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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 29th and February 5th 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 Winter Reading Contests and Feature, which we have brought back for a fourth year. On select days between now and February 23rd at noon ET, we are hosting a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter (or a book publishing in the spring that we would like to bring to your attention now) and giving five lucky readers a chance to win it.
Also, be sure to check out our New Release Spotlight for NEED TO KNOW by Karen Cleveland (which includes our review) and our Suspense/Thriller Author Spotlight for ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL by Sarah Vaughan (which includes our review and interview with the author). Both books will be Bookreporter.com Bets On picks; you can read Carol Fitzgerald's Bets On commentaries in the February 2nd edition of the Bookreporter.com Weekly Update newsletter.
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
Winter Reading Contests and Feature
Our Winter Reading Contests and Feature have returned for a fourth year! On select days between now and February 23rd at noon ET, we are hosting a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter (or a book publishing in the spring that we would like to get on your radar now) and giving five lucky readers a chance to win it. We also are sending a special newsletter to announce the day's title, which you can sign up for here.
This year's featured titles are:
Click here to read all the contest details
and learn more about our featured titles.
On Sale the Week of January 29th in Hardcover
January 30th
1947: Where Now Begins written by Elisabeth Åsbrink, translated by Fiona Graham (History)
The year 1947 marks a turning point in the 20th century. Peace with Germany becomes a tool to fortify the West against the threats of the Cold War. The CIA is created, Israel is about to be born, Simone de Beauvoir experiences the love of her life, an ill George Orwell is writing his last book, and Christian Dior creates the hyper-feminine New Look as women are forced out of jobs and back into the home. In the midst of it all, a 10-year-old Hungarian-Jewish boy resides in a refugee camp for children of parents murdered by the Nazis. This year he has to make the decision of a lifetime, one that will determine his own fate and that of his daughter yet to be born, Elisabeth.
Other Press | 9781590518960
BLOOD SISTERS by Jane Corry (Psychological Thriller)
Three little girls set off to school one sunny morning. Within an hour, one of them is dead. Fifteen years later, Kitty can't speak and has no memory of the accident that's to blame. She lives in an institution and is unlikely ever to leave. But that doesn't keep her from being frightened when she encounters an eerily familiar face. Art teacher Alison is struggling to make ends meet and to forget the past. When a teaching job at a prison opens up, she takes it, despite her fears. Then she starts to receive alarming notes; next, her classroom erupts in violence. Meanwhile, someone is watching both Kitty and Alison. Someone who never forgot what happened that day. Someone who wants revenge. And only another life will do.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9780525522188
THE BLOODY SPUR: A Caleb York Western by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Western)
The Santa Fe Railroad wants to build a spur through Trinidad, New Mexico, linking the town to the cattle trade. Only one man stands against it --- rancher George Cullen. At the request of the town council, Sheriff Caleb York rides out to the Bar-O to reason with his old friend. But the stubborn blind rancher won’t budge. Cullen’s former partner, Burt O’Malley, has recently returned from a 20-year stint in the pen for manslaughter. And hired gun Alver Hollis, the much-feared Preacherman, has also shown up with two cronies, claiming they’re in town for the biggest poker game in the territory. With murder in the wind, the whole town is in danger. Who will be the next target?
Kensington | 9781617735981
BUILDING THE GREAT SOCIETY: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House by Joshua Zeitz (History)
LBJ's towering political skills and his ambitious slate of liberal legislation are the stuff of legend: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and environmental reform. But what happened after the bills passed? One man could not and did not go it alone. Joshua Zeitz reanimates the creative and contentious atmosphere inside Johnson's White House as a talented and energetic group of advisers made LBJ's vision a reality. Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, Joe Califano, Harry McPherson and the other staff members who comprised LBJ's inner circle were men as pragmatic and ambitious as Johnson, equally skilled in the art of accumulating power or throwing a sharp elbow.
Viking | 9780525428787
THE BURIAL SOCIETY by Nina Sadowsky (Psychological Thriller)
Catherine doesn’t bury the dead. She rescues the living --- from intolerable, abusive, dangerous lives. Her darknet-based witness protection program, the Burial Society, is the last hope for people who desperately need to disappear. Catherine takes care of them and provides new identities. She is effective and efficient --- until she discovers that her slip-up may have compromised a client and maybe even killed her. Powerless to help without exposing her shadowy profession, Catherine makes a drastic move. With her covert service relocated to Paris, she has done her best to move on. But when a dark part of her past suddenly appears in the City of Light, she refuses to run --- and her life takes a harrowing turn.
Ballantine Books | 9780425284377
DARK IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
On a chilly February night, during a screening of Psycho in midtown, someone sunk an ice pick into the back of Chanel Rylan’s neck. As Eve Dallas puzzles over a homicide that seems carefully planned and yet oddly personal, she receives a tip from an unexpected source: an author of police thrillers who recognizes the crime --- from the pages of her own book. The good news is that Eve and her billionaire husband, Roarke, have an excuse to curl up in front of the fireplace with their cat, Galahad, reading mystery stories for research. The bad news is that time is running out before the next victim plays an unwitting role in a murderer’s deranged private drama.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250161536
THE GIRLFRIEND by Michelle Frances (Psychological Thriller)
Laura has it all. A successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a 23-year-old son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome and talented. Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart but hasn’t led Laura’s golden life. And she wants it. When tragedy strikes, a decision is made and a lie is told. A lie so terrible it changes their lives forever.
Kensington | 9781496712462
THE GRAVE’S A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley (Historical Mystery)
In the wake of an unthinkable family tragedy, 12-year-old Flavia de Luce is struggling to fill her empty days. For a needed escape, Dogger, the loyal family servant, suggests a boating trip for Flavia and her two older sisters. As their punt drifts past the church where a notorious vicar had recently dispatched three of his female parishioners by spiking their communion wine with cyanide, Flavia, an expert chemist with a passion for poisons, is ecstatic. Suddenly something grazes her fingers as she dangles them in the water. She clamps down on the object, which turns out to be a human head, attached to a human body. If anything could take Flavia’s mind off sorrow, it is solving a murder --- although one that may lead the young sleuth to an early grave.
