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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of December 25th and January 1st 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 Reviewer Picks for 2017, where our reviewers reveal their favorite books of the year, and various "Best Of" lists that we've compiled from around the web. Let us know how many books you've read, and how many audiobooks you've listened to, in 2017 in our latest poll.
Also, please keep in mind our very special End-of-the-Year contest featuring Carol Fitzgerald’s Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2017. One Grand Prize winner will be awarded all 40 books, while eight other winners will receive a selection of five of these titles. The deadline for your entries is Monday, January 8th at noon ET.
And be sure to check out our Holiday Author Blogs. Eleven authors have shared with us some wonderful holiday memories about giving or receiving books during the holidays. This year's contributors are Chloe Benjamin, Alafair Burke, Karen Cleveland, Chris Fabry, A. J. Finn, Tayari Jones, Nick Petrie, Francine Rivers, Sarah Vaughan, Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig.
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
This Week's Bonus News: Reviewer Picks for 2017,
"Best Of" Lists from Around the Web,
and Our Year-End Poll
Bookreporter.com Reviewers Choose Their Favorite Books of 2017
Recently we asked our reviewers to provide us with a list of some of their favorite books from 2017. Included is a mix of fiction and nonfiction titles, all published this year. Take a moment to read these varied lists of titles and see if you agree with their selections! Please note that due to personal and professional commitments, some reviewers were not able to participate in this feature.
2017 “Best Of” Lists from Around the Web
This is the time of year when “Best Of” lists are everywhere. These annual roundups always seem to spark lively discussions among readers as they reflect on their favorite books of the year. Although we at Bookreporter.com don’t have a “Best Of” list of our own, we’ve compiled a number of them for you. See which of your top picks appear on these lists and which titles you feel should've been included but weren't. Perhaps you’ll even find some books to add to your reading list as we head into the new year!
Bookreporter.com's Year-End Poll
How many print books or e-books did you read in 2017? How many audiobooks did you listen to? Click here to cast your votes!
On Sale the Week of December 25th in Hardcover
December 26th
DEATH AT NUREMBERG: A Clandestine Operations Novel by W. E. B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV (Historical Thriller/Adventure)
When Jim Cronley hears he's just won the Legion of Merit, he figures there's another shoe to drop, and it's a big one: he's out as Chief, DCI-Europe. His new assignments, however, couldn't be bigger: to protect the U.S. chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials from a rumored Soviet NKGB kidnapping, and to hunt down and dismantle the infamous Odessa, an organization dedicated to helping Nazi war criminals escape to South America. It doesn't take long for the first attempt on his life, and then the second. NKGB or Odessa? Who can tell? The deeper he pushes, the more secrets tumble out.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780399176746
THE LAST MAN IN TEHRAN by Mark Henshaw (Thriller)
An attack on an Israeli port throws the Middle East into chaos. The Mossad, Israel’s feared intelligence service, responds with a campaign of covert sabotage and assassination, determined to protect the homeland. But evidence quickly turns up suggesting that a group of moles inside Langley are helping Mossad wage its covert war. Convinced that Mossad has heavily penetrated the CIA’s leadership, the FBI launches a counterintelligence investigation. New Red Cell Chief Kyra Stryker turns to her former mentors --- now-retired Red Cell Chief Jonathan Burke and his wife, former CIA Director Kathryn Cooke --- to help uncover who is trying to tear the CIA apart from the inside out.
Touchstone | 9781501161261
THE WANTED: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel by Robert Crais (Thriller)
When single mother Devon Connor hires Elvis Cole, it’s because her troubled teenage son Tyson is flashing cash and she’s afraid he’s dealing drugs. But the truth is devastatingly different. With two others, he’s been responsible for a string of high-end burglaries, a crime spree that takes a deadly turn when one of them is murdered and Tyson and his girlfriend disappear. They stole the wrong thing from the wrong man, and, determined to get it back, he has hired two men who are smart and brutal and the best at what they do. To even the odds, Cole brings in his friend, Joe Pike, but even the two of them together may be overmatched.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780399161506
On Sale the Week of December 25th in Paperback
December 26th
ANY DREAM WILL DO by Debbie Macomber (Fiction)
Shay Benson adored her younger brother, Caden, and that got her into trouble. Pastor Drew Douglas adored his wife. But when he lost her, it was all he could do to focus on his two beautiful kids, and his flock came in a distant third. Shay and Drew meet in church one day and strike up a friendship that, over time, turns into something deeper and possibly romantic. Shay learns to trust again as she, in turn, proves herself trustworthy to her adopted community. But Caden’s return to town and a disastrous secret threaten to undo the life Shay has tried so hard to rebuild. It will take the utmost courage and faith if she and Drew hope to find healing and open their hearts to a brighter future.
