On Sale This Week

July 20, 2021

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 19th and July 26th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com, where three book groups will win up to 12 paperback copies of THE EXILES by Christina Baker Kline, which is July's Target Book Club pick and was a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection when it released in hardcover last year. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, it is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, August 4th at noon ET.

Carol's latest “Bookreporter Talks To” interview is with Scott Shepherd, whose first mystery novel, THE LAST COMMANDMENT, is now in stores and will be a Bets On pick. In it, a Scotland Yard detective tracks a serial killer from London to New York City. Scott had the idea for this book for a while and talks about how he played around with it in his head for a long time (decades, actually) before writing it. He speaks in-depth about the characters, explains why he chose London and New York for its settings, and alludes to where they are going in future books without giving too much away.

A longtime writer and producer with years of experience running network television series, Scott discusses the challenges of writing for the screen versus what happens in a novel. Their conversation about television writers’ rooms will give you a better idea of how things come together on the small screen. His family has a rich Hollywood history; his great-grandfather was Louis B. Mayer from MGM, so he shares some fun stories of growing up when celebrities were just the friends of your family. Wait until you hear who read him bedtime stories! Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.

We hosted this month's “Bookaccino Live” afternoon event last week. Carol presented 35 books releasing between July 13th and August 3rd, along with nine from September, that she wanted to get on your radar. Click here to watch the presentation and here to see a list of all the titles she talked about.

Next month’s "Bookaccino Live" event will take place on Wednesday, August 11th at 2pm ET. Carol will present titles releasing between August 10th and September 7th, along with a few from October, that she thinks will appeal to you. Click here to sign up. Those attending the live event will be asked to answer a survey about the books from the presentation that they are most interested in reading and will be eligible to win a prize.

For those of you who are doing online shopping, if you use the store links below, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases. We would appreciate your considering this!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.

Wednesday, July 21st at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe --- will talk to Vanessa Riley, whose latest novel is ISLAND QUEEN.

Wednesday, July 21st at 8:30pm ET: Book Passage: Book Passage presents a virtual event featuring Megan Miranda, who will talk to Hank Phillippi Ryan about her new psychological thriller, SUCH A QUIET PLACE.

Thursday, July 22nd at 7pm ET: National Writers Series: The National Writers Series will host Megan Miranda, author of SUCH A QUIET PLACE, in conversation with journalist Riley Sager.

Thursday, July 22nd at 8pm ET: Titcomb's Bookshop: Join Titcomb's in welcoming Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray to talk about their new novel, THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN.

Thursday, July 22nd at 8:30pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Francesca Serritella as she discusses the new paperback edition of her book, GHOSTS OF HARVARD, with Jeniffer Thompson.

Monday, July 26th at 8pm ET: Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Megan Miranda will discuss SUCH A QUIET PLACE with Samantha Downing, whose new book is FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

Tuesday, July 27th at 6pm ET: Bethany Beach Books: Join Bethany Beach Books for a virtual author event with Shari Lapena in conversation with Linwood Barclay about her new thriller, NOT A HAPPY FAMILY.

Tuesday, July 27th at 7pm ET: Poughkeepsie Public Library District: Lisa Scottoline, the New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award-winning author of 33 novels, will talk about her first-ever work of historical fiction, ETERNAL.

Tuesday, July 27th at 8pm ET: Warwick's: This Couch Surfing Book Tour event features Megan Miranda as she discusses her new book, SUCH A QUIET PLACE, with Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke.

This Week's Bonus News:
"What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?"
Contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com
Enter to Win Up to 12 Paperback Copies of THE EXILES
by Christina Baker Kline for Your Group

On Sale the Week of July 19th in Hardcover

July 20th

BETTER TO HAVE GONE: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur (Memoir/History)
It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world --- Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, and the future is bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in BETTER TO HAVE GONE, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice.
Scribner | 9781501132513

BLACK ICE by Brad Thor (Political Thriller)
Scot Harvath is having his best summer ever. With a cottage on the fjord, a boat and his beautiful girlfriend Sølvi, he has everything he could possibly want. But out of vacation days and long overdue back home, America’s top spy has a decision to make --- return, or submit his resignation. When his deadly past comes calling, though, he’ll be left with no choice at all. Leaving his favorite Oslo café, Harvath watches as a ghost climbs out of a taxi --- a man he killed years ago, halfway around the world. How is he still alive? And what is he doing in Norway? In a race against time that will take him high above the Arctic Circle, Harvath will be tested in ways he has never imagined and pushed to a limit few human beings could ever endure.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982104122

THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS by Chuck Wendig (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father --- and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have --- and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again…and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.
Del Rey | 9780399182136

