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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 1st and January 8th 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 the hardcovers and paperbacks releasing this month, which you can find in our Coming Soon feature.
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.
On ReadingGroupGuides.com, we're asking book groups to help us compile our "Best Books of the Year" list. Click here to share both your favorite book that you read with your group in 2017 and your favorite book that you read outside your group by Wednesday, January 31st at noon ET, and you will be eligible to win SIX great book group titles releasing this year: AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones, EDUCATED: A Memoir by Tara Westover, EVERY NOTE PLAYED by Lisa Genova, THE GREAT ALONE by Kristin Hannah, THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin, and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW by A. J. Finn.
Finally, be sure to cast your votes in the Bookreporter.com poll by Friday, January 5th at noon ET. We want to know how many books you read, and how many audiobooks you listened to, in 2017.
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:
Bookreporter.com's Coming Soon Feature for January
In this newsletter, you will find some of the hardcovers and paperbacks that will be available the first two weeks of January. But since we always love looking ahead --- and there are lots of noteworthy books to look forward to in January --- we want to give you a sneak peek at the entire month's worth of releases. Below are some highlights, but for a much more comprehensive list, take a look at January's Coming Soon feature here.
Hardcovers:
Paperbacks:
Click here for more January hardcovers and paperbacks.
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
On Sale the Week of January 8th in Hardcover
January 9th
THE AFTERLIVES by Thomas Pierce (Fiction)
Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age 30. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights or angels, Jim wonders what, if anything, awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love.
Riverhead Books | 9781594632532
BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)
When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest --- not when she has an entire world to save! If she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she never will have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away.
Tor.com | 9780765393586
THE BLACK PAINTING by Neil Olson (Fiction)
There are four cousins in the Morse family, and their grandfather has summoned them to his mansion at Owl’s Point. None of them have visited the family estate since they were children, when a prized painting disappeared: a self-portrait by Goya, rumored to cause madness or death upon viewing. Afterward, the family split apart amid the accusations and suspicions that followed its theft. Any hope that their grandfather planned to make amends evaporates when Teresa arrives to find the old man dead. As the family gathers and suspicions mount, Teresa hopes to find the reasons behind her grandfather’s death and the painting’s loss. But to do so, she must uncover ugly family secrets and confront those who would keep them hidden.
Hanover Square | 9781335953810
THE BOAT PEOPLE by Sharon Bala (Fiction)
When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and 500 fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks --- and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum.
Doubleday | 9780385542296
THE CHALK MAN by C. J. Tudor (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same. In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he has put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank…until one of them turns up dead.
Crown | 9781524760984
DANGEROUS CROSSING by Rachel Rhys (Historical Mystery)
In 1939, Europe is on the brink of war when young Lily Shepherd boards an ocean liner in Essex, bound for Australia. She is ready to start anew, leaving behind the shadows in her past. With stops at exotic locations along the way, the voyage shows Lily places she’d only ever dreamed of and enables her to make friends with those above her social station. She even allows herself to hope that a man she couldn’t possibly have a future with outside the cocoon of the ship might return her feelings. But Lily soon realizes that she’s not the only one hiding secrets. Her newfound friends are also running away from their pasts. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war has been declared, and Lily’s life will be changed irrevocably.
Atria Books | 9781501162725
THE DAYS WHEN BIRDS COME BACK by Deborah Reed (Fiction)
June is in transition, reeling from her divorce, trying to stay sober, and faced with a completely stalled career. She returns to the beautiful Oregon coast where she grew up, and must decide what to do with her late and much-loved grandparents’ charming cedar-shingled home. Jameson comes highly recommended to renovate the old house to sell. He too is unmoored as he struggles to redefine his marriage in the aftermath of tragic loss, and over the course of the summer, his conversations with June about the house quickly turn to the personal. Sensing connection, June and Jameson can’t seem to stop circling each other, shying away from hurt. But what can the future hold as long as they are gripped so firmly by the past?
