In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of March 26th and April 2nd 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 in April, which you can find in our Coming Soon feature.
We also have two new contests to tell you about on ReadingGroupGuides.com.
AUNTIE POLDI AND THE SICILIAN LIONS is Mario Giordano's first novel translated into English (courtesy of John Brownjohn) and is the opening installment of a series starring Auntie Poldi, Sicily’s newest amateur sleuth. We are celebrating its U.S. release with a special contest that will give three readers the chance to win 12 copies of the book for their group. Enter here by Wednesday, April 18th at noon ET.
Also, we are celebrating the release of THE BRIGHTEST SUN by Adrienne Benson --- an illuminating debut following three women in sub-Saharan Africa as they search for home and family --- with a special contest that will give three readers the chance to win 12 copies of the book for their group. Enter here by Wednesday, April 18th at noon ET.
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 April
In this newsletter, you will find some of the hardcovers and paperbacks that will be available the first week of April. But since we always love looking ahead --- and there are lots of noteworthy books to look forward to in April --- 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 April's Coming Soon feature here.
Hardcovers:
Paperbacks:
Click here for more April hardcovers and paperbacks.
On Sale the Week of March 26th in Hardcover
March 26th
RED ALERT: An NYPD Red Mystery by James Patterson and Marshall Karp (Mystery/Thriller)
The richest of New York's rich gather at the Pierre's Cotillion Room to raise money for those less fortunate. The mayor --- with Detectives Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald of the elite NYPD Red task force providing security --- is on hand to applaud the Silver Bullet Foundation's new plan for public housing. A fatal blast rocks the room, stirring up horrifying memories of 9/11. Is the explosion an act of terrorism --- or a homicide? A big-name female filmmaker is the next to die, in a desolate corner of New York City. The crimes keep escalating, and the perpetrators may be among the A-list New Yorkers NYPD Red was formed to protect.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316395441
March 27th
THE BALCONY by Jane Delury (Fiction)
Set in a small village near Paris, THE BALCONY follows the inhabitants of a single estate --- including a manor and a servants' cottage --- over the course of several generations, from the Belle Époque to the present day, introducing us to a fascinating cast of characters. A young American au pair develops a crush on her brilliant employer. An ex-courtesan shocks the servants, a Jewish couple in hiding from the Gestapo attract the curiosity of the neighbors, and a housewife begins an affair while renovating her downstairs. Rich and poor, young and old, powerful and persecuted, all of these people are seeking something: meaning, love, a new beginning or merely survival.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316554671
THE DISAPPEARED: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
A prominent female British executive never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British Embassy is pressing hard. Joe Pickett knows that happens sometimes. But no sign of her months after she vanished? That suggests something else. At the same time, Joe's friend Nate Romanowski has asked him to intervene with the feds on behalf of falconers who can no longer hunt with eagles, even though their permits are in order. Who is blocking the falconers and why? The more Joe investigates both cases, the more someone wants him to go away. Is it because of the missing woman or because he's become Nate's advocate? Or are they somehow connected?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399176623
GLIMPSE by Jonathan Maberry (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Rain Thomas is a young woman trying to rebuild her life after years of drug addiction and abuse. Ten years ago, at age 16, she gave up her baby after the father, her first love, died in Iraq. Now, three years clean and on the way to a job interview, Rain borrows a pair of reading glasses from an old lady on a Brooklyn train. The lenses are cracked, and through the crack she catches a glimpse of a little boy running and screaming. The boy looks so much like Rain’s dead lover --- like their son must look now. But how does a recovering junkie fight supernatural monsters? And how far will one woman go to save her lost son?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250065261
I WAS ANASTASIA by Ariel Lawhon (Historical Thriller)
Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled from a canal in Berlin and claims to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her detractors are convinced that she is only after the immense Romanov fortune. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre, old enemies and new threats are awakened.
Doubleday | 9780385541695
JACKRABBIT SMILE: A Hap and Leonard Novel by Joe R. Lansdale (Thriller)
Hap is celebrating his wedding to his longtime girlfriend, Brett (who is also Hap and Leonard's boss), when their backyard barbecue is interrupted by a couple of Pentecostal white supremacists. Judith Mulhaney's daughter, Jackrabbit, has been missing for five years. Well, she's been missing from them for five years, but she's been missing from everybody, including the local no-goods who ran with her, for a few months. Despite their misgivings about Judith and her son, Hap and Leonard take the case. It isn't long until they find themselves mixed up in a revivalist cult that believes Jesus will return flanked by an army of lizard-men --- solving a murder to boot.
Mulholland Books | 9780316311588
NOT THAT I COULD TELL by Jessica Strawser (Mystery)
When a group of neighborhood women gathers around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It’s a rare kid-free night, and they’re giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal. By Monday morning, one of them is gone. Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance. As the police investigation goes from a media circus to a cold case, the neighbors are forced to reexamine what’s going on behind their own closed doors --- and to ask how well anyone really knows anyone else.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250107886
THE QUEENS OF INNIS LEAR by Tessa Gratton (Fantasy)
The erratic decisions of a prophecy-obsessed king have drained Innis Lear of its wild magic, leaving behind a trail of barren crops and despondent subjects. The king’s three daughters know the realm’s only chance of resurrection is to crown a new sovereign, proving a strong hand can resurrect magic and defend itself. But their father will not choose an heir until the longest night of the year, when prophecies align and a poison ritual can be enacted. Refusing to leave their future in the hands of blind faith, the daughters of Innis Lear prepare for war --- but regardless of who wins the crown, the shores of Innis will weep the blood of a house divided.
Tor Books | 9780765392466
TANGERINE by Christine Mangan (Psychological Thriller)
The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the accident at Bennington, the two friends haven’t spoken in over a year. But there Lucy was, trying to make things right. Alice has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country. But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice --- she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice’s husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her: her relationship with her enigmatic friend, her decision to ever come to Tangier, and her very own state of mind.