FALSE WITNESS by Karin Slaughter (Mystery/Thriller)
Leigh Collier is an up-and-coming defense attorney and is managing to successfully coparent through a pandemic. But her ordinary life masks a childhood no one should have to endure. On a Sunday night at her daughter’s school play, she gets a call from one of the firm's partners who wants Leigh to come on board to defend a wealthy man accused of multiple counts of rape. When she meets the accused face-to-face, she realizes it’s no coincidence that he’s specifically asked for her to represent him. He may know what happened over 20 years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades avoiding her past. The only person who can help is her younger, estranged sister Callie --- the last person Leigh would ever want to drag into this after all they’ve been through.
William Morrow | 9780062858092

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by Samantha Downing (Psychological Thriller)
Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the prestigious Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. He says his wife couldn’t be more proud --- though no one has seen her in a while. Teddy really can’t be bothered with a few mysterious deaths on campus that are looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is pushing these kids to their full academic potential. All he wants is for his colleagues --- and the endlessly meddlesome parents --- to stay out of his way. If not, well, they’ll get what they deserve. It’s really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.
Berkley | 9780593100974

GOLDEN BOY: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite by John Glatt (True Crime)
By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. With his striking good looks, he moved with ease through glittering social circles and followed in his father’s footsteps to Princeton. But Tommy always felt different. The cracks in his façade began to show in warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia and an inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his former best friend’s Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect --- but he was never charged. Just months later, he shot his father point-blank in the head. Journalist John Glatt takes an in-depth look at the devastating crime that rocked Manhattan’s upper class.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250271020

INTIMACIES by Katie Kitamura (Fiction)
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend, Jana, witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. Soon she’s pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
Riverhead Books | 9780399576164

THE LIGHTS OF SUGARBERRY COVE by Heather Webber (Fiction)
Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about southern cooking and family. But despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night Sadie almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted. So why is she so unhappy? When their mother suffers a minor heart attack, the two sisters come home to run the inn while she recovers. With a little help from the inn’s quirky guests, they may come to terms with their strained relationships, accept the past and rediscover a little lake magic.
Forge Books | 9781250774620

THE MAN WITH THE SILVER SAAB: A Detective Varg Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery/Humor)
Detective Ulf Varg is a man of refined tastes who is quite familiar with the art scene in Malmö. So when art historian Anders Kindgren visits the Department of Sensitive Crimes to report a series of bizarre acts that have been committed against him, Ulf and his team swing into action. Fish stuffed into the vents of Kindgren’s car and a manipulated footnote in a recent publication would be cause enough for an investigation. But when a painting Kindgren had confidently appraised as genuine is later declared to be a fake, it’s clear that someone is out to tarnish his reputation. Meanwhile, Ulf is also weathering personal issues, which quickly spiral out of control. When blood belonging to his lip-reading dog, Martin, is found in the back of his classic Saab, Ulf finds himself the subject of a departmental investigation.
Pantheon | 9780593316108

THE PAST IS RED by Catherynne M. Valente (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction/Humor)
The future is blue. Endless blue…except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown. Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time. But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
Tordotcom | 9781250301130

RED TRAITOR by Owen Matthews (Historical Thriller)
The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is chasing a white elephant: the long-rumored existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power. In a wild-goose chase that has Vasin engaged in high-stakes espionage against a rival State agency, he first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr. As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines are ordered to make a covert run at the American blockade in the Caribbean --- each sub carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads.
Doubleday | 9780385543422

THE RETREAT by Elisabeth de Mariaffi (Psychological Thriller)
Maeve Martin arrives at the High Water Center for the Arts, a gorgeous lodge nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains, determined to do one thing: begin her own dance company. A retired performer and mother of two, time is running out for her to find her feet again after the collapse of her disastrous --- and violent --- marriage. But when an avalanche strikes, Maeve finds herself trapped with six other guests. At first, there’s a sense of camaraderie. But as the days pass and the storm rages on outside, tensions start to run high. Then the first guest meets an unspeakable death. Followed by another. Soon Maeve must admit how little she knows about these strangers --- and how useless a locked door is if the darkness is already inside.
Mulholland Books | 9780316706308

SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN by Shelley Parker-Chan (Historical Fantasy)
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.
Tor Books | 9781250621801

WHAT STRANGE PARADISE by Omar El Akkad (Fiction)
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese and Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna is a teenage girl who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir’s life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety.
Knopf | 9780525657903

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG by Richard Roper (Fiction)
Joel and Theo haven’t spoken since the summer they turned 16, but that’s about to change. From the outside Joel looks like the picture of success: a TV scriptwriter with a smash hit who’s still together and in love with his teenage sweetheart, Amber. But he's falling apart at the seams. He's headed home to reconnect with Theo, who has been living in his parents' shed, nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego. Then he gets evicted on his 30th birthday. He thinks he's done with the real world --- until it shows up on his doorstep. One of them is keeping a secret, and the other is living a lie. But can the promise they once made to walk all 184 miles of the Thames Path help them find their way back to the truth --- and to their friendship?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525539919