Delacorte Press | 9780345539991
HELLBENT: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz (Thriller)
Taken from a group home at age 12, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as an off-the-books government assassin: Orphan X. After he broke with the Orphan Program, Evan disappeared and reinvented himself as the Nowhere Man, a man spoken about only in whispers and dedicated to helping the truly desperate. But this time, the voice on the other end is Jack Johns, the man who raised and trained him, the only father Evan has ever known. Secret government forces are busy trying to scrub the remaining assets and traces of the Orphan Program, and they have finally tracked down Jack. With little time remaining, Jack gives Evan his last assignment: find and protect his last protégé and recruit for the program.
Minotaur Books | 9781250119179
IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE written by Tom Malmquist, translated by Henning Koch (Fiction)
When Tom's heavily pregnant girlfriend Karin is rushed to the hospital, doctors are able to save the baby. But they are helpless to save Karin from what turns out to be acute leukemia. And in a cruel, fleeting moment, Tom gains a daughter but loses his soulmate. IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE ALIVE is the story of the year that changes everything, as Tom must reconcile the fury and pain of loss with the overwhelming responsibility of raising his daughter, Livia, alone.
Melville House | 9781612197111
INTO THE BLACK NOWHERE: An UNSUB Novel by Meg Gardiner (Psychological Thriller)
In southern Texas, on Saturday nights, women are disappearing. Rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix, newly assigned to the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, fears that a serial killer is roaming the dark roads outside Austin. Caitlin and the FBI's serial crime unit discover the first victim's body in the woods. She is laid out in a bloodstained, white baby-doll nightgown. A second victim in a white nightie lies deeper in the forest's darkness. Both bodies are surrounded by Polaroid photos, stuck in the earth like headstones. As Saturday night approaches, Caitlin and the FBI enter a desperate game of cat and mouse, racing to capture the cunning predator before he claims more victims.
Dutton | 9781101985557
JACKIE, JANET & LEE: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Biography)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill followed in their mother Janet’s footsteps after her marriages to the philandering socialite “Black Jack” Bouvier and the fabulously rich Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss. Jacqueline would marry John F. Kennedy and the story of their marriage is legendary, as is the story of her second marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Less well known is the story of her love affair with a world renowned architect and a British peer. Jackie's sister, Lee, had liaisons with one and possibly both of Jackie's husbands, in addition to her own three marriages --- to an illegitimate royal, a Polish prince and a Hollywood director.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250128010
KILLER CHOICE by Tom Hunt (Thriller)
Gary Foster’s life is finally heading in the right direction. After years of trying, his wife, Beth, is pregnant, and he recently opened a business with his brother. But one phone call changes everything. After collapsing suddenly, Beth has been rushed to the hospital. Tests reveal a devastating diagnosis: an inoperable brain tumor. Their only hope is an expensive experimental treatment available abroad, with a cost that’s out of their reach. And Beth’s time is running out. Then a strange man approaches Gary and offers the money he needs, on one condition: that he kill someone, no questions asked. End one life to save another.
Berkley | 9780399586408
THE MONK OF MOKHA by Dave Eggers (Biography)
Mokhtar Alkhanshali is 24 and working as a doorman when he discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen’s central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral homeland to tour terraced farms high in the country’s rugged mountains and meet beleaguered but determined farmers. But when war engulfs the country and Saudi bombs rain down, Mokhtar has to find a way out of Yemen without sacrificing his dreams or abandoning his people.
Knopf | 9781101947319
MOTHERS OF SPARTA: A Memoir in Pieces by Dawn Davies (Memoir)
This is a book about a young girl who moves to a new town every couple of years; a misfit teenager who finds solace in a local music scene; an adrift twenty-something who drops out of college to pursue her dream of making cheesecake on a stick a successful business franchise. Alone in a new city, she summons her inner strength as she holds the hand of a dying stranger. Dawn Davies is a woman who finds humor in difficult pregnancies and postpartum depression. She is a divorcee who unexpectedly finds second love. She is a happily married suburban wife who nevertheless makes a mental list of all the men she would have slept with. And she is a parent who finds herself tested in ways she never could imagine.
Flatiron Books | 9781250133700
NOW WE ARE DEAD by Stuart MacBride (Mystery)
Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace --- that’s why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he’s back on the streets and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good. The Powers That Be won’t listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she has more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy. Perhaps she could try solving a few instead of harassing an innocent man? Steel knows Wallace is guilty. And the longer he gets away with it, the more women will suffer. The question is: How much is she willing to sacrifice to stop him?
HarperCollins | 9780008257088
THE POPE OF PALM BEACH by Tim Dorsey (Mystery/Humor)
Perpetually hunting Floridian arcana and lore, Serge A. Storms and his sidekick, Coleman, are on a frenzied literary pilgrimage that leads them back to Riviera Beach, the cozy seaside town where the boys spent their formative years. Growing up, Serge was enthralled by the Legend of Riviera Beach, aka Darby, a welder at the port who surfed the local waves long before the hot spots were hot. Meanwhile, there was a much murkier legend that made the rounds of the schoolyards from Serge’s youth --- that of the crazy hermit living in a makeshift jungle compound farther up the mysterious Loxahatchee River than anyone dared to venture. Serge moved away but never forgot, and is back now, with those legends looming larger than ever in the rearview mirror of his memory.
William Morrow | 9780062429254
STILL ME by Jojo Moyes (Romance)
Louisa Clark arrives in New York ready to start a new life, confident that she can embrace this new adventure and keep her relationship with Ambulance Sam alive across several thousand miles. She is thrown into the world of the superrich Gopniks: Leonard and his much younger second wife, Agnes, and a never-ending array of household staff and hangers-on. Lou is determined to get the most out of the experience and throws herself into her job and New York life within this privileged world. Before she knows what's happening, Lou is mixing in New York high society, where she meets Joshua Ryan, a man who brings with him a whisper of her past.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9780399562457
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED by Mick Herron (Thriller)
Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk. Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero --- if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.
Soho Crime | 9781616958619
WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM by Mary Lynn Bracht (Historical Fiction)
Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than 60 years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735214439
THE WINTER STATION by Jody Shields (Historical Fiction)
In 1910, people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife --- but she has secrets of her own.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316385343
On Sale the Week of January 29th in Paperback
January 30th
AMERICAN WAR by Omar El Akkad (Fiction)
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.