Ecco | 9780062686664
TIGER WOODS by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian (Sports/Biography)
In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet. Married to a Swedish beauty and the father of two young children, he was the winner of 14 major golf championships and earning more than $100 million annually. But it was all a carefully crafted illusion. As it turned out, Woods had been living a double life for years --- one that unraveled in the aftermath of a Thanksgiving-night car crash that exposed his serial infidelity and sent his personal and professional lives over a cliff. Still, the world has always wondered: Who is Tiger Woods, really? In TIGER WOODS, Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian look deep behind the headlines to produce a richly reported answer to that question.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501126420
TO DIE BUT ONCE: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear (Historical Mystery)
During the months following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, Maisie Dobbs investigates the disappearance of a young apprentice working on a hush-hush government contract. As news of the plight of thousands of soldiers stranded on the beaches of France is gradually revealed to the general public, another young man beloved by Maisie makes a terrible decision that will change his life forever. Maisie’s investigation leads her from the countryside of rural Hampshire to the web of wartime opportunism exploited by one of the London underworld’s most powerful men. Yet when a final confrontation approaches, she must acknowledge the potential cost to her future --- and the risk of destroying a dream she wants very much to become reality.
Harper | 9780062436634
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT CHARLIE OUTLAW by Leah Stewart (Fiction)
After a series of missteps in the face of his newfound fame, actor Charlie Outlaw flees to a remote island in search of anonymity and a chance to reevaluate his recent breakup with his girlfriend, actress Josie Lamar. But soon after his arrival on the peaceful island, his solitary hike into the jungle takes him into danger he never anticipated. The star of a cult TV show, Josie has spent the 20 years since searching for a role to equal that one, and feeling less and less like her character. As she gets ready for a reunion of the cast at a huge fan convention, she thinks all she needs to do is find a part and replace Charlie. But she can't forget him, and to get him back she'll need to be a hero in real life.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735214347
On Sale the Week of March 26th in Paperback
March 26th
SECOND STORY MAN by Charles Salzberg (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Francis Hoyt is a master burglar who specializes in stealing high-end silver, breaking into homes that seem impenetrable. He has never been caught in the act, although he has spent some time in prison on a related charge --- time he used to hone his craft and make valuable connections. One day, Charlie Floyd, an experienced investigator who has recently retired from his job with the attorney general’s department for the state of Connecticut, receives a phone call from Manny Perez, a Cuban-American Miami police detective. Perez, who has worked with Floyd previously, wants to enlist the former investigator in his efforts to put an end to Francis Hoyt’s criminal career. Floyd accepts the offer, and they team up to bring Hoyt to justice.
Down & Out Books | 9781946502551
March 27th
ALL BY MYSELF, ALONE by Mary Higgins Clark (Mystery/Thriller)
Fleeing the disastrous and humiliating last-minute arrest of her fiancé on the eve of their wedding, Celia, an expert on gems and jewelry, is hoping to escape from reality on a glamorous cruise ship. But it is not to be. On board in the most luxurious suite is the elderly and world-famous Lady Emily Harworth. Immensely wealthy, Lady Em is the owner of a priceless emerald necklace that she intends to leave to the Smithsonian on her death. Three days later, Lady Em is found dead --- and the necklace is missing. Is it the work of her apparently devoted secretary, or her lawyer-executor, both of whom she had invited on board for the cruise?
Pocket Books | 9781501131127
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE by Elizabeth Strout (Fiction)
Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband, while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, Elizabeth Strout's celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after 17 years of absence.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812989410
ARNIE: The Life of Arnold Palmer by Tom Callahan (Sports/Biography)
The winner of more than 90 championships, including four Masters Tournaments, Arnold Palmer was a legend in 20th-century sports: a supremely gifted competitor beloved for his powerful hitting, his nerve on the greens, and his great rapport with fans. Perhaps above all others, Palmer was the reason golf’s popularity exploded, as the King of the links helped define golf’s golden age along with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. In addition to his talent on the golf course, Palmer was a brilliant entrepreneur off it, and one of the first sportsmen to create his own successful marketing brand. But beyond his business acumen, Palmer was always a larger-than-life character, and ARNIE recounts a host of unforgettable anecdotes from a long life in the spotlight.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062439741
CATASTROPHE: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
In CATASTROPHE, renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. From “The Epidemic,” which traces the gradual effects of a “state influenza” that targets those who disagree with the government, to “The Collapse of Baliverna,” where a man puzzles over whether a misstep on his part caused the collapse of a building, Buzzati’s surreal, unsettling tales reckon with the struggle that lies beneath everyday interactions, the sometimes perverse workings of human emotions and desires, and describe the small steps we take as individuals and as a society in our march toward catastrophe.
Ecco | 9780062742735
CHARLTON HESTON: Hollywood's Last Icon by Marc Eliot (Biography)
With unforgettable performances such as Moses in The Ten Commandments, the anguished astronaut George Taylor in 1968’s Planet of the Apes, and the eponymous Ben-Hur --- for which he won an Academy Award --- Charlton Heston cemented his place in the pantheon of 20th-century Hollywood royalty. But his fame as an actor was matched by his political activism. A Democrat in his early years, Heston became a staunch supporter of Richard Nixon and Reagan republicanism. He was also president of the National Rifle Association and an outspoken crusader for gun rights. At long last, Marc Eliot tells the story of Heston’s life and six-decade-long career in full detail.
Dey Street Books | 9780062420459
THE FALLEN: A Testament Novel by Eric Van Lustbader (Supernatural Thriller)
The End of Days has been predicted for millennia. Now, in a hidden cave in the mountains of Lebanon, a man makes a fateful discovery. He will bring what has been forbidden for thousands of years into the light: the Testament of Lucifer. In Istanbul, Bravo Shaw, head of the Gnostic Observatine sect, is warned by Fra Leoni that an unfathomable danger has arisen in the war between Good and Evil: Lucifer’s advance guard, the Fallen. Humankind is in danger of being enslaved by the forces of evil.
