|
In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of February 10th and February 17th 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 Mary Higgins Clark tribute. Our own Greg Fitzgerald pays homage to the "Queen of Suspense," who passed away on January 31st at the age of 92.
Also, please keep in mind our Valentine's Day contest, which is wrapping up shortly. Five of you will win five recently published or soon-to-be-released titles for yourself or that special someone in your life: THE END OF THE DAY by Bill Clegg (an upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On selection), THE GIRL HE USED TO KNOW by Tracey Garvis Graves (a Bets On pick when it released in hardcover last year), GROWN UPS by Emma Jane Unsworth, POSTSCRIPT by Cecelia Ahern, and THE WOMEN IN BLACK by Madeleine St John. All you have to do is enter here by Thursday, February 13th at noon ET for your chance to win these irresistible love-themed books.
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
Special Preview of Friday's Bookreporter Update
Carol Fitzgerald shares a video preview of what you will see in the February 14th Weekly Update newsletter here. We hope you enjoy it!
Click here to see all of our videos on
The Book Report Network YouTube channel,
including our "Bookreporter Talks To" author interviews.
Our most recent "Bookreporter Talks To" segment features 13 authors
who attended Winter Institute and ALA Midwinter. Carol asked them to
introduce us to their new books. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Click here to listen to our podcasts.
This Week's Bonus News:
Our Tribute to Mary Higgins Clark
We at Bookreporter.com mourn the loss of Mary Higgins Clark, the "Queen of Suspense," who has died at the age of 92 of natural causes.
Higgins Clark's resume is impressive: 38 suspense novels, four collections of short stories, a historical novel, a memoir and two children’s books. With bestselling author Alafair Burke, she wrote the Under Suspicion series, including THE CINDERELLA MURDER, ALL DRESSED IN WHITE, THE SLEEPING BEAUTY KILLER, EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE and YOU DON'T OWN ME. With her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, she coauthored five more suspense novels. More than 100 million copies of her books are in print in the United States alone.
Bookreporter.com's Greg Fitzgerald reflects on Higgins Clark’s remarkable career and legacy in this lovely tribute.
Click here to read our tribute to Mary Higgins Clark.
On Sale the Week of February 10th in Hardcover
February 11th
ABOVE THE BAY OF ANGELS by Rhys Bowen (Historical Mystery)
Isabella Waverly only means to comfort the woman felled on a London street. In her final dying moments, she thrusts a letter into Bella’s hand. It’s an offer of employment in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace, and everything the budding young chef desperately wants: an escape from the constrictions of her life as a lowly servant. In the stranger’s stead, Bella can spread her wings. Arriving as Helen Barton from Yorkshire, she pursues her passion for creating culinary delights, served to the delighted Queen Victoria herself. Best of all, she’s been chosen to accompany the queen to Nice. What fortune! Until the threat of blackmail shadows Bella to the Riviera, and a member of the queen’s retinue falls ill and dies.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542008266
THE ABSOLUTION by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Mystery/Thriller)
The police find out about the crime the way everyone does: on Snapchat. The video shows a terrified young woman begging for forgiveness. When her body is found, it is marked with a number “2”. Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim, but who could have hated her enough to kill? Then another teenager goes missing, more clips are sent to social media, and the body with a “3” is found. Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth is far from simple. The killer is not done yet. And is there an undiscovered body carrying the number “1” out there?
Minotaur Books | 9781250136305
ALL THE BEST LIES by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery/Thriller)
FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: Who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than 40 years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. They discover that young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good.
Minotaur Books | 9781250297389
AMERICAN SHERLOCK: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson (True Crime/Biography)
Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest --- and first --- forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural. Heinrich was one of the nation's first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However, with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today. His work, though not without its serious --- some would say fatal --- flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525539551
THE BURN by Kathleen Kent (Mystery/Thriller)
Betty Rhyzyk’s wounds are still fresh from an encounter with an apocalyptic cult known as The Family. She's back at work as a narcotics detective, but something isn't right --- at work, where someone has been assassinating confidential informants, or at home, where she struggles to connect with her loving wife, Jackie. To make matters worse, Betty's partner seems to be increasingly dependent on the prescription painkillers he was prescribed for the injuries he sustained rescuing her. Betty decides to go rogue, investigating her own department and chasing down phantom sightings of the cult leader who took her hostage. The chase will lead her to the dark heart of a drug cartel terrorizing Dallas, and straight to the crooked cops who plan to profit from it all.
Mulholland Books | 9780316450584
THE CHILL by Scott Carson (Supernatural Thriller)
Far upstate, in New York’s ancient forests, a drowned village lays beneath the dark, still waters of the Chilewaukee reservoir. Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far…and some didn’t move at all. Now, a century later, an inspector assigned to oversee the dam witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982104597
DEAD TO HER by Sarah Pinborough (Psychological Thriller)
Marcie’s affair with Jason Maddox catapulted her into the world of the elite. Old money, old ties, old secrets. Marcie may have married into this world, but she’ll never be part of it. Then Jason’s boss brings back a new wife from his trip to London. Young, attractive, reckless --- nobody can take their eyes off Keisha. Including Marcie’s husband. Some people would kill for the life Marcie has. What will she do to keep it?
William Morrow | 9780062856821
THE ESCAPE ARTIST: A Memoir by Helen Fremont (Memoir)
Helen Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on --- to both Helen and her older sister --- a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world. She delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her mother’s will.
Gallery Books | 9781982113605
THE FALCON THIEF: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird by Joshua Hammer (True Crime)
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions --- and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501191886
FRANKLIN & WASHINGTON: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (Biography)
Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Benjamin Franklin, an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north, and George Washington, a slaveholding general from the agrarian south, were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention. Yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since. Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.