Ballantine Books | 9780399181214
ASSASSIN’S FATE: Book III of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy by Robin Hobb (Fantasy)
FitzChivalry Farseer’s young daughter, Bee, has been kidnapped by the Servants, a secret society whose members not only dream of possible futures but use their prophecies to add to their wealth and influence. As Bee is dragged by her sadistic captors across half the world, Fitz and the Fool, believing her dead, embark on a mission of revenge that will take them to the distant island where the Servants reside --- a place the Fool once called home and later called prison. It was a hell the Fool escaped, maimed and blinded, swearing never to return. For all his injuries, however, the Fool is not as helpless as he seems. And though Fitz is no longer the peerless assassin of his youth, he remains a man to be reckoned with.
Del Rey | 9780553392968
GINNY MOON by Benjamin Ludwig (Fiction)
Ginny Moon is exceptional. Everyone knows it --- her friends at school, teammates on the basketball team, and especially her new adoptive parents. They all love her, even if they don't quite understand her. They want her to feel like she belongs. What they don't know is that Ginny has no intention of belonging. She has found her birth mother on Facebook and is determined to get back to her --- even if it means going back to a place that was extremely dangerous. Because Ginny left something behind and is desperate to get it back, to make things right. But no one listens. No one understands. So Ginny takes matters into her own hands.
Park Row | 9780778330882
THE HEARTS OF MEN by Nickolas Butler (Fiction)
Camp Chippewa, 1962. Thirteen-year-old Nelson Doughty, a social outcast and an overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan. Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths --- and the limits --- of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery.
Ecco | 9780062469694
THE MIDNIGHT BELL by Jack Higgins (Thriller)
In Ulster, Northern Ireland, a petty criminal kills a woman in a drunken car crash. Her sons swear revenge. In London, Sean Dillon and his colleagues in the “Prime Minister's private army,” fresh from defeating a deadly al-Qaeda operation, receive a warning: You may think you have weakened us, but you have only made us stronger. In Washington, D.C., a special projects director with the CIA, frustrated at not getting permission from the President for his daring anti-terrorism plan, decides to put it in motion anyway. Soon, the ripples from these events will meet and overlap, creating havoc in their wake. Desperate men will act, secrets will be revealed --- and the midnight bell will toll.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780399185328
MISSISSIPPI BLOOD: The Natchez Burning Trilogy by Greg Iles (Thriller)
In this concluding volume to Greg Iles’ Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations --- preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son. The trial sets a terrible clock in motion, and unless Penn can pierce the veil of the past and exonerate his father, his family will be destroyed.
William Morrow | 9780062311184
NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT by Kristan Higgins (Fiction)
Paperback Original
The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back. There’s only one place to land: home. But the tiny Maine community she left 15 years ago doesn’t necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments. Balancing loss and opportunity, dark events from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise…and the chance to begin again.
HQN | 9781335903358
THE WICKED CITY by Beatriz Williams (Fiction)
When she discovers that her banker husband has been harboring a secret life, Ella Gilbert escapes their sleek SoHo loft for a studio in a quaint building in Greenwich Village. Her charismatic musician neighbor, Hector, warns her to stay out of the basement after midnight, when a symphony of mysterious noise strikes up, even though it's stood empty for decades. Back in the Roaring Twenties, the building hosted one of the city’s most notorious speakeasies. As Ella unravels the strange history of the building --- and the family thread that connects her to flapper Geneva Kelly --- she senses the Jazz Age spirit of her incandescent predecessor invading her own shy nature, in ways that will transform her life in the wicked city.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062405012
On Sale the Week of January 1st in Hardcover
January 2nd
AN AEGEAN APRIL: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery by Jeffrey Siger (Mystery)
When a government policy accelerates the surge of refugees onto his island, Mihalis Volandes rises to prominence in relief efforts he sees as growing increasingly ineffectual. One evening, after working to stir up support for his breakthrough plan to strike at the heart of the lucrative refugee trafficking trade, he returns to his mansion and falls victim in his own garden to a swishing sword. A refugee-turned-local-aid-worker named Ali Serra is found at the scene and is swiftly arrested. Volandes was a prominent citizen and the crime particularly gruesome. Could it be terrorism or something else? But whether Ali is guilty or framed, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis can't ignore a powerful motive for the murder.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209451
THE BOMB MAKER by Thomas Perry (Thriller)
A threat is called into the LAPD Bomb Squad, and when tragedy ensues, the fragmented unit turns to Dick Stahl, a former Bomb Squad commander who now operates his own private security company. Just returned from a tough job in Mexico, Stahl is at first reluctant to accept the offer, but his sense of duty to the technicians he trained is too strong to turn it down. On his first day back at the head of the squad, Stahl’s three-person team is dispatched to a suspected car bomb. And it quickly becomes clear to him that they are dealing with an unusual mastermind --- one whose intended target seems to be the Bomb Squad itself.