Forge Books | 9780765388582
KENNEDY AND KING: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights by Steven Levingston (History)
KENNEDY AND KING traces the emergence of two of the 20th century's greatest leaders, their powerful impact on each other and on the shape of the civil rights battle between 1960 and 1963. These two men from starkly different worlds profoundly influenced each other's personal development. Kennedy's hesitation on civil rights spurred King to greater acts of courage, and King inspired Kennedy to finally make a moral commitment to equality.
Hachette Books | 9780316267380
LETTERMAN: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman (Biography/Entertainment)
In a career spanning more than 30 years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In LETTERMAN, Jason Zinoman mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer’s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman’s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062377227
LUCKY: A Detective Jack Yu Investigation by Henry Chang (Hard-boiled Mystery)
Chinatown gang leader “Lucky” Louie was shot outside of a Chinatown off-track betting establishment and lay in a coma for 88 days, waking on Easter Sunday. The number 88 is a double-helix, double-lucky Chinese number; religion and superstition all lean Lucky’s way. But Detective Jack Yu, Lucky’s boyhood blood brother, fears his friend’s luck is about to run out. When Lucky embarks on a complex and daring series of crimes against the Chinatown criminal underground, Jack races to stop him before his Jacket Design by Janine Agro enemies do so --- permanently.
Soho Crime | 9781616958923
MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz (Mystery/Thriller)
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Conway’s latest tale has Atticus investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.
Harper Perennial | 9780062645234
THE OTHER MOTHER by Carol Goodman (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a whole new world. Daphne secured the live-in position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take her daughter away. When Daphne is diagnosed with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels unstoppable --- until she meets Laurel Hobbes, who also has a daughter named Chloe. They immediately form an intense friendship, revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. But Daphne realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a very shocking price.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062562647
THE STARS ARE FIRE by Anita Shreve (Historical Fiction)
In October 1947, Grace Holland is experiencing two simultaneous droughts. An unseasonably hot, dry summer has turned the state of Maine into a tinderbox, and Grace and her husband, Gene, have fallen out of love and barely speak. Five months pregnant and caring for two toddlers, Grace has resigned herself to a life of loneliness and domestic chores. One night she awakes to find that wildfires are racing down the coast, closer and closer to her house. Forced to pull her children into the ocean to escape the flames, Grace watches helplessly as everything she knows burns to the ground. By morning, her life is forever changed: she is homeless, penniless, awaiting news of her husband's fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists.
Vintage | 9780345806369
STRANGERS TEND TO TELL ME THINGS: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home by Amy Dickinson (Memoir/Essays)
By peeling back the curtain of her syndicated advice column, Amy Dickinson reveals much of the inspiration and motivation that has fueled her calling. Through a series of linked essays, this moving narrative picks up where her earlier memoir left off. Exploring central themes of romance, death, parenting, self-care and spiritual awakening, this touching and heartfelt homage speaks to all who have faced challenges in the wake of life's twists and turns. From finding love in middle age to her storied experience with stepparenting to overcoming disordered eating to her final moments spent with her late mother, Dickinson's trademark humorous tone delivers punch and wit that will empower, entertain and heal.
Hachette Books | 9780316352628
THE WHISPERING ROOM: A Jane Hawk Novel by Dean Koontz (Thriller)
“No time to delay. Do what you were born to do. Fame will be yours when you do this.” These are the words that ring in the mind of mild-mannered, beloved schoolteacher Cora Gundersun --- just before she takes her own life, and many others’, in a shocking act of carnage. When the disturbing contents of her secret journal are discovered, it seems certain that she must have been insane. But Jane Hawk knows better. In the wake of her husband’s inexplicable suicide --- and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals --- Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment.
Bantam | 9780345546821
WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR by Robert K. Tanenbaum (Legal Thriller)
Tensions have been building between the police force and the black rights activists in Harlem, and they reach a boiling point when a cop shoots down a seemingly unarmed teenager. The community, believing the teen had no weapon, rises up in anger and demands to have the officer prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But there’s something more than a call for justice at work here: a plot to bring down the city’s police force through a conspiracy so vast and malicious only N.Y.D.A. Roger "Butch" Karp and his band of truth-seekers can untangle it. Karp, along with Marlene and an eclectic cast of characters, seek to unravel the murder mystery without fear or favor.
Pocket Books | 9781476793245
YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR by Hallie Ephron (Psychological Suspense/Mystery)
Seven-year-old Lissie and her four-year-old sister, Janey, were playing with their porcelain dolls in the front yard when a puppy scampered by. Lissie chased after the pup as it ran down the street. When she returned to the yard, Janey and her precious doll were gone. Every year on the anniversary of her disappearance, Lis and Janey’s mother places an ad in the local paper with a picture of the toy Janey had with her that day, offering a generous cash reward for its return. For years, there’s been no response. But this year, the doll came home. It is the first clue in a decades-old mystery that is about to turn into something far more sinister --- endangering Lis and the lives of her mother and daughter as well.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062473639
On Sale the Week of April 2nd in Hardcover
April 1st
GEHRIG AND THE BABE: The Friendship and the Feud by Tony Castro (Sports/History)
The legendary achievements of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are undeniable hallmarks of baseball history. Much has been written about the two men as teammates, but Ruth and Gehrig's relationship away from the field is rarely, if ever, explored. In GEHRIG AND THE BABE, Tony Castro portrays Ruth and Gehrig for what they were: American icons who were remarkably different men. For the first time, readers will learn about a friendship driven apart, an enduring feud that wove its way in and out of their Yankees glory years and chilled their interactions until July 4, 1939 --- Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium --- when Gehrig’s famous farewell address thawed out their stone silence.