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780544817357
THE DEVIL'S CLAW by Lara Dearman (Mystery)
Following a traumatic incident in London, journalist Jennifer Dorey has returned home to Guernsey, taking a job as a local newspaper reporter. When she finds a drowned woman on a beach, Jennifer uncovers something much bigger and more sinister than she first thought. Jennifer enlists the help of DCI Michael Gilbert, an officer on the verge of retirement, to investigate a pattern of similar deaths over the last 50 years. They follow a dark trail of island myths and folklore to the illegitimate son of a Nazi soldier, whose painstakingly executed work has gone undetected so far. But as Jennifer gets closer to the truth of the killer’s identity, she finds herself stepping deeper into his grasp.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781683314561
THE ENGLISH WIFE by Lauren Willig (Historical Mystery)
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, and Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned. Bay's sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250056276
FIRE SERMON by Jamie Quatro (Fiction)
Maggie is entirely devoted to her husband Thomas, their two beautiful children, and to God --- until what begins as a platonic intellectual and spiritual exchange between writer Maggie and poet James transforms into an erotically charged bond that challenges Maggie’s sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her deeper into the darkness of desire.
Grove Press | 9780802127044
FOOLS AND MORTALS by Bernard Cornwell (Historical Fiction)
In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William’s star rises, Richard’s onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty. So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls upon Richard, forcing him onto a perilous path through a bawdy and frequently brutal London. Entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal, Richard has to call on all he has now learned from the brightest stages and the darkest alleyways of the city. To avoid the gallows, he must play the part of a lifetime.
Harper | 9780062250872
GRIST MILL ROAD by Christopher J. Yates (Thriller)
The year is 1982. The setting: an Edenic hamlet some 90 miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends --- Patrick, Matthew and Hannah --- are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again --- with even more devastating results.
Picador | 9781250150288
HEART SPRING MOUNTAIN by Robin MacArthur (Fiction)
It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away, Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her. As she begins her search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to follow three generations of women --- a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer and an owl-loving hermit --- as they seek love, bear children and absorb losses. All the while, Vale’s search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.
Ecco | 9780062444424
THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin (Fiction)
It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children --- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness --- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735213180
THE MAZE AT WINDERMERE by Gregory Blake Smith (Historical Fiction)
A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest --- the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress’s diamond necklace --- launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; a young writer soon to make his mark turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport’s earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited.
Viking | 9780735221925
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis (History)
On September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius I.Q. studies a 12-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a 10-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite," aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies.
Twelve | 9781455563586
OPERATOR DOWN: A Pike Logan Thriller by Brad Taylor (Thriller/Adventure)
It was to be a simple mission. Nothing more than assessing whether a merchant in the fabled Israeli Diamond Exchange was involved in a scheme that could potentially embarrass the state of Israel. But nothing is ever simple in the world of intelligence, as Aaron Bergman --- a former leader of an elite direct action team under the Mossad --- should have known. Executing the operation as a contractor, he disappears without a trace. Pike Logan and his team know none of this, but he’s tracking an American arms dealer in Tel Aviv who may be attempting to sell sensitive nuclear weapons components to the highest bidder. When Pike’s team breaks up an attempt at killing Shoshana, Aaron’s partner, they stumble upon a concerted conspiracy to topple a democratic African country.
Dutton | 9781101984819
PECULIAR GROUND by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Historical Fiction)
It is the 17th century, and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders --- migrants fleeing the plague --- find no mercy. Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood’s walls.
Harper | 9780062684196
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot (Biography)
Historian Max Boot demonstrates how Edward Lansdale pioneered a “hearts and mind” diplomacy --- first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America’s giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to never-before-seen documents --- including long-hidden love letters --- Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish “T. E. Lawrence of Asia” from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975.
Liveright | 9780871409416
SAY MY NAME by Allegra Huston (Fiction)
Years ago, frightened by passion, Eve settled for less: marrying safely, building a solid, ordinary life. Now she longs for more. One day, while treasure hunting for a friend’s antiques shop, she finds a mysterious instrument, carved with twining vines. It sends her on a quest --- and into a compelling connection with a young man, the son of an old flame. He is 20 years younger than she is, a musician, a seeker, a bohemian --- and, to her amazement, he’s pursuing her. Can this euphoric connection last? Eve finds herself defenseless against the force of her fantasies. But she cannot retreat back to safety; she is no longer the woman she was. And even now, she can hardly imagine the woman she will become.
Mira | 9780778330714
SHROUD OF ETERNITY: Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles, Volume II by Terry Goodkind (Fantasy)
The formidable sorceress Nicci and her companions --- the newly powerless Nathan and the youthful Bannon --- set out on another quest after driving ruthless Norukai slavers out of Renda Bay. Their mission: restore Nathan’s magic and, for Nicci, save the world. Guided by the witch-woman Red's mysterious prophecy, the trio makes their way south of Kol Adair towards a wondrous city shrouded behind time, Ildakar. But the grotesque omens on their path to Nathan's salvation --- severed Norukai heads on pikes, a genetically modified monster, and a petrified army of half a million --- are just a taste of the unimaginable horrors that await within the Shroud of Eternity.
