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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 $34,450 of our $50,000 goal.
You can read about our plans and donate here. If you would prefer donating via check, please send to:
The Book Report, Inc.
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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 August 3rd and August 10th 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 special contest for Ayad Akhtar's highly anticipated new novel, HOMELAND ELEGIES, a deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams. Twenty-five readers will win a finished copy of the book, which doesn't release until September 15th. The deadline for your entries is Friday, August 14th at noon ET.
We also are spotlighting the release of WITH OR WITHOUT YOU, a story of love, loyalty, loss and resilience. New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt writes novels that expertly explore the struggles and conflicts that people face in their search for happiness. For the characters in her latest book, it seems at first that such happiness can come only at someone else’s expense.
Be sure to check out Carol's latest "Bookreporter Talks To" interviews with Alice Feeney and Jill McCorkle.
Alice Feeney's new psychological thriller, HIS & HERS (an upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On pick), has dueling multiple narrators who tell unexpected sides of the same story in a murder case where the suspect could be any number of people. Alice and Carol discussed the many layers in the book, first with the characters on the surface, and then the many ways that Alice was able to convey their inner shadows. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast. Don't miss Carol's Bets On commentary in the August 7th Bookreporter Weekly Update newsletter.
Jill McCorkle's HIEROGLYPHICS is a novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations. The idea for the book came from two real-life events: the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston and a train wreck in Rennert, North Carolina, a year later. Carol talked about the careful way that you'll want to read Jill’s books so you don't miss small but meaningful details, and Jill shared a surprise that she layered in for readers of her 2013 novel, LIFE AFTER LIFE. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
Our Next Live Virtual Reader Event
The Book Report Network Presents:
Bookaccino Live – A Lively Talk About Books
Wednesday, August 12th at 2pm ET
Last but certainly not least, don’t forget that on Wednesday, August 12th at 2pm ET, we will be hosting our virtual event, "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books”, via Zoom for the second time. Carol will present titles releasing in late August and September, along with a few from October, that she thinks will be of interest to our readers. We are limiting attendance to the first 500 attendees, so now is the time to sign up!
If you already signed up for this session, please do not sign up again. This will help us keep an accurate audience count. Stay tuned as we are planning a special evening event for the 24th anniversary of Bookreporter on Thursday, August 27th.
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: WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
by Caroline Leavitt
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU by Caroline Leavitt (Fiction)
New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt returns with her new novel, WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.
Stella and Simon’s marriage is tested when Stella unexpectedly falls into a coma just as Simon is preparing to fly with his band to Los Angeles for 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, also must make a difficult choice as the coma wears on.
Stella awakes from her two-month sleep into a striking new reality where Simon and Libby have formed an intense bond, and where she discovers that 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. Stella’s whole identity, but also her role in her relationships, has been scrambled, and she has the chance to form a new life, one she hadn’t even realized she wanted.
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU is a page-turner that asks the question: What do we owe the other people in our lives, and when does the cost become too great?
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, August 5th 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 Elin Hilderbrand, whose latest novel is 28 SUMMERS.
Wednesday, August 5th at 8pm ET: St. Louis County Public Library & Left Bank Books Virtual Event: Join the St. Louis County Public Library and Left Bank Books for a thrilling party with surprise guests to celebrate Karin Slaughter's 20th novel, THE SILENT WIFE, which is now available.
Wednesday, August 5th at 10pm ET: Bookshop Santa Cruz Virtual Event: Join Bookshop Santa Cruz for an online event with David Sheff as he discusses his new book, THE BUDDHIST ON DEATH ROW: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place.
Thursday, August 6th through Sunday, August 9th: East Hampton Library’s Annual Authors Night: Tickets are now on sale for East Hampton Library’s 16th Annual Authors Night, presented this year as a series of interactive online Zoom events. Each one-hour author event will be in the format of a conversation between the featured author and a noted interviewer, followed by a moderated question-and-answer period with the participating online audience.
Thursday, August 6th at 7pm ET: RJ Julia Booksellers Virtual Event: Stolen books, rare manuscripts and two bestselling authors make for a fascinating evening! Fiona Davis will discuss her latest novel, THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE, with Adriana Trigiani.
Thursday, August 6th at 8pm ET: Magic City Books Virtual Event: Magic City Books is excited to welcome internationally bestselling authors Shari Lapena and Riley Sager for a virtual event. Lapena is the author of four previous bestselling books, and her latest thriller, THE END OF HER, is one of the most highly anticipated books of the summer.
Friday, August 7th at 7pm ET: Margaret Mitchell House Virtual Event: Shari Lapena will be in conversation with fellow New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner about her new novel, THE END OF HER.
Saturday, August 8th at 6pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Fiona Davis will discuss her latest novel, THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE, with Barbara Peters and author Kate Quinn.
Sunday, August 9th at 3pm ET: Murder By The Book Virtual Event: Murder By The Book presents a virtual event with John Grisham and James Lee Burke. Burke will discuss his 40th book, A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL, which releases on August 11th.
Monday, August 10th at 7pm ET: Parnassus Books Virtual Event: Jill McCorkle, whose latest novel is HIEROGLYPHICS, will be in conversation with author Silas House.
Wednesday, August 12th at 2pm ET: The Book Report Network Presents: Bookaccino Live – A Lively Talk About Books: Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing in late August and September, along with a few from October, that she would like to get on your radar.
This Week's Bonus News: Our Special Contest for HOMELAND ELEGIES by Ayad Akhtar
On Sale September 15th
Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of DISGRACED and AMERICAN DERVISH, returns with a long-awaited new novel. In HOMELAND ELEGIES, an immigrant father and his son search for belonging --- in post-Trump America, and with each other. We have 25 finished copies to give away to those who would like to preview the book, which releases on September 15th. To enter, please fill out this form by Friday, August 14th at noon ET.
HOMELAND ELEGIES by Ayad Akhtar (Fiction)
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, HOMELAND ELEGIES blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son and the country they both call home.
Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation’s unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one --- least of all himself --- in the process.
- Click here to read more about the book.
- Click here to read an excerpt.
- Click here to visit Ayad Akhtar's website.
- Connect with Ayad Akhtar on Facebook and Twitter.
Click here to enter the contest.
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
On Sale the Week of August 10th in Hardcover
August 11th
BEFORE YOU GO by Tommy Butler (Fiction)
In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake --- if it was a mistake --- until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support group