July 28, 2020

July 28, 2020

Latest Update on Our GoFundMe Campaign

Thank you to those of you who have donated to our GoFundMe campaign. So far, with online and snail mail donations, we have raised $34,385 of our $50,000 goal.

In addition to these contributions, we are loving your comments about how you enjoy Bookreporter.com. Here is a message we received recently:

Yvonne: "This is a tremendous resource for book clubs."

You can read about our plans and donate here. If you would prefer donating via check, please send to:

The Book Report, Inc.
16 Mt. Bethel Road, Suite 365
Warren, NJ 07059

Thank you again for your consideration and your donation.

Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 27th and August 3rd 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 "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com, where three book groups will win 12 copies of LADY CLEMENTINE by Marie Benedict, a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick that is now available in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, September 9th at noon ET.

We also are spotlighting the release of HIEROGLYPHICS, a mesmerizing new novel from Jill McCorkle about the burden of secrets carried across generations. Don't miss our review of the book, along with Carol's "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Jill, in Friday's Bookreporter Weekly Update newsletter.

Be sure to answer our current poll, which is a follow-up to a poll that we did back in March, where we asked if your reading habits have changed due to the pandemic. Four months have gone by, and we are curious to find out what your reading habits are like now. Click here to let us know by Friday, July 31st at noon ET.

That also is the deadline for our latest Word of Mouth contest, where three readers each will be randomly chosen to win a copy of THE ANSWER IS...: Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek (which we will review in Friday's Weekly Update newsletter) and FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER by Rachel Beanland, the latter of which is a Bets On pick. Tell us about the books you’ve finished reading, and you'll be in the running to win both these titles.

Finally, don't forget to enter this month's Sounding Off on Audio contest. By submitting your comments about the audiobooks you've listened to, you'll have a chance to win the audio versions of Brad Thor's NEAR DARK, read by Armand Schultz, and Kristin Harmel's THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES, read by Madeleine Maby. The deadline for your entries is Monday, August 3rd 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

Now Available: HIEROGLYPHICS by Jill McCorkle

HIEROGLYPHICS by Jill McCorkle (Fiction)
“A beautiful, heart-piercing meditation on life and death and the marks we leave on this world. It is the work of a wonderful writer at her finest and most profound.” —Jessica Shattuck, author of THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE

New York Times bestselling author Jill McCorkle’s new novel, HIEROGLYPHICS, is a mesmerizing story about piecing together the hieroglyphics of history and memory.

“Jill McCorkle has long been one of our wryest, warmest, wisest storytellers. In HIEROGLYPHICS, she takes us on through decades, through loss, through redemption, and lands in revelation and grace. As always with McCorkle, the story feels so effortless and true that we might well miss what a high-wire act she’s performing. But make no mistake: she’s up there without a net, she never misses a step, and it’s spectacular.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of THE GREAT BELIEVERS

“Suffused with a deep and heartening understanding of human resilience and strength. A beautiful and emotionally satisfying novel.” —Brad Watson, author of MISS JANE

Click here to read more about the book.

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.

Wednesday, July 29th at 2pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Alice Feeney will discuss her new psychological thriller, HIS & HERS, via Facebook Live. Watch the event in real time or check it out later on Facebook or YouTube.

Wednesday, July 29th at 6:30pm ET: BookTowne Virtual Event: Join BookTowne on Zoom with author Rachel Beanland discussing her debut novel, FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER.

Wednesday, July 29th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": Every Wednesday, Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe talk books and writing on their "Friends and Fiction" Facebook group page. Their special guest will be Fiona Davis, whose latest novel is THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE.

Thursday, July 30th at 6:30pm ET: Sumter County Museum Live! Virtual Book Chat: Join the Sumter County Museum for a Live! Virtual Book Chat and Q&A with authors Kristy Woodson Harvey and Mary Alice Monroe. They will discuss their latest novels, FEELS LIKE FALLING and ON OCEAN BOULEVARD, respectively.

Thursday, July 30th at 7pm ET: Bank Square Books and Savoy Bookshop & Café Virtual Event: Bank Square Books and Savoy Bookshop & Café present a virtual author event with Susannah Cahalan, author of THE GREAT PRETENDER, who will be in conversation with Robert Kolker, author of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD.

Thursday, July 30th at 7:30pm ET: Harris County Public Library Virtual Event: The Harris County Public Library presents two award-winning authors in a discussion of writing about family. Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, will engage in a conversation with Saeed Jones as they discuss his recent memoir, HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, and what it means to write about black families.

Thursday, July 30th at 8pm ET: Skylark Bookshop Virtual Event: Byron Lane will discuss his debut novel, A STAR IS BORED, which is one of the most hotly anticipated titles of the summer.

Sunday, August 2nd at 6pm ET: Shelter Island Public Library Virtual Event: In this online fundraiser for the Shelter Island Public Library, bestselling authors Adriana Trigiani (TONY'S WIFE) and Elin Hilderbrand (28 SUMMERS) will talk about their writing lives, their characters and settings, and much more.

Monday, August 3rd at 7pm ET: Douglas County Library Virtual Event: Shari Lapena will talk about her new novel, THE END OF HER, with Harlan Coben, the #1 bestselling author of THE BOY FROM THE WOODS.

Tuesday, August 4th at 1pm ET: Simon & Schuster's Book Club Favorites Online Event: William Kent Krueger will join members of the Simon & Schuster team for a Facebook Live Book Club chat about THIS TENDER LAND, which is now in paperback and is this month's pick for S&S's Book Club Favorites.

Tuesday, August 4th at 7pm ET: Barnes & Noble Virtual Book Club Event: Barnes & Noble will host a Facebook Live discussion for their July book club pick, FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER, featuring author Rachel Beanland and Ann Hood, whose most recent book is KITCHEN YARNS: Notes on Life, Love, and Food.

This Week's Bonus News: Our Latest
"What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?"
Contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com

Each month, we ask book groups to share the titles they are reading that month and rate them. From all entries, three winners will be selected, and each will win 12 copies of that month’s prize book for their group. Note: To be eligible to win, let us know the title of the book that YOUR book group is CURRENTLY reading, NOT the title we are giving away.

Our latest prize book is LADY CLEMENTINE by Marie Benedict, which is now available in paperback. This Bookreporter.com Bets On pick is an incredible novel that focuses on one of the people who had the most influence during World War I and World War II: Clementine Churchill. To enter, please fill out the form on this page by Wednesday, September 9th at noon ET.

LADY CLEMENTINE by Marie Benedict (Historical Fiction)
In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband.

LADY CLEMENTINE is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

- Click here for the discussion guide.
- Click here to read our review.
- Click here to read Carol's Bookreporter.com Bets On commentary.
- Click here to watch Carol's "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Marie Benedict.
- Click here to listen to a podcast of the interview.

Click here to enter the contest.

On Sale the Week of July 27th in Hardcover

July 27th

1st CASE by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts (Thriller)
Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's computer. Yet her mentor, Eve Abajian, arranges a new beginning for her --- as an intern in the FBI's Boston field office. Her new supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge William Keats, sees in Angela a fellow prodigy. But Angela's skills come with a natural curiosity, which is also a dangerous liability. With little training, Angela is quickly plunged into a tough case: tracking murderous brothers who go by the Poet and the Engineer. When Keats tells her to "watch and listen," Angela's mind kicks into overdrive. The obsessive thinking that earned her A’s on campus can prove fatal in the field.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316418188

July 28th

AFTERLAND by Lauren Beukes (Dystopian Thriller/Science Fiction)
Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence --- and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie --- all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home. To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step…even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.
Mulholland Books | 9780316267830

THE BUTTERFLY LAMPSHADE by Aimee Bender (Fiction)
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents --- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality.
Doubleday | 9780385534871

CROSSINGS by Alex Landragin (Fiction)
On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first piece is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250259042

DEADLOCK by Catherine Coulter (Thriller)
A young wife is forced to confront a decades-old deadly secret when a medium connects her to her dead grandfather. A vicious psychopath wants ultimate revenge against Savich, but first, she wants to destroy what he loves most --- his family. A series of three red boxes are delivered personally to Savich at the Hoover Building, each one containing puzzle pieces of a town only FBI agent Pippa Cinelli recognizes. Savich sends in Cinelli to investigate undercover, but someone knows who she is. Can Savich and Sherlock figure out the red box puzzle and the young wife’s secret before it’s too late?
Gallery Books | 9781501193699

DEMON IN WHITE: The Sun Eater, Book Three by Christopher Ruocchio (Space Opera/Fantasy)
For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the Empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien race bent on humanity’s destruction. Rumors of a new king amongst the Cielcin have reached the Imperial throne. To make matters worse, a cult of personality has formed around Hadrian, spurred on by legends of his having defied death itself. Hadrian’s rise to prominence proves dangerous to himself and his team, as pressures within the Imperial government distrust or resent his new influence. And above it all, there is the mystery of the Quiet. Hadrian did defy death. He did return. But the keys to the only place in the universe where Hadrian might find the answers he seeks lie in the hands of the Emperor himself.
DAW | 9780756413064

THE END OF HER by Shari Lapena (Psychological Thriller)
Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls. The babies are a handful, but even as Stephanie struggles with the disorientation of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she's sure of: she has all she ever wanted. Then Erica, a woman from Patrick's past, appears and makes a disturbing accusation. Patrick had always said his first wife's death was an accident, but now Erica claims it was murder. Patrick insists he's innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. Still, Erica knows things about Patrick --- things that make Stephanie begin to question her husband. Stephanie isn't sure what, or who, to believe. As Stephanie's trust in Patrick begins to falter, Patrick stands to lose everything. Is Erica the persuasive liar Patrick says she is? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?
Pamela Dorman Books | 9781984880512