A WOMAN OF INTELLIGENCE by Karin Tanabe (Historical Thriller)
A former translator for the United Nations, Katharina Edgeworth --- now the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon and heir to a shipping fortune --- is desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job. Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret soon threatens to ruin her.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250231505

On Sale the Week of July 19th in Paperback

July 20th

AUSTEN YEARS: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen (Memoir)
In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing and imagining through Austen’s novels. AUSTEN YEARS is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism and biographical and historical material about Austen herself.
Picador | 9781250798572

THE BONES OF WOLFE: A Border Noir by James Carlos Blake (Noir Thriller)
Rudy and Frank Wolfe are engaging in routine miscellaneous business for their family when they stumble upon a stash of high-quality pornographic films in a raid. The plot thickens when their Aunt Catalina, the family matriarch aged 115, recognizes a resemblance to her long-lost sister in one of the young performers. Catalina tasks the boys with tracking the girl down, however improbable a connection may be. Soon, Rudy and Frank find themselves moving away from the world of porn and towards the upper echelons of the Sinaloa drug cartel, where the mysterious woman has become a particular favorite of the head narco. For their aunt, the woman and themselves, Frank and Rudy must find a way to extract her from the cartel.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802156952

CROOKED HALLELUJAH by Kelli Jo Ford (Fiction)
It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and 15-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church --- a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. CROOKED HALLELUJAH tells the stories of Justine --- a mixed-blood Cherokee woman --- and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802149138

THE GOOD LIE by A. R. Torre (Domestic Thriller)
Paperback Original
Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore has spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives --- predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. Defense attorney Robert Kavin’s son fell prey to the BH Killer. Convinced of Thompson’s innocence, he steps in to represent him. Now Robert wants Gwen to interview the accused, create a psych profile of the killer and his victims, and help clear his client’s name. As Gwen and Robert grow closer and she dives deeper into the investigation, grave questions arise. So does Gwen’s suspicion that Robert is hiding something --- and that he might not be the only one with a secret.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542020169

HEAVEN AND EARTH written by Paolo Giordano, translated by Anne Milano Appel (Fiction)
Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves, and taciturn, proud people. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother's paperbacks. Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the farm next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern --- the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond. But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers.
Penguin Books | 9781984877338

ISN’T IT BROMANTIC? by Lyssa Kay Adams (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
As the daughter of a Russian journalist who mysteriously disappeared, Elena Konnikova escaped danger the only way she knew how: She married her childhood friend, Vladimir, and moved to the United States. Vlad thought he could be content with his marriage of convenience, but it’s become too difficult to continue in a one-sided relationship. He joined the Bromance Book Club to learn how to make his wife love him, but all he’s learned is that he deserves more. The bros are unwilling to let Vlad forgo true love --- and this time they’re not operating solo. They join forces with Vlad’s neighbors, a group of meddling widows who call themselves the Loners. But just when things finally look promising, Elena’s past life intrudes and their happily ever after is cast into doubt.
Berkley | 9780593332771

NORTHERNMOST by Peter Geye (Fiction)
In 1897, Odd Einar Eide returns home from a near-death experience in the Arctic only to discover his own funeral underway. His wife, Inger, is slow to warm back up to him, having spent many sleepless nights convinced she had lost both him and their daughter, Thea, who traveled to America two years earlier but has yet to send even a single letter back to them in Hammerfest. More than a century later, Greta Nansen has finally begun to admit to herself that her marriage is over. Desperately unhappy and unfulfilled, she makes the decision to follow her husband from their home in Minnesota to Oslo, where he has traveled for work, to end it once and for all. But on impulse, she diverts her travels to Hammerfest: the town of her ancestors, the town where her great-great-grandmother Thea was born --- and never returned.
Vintage | 9780525565352

NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE by Claire North (Post-Apocalyptic Thriller)
Paperback Original
Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age --- a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven's world, such material must be closely guarded so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated. But when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life will be turned upside down. Torn between friendship and faith, Ven must decide how far he's willing to go to save this new world --- and how much he is willing to lose.
Orbit | 9780316498838

PEW by Catherine Lacey (Fiction)
In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. By the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are --- a devil or an angel or something else entirely --- is dwarfed by even larger truths.
Picador | 9781250798534

