, 2025

Once upon a time, Ramona Riley was a student at a prestigious art school, with dreams of landing in Hollywood as a costume designer to the stars. But after her father’s car accident, she had to quit and return to her small New Hampshire town, Clover Lake, to help take care of her younger sister. Twelve years later, Ramona is still working at the town’s café, all but given up on her dream. But when a big-budget romantic comedy comes to Clover Lake to film, she wonders if this could be her chance. There’s only one problem: Dylan Monroe, her first kiss and Hollywood’s favorite wild child, is the star. Ultimately, both women must decide if the spark between them can fan the flames of their individual dreams, or if it will extinguish their light.

A Farewell to Arfs: A Chet & Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn - Mystery

May 13, 2025

Chet the dog and his human partner, PI Bernie Little, are on to a new case, and this time they're entangled in a web of crime unlike anything they've ever seen before. Their elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Parsons, thought he was doing the right thing by loaning his ne'er do well son, Billy, some money to help get himself settled. But soon, Mr. Parsons discovers that his entire life savings is gone. A run-of-the-mill scam? Bernie isn’t so sure that the case is that simple, but it's Chet who senses what they're really up against. Only Billy knows the truth, but he's disappeared. Can Chet and Bernie track him down before it's too late? Someone else is also in the hunt, an enemy with a mysterious, cutting-edge power who will test Chet and Bernie to their limit --- or maybe beyond.

The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America by Larry Tye - Music/History

May 13, 2025

This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians --- Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie --- the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of 20th-century America. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, THE JAZZMEN brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid-1900s through the singular lens of the country’s most gifted, engaging and enduring African-American musicians.

Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World by Eric Jay Dolin - History

May 13, 2025

In LEFT FOR DEAD, Eric Jay Dolin tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their 18-month ordeal --- an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail.

Liars by Sarah Manguso - Fiction

May 13, 2025

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including --- a few years later --- all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims and ego; in short, she becomes a wife. As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi - True Crime

May 13, 2025

In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed 50 women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. The transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these cases incredibly difficult to solve. Based on his own on-the-ground research and drawing on his 25-year career as an FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi investigates the most terrifying of these cases.

The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard by Michael Callahan - Historical Fiction

May 13, 2025

In 1959, Hollywood ingenue Mercy Welles seems to have the world at her feet. Far removed from her Nebraska roots, she has crafted herself into a glamorous Oscar-nominated actress engaged to an up-and-coming director. Until she shockingly vanishes without a trace. Almost 60 years later, Kit O’Neill, a junior television producer in Manhattan, is packing up her recently deceased grandmother’s attic, only to discover a long-lost box of souvenirs that reveal that the grandmother who raised her and her sister was, in fact, the mysterious Mercy Welles. Kit is determined to solve the riddle of her grandmother’s missing life, and the trail eventually leads to Martha’s Vineyard. Mercy retreats to the island nursing a broken heart, only to be drawn to the roguish Ren Sewards, who is not just the simple oysterman he appears to be but a scion of one of the island’s wealthy founding families.

Maine Characters by Hannah Orenstein - Fiction

May 13, 2025

Every summer, Vivian Levy and Lucy Webster spend a month with their father at his lake house --- separately. Raised in New York City, Vivian is an ambitious sommelier with a secret that could derail her future. Lucy grew up in a tiny Maine town, where she now teaches high school English while watching her marriage unravel. They’ve never met. While Lucy envied her half-sister from afar, their father kept Vivian in the dark. When Vivian arrives at the lake to spread his ashes and sell his cabin, she's shocked to find Lucy there, awaiting his return. In an ideal world, they’d help each other through their grief. Instead, forced to spend the summer together, they fight through a storm of suspicion and hostility to untangle the messy truth about their parents’ pasts.

One Deadly Eye: A Doc Ford Novel by Randy Wayne White - Thriller/Adventure

May 13, 2025

A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc Ford is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane. No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s most dangerous prison, including a serial killer --- the Vulture Monk --- who has a taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a priceless art collection.

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean - Psychological Thriller/Mystery

May 13, 2025

It’s been 20 years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State. But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken --- and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center - Romantic Comedy

May 13, 2025

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to rewrite a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates, it’s a break too big to pass up. Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for the writing gig of a lifetime. But Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone --- much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus, he doesn’t even care about the script; it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. But Emma is not going down without a fight. She will convince him that love stories matter --- even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But what if that kiss is accidentally amazing?

The Shadow of War: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Jeff Shaara - Historical Fiction

May 13, 2025

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy inherited an ill-conceived, poorly executed invasion of Cuba that failed miserably and set in motion the events that put the U.S. and the Soviet Union on a collision course that nearly started a war that would have enveloped much of the world. THE SHADOW OF WAR brings to life the many threads that lead to the building crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962. It is told from a multitude of perspectives and voices --- from the Russian engineer attempting the nearly impossible task of building the missile launch facilities in Cuba, to the U.S. Navy commanders whose ships are sent to "quarantine" Cuba, to the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, desperately trying to maintain a challenging balancing act between the conflicting demands of various powerful forces.

A Simple Twist of Fate by April Asher - Paranormal Romantic Comedy

May 13, 2025

At the age of 18, witch Harlow “Harry” Pierce attended her first Fates Festival Finding Ceremony, certain that the Blue Willow Wisp would lead her to her Fated match: her cougar shifter boyfriend, Jaxon Atwood. But Fate had other plans, guiding her best friend to him instead. Thirteen years later, she returns to her magical hometown --- with her half-human, half-shifter goddaughter in tow --- hoping that the town would work its magic on the troubled teenager. Jaxon Atwood was a shifter of few words and even less patience…until his mother retired as Alpha of the Rocky Mountain Pack and left the running of things to him. It’s a headache he didn’t need, and one that brought the witch who’d ripped his heart from his chest knocking on his door.

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud - Historical Fiction

May 13, 2025

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state --- separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife, Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’ union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; and of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

The Underhanded by Adam Sikes - Thriller/Adventure

May 13, 2025

Professor William Dresden has found solitude in the south of France to grapple with his troubled past --- a neglected upbringing, failed romances, the recent demolition of his life’s work in academia, and even witnessing genocide. But he soon learns that he has much larger problems when an adrift MI6 officer, Adeline Parker, insists on a meeting, revealing shocking information about his family. Then a bomb explodes. William and Adeline narrowly escape the attempt on their lives and find themselves battling a group of neofascists and extreme nationalists who are inciting violent divisions across Europe. They are pulled into a shadowy war against a cabal called the Strasbourg Executive and pushed to the brink by family betrayals, corrupt institutions, and the Executive’s subversive plots against the fabric of Western society.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman - Mystery

May 13, 2025

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now. Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts. As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?

The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore - Historical Thriller

May 13, 2025

1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want --- a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime. How can they defeat the enemy without firing a bullet? To thwart the Nazis, Ansel and his team invent a powerful new theater of battle: economic warfare. Money is a dangerous weapon, and Ansel’s efforts will plunge him into a world full of peril and deceit.