Mysterious Press | 9780802127488
FALSE WITNESS by Andrew Grant (Mystery/Thriller)
A woman disappears on her 21st birthday. The following day her body is found, wrapped neatly like a gift. What does Detective Cooper Devereaux have to go on? Very little. Then another victim is discovered. Again, she was killed on her 21st birthday. Again, her body was wrapped like a gift. By the third murder the tabloids have dubbed the homicidal monster the Birthday Killer --- and Devereaux is under the gun. While Devereaux’s own violent and mysterious past nips at his heels, and his fragile home life threatens to unravel, he can’t afford to be anything but totally obsessed with the frantic search through the many layers of this city, from its wealthy enclaves to its dark criminal underbelly.
Ballantine Books | 9780399594335
GREEN by Sam Graham-Felsen (Fiction)
David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won’t even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Nobody is more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar is a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave’s own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave’s assumptions about black culture. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar’s. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he’s been given --- and that Mar has not.
Random House | 9780399591143
IN THE SHADOW OF AGATHA CHRISTIE: Classic Crime Fiction by Forgotten Female Writers: 1850-1917 edited by Leslie S. Klinger (Mystery/Short Stories)
Agatha Christie burst onto the literary scene in 1920, with THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES; her last novel was published in 1976, a career longer than even Arthur Conan Doyle’s 40-year span. The truth is that it was due to the success of writers like Anna Katherine Green in America; L. T. Meade, C. L. Pirkis, the Baroness Orczy and Elizabeth Corbett in England; and Mary Fortune in Australia that the doors were finally opened for female crime writers. So, while Agatha Christie may still reign supreme, it is important to remember that she did not ascend that throne except on the shoulders of the women who came before her --- and inspired her --- and who are now removed from her shadow once and for all.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776309
A MAP OF THE DARK by Karen Ellis (Thriller)
A teenage girl has disappeared from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads obscures the fact that she did not go willingly. With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, FBI Agent Elsa Myers’ carefully compartmentalized world collapses around her. Everything she has buried --- her fraught relationship with her sister and niece, her self-destructive past, her mother's death --- threatens to resurface, with devastating consequences. Can our most painful childhood secrets be forgotten? Or will they always find their way back into our adult lives?
Mulholland Books | 9780316505666
MOOD INDIGO: An Edna Ferber Mystery by Ed Ifkovic (Historical Mystery)
Dougie Maddox is the financially astute but socially naïve only son of a Fifth Avenue dynasty. His widowed mother, known as Lady Maud, has kept the 35-year-old on a short leash, but Dougie has crossed paths with Belinda Ross, the new Broadway songbird. He's mesmerized by her, but she seems besotted by him. When Belinda is found strangled late one night in a Times Square Automat, jealous, hot-tempered Dougie is the prime suspect. But British wit Noel Coward, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, team up to clear Dougie's name. Their investigation inevitably takes them deep into Belinda's circle and her past.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209413
THE MUSIC SHOP by Rachel Joyce (Fiction)
On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb, there is a music shop that is jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless and the adrift; Frank, the shop’s owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind.
Random House | 9780812996685
PROMISE NOT TO TELL by Jayne Ann Krentz (Romantic Suspense)
Seattle gallery owner Virginia Troy has spent years battling the demons that stem from her childhood time in a cult and the night a fire burned through the compound, killing her mother. And now one of her artists has taken her own life, but not before sending Virginia a last picture: a painting that makes Virginia doubt everything about the so-called suicide --- and her own past. Like Virginia, private investigator Cabot Sutter was one of the children in the cult who survived that fire...and only he can help her now. Thrown into an inferno of desire and deception, Virginia and Cabot draw ever closer to the mystery of their shared memories --- and the shocking fate of the one man who still wields the power to destroy everything they hold dear.