THE SINFUL LIVES OF TROPHY WIVES by Kristin Miller (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Mystery writer Brooke Davies has had no problem playing the role of a doting housewife. But as she befriends other wives on the street and spends considerable time away from her husband Jack, he worries if he doesn’t control Brooke’s every move, she will reveal the truth behind their “perfect” marriage. Erin King, famed news anchor and chair of the community board, is no stranger to maintaining an image --- though being married to a plastic surgeon helps. But the skyrocketing success of her career has worn her love life thin, and her professional ambitions have pushed Mason away. Quitting her job is a Hail Mary attempt at keeping him interested, to steer him away from finding a young trophy wife. But is it enough, and is Mason truly the man she thought he was?
Ballantine Books | 9781524799526

THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Michele Campbell (Psychological Thriller)
Meet the first Mrs. Ford. Beautiful. Accomplished. Wealthy beyond imagination. Married to a much younger man. And now, she’s dead. Meet the second Mrs. Ford. Waitress. Small-town girl. Married to a man she never forgot, from a summer romance 10 years before. And now, she’s wealthy beyond imagination. Who is Connor Ford? Two women loved him. And knew him as only wives can know. Set amongst the glittering mansions of the Hamptons, THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is about the lives of those who will do anything for love and money. Who is the victim? Who is the villain? And who will be next to die?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250313348

WONDERLAND by Zoje Stage (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
After years of city life, Orla and Shaw Bennett are ready for the quiet of New York's Adirondack mountains --- or at least, they think they are. Settling into the perfect farmhouse with their two children, they are both charmed and unsettled by the expanse of their land, the privacy of their individual bedrooms, and the isolation of life a mile from any neighbor. But none of the Bennetts could expect what lies waiting in the woods, where secrets run dark and deep. When something begins to call to the family --- from under the earth, beneath the trees and within their minds --- Orla realizes she might be the only one who can save them…if she can find out what this force wants before it's too late.
Mulholland Books | 9780316458528

On Sale the Week of July 26th in Hardcover

July 27th

A COMEDY OF TERRORS: A Flavia Albia Novel by Lindsey Davis (Historical Mystery)
Flavia Albia, daughter and successor of private informer Marcus Didius Falco, is twiddling her thumbs with no clients during the December festival of Saturnalia. But that doesn't mean all is quiet. Her husband Tiberius and the Fourth Cohort are battling organized crime interests that are going to war over the festival nuts. A series of accidental poisonings, then bloody murders of rival nut-sellers, and finally a gruesome warning to Tiberius from the hidden criminal powers to back off. Albia has had just about enough and combines forces with Tiberius to uncover the hidden criminal gangs trying to worm their way into the establishment at a banquet of the emperor Domitian.
Minotaur Books | 9781250241542

FIERCE LITTLE THING by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (Psychological Thriller)
Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was immediately taken with Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends. Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate, estranged from the others. Her carefully walled life is torn open by threatening letters. Unless she and her former friends return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers --- their last-ditch attempt to save Home --- will be revealed. From vastly different lives, the five return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?
Flatiron Books | 9781250779427

GODSPEED by Nickolas Butler (Literary Thriller)
Cole, Bart and Teddy of True Triangle Construction are hired to finish a project for a mysteriously wealthy homeowner. Nestled in the mountains outside of Jackson, Wyoming, the house is a masterpiece. Once finished, it promises to be the architectural prize of Jackson and could put True Triangle on the map. But despite the project's lure, the owner is intent on having it built in a matter of months, an impossible task made irresistible by the exorbitant bonus that awaits them if they succeed. Up against the fateful deadline, and the looming threat of a harsh Wyoming winter, Cole, Bart and Teddy are willing to do anything to get the money. And what becomes an obsession for all three quickly builds to tragic consequences for some.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593190418

A GOOD DAY FOR CHARDONNAY by Darynda Jones (Mystery)
Full-time sheriff Sunshine Vicram has to deal with a bar fight gone bad, a teenage daughter hunting a serial killer, and the still unresolved mystery of her own abduction years prior. All evidence points to a local distiller, a dangerous bad boy named Levi Ravinder, but Sunny knows he’s not the villain of her story. Still, perhaps beneath it all, he possesses the keys to her disappearance. At the very least, beneath it all, he possesses a serious set of abs. Between policing a town her hunky chief deputy calls four cents short of a nickel, that pesky crush she has on Levi that seems to grow exponentially every day, and an irascible raccoon that just doesn’t know when to quit, Sunny’s life is about to rocket to a whole new level of crazy.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250233110

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK by Derek B. Miller (Historical Fiction)
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Sheldon, along with his teenage cousins and his best friend, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hitmen and angry accordion players, all while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780358269601

ISLAND OF THIEVES by Glen Erik Hamilton (Thriller)
Van Shaw is hired to evaluate the safeguards for the art collection of eccentric business magnate Sebastien Rohner. Then Rohner reveals to Van the real reason he’s been recruited: to prevent another professional burglar from stealing the art. While questioning the bizarre nature of the job, Van accepts the lucrative offer and arrives at the island estate during an international summit that Rohner is hosting. Shortly after beginning his surveillance of Rohner’s highly secure gallery wing, he stumbles across the murdered body of one of the honored guests. Van knows that the homicide detectives on the case think he’s the prime suspect. To clear his name, he will have to uncover the hidden motive of corporate espionage at a global level, even with a band of killers on his tail.
William Morrow | 9780062978547