Triumph Books | 9781629372518
TRUE FICTION by Lee Goldberg (Thriller)
When a passenger jet crashes onto the beaches of Waikiki, bestselling thriller writer Ian Ludlow knows the horrific tragedy wasn’t an accident. Years before, the CIA enlisted Ian to dream up terrorism scenarios to prepare the government for nightmares they couldn’t imagine. Now one of those schemes has come true, and Ian is the only person alive who knows how it was done…and who is behind the plot. That makes him too dangerous to live. Ian goes on the run, sweeping up an innocent bystander in his plight: Margo French, a dog walker and aspiring singer. They are pursued by assassins and an all-seeing global-intelligence network that won’t stop until Ian and Margo are dead.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781503949188
April 3rd
ALL THE BEAUTIFUL LIES by Peter Swanson (Psychological Thriller)
Days before Harry Ackerson’s college graduation, his stepmother Alice calls with shocking news: his father is dead, and the police think it’s suicide. A devastated Harry returns to his father’s home in Maine, and shortly after his arrival meets a mysterious young woman named Grace McGowan. Though she claims to be new to the area, Harry begins to suspect that Grace may not be a complete stranger to his family. But she isn’t the only attractive woman taking an interest in Harry. The sensual Alice is also growing closer, coming on to him in an enticing, clearly sexual way. Harry becomes disoriented by a growing fear that both women are hiding dangerous --- even deadly --- secrets…and that neither one is telling the truth.
William Morrow | 9780062427052
AMERICA IS NOT THE HEART by Elaine Castillo (Fiction)
How many lives fit in a lifetime? When Hero De Vera arrives in America --- haunted by the political upheaval in the Philippines and disowned by her parents --- she's already on her third. Her uncle gives her a fresh start in the Bay Area, and he doesn't ask about her past. His younger wife knows enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. But their daughter --- the first American-born daughter in the family --- can't resist asking Hero about her damaged hands.
Viking | 9780735222410
AMERICAN BY DAY by Derek B. Miller (Thriller)
She knew it was a weird place. She’d heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård has to leave her native Norway and actually go there: to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African-American academic. AMERICA. Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise reverberate in every aspect of daily life. Working with --- or, if necessary, against --- the police, she must negotiate the local political minefields and navigate the backwoods of the Adirondacks to uncover the truth before events escalate further.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9781328876652
BLUFF by Michael Kardos (Thriller)
At 27, magician Natalie Webb is already a has-been. A card-trick prodigy, she took first place at the World of Magic competition at 18 and has never again reached such heights. Shunned by the magic world after a disastrous liaison with an older magician, she now lives alone in a New Jersey apartment. In a desperate ploy for extra cash, she follows up on an old offer to write for a glossy magazine and pitches the editor a seductive topic: the art of cheating at cards. But when Natalie meets the perfect subject for her piece --- a poker cheat who dazzles at sleight of hand --- what begins as a journalistic gamble soon becomes a test of everything she thinks she knows about her talent, and herself.
Mysterious Press | 9780802128041
CAN’T HELP MYSELF: Lessons & Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist by Meredith Goldstein (Memoir)
Every day, Boston Globe advice columnist Meredith Goldstein takes on the relationship problems of thousands of dedicated readers. In her column, she has it all figured out, but in her real life she is a lot less certain. Whether it's her own reservations about the traditional path of marriage and family, her difficulty finding someone she truly connects with, or the evolution of her friendships as her friends start to have their own families, Meredith finds herself looking for insight, just like her readers. As she searches for responses to their concerns, she's surprised to discover answers to her own. But it's after her mother is diagnosed with cancer that she truly realizes how special her "Love Letters" community is.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781455543779
CAVE OF BONES: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel by Anne Hillerman (Mystery)
When Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito arrives to speak at a character-building program for at-risk teens, she discovers chaos. Annie, a young participant on a solo experience, stumbled upon a human skeleton. While everyone is relieved that Annie is back, they’re concerned about a beloved instructor who went out into the wilds to find the missing girl. The instructor’s disappearance mirrors a long-ago search that may be connected to a case in which the legendary Joe Leaphorn played a crucial role. While Bernie searches for answers in her case, her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, juggles trouble closer to home. A vengeful man he sent to prison for domestic violence is back --- and involved with Bernie’s sister, Darleen.
Harper | 9780062391926
CODENAME VILLANELLE by Luke Jennings (Thriller)
Villanelle is one of the world's most skilled assassins. A catlike psychopath whose love for the creature comforts of her luxurious lifestyle is second only to her love of the game, she specializes in murdering the world's richest and most powerful. But when she murders an influential Russian politician, she draws a relentless foe to her tail. Eve Polastri is a former MI6 operative hired by the national security services for a singular task: to find and capture or kill the assassin responsible, and those who have aided her. The ensuing chase will lead them on a trail around the world, intersecting with corrupt governments and powerful criminal organizations, all leading towards a final confrontation from which neither will emerge unscathed.
Mulholland Books | 9780316512527
A DYING NOTE: A Silver Rush Mystery by Ann Parker (Historical Mystery)
It’s autumn of 1881, and Inez Stannert, still the co-owner of Leadville, Colorado's Silver Queen saloon, is settled in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. Inez has turned her business talents to managing a music store, hoping to eventually become an equal partner in the enterprise with the store's owner, a celebrated local violinist. Inez's carefully constructed life for herself and Antonia threatens to tumble about her ears when the badly beaten body of a young musician washes up on the filthy banks of San Francisco's Mission Creek canal. Inez and Antonia become entangled in the mystery of his death when the musician turns out to have ties to Leadville, ties that threaten to expose Inez's notorious past.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209796
EUNICE: The Kennedy Who Changed the World by Eileen McNamara (Biography)
While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the Senate, his Stanford-educated daughter Eunice was tapping her father’s fortune and her brothers’ political power to engineer one of the great civil rights movements of our time on behalf of millions of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Now, in EUNICE, Pulitzer Prize winner Eileen McNamara finally brings Eunice Kennedy Shriver out from her brothers’ shadow to show an officious, cigar-smoking, indefatigable woman of unladylike determination and deep compassion born of rage.
Simon & Schuster | 9781451642261
THE FEMALE PERSUASION by Meg Wolitzer (Fiction)
Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 63, has been a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer --- madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can't quite place --- feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she'd always imagined.