William Morrow | 9780062880154
THE ILLNESS LESSON by Clare Beams (Historical Fiction)
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th-century New England. When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. It's not long, though, before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls' parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations --- based on a shocking historic treatment --- horrify Caroline.
Doubleday | 9780385544665
IN THE LAND OF MEN: A Memoir by Adrienne Miller (Memoir)
A naive and idealistic 22-year-old from the Midwest, Adrienne Miller got her lucky break when she was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ magazine in the mid-’90s. Three years later, she forged her own path, becoming the first woman to take on the role of literary editor of Esquire. This was also a unique moment in history that saw the rise of a new literary movement, as exemplified by McSweeney’s and the work of David Foster Wallace. The mercurial Wallace would become the defining voice of a generation and the fiction writer Miller would work with most. Their intellectual and artistic exchange grew into a highly charged professional and personal relationship between the most prominent male writer of the era and a young woman still finding her voice.
Ecco | 9780062682413
INDELICACY by Amina Cain (Fiction)
In INDELICACY, a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor --- social and erotic --- but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374148379
THE LAST NEGROES AT HARVARD: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth (Memoir/History)
In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented 18 “Negro” boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later, they would graduate as African Americans. Some 50 years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives and what their time at Harvard meant. Garrett and his partner, Jeanne Ellsworth, recount how these 18 youths broke new ground, with ramifications that extended far past the iconic Yard. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against national injustice and grappled with the racism of academia, had dinner with Malcolm X, and fought alongside their African national classmates for the right to form a Black students’ organization.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9781328879974
THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Historical Fiction)
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, Absalom Cornet arrives from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316529259
THE ONLY CHILD by Mi-ae Seo (Psychological Thriller)
Criminal psychologist Seonkyeong receives an unexpected call one day. Yi Byeongdo, a serial killer whose gruesome murders shook the world, wants to be interviewed. Refusing to speak to anyone until now, he asks specifically for her. Seonkyeong agrees out of curiosity. That same day, Hayeong, her husband’s 11-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, shows up at their door after her grandparents, with whom she lived after her mother passed away, die in a sudden fire. Seonkyeong wants her to feel at home, but is gradually unnerved as the young girl says very little and acts strangely. At work and at home, Seonkyeong starts to unravel the pasts of the two new arrivals in her life and begins to see startling similarities.
Ecco | 9780062905048
PLAY THE RED QUEEN by Juris Jurjevics (Mystery)
Vietnam, 1963. A female Viet Cong assassin is trawling the boulevards of Saigon, catching US Army officers off-guard with a single pistol shot, then riding off on the back of a scooter. Although the US military is not officially in combat, 16,000 American servicemen are stationed in Vietnam “advising” the military and government. Among them are Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, two army investigators who have been tasked with tracking down the daring killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641291378
POSTSCRIPT by Cecelia Ahern (Fiction)
Seven years after her husband's death --- six since she read his final letter --- Holly Kennedy has moved on with her life. When Holly's sister asks her to tell the story of the "PS, I Love You" letters on her podcast --- to revisit the messages Gerry wrote before his death to read after his passing --- she does so reluctantly, not wanting to reopen old wounds. But after the episode airs, people start reaching out to Holly, and they all have one thing in common: they are terminally ill and want to leave their own missives behind for loved ones. Suddenly, Holly finds herself drawn back into a world she's worked tirelessly to leave behind --- but one that leads her on another incredible, life-affirming journey.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538746592
THE QUEEN'S FORTUNE: A Novel of Desiree, Napoleon, and the Dynasty That Outlasted the Empire by Allison Pataki (Historical Fiction)
As the French Revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone, and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister Julie marries his brother Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked. Quickly entering into their own passionate, dizzying courtship that leads to a secret engagement, they vow to meet in the capital once his career has been secured. But her newly laid plans with Napoleon turn to sudden heartbreak, thanks to the rising star of Parisian society, Josephine de Beauharnais. Once again, Desiree’s life is turned on its head.
Ballantine Books | 9780593128183
SALT RIVER: A Doc Ford Novel by Randy Wayne White (Thriller/Adventure)
Marine biologist and former government agent Doc Ford is sure he's beyond the point of being surprised by his longtime pal Tomlinson's madcap tales of his misspent youth. But he's stunned anew when avowed bachelor Tomlinson reveals that as a younger man strapped for cash, he'd unwittingly fathered multiple children via for-profit sperm bank donations. Thanks to genealogy websites, Tomlinson's now-grown offspring have tracked him down, seeking answers about their roots --- but Doc quickly grows suspicious that one of them might be planning something far more nefarious than a family reunion. With recent history on his mind, Doc is unsurprised when his own dicey past is called into question.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735212725
THE UNSPOKEN NAME by A. K. Larkwood (Fantasy/Adventure)
What if you knew how and when you will die? Csorwe does --- she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin --- the wizard's loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power. But Csorwe will soon learn that gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.
Tor Books | 9781250238900
UNTAMED SHORE by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Thriller)
Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. Her head is filled with dreams of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option is to marry and have children. Three wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer, and Viridiana is magnetized. She immediately becomes entwined in the glamorous foreigners’ lives. When one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon enough, someone is asking questions, and Viridiana has some of her own about the identity of her new acquaintances. Sharks may be dangerous, but there are worse predators nearby, ready to devour a naïve young woman who is quickly being tangled in a web of deceit.
Agora Books | 9781947993921
THE UNWILLING by Kelly Braffet (Historical Fantasy)
Judah is a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban’s vast empire. As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom and no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle walls. Elban --- a lord as mighty as he is cruel --- has his own plans for her, for all of them. But outside the walls, a magus, a healer with his own secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at the heart of those plans lies Judah. The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined.