Vintage | 9781101973134
BANANA CREAM PIE MURDER: A Hannah Swensen Mystery with Recipes! by Joanne Fluke (Mystery)
After an extravagant honeymoon, Hannah is eager to settle down in Lake Eden and turn domestic daydreams into reality. But when her mother’s neighbor is discovered murdered in the condo downstairs, reality becomes a nightmarish investigation. Victoria Bascomb, once a renowned stage actress, was active in the theater community during her brief appearance in town…and made throngs of enemies along the way. Did a random intruder murder the woman as police claim, or was a deadlier scheme at play? As Hannah peels through countless suspects and some new troubles of her own, solving this crime --- and living to tell about it --- might prove trickier than mixing up the ultimate banana cream pie.
Kensington | 9781617732225
BEHIND HER EYES by Sarah Pinborough (Psychological Thriller)
On a rare night out, single mom Louise meets a man in a bar and sparks fly. When she arrives at work on Monday, she meets her new boss, David --- the man from the bar. David is married and says the kiss was a terrible mistake, but he still can’t keep his eyes off her. And then Louise bumps into Adele, who’s new to town and in need of a friend. But she also just happens to be married to David. David and Adele look like the picture-perfect husband and wife. But then why is David so controlling? And why is Adele so scared of him? As Louise is drawn into David and Adele’s orbit, she uncovers more puzzling questions than answers.
Flatiron Books | 9781250111197
BURNTOWN by Jennifer McMahon (Thriller)
Eva Sandeski, known as “Necco” on the street, has been a part of an underworld known as “Burntown” for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison’s workshop. According to Necco’s mother, Lily, it’s this machine that got Miles murdered. Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco’s boyfriend is murdered, she’s convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from the man called “Snake Eyes,” Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive.
Anchor | 9781101971857
HERE WE LIE by Paula Treick DeBoard (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Megan Mazeros and Lauren Mabrey are complete opposites on paper. Megan is a girl from a modest Midwest background, and Lauren is the daughter of a senator from an esteemed New England family. When they become roommates at a private women’s college, they forge a strong, albeit unlikely, friendship. The summer before senior year, Megan joins Lauren and her family on their private island off the coast of Maine. But late one night, something unspeakable happens, searing through the framework of their friendship and tearing them apart. Many years later, Megan publicly comes forward about what happened that fateful night, revealing a horrible truth and threatening to expose long-buried secrets.
Park Row | 9780778330264
THE HONORABLE TRAITORS by John Lutz (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Officially, Thomas Laker is an employee of the NSA. His real employer, known as the Gray Outfit, is not listed --- anywhere. When a Washington, D.C., insider is killed in a bomb explosion, Laker teams up with cryptographer Ava North on a desperate search for clues. The only thing certain is that another act of terrorism is imminent. Delving into the dangerous past when America was drawn into global conflict, they discover one of history’s greatest --- and deadliest --- secrets. In the wrong hands it can unleash unimaginable destruction. Now, to keep his homeland from plunging into its darkest hour, Laker will have to defend everything he believes in.
Pinnacle | 9780786040933
THE MEN IN MY LIFE: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan by Patricia Bosworth (Memoir)
From acclaimed biographer Patricia Bosworth comes a series of vivid confessions about her remarkable journey into womanhood. Married and divorced from an abusive husband before she’s 20, she joins the famed Actors Studio. She takes classes with Lee Strasberg alongside Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and others; she works on Broadway opposite Paul Muni, Helen Hayes and Elaine Stritch; Gore Vidal and Elia Kazan become her mentors. Her anecdotes of theatre’s Golden Age have never been told before. At the zenith of her career, about to film The Nun’s Story with Audrey Hepburn, Patricia faces a decision that changes her forever.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062287915
THE MOTHER’S PROMISE by Sally Hepworth (Fiction)
All their lives, Alice Stanhope and her daughter, Zoe, have been a family of two. Zoe has always struggled with crippling social anxiety, and her mother has been her constant and fierce protector. With no family to speak of, and the identity of Zoe’s father shrouded in mystery, their team of two works until it doesn’t. Until Alice gets sick and needs to fight for her life. Desperate to find stability for Zoe, Alice reaches out to two women who are practically strangers, but who are her only hope: Kate, a nurse, and Sonja, a social worker. As the four of them come together, they must confront their sharpest fears and secrets about abandonment, abuse, estrangement and the deepest longing for family.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250077769
THE ORIGINAL BLACK ELITE: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor (Biography)
In the wake of the Civil War, Daniel Murray, born free and educated in Baltimore, was in the vanguard of Washington, D.C.’s black upper class. Though Murray and other black elite of his time were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second, their prospects were crushed by Jim Crow segregation and the capitulation to white supremacist groups by the government, which turned a blind eye to their unlawful --- often murderous --- acts. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor traces the rise, fall and disillusionment of upper-class African Americans, revealing that they were a representation not of hypothetical achievement but what could be realized by African Americans through education and equal opportunities.
Amistad | 9780062346100
A PIECE OF THE WORLD by Christina Baker Kline (Historical Fiction)
To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than 20 years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the 20th century.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062356277
THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel (Biography)
Many people dream of escaping modern life. Most will never act on it --- but in 1986, 20-year-old Christopher Knight did just that when he left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine and disappeared into the woods. He would not have a conversation with another person for the next 27 years. Drawing on extensive interviews with Knight himself, journalist Michael Finkel shows how Knight lived in a tent in a secluded encampment, developing ingenious ways to store provisions and stave off frostbite during the winters. A former alarm technician, he stealthily broke into nearby cottages for food, books and supplies. Since returning to the world, he has faced unique challenges --- and compelled us to reexamine our assumptions about what makes a good life.
Vintage | 9781101911532
SYCAMORE by Bryn Chancellor (Psychological Thriller)
A newcomer to the town of Sycamore, Arizona, stumbles across what appear to be human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine. As news of the discovery makes its way around town, Sycamore’s longtime residents fear the bones may belong to Jess Winters, the teenage girl who disappeared suddenly some 18 years earlier. In the days it takes the authorities to make an identification, the residents rekindle stories, rumors and recollections both painful and poignant as they revisit Jess’ troubled history. In resurrecting the past, the people of Sycamore will find clarity, unexpected possibility, and a way forward for their lives.