JUST ONE LOOK by Lindsay Cameron (Psychological Thriller)
After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie Woodson takes a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness. But when she orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she’s been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn’t simply admire Annabelle --- she wants to take her place. And she’s armed with the tools to make that happen.
Ballantine Books | 9780593159057

NEW TEETH: Stories by Simon Rich (Fiction/Short Stories)
Called a “comedic Godsend” by Conan O’Brien and “the Stephen King of comedy writing” by John Mulaney, Simon Rich is back with NEW TEETH, his funniest and most personal collection yet. Two murderous pirates find a child stowaway on board and attempt to balance pillaging with co-parenting. A woman raised by wolves prepares for her parents’ annual Thanksgiving visit. An aging mutant superhero is forced to learn humility when the mayor kicks him upstairs to a desk job. And in the hard-boiled caper “The Big Nap,” a weary two-year-old detective struggles to make sense of “a world gone mad.”
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316536684

NOT A HAPPY FAMILY by Shari Lapena (Psychological Thriller)
Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there, and Fred and Sheila Merton certainly are rich. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered after a fraught Easter dinner with their three adult kids. They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their vindictive father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of the siblings is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did someone snap after that dreadful evening? Or did another person appear later that night with the worst of intentions? That must be what happened. After all, if one of the family were capable of something as gruesome as this, you'd know. Wouldn't you?
Pamela Dorman Books | 9781984880550

A PLACE LIKE HOME: Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher (Fiction/Short Stories)
A PLACE LIKE HOME is a collection of short stories by internationally bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher, never before published in book form. It contains 15 stories, which range from “The Holiday,” in which a wife surprises her husband of 25 years with a holiday full of Mediterranean sunshine, red rocks and blue seas in an effort to rekindle the romance they had before children; “The Eye of Love,” which takes the reader to a village by the sea where old flames meet again; and “A Place Like Home,” where a lonely young woman goes to recuperate in the Scottish countryside after a brief illness. The fruit orchards and fresh sea air offer much-needed respite --- but not as much as the handsome, mysterious farmer she meets.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274953

ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE TREACHERY by Brian Freeman (Thriller/Adventure)
Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery Treadstone agent code-named Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian double agent who’d been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. They failed. The Russian died at the hands of a shadowy assassin known only by the nickname Lennon. Now everything has changed for Bourne. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative, working in the shadows for Treadstone, when he’s called in for a new mission in London --- to prevent another assassination masterminded by Lennon. But nothing about this mission is what it seems.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525542650

ROVERS by Richard Lange (Supernatural Thriller)
Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For 70 years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts and prostitutes they feed on. This hard-boiled supernatural hell ride kicks off when the brothers encounter a young woman who disrupts their grim routine, forcing Jesse to confront his past and plunging his present into deadly chaos as he finds himself scrambling to save her life. The story plays out through the eyes of the brothers, a grieving father searching for his son’s murderer, and a violent gang of rover bikers.
Mulholland Books | 9780316541961

A SONG EVERLASTING by Ha Jin (Fiction)
At the end of a U.S. tour with his state-supported choir, popular singer Yao Tian takes a private gig in New York to pick up some extra cash for his daughter’s tuition fund, but the consequences of his choice spiral out of control. On his return to China, Tian is informed that the sponsors of the event were supporters of Taiwan’s secession, and that he must deliver a formal self-criticism. When he is asked to forfeit his passport to his employer, Tian impulsively decides instead to return to New York to protest the government’s threat to his artistic integrity. With the help of his old friend Yabin, Tian’s career begins to flourish in the United States. But he is soon placed on a Chinese government blacklist and thwarted by the state at every turn.
Pantheon | 9781524748791

SWAN DIVE: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina by Georgina Pazcoguin (Memoir)
In this love letter to the art of dance and the sport that has been her livelihood, the New York City Ballet’s first Asian American female soloist, Georgina Pazcoguin, lays bare her unfiltered story of leaving small-town Pennsylvania for New York City and training amid the unique demands of being a hybrid professional athlete/artist, all before finishing high school. She pitches us into the fascinating, whirling shoes of dancers in one of the most revered ballet companies in the world with an unapologetic sense of humor about the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest mentality at NYCB. Some swan dives are literal: even in the ballet, there are plenty of face-plants, backstage fights, late-night parties and raucous company bonding sessions.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250244307