Riverhead Books | 9781594488405
FIRST PERSON by Richard Flanagan (Fiction)
Kif Kehlmann, a young, penniless writer, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl offers Kehlmann the job of ghost writing his memoir. He has six weeks to write the book, for which he'll be paid $10,000. But as the writing gets underway, Kehlmann begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. As the deadline draws closer, he becomes ever more unsure if he is ghost writing a memoir, or if Heidl is rewriting him --- his life, his future. Everything that was certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder: Who is Siegfried Heidl --- and who is Kif Kehlmann?
Knopf | 9780525520023
THE GOOD LIAR by Catherine McKenzie (Psychological Thriller)
When an explosion rips apart a Chicago building, the lives of three women are forever altered. A year later, Cecily is in mourning. She was supposed to be in the building that day. Instead, she stood on the street and witnessed it going down, with her husband and best friend inside. Kate fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her. And Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched the horror unfold on the morning news, knowing that the woman she was so desperate to reconnect with was in the building. As its anniversary dominates the media, the memories of that terrifying morning become dangerous triggers. All these women are guarding important secrets. Just how far will they go to keep them?
Lake Union Publishing | 9781503951631
GREEKS BEARING GIFTS: A Bernie Gunther Novel by Philip Kerr (Historical Thriller)
Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece. Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel's claimed losses are large and may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place. Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war.
Marian Wood Books/Putnam | 9780399177064
GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE by Rob Leininger (Mystery)
IRS agent-turned-PI Mortimer Angel is relaxing in a hole-in-the-wall bar in a Reno casino when an attractive young girl hires him to find out who left her a cryptic message demanding a million dollars. At the girl’s house, Mort finds the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon --- Jo-X to his legions of fans --- hanging from the rafters with two bullet holes in him. Mort is shocked when he learns the identity of the girl’s father --- and even more shocked when the father hires him to investigate the murder. Mort, being Mort, accumulates a few felonies as he follows the clues to Las Vegas. And along the way, he picks up an alluring young assistant who changes his life --- in every conceivable way.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608092741
HOLD BACK THE DARK: A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel by Kay Hooper (Supernatural Thriller)
Trapped in a nightmare they can't escape, the residents of Prosperity are killing one another, waking up with no memory of the monstrous acts they've committed --- or the reasons why. Chief Deputy Katie Cole knows that whatever evil is afoot is beyond her expertise, and beyond the understanding of Sheriff Jackson Archer. They need help. The Special Crimes Unit is called in for its specific brand of investigation, to aid the Chosen as well as the once-peaceful mountain town. It will take all the agents' training, all their experience, and every extra sense they can call on to get to the bottom of things in Prosperity.
Berkley | 9780425280959
HOW TO BE SAFE by Tom McAllister (Fiction)
Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works. Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Gun sales skyrocket, victims are transformed into martyrs, and the rules of public mourning are ruthlessly enforced. Anna decides to wholeheartedly reject the culpability she’s somehow been assigned, and the rampant sexism that comes with it, both in person and online.
Liveright | 9781631494130
I’VE GOT MY EYES ON YOU by Mary Higgins Clark (Mystery/Thriller)
After a party when her parents are away, 18-year-old Kerry Dowling is found fully dressed at the bottom of the family pool. The immediate suspect is her boyfriend, who had a bitter argument with her at the party. Then there is a 20-year-old neighbor who was angry because she didn’t invite him to the party. Or is there someone else who has not yet been seen on the radar? Kerry’s older sister Aline, a 28-year-old guidance counselor, is determined to assist the Prosecutor's Office in learning the truth. She does not realize that now she is putting her own life in danger.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501171680
JANE AND DOROTHY: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility: The Lives of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth by Marian Veevers (Biography)
Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth were born just four years apart, in a world torn between heady revolutionary ideas and fierce conservatism, but their lives have never been examined together before. They both lived in Georgian England, navigated strict social conventions and new ideals, and they were both influenced by Dorothy’s brother, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth and his coterie. They were both supremely talented writers yet often lacked the necessary peace of mind in their search for self-expression. Neither ever married. JANE AND DOROTHY uses each life to illuminate the other.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776781
THE KNOWLEDGE: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes (Mystery)
In the backseat of Robbie Parsons’ cab is a man with a gun in his hand --- a man who brazenly committed a crime in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied art gallery-cum-casino, then jumped in and ordered Parsons to drive. As the criminal eventually escapes to Nairobi, Detective Superintendent Richard Jury comes across the case in the Saturday paper. Two days previously, Jury had met and instantly connected with one of the victims of the crime, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Feeling personally affronted, Jury soon enlists Melrose Plant, Marshall Trueblood and his whole gang of merry characters to contend with a case that takes a number of unexpected turns.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802128010
LAWN BOY by Jonathan Evison (Fiction)
For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work --- and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew --- he knows that he has to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how? In LAWN BOY, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity.
Algonquin Books | 9781616202620
LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE: Essays by Sloane Crosley (Essays/Humor)
Fans of I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE and HOW DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER know Sloane Crosley's life as a series of relatable but madcap misadventures. In LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE, whether it's scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on “Gossip Girl,” befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight.
MCD | 9780374279844
A NANTUCKET WEDDING by Nancy Thayer (Fiction)
A few years after losing her beloved husband, Alison is doing something she never thought she would do again: getting married. While placing the finishing touches on her summer nuptials, Alison is anxious to introduce her fiancé, David, to her grown daughters: Felicity, a worried married mother of two, and Jane, also married but focused on her career. The sisters have a somewhat distant relationship, and Alison hopes that the wedding and the weeks leading up to the ceremony will give the siblings a chance to reconnect, as well as meet and get to know David’s grown children. As the summer progresses, it is anything but smooth sailing.