Mira | 9780778309406
WASHINGTON'S END: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle by Jonathan Horn (History)
WASHINGTON’S END begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered by partisan criticism and eager to return to his farm, Washington assumed a role for which there was no precedent at a time when the kings across the ocean yielded their crowns only upon losing their heads. In a different sense, Washington would lose his head, too. Bestselling author Jonathan Horn reveals that the quest to surrender power proved more difficult than Washington imagined and brought his life to an end he never expected.
Scribner | 9781501154232
WEATHER by Jenny Offill (Fiction)
For years Lizzie Benson has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, “Hell and High Water,” and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls.
Knopf | 9780385351102
WILDLAND by Rebecca Hodge (Fiction)
When Kat Jamison retreats to the Blue Ridge Mountains, she's counting on peace and solitude to help her make a difficult decision. Her breast cancer has returned, but after the death of her husband, her will to fight is dampened. Now she has a choice to make: face yet another round of chemotherapy or surrender gracefully. Self-reflection quickly proves impossible as her getaway is complicated by a pair of abandoned dogs and two friendly children staying nearby, Lily and Nirav. But when lightning ignites a deadly wildfire, Kat's cabin is cut off from the rest of the camp, separating Lily and Nirav from their parents. Left with no choice, Kat, the children and the dogs must flee on foot through the drought-stricken forest, away from the ravenous flames.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643852928
On Sale the Week of February 10th in Paperback
February 11th
AT THE WOLF’S TABLE by Rosella Postorino (Historical Fiction)
Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Sauer’s parents are gone, and her husband Gregor is far away, fighting on the front lines of WWII. Impoverished and alone, she makes the fateful decision to leave war-torn Berlin to live with her in-laws in the countryside. But one morning, the SS informs her that she has been conscripted to be one of Hitler’s tasters: twice a day, she and nine other women go to his secret headquarters to eat his meals before he does. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, and the women like Rosa who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives every day for Hitler’s. As secrets and resentments grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic climax.
Flatiron Books | 9781250179166
BANDBOX by Thomas Mallon (Historical Fiction)
Bandbox is a hugely successful magazine, a glamorous monthly cocktail of 1920s obsessions from the stock market to radio to gangland murder. Edited by the bombastic Jehoshaphat “Joe” Harris, the magazine has a masthead that includes, among many others, a grisly, alliterative crime writer; a shy but murderously determined copyboy; and a burned-out vaudeville correspondent who’s lovesick for his loyal, dewy assistant. As the novel opens, the defection of Harris’ most ambitious protégé has plunged Bandbox into a death struggle with a new competitor on the newsstand. But there’s more to come: a sabotaged fiction contest, the NYPD vice squad, a subscriber’s kidnapping, and a film-actress cover subject who makes the heroines of Fosse’s Chicago look like the girls next door.
Vintage | 9781984899743
THE BOATMAN’S DAUGHTER by Andy Davidson (Supernatural Thriller)
Paperback Original
Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.
MCD x FSG Originals | 9780374538552
BOOK OF THE JUST: Book Three of the Bohemian Trilogy by Dana Chamblee Carpenter (Supernatural Thriller)
Hiding among a tribe of the Martu in the isolation of the Australian outback near the edges of Lake Disappointment, Mouse and her lover, Angelo, have seemingly evaded at least one of the predators hunting them. Carefully dropping bogus breadcrumbs across Europe, they misdirect the Novus Rishi, a ruthless cult that wants Mouse as the ultimate weapon in their battle against evil. But when unnerving dreams start to plague Angelo, and the ancient beings of the Martu’s Dreaming send prophetic warnings that include visions of Mouse at her father’s side, the two lovers realize it’s time to act. With nowhere left to run, Mouse and Angelo prepare for a last showdown with their enemies.
Pegasus Books | 9781643133454
THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT by Charlie Jane Anders (Science Fiction)
Humanity clings to life on January --- a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization --- but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside. Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives --- with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice. Burdened with a dangerous, painful secret, Sophie and her ragtag group of exiles face the ultimate challenge --- and they are running out of time.
Tor Books | 9780765379979
COURTING MR. LINCOLN by Louis Bayard (Historical Fiction)
When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln, he is on no one's shortlist to be president. Rough and reticent, he’s a country lawyer lacking money and manners, living above a dry goods shop, but with a gift for oratory. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with a tireless interest in debates and elections, at first finds him an enigma. It’s not long, though, before she sees the Lincoln that his roommate, Joshua Speed, knows: a man who, despite his awkwardness, is amiable and profound, with a gentle wit to match his genius and a respect for her keen political mind. But as her relationship with Lincoln deepens, she must confront his inseparable friendship with Speed, who has taught his roommate how to dance, dress and navigate the polite society of Springfield.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750446
A DANGEROUS COLLABORATION: A Veronica Speedwell Mystery by Deanna Raybourn (Historical Mystery)
Lured by the promise of a rare and elusive butterfly, the intrepid Veronica Speedwell is persuaded by Lord Templeton-Vane, the brother of her colleague Stoker, to pose as his fiancée at a house party on a Cornish isle owned by his oldest friend, Malcolm Romilly. But Veronica soon learns that one question hangs over the party: What happened to Rosamund? Three years ago, Malcolm’s bride vanished on their wedding day, and no trace of her has ever been found. Now those who were closest to her have gathered, each a possible suspect in her disappearance. Determined to discover Rosamund’s fate, Veronica and Stoker match wits with a murderer who already has struck once and will not hesitate to kill again.