Harper Perennial | 9780062661104
THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON by Tasha Kavanagh (Psychological Thriller)
When 15-year-old Yasmin --- obese, obsessive and deemed a freak by her peers --- sees a sinister man watching Alice Taylor from the school fence, she becomes convinced he’s planning to take her. After all, who wouldn’t want the popular and perfect Alice? Then Yasmin realizes if she can find out who he is before he acts, she’ll be the only one who can tell the police, save Alice and become Alice’s heroine. But as Yasmin discovers more about this man, her affections begin to shift. Perhaps she was wrong about him. Perhaps she doesn’t need Alice after all. And then Alice vanishes.
Park Row | 9780778330332
THE THIRST: A Harry Hole Novel by Jo Nesbø (Mystery/Thriller)
The murder victim is a self-declared Tinder addict. Two days later, there’s a second murder: a woman of the same age, a Tinder user, an eerily similar scene. The chief of police knows there’s only one man for this case. But Harry Hole is no longer with the force. He promised the woman he loves --- and himself --- that he’d never go back: not after his last case, which put the people closest to him in grave danger. But there’s something about these murders that catches his attention, something in the details that the investigators have missed. Now, despite his promises, despite everything he risks, Harry throws himself back into the hunt for a figure who haunts him, the monster who got away.
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard | 9780804170222
THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY by Hannah Tinti (Literary Thriller)
A loner who spent years living on the run, Samuel Hawley raised his daughter, Loo, on the road, always watching his back. Now that Loo is a teenager, Hawley wants only to give her a normal life. In his late wife’s hometown, he finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at the local high school. She also grows more and more curious about the death of the mother she never knew. Soon, everywhere she turns, she encounters the mysteries of her parents’ lives before she was born. As Loo uncovers a history that’s darker than she could have known, the demons of her father’s past spill over into the present --- and together both Hawley and Loo must face a reckoning yet to come.
Dial Press Trade Paperback | 9780812989908
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead (Historical Fiction)
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood --- where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.
Anchor | 9780345804327
On Sale the Week of February 5th in Hardcover
February 6th
AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones (Fiction)
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
Algonquin Books | 9781616201340
THE ART OF VANISHING: A Memoir of Wanderlust by Laura Smith (Memoir)
At 25, as her wedding date approached, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiancé, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free. She found in the strangely captivating story of another restless young woman determined to live without constraints both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Newhall Follett was a free-spirited trailblazer who published her first novel at 11, enlisted as a deck hand on a boat bound for the south China seas at 15, and was one of the first women to hike the Appalachian trail. Then in December 1939, she walked out of her apartment, leaving behind a fraying marriage, and vanished without a trace. Obsessed by her story, Laura set off to find out what had happened.
Viking | 9780399563584
AS BRIGHT AS HEAVEN by Susan Meissner (Historical Fiction)
In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than 12,000 victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope.
Berkley | 9780399585968
ASYMMETRY by Lisa Halliday (Fiction)
Told in three distinct sections, ASYMMETRY explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography and justice. The first section, “Folly,” tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. By contrast, “Madness” is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501166761
BEAUTIFUL DAYS: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (Fiction/Short Stories)
In BEAUTIFUL DAYS, Joyce Carol Oates explores the most secret, intimate and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance. In “Big Burnt,” a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she never could have anticipated. “The Nice Girl” depicts a young woman who has been infuriatingly “nice,” until she is forced to come to terms with the raw desperation of her deepest self. And the tragic “Undocumented Alien” depicts a young African student enrolled in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.
Ecco | 9780062795786
BERLIN 1936: Sixteen Days in August written by Oliver Hilmes, translated by Jefferson Chase (History)
BERLIN 1936 takes the reader through the 16 days of the Olympiad, describing the events in the German capital through the eyes of a select cast of characters --- Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, sportsmen and journalists, writers and socialites, nightclub owners and jazz musicians. While the events in the Olympic stadium, such as when an American tourist breaks through the security and manages to kiss Hitler, provide the focus and much of the drama, it also considers the lives of ordinary Berliners --- the woman with a dark secret who steps in front of a train, the transsexual waiting for the Gestapo's knock on the door, and the Jewish boy fearing for his future and hoping that Germany loses on the playing field.
Other Press | 9781590519295
THE BOOKWORM by Mitch Silver (Thriller)
Europe, 1940: Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into a monastery just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. The ersatz man of the cloth adds an old leather Bible to the monastery’s library and then escapes. London, 2017: A construction worker makes a grisly discovery --- a skeletal arm-bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. It’s all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together --- and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent --- is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelovg Klimt.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776415
CALL ME ZEBRA by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Fiction)
Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn’t fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are Zebra’s only companions --- until she meets Ludo. Their connection is magnetic; their time together fraught. Zebra overwhelms him with her complex literary theories, her concern with death, and her obsession with history. He thinks she’s unhinged; she thinks he’s pedantic. Neither are wrong; neither can let the other go. They push and pull their way across the Mediterranean, wondering with each turn if their love, or lust, can free Zebra from her past.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780544944602
DAPHNE by Will Boast (Fiction)
Born with a rare (and real) condition in which she suffers degrees of paralysis when faced with intense emotion, Daphne has few close friends and even fewer lovers. Like her mythic namesake, even one touch can freeze her. But when Daphne meets shy, charming Ollie, her well-honed defenses falter, and she’s faced with an impossible choice: cling to her pristine, manicured isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy. Set against the vivid backdrop of a San Francisco flush with money and pulsing with protest, DAPHNE is a modern fable that explores both self-determination and the perpetual fight between love and safety.
Liveright | 9781631493034
A DEATH IN LIVE OAK: A Jack Swyteck Novel by James Grippando (Legal Thriller)
When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the preeminent black fraternity at Florida's flagship university, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime. Contending with rising political tensions, racial unrest and a sensational media, Townson’s defense attorney, Jack Swyteck, knows that the stakes could not be higher. The evidence against his client, which includes a threatening text message referencing "strange fruit" on the river, seems overwhelming. Then Jack gets a break that could turn the case.
Harper | 9780062657800
THE DECEIVERS: A John Wells Novel by Alex Berenson (Thriller)
The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Ahmed to doubt them, until it was too late. Vinnie Duto, the former CIA director and now president, wants John Wells to go to Colombia. An old asset there has information to share --- and it will lead Wells to the deadliest mission of his life, an extraordinary confluence of sleeper cells, sniper teams, false flag operations, double agents high in the U.S. government, and a Russian plot to take over the government itself. If it succeeds, what happened in Texas will be only a prelude.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399176166
A FALSE REPORT: A True Story of Rape in America by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong (True Crime)
In 2008, 18-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment and raped her. Within days, police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie. Police charged Marie with false reporting. More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault, a case that bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon realized they were dealing with a serial rapist.