Ballantine Books | 9781101967102
NAPOLEON: The Spirit of the Age: 1805-1810 by Michael Broers (Biography)
This second volume of Michael Broers’ three-volume life of Napoleon covers the tumultuous years of 1805 to 1810, a period that marks the zenith of Napoleon’s power and military success. Like volume one, SOLDIER OF DESTINY, it is based on the new version of Napoleon’s correspondence, made available by the Fondation Napoléon in Paris. It is the story of Napoleon’s conquest of Europe --- and that of his magnificent Grande Armée --- as they sweep through the length and breadth of Europe.
Pegasus Books | 9781681776699
THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND: My Tale of Madness and Recovery by Barbara K. Lipska with Elaine McArdle (Memoir)
In January 2015, Barbara Lipska --- a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness --- was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, she descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and co-workers. But miraculously, just as her doctors figured out what was happening, the immunotherapy they had prescribed began to work. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity. In THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND, Lipska describes her extraordinary ordeal and its lessons about the mind and brain.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9781328787309
THE ORACLE YEAR by Charles Soule (Supernatural Thriller/Adventure)
When an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world. Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded website with the help of his friend, Hamza, to selectively announce his revelations. He makes a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. With only a handful of people he can trust, it's all Will can do to simply survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.
Harper Perennial | 9780062686633
THE OVERSTORY by Richard Powers (Fiction)
An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers --- each summoned in different ways by trees --- are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393635522
PARIS BY THE BOOK by Liam Callanan (Fiction)
When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters, and, hidden in an unexpected spot, plane tickets to Paris. Hoping to uncover clues --- and her husband --- Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge…and that he had set in Paris. The Eady women follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family --- and the Paris she thought she knew.
Dutton | 9781101986271
THE RECOVERING: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison (Memoir/Cultural Studies)
Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction --- both her own and others' --- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence --- including Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson and David Foster Wallace --- as well as brilliant lesser-known figures, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316259613
ROCKET MEN: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon by Robert Kurson (History)
In a year of historic violence and discord --- the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago --- the Apollo 8 mission would be the boldest, riskiest test of America’s greatness under pressure. In ROCKET MEN, Robert Kurson puts the focus on the three astronauts and their families: the commander, Frank Borman, a conflicted man on his final mission; idealistic Jim Lovell, who had dreamed since boyhood of riding a rocket to the Moon; and Bill Anders, a young nuclear engineer and hotshot fighter pilot making his first space flight.
Random House | 9780812988703
TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE by Olivia Kiernan (Mystery/Thriller)
In a quiet Dublin suburb, within her pristine home, Eleanor Costello is found hanging from a rope. Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan would be more than happy to declare it a suicide. Four months ago, Frankie's pursuit of a killer almost ended her life and she isn't keen on investigating another homicide. But the autopsy reveals poorly healed bones and old stab wounds, absent from medical records. A new cut is carefully, deliberately covered in paint. Eleanor's husband, Peter, is missing. With the suspect pool growing and mysterious calls to Frankie's phone implying that the killer is closer than anyone would like, all Frankie knows is that Eleanor guarded her secrets as closely in life as she does in death.
Dutton | 9781524742614
UNDERCURRENTS: A Faye Longchamp Mystery by Mary Anna Evans (Mystery)
Faye Longchamp has traveled to Memphis, a city steeped in music, poverty, history and the smoky tang of barbecue. She's there working alone to do an assessment of a site, welcome work for her small archaeological consulting firm. When Faye spies a child too young to be wandering along a creek alone, she follows the girl. A day later she uncovers a dying woman, buried alive near a spot where the girl might well be hiding. Nobody would blame Faye for running hard, but she can't make herself leave Kali, the woman's now orphaned daughter, who might be in danger. Faye's gut is telling her that a monster is stalking Memphis, endangering the child she has come to love. If the police can't catch him, then she will have no choice but to try to find him herself.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209307
VARINA by Charles Frazier (Historical Fiction)
Her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history --- culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives with “bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit.”
Ecco | 9780062405982
WE OWN THE SKY by Luke Allnutt (Fiction)
Rob Coates feels like he’s won the lottery of life. There is Anna, his incredible wife, their London town house and, most precious of all, Jack, their son, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. But when a devastating illness befalls his family, Rob’s world begins to unravel. Suddenly finding himself alone, Rob seeks solace in photographing the skyscrapers and clifftops he and Jack used to visit. And just when it seems that all hope is lost, Rob embarks on the most unforgettable of journeys to find his way back to life, and forgiveness.
Park Row | 9780778314738
WILD MOMS: Motherhood in the Animal Kingdom by Dr. Carin Bondar (Nature)
Being a mom is a tough job --- but imagine doing it in the jungle or out on the safari, faced by the ravages of the elements, a scarcity of resources, and the threat of predators at all times of the day and night. In WILD MOMS, Dr. Carin Bondar takes readers on an enthralling tour of the animal kingdom as she explores the phenomenon of motherhood in the wild. She answers a whole host of questions about the animal kingdom: How do moms in the animal kingdom cope with crying babies and potty training? How does breastfeeding work in the wild? If children with disabilities do not fit into Darwin’s theory of evolution, then why do we see mothers from various mammalian groups providing ongoing care to disabled offspring?
Pegasus Books | 9781681776651
WOMEN IN SUNLIGHT by Frances Mayes (Fiction)
Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of her close friend, a complex woman who continues to cast a shadow on Kit’s own life. Her work is waylaid by the arrival of three women --- Julia, Camille and Susan --- all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship that will uproot them completely and redirect their lives. Susan, the most adventurous of the three, has enticed them to subvert expectations of staid retirement by taking a lease on a big, beautiful house in Tuscany. With Kit’s friendship and guidance, the three friends launch themselves into Italian life, pursuing passions long-forgotten --- and with drastic and unforeseeable results.
Crown | 9780451497666
On Sale the Week of April 2nd in Paperback
April 3rd
THE BAKER’S SECRET by Stephen P. Kiernan (Historical Fiction)
On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on the Normandy coast of France, Emmanuelle is making the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Each day, Emma receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves --- contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope --- the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062369598
BALLPLAYER by Chipper Jones with Carroll Rogers Walton (Sports/Memoir)
Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame–worthy statistics during a 19-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small town Pierson, Florida. He grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad dreaming that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer. With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency.