FLYAWAY by Kathleen Jennings (Fantasy)
In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers --- a note that makes her question memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure. A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live --- and even thrive --- under a burning sun, FLYAWAY introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters and enchanted bottles.
Tor.com | 9781250260499

THE GEOMETRY OF HOLDING HANDS: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
In Edinburgh, rumors and gossip abound. But Isabel Dalhousie well knows that such things can't be taken at face value. Still, the latest whispers hint at mysterious goings-on, and who but Isabel can be trusted to get to the bottom of them? At the same time, she must deal with the demands of her two small children, her husband, and her rather tempestuous niece, Cat, whose latest romantic entanglement comes --- to no one's surprise --- with complications. Still, even with so much going on, Isabel, through the application of good sense, logic and ethics, will, as ever, triumph.
Pantheon | 9781524748944

THE GROVE OF THE CAESARS: A Flavia Albia Novel by Lindsey Davis (Historical Mystery)
At the feet of her adoptive father, renowned private informer Marcus Didius Falco, Flavia Albia learned a number of important rules. First and foremost: always keep one's distance from the palace --- nothing good comes from that direction. But right behind it: murder is the business of the Vigiles, best to leave them to it. Having broken the first rule more often than she'd like, it's no surprise to anyone when she finds herself breaking the second one. The public gardens named after the Caesars is a place that nice girls are warned away from, and when a series of bodies are uncovered, it seems that a serial killer has been haunting the grove for years. The case is assigned to one Julius Karus, a cohort of the Vigiles, but Flavia Albia decides to work with this vile man and bring the serial killer to justice.
Minotaur Books | 9781250241566

HIEROGLYPHICS by Jill McCorkle (Fiction)
Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened. Now they’ve retired to North Carolina, where Lil sifts through letters and notes and diary entries --- perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d hoped to keep buried.
Algonquin Books | 9781616209728

HIS & HERS by Alice Feeney (Psychological Thriller)
When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.
Flatiron Books | 9781250266071

I HOLD A WOLF BY THE EARS: Stories by Laura van den Berg (Fiction/Short Stories)
Both timeless and urgent, the 11 stories in Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prize-winning book THE ISLE OF YOUTH confront misogyny, violence and the impossible economics of America. In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife’s anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374102098

THE ISLAND CHILD by Molly Aitken (Fiction)
Oona grew up on the island of Inis: a wind-blasted rock off the coast of Ireland where the men went out on fishing boats and the women tended turf fires; where the only book was the Bible; and where girls stayed at home until they became mothers themselves. The island was a gift for some, a prison for others. Even as a child, Oona knew she wanted to leave, but she never could have anticipated the tumultuous turn of events that ultimately would compel her to flee. Now, after 20 years --- after Oona has forged a new, very different life for herself --- her daughter vanishes, forcing Oona to face her past in order, finally, to be free of it.
Knopf | 9780525658375

LET'S NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN: A Memoir by Sara Faith Alterman (Memoir)
Twelve-year-old Sara enjoyed a G-rated existence in suburban New England, filled with over-the-top birthday cakes, Revolutionary War reenactments, and nerdy word games invented by her prudish father, Ira. But Sara's world changed for the icky when she discovered that Ira had been shielding her from the truth: that he was a campy sex writer who’d sold millions of books in multiple languages. For decades, these books remained an unspoken family secret, until Ira developed early onset Alzheimer's disease…and announced he'd be reviving his writing career. With Sara's help. In her memoir, Sara shares the profound experience of discovering new facets of her father --- once as a child, and again as an adult.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538748671

LOVE AND THEFT by Stan Parish (Thriller)
When Alex Cassidy and Diane Alison meet at a party in Princeton, New Jersey, the chemistry between them is instant and undeniable. She's a single mother, local fixture and owner of a successful catering company. He's a single father and weekend homeowner --- and leader of an armed-robbery crew that just pulled off a record-breaking, precision jewel heist in Las Vegas. Neither one realizes that their lives have overlapped before, and that the shared history they uncover will threaten everyone they love. Swept up in their burgeoning relationship, Diane joins Alex at his beach house in Tulum, where Alex decides to leave his life of crime behind. It begins as a postcard-perfect weekend until an entanglement with a powerful cartel forces Alex to mastermind one final and unthinkably dangerous job.
Doubleday | 9780385545242

MEMORIAL DRIVE: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey (Memoir)
At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. In MEMORIAL DRIVE, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet explores this profound experience of pain, loss and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.
Ecco | 9780062248572

MUST I GO by Yiyun Li (Fiction)
Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children and seen the arrival of 17 grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair. Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past. She returns inexorably to the memory of her daughter, Lucy. This is a novel about life in all its messy glory, and of a life lived, by the extraordinary Lilia, absolutely on its own terms. Yiyun Li navigates the twin poles of grief and resilience, loss and rebirth, that compass a human heart.
Random House | 9780399589126

PLAYING NICE by JP Delaney (Psychological Thriller)
Miles Lambert breaks the devastating news that Pete Riley’s son, Theo, isn’t actually his son --- he is the Lamberts’, switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they’ve been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again. The two families take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents --- or even each other?
Ballantine Books | 9781984821348

ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE EVOLUTION by Brian Freeman (Thriller/Adventure)
After the death of his lover in a mass shooting, secret agent Jason Bourne is convinced that there is more to her murder than it seems. Worse, he believes that Treadstone --- the agency that made him who he is, that trained him --- is behind the killing. Bourne goes rogue, leaving Treadstone behind and taking on a new mission to infiltrate and expose an anarchist group, Medusa. But when a congresswoman is assassinated in New York, Bourne is framed for the crime, and he finds himself alone and on the run. In his quest to stay one step ahead of his enemies, Bourne teams up with journalist Abbey Laurent to figure out who was behind the frame-up, and to learn as much as he can about the ever-growing threat of the mysterious Medusa group.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525542599

A ROYAL AFFAIR: A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery by Allison Montclair (Historical Mystery)
In 1946 London, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are the proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. One day, Lady Matheson, a cousin of Gwen’s who works for the Queen in "some capacity," arrives in need of some discreet investigation. It seems that Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a dashing Greek prince, and a blackmail note has arrived, alluding to some potentially damaging information about said prince. Wanting to keep this out of the palace gossip circles, but also needing to find out what skeletons might lurk in the prince's closet, the palace has quietly turned to Gwen and Iris. Without causing a stir, the two of them must uncover any secrets in the prince's past before his engagement to the future Queen of England is announced.
Minotaur Books | 9781250178398

A STAR IS BORED by Byron Lane (Fiction/Humor)
Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for an insane job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s worst-dressed list. She needs an assistant. He needs a hero. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author and an award-winning actress, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: crazy. Admittedly so. Famously so. Fabulously so, as Charlie quickly discovers. Their three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows, Charlie must make a choice.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250266491

STRONG FROM THE HEART: A Caitlin Strong Novel by Jon Land (Thriller)
The drug crisis hits home for Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong when the son of her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters nearly dies from an opioid overdose. On top of that, she’s dealing with the inexplicable tragedy of a small Texas town where all the residents died in a single night. When Caitlin realizes that these two pursuits are intrinsically connected, she finds herself following a trail that will take her to the truth behind the crisis that claimed 75,000 lives last year. The same force that has taken over the opiate trade has even more deadly intentions in mind, specifically the murder of tens of millions in pursuit of their even more nefarious goals. At the root of the conspiracy lies a cabal nestled within the highest corridors of power that’s determined to destroy all threats posed to them.
Forge Books | 9780765384706

THE TWO MRS. CARLYLES by Suzanne Rindell (Historical Fiction)
San Francisco, 1906. Violet is one of three people grateful for the destruction of the big earthquake. It leaves her and her two best friends unexpectedly wealthy --- if the secret that binds them together stays buried beneath the rubble. Fearing discovery, the women strike out on their own, and orphaned, wallflower Violet reinvents herself. When a whirlwind romance with the city's most eligible widower, Harry Carlyle, lands her in a luxurious mansion as the second Mrs. Carlyle, it seems like her dreams of happiness and love have come true. But all is not right in the Carlyle home, and Violet soon finds herself trapped by the lingering specter of the first Mrs. Carlyle, and by the inescapable secrets of her own violent history.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525539209

WHEN SHE WAS GOOD by Michael Robotham (Psychological Thriller)
Who is Evie Cormac, the girl with no past, running from? She was discovered hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a terrible crime. Her ability to tell when someone is lying helped Cyrus crack an impenetrable case in GOOD GIRL, BAD GIRL. Now, the closer that criminal psychologist Cyrus Haven gets to uncovering answers about Evie’s dark history, the more he exposes Evie to danger, giving her no choice but to run. Ultimately, both will have to decide if some secrets are better left buried and some monsters should never be named.
Scribner | 9781982103637

THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Michele Campbell (Psychological Thriller)
Meet the first Mrs. Ford. Beautiful. Accomplished. Wealthy beyond imagination. Married to a much younger man. And now, she’s dead. Meet the second Mrs. Ford. Waitress. Small-town girl. Married to a man she never forgot, from a summer romance 10 years before. And now, she’s wealthy beyond imagination. Who is Connor Ford? Two women loved him. And knew him as only wives can know. Set amongst the glittering mansions of the Hamptons, THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is about the lives of those who will do anything for love and money. Who is the victim? Who is the villain? And who will be next to die?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250202550