Crown | 9781524759933
FEEL FREE: Essays by Zadie Smith (Essays)
Arranged into five sections --- In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free --- Zadie Smith’s new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network --- and Facebook itself --- really about? Why do we love libraries? What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays such as "Joy" and "Find Your Beach," FEEL FREE offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life.
Penguin Press | 9781594206252
FORCE OF NATURE by Jane Harper (Mystery)
When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder?
Flatiron Books | 9781250105639
FORTY DEAD MEN: An Alafair Tucker Mystery by Donis Casey (Historical Mystery)
World War I is over. Alafair Tucker is overjoyed that her elder son, George Washington Tucker, has finally returned home from the battlefields of France. Yet she is the only one in the family who senses that he has somehow changed. One rainy day, Gee Dub spies a woman trudging along the country road. Once made comfortable at the Tucker farm, Holly Johnson reveals she has forged her way from Maine to Oklahoma in hopes of finding the soldier she married before he shipped to France. At the war's end, Daniel Johnson disappeared without a trace. But when he finally turns up, shot dead, Gee Dub is arrested on suspicion of murder, and the entire extended Tucker family rallies to his defense.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209376
THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez (Fiction)
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world and increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
Riverhead Books | 9780735219441
THE GATE KEEPER: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd (Historical Mystery)
A restless Ian Rutledge drives aimlessly, haunted by the past, and narrowly misses a motorcar stopped in the middle of a desolate road. Standing beside the vehicle is a woman with blood on her hands and a dead man at her feet. She swears she didn’t kill Stephen Wentworth. A stranger stepped out in front of their motorcar and fired a single shot before vanishing into the night. Although he is a witness after the fact, Rutledge persuades the Yard to give him the inquiry, since he’s on the scene. But is he seeking justice --- or fleeing painful memories in London? When a second suspicious death occurs, the evidence suggests that a dangerous predator is on the loose, and that death is closer than Rutledge knows.
William Morrow | 9780062678713
GIRL UNKNOWN by Karen Perry (Literary Thriller)
David and Caroline Connolly are swimming successfully through their marriage’s middle years. The recent stresses of home renovation and of a brief romantic betrayal (Caroline’s) are behind them. The Connollys know and care for each other deeply. Then one early fall afternoon, a student appears in David’s university office and says, “I think you might be my father.” And the fact of a youthful passion that David had tried to forget comes rushing back. In the person of this intriguing young woman, the Connollys may have a chance to expand who they are and how much they can love, or they may be making themselves vulnerable to menace. They face either an opportunity or a threat --- but which is which?
Henry Holt and Co. | 9780805098747
THE GLASS FOREST by Cynthia Swanson (Historical/Literary Thriller)
In the autumn of 1960, Angie Glass is living an idyllic life in her Wisconsin hometown. At 21, she is married to charming, handsome Paul and has just given birth to a baby boy. But when Paul’s niece, Ruby, reports that her father, Henry, has committed suicide and that her mother, Silja, is missing, Angie and Paul drop everything and fly to the small upstate town of Stonekill, New York, to be by Ruby’s side. Angie thinks they’re coming to the rescue of Paul’s grief-stricken young niece, but Ruby is a composed and enigmatic 17-year-old who resists Angie’s attempts to nurture her. As Angie learns more about the complicated Glass family, she begins to question the very fabric of her own marriage.
Touchstone | 9781501172090
THE GONE WORLD by Tom Sweterlitsch (Science Fiction/Thriller)
Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family --- and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra --- a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence. Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399167508
GOOD NEIGHBORS by Joanne Serling (Fiction)
In an idyllic suburb, four young families quickly form a neighborhood clique, their friendships based on little more than the ages of their children and a shared sense of camaraderie. When one of the couples, Paige and Gene Edwards, adopt a four-year-old girl from Russia, the group's loyalty and morality is soon called into question. Are the Edwards unkind to their new daughter? Or is she a difficult child with hidden destructive tendencies? As the seams of the group friendship slowly unravel, neighbor Nicole Westerhof finds herself drawn further into the life of the adopted girl, forcing Nicole to reexamine the deceptive nature of her own family ties, and her complicity in the events unfolding around her.
Twelve | 9781455541911
THE GREAT ALONE by Kristin Hannah (Historical Fiction)
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier. Thirteen-year-old Leni dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. But as winter approaches, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within.
St. Martin's Press | 9780312577230
HEAD WOUNDS: A Daniel Rinaldi Mystery by Dennis Palumbo (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Dr. Daniel Rinaldi becomes a participant in a domestic drama that blows up right outside his front door. In the chaos that follows, Rinaldi learns that his neighbor has told her boyfriend that Rinaldi is her lover. As things heat up, Rinaldi becomes a murder suspect. But this is just the first act in HEAD WOUNDS. As one savagery follows another, Rinaldi is forced to relive a terrible night that haunts him still. And to realize that now he --- and those he loves --- are being victimized by a brilliant killer still in the grip of delusion. Determined to destroy Rinaldi by systematically targeting those close to him, computer genius Sebastian Maddox strives to cause as much psychological pain as possible, before finally orchestrating a bold, macabre death for his quarry.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464208164
THE HEART IS A SHIFTING SEA: Love and Marriage in Mumbai by Elizabeth Flock (Family & Relationships/Sociology)
In 21st-century India, tradition is colliding with Western culture, a clash that touches the lives of everyday Indians. While ethnicity, class and religion are influencing the nation’s development, so too are pop culture and technology --- an uneasy fusion whose impact is most evident in the institution of marriage. THE HEART IS A SHIFTING SEA introduces three couples whose relationships illuminate these sweeping cultural shifts in dramatic ways: Veer and Maya, a forward-thinking professional couple whose union is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage blossoms into true love.
Harper | 9780062456489
THE HOUSE OF IMPOSSIBLE BEAUTIES by Joseph Cassara (Fiction)
It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where 17-year-old Angel first comes into her own. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone. The Xtravaganzas --- Venus, Juanito and Daniel --- are ambitious, resilient and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences.