UNTHINKABLE by Brad Parks (Thriller)
Nate Lovejoy is a self-proclaimed nobody, a stay-at-home dad who doesn’t believe he’s important to anyone but his wife and their two daughters. So it’s a shock when members of a powerful secret society kidnap and spirit Nate away to a mansion at the behest of their leader, Vanslow DeGange, who claims to know the future. He’s foreseen that a billion people could die --- unless Nate acts. It seems improbable, especially given what DeGange says will set this mass casualty incident in motion: a lawsuit against the biggest power company in Virginia, being brought by Nate’s wife, Jenny. Nate quickly smells a scam being perpetrated by the power company. But at every turn, it becomes apparent there’s more to DeGange’s gift than Nate wants to acknowledge.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542024952

WE WANT WHAT WE WANT: Stories by Alix Ohlin (Fiction/Short Stories)
WE WANT WHAT WE WANT is a collection of surprising, darkly funny stories of people testing the boundaries of their lives. In "Money, Geography, Youth," Vanessa finds out that her father is engaged to her childhood best friend. She responds by turning to a different old friendship for her own, unique diversion. In "The Brooks Brothers Guru," Amanda rescues her gawky cousin from a cult, only to discover clean-cut, well-dressed men living in a beautiful home, leading her to wonder what freedoms she might willingly trade away for a life of such elegant comfort. And in "The Universal Particular," Tamar welcomes her husband's young stepcousin from Somalia into their home, only to find their cool suburban life knocked askew in ways they cannot quite understand.
Knopf | 9780525654636

THE WOMEN'S MARCH: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession by Jennifer Chiaverini (Historical Fiction)
Twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul returns to her native New Jersey after several years on the front lines of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Nine states have already granted women voting rights, but only a constitutional amendment will secure the vote for all. To inspire support for the campaign, Alice organizes a magnificent procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, the day before the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson, a firm anti-suffragist. On March 3, 1913, the glorious march commences, but negligent police allow vast crowds of belligerent men to block the parade route --- jeering, shouting threats, assaulting the marchers --- endangering not only the success of the demonstration but the women’s very lives.
William Morrow | 9780062976000

On Sale the Week of July 26th in Paperback

July 27th

AGENT SONYA: The Spy Next Door by Ben Macintyre (History)
In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn’t know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn’t know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe. Behind the facade of her picturesque life, Burton was a dedicated Communist, a Soviet colonel and a veteran agent, gathering the scientific secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the bomb.
Crown | 9780593136324

ALL THE LITTLE HOPES by Leah Weiss (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Deep in the tobacco land of North Carolina, nothing has been the same since the boys shipped off to war and worry took their place. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is precocious and itching for adventure. Then Allie Bert Tucker wanders into town, an outcast with a puzzling past, and Lucy figures the two of them can solve any curious crime they find --- just like her hero, Nancy Drew. Their chance comes when a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking, and an eccentric gives the girls a mystery to solve that takes them beyond the ordinary. Their quiet town, seasoned with honeybees and sweet tea, becomes home to a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. More men go missing. And together, the girls embark on a journey to discover if we ever really know who the enemy is.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728232744

BONE CHASE by Weston Ochse (Supernatural Thriller/Dark Fantasy)
There were giants on the earth in those days --- at least that’s what the Bible says. But where are they? Did they ever really exist at all? When out-of-work math teacher Ethan McCloud is sent a mysterious box, he and his ex-girlfriend begin to unravel a mystery 10,000 years in the making --- and he is the last hope to discovering the world’s greatest conspiracy. Chased by both the Six-Fingered Man and the Council of David, Ethan must survive the chase --- and find the truth.
Gallery/Saga Press | 9781534450103

THE BOOK OF HIDDEN WONDERS by Polly Crosby (Fiction)
Romilly Kemp and her eccentric painter father have happy but sheltered lives in a ramshackle mansion in the English countryside. When her father finds fame with a series of children’s books starring Romilly as the main character, everything changes: exotic foods appear on the table, her father appears on TV, and strangers appear at their door, convinced the books will lead them to a precious prize. But as time passes, Romilly’s father becomes increasingly suspicious of the outside world until he begins to disappear within himself. She returns to his illustrations, looking for a way to connect with her ailing father, and finds a series of clues he has left just for her. This treasure hunt leads her to a shocking secret that is crucial to understanding her family.
Park Row | 9780778388012

THE BOY IN THE FIELD by Margot Livesey (Fiction)
One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe and Duncan Lang discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage.
Harper Perennial | 9780062946409

THE BREAKER: A Peter Ash Novel by Nick Petrie (Thriller)
When Peter Ash --- a man wanted by two governments --- spots a suspicious armed man walking into a crowded market, he knows he can't stand by and do nothing. The young gunman appeared to have one target and one mission, but when he escapes, it seems there is more to the encounter than meets the eye. Peter's hunch is proven correct when a powerful associate from his past appears with an interest in the crime, and an irresistible offer: if he and his girlfriend June solve this mystery, Peter's record will be scrubbed clean. While Peter and his friend Lewis trace the gunman, reporter June digs into the victim of the incident, a man whose face rings a bell in her memory.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525535492