On Sale the Week of July 27th in Paperback

July 28th

THE BAD SISTER by Kevin O'Brien (Thriller)
Paperback Original
The site of the old campus bungalow where two girls were brutally slain is now a flower patch covered with chrysanthemums. It’s been 50 years since the Immaculate Conception Murders. Three more students and a teacher were killed in a sickening spree that many have forgotten. But there is one person who knows every twisted detail. Hannah O’Rourke and her volatile half-sister, Eden, have little in common except a parent. Yet they’ve ended up at the same small college outside Chicago, sharing a bungalow with another girl. When their arrival coincides with a spate of mysterious deaths, Hannah’s journalism professor, Ellie Goodwin, knows it’s more than a fluke. A copycat is recreating those long-ago murders.
Pinnacle | 9780786045082

THE BIRTHDAY GIRL by Melissa de la Cruz (Psychological Thriller)
Before she became a glamorous fashion designer, Ellie de Florent-Stinson was a trailer-park teen about to turn 16. But a night of birthday celebration doesn’t go exactly as planned and descends into a night she’ll never be able to forget. Now, on the cusp of her 40th birthday, it appears Ellie has everything she ever wanted. Except everything is not quite as perfect as it looks on the outside, as Ellie is keeping many secrets. Hiding those skeletons has a cost, and it all comes to a head the night of her fabulous birthday party in the desert. Old and new friends and frenemies, stepdaughters and business partners, ex-wives and ex-husbands congregate, and the glittering facade of Ellie’s life begins to crumble.
Dutton | 9781524743789

CHILD’S PLAY by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
A senior partner at a prestigious New York law firm, Kate Morgan couldn’t be prouder of her three grown children. A single mother for years after the death of her husband, Kate keeps a tight rein on her family, her career and even her own emotions, never once asking herself if she truly knows her children…or if her hopes for them are the right ones and what they want. She is about to find out. During one hectic summer in Manhattan, Kate’s world turns upside down. One child has been keeping an astonishing secret, while another confesses to an equally shocking truth. A wonderful match and picture-book wedding are traded for a relationship that shakes Kate to her core. A totally inappropriate love affair and an out-of-wedlock baby complete the chaos.
Dell | 9780399179525

COLD STORAGE by David Koepp (Science Fiction/Thriller)
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction. He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository. Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it. He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards --- one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?
Ecco | 9780063023345

DARK SITE: A Sam Dryden Novel by Patrick Lee (Thriller)
Former Special Forces operative Sam Dryden is the target of an unsuccessful attempted abduction. Using his attacker's cell phone, he learns that another person, a woman named Danica Ellis, is also being targeted. Dryden arrives just in time to save Danica from the assault team sent after her. But neither of them recognize the other, or have any idea why they are being targeted. The only clue is a heavily redacted, official-looking document given to Danica by her stepfather before he was killed. It refers to witnesses to a secret military site in Ashland, Iowa, in 1989. Dryden and Danica lived in Ashland in 1989, when they were both 12 years old, though neither of them has any memory of the other. Now it’s up to them to piece together the details of their past --- and elude the forces that are after them in the present-day.
Minotaur Books | 9781250030801

GIRL IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR by Kelsey Rae Dimberg (Psychological/Political Thriller)
They are Phoenix’s First Family: Philip Martin, son of the sitting Senator and an ex-football player; his wife Marina, the stylish and elegant director of Phoenix’s fine arts museum; and their four-year-old daughter Amabel. Finn Hunt is working a dull office job to pay off her college debt when she meets Philip and charms Amabel. She eagerly agrees to nanny, thinking she’s lucked into the job of a lifetime. But when a young woman approaches Finn, claiming a connection with Philip and asking Finn to pass on a message, Finn becomes caught up in a web of deceit with the Senate seat at its center. And Finn isn’t exactly innocent herself: she too has a background she has kept hidden, and everything is about to be laid bare.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062867940

GOLDEN IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body --- and killed him. After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team --- and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed --- it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. While the lab tries to identify the deadly toxin, Eve hunts for the sender. But when someone else dies in the same grisly manner, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with either a madman --- or someone who has a hidden and elusive connection to both victims.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250207227

THE GOLDEN WOLF by Linnea Hartsuyker (Historical Fantasy)
A growing rebellion pits Ragnvald and his sons against enemies old and new, and a looming tragedy threatens to divide the hardened warrior from Harald and all who care for him. Across the sea, Svanhild, too, wrestles with a painful decision, risking the dissolution of her fragile new family as she desperately tries to save it. Yet as old heroes fall, new heroes arise. For years, Ragnvald and Svanhild pursued the destinies bestowed by their ancient gods. Though the journey has cost them much, their sacrifices and dreams will be honored by the generations that follow, beginning with Freydis and Einar. Emerging from their parents’ long shadows, they have begun to carry on the family’s legacy while pursuing their own glorious fates.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062563767

GOODNIGHT STRANGER by Miciah Bay Gault (Literary Thriller)
Lydia and Lucas Moore are in their late 20s when a stranger enters their small world on Wolf Island. Lydia, the responsible sister, has cared for her pathologically shy brother, Lucas, ever since their mom’s death a decade before. They live together in their family house by the sea, shadowed by events from their childhood. When Lydia sees the stranger step off the ferry, she feels an immediate connection to him. Lucas is convinced that the man, Cole Anthony, is the reincarnation of their baby brother, who died when they were young. Cole knows their mannerisms, their home, the topography of the island. What else could that mean? To find out, Lydia must finally face her anxiety about leaving the island and challenge Cole’s grip on her family’s past and her brother.
Park Row | 9780778309802

HOUSE ON FIRE by Joseph Finder (Thriller)
Nick Heller is at the top of his game when he receives some devastating news: his old army buddy, Sean, has died of an overdose. Sean, who once saved Nick’s life, got addicted to opioids after returning home wounded from war. Then at Sean’s funeral, a stranger approaches Nick with a job. The woman is the daughter of a pharmaceutical kingpin worth billions. Now she wants to become a whistleblower, exposing her father and his company for burying evidence that its biggest money-maker was dangerously addictive. It was a lie that killed hundreds of thousands of people, including Sean. All Nick has to do is find the document that proves the family knew the drug’s dangers. But Nick soon realizes that the sins of the patriarch are just the beginning.
Dutton | 9781101985861

INTIMATIONS: Six Essays by Zadie Smith (Essays)
Paperback Original
Written during the early months of lockdown, INTIMATIONS explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality --- or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it? Zadie Smith clears a generous space for thought, open enough for each reader to reflect on what has happened --- and what should come next.
Penguin Books | 9780593297612

THE KIDS ARE GONNA ASK by Gretchen Anthony (Fiction/Humor)
Paperback Original
The death of Thomas and Savannah McClair’s mother turns their world upside down. Raised to be fiercely curious by their grandmother Maggie, the twins become determined to learn the identity of their biological father. And when their mission goes viral, an eccentric producer offers them a dream platform: a fully sponsored podcast called “The Kids Are Gonna Ask.” To discover the truth, Thomas and Savannah begin interviewing people from their mother’s past and are shocked when the podcast ignites in popularity. As the attention mounts, they get caught in a national debate they never asked for --- but nothing compares to the mayhem that ensues when they find him.
Park Row | 9780778308744

THE LONG CALL by Ann Cleeves (Mystery)
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed, and his new life is forced into a collision course with the world he thought he’d left behind.
Minotaur Books | 9781250204455

MAGGIE BROWN & OTHERS: Stories by Peter Orner (Fiction/Short Stories)
In MAGGIE BROWN & OTHERS, Peter Orner chronicles people whose lives are at inflection points. Whether it's a first date that turns into a late-night road trip to a séance in an abandoned airplane hangar, or a family's memories of the painful mystery surrounding a forgotten uncle's demise, Orner reveals how our fleeting decisions between kindness and abandonment chase us across time. These stories are anchored by a poignant novella that delivers not only the joys and travails of a 40-year marriage, but an entire era in a working-class New England city.
Back Bay Books | 9780316516129

NOTES OF LOVE AND WAR by Betty Bolté (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Audrey Harper needs more than home and hearth to satisfy her self-worth, despite being raised with the idea that a woman's place is in the home. Working as a music critic for the city newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland, during the Second World War, she has enjoyed both financial freedom and personal satisfaction in a job well done. When Audrey uncovers evidence of German spies working to sabotage a secret bomber plane being manufactured in her beloved city, she must choose between her sense of duty to protect her city and the urgings of her boss, her family and her fiancé to turn over her evidence to the authorities. But when her choices lead her and her sister into danger, she is forced to risk life and limb to save her sister and bring the spies to justice.
Mystic Owl Publishing | 9781733973656

THE RUSSIAN by Ben Coes (Political Thriller)
The Russian mafia has virtually taken over the criminal underworld in the U.S., and law enforcement, at every level, has been unable to stem the tide. When a powerful Russian mob family declares war by publicly executing two high-profile American politicians, the message is unmistakable: Opposition will be met with deadly force. With no other viable options, the president creates a clandestine assassination team to take the fight back to the criminals. The CIA recruits two Tier 1 operators --- former Navy SEALs Billy Cosgrove and Rob Tacoma --- but before the team can even begin its mission, Cosgrove is targeted in a fatal attack. Now it’s up to Tacoma to do the impossible: find and kill the hidden mob boss behind Cosgrove’s death, and take on a ruthless enemy with endless resources, zero boundaries and no mercy.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250140807

SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR by Richard Roper (Fiction)
All Andrew wants is to be normal. That's why his coworkers believe he has the perfect wife and two children waiting at home for him after a long day. But the truth is, his life isn't exactly as people think...and his little white lie is about to catch up with him. Because in all of Andrew's efforts to fit in, he's forgotten one important thing: how to really live. And maybe, it's finally time for him to start.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525539896

STONE COLD HEART by Caz Frear (Mystery)
A young Australian woman turns up dead after a party thrown by her new boss. The initial investigation of Naomi Lockhart's murder points to Joseph Madden, the owner of a coffee shop. Madden insists he’s innocent, that he was home with his wife Rachel at the time of the murder. When police question her, Rachel contradicts his alibi, swearing that she was home alone. Detective Constable Cat Kinsella knows that one of them is lying --- but the question of which one, and why, is far more complicated than she could have expected. As she tries to balance the demands of the investigation with a budding romance and unresolved family drama, Cat has to decide how far she’ll go to keep her own past mistakes buried.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062849908

A STRANGER ON THE BEACH by Michele Campbell (Psychological Thriller)
After a very public fight with her husband, Caroline Stark realizes that her life may not be as perfect as it seems: her husband is lying to her, money is disappearing, and there’s a stranger on the beach outside her house. As Caroline’s marriage and her carefully constructed lifestyle begin to collapse around her, she turns to the stranger, Aidan, for comfort…and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling, Aidan’s infatuation with Caroline, her family and her house becomes more and more destructive. But who is manipulating whom in this deadly game of obsession and control? Who will take the blame when someone ends up dead…and what is Caroline hiding?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250313324

THEY ALL FALL DOWN by Rachel Howzell Hall (Mystery/Thriller)
Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico with six other strangers. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is soon shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses --- and all seven strangers harbor a secret. Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keep the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents stir suspicions, as one by one, they all fall down.
Forge Books | 9781250224613

TIN BADGES by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Thriller)
As one of the NYPD’s most trusted “tin badges” --- retired detectives brought in to solve cases that are beyond the reach of the everyday force --- Tank Rizzo has faced off against some of the city’s toughest criminals without breaking a sweat. To tackle a case involving a dangerous kingpin known as Gonzo, Tank turns to his best friend and ex-partner, Pearl; a former mobster living out a seemingly quiet retirement as the owner of Tank’s favorite Italian restaurant; and a team of expert misfits he would trust with his life. But Gonzo will stop at nothing to defend the empire he's built, and he won't hesitate to make it personal.
Ballantine Books | 9780345483935

UNSPEAKABLE ACTS: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession edited by Sarah Weinman (True Crime Anthology)
Paperback Original
Sarah Weinman --- the acclaimed author of THE REAL LOLITA, and editor of WOMEN CRIME WRITERS and TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES --- brings together an exemplary collection of recent true-crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. There are 13 pieces in all, and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.
Ecco | 9780062839886

WHAT ROSE FORGOT by Nevada Barr (Mystery/Thriller)
Rose Dennis wakes up in a hospital gown, her brain in a fog. With no memory of how she ended up at this unknown medical facility, Rose is sure that something is very wrong. When she overhears one of the administrators saying about her that she's "not making it through the week," Rose is convinced that if she's to survive, she has to stop taking her medication. How does she convince anyone that what she’s experienced is true? With her memory shaky, how can she even trust herself? Enlisting the help of her computer-hacker sister and her teenage granddaughter, Rose begins to piece together fragments of her life. But any lingering doubt that she’s in real danger is erased when a stranger starts showing up at her now-abandoned house, determined to get rid of Rose once and for all.
Minotaur Books | 9781250208026

YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY by Steph Cha (Thriller)
In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it’s been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. She’s distraught that her sister hasn’t spoken to their mother in two years. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his quiet life in Palmdale. But when another shocking crime hits L.A., both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence.
Ecco | 9780062868848
 

July 29th

SINISTER SISTERHOOD by Jane Badrock (Thriller/Dark Humor)
Paperback Original
Elle's dreams of domestic bliss are devastated by David's deceiving dalliances. Abandoned and alone, she needs a new life plan, and it's thrust upon her by her tiger-loving aunt in India. She must conserve the creatures and hunt the hunters. Converted to the cause, Elle is committed to combating cruel animal exploitation, but she can't do it on her own. She needs money and a terrific team beneath her, and it takes time to find the right people to bring in money and carry out the campaign. What she gets is an assortment of wicked women with their own attributes and agendas. But the battle gets bigger. There's a mysterious mastermind building an execrable empire on the back of coveted creatures' carcases. The Sinister Sisterhood are devious, deadly and dedicated --- but not necessarily to Elle's cause.
BAD PRESS iNK | 9781916084520

On Sale the Week of August 3rd in Hardcover

August 3rd

THE COMEBACK by Ella Berman (Fiction)
At the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, teen star Grace Turner disappeared. Now, tentatively sober and surprisingly numb, Grace is back in Los Angeles after her year of self-imposed exile. She knows that the new private life she wants isn’t going to be easy as she tries to be a better person and reconnect with the people she left behind. But when Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke --- the man who controlled her every move for eight years --- she realizes that she can’t run from the secret behind her spectacular crash and burn for much longer. And she’s the only one with nothing left to lose.
Berkley | 9780593099513

August 4th

BEAR NECESSITY by James Gould-Bourn (Fiction)
Danny has become a single father to 11-year-old Will --- who hasn’t spoken since the death of his mother in a car crash a year earlier --- and has just been fired from his construction job. To make matters worse, he’s behind on the rent and his nasty landlord is threatening to break his legs if he doesn’t pay soon. After observing local street performers in a nearby park, Danny spends his last few dollars on a tattered panda costume, impulsively deciding to become a dancing bear. While performing one day, Danny spots his son in the park and chases off the older boys who are taunting him. Will opens up for the first time since his mother’s death, unaware that the man in the panda costume is his father.
Scribner | 9781982128296

BEHIND THE RED DOOR by Megan Collins (Psychological Thriller)
When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a 34-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare --- one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading --- Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory. Back at her childhood home to help her father pack for a move, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir and discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. With the help of her psychologist father, Fern digs deeper, hoping to find evidence that her connection to Astrid can help the police locate her. But the disturbing truth will change both of their lives forever.
Atria Books | 9781982130398

BEING LOLITA: A Memoir by Alisson Wood (Memoir)
A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing --- and in a young, charismatic English teacher. Mr. North gives Alisson a copy of LOLITA to read, telling her it is a beautiful story about love. The book soon becomes the backdrop to a connection that blooms from a simple crush into a forbidden romance. But as Mr. North’s hold on her tightens, Alisson is forced to evaluate how much of their narrative is actually a disturbing fiction. In the wake of what becomes a deeply abusive relationship, Alisson is faced again and again with the story of her past, from rereading LOLITA in college to working with teenage girls to becoming a professor of creative writing.
Flatiron Books | 9781250217219

THE BOOK OF ATLANTIS BLACK: The Search for a Sister Gone Missing by Betsy Bonner (True Crime/Memoir)
A young woman is found dead on the floor of a Tijuana hotel room. An ID in a nearby purse reads “Atlantis Black.” The police report states that the body does not seem to match the identification, yet the body is quickly cremated and the case is considered closed. So begins Betsy Bonner’s search for her sister, Atlantis, and the unraveling of the mysterious final months before Atlantis’ disappearance, alleged overdose and death. With access to her sister’s email and social media accounts, she attempts to decipher and construct a narrative. Through a history only she and Atlantis shared, Bonner finds questions that lead only to more questions and possible clues that seem to point in no particular direction.
Tin House Books | 9781947793774

THE BOYS' CLUB by Erica Katz (Fiction)
Alex Vogel has always been a high achiever who lived her life by the book. Accepting a dream offer at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, she promises her sweet and supportive longtime boyfriend that the job won’t change her. Yet Alex is seduced by the firm’s money and energy…and by her cocksure male colleagues. But as her clients’ expectations and demands on her increase, and Alex finds herself magnetically drawn to a handsome coworker, she begins to question everything. When something happens that reveals the dark reality of the firm, Alex can no longer stand by silently --- even if doing what’s right means putting everything on the line to expose the shocking truth.
Harper | 9780062961488

THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS by Becky Mandelbaum (Fiction)
It’s late 2016 when Ariel discovers that her mother Mona’s animal sanctuary in Western Kansas has not only been the target of anti-Semitic hate crimes, but that it’s also for sale, due to hidden financial ruin. Estranged from her mother for six years, Ariel knows she has to return to her childhood home --- especially since her own past may have played a role in the attack on the sanctuary. Ariel expects tension, maybe even fury, but she doesn’t anticipate that her first love, a ranch hand named Gideon, will still be working at the Bright Side. Meanwhile, Ariel’s charming but hapless fiancé, Dex, grows paranoid about her sudden departure. After uncovering Mona’s address, he sets out to confront Ariel, but instead finds her grappling with the life she’s abandoned.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982112981

BRONTË’S MISTRESS by Finola Austin (Historical Fiction)
Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson --- mistress of Thorp Green Hall --- has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more. All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë, and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Branwell has his own demons to contend with --- including living up to the ideals of his intelligent family --- but his presence is a breath of fresh air for Lydia. However, her new taste of passion comes with consequences.
Atria Books | 9781982137236