Ecco | 9780062676979
HOW TO STOP TIME by Matt Haig (Fiction)
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. He has lived history but now just wants an ordinary life. So Tom moves back to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher --- the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history firsthand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group that protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him.
Viking | 9780525522874
I AM, I AM, I AM: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell (Memoir)
I AM, I AM, I AM is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers. Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots.
Knopf | 9780525520221
THE KING'S CITY: A History of London During The Restoration: The City that Transformed a Nation by Don Jordan (History)
During the reign of Charles II, London was a city in flux. After years of civil war and political turmoil, England's capital became the center for major advances in the sciences, the theatre, architecture, trade and ship-building that paved the way for the creation of the British Empire. Throughout the quarter-century Charles was on the throne, London also suffered several serious reverses: the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666, and severe defeat in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which brought about notable economic decline. But thanks to the genius and resilience of the people of London, and the occasionally wavering stewardship of the King, the city rose from the ashes to become the economic capital of Europe.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776385
THE KINGS OF BIG SPRING: God, Oil, and One Family's Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer (Memoir/History)
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
Flatiron Books | 9781250058911
THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú (Memoir)
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes and smuggling corridors, where they learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the whole story.
Riverhead Books | 9780735217713
LOOK FOR ME by Lisa Gardner (Mystery/Thriller)
The home of a family of five is now a crime scene: four of them savagely murdered, one --- a 16-year-old girl --- missing. Was she lucky to have escaped? Or is her absence evidence of something sinister? Detective D. D. Warren is on the case --- but so is survivor-turned-avenger Flora Dane. Seeking different types of justice, they must make sense of the clues left behind by a young woman who, whether as victim or suspect, is silently pleading, Look for me.
Dutton | 9781524742058
THE MASTERPIECE by Francine Rivers (Romance)
Successful LA artist Roman Velasco appears to have everything he could possibly want. Only Grace Moore, his reluctant, newly hired personal assistant, knows how little he truly has. The demons of Roman’s past seem to echo through the halls of his empty mansion and out across his breathtaking Topanga Canyon view. Like Roman, Grace is wrestling with ghosts and secrets of her own. After a disastrous marriage threw her life completely off course, she vowed never to let love steal her dreams again. But as she gets to know the enigmatic man behind the reputation, it’s as if the jagged pieces of both of their pasts slowly begin to fit together...until something so unexpected happens that it changes the course of their relationship --- and both their lives --- forever.
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. | 9781496407900
ONLY CHILD by Rhiannon Navin (Fiction)
Squeezed into a coat closet with his classmates and teacher, first grader Zach Taylor can hear gunshots ringing through the halls of his school. A gunman has entered the building, taking 19 lives and irrevocably changing the very fabric of this close-knit community. While Zach's mother pursues a quest for justice against the shooter's parents, holding them responsible for their son's actions, Zach retreats into his super-secret hideout and loses himself in a world of books and art. Armed with his newfound understanding, and with the optimism and stubbornness only a child could have, Zach sets out on a captivating journey towards healing and forgiveness.
Knopf | 9781524733353
ONLY KILLERS AND THIEVES by Paul Howarth (Historical Fiction/Adventure)
It is 1885, and a crippling drought threatens to ruin the McBride family. When the rain finally comes, it is a miracle that renews their hope for survival. But returning home from an afternoon swimming at a remote waterhole filled by the downpour, 14-year-old Tommy and 16-year-old Billy meet with a shocking tragedy. Thirsting for vengeance against the man they believe has wronged them, the distraught brothers turn to the ruthless and cunning John Sullivan, their father’s former employer. As they ride across the barren outback in pursuit, their harsh and horrifying journey will have a devastating impact on Tommy and will hold enduring consequences for a young country struggling to come into its own.
Harper | 9780062690968
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BOY by Rachel Lyon (Fiction)
Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. But the decision to show it is not easy, especially as she forges an intense bond with the boy’s mother. Lu becomes torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.
Scribner | 9781501169588
THE STORM KING by Brendan Duffy (Literary Thriller)
After a tumultuous youth marked by his inexplicable survival of a devastating tragedy, Nate McHale left his Adirondack hometown of Greystone Lake and never looked back. Fourteen years later, he has become a respected New York City surgeon, devoted husband and loving father. Then a body is discovered deep in the forests that surround Greystone Lake. This disturbing news finally draws Nate home. While navigating a tense landscape of secrets and suspicion, resentments and guilt, Nate reconnects with estranged friends and old enemies, and encounters strangers who seem to know impossible things about him. Haunting every moment is the Lake’s sinister history and the memory of Lucy Bennett, with whom Nate is forever linked by shattering loss and youthful passion.
Ballantine Books | 9780804178143
TARNISHED CITY by Vic James (Dystopian Fantasy)
In a modern Britain where magic users control wealth, politics --- and you --- an uprising has been crushed. In its aftermath, two families will determine the country’s fate. The ruthless Jardines make a play for ultimate power. And the Hadleys, once an ordinary family, must find the extraordinary strength to fight back. Abi Hadley is a fugitive. Her brother, Luke, a prisoner. Both will discover that in the darkest places, the human spirit shines brightest. Meanwhile, amid his family’s intrigues, Silyen Jardine dreams of forgotten powers from an earlier age. As blood runs in the streets of London, all three will discover whether love and courage can ever be stronger than tyranny.
Del Rey | 9780425284124
THE UNDERTAKER'S DAUGHTER by Sara Blaedel (Thriller)
Ilka Nichols Jensen learns that her father --- who walked out suddenly on the family more than three decades ago --- has died and left her something in his will: his funeral home in Racine, Wisconsin. Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin. She plans to visit the funeral home and go through her father's things before preparing the business for a quick sale. But when she stumbles on an unsolved murder, and a killer who seems to still be very much alive, the undertaker's daughter realizes she might be in over her head.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781455541119
THE UNFORGOTTEN by Laura Powell (Mystery/Thriller)
Fifteen-year-old Betty Broadbent’s world is upended in the summer of 1956 when a string of brutal murders brings London’s press corps flooding into the village, many of whom find lodging at the Hotel Eden, a boarding house run by her mother. She is instantly transfixed by one of the reporters, Mr. Gallagher --- and he, fully twice her age, seems equally transfixed by her. The unlikely relationship that blooms between them is as overlaid with longing and desire as it is with impropriety and even menace. And as the shocking death toll rises, both Betty and Mr. Gallagher are forced to make a devastating choice, one that will shape their own lives --- and the life of an innocent man --- forever.