Berkley | 9780399585272
RED SKY AT NOON by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Historical Fiction)
Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines. But is there a traitor among them? The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler’s troops as they push East.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776736
ROBICHEAUX by James Lee Burke (Thriller)
Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle with alcoholism, and the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, Dave Robicheaux’s thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts at Spanish Lake live on the edge of his vision. During a murder investigation, Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he’s investigating, one that involved the death of the man who took the life of Robicheaux’s beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501176845
A STATE OF FREEDOM by Neel Mukherjee (Fiction)
Five characters, in very different circumstances --- from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, to a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city --- find out the meanings of dislocation and the desire for more. Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393292909
UNBOUND: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods (Thriller/Adventure)
In the wake of a personal tragedy, former CIA operative Teddy Fay --- now a successful Hollywood film producer known as Billy Barnett --- takes a leave of absence to travel and grieve, and lands in Santa Fe in the company of his friends Stone Barrington and Ed Eagle. There, fate hands him an unexpected opportunity to exact quiet revenge for his recent loss, from a man who helped to cover up the crime. But when his enemy wises up to Teddy’s machinations, a discreet game of sabotage escalates to a potentially lethal battle. It will take all of Stone’s diplomacy and skill to maneuver for Teddy’s advantage while keeping innocents out of the crossfire.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735217171
VINDICATION: A Matt Royal Mystery by H. Terrell Griffin (Mystery)
Matt Royal, the retired lawyer-turned-beach-bum, is called back into the courtroom to defend his girlfriend J.D. Duncan's Aunt Esther. A bestselling author has been murdered after a book signing, and Aunt Esther has been arrested. Matt reluctantly suits up for the courtroom, and J.D. takes a leave from the police department to go undercover. A bizarre specter from the past haunts their investigation every step of the way. As they delve further into the case, the pieces of the puzzle refuse to fall into any kind of coherent pattern. Jock Algren arrives with his special skill set to expose the real murderer and free Aunt Esther, but to no avail. Not until the case goes to trial and the evidence is revealed does the truth emerge --- and a strange kind of justice prevails.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608092765
THE WOLVES OF WINTER by Tyrell Johnson (Post-Apocalyptic Thriller)
Forget the old days. Forget summer. Forget warmth. Forget anything that doesn’t help you survive in the endless white wilderness beyond the edges of a fallen world. Lynn McBride has learned much since society collapsed in the face of nuclear war and the relentless spread of disease. As the memories of her old life continue to haunt, she’s forced to forge ahead in the snow-drifted Canadian Yukon, learning how to hunt and trap and slaughter. Shadows of the world before have found her tiny community --- most prominently in the enigmatic figure of Jax, who brings with him dark secrets of the past and sets in motion a chain of events that will call Lynn to a role she never imagined.
Scribner | 9781501155673
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW by A. J. Finn (Psychological Thriller)
Anna Fox lives alone --- a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble --- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, no one --- and nothing --- is what it seems.
William Morrow | 9780062678416
On Sale the Week of January 1st in Paperback
January 1st
THE LAST THING SHE EVER DID by Gregg Olsen (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
For years, Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all --- security, happiness and a beautiful young son named Charlie. Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible. It took one fleeting moment for Liz to change the lives of everyone she loves --- a heartrending accident that can’t be undone. Neither can the second-worst mistake of her life: concealing it. There’s another good neighbor who has his own secrets, his own pain, and his own reasons for watching Liz’s every move. And only he knows that the mystery of the missing boy is far from over.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542046428
January 2nd
ALWAYS HAPPY HOUR: Stories by Mary Miller (Fiction/Short Stories)
ALWAYS HAPPY HOUR weaves tales of young women --- deeply flawed and intensely real --- who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage --- whether it’s a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend --- they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better.
Liveright | 9781631493973
THE BOOK THAT CHANGED AMERICA: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation by Randall Fuller (History)
Throughout its history, America has been torn in two by debates over ideals and beliefs. Randall Fuller takes us back to one of those turning points, in 1860, with the story of the influence of Charles Darwin’s just-published ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES on five American intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn. Each of these figures seized on the book’s assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery, one that helped provide scientific credibility to the cause of abolition.
Penguin Books | 9780143130093
CELINE by Peter Heller (Thriller)
Celine has made a career out of tracking down missing persons nobody else can find. But when a young woman named Gabriela employs her expertise, what was meant to be Celine's last case becomes a scavenger hunt through her own memories, the secrets there and the surprising redemptions. Gabriela's father was a National Geographic photographer who went missing in Wyoming 20 years ago, and while he was assumed to have been mauled by a grizzly, his body was never found. Celine and her partner set out to Yellowstone National Park to follow a trail gone cold but soon realize that somebody desperately wants to keep this case closed.