THE BUDDHIST ON DEATH ROW: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place by David Sheff (Biography)
While in San Quentin, serving a sentence for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was set up for the murder of a guard --- a conviction that landed him on death row, where he’s been since 1990. At the time of his murder trial, he was held in solitary confinement, torn by rage and anxiety, felled by headaches, seizures and panic attacks. A criminal investigator repeatedly offered to teach him breathing exercises, which he initially refused --- but then desperation caused him to change his mind. David Sheff describes Masters’ gradual but profound transformation from a man dedicated to hurting others to one who has prevented violence on the prison yard, counseled high school kids by mail, and helped prisoners --- and even guards --- find meaning in their lives.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982128456

CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (History/Sociology)
Beyond race, class or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma and more. Using riveting stories about people --- including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others --- she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. CASTE is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
Random House | 9780593230251

CONVINCE ME by Nina Sadowsky (Psychological Thriller)
When Justin Childs’ body is retrieved from the wreckage of a car accident, his death leaves his loved ones with more questions than answers. In life, his charm and easygoing nature inspired trust, making him friends wherever he went. Now that he’s gone, the cracks begin to show: disturbing discrepancies in his company’s financials, unaccounted-for absences, a medical record that appears to be entirely fabricated. As the secrets and betrayals pile up, his wife, mother and best friend realize their beloved Justin was not the man they thought he was. Was the crash that killed him really an accident --- or did Justin finally get caught in something he couldn’t lie his way out of?  
Ballantine Books | 9780525619901

CRY BABY: A Tom Thorne Novel by Mark Billingham (Mystery/Thriller)
In the summer of 1996, two boys run from a playground into the adjoining woods, but only one comes out. DS Tom Thorne takes on a case that quickly spirals out of control when two people connected with the missing boy are murdered. As London prepares to host the European Soccer Championships, Thorne fights to keep on top of a baffling investigation while also dealing with the ugly fallout of his broken marriage.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802149466

THE DAY LINCOLN LOST by Charles Rosenberg (Historical/Political Thriller)
Abby Kelley Foster arrived in Springfield, Illinois, with the fate of the nation on her mind. The famed abolitionist speaker knew that her first speech in the city would make headlines. One of the residents reading those headlines would be none other than the likely next president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln knew his chances of winning were good. But when her speech sparks violence, leading to her arrest and a high-profile trial, he suspects that his political rivals have conspired against him. President James Buchanan is one such rival. As his term ends and his political power crumbles, he makes one last move that might derail Lincoln’s campaign, steal the election and throw America into chaos.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335145222

DEAD WEST by Matt Goldman (Mystery)
Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles. He quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered, and that Ebben himself may have been the target. As Nils moves into Ebben’s inner circle, he discovers that everyone in Ebben’s professional life seems to have dubious motives at best. With Nils' friend Jameson White, who has come to Los Angeles to deal with demons of his own, acting as Ebben’s bodyguard, Nils sets out to find a killer before it’s too late.
Forge Books | 9781250191342

THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI by Akwaeke Emezi (Fiction)
Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, he finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens --- and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis --- the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
Riverhead Books | 9780525541608

THE EIGHTH DETECTIVE by Alex Pavesi (Mystery)
There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out --- and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days. Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories. But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250755933

ELIOT NESS AND THE MAD BUTCHER: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz (True Crime)
In 1934, the nation’s most legendary crime-fighter --- fresh from taking on the greatest gangster in American history --- arrived in Cleveland, a corrupt and dangerous town about to host a world's fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started turning up. The young detective, already battling the mob and crooked cops, found his drive to transform American policing subverted by a menace largely unknown to law enforcement: a serial murderer. Eliot Ness' greatest case had begun. Now, Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz uncover this lost crime epic, delivering a gripping nonfiction account based on decades of groundbreaking research.
William Morrow | 9780062881977

FALLOUT: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World by Lesley M.M. Blume (History)
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the U.S. government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked --- until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982128517

THE FINISHER: A Peter Diamond Investigation by Peter Lovesey (Mystery)
Through a particularly ill-fated series of events, Maeve Kelly, an elementary school teacher whose mother always assured her “curvy” girls shouldn’t waste their time trying to be fit, has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath’s springtime half marathon. The training is brutal, but she must disprove her mother and collect pledges for her aunt’s beloved charity. Meanwhile, Detective Peter Diamond is tasked with crowd control on the raucous day of the race --- and catches sight of a violent criminal he put away a decade ago. Diamond’s hackles are already up when he learns that one of the runners never crossed the finish line and disappeared without a trace. Was Diamond a spectator to murder?
Soho Crime | 9781641291811

THE FIRST TO LIE by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Psychological Thriller)
We all have our reasons for being who we are. But what if being someone else could get you what you want? After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed. What she doesn't know is that she isn't the only one plotting her revenge. An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who must choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?
Forge Books | 9781250258809

THE FIXED STARS: A Memoir by Molly Wizenberg (Memoir)
At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe. Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? THE FIXED STARS explores timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family.
Abrams Press | 9781419742996

THE FRIENDSHIP LIST by Susan Mallery (Fiction)
Single mom Ellen Fox couldn’t be more content --- until she overhears her son saying he can’t go to his dream college because she needs him too much. If she wants him to live his best life, she has to convince him she’s living hers. So Unity Leandre, her best friend since forever, creates a list of challenges to push Ellen out of her comfort zone. Unity will complete the list, too, but not because she needs to change. What’s wrong with a thirtysomething widow still sleeping in her late husband’s childhood bed? The Friendship List begins as a way to make others believe they’re just fine. But somewhere between “wear three-inch heels” and “have sex with a gorgeous guy,” Ellen and Unity discover that life is meant to be lived with joy and abandon.
HQN | 9781335136961

A FURIOUS SKY: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes by Eric Jay Dolin (History)
Hurricanes menace North America from June through November every year, each as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs. These megastorms will likely become more intense as the planet continues to warm, yet too often we treat them as local disasters and TV spectacles, unaware of how far-ranging their impact can be. As bestselling historian Eric Jay Dolin contends, we must look to our nation’s past if we hope to comprehend the consequences of the hurricanes of the future. With A FURIOUS SKY, Dolin has created a sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’s New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.
Liveright | 9781631495274

HARROW THE NINTH by Tamsyn Muir (Science Fiction/Space Opera)
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side by side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath --- but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her. Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: Is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?
Tor.com | 9781250313225

THE HOLLOW ONES: The Blackwood Tapes, Vol. 1 by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Odessa Hardwicke's life is derailed when she's forced to turn her gun on her partner, Walt Leppo, a decorated FBI agent who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defense, shakes the young FBI agent to her core. Devastated, Odessa is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation. But what most troubles her isn't the tragedy itself --- it's the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent's body after his death. A low-level assignment puts Odessa on the trail of a mysterious figure named Hugo Blackwood, who claims to have been alive for centuries, and who is either an unhinged lunatic, or humanity's best and only defense against unspeakable evil.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538761748

IMPERFECT WOMEN by Araminta Hall (Psychological Thriller)
When Nancy Hennessy is murdered, she leaves behind two best friends, an adoring husband and daughter, and a secret lover whose identity she took to the grave. Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy and cherished by those who knew her --- from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders, and Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other and maybe even themselves.
MCD | 9780374272586

IN THE VALLEY: Stories and a Novella Based on Serena by Ron Rash (Fiction/Short Stories)
In these 10 stories, Ron Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in --- rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain --- and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child who threatens all she has accomplished.
Doubleday | 9780385544290

INFERNO: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho (Memoir)
When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband James admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In INFERNO, Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to James.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250623713

THE LAST MRS. SUMMERS: A Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen (Historical Mystery)
Georgie’s best friend, Belinda, inherits a spooky house in Cornwall and asks Georgie to go with her to inspect the property. When they arrive, they meet Rose, a woman Belinda knew as a child when she spent her summers with her grandmother in Cornwall. Rose is now married to Tony Summers, Belinda’s childhood crush, but confides that she thinks Tony killed his first wife. She asks Georgie and Belinda to observe Tony’s behavior and their surroundings. But during a thunderstorm, the lights go out and Tony is found dead. All clues point to Belinda as the prime suspect. Now Georgie must uncover the secrets that led to Tony’s death and find out if he was villain or victim before Belinda takes the fall for his murder.
Berkley | 9780451492876

THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE by Fiona Davis (Historical Fiction)
Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she has wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes and books for the exhibit Sadie has been running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage --- truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.
Dutton | 9781524744618

THE LIVING DEAD by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus (Horror)
A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead. In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly risen friends and family. On a U.S. aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones, while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In D.C., an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.
Tor Books | 9781250305121

LUSTER by Raven Leilani (Fiction)
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s --- sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage --- with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home --- though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374194321

MIGRATIONS by Charlotte McConaghy (Fiction)
When the wild she loves begins to disappear, Franny Stone arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and track their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s dark history begins to unspool. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of unsent letters, and obsessed with pursuing the terns at any cost, she is full of secrets. When her quest threatens the safety of the entire crew, Franny must ask herself what she is really running toward --- and running from.
Flatiron Books | 9781250204028

THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS by A. N. Wilson (Biography)
Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his 58 years when he died. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, award-winning biographer A.N. Wilson seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity.
Harper | 9780062954947

THE NIGHT SWIM by Megan Goldin (Psychological Thriller)
The new season of Rachel Krall's true-crime podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation --- but she keeps receiving mysterious letters. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases --- and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250219688