Gallery Books | 9781501181221
THE WHICH WAY TREE by Elizabeth Crook (Western)
Early one morning, a panther savagely attacks a family of homesteaders, mauling a young girl named Samantha and killing her mother. Samantha and her half-brother, Benjamin, survive, but she is left traumatized. THE WHICH WAY TREE is the story of Samantha's unshakeable resolve to stalk and kill the infamous panther and avenge her mother's death. In their quest, she and Benjamin enlist a charismatic Tejano outlaw and a haunted, compassionate preacher with an aging but relentless tracking dog. As the members of this unlikely posse hunt the panther, they are in turn pursued by a hapless but sadistic Confederate soldier with troubled family ties to the preacher and a score to settle.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316434959
On Sale the Week of February 5th in Paperback
February 6th
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (Fiction)
Nearly two weeks early, Archibald Isaac Ferguson is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson’s pleasures and ache from each Ferguson’s pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson’s life rushes on.
Picador | 9781250160010
ALMOST MISSED YOU by Jessica Strawser (Psychological Thriller)
Three years into their marriage, Violet and Finn have a wonderful little boy. Life is good, and Violet can’t believe her luck. So no one is more surprised than she when Finn leaves her at the beach and takes their son with him. Violet is suddenly in her own worst nightmare, and faced with the knowledge that the man she’s shared her life with, she never really knew at all. Caitlin and Finn have been best friends for the longest time. But when Finn shows up on Caitlin’s doorstep with the son he’s wanted for kidnapping, demands that she hide them from the authorities, and threatens to reveal a secret that could destroy her own family if she doesn’t, Caitlin faces an impossible choice.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250107619
THE ATOMIC CITY GIRLS by Janet Beard (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
In November 1944, 18-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which has sprung up in a matter of months. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiers, scientists and workmen. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins an affair with Sam Cantor, a young Jewish physicist who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too well. Across town, African-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government’s plans. But a breach in security will intertwine his fate with June’s search for answers.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062666710
BEARTOWN by Fredrik Backman (Fiction)
A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, Beartown is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semifinals, and they actually have a shot at winning. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semifinal match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made, and like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Washington Square Press | 9781501160776
THE BOOK THIEVES: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance written by Anders Rydell, translated by Henning Koch (History)
Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves, Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe’s libraries and bookshops, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own that they could use to wage an intellectual war on literature and history. But when the war was over, most of the books were never returned. Instead many found their way into the public library system, where they remain to this day. Now, Rydell finds himself entrusted with one of these stolen volumes, setting out to return it to its rightful owner.
Penguin Books | 9780735221239
BY THE BOOK by Julia Sonneborn (Fiction)
Paperback Original
An English professor in California, Anne Corey is determined to score a position on the coveted tenure track at her college. All she has to do is get a book deal, snag a promotion, and boom! She’s in. But then Adam Martinez --- her first love and ex-fiancé --- shows up as the college’s new president. Anne should be able to keep herself distracted. After all, she has a book to write, an aging father to take care of, and a new romance developing with the college’s insanely hot writer-in-residence. But no matter where she turns, there’s Adam, as smart and sexy as ever. As the school year advances and her long-buried feelings begin to resurface, Anne begins to wonder whether she just might get a second chance at love.
Gallery Books | 9781501175183
FULL WOLF MOON by Lincoln Child (Thriller)
When renowned "enigmalogist" Jeremy Logan travels to an isolated writers' retreat deep in the Adirondacks to work on his book, he discovers the remote community has been rocked by the grisly death of a hiker on Desolation Mountain. The attack occurred during the full moon and the body was severely mauled, but the unusual savagery calls into question the initial suspicions of a bear attack. Logan's theories take a dramatic turn when he meets Laura Feverbridge, a respected scientist who is still struggling with the violent loss of her father months earlier. As Feverbridge shares her research with Logan, he begins to wonder whether he is actually up against something he can’t believe is real.
Anchor | 9780307473769
GOLDEN HILL: A Novel of Old New York by Francis Spufford (Historical Fiction)
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street. Mr. Smith is amiable and charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. In his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won’t explain why, where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him --- maybe even kill him?
Scribner | 9781501163883
THE HEIRS by Susan Rieger (Fiction)
Six months after Rupert Falkes dies, leaving a grieving widow and five adult sons, an unknown woman sues his estate, claiming she had two sons by him. The Falkes brothers are pitched into turmoil, at once missing their father and feeling betrayed by him. In disconcerting contrast, their mother, Eleanor, is cool and calm, showing preternatural composure. Struggling to reclaim their identity, the brothers find Eleanor’s sympathy toward the woman and her sons confounding. Widowhood has let her cast off the rigid propriety of her stifling upbringing, and the brothers begin to question whether they knew either of their parents at all.
Broadway Books | 9781101904732
HIGH NOON: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel (History)
It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon achieved instant box-office and critical success. Yet what has been often overlooked is that the movie was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Examined in light of Foreman's testimony, High Noon's emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance.
Bloomsbury USA | 9781620409497
THE HOLLYWOOD DAUGHTER by Kate Alcott (Historical Fiction)
In 1950, Ingrid Bergman has a baby out of wedlock with her Italian lover, film director Roberto Rossellini. Previously held up as an icon of purity, Bergman's fall shocked her legions of American fans. Growing up in Hollywood, Jessica Malloy watches as her PR executive father helps make Ingrid a star. Over years of fleeting interactions with the actress, Jesse comes to idolize Ingrid. In a heated era of McCarthyism and extreme censorship, Ingrid's affair sets off an international scandal that robs 17-year-old Jesse of her childhood hero. When the stress placed on Jesse's father begins to reveal hidden truths about the Malloy family, Jesse's eyes are opened to the complex realities of life --- and love.