Tor Books | 9780765388247
TELL ME MORE: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan (Essays/Personal Growth)
It’s a crazy idea: trying to name the phrases that make love and connection possible. But that’s just what Kelly Corrigan has set out to do here. In her bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences. Now, in TELL ME MORE, she’s back with a deeply personal and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,” Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.
Random House | 9780399588372
THIS COULD HURT by Jillian Medoff (Fiction)
Rosa Guerrero beat the odds as she rose to the top of the corporate world. A leader who wields power with grace and discretion, she has earned the devotion and loyalty of her staff. No one admires Rosa more than her doting lieutenant Leo Smalls, a benefits vice president whose whole world is Ellery. While Rosa is consumed with trying to address the needs of her staff within the ever-constricting limits of the company’s bottom line, her associate director, Rob Hirsch, a happily married father of two, finds himself drawing closer to his "work wife," Lucy Bender, an enterprising single woman searching for something to fill the vacuum in her personal life. For Kenny Verville, a senior manager with an MBA, Ellery is a temporary stepping-stone to bigger and better places --- that is, if his high-powered wife has her way.
Harper | 9780062660763
THE TRANSITION by Luke Kennard (Dystopian Fiction/Satire)
Do you or your partner spend more than you earn? Have your credit card debts evolved into collection letters? Has either of you considered turning to a life of a crime? You are not alone. We know. We can help. Welcome to the Transition. While taking part in the Transition, you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme --- Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances and Self-respect --- until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society. At the end of your six months, who knows what discoveries you’ll have made about yourself?
Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 9780374278717
TWO GIRLS DOWN by Louisa Luna (Thriller)
When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied. With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.
Doubleday | 9780385542494
THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL: A Mystery of 1920s Bombay by Sujata Massey (Historical Mystery)
Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. The Farid widows live in full purdah --- in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder.
Soho Crime | 9781616957780
THE WIFE BETWEEN US by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (Psychological Thriller)
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement --- a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle. Assume nothing. THE WIFE BETWEEN US exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage --- and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250130921
WINTER by Ali Smith (Fiction)
Winter. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. And now Art’s mother is seeing things. Come to think of it, Art is seeing things himself. When four people, strangers and family, converge on a 15-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone? Winter. It makes things visible. Ali Smith’s shapeshifting WINTER casts a warm, wise, merry and uncompromising eye over a post-truth era in a story rooted in history and memory and with a taproot deep in the evergreens, art and love.
Pantheon | 9781101870754
WOMAN AT 1,000 DEGREES written by Hallgrímur Helgason, translated by Brian FitzGibbon (Fiction)
From her childhood in the remote islands of Iceland, where she was born the granddaughter of Iceland’s first president, to teen years spent living by her wits alone in war-torn Europe while her father fought on the side of the Nazis, to love affairs on several continents, Herra Björnsson moved Zelig-like through the major events and locales of the 20th century. She wed and lost husbands, had children, fled a war, kissed a Beatle, weathered the Icelandic financial crash, and mastered the Internet. She has experienced luck and betrayal and upheaval and pain, and --- with a bawdy, uncompromising spirit --- she has survived it all. Now, as she awaits death in a garage in Reykjavík, she shows us a woman unbowed by the forces of history.