THE PALACE: A Simon Riske Novel by Christopher Reich (Thriller)
Rafael de Bourbon recently married a wealthy English beauty and is days away from opening a luxury boutique hotel off the southern coast of Thailand. But when the Royal Thai Police storm the hotel and arrest him for blackmail and extortion, "Rafa" is thrown into Bangkok's most notorious jail. In desperation, he reaches out to the one man who can prove his innocence. Simon Riske, ex-con and now "private spy," owes Rafa his life. Once they were the closest of friends, until a woman came between them. Riske rushes to Bangkok to secure his friend's release, and overnight he finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue larger and more dangerous than he could imagine. In hours, it is Riske who finds himself the wanted man.
Mulholland Books | 9780316456012

A SAINT FROM TEXAS by Edmund White (Fiction)
Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far more dramatic and tragic fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy's land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams --- ones that will carry them far from Texas and from each other. As the decades unfold, Yvonne will ascend the highest ranks of Parisian society as Yvette gives herself to a lifetime of worship and service in the streets of Jericó, Colombia. And yet, even as they remake themselves in their radically different lives, the twins find that the bonds of family and the past are unbreakable.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635572551

THE SILENT WIFE by Karin Slaughter (Mystery/Thriller)
Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect. The man insists that he was framed by a corrupt law enforcement team led by Jeffrey Tolliver and that the real culprit is still out there. If Will reopens the investigation and implicates the dead police officer with a hero’s reputation of wrongdoing, the opportunistic convict is willing to provide the information GBI needs about the riot murder. Only days ago, another young woman was viciously murdered in a state park in northern Georgia. Is it a fluke, or could there be a serial killer on the loose?
William Morrow | 9780062858108

SIX DAYS IN AUGUST: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome by David King (True Crime)
On the morning of August 23, 1973, a man wearing a wig, makeup and a pair of sunglasses walked into the main branch of Sveriges Kreditbank, a prominent bank in central Stockholm. He ripped out a submachine gun, fired it into the ceiling and shouted, "The party starts!" This was the beginning of a six-day hostage crisis --- and media circus --- that would mesmerize the world. Complicated emotional relationships developed between captors and captives that would launch a remarkable new concept into the realm of psychology, hostage negotiation and popular culture. SIX DAYS IN AUGUST captures the surreal events in their entirety, on an almost minute-by-minute basis, and forces us to consider "Stockholm syndrome" in an entirely new light.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393635089

TRUE STORY by Kate Reed Petty (Fiction)
2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can't tell: the story of "the things that happened while I was asleep." 1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high school as the reigning state champions. They're on top of the world --- until two of his friends drive a passed-out girl home from one of the team's "legendary" parties, and a rumor about what happened in the backseat spreads through the town like wildfire. Nick descends into alcoholism, and Alice builds a life in fits and starts, underestimating herself and placing her trust in the wrong people. When she finally gets the opportunity to confront a past that she can't remember, will she take it?
Viking | 9781984877680

UNDER PRESSURE: A Lucas Page Novel by Robert Pobi (Thriller)
On a beautiful October evening, New York City's iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company's private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee --- yet the damage to the building itself was minimal. An explosion of that precision was no accident. In response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team, but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Dr. Lucas Page is uniquely gifted for the task at hand --- he can visualize a crime scene as if he was a bystander and can break down any set of data at a glance. Even though Page wants nothing to do with the FBI, with his city under attack and his family at risk, he steps in to find a killer in a haystack before they strike again.
Minotaur Books | 9781250293961

UNIVERSE OF TWO by Stephen P. Kiernan (Historical Fiction)
Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he works on designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. But he suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda --- unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task --- mistakes as self-doubt. Once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the feelings of culpability devastate him and Brenda. At the war’s end, Charlie receives a scholarship to pursue a PhD in physics at Stanford, but the past proves inescapable. Haunted by guilt, Charlie and Brenda decide to dedicate the rest of their lives to making amends for the evil he helped to birth into the world.
William Morrow | 9780062878441

THE WEEKEND by Charlotte Wood (Fiction)
Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather at Sylvie's old beach house to clean it out before it is sold. Can they survive together without her? Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface --- and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.
Riverhead Books | 9780593086438

WHY VISIT AMERICA: Stories by Matthew Baker (Fiction/Short Stories)
The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s WHY VISIT AMERICA. The book opens with a seemingly traditional story in which the speculative element is extremely minimal --- the narrator has a job that doesn’t actually exist --- a story that wouldn’t seem much out of place in a collection of literary realism. From there the stories get progressively stranger.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250237200

THE WICKED SISTER by Karen Dionne (Psychological Thriller)
For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents' deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family's sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. As Rachel begins to uncover what really happened on the day her parents were murdered, she learns --- as her mother did years earlier --- that home can be a place of unspeakable evil, and that the bond she shares with her sister might be the most poisonous of all.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780735213036

WITH OR WITHOUT YOU by Caroline Leavitt (Fiction)
Stella is a nurse who has long suppressed her own needs and desires to nurture the dreams of her partner, Simon, the bass player for a rock band that has started to lose its edge. But when Stella falls into a coma just as Simon is headed to a gig that could revive his career, Simon must learn the meaning of sacrifice, while Stella’s best friend, Libby, a doctor who treats Stella, must also make a difficult choice as the coma wears on. When Stella at last awakes from her two-month sleep, she emerges into a striking new reality where Simon and Libby have formed an intense bond, and where she has acquired a startling artistic talent of her own: the ability to draw portraits of people in which she captures their innermost feelings and desires.
Algonquin Books | 9781616207793

THE WOMAN IN RED by Diana Giovinazzo (Historical Fiction)
Destiny toys with us all, but Anita Garibaldi is a force to be reckoned with. Forced into marriage at a young age, Anita feels trapped in a union she does not want. But when she meets the leader of the Brazilian resistance, Giuseppe Garibaldi, in 1839, everything changes. Swept into a passionate affair with the idolized mercenary, Anita's life is suddenly consumed by the plight to liberate Southern Brazil from Portugal --- a struggle that would cost thousands of lives and span almost 10 bloody years. Little did she know that this first taste of revolution would lead her to cross oceans, traverse continents and alter the course of her entire life --- and the world.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538717417

On Sale the Week of August 3rd in Paperback

August 4th

1941: The Year Germany Lost the War by Andrew Nagorski (History)
In early 1941, Hitler’s armies ruled most of Europe. Churchill’s Britain was an isolated holdout against the Nazi tide, but German bombers were attacking its cities and German U-boats were attacking its ships. Stalin was observing the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Roosevelt was vowing to keep the United States out of the war. But by the end of 1941, Hitler had repeatedly gambled on escalation and lost: by invading the Soviet Union and committing a series of disastrous military blunders; by making mass murder and terror his weapons of choice, and by rushing to declare war on the United States after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Britain emerged with two powerful new allies: Russia and the United States. By then, Germany was doomed to defeat.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501181139

AN ACCIDENTAL CORPSE: An Art of Murder Mystery by Helen A. Harrison (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
On the night of August 11, 1956, in a quiet East Hampton hamlet, Jackson Pollock crashed his car into a tree. The accident killed Pollock, the world-renowned abstract painter and notorious alcoholic, and his 25-year old passenger, Edith Metzger. Or did it? Metzger's autopsy reveals that she was already dead before the crash. Was it murder? This shocking question draws vacationing Detective Juanita Diaz and her husband, Captain Brian Fitzgerald, of the NYPD into a homicide investigation that implicates famous members of East Hampton's art community --- including Pollock himself.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728213972

THE ACCOMPLICE by Joseph Kanon (Historical Thriller)
Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz --- nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley --- an American CIA desk analyst --- to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.,
Washington Square Press | 9781501121432

ALL THE FLOWERS IN PARIS by Sarah Jio (Fiction)
When Caroline wakes up in a Paris hospital with no memory of her past, she’s confused to learn that for years she’s lived a sad, reclusive life in a sprawling apartment on the rue Cler. A budding friendship with the chef of a charming nearby restaurant takes her mind off her foggy past, as does a startling mystery from decades prior. In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young widow named Céline is trying to build a new life for her daughter. Then a ruthless German officer discovers her Jewish ancestry, and Céline is forced to play a dangerous game to secure the safety of her loved ones. When Caroline discovers Céline’s letters tucked away in a closet, she realizes that her apartment harbors dark secrets --- and that she may have more in common with Céline than she ever could have imagined.
Ballantine Books | 9781101885079

AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL LIVE by JoAnn Chaney (Psychological Thriller)
Matt frantically tells park rangers that he and his wife, Marie, were hiking when she fell off a cliff into the raging river below. They start a search, but they aren’t hopeful: no one could have survived that fall. It was a tragic accident. But Matt’s first wife also died under suspicious circumstances. And when the police pull a body out of the river, they have a lot more questions for Matt. Detectives Loren and Spengler want to know if Matt is a grieving, twice-unlucky husband or a cold-blooded murderer. They dig into the couple’s lives to see what they can unearth. And they find that love’s got teeth, it’s got claws, and once it hitches you to a person, it’s tough to rip yourself free. So what happens when you’re done making it work?
Flatiron Books | 9781250268594

AUNTIE POLDI AND THE HANDSOME ANTONIO written by Mario Giordano, translated by John Brownjohn (Mystery)
Paperback Original
All the beloved, irascible Auntie Poldi wanted from her Sicilian retirement was time to enjoy the sunshine, a free-flowing supply of wine, and a sultry romance with Chief Inspector Vito Montana. But then her idyll is rudely disrupted by the last person she wants to see on her doorstep: John Owenya, detective inspector with the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs, who is also her estranged lying cheat of a husband. Not only is John's sudden reappearance putting a kink in Poldi's dreamy love affair with Montana, but his presence also comes with a plea for help --- and unwanted clashes with the Mafia. Where is John's half-brother? What is the 10-million-dollar "it" that John's brother was last seen with, which has both the Sicilian and the Tanzanian mobs in a frenzy?
Mariner Books | 9780358309420