Berkley | 9780451490728
DIARY OF A DEAD MAN ON LEAVE by David Downing (Historical Thriller)
In April 1938, Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm, Germany, and lets a room from the widow who owns it. Fifty years later, Walter Gersdorff, the widow’s son, discovers the carefully hidden diary that the boarder had kept during his stay. What Walter finds is a chronicle of one of the most tumultuous years in German history, narrated by a secret agent on a deadly mission. Josef Hofmann was not the returned Argentinian immigrant he’d said he was --- he was a communist spy under Moscow’s command trying to reconnect with remaining members of Germany’s suppressed communist party. But as he grew close to the Gersdorffs, accidentally stepping into the role of the father Walter never had, Hofmann began to wish for another kind of hope in his life.
Soho Crime | 9781641291293
EARLY RISER by Jasper Fforde (Fantasy/Humor)
Your name is Charlie Worthing, and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams that you dismiss as nonsense. When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling. When you get the dreams too, it's weird. When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity. But teasing truth from the Winter is never easy. You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting; ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers, whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food; and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk.
Penguin Books | 9780143111276
FRATERNITY: An Inside Look at a Year of College Boys Becoming Men by Alexandra Robbins (Sociology/Gender Studies)
Two real-life stories. One stunning twist. Meet Jake, a studious freshman weighing how far to go to find a brotherhood that will introduce him to lifelong friends and help conquer his social awkwardness; and Oliver, a hardworking chapter president trying to keep his misunderstood fraternity out of trouble despite multiple run-ins with the police. Their year-in-the-life stories help explain why students are joining fraternities in record numbers despite scandalous headlines. To find out what it’s like to be a fraternity brother in the 21st century, Alexandra Robbins contacted hundreds of brothers whose chapters don’t make headlines --- and who suggested that many fraternities can be healthy safe spaces for men.
Dutton | 9781101986745
GHOSTS OF THE MISSING by Kathleen Donohoe (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Culleton, New York has a long history --- of writers, of artists and of unsolved mysteries. It’s where Adair grew up before she moved to Brooklyn to try to make it as an artist. But after years away from her hometown and little to show for it, Adair decides to return. She moves back into Moye House, the old mansion and current writer’s retreat, imbued with her family's legacy. Ciaran is a writer staying at Moye House in the hopes of finally solving the mystery of what happened to Rowan Kinnane --- his sister, and Adair’s childhood best friend. As the two begin investigating, secrets long buried rise to the surface, complicating their sense of themselves and their understanding of what happened on that fateful day.
Mariner Books | 9780544557178
HANGMAN by Daniel Cole (Thriller)
Detective Emily Baxter is still reeling from the Ragdoll case, and from the disappearance of her friend, William “Wolf” Fawkes. Despite her reluctance to jump into another gruesome case, she’s summoned to a meeting of a new FBI/CIA/UK law enforcement task force in New York. There, she is presented with photographs of the latest copycat murder: a body contorted into a familiar pose, strung up from the Brooklyn Bridge, the word “BAIT” carved deep into its chest. As the media pressure intensifies, Baxter is ordered to assist with the investigation and attend the scene of another murder, again with a victim inscribed with a word: “PUPPET.” Baxter must shake off the grief and fear that have paralyzed her for the last year so she can stop another terrible killer before it’s too late.
Ecco | 9780062653994
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM: Stories by Peter Kispert (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
Throughout Peter Kispert’s debut collection, we meet characters who have lied, who have sometimes created elaborate falsehoods, and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. In the title story, the narrator, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play a friend he invented in order to seem less lonely. In "Aim for the Heart," a man's lies about a hunting habit leave him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories. And in "Rorschach," a theater producer runs a show in which death row inmates are crucified in an on-stage rendering of the New Testament, while being haunted daily by an unrequited love and nightly by ghosts of his own creation.
Penguin | 9780143134282
kaddish.com by Nathan Englander (Fiction/Humor)
When his father dies, it falls to Larry --- the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews --- to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for 11 months. But to the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses, imperiling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, he hires a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to say the prayer instead --- a decision that will have profound, and very personal, repercussions.
Vintage | 9780525434054
LANDFALL by Thomas Mallon (Fiction)
LANDFALL is set during the tumultuous middle of the George W. Bush years, amid the twin catastrophes of the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina. The president possesses a personality whose high-speed alternations between charm and petulance, resoluteness and self-pity, continually energize and mystify the panoply of characters around him. They include his acerbic, crafty mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush; his desperately correct and eager-to-please secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice; the gnomic and manipulative Donald Rumsfeld; foreign leaders from Tony Blair to Vladimir Putin; and the caustic one-woman chorus of Ann Richards, Bush's predecessor as governor of Texas.
Vintage | 9781101971352
THE LIBRARY OF LOST AND FOUND by Phaedra Patrick (Fiction)
Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people --- though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she’s invisible. All of that changes when a book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep. Inside, Martha finds a dedication written to her by her best friend --- her grandmother Zelda --- who died under mysterious circumstances years earlier. When Martha discovers a clue within the book that her grandmother may still be alive, she becomes determined to discover the truth. As she delves deeper into Zelda’s past, she unwittingly reveals a family secret that will change her life forever.
Park Row | 9780778309826
ME FOR YOU by Lolly Winston (Fiction)
Rudy never expected to be a widower at 54 years old. Now, 10 months after the untimely death of his beloved wife, he’s still struggling with how to move on from the overwhelming tragedy --- but at least his new job is helping. After being downsized from his finance position, Rudy turned to his first love: the piano. As the piano player at Nordstrom, Rudy finds immense joy in bringing a little music into the world. And it doesn’t hurt that Sasha, the men’s watch clerk who is finally divorcing her no-good husband, finds time to join him at the bench every now and then. Just when Rudy and Sasha’s relationship begins to deepen, the police reveal a shocking update about Rudy’s wife’s untimely death, and now they want a second look at him, too.