Anchor | 9781101912249
HUCK OUT WEST by Robert Coover (Historical Fiction)
At the end of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, on the eve of the Civil War, Huck and Tom Sawyer decide to escape “sivilization” and “light out for the Territory.” In Robert Coover’s vision of their Western adventures, Tom decides he’d rather own civilization than escape it, leaving Huck “dreadful lonely” in a country of bandits, war parties and gold. In the course of his ventures, Huck reunites with old friends, facing hard truths and even harder choices.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393355499
LAST HOPE ISLAND: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War by Lynne Olson (History)
When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France. As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known to occupied countries as “Last Hope Island.” Getting there, one young emigré declared, was “like getting to heaven.” Acclaimed historian Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812987164
THE LIGHT WE LOST by Jill Santopolo (Fiction)
Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated --- perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East, and Lucy pursues a career in New York. What follows is a 13-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals and, ultimately, love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735212763
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders (Historical Fiction)
It’s February 1862, and the Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. The boy finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state --- called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo --- a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812985405
THE MISSING WIFE by Sheila O'Flanagan (Fiction)
Paperback Original
When Imogen Naughton vanishes, everyone who knows her is shocked. She has a perfect marriage. Her handsome husband treats her like a princess. She’s always said how lucky she is. So why has she left? And how will she survive without Vince? What goes on behind closed doors is often a surprise, and Imogen surprises herself by taking the leap she knows she must. But as she begins her journey to find the woman she once was, Imogen's past is right behind her. Will it catch up with her? And will she be ready to face it if it does?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538760543
THE POSSESSIONS by Sara Flannery Murphy (Romantic Suspense)
In an unnamed city, Eurydice works for the Elysian Society, a private service that allows grieving clients to reconnect with lost loved ones. She and her fellow workers, known as "bodies," wear the discarded belongings of the dead and swallow pills called lotuses to summon their spirits. But when Edie, a body, channels Sylvia, the dead wife of recent widower Patrick Braddock, she becomes obsessed with the glamorous couple. Despite the murky circumstances surrounding Sylvia’s drowning, Edie breaks her own rules and pursues Patrick. After years of hiding beneath the lotuses’ dulling effect, Edie discovers that the lines between her own desires and those of Sylvia have begun to blur, and takes increasing risks to keep Patrick within her grasp.
Harper Perennial | 9780062458384
RICHARD NIXON: The Life by John A. Farrell (Biography)
RICHARD NIXON opens with young Navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returning from the Pacific and setting his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes quickly gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. It is a stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial portrait of a man who embodied postwar American cynicism.
Vintage | 9780345804969
SEEING RED by Sandra Brown (Thriller)
Twenty-five years ago, Major Franklin Trapper became a national icon when he was photographed leading a handful of survivors to safety after the bombing of a Dallas hotel. For years, he gave frequent speeches and interviews but then suddenly dropped out of the public eye. Now TV journalist Kerra Bailey is willing to use any means necessary to get an exclusive with the Major --- even if she has to secure an introduction from his estranged son, former ATF agent John Trapper. When the interview goes catastrophically awry, Trapper realizes he needs Kerra under wraps if he's going to track down the gunmen and finally discover who was responsible for the Dallas bombing.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781455572083
A SEPARATION by Katie Kitamura (Fiction)
A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love.
Riverhead Books | 9780399576119
THINGS TO DO WHEN IT’S RAINING by Marissa Stapley (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Mae Summers has it all: a loving fiancé, Peter, a job at the flourishing company he owns, and a beautiful New York City apartment. But Mae’s life shatters when she wakes up one morning to discover Peter gone and the company in shambles. There’s only one place for Mae to go: home to Alexandria Bay, where she was raised by her grandparents. And not all is right in Alex Bay, either: Mae finds her grandmother struggling with dementia, separated from Mae’s grandfather thanks to a terrible secret she never meant to reveal. She also finds Gabe, her childhood best friend who became the love of her young life --- now a handsome if brooding adult, working through a private trauma that still haunts him.
Graydon House | 9781525899010
A TIME OF LOVE AND TARTAN: A 44 Scotland Yard Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Fiction)
Paperback Original
When Pat accepts her narcissistic ex-boyfriend Bruce's invitation for coffee, she has no idea of the complications in her romantic and professional life that will follow. Meanwhile, Matthew, her boss at the art gallery, attracts the attention of the police after a misunderstanding at the local bookstore. Whether caused by small things such as a cup of coffee and a book, or major events such as Stuart's application for promotion and his wife Irene's decision to pursue a PhD in Aberdeen, change is coming to Scotland Street. But for three seven-year-old boys --- Bertie Pollock, Ranald, and Big Lou's foster son, Finlay --- it also means getting a glimpse of perfect happiness.
Anchor | 9780525436553
UNRAVELING OLIVER by Liz Nugent (Psychological Thriller)
Oliver Ryan is happily married to his wife, Alice, who illustrates the award-winning children’s books he writes and devotedly cares for him in their comfortable suburban home. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease --- until, one evening, Oliver delivers blows to Alice that render her comatose. As Alice hovers between life and death in her hospital bed, the couple’s circle of friends, neighbors and acquaintances try to understand what could have driven Oliver to commit such an astonishing act of savagery. Oliver tells his story, peeling away the layers to reveal a life of shame, envy, breath-taking deception and masterful manipulation. As details about his past catch up with him, even he is in for a shock.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781501173387
WHITE TEARS by Hari Kunzru (Literary Thriller)
Seth is a shy, awkward twentysomething. Carter is more glamorous, the heir to a great American fortune. But they share an obsession with music --- especially the blues. One day, Seth discovers that he accidentally has recorded an unknown blues singer in a park. Carter puts the file online, claiming it's a 1920s recording by a made-up musician named Charlie Shaw. But when a music collector tells them that their recording is genuine --- that there really was a singer named Charlie Shaw --- the two white boys, along with Carter's sister, find themselves in over their heads, delving deeper and deeper into America's dark, vengeful heart.
Vintage | 9781101973219
WILL’S RED COAT: The Story of One Old Dog Who Chose to Live Again by Tom Ryan (Memoir)
Drawn by an online post, Tom Ryan adopted Will, a frightened, deaf and mostly blind elderly dog, and brought him home to live with him and Atticus. Tom hoped to give Will a place to die with dignity, amid the rustic beauty of the White Mountains of his New Hampshire home. But when Will bites him numerous times and acts out in violent displays, Tom realizes he is in for a challenge. With endless patience and the kind of continued empathy Tom has nurtured in his relationship with Atticus, Will eventually begins to thrive. Soon, the angry, hurt, depressed and near-death oldster has transformed into a happy, gamboling companion with a puppy-like zest for discovery.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062444998
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