Vintage | 9781101973486
CLOWNFISH BLUES by Tim Dorsey (Mystery/Humor)
Serge A. Storms and Coleman’s adventure traveling the byways of the Sunshine State’s underbelly is about to take a detour. Someone is trying to tilt the odds in the state lottery amidst a conga line of huge jackpots, spinning off more chaos than any hurricane season. With this much at stake, of course every shady character wants in. Crooked bodega owners, drug cartels laundering money through the lottery, and venture capitalists are all trying to game the system --- and lining up to get their cut. They’re also gambling with their lives, because when Serge and Coleman get hip to this timely (and very lucrative) trip, there’s no telling whose number is up next.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062429230
THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE by John Scalzi (Science Fiction/Space Opera)
The Flow is an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars. Riding the Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. Just as a river changes course, the Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
Tor Science Fiction | 9780765388902
THE DRY by Jane Harper (Mystery)
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead. Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them.
Flatiron Books | 9781250105622
FIRST LIGHT by Bill Rancic (Fiction)
Set amid the deep, wild woods of the Yukon, FIRST LIGHT tells the story of Daniel Albrecht and Kerry Egan, a young couple just beginning their life together. While they are flying home from a work trip in Alaska to plan their wedding in Chicago, both engines of their plane catch fire and send the plane careening into a mountainside in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. Kerry is seriously injured in the accident, and Daniel --- the one person among the passengers with some survival experience --- makes the courageous decision to search for help. Thus begins a harrowing and suspenseful race against time and the elements, as it becomes clear that not everyone will make it out alive.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9781101982297
THE FUTURES by Anna Pitoniak (Fiction)
Julia and Evan fall in love as undergraduates at Yale. After graduation, and on the eve of the great financial meltdown of 2008, they move together to New York City, where Evan lands a job at a hedge fund. But Julia, whose privileged upbringing grants her an easy but wholly unsatisfying job with a nonprofit, feels increasingly shut out of Evan's secretive world. With the market crashing and banks failing, Evan becomes involved in a high-stakes deal at work --- a deal that, despite the assurances of his Machiavellian boss, begins to seem more than slightly suspicious. Meanwhile, Julia reconnects with someone from her past who offers a glimpse of a different kind of life.
Back Bay Books | 9780316354165
THE GIRL BEFORE by JP Delaney (Psychological Thriller)
Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control. The space is intended to transform its occupant --- and it does. After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street, she is instantly drawn to the space --- and to its aloof but seductive creator. Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to her in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror as the girl before.
Ballantine Books | 9780425285060
THE GIRL IN THE GARDEN by Melanie Wallace (Fiction)
When June arrives on the coast of New England with a baby in her arms and an untrustworthy man by her side, Mabel --- who rents them a cabin --- senses trouble. A few days later, the girl and her child are abandoned. June is soon placed with Mabel’s friend, Iris, in town, and her life becomes entwined with a number of locals who have known one another for decades. Surrounded by the personal histories and secrets of others, June finds the way forward for herself and her son amid revelations of the others' pasts, including loves --- and crimes --- from years ago.
Mariner Books | 9781328745712
GUNMETAL GRAY: A Gray Man Novel by Mark Greaney (Thriller)
After five years on the run, Court Gentry is back on the inside at the CIA. But his first mission makes him wish he had stayed on the outs when a pair of Chinese agents try to take him down in Hong Kong. Normally the Chinese prefer to stay eyes-only on foreign agents. So why are they on such high alert? Court’s high-stakes hunt for answers takes him across Southeast Asia and leads to his old friend, Donald Fitzroy, who is being held hostage by the Chinese. Fitzroy was contracted to find Fan Jiang, a former member of an ultra-secret computer warfare unit responsible for testing China’s own security systems. And it seems Fan may have been too good at his job --- because China wants him dead.
Berkley | 9780451489739
KILL THE FATHER by Sandrone Dazieri (Thriller)
A woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome, and her six-year-old son goes missing. The chief of Rome’s major crimes unit secretly lures to the case two of Italy’s top analytical minds: Deputy Captain Colomba Caselli, a fierce, warrior-like detective still reeling from having survived a bloody catastrophe, and Dante Torre, a man who spent his childhood trapped inside a concrete silo while being fed by the gloved hand of a masked kidnapper who called himself “the Father.” All evidence suggests that the Father is back and active after being dormant for decades. But when Colomba and Dante begin following the ever-more-bizarre trail of clues, they grasp that what’s really going on is darker than they ever imagined.