Gallery Books | 9781501179136
MERCY HOUSE by Alena Dillon (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts Evelyn, until she receives word that Mercy House will be investigated by Bishop Hawkins, a man with whom she shares a dark history. In order to protect everything they’ve built, the nuns must conceal many of their methods, which are forbidden by the Catholic Church. Evelyn will go to great lengths to defend all that she loves. She confronts a gang member, defies the church, challenges her own beliefs and faces her past.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062914804
NEON PREY: A Lucas Davenport Novel by John Sandford (Mystery/Thriller)
Clayton Deese looks like a small-time criminal, muscle for hire when his loan shark boss needs to teach someone a lesson. Now, seven months after a job that went south and landed him in jail, Deese has skipped out on bail, and the U.S. Marshals come looking for him. They don't much care about a low-level guy --- it's his boss they want --- but Deese might be their best chance to bring down the whole operation. Then, they step onto a dirt trail behind Deese's rural Louisiana cabin and find a jungle full of graves. Lucas Davenport is now on the trail of a serial killer who has been operating for years without notice. His quarry is ruthless, and --- as Davenport will come to find --- full of surprises.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593085738
THE NIGHT SWIMMERS by Peter Rock (Fiction)
Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan, there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. Peter Rock’s autobiographical novel begins in the ’90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin. The narrator, a recent college graduate, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears. Twenty years later, the narrator tries to understand those months, his forgotten obsessions and dreams, and looks for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel.
Soho Press | 9781641291279
THE PANDORA ROOM by Christopher Golden (Supernatural Thriller)
In one ancient variation on the myth of Pandora’s Box, there were two jars: one for Pandora and one for her sister, Anesidora. One contained all the blessings of the gods, the other all the world’s curses. Now, in a subterranean city in Northern Iraq, archaeologist Sophie Durand has discovered a secret chamber covered in writing that confirms that version of the tale --- a chamber that contains a single jar. Those who believe the myth want to know which jar has been found in the Pandora Room: the one containing blessings, or the one full of curses. Governments rush to lay claim, but jihadi forces aren’t waiting for the dust to settle. Whatever the jar contains, they want it, no matter who they have to kill…or what will emerge when they open it.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250252920
PARKLAND: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen (Social Science/Current Affairs)
Dave Cullen unfolds the story of Parkland through the voices of key participants whose diverse personalities and outlooks comprise every facet of their grassroots #neveragain movement. Instead of taking us into the minds of the killer, he takes us into the hearts of the Majory Stoneman Douglas students as they cope with the common concerns of high school students everywhere --- awaiting college acceptance letters, studying for mid-term exams, competing against their athletic rivals, putting together the yearbook, staging the musical "Spring Awakening," enjoying prom and graduation --- while moving forward from a horrific event that has altered them forever.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062882967
THE SECRETARY by Renée Knight (Psychological Thriller)
From her first day as Personal Assistant to the celebrated Mina Appleton, Christine Butcher understands what is expected of her. For 20 years, she has been a most devoted servant, a silent witness to everything in Mina’s life. Day after day, year after year, Christine has been there, invisible --- watching, listening, absorbing all the secrets floating around her. Keeping them safe. Christine is trusted. But those years of loyalty and discretion come with a high price. And eventually Christine will pay. But it would be a mistake to underestimate such a steadfast woman as Christine. Because as everyone is about to discover, there’s a dangerous line between obedience and obsession.
Harper Perennial | 9780062362360
SISTERS BY CHOICE: A Blackberry Island Novel by Susan Mallery (Fiction)
Paperback Original
After her cat toy empire goes up in flames, Sophie Lane returns to Blackberry Island, determined to rebuild. Until small-town life reveals a big problem: she can’t grow unless she learns to let go. If Sophie relaxes her grip even a little, she might lose everything. Or she might finally be free to reach for the happiness and love that have eluded her for so long. Kristine has become defined by her relationship to others. As much as she adores her husband and sons, she wants something for herself --- a sweet little bakery just off the waterfront. Like the mainland on the horizon, Heather’s goals seem beyond her grasp. Every time she manages to save for college, her mother has another crisis. Can she break free, or will she be trapped in this tiny life forever?
Mira | 9780778309390
SMOKESCREEN by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
A journalist shows up on Eve Duncan's doorstep with a plea for help. Jill Cassidy has just come from a small African village with a heartwrenching story: half the villagers --- many of them children --- have been killed in a horrific attack by guerilla soldiers, the bodies burned beyond recognition. Now, the families desperately need Eve's help to get closure and begin to heal. But when Eve arrives in the remote jungle, she begins to suspect that Jill's plea may have been a cover story for a deeper, more sinister plot. Isolated and unsure who she can trust, Eve finds herself stranded in an unstable country where violence threatens to break out again at any moment.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538713075
THE STATIONERY SHOP by Marjan Kamali (Fiction)
Roya is a dreamy, idealistic teenager who finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood book and stationery shop. When Mr. Fakhri introduces Roya to Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry, she loses her heart at once. A few months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but violence suddenly erupts --- a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. More than 60 years later, though, an accident of fate leads Roya back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did he leave? Where did he go? How was he able to forget her?
Gallery Books | 9781982107499
SUMMER OF ’69 by Elin Hilderbrand (Historical Fiction)
It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same. Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, each of them hiding a troubling secret.