THE CITY WE BECAME by N. K. Jemisin (Urban Fantasy)
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones.
Orbit | 9780316509886

THE DREAMCATCHER CODES by Barbara Newman (Fantasy)
Paperback Original
Powered by the elements earth, air, fire and water, and secret messages from mystical dreamcatchers, four girls join forces on a quest to recover the stolen piece of the coveted Crystal Horseshoe. Snatched by a giant raven during a raging storm, this sacred talisman holds the Codes of Nature and is the very key to its survival. Maia from the North has been called by Sophia, Guardian of Mother Earth, to find and lead the Crystal Warriors on this daring path into the unknown. Falcon, Ava and Yue complete the circle of four, and together they bravely face what lies ahead. But time is running out, and their search is threatened by shapeshifters in the sky who want the crystal destroyed. Will this fierce cowgirl sisterhood, with mythical horses by their side, overcome the destructive forces of greed and heal Mother Earth?
Green Writers Press | 9781733653473

FAITHLESS IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
The scene in the West Village studio appears to be a classic crime of passion: two wine glasses by the bed, music playing, and a body with a bashed-in head. But when Eve Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don’t add up. Gwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant and tearful over the trauma of finding the body. But why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things? As Eve and her team look into it, they find that the lies go well beyond murder --- and soon they’re getting the FBI involved in a case that involves a sinister, fanatical group and a stunning criminal conspiracy.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250771827

A HOUSE IS A BODY: Stories by Shruti Swamy (Fiction/Short Stories)
Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the 12 arresting stories of A HOUSE IS A BODY. In “Earthly Pleasures,” a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s professional crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain and power that contain the world.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751450

I HOLD A WOLF BY THE EARS: Stories by Laura van den Berg (Fiction/Short Stories)
Both timeless and urgent, the 11 stories in Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prize-winning book THE ISLE OF YOUTH confront misogyny, violence and the impossible economics of America. In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife’s anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.
Picador | 9781250798664

THE KINGDOM written by Jo Nesbø, translated by Robert Ferguson (Mystery/Thriller)
Roy and Carl, brothers from a small mountain town, have spent their whole lives hiding from the darkness in their pasts --- Roy by staying put and staying quiet, and Carl by running far away. Roy believed his little brother was gone for good. But Carl has big plans for his hometown. And when he returns with a mysterious new wife and a business opportunity that seems too good to be true, simmering tensions begin to surface and unexplained deaths in the town’s past come under new scrutiny. Soon powerful players set their sights on taking the brothers down by exposing their role in the town’s sordid history. But Roy and Carl are survivors, and no strangers to violence. As the town’s long-buried past begins to surface, Roy will be forced to choose between his own flesh and blood and a future he had never dared to believe possible.
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard | 9780525564867

LITTLE CRUELTIES by Liz Nugent (Psychological Thriller)
William, Brian and Luke: three boys, born a year apart, trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention. They play games, as brothers do…yet even after the Drumms escape into the world beyond their windows, those games --- those little cruelties --- grow more sinister, more merciless and more dangerous. And with their lives entwined like the strands of a noose, only two of the brothers will survive.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781501189692

THE MAN BAN by Nicola Marsh (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Harper Ryland has been on a self-imposed man ban for the last 12 months after a particularly horrible breakup. Instead, she's focusing on her career as an up-and-coming food stylist. Harper's latest gig is her best friend's wedding. When the Best Man, Manny Gomes, belittles her hard work, she decides to lead him on the entire wedding and then humiliate him in sweet revenge. When the Anglo-Indian doctor shows up in New Zealand a week later, while Harper is on her first international job, it's the last thing she needs. But when suave Manny steps in to help after an unfortunate disaster, his chivalry gets under her skin a little, and Harper discovers that lifting her ban while overseas is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Berkley | 9780593198643

THE MARSH BIRD by Anne Brooker James (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Woven with murder, mystery and magic, THE MARSH BIRD is a compelling story of a young, orphaned, multiracial girl from Louisiana and a white teen abandoned as an infant and raised by a local white fisherman, both embraced by the residents of a rural, Gullah Geechee sea island community. Set among descendants of those once enslaved in the lush marshes of the Lowcountry coast of South Carolina and Georgia, this is an unforgettable love story, and a tale of survival that proves it is the bonds of love and care that create a family.
Koehler Books | 9781646633654

THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED by Kevin O'Brien (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Seattle TV reporter Anna Malone awakens to her phone ringing. She rarely drinks, and this hangover is brutal. Why can't she shake the feeling that something terrible happened last night? And why can't she recall any of it? What Anna does remember: an awkward restaurant meal with her married lover, Russ Knoll, and his unsuspecting wife, Courtney. Russ' phone call reveals that Courtney is missing, and as days go by with no trace, he comes under police scrutiny. Anna already suspected that Courtney might have a darker side. Is she truly missing? Perhaps the sudden disturbances in Anna's life aren't accidental after all. But no scenario that she imagines can compare to the twisted game unfolding around her.
Pinnacle | 9780786045099

RADAR GIRLS by Sara Ackerman (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
In the dizzying aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy Wilder enlists in a top-secret program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time. Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked-out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies. But not everyone thinks the women are up to the job, and the new recruits must rise above their differences and work side by side despite the resistance and heartache they meet along the way. With America’s future on the line, Daisy is determined to prove herself worthy. And with the man she’s falling for out on the front lines, she cannot fail. From radar towers on remote mountaintops to flooded bomb shelters, she’ll need her new team when the stakes are highest.
Mira | 9780778332046

ROYAL by Danielle Steel (Historical Romance)
As the war rages on in the summer of 1943, causing massive destruction and widespread fear, the King and Queen choose to quietly send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a trusted noble family in the country. Despite her fiery, headstrong nature, the princess's fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London. Third in line for the throne, 17-year-old Charlotte reluctantly uses an alias upon her arrival in Yorkshire, her two guardians the only keepers of her true identity. In time, she settles comfortably into a life out of the spotlight, befriending a young evacuee and training with her cherished horse. But no one predicts that in the coming months, she will fall deeply in love with her protectors' son.
Dell | 9780399179679

SAFE IN MY ARMS by Sara Shepard (Domestic Thriller)
Paperback Original
Andrea, Lauren and Ronnie all see themselves as good, loving moms who are trying their best, but they each arrive at the Silver Swans preschool Welcome Breakfast with something to hide. They already feel like impostors among the school's community of polished parents. But then notes appear in their children’s backpacks after the first day at school. Notes that indicate that someone knows their deepest, darkest secrets and needs them gone. Does someone not want them in the community? Or is it something more menacing --- does someone know everything? When the principal of the school is the victim of an almost-fatal attack, it quickly becomes clear that the Silver Swans community is not as flawless as the brochures and website would have you believe.
Dutton | 9781524746780

THEN SHE VANISHED by T. Jefferson Parker (Thriller)
Private Investigator Roland Ford has taken a job for a fellow Marine and a rising politician, Dalton Strait. His wife, Natalie, has gone missing, leaving behind a cryptic plea for help. Strait has made many enemies during his time in politics, all of whom could be looking for revenge. But as Ford digs into the details of a troubled marriage, Natalie's disappearance becomes more and more complicated. Meanwhile, the bombings in the city intensify, with a mysterious group known only as the Chaos Committee claiming responsibility. Ford soon learns that the seemingly random attacks may be connected to the case he's on --- and suddenly, his hunt for a missing woman might decide the fate of an entire city.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525537687

THREE WORDS FOR GOODBYE by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn that their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe 40 years earlier. Clara sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy. A shocking truth about their family brings the sisters closer together, but as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062965240

UNIVERSE OF TWO by Stephen P. Kiernan (Historical Fiction)
Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he works on designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. But he suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda --- unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task --- mistakes as self-doubt. Once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the feelings of culpability devastate him and Brenda. At the war’s end, Charlie receives a scholarship to pursue a PhD in physics at Stanford, but the past proves inescapable. Haunted by guilt, Charlie and Brenda decide to dedicate the rest of their lives to making amends for the evil he helped to birth into the world.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062878458

THE VACATION by T. M. Logan (Psychological Thriller)
Kate and her three best friends are spending a week with their families in a luxurious villa in the south of France. But soon after arriving, she discovers an incriminating text on her husband’s cell phone. A text revealing that he’s having an affair. And that the other woman is one of her best friends. But which one? Trapped in paradise with no one to trust, Kate is determined to find out who has put her marriage --- and a lifelong friendship --- in jeopardy. But as she closes in on the truth, she realizes that the stakes are higher than she ever imagined. Everyone on the trip has secrets…and someone may be prepared to kill to keep theirs hidden.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250797186

WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK by Julia Heaberlin (Psychological Thriller)
It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her brother, Wyatt, was cleared of wrongdoing by the police, but he was tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and is in a new documentary about the crime. When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town’s youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can’t look away. She shares a wound that won’t close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.
Ballantine Books | 9780525621690

WHITE IVY by Susie Yang (Fiction)
Raised outside of Boston, Ivy Lin’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen --- and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates. Years later, Ivy is back in Boston and bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister. Just as she is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from Ivy’s past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982100605

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