BAD NEWS TRAVELS by James Swain (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
The shocking suicide of Beth Daniels’ father, a prominent surgeon, has thrown the FBI agent into a tailspin. But when Beth heads to Saint Augustine, Florida, for the funeral, she’ll need more than the emotional support of her boyfriend, retired detective Jon Lancaster. She’ll need his gut instinct for solving a mystery. No sooner do they arrive than suspicions are aroused. There’s the pair of Russians who seem to be watching every move the family makes. A final, cryptic phone call Martin Daniels made to his granddaughter. Strange blood evidence on his estate. More than $1 million missing from Martin’s account. And his cell phone, wiped clean, along with clues to a double life. To Beth, it’s disturbingly clear: the man she loved was a stranger.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542016445

BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption by Ben Mezrich (Biography)
Ben Mezrich's 2009 bestseller, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES, is the definitive account of Facebook's founding and the basis for the Academy Award–winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers and foils to Mark Zuckerberg. BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES is the story of the brothers’ redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook.
Flatiron Books | 9781250217769

A BOOKSHOP IN BERLIN: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman's Harrowing Escape from the Nazis by Françoise Frenkel (Memoir)
In 1921, Françoise Frenkel --- a Jewish woman from Poland --- opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin’s first French bookshop. It becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise’s dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.
Atria Books | 9781501199851

THE BUTTERFLY GIRL by Rene Denfeld (Thriller)
A year ago, Naomi, the investigator with an uncanny ability to find missing children, made a promise that she would not take another case until she finds the younger sister who has been missing for years. The search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets. Though she does not want to get involved, Naomi is unable to resist the pull of children in need --- and the fear she sees in the eyes of a 12-year-old girl named Celia. Running from an abusive stepfather and an addict mother, Celia has nothing but hope in the butterflies --- her guides and guardians on the dangerous streets. As danger creeps closer, Naomi and Celia are forced to consider the question: Can you still be lost even when you’ve been found?
Harper Perennial | 9780062698179

CEMETERY ROAD by Greg Iles (Thriller)
Marshall McEwan is one of the most successful journalists in Washington, D.C. But when he discovers that his father is terminally ill, he must return home to face the unfinished business of his past. On arrival, he finds Bienville, Mississippi, very much changed. His family’s 150-year-old newspaper is failing; and Jet Talal, the love of his youth, has married into the family of Max Matheson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker Club. To Marshall’s surprise, the Poker Club has taken a town on the brink of extinction and offered it salvation, in the form of a billion-dollar Chinese paper mill. But on the verge of the deal being consummated, two murders rock Bienville to its core, threatening far more than the city’s economic future.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062824684

CITY OF WINDOWS by Robert Pobi (Thriller)
During the worst blizzard in memory, an FBI agent in a moving SUV in New York City is killed by a nearly impossible sniper shot. Unable to pinpoint where the shot came from, the agent-in-charge, Brett Kehoe, turns to the one man who might be able to help them --- former FBI agent Lucas Page. A university professor and bestselling author, Page left the FBI years ago after a tragic event robbed him of a leg, an arm, an eye and the willingness to continue. With a new wife and family, Page has no interest in helping the FBI --- except for the fact that the victim was his former partner. Agreeing to help for his partner’s sake, Page finds himself hunting a killer with an unknown agenda and amazing sniper skills in the worst of conditions.
Minotaur Books | 9781250776662

THE CONFESSION CLUB by Elizabeth Berg (Fiction)
When a group of friends in Mason, Missouri, decide to start a monthly supper club, they get more than they bargained for. The plan for congenial evenings abruptly changes course one night when one of the women reveals something startlingly intimate. The supper club then becomes Confession Club, and the women gather weekly to share not only dinners but embarrassing misdeeds, deep insecurities and long-held regrets. They invite Iris Winters and Maddy Harris to join, and their timing couldn't be better. Iris is conflicted about her feelings for a charming but troubled man, and Maddy has come back home from New York to escape a problem too big to handle alone. The club offers exactly the kind of support they need to help them make some difficult decisions.
Ballantine Books | 9781984855190

A COSMOLOGY OF MONSTERS by Shaun Hamill (Horror)
In the late '60s, the bookish Margaret marries Lovecraft-lover Harry against her better judgment. The couple has two daughters --- Sydney, born for the spotlight, and the brilliant but awkward Eunice, a natural writer and storyteller. But finances are tight, Margaret and Eunice are haunted by horrific dreams, and Harry starts acting strangely. He becomes obsessed with the construction of an elaborately crafted haunted house attraction, christened the Wandering Dark. The family tries to shield baby Noah from the house's faux horrors, but unbeknownst to them, he's being visited by a furry beast with glowing orange eyes --- the same ghastly being glimpsed by both his mother and sister. However, unlike them, Noah decides to let the creature in.
Vintage | 9780525563921

THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction)
Yetu holds the memories for her people --- water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners --- who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone except for the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu, who remembers for everyone, but the memories are destroying her. So she flees to the surface and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past --- and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity --- and own who they really are.
Gallery/Saga Press | 9781534439870

EVERY BONE A PRAYER by Ashley Blooms (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Misty's holler looks like any of the thousands of hollers that fork through the Appalachian Mountains. But Misty knows her home is different. She may be only 10, but she hears things. Even the crawdads in the creek have something to say, if you listen. All that Misty's sister, Penny, wants to talk about are the strange objects that start appearing outside their trailer. The grown-ups mutter about sins and punishment, but that doesn't scare Misty. Not like the hurtful thing that's been happening to her, the hurtful thing that is becoming part of her. Ever since her neighbor, William, cornered her in the barn, she must figure out how to get back to the Misty she was before --- the Misty who wasn't afraid to listen.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728216218

FIND ME by André Aciman (Fiction)
André Aciman’s CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has sold nearly three quarters of a million copies, and the book became an Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love. In FIND ME, Elio’s father, Samuel, is on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.
Picador | 9781250758071

FIRE & BLOOD: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (A Targaryen History)
written by George R. R. Martin, illustrations by Doug Wheatley (Fantasy)
Centuries before the events of A GAME OF THRONES, House Targaryen --- the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria --- took up residence on Dragonstone. FIRE & BLOOD begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel.
Bantam | 9781524796303

GENESIS by Robin Cook (Medical Thriller)
When the body of social worker Kera Jacobsen shows up on Chief New York City Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery's autopsy table, it appears she was the victim of a drug overdose. But Kera's family and friends swear she never touched drugs. And although Kera was 10 weeks pregnant, nobody knows who the father was --- or what he might know about Kera's final moments alive. With Laurie temporarily sidelined by a medical emergency, her new pathology resident, Dr. Aria Nichols, turns to a controversial new technique: collaborating with experts at a start-up ancestry website to trace the fetus's DNA in the hopes of identifying the mystery father. But when Kera's fellow social worker is murdered, it becomes clear that someone doesn't want Kera's secrets to come to light.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525542179

HEART OF BARKNESS: A Chet & Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn (Mystery)
Chet the dog and P.I. Bernie are both music lovers. So when Lotty Pilgrim, a country singer from long ago, turns up at a local bar, they drive out to catch her act. Bernie is surprised to see someone who was once so big performing in such a dive, and drops a C-note the Little Detective Agency can’t afford to part with into the tip jar. The C-note is stolen right from under their noses, and before the night is over, it’s stolen again. Soon they’re working the most puzzling case of their career, a case that takes them back in time in search of old border-town secrets, and into present-day danger where powerful people want those secrets to stay hidden.
Forge Books | 9781250297730

LAND OF WOLVES: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson (Mystery)
Recovering from his harrowing experiences in Mexico, Sheriff Walt Longmire returns to Absaroka County, Wyoming, to try once again to maintain justice in a place with grudges that go back generations. When a shepherd is found dead, Longmire suspects it could be suicide. But the shepherd's connection to the Extepares, a powerful family of Basque ranchers with a history of violence, leads the sheriff into an intricate investigation of a possible murder. And when a young boy with ties to the Extepare clan arrives in town, the stakes grow even higher. Even more complicating, a renegade wolf has been haunting the Bighorn Mountains, and the townspeople are out for blood. With both a wolf and a killer on the loose, Longmire follows a twisting trail of evidence, leading to dark and shocking conclusions.
Penguin Books | 9780525522522

THE LONG ACCOMPLISHMENT: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony by Rick Moody (Memoir)
At the start of THE LONG ACCOMPLISHMENT, Rick Moody, a recovering alcoholic and sexual compulsive with a history of depression, is also the divorced father of a beloved little girl and a man in love. His answer to the question “Would you like to be in a committed relationship?” is, fully and for the first time in his life, “Yes.” And so his second marriage begins as he emerges from the wreckage of his past, only to be battered by a stormy sea of external troubles --- miscarriages, the deaths of friends and robberies, just for starters. To Moody’s astonishment, matrimony turns out to be the site of strength in hard times, a vessel infinitely tougher and more durable than any boat these two participants would have traveled by alone.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250214799

LONG RANGE: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One survivor of the grizzly's rampage tells a bizarre story, but just as Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems, he is brought home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife is severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers --- and the shooter. The search for the would-be assassin becomes personal when Joe's best friend, Nate Romanowski --- just as he's adjusting to the arrival of his first child --- falls under suspicion for the crime.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525538264