Back Bay Books | 9780316420006
UNSOLVED by James Patterson and David Ellis (Thriller)
FBI agent Emmy Dockery is young and driven, and her unique skill at seeing connections others miss has brought her an impressive string of arrests. But a shocking new case has left her utterly baffled. The victims all appear to have died by accident and seemingly have nothing in common. But this many deaths can't be a coincidence. And the killer is somehow one step ahead of every move Dockery makes. To FBI special agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, everyone in the FBI is a suspect --- particularly Emmy Dockery (the fact that she's his ex-fiancee doesn't make it easier). But someone else is watching Dockery. Studying, learning, waiting. Until it's the perfect time to strike.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538731635
THE WOMEN IN BLACK by Madeleine St John (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
The women in black, so named for the black frocks they wear while working at an upscale department store called Goode’s, are run off their feet selling ladies’ cocktail dresses during the busy season. But in Sydney in the 1950s, there’s always time to pursue other goals. By the time the last marked-down dress has been sold, all of their lives will be forever changed in Madeleine St John’s debut novel, which is perfect for fans of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Scribner | 9781982134082
On Sale the Week of February 17th in Hardcover
February 18th
AMNESTY by Aravind Adiga (Fiction)
Danny is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. For three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life. But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients --- a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported. Or say nothing, and let justice go undone.
Scribner | 9781982127244
THE ANTIDOTE FOR EVERYTHING by Kimmery Martin (Fiction)
Georgia Brown’s profession as a urologist requires her to interact with plenty of naked men, but her romantic prospects have fizzled. The most important person in her life is her friend Jonah Tsukada, a funny, empathetic family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, and who has become as close as family to her. Just after Georgia leaves the country for a medical conference, Jonah shares startling news. The hospital is instructing doctors to stop providing medical care for transgender patients. Jonah, a gay man, is the first to be fired when he refuses to abandon his patients. When Georgia's attempts to address the situation result in incalculable harm, both she and Jonah find themselves facing the loss of much more than their careers.
Berkley | 9781984802835
THE BOSTON MASSACRE: A Family History by Serena Zabin (History)
The story of the Boston Massacre --- when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death --- is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political. Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780544911154
BROKEN FAITH: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults by Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr (True Crime/Religion)
In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. In their eyes she’s a prophet. And to disobey her means eternal damnation. The control Whaley exerts is absolute: she decides what her followers study, where they work, whom they can marry --- even when they can have sex. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations and thousands of pages of documents, BROKEN FAITH is a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335145239
THE DARK CORNERS OF THE NIGHT: An UNSUB Novel by Meg Gardiner (Psychological Thriller)
He appears in the darkness like a ghost, made of shadows and fear --- the Midnight Man. He comes for the parents but leaves the children alive, tiny witnesses to unspeakable horror. The bedroom communities of Los Angeles are gripped with dread, and the attacks are escalating. Still reeling from her best friend’s close call in a bombing six months ago, FBI behavioral analyst Caitlin Hendrix has come to Los Angeles to assist in the Midnight Man investigation and do what she does best --- hunt a serial killer. Her work is what keeps her going, but something about this UNSUB --- unknown subject --- doesn’t sit right. She soon realizes that this case will test not only her skills but also her dedication, for within the heart of a killer lives a secret that mirrors Caitlin’s own past.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781982627515
DEATH IN THE FAMILY: A Shana Merchant Novel by Tessa Wegert (Mystery/Thriller)
Thirteen months ago, former NYPD detective Shana Merchant barely survived being abducted by a serial killer. Now hoping to leave grisly murder cases behind, she has taken a job in her fiancé's sleepy hometown in the Thousand Islands region of Upstate New York. But as a nor'easter bears down on her new territory, Shana and fellow investigator Tim Wellington receive a call about a man missing on a private island. Shana and Tim travel to the isolated island owned by the wealthy Sinclair family to question the witnesses. They arrive to find blood on the scene and a house full of Sinclair family and friends on edge. As the gale intensifies outside, Shana starts conducting interviews and discovers that the Sinclairs and their guests are crawling with dark and dangerous secrets.
Berkley | 9780593097892
FIGHTING FOR SPACE: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight by Amy Shira Teitel (Biography)
When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the 20th century --- man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War and was the first woman to break the sound barrier. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality --- an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538716045
THE GENIUS OF WOMEN: From Overlooked to Changing the World by Janice Kaplan (Gender Studies/Personal Growth)
Even in this time of rethinking women’s roles, we define genius almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, people mention Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. As for great women? In one survey, the only female genius anyone listed was Marie Curie. Janice Kaplan set out to determine why the extraordinary work of so many women has been brushed aside. In THE GENIUS OF WOMEN, she makes surprising discoveries about women geniuses now and throughout history. Through interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists and dozens of women geniuses at work in the world today, she proves that genius isn't just about talent. It's about having that talent recognized, nurtured and celebrated.
Dutton | 9781524744212
THE HOLDOUT by Graham Moore (Legal Thriller)
Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a 25-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. It’s an open-and-shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed --- until Maya Seale, convinced of Nock’s innocence, persuades her fellow jurors to return the verdict of not guilty. Flash forward 10 years. A true-crime docuseries reassembles the jury, with particular focus on Maya, now a defense attorney herself. When one of the jurors is found dead in Maya’s hotel room, all evidence points to her as the killer. Now, she must prove her own innocence --- by getting to the bottom of a case that is far from closed.
Random House | 9780399591778
THE LAST PASSENGER: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch (Historical Mystery)
London, 1855. A young and eager Charles Lenox faces his toughest case yet: a murder without a single clue. Slumped in a third-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a handsome young gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets and no sign of identification on his person. And putting together the clues to the mystery of the man’s identity only raises more questions, when Lenox discovers that the crime has a significant connection to America. As he seeks to solve this impossible case, the young Lenox must confront an equally troublesome problem in his personal life. Kitty Ashbrook, beautiful and cultured, appears to be his soulmate --- but love comes with obstacles of its own.