Algonquin Books | 9781616206239
On Sale the Week of January 8th in Paperback
January 9th
BETWEEN ME AND YOU by Allison Winn Scotch (Fiction)
Paperback Original
When their paths first cross, Ben Livingston is a fledgling screenwriter on the brink of success; Tatum Connelly is a struggling actress tending bar in a New York City dive. They fall in love, marry, become parents, and think only of the future. But as the years go by, Tatum’s stardom rises while Ben’s fades. Now all they can do is think back. A life of passion, joy, tragedy and loss --- once shared --- becomes one as shifting and unpredictable as a memory. As the pieces of their past come together, as they explore the ways love can bend and break, Ben and Tatum come to see how it all went wrong --- and wonder what they can do now to make it all right.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781503941229
THE BOY WHO ESCAPED PARADISE written by J. M. Lee, translated by Chi-Young Kim (Fiction)
An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols written in blood near the corpse. Gilmo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. He used to have a quiet life back in Pyongyang. But when his father, a preeminent doctor, is discovered to be a secret Christian, he is subsequently incarcerated in a political prison overseen by a harsh, cruel warden. There, Gilmo meets the spirited Yeong-ae, who becomes his only friend. When Yeong-ae manages to escape, Gilmo flees to track her down. He uses his peculiar gifts to navigate betrayal and the criminal underworld of east Asia --- a world wholly alien to everything he's ever known.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776231
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: From Enlightenment to Tyranny by Ian Davidson (History)
The French Revolution casts a long shadow, one that reaches into our own time and influences our debates on freedom, equality and authority. Its significance morphs according to the sympathies of the viewer, who may see it as a series of gory tableaux, a regrettable slide into uncontrolled anarchy --- or a radical reshaping of the political landscape. Ian Davidson provides a fresh look at this vital moment in European history. He reveals how it was an immensely complicated and multifaceted revolution, and how subsequently it became weighted with political, social and moral values.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776170
ILL WILL by Dan Chaon (Psychological Thriller)
A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his 40s when he hears the news: his adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt and uncle. Despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning. Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients has been plying him with stories of the drowning deaths of a string of drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses his patient's suggestions that a serial killer is at work as paranoid thinking, but eventually he starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence.
Ballantine Books | 9780345476050
THE KING IS DEAD: The Last Will and Testament of Henry VIII by Suzannah Lipscomb (History)
On January 28, 1547, King Henry VIII died at Whitehall. Just hours before his passing, his last will and testament had been read, stamped and sealed. The will confirmed the line of succession as Edward, Mary and Elizabeth; and, following them, the Grey and Suffolk families. It also listed bequests to the king's most trusted councillors and servants. Historians have disagreed over the will’s intended meaning, its authenticity and validity, and the circumstances of its creation. Along with examining the background to the drafting of the will and describing Henry's last days, Suzannah Lipscomb offers her own illuminating interpretation of one of the most significant constitutional documents of the Tudor period.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776217
LAST STOP IN BROOKLYN: A Mary Handley Mystery by Lawrence H. Levy (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
It's the summer of 1894, and an infidelity case has brought PI Mary Handley to a far corner of Brooklyn: Coney Island. In the midst of her investigation, Mary is contacted by a convicted man's brother to reopen a murder case. A prostitute was killed by a Jack the Ripper copycat years ago in her New York hotel room, but her true killer was never found. New York City's untouchable head of detectives, Thomas Byrnes, swears he put the right man behind bars, but as Mary digs deeper, she finds corruption at the heart of New York's justice system, involving not only the police, but the most powerful of stock titans.
Broadway Books | 9780451498441
LONG BLACK VEIL by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Thriller)
In 1980, six college students sneak into the dilapidated ruins of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, looking for a thrill. But it’s not long before they realize they are locked in --- and not alone. When the friends get lost and separated, the terrifying night ends in tragedy, and the unexpected, far-reaching consequences reverberate through the survivors’ lives. Decades later, the dogged detective investigating the cold case charges one of them --- celebrity chef Jon Casey --- with murder. Only Casey’s old friend, Judith Carrigan, can testify to his innocence. But Judith is protecting long-held secrets of her own --- secrets that, if brought to light, could destroy her career as a travel writer and tear her away from her fireman husband and teenage son.
Broadway Books | 9780451496331
MAY by Marietta Miles (Thriller)
Paperback Original
May, a lonely drifter and small-time weed dealer, has spent years running from her ugly past. However, as a damaging nor’easter takes aim at her sleepy island home of Folly, she rushes to shore up, settle in and keep safe. Though most of the islanders have evacuated, May is not entirely alone. Spoiled city kid Curtis, fleeing his own dark secrets, and naïve local boy Tommy are also stuck on the island. Both are tweaking, and both are desperate, but only one grows vile and violent. To save the boy and to save herself, May must learn to be bad.
Down & Out Books | 9781946502179
MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE by Matthew Sullivan (Mystery)
Lydia Smith is a clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore whose life comes unglued when Joey Molina kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. But when Lydia flips through his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia? As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long-buried memory from her own violent childhood.