Scribner | 9781501130748
LOLA by Melissa Scrivner Love (Thriller)
The Crenshaw Six are a small but up-and-coming gang in South Central LA who have recently been drawn into an escalating war between rival drug cartels. To outsiders, the Crenshaw Six appear to be led by a man named Garcia --- yet what no one has figured out is that the gang's real leader (and secret weapon) is Garcia's girlfriend, a brilliant young woman named Lola. Lola has mastered playing the role of submissive girlfriend, and in the man's world she inhabits, she is consistently underestimated. But in truth she is much, much smarter --- and in many ways tougher and more ruthless --- than any of the men around her.
Broadway Books | 9780451496119
THE LONELY HEARTS HOTEL by Heather O'Neill (Historical Fiction)
Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen. Separated as teenagers, both descend into the city’s underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite --- after years of searching and desperate poverty --- the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they’ll go to extreme lengths to make them come true.
Riverhead Books | 9780735213746
THE LOST ORDER by Steve Berry (Thriller)
The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the country. Treasure hunters searched for over a century, but little of that immense wealth was ever found --- until now. When the news about the found treasure gets out, two factions of what remains of the Knights rush to seize their fair share. Thrust into this battle is former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, who has his own ancestral connection to the Knights --- one that is far more complicated than he ever could have imagined.
Minotaur Books | 9781250058461
LOVE STORY: The Baxter Family, Book 1 by Karen Kingsbury (Romance)
John and Elizabeth's whirlwind romance started when they were young college students and lasted nearly 30 years --- until Elizabeth died of cancer. When John is asked to relive his long-ago love story with Elizabeth for his grandson Cole’s heritage project, he reluctantly agrees and allows his heart and soul to go places they haven’t gone in decades. At the same time, Baxter family friend Cody Coleman is working through the breakup of his complicated relationship with Andi Ellison. He is determined to move on when a chance sighting changes his plans --- and heart. Can Cody convince Andi to give their love another try, or is it time for them to say goodbye for good?
Howard Books | 9781451687606
THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH by Lindsey Lee Johnson (Fiction)
The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school. Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor and every feeling is potentially postable, shareable and viral. Lindsey Lee Johnson’s kaleidoscopic narrative exposes at every turn the real human beings beneath the high school stereotypes.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812987126
NO MIDDLE NAME: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories by Lee Child (Thriller/Short Stories)
Get ready for the ultimate Jack Reacher experience: a thrilling new novella and 11 previously published stories, together for the first time in one pulse-pounding collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child. NO MIDDLE NAME begins with “Too Much Time,” a brand-new work of short fiction that finds Reacher in a hollowed-out town in Maine, where he witnesses a random bag-snatching but sees much more than a simple crime. No suitcase. No destination. No middle name. No matter how far Reacher travels off the beaten path, trouble always finds him. Feel bad for trouble.
Dell | 9780399593598
THE OLD MAN by Thomas Perry (Thriller)
To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont. But most 60-year-old widowers don’t have multiple driver’s licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army. When the plan turned sour, he reacted according to his own ideas of right and wrong, triggering consequences he never could have anticipated. Just as he had begun to think himself finally safe, Chase must reawaken his survival instincts to contend with the history he has spent his adult life trying to escape.
Mysterious Press | 9780802127532
PERFECT by Rachel Joyce (Fiction)
Byron Hemmings wakes to a morning that looks like any other: his school uniform draped over his wooden desk chair, his sister arguing over the breakfast cereal, the click of his mother’s heels as she crosses the kitchen. But when the three of them leave home, the morning takes an unmistakable turn. In one terrible moment, something happens, something completely unexpected and at odds with life as Byron understands it. While his mother seems not to have noticed, 11-year-old Byron realizes that from now on nothing can be the same. Over the days and weeks that follow, Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Unable to trust his parents, he confides in his best friend, James, and together they concoct a plan.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812983463
THE PERFECT STRANGER by Megan Miranda (Psychological Thriller)
When Leah Stevens’ career implodes, a chance meeting with her old friend, Emmy Grey, offers her the perfect opportunity to start over. Emmy, just out of a bad relationship, convinces Leah to come live with her in rural Pennsylvania, where there are teaching positions available and no one knows Leah’s past. Or Emmy’s. When the town sees a spate of vicious crimes and Emmy Grey disappears, Leah begins to realize how very little she knows about her friend and roommate. Unable to find friends, family, a paper trail or a digital footprint, the police question whether Emmy Grey existed at all. And mark Leah as a prime suspect.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501108006
THE PRISONER: A John Wells Novel by Alex Berenson (Thriller)
Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him will be very hard, and to accomplish it, John Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison. Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. He knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9781101982778
THE RED SPHINX: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers written by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth (Historical Fiction/Adventure)
In 1844, Alexandre Dumas published THE THREE MUSKETEERS, a novel so famous and still so popular today that it scarcely needs introduction. Shortly thereafter he wrote a sequel, TWENTY YEARS AFTER, that resumed the adventures of his swashbuckling heroes. Later, toward the end of his career, Dumas wrote THE RED SPHINX, another direct sequel to THE THREE MUSKETEERS that begins, not 20 years later, but a mere 20 days afterward. THE RED SPHINX picks up right where THE THREE MUSKETEERS left off, continuing the stories of Cardinal Richelieu, Queen Anne and King Louis XIII --- and introducing a charming new hero, the Comte de Moret, a real historical figure from the period.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776156
THE REFUGEES by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Fiction/Short Stories)
In THE REFUGEES, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds: the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, these stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.