Dutton | 9781101984420
BEFORE I LET YOU GO by Kelly Rimmer (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Annie is a drug addict and a thief, and is in trouble again. Her sister Lexie has always helped her, but this time, she’s not just strung out --- she’s pregnant and in premature labor. If she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby and maybe even go to prison. But the alternative is unthinkable. As the weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancé only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters’ childhoods, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face.
Graydon House | 9781525820847
CHANGE AGENT by Daniel Suarez (Science Fiction/Thriller)
In 2045, Kenneth Durand leads Interpol’s most effective team against genetic crime, hunting down black market labs that perform "vanity edits" on human embryos for a price. These illegal procedures augment embryos in ways that are rapidly accelerating human evolution. Durand and his fellow Interpol agents discover that one figure looms behind it all: Marcus Demang Wyckes, leader of a powerful and sophisticated cartel known as the Huli jing. After being forcibly dosed with a radical new change agent, Durand wakes from a coma weeks later to find he’s been genetically transformed into someone else --- Wyckes. Now a fugitive, Durand is determined to restore his original DNA by locating the source of the mysterious change agent.
Dutton | 9781101984673
CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang (Fiction)
At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator of Weike Wang’s debut novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long, demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew.
Vintage | 9780525432227
THE CUBS WAY: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse by Tom Verducci (Sports)
It took 108 years, but it really happened: the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of THE YANKEE YEARS with Joe Torre, has full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball.
Three Rivers Press | 9780804190039
GIRL IN SNOW by Danya Kukafka (Mystery/Thriller)
When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched --- not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters --- Cameron, Jade and Russ --- must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth or both.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501144387
GOLDEN PREY: A Lucas Davenport Novel by John Sandford (Thriller)
A Biloxi, Mississippi, drug-cartel counting house gets robbed, and suitcases full of cash disappear, leaving behind five bodies, including that of a six-year-old girl. Lucas Davenport --- who now works for the U.S. Marshals Service --- takes the case, which quickly spirals out of control, as cartel assassins, including a torturer known as the “Queen of home-improvement tools,” compete with Davenport to find the Dixie Hicks shooters who knocked over the counting house. Things get ugly really fast, and neither the cartel killers nor the holdup men give a damn about whose lives Davenport might have saved; to them, he’s just another large target.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9781101988848
HOURGLASS: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro (Memoir)
HOURGLASS is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time --- abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning --- a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.
Anchor | 9781101974261
I KNOW A SECRET: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen (Thriller)
Two separate homicides, at different locations, with unrelated victims, have more in common than just being investigated by Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. In both cases, the bodies bear startling wounds, yet the actual cause of death is unknown. It’s a doubly challenging case for the cop and the coroner to be taking on. As Jane struggles to save her mother from the crumbling marriage that threatens to bury her, Maura grapples with the imminent death of her own mother --- infamous serial killer Amalthea Lank. While Jane tends to her mother, there’s nothing Maura can do for Amalthea, except endure one final battle of wills with the woman whose shadow has haunted her all her life.
Ballantine Books | 9780345543905
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (True Crime/History)
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. In KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, David Grann revisits these shocking crimes, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals.
Vintage | 9780307742483
THE LEMONADE YEAR by Amy Willoughby-Burle (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Nina's once-sweet life has unexpectedly turned sour. Her marriage is over, her job is in jeopardy, and her teenage daughter is slipping away from her. Then her father dies, and issues with Nina's mother come to a head; her estranged brother, Ray, comes home; and her sister, Lola, is tempted to blow a big family secret out of the water. All Nina has left is her final photography assignment: shooting images for the book 32 Ways to Make Lemonade. Well, that and the attention of a younger man, but Oliver's on-again-off-again romantic interest in her ebbs and flows so much she is seasick. And then Jack, her ex-husband, shows up, wanting to get back together.
Shadow Mountain | 9781629724119
LILLIAN BOXFISH TAKES A WALK by Kathleen Rooney (Fiction)
She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat, and Manhattan is grittier now, but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed --- and has not.
Picador | 9781250151162
MARATHON by Brian Freeman (Mystery/Thriller)
Tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city's biggest annual event: the Duluth Marathon. But in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy. One spectator remembers being jostled by a young man with a backpack not far from the bomb site. He spots a Muslim man in a tourist's photo of the event and is convinced that this was the individual who bumped into him in the crowd. But are the answers behind the bombing more complex than anyone realizes?
Quercus | 9781681442402
MARLENA by Julie Buntin (Fiction)
Everything about 15-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor: the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly drawn into Marlena’s orbit, and as she catalogues a litany of firsts --- first drink, first cigarette, first kiss, first pill --- Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within a year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.
Picador | 9781250160157
MISS YOU by Kate Eberlen (Romantic Comedy)
Tess is in Florence on an idyllic vacation before starting university in London. Gus is also visiting Florence, on a holiday with his parents seven months after tragedy shattered their lives. He is headed to medical school in London, but longs to escape and discover who he really is. A chance meeting brings these 18-year-olds together for a brief moment --- the first of many times their paths will crisscross as their lives diverge from those they’d envisioned. Over the course of the next 16 years, Tess and Gus will face very different challenges and choices. Separated by distance and circumstance, the possibility of these two connecting once more seems slight. But while fate can separate two people, it can also bring them back together again.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062460233
MURDER ON THE SERPENTINE: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen’s confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. At Her Majesty’s request, Sir John had been surreptitiously investigating Alan Kendrick, a horse-racing enthusiast who seems to have had an undue amount of influence on her son, the Prince of Wales. Now Thomas Pitt must navigate the corridors of power with the utmost discretion and stealth, for it seems certain that Sir John’s killer is a member of the upper classes. Aided by his wife, Charlotte, and her social contacts, Pitt seeks out the hidden motives behind the polite façade of those to the manner born --- and uncovers a threat to the throne that could topple the monarchy.