THE LOST JEWELS by Kirsty Manning (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
When jewelry historian Kate Kirby receives a call about the Cheapside jewels, she knows she’s on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. But the trip to London forces Kate to explore secrets that have long been buried by her own family. Back in Boston, Kate has uncovered a series of sketches linking her suffragette great-grandmother Essie to the Cheapside collection. Could these sketches hold the key to Essie’s secret life in Edwardian London? In the summer of 1912, impoverished Irish immigrant Essie Murphy is visiting her brother when a workman’s pickaxe strikes through the floor of an old tenement house in Cheapside. The workmen uncover a stash of treasure --- from Ottoman pendants to Elizabethan and Jacobean gems --- and then the finds disappear again. Could these jewels, one in particular, change the fortunes of Essie and her sisters?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062882028

MAN OF THE YEAR by Caroline Louise Walker (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Dr. Robert Hart, Sag Harbor’s just-named Man of the Year, is the envy of his friends and neighbors. His medical practice is thriving. He has a beautiful old house, a beautiful new wife and a beautiful boat docked in the village marina. Even his wayward son, Jonah, is back on track, doing well at school, finally worthy of his father’s attentions. So when Jonah’s troubled college roommate needs a place to stay for the summer, Robert and his wife generously offer him their guest house. But when Robert suspects his new houseguest of getting a little too close to his wife, the good doctor’s veneer begins to crack. Before long, Robert is embroiled in a desperate downward spiral, threatening to destroy anyone who stands in his way.
Gallery Books | 9781982100469

MY LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: Essays by Laura Lippman (Essays)
Paperback Original
In this collection of original and previously published nonfiction essays, New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman offers readers an introspective look into various facets of her life. Her childhood and school years, her successful career as a newspaper reporter, the challenge of balance, her life as a novelist and a reader --- Lippman’s takes on these universal subjects offer as many twists as her award-winning crime fiction. Of the 16 essays, only three have appeared in book form before.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062997333

THE NANNY by Gilly Macmillan (Psychological Thriller)
When her beloved nanny, Hannah, left without a trace in the summer of 1988, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt was devastated. Haunted by the loss, Jo grew up bitter and distant, and eventually left her parents and Lake Hall, their faded aristocratic home, behind. Thirty years later, Jo returns to the house and is forced to confront her troubled relationship with her mother. But when human remains are accidentally uncovered in a lake on the estate, Jo begins to question everything she thought she knew. Then an unexpected visitor knocks on the door, and Jo’s world is destroyed again. Desperate to piece together the gaping holes in her memory, Jo must uncover who her nanny really was, why she left, and if she can trust her own mother.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062875563

NO WOODS SO DARK AS THESE: A Ryan DeMarco Mystery by Randall Silvis (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Former Sergeant Ryan DeMarco's life has been spent in defiance --- he's defied death, loneliness and betrayal, all while fighting the worst parts of humanity. He's earned a break, and following the devastation of their last case, DeMarco and his girlfriend Jayme want nothing more than to live quietly in each other's company. But dreams of a peaceful life together are shattered when two bodies are discovered in a smoldering car in the woods, and another is found brutally mutilated nearby. Much as he'd like to leave the case to his former colleagues, dark forces are at play, and DeMarco cannot escape the vortex of lies, betrayal and desperation. He and Jayme are dragged back into the fray, where they must confront the shady dealings of a close-knit rural community.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781492665625

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 | 9780593098936

PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU by Ellen Feldman (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Living through World War II, working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim. She is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Ellen Feldman's PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU is an extraordinary story of resilience, love and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250622778

A PURE HEART by Rajia Hassib (Fiction)
Sisters Rose and Gameela Gubran could not have been more different. Rose, an Egyptologist, married an American journalist and immigrated to New York City. Gameela, a devout Muslim since her teenage years, stayed in Cairo. During the aftermath of Egypt's revolution, Gameela is killed in a suicide bombing. When Rose returns to Egypt, she sifts through the artifacts Gameela left behind, desperate to understand how her sister came to die. Soon, Rose realizes that Gameela has left many questions unanswered. Why had she quit her job just a few months before her death and not told her family? Who was she romantically involved with? And how did the religious Gameela manage to keep so many secrets?
Penguin Books | 9780525560074

RIGHT AFTER THE WEATHER by Carol Anshaw (Fiction)
It’s the fall of 2016. Cate, a set designer, lives and works in Chicago’s theater community. She has stayed too long at the fair and knows it’s time to get past her prolonged adolescence and stop taking handouts from her parents. Only a few blocks away, but in a parallel universe, we find Nathan and Irene --- casual sociopaths, drug addicts and small-time criminals. Their world and Cate’s intersect the day she finds these strangers assaulting her friend, Neale. Forced to take fast, spontaneous action, Cate does something she’s never even considered. She now also knows the violence she is capable of, as does everyone else in her life, and overnight, their world has changed.
Washington Square Press | 9781476747804

ROUGHHOUSE FRIDAY: A Memoir by Jaed Coffin (Memoir)
While lifting weights in the Seldon Jackson College gymnasium on a rainy autumn night, Jaed Coffin hears the distinctive whacking sound of sparring boxers down the hall. A year out of college, he has been biding his time as a tutor at a local high school in Sitka, Alaska, without any particular life plan. That evening, Coffin joins a ragtag boxing club; despite feeling initially terrified, he learns to fight. His coach, Victor “the Savage,” invites him to participate in the monthly Roughhouse Friday competition, where men contend for the title of best boxer in southeast Alaska. With every successive match, Coffin realizes that he isn’t just fighting for the championship belt; he is also learning to confront the anger he feels about a past he never knew how to make sense of.
Picador | 9781250619549

THE STARLESS SEA by Erin Morgenstern (Fantasy/Romance)
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
Anchor | 9781101971383

SWEET SORROW by David Nicholls (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Now: On the verge of marriage and a fresh start, 38-year-old Charlie Lewis finds that he can’t stop thinking about the past, and the events of one particular summer. Then: Sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis looks after his depressed father, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. But when Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. In order to spend time with Fran, Charlie must join the Company. The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” learned and performed in a theater troupe over the course of a summer. Now: Charlie can’t go to the altar without coming to terms with his relationship with Fran, his friends and his former self.
Mariner Books | 9780358248361

TENDER IS THE FLESH written by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and he tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat --- “special meat” --- is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon he becomes tortured by what has been lost --- and what might still be saved.
Scribner | 9781982150921

TRAVEL LIGHT, MOVE FAST by Alexandra Fuller (Memoir)
After her father’s sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins TRAVEL LIGHT, MOVE FAST, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and who was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen all together, all at once --- or not at all. Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.
Penguin Books | 9781101979815

TRAVELERS by Helon Habila (Fiction)
A Nigerian graduate student who has made his home in America knows what it means to strike out for new shores. When his wife proposes that he accompany her to Berlin, where she has been awarded a prestigious arts fellowship, he has his reservations. In Berlin, Helon Habila’s central character finds himself thrown into contact with a community of African immigrants and refugees whose lives previously seemed distant from his own, but to which he is increasingly drawn. The walls between his privileged, secure existence and the stories of these other Africans on the move soon crumble, and his sense of identity begins to dissolve as he finds that he no longer can separate himself from others’ horrors, or from Africa.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393358070

WE ARE THE WEATHER: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer (Science/Environment)
Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response? The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves --- with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat --- and don’t eat --- for breakfast.
Picador | 9781250757975

WHERE THE LIGHT ENTERS: Building a Family, Discovering Myself by Jill Biden (Memoir)
"How did you get this number?" Those were the first words Jill Biden spoke to U.S. senator Joe Biden when he called her out of the blue to ask her on a date. Growing up, Jill had wanted two things: a marriage like her parents' and a career. An early heartbreak had left her uncertain about love, until she met Joe. But as they grew closer, Jill faced difficult questions: How would politics shape her family and professional life? And was she ready to become a mother to Joe's two young sons? This is the story of how Jill built a family --- and a life --- of her own. From the pranks she played to keep everyone laughing to the traditions she formed that would carry them through tragedy, hers is the spirited journey of a woman embracing many roles.
Flatiron Books | 9781250182340

WHERE MEMORY LEADS: My Life by Saul Friedländer (Memoir)
Forty years after his acclaimed, poignant first memoir, WHEN MEMORY COMES, Saul Friedländer returns with WHERE MEMORY LEADS, bridging the gap between the ordeals of his childhood and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. After abandoning his youthful conversion to Catholicism, he rediscovers his Jewish roots as a teenager and builds a new life in Israeli politics. Most importantly, this memoir led Friedländer to reflect on the wrenching events that induced him to devote 16 years of his life to writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.
Other Press | 9781635420494

THE WHISPERER: An Inspector Sejer Mystery by Karin Fossum (Mystery)
Ragna Riegel is a woman of routines. She sits in the same seat on the bus every day on her way to her predictable job at a supermarket. On her way back to the house she has always lived in, she visits the same local shop. She feels safe, until one day she receives a letter with a threatening message scrawled in capital letters. Ragna’s carefully constructed life beings to unravel into a nightmare. Isolated and threatened by an unknown enemy, she must use all her means to defend herself. When the worst happens, Inspector Konrad Sejer is called in to interrogate Ragna. Is this unassuming woman out of her depth, or is she hiding a dark secret?
Mariner Books | 9780358299608

YOU HAD ME AT HOLA by Alexis Daria (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow --- until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez. But after a disastrous first impression, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. Rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.
Avon | 9780062959928

Please visit the other websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com: ReadingGroupGuides.com and AuthorsOnTheWeb.com.

And be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.