Grove Press | 9780802127365
ROBERT B. PARKER’S REVELATION by Robert Knott (Historical Mystery/Western)
Territorial marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch figured things had finally settled down in Appaloosa when Boston Bill Black’s murder charge was dropped. But all that changed when Augustus Noble Driggs was transferred to a stateside penitentiary just across the border from Mexico. In a haunting twist of fate, Driggs and a pack of cold-blooded convicts are suddenly on the loose --- and it’s up to any and all territorial lawmen, including Cole and Hitch, to capture the fugitives and rescue the woman kidnapped during their escape. But nothing is ever quite what it seems with the ever-elusive Driggs. Finally free, he’s quickly on his own furious hunt for a hidden cache of gold and jewels --- and for the men who betrayed him and left him for dead.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399575358
THE RUNNING GIRL by Sara Blaedel (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Detective Louise Rick gets a call from her son, Jonas. It's every parent's worst nightmare: A school party has ended in terrifying chaos after a group of violent teenagers forced their way into the building in search of alcohol and valuables. Dashing to the scene, Louise discovers one of the students gravely injured --- struck by a car while attempting to run for help. Now the girl's distraught mother, pushed to her emotional breaking point, will do anything to make those who hurt her daughter pay. So when someone targets the gang members with a vicious attack, the girl's mother is the obvious suspect. But Louise can't shake the feeling that the case might not be as cut-and-dried as it first appears.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538759738
THE SCHOOLDAYS OF JESUS by J. M. Coetzee (Fiction)
Davíd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language, has begun to make friends, and has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him. But he will be seven soon and should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simón and Inés work, Davíd is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It’s here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it’s here, too, that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of.
Penguin Books | 9780735222670
THE SCRIBE OF SIENA by Melodie Winawer (Historical Fiction)
When her beloved brother passes away, accomplished neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato welcomes the unexpected trip to the Tuscan city of Siena to resolve his estate. But as she delves deeper into her brother’s affairs, she discovers intrigue she never imagined --- a 700-year-old conspiracy to decimate the city. After uncovering the journal and paintings of Gabriele Accorsi, the 14th-century artist at the heart of the plot, Beatrice finds a startling image of her own face and is suddenly transported to the year 1347. When she meets Accorsi, something unexpected happens: she falls in love --- not only with Gabriele, but also with the beauty and cadence of medieval life.
Touchstone | 9781501152269
SECRETS IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
Larinda Mars, a professional gossip, has been murdered. As it turns out, she was keeping the most shocking stories quiet, for profitable use in her side business as a blackmailer. Setting her sights on rich, prominent marks, she’d find out what they most wanted to keep hidden and then bleed them dry. Now someone’s done the same to her, literally. Eve didn’t like Larinda Mars. But she likes murder even less. To find justice for this victim, she’ll have to plunge into the dirty little secrets of all the people Larinda Mars victimized herself. Along the way, though, she may be exposed to some information she really didn’t want to know.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250123176
THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS by Michael Robotham (Psychological Thriller)
Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. When Agatha learns from Meghan’s popular parenting blog that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever.
Scribner | 9781501170324
SOUTH AND WEST: From a Notebook by Joan Didion (Memoir/Essays)
Joan Didion has always kept notebooks --- of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles. SOUTH AND WEST gives us two extended excerpts from notebooks she kept in the 1970s. “Notes on the South” traces a road trip that she and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, took through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Her acute observations about the small towns they pass through, her interviews with local figures, and their preoccupation with race, class and heritage suggest a South largely unchanged today. “California Notes” began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial. Though Didion never wrote the piece, the time she spent watching the trial in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the West and her own upbringing in Sacramento.