Ballantine Books | 9780425285008
MUSIC OF THE GHOSTS by Vaddey Ratner (Fiction)
Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared 25 years ago. In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, immerses herself in long-buried memories and prepares to learn her father’s fate.
Touchstone | 9781476795799
MY DEAR HAMILTON: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence. And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all --- including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal. When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062466167
NECESSARY ENDS: A Tai Randolph Mystery by Tina Whittle (Mystery)
Paperback Original
It was the crime that rocked Atlanta --- actress Jessica Talbot shot dead in her mansion and her husband, movie producer Nick Talbot, accused of the murder. The case seemed open and shut...until a dirty cop's secret forced prosecutors to set Talbot free. Now, four years later, someone wants Talbot dead, and the evidence points to the man most convinced of Talbot's guilt --- Tai Randolph’s lover, Trey Seaver. Talbot offers an irresistible deal: he'll keep Trey's name off the suspect list if Trey agrees to a one-on-one interview. Caught between his drive for justice and his need for security, Trey does the unexpected --- he asks Tai to help him investigate.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464209857
THE NIGHT OCEAN by Paul La Farge (Historical Fiction)
Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life. In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends --- or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.
Penguin Books | 9781101981092
THE ONE-EYED MAN by Ron Currie (Fiction)
K. is possessed of a hyper-articulate exasperation with the world, a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K. loses his metaphorical capacity, becoming so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates everyone, friends and strangers alike. When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.
Penguin Books | 9780143110453
OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES by Abbi Waxman (Fiction/Humor)
Paperback Original
As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors’ private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, and Bill Horton’s wife is mysteriously missing. After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, though, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that’s a notion easier said than done when Anne’s husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families --- and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.
Berkley | 9780399587924
THE RIGHT TIME by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow takes solace in the mysteries she reads with her devoted father --- and soon she is writing them herself. Midway through college, she has finished a novel and manages to find a seasoned agent, then a publisher. But as she climbs the ladder of publishing success, she resolutely adheres to her father’s admonition: Men read crime thrillers by men only --- and so Alexandra Winslow publishes under the pseudonym Alexander Green. Her secret life as the mysterious and brilliantly successful Alexander Green --- and her own life as a talented young woman --- expose her to the envious, the arrogant, and Hollywood players who have no idea who she really is.
Dell | 9781101883969
THE ROMANCE READER’S GUIDE TO LIFE by Sharon Pywell (Fiction)
As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that didn’t know what to do with her. As her mother not unkindly told her, she was never going to grow up to be a great beauty. Her glamorous sister, Lilly, moved easily through the world. Her brother didn’t want a girl joining his group of friends. And their small town of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world. But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and discovers a world of passion, love and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grown-up she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much.
Flatiron Books | 9781250101761
THE RULES DO NOT APPLY: A Memoir by Ariel Levy (Memoir)
When Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true. Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules --- about work, about love, and about womanhood.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812986679
THE SECRET DIARY OF HENDRIK GROEN written by Hendrik Groen, translated by Hester Velmans (Fiction)
Technically speaking, Hendrik Groen is...elderly. But at age 83 1/4, this feisty, indomitable curmudgeon has no plans to go out quietly. He begins writing an exposé: secretly recording the antics of day-to-day life in his retirement home, where he refuses to take himself, or his fellow "inmates," too seriously. With an eccentric group of friends, he founds the wickedly anarchic Old-But-Not-Dead Club, and he and his best friend, Evert, gleefully stir up trouble. And when a sweet and sassy widow moves in next door, he polishes his shoes, grooms what's left of his hair, and determines to savor every ounce of joy in the time he has left, with hilarious and tender consequences.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781455542154
THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE by Lisa See (Fiction)
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, life goes on as it has for generations --- until a stranger appears at the village gate. Slowly, Li-yan begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock, she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her near an orphanage. Despite being raised by loving adoptive parents, Li-yan’s daughter, Haley, wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.
Scribner | 9781501154836
TOM CLANCY POINT OF CONTACT: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel by Mike Maden (Thriller/Adventure)
A former U.S. senator and defense contractor needs someone to look over the books of Dalfan Technologies, a Singapore company. He turns to Jack Ryan, Jr. and Paul Brown, two employees of one of the best financial analysis firms in the country, which also happens to be the cover for The Campus, a top-secret American intelligence agency. Brown has no idea that Jack works for The Campus. Jack has no idea that the awkward accountant has been tasked with uploading a cyberwarfare program into the highly secure Dalfan Technologies mainframe on behalf of the CIA. On the verge of mission success, Brown discovers a game within the game, and the people who now want to kill him are as deadly as the cyclone bearing down on the island nation.
Berkley | 9780735215887
TRAJECTORY: Stories by Richard Russo (Fiction/Short Stories)
The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels, and all are bound together by parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts. In “Horseman,” a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist --- as well as her own regrets. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. “Voice” gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And “Milton and Marcus” takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career --- a career that depends wholly on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead).
Vintage | 9781101971987
WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY: Stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Magical Realism/Short Stories)
In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In “Wild,” a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In "The Future Looks Good," three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in "Light," a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to "fix the equation of a person" --- with rippling, unforeseen repercussions. This debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.
Riverhead Books | 9780735211032
WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS: A Novel of the French Revolution by Allison Pataki and Owen Pataki (Historical Fiction)
Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with revolution. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife and their infant son from a comfortable life in Marseille to Paris, in the hopes of joining the cause. André, the son of a denounced nobleman, has evaded execution by joining the new French army. Sophie, a young aristocratic widow, embarks on her own fight for independence against her powerful, vindictive uncle. As chaos threatens to undo the progress of the Revolution and the demand for justice breeds instability and paranoia, the lives of these compatriots become inextricably linked.
Dial Press Trade Paperback | 9780399591709
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