Minotaur Books | 9781250312204
THE LOST FUTURE OF PEPPERHARROW by Natasha Pulley (Historical Fantasy/Mystery)
1888. Five years after they met, Thaniel Steepleton, an unassuming translator, and Keita Mori, the watchmaker who remembers the future, are traveling to Japan. Thaniel has received an unexpected posting to the British legation in Tokyo, and Mori has business that is taking him to Yokohama. Thaniel's brief is odd: the legation staff have been seeing ghosts, and Thaniel's first task is to find out what's really going on. But while staying with Mori, he starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons Mori won't --- or can't --- share, he is frightened. Then he vanishes. Meanwhile, something strange is happening in a frozen labor camp in Northern Japan. Takiko Pepperharrow, an old friend of Mori's, must investigate.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635573305
THE LUCKY STAR by William T. Vollmann (Fiction)
After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.
Viking | 9780399563522
THE MAN IN THE RED COAT by Julian Barnes (History)
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives, which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits.
Knopf | 9780525658771
NO BAD DEED by Heather Chavez (Domestic Thriller)
Driving home one rainy night, Cassie Larkin sees a man and woman fighting on the side of the road. Against all reason and advice, she gets out of her minivan and chases after the violent man, trying to help his victim. When Cassie physically tries to stop him, he suddenly turns on her and spits out an ominous threat: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” A veterinarian trained to heal, Cassie can’t let the woman die. But while she’s examining the unconscious victim, the attacker steals her car. Now he has her name and address, and knows about her children. The next day --- Halloween --- her husband disappears while trick-or-treating with their six-year-old daughter. Are these disturbing events a coincidence or the beginning of a horrifying nightmare?
William Morrow | 9780062936172
ONE MINUTE OUT: A Gray Man Novel by Mark Greaney (Thriller)
While on a mission to Croatia, Court Gentry uncovers a human trafficking operation. The trail leads from the Balkans all the way back to Hollywood. Court is determined to shut it down, but his CIA handlers have other plans. The criminal ringleader has actionable intelligence about a potentially devastating terrorist attack on the US. The CIA won't move until they have that intel. It's a moral balancing act with Court at the pivot point.
Berkley | 9780593098912
THE OTHER MRS. by Mary Kubica (Psychological Thriller)
Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie. But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.
Park Row | 9780778369110
REAL LIFE by Brandon Taylor (Fiction)
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends --- some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
Riverhead Books | 9780525538882
SAINT X by Alexis Schaitkin (Psychological Thriller)
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found, and two local men --- employees at the resort --- are arrested. But the evidence is slim, and the men are soon released. Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth --- not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister?
Celadon Books | 9781250219596
THE SUN DOWN MOTEL by Simone St. James (Supernatural Thriller)
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City. To help pay for it, she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnĘžt right at the motel, something haunting and scary. Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.
Berkley | 9780440000174
On Sale the Week of February 17th in Paperback
February 18th
AMERICAN POP by Snowden Wright (Historical Fiction)
Founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company, Houghton and Annabelle Forster raise their four children with the expectation that they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability --- and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062697752
BANGKOK WAKES TO RAIN by Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Fiction)
A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of 19th-century Siam. A post-WWII society woman marries, mothers and holds court, little suspecting her solitary future. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the resident spirits. A young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in New Krungthep, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself.
Riverhead Books | 9780525534778
THE BIRD KING by G. Willow Wilson (Historical Fantasy)
THE BIRD KING tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret --- he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls?
Grove Press | 9780802148292
CALL ME EVIE by J.P. Pomare (Psychological Thriller)
Seventeen-year-old Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to an isolated cabin in a remote beach town --- a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her for her own good. But Evie can't remember anything about that night --- for all she knows, he's lying. As fragments of her memory return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her savior...or her jailer.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525538165
CHEROKEE AMERICA by Margaret Verble (Historical Fiction)
It’s the early spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as “Check,” a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In CHEROKEE AMERICA, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check’s mixed-race family, friends and neighbors come together to protect their community --- and painfully expel one of their own.
Mariner Books | 9780358116691
THE CLIFF HOUSE by RaeAnne Thayne (Romance)
After the death of their mother, sisters Daisy and Beatriz Davenport found a home with their aunt Stella in the beautiful and welcoming town of Cape Sanctuary. Now, with Daisy and Bea grown, it’s time for Stella to reveal the secret she’s been keeping from them --- a secret that will change their family forever. Bea thought she’d sown all her wild oats when she got pregnant far too young. The marriage that followed was rocky and not destined to last. Now, just as she’s beginning to pursue a new love with an old friend, Bea’s ex-husband resurfaces and turns her life completely upside down. Then there’s Daisy, who has never taken a risk --- until she meets a man who makes her question everything she thought she knew about life, love and the power of taking chances.
HQN | 9781335080455
DON’T LET ME DOWN: A Memoir by Erin Hosier (Memoir)
Erin Hosier’s coming-of-age was full of contradictions. Born into the turbulent 1970s, she was raised in rural Ohio by lapsed hippies who traded 1960s rock ‘n’ roll for 1950s-era Christian hymns. Her mother’s newfound faith was rooted in a desire to manage her husband’s mood swings, which could alternately fill the house with music or with violence. With the Beatles providing the soundtrack, Erin grew up adoring her larger-than-life father, Jack. Together, they bonded over their iconic songs, even as they inspired Erin to question authority --- both her father’s and others’.
Atria Books | 9781451644968
FEAST YOUR EYES by Myla Goldberg (Historical Fiction)
FEAST YOUR EYES, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston. After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives, and especially Lillian’s career, as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.