Vintage | 9780525434191
STEAL AWAY HOME by Billy Coffey (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Owen Cross’ father is a hard man, proud in his brokenness, who wants nothing more than for Owen to succeed where he failed. With his innate talents and his father’s firm hand guiding him, Owen goes to college with dreams of the major leagues --- and an emptiness full of a girl named Micky Dullahan. Owen loved Micky from the first time they met on the hill between their two worlds: his middle-class home and her troubled Shantytown. Years later he leaves her for the dugouts and the autographs, but their days together follow him. When he finally returns home, he discovers that even peace comes at a cost. And that the hardest things to say are to the ones we love the most.
Thomas Nelson | 9780718084448
THE STOLEN ANGEL by Sara Blaedel (Thriller)
Paperback Original
When the granddaughter of the wealthy Sachs-Smith family is kidnapped, Louise Rick's skills as a trained negotiator are put to work. She is tasked with helping the desperate mother negotiate what soon turns into a life-or-death situation. The kidnappers will only exchange the deathly ill little girl for an infamous stained glass panel --- known as the Angel of Death --- that has been in the family for generations. But the Angel was recently stolen from the family home. Racing against the clock as she matches wits with a criminal mastermind, Louise will be taken to the depths of human depravity. Will she be able to find the little girl before her time runs out?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538759752
TELL ME HOW THIS ENDS WELL by David Samuel Levinson (Fiction)
In 2022, American Jews face an increasingly unsafe and anti-Semitic landscape at home. Against this backdrop, the Jacobson family gathers for Passover in Los Angeles. But their immediate problems are more personal than political, with the three adult children in various states of crisis, the result, each claims, of a lifetime of mistreatment by their father, Julian. The siblings have begun to suspect that Julian is hastening their mother Roz's demise, and years of resentment boil over as they debate whether to go through with the real reason for their reunion: an ill-considered plot to end their father’s iron rule for good. That is, if they can put their bickering, grudges, festering relationships and distrust of one another aside long enough to act.
Hogarth | 9780451496898
UNSUB by Meg Gardiner (Psychological Thriller)
Caitlin Hendrix has been a Narcotics detective for six months when the killer at the heart of all her childhood nightmares reemerges: the Prophet. An UNSUB --- what the FBI calls an unknown subject --- the Prophet terrorized the Bay Area in the 1990s and nearly destroyed her father, the lead investigator on the case. Twenty years later, two bodies are found bearing the haunting signature of the Prophet. Caitlin has never escaped the shadow of her father’s failure to protect their city. But now the ruthless madman is killing again and has set his sights on her, threatening to undermine the fragile barrier she rigidly maintains for her own protection, between relentless pursuit and dangerous obsession.
Dutton | 9781101985540
THE WANDERERS by Meg Howrey (Science Fiction)
In four years, aerospace giant Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshihiro Tanaka and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they’re the crew for the historic voyage by spending 17 months in the most realistic simulation ever created. Constantly observed by Prime Space’s team of "Obbers," Helen, Yoshi and Sergei must appear ever in control. But as their surreal pantomime progresses, each soon realizes that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The borders between what is real and unreal begin to blur, and each astronaut is forced to confront demons past and present, even as they struggle to navigate their increasingly claustrophobic quarters --- and each other.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399574641
WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES by Georgia Hunter (Historical Fiction)
It is the spring of 1939, and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable, and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety. As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity and inner strength to persevere.
Penguin Books | 9780399563096
WHAT YOU BREAK by Reed Farrel Coleman (Hard-boiled Noir Mystery)
Gus Murphy and his girlfriend, Magdalena, are put in harm’s way when Gus is caught up in the distant aftershocks of heinous crimes committed decades ago in Vietnam and Russia. Gus’ ex-priest pal, Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman anxious to have someone look more deeply into the brutal murder of his granddaughter. The businessman, Spears, offers big incentives if Gus can supply him with what the cops cannot --- a motive. Later that same day, Gus witnesses the execution of a man who has just met with his friend, Slava. As Gus looks into the girl’s murder and tries to protect Slava from the executioner’s bullet, he must navigate a minefield populated by hostile cops, street gangs, and a Russian mercenary who will stop at nothing to do his master’s bidding.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780425283226
THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE by Jessica Shattuck (Historical Fiction)
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows. As Marianne assembles a makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062563675
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