Scribner | 9781501116858
THE MIDNIGHT COOL by Lydia Peelle (Historical Fiction)
A middle-aged Irish immigrant, Billy has a gift for illusion --- making damaged objects look new. His companion, Charles, the smooth-tongued teenage son of a prostitute, is a natural salesman, just like the mythical father he’s never met. Longtime horse traders and partners, they’ve recently turned their talents to trading mules. But in the summer of 1916, these seasoned grifters skilled in the art of the underhanded deal have just been swindled themselves. They’re saddled with the one thing they may not be able to unload: a gorgeous, murderous black mare named The Midnight Cool.
Harper Perennial | 9780062475473
MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation by Brad Ricca (Biography)
MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES tells the true story of Grace Humiston, the lawyer, detective and first woman U.S. District Attorney who turned her back on New York society life to become one of the nation's greatest crime-fighters during an era when women were still not allowed to vote. After agreeing to take the sensational case of missing 18-year-old Ruth Cruger, Grace and her partner, the hard-boiled detective Julius J. Kron, navigated a dangerous web of secret boyfriends, two-faced cops, underground tunnels, rumors of white slavery, and a mysterious pale man, in a desperate race against time.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250160836
ON TURPENTINE LANE by Elinor Lipman (Romantic Comedy)
At 32, Faith Frankel has returned to her claustro-suburban hometown, where she writes institutional thank-you notes for her alma mater. It's a peaceful life, and surely with her recent purchase of a sweet bungalow on Turpentine Lane, her life is finally on track. Never mind that her fiancé is off on a crowdfunded cross-country walk, too busy to return her texts (but not too busy to post photos of himself with a different woman in every state). And never mind her witless boss, or a mother who lives too close, or a philandering father who thinks he's Chagall. When she finds some mysterious artifacts in the attic of her new home, she wonders whether anything in her life is as it seems.
Mariner Books | 9781328745583
THE PERFECT NANNY by Leila Slimani (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic apartment in Paris’s upscale 10th arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.
Penguin Books | 9780143132172
THE SONG AND THE SILENCE: A Story about Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright by Yvette Johnson (Memoir)
“Have to keep that smile,” Booker Wright said in the 1966 NBC documentary “Mississippi: A Self-Portrait.” The ripple effect from his remarks would cement Booker as a civil rights icon because he did the unthinkable: before a national audience, Wright described what life truly was like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi. Four decades later, Yvette Johnson, Wright’s granddaughter, finds footage of the controversial documentary. Compelled to learn more about her roots, she travels to Greenwood, Mississippi. As she uncovers her grandfather’s compelling story and gets closer to the truth behind his murder, she also confronts her own conflicted feelings surrounding race, family and forgiveness.
Atria Books | 9781476754956
THE STRAYS by Emily Bitto (Historical Fiction)
On her first day at a new school, Lily befriends Eva and her sisters Beatrice and Heloise, daughters of the infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. An only child from an unremarkable, working-class family, Lily has never experienced a household like the Trenthams' --- a community of like-minded artists Evan and his wife have created, all living and working together to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia. And Lily has never met anyone like Eva, whose unabashed confidence and worldly knowledge immediately draw her in. But as seductive as the artists' utopian vision appears, behind it lies both darkness and dysfunction. And the further the girls are pulled in, the greater the consequences become.
Twelve | 9781455537716
SUNDAY SILENCE by Nicci French (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Lover of London, gifted psychologist, frequent police consultant --- Frieda Klein is many things. And now she's a person of interest in a murder case. A body has been discovered in the most unlikely and horrifying of places: beneath the floorboards of Frieda's house. The corpse is only months old, but the chief suspect appears to have died more than seven years ago. Except as Frieda knows all too well, he's alive and well and living in secret. And it seems he's inspired a copycat. As the days pass and the body count rises, Frieda finds herself caught in a fatal tug-of-war between two killers: one who won't let her go, and another who can't let her live.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062676689
UNDER A CLOUDLESS SKY by Chris Fabry (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In the mining town of Beulah Mountain, West Virginia, in 1933, two young girls form an unbreakable bond against the lush Appalachian landscape. Ruby and Bean thrive under the tender care of Bean’s mama, blissfully unaware of the rising conflict in town and the coming tragedy that will tear them apart forever. In 2004, neighbors up and down the hollow have sold their land to Coleman Coal and Energy, but Hollis Beasley is determined to hold on to his family legacy on Beulah Mountain. Standing in his way is Buddy Coleman, an upstart mining executive who hopes to revitalize the dying town by increasing coal production and opening the Company Store Museum. What surprises them all is how their stories will intersect with a feisty octogenarian living hundreds of miles away.
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. | 9781414387789
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