Scribner | 9781501197857
FINDING KATARINA M. by Elisabeth Elo (Thriller)
Natalie March is a respected surgeon whose deepest relationship is with her mother, Vera March, a Russian immigrant and MS patient confined to a rehabilitation center. Vera is still haunted by the fact that her Ukrainian parents were sent to the gulag, Stalin's notorious network of labor camps, when she was just a baby. All her life she has presumed that they perished there. Natalie would do anything to heal her mother's psychic pain: it's the one wound that she, a doctor, cannot mend. When a young Russian dancer comes to Natalie's office claiming to be her cousin, and providing details about her grandmother that no stranger could know, Natalie must face a surprising truth: her grandmother, Katarina Melnikova, is still very much alive.
Polis Books | 9781947993945
THE GOOD LIE by Tom Rosenstiel (Political Thriller)
When a shadowy American diplomatic complex is attacked in North Africa, the White House is besieged by accusations of incompetence and wild conspiracy theories. Eager to learn the truth, the president and his staff turn to Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks. The investigators dive headfirst into the furtive world of foreign intelligence and national security, hoping to do it quietly. That becomes impossible, though, when it blows up into an all-out public scandal: Congress opens hearings, and a tireless national security reporter publishes a bombshell exposé. Now, Rena and Brooks are caught in the middle.
Ecco | 9780062475428
THE LAST by Hanna Jameson (Dystopian Psychological Thriller)
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of his hotel in Switzerland, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, followed by New York, then London and finally Berlin. Two months later, there are 20 survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Jon and the rest try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when he goes up to the roof to investigate the hotel’s worsening water quality, he is shocked to discover the body of a young girl floating in one of the tanks. As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind the girl’s death.
Atria Books | 9781501198830
LATE IN THE DAY by Tessa Hadley (Fiction)
Alexandr, Christine, Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their 20s. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.
Harper Perennial | 9780062476708
LITTLE CONSTRUCTIONS by Anna Burns (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard, the Doe clan, a close-knit family of criminals and victims, has the run of the place. Yet there are signs that patriarch John Doe’s reign may be coming to an end. When Jetty Doe breaks into a gun store and makes off with a Kalashnikov, the stage is set for a violent confrontation. But while Jetty is making her way across town in a taxi, an elusive, chatty narrator takes us on a wild journey, zooming in and out on various members of the Doe clan with long, digressive riffs that chase down the causes and repercussions of Jetty’s act.
Graywolf Press | 9781644450130
LOOK HOW HAPPY I’M MAKING YOU: Stories by Polly Rosenwaike (Fiction/Short Stories)
The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s LOOK HOW HAPPY I'M MAKING YOU want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or --- having recently given birth --- are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another, nervous about her biological clock, “forgets” to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother’s Day contend with their losses and what it would mean for one of them to have a child.
Anchor | 9780525563730
THE LUCKY ONE by Lori Rader-Day (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within 24 hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day. Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages, scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062938077
NORMAL PEOPLE by Sally Rooney (Fiction)
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation --- awkward but electrifying --- something life-changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world, while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Hogarth | 9781984822185
THE OPPOSITE OF FATE by Alison McGhee (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Twenty-one-year-old Mallie Williams has just landed on her feet following a tumultuous youth when the unthinkable happens: she is violently assaulted. The crime leaves her comatose, surrounded by friends and family who are hoping against hopes for a full recovery. But soon Mallie's small community finds themselves divided. The rape has left Mallie pregnant, and while some friends are convinced that she would never keep the pregnancy, others are sure that a baby would be the only good thing to come out of all of this pain. Mallie, her family and her town find themselves at the center of a media storm, confronting questions nobody should have to face. And when Mallie emerges from the fog, what will she think of the choices that were made on her behalf?
Mariner Books | 9780358172475
THE PERFECT GIRLFRIEND by Karen Hamilton (Psychological Thriller)
Juliette loves Nate. She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight attendant for his airline so she can keep a closer eye on him. They are meant to be. The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing. Because Juliette has a plan to win him back. She is the perfect girlfriend. And she’ll make sure no one stops her from getting exactly what she wants. True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain.
Graydon House | 9781525812040
THE PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE by Samantha Shannon (Fantasy)
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction --- but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635570304
THE ROCK BLASTER written by Henning Mankell, translated by George Goulding (Fiction)
Paperback Original
The year is 1911. The young rock blaster Oskar Johansson has been killed in an accident. Or so it says in the local newspaper. In spite of serious injuries, however, Oskar survives. Decades later, Oskar looks back and reflects on his working life as an invalid, his marriage, his dreams and his hopes. Oskar's life is woven together out of fragments of voices, images and episodes that, taken together, provide a sharp and precise picture of life in Sweden for the working class.
Vintage | 9780525566168
THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LANGUAGES by Lindsay Stern (Fiction)
Ivan is a tightly wound philosophy professor. His wife, Prue, is quite the opposite: a pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is bold and vibrant, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them. Might it have something to do with the arrival of the college's dashing but insufferable new writer-in-residence, whose novel Prue always seems to be reading? Into this delicate moment barrels Ivan's unstable father-in-law, Frank, in town to hear Prue deliver a lecture on birdsong that is set to cement her tenure application. But the talk doesn't go as planned, unleashing a series of crises that force Ivan to finally confront the problems in his marriage.
Penguin Books | 9780525557456
TIDELANDS by Philippa Gregory (Historical Fiction)
On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning.
Washington Square Press | 9781501187162
TRIGGER by David Swinson (Mystery)
Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with catastrophe. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, he's barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney --- who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. Frank passes the time --- and tests himself --- by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But when an old friend from his police days needs Frank's help to prove he didn't shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago.
Mulholland Books | 9780316264266
WHEN YOU READ THIS by Mary Adkins (Fiction)
For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only 33. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’ last wish. Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, a haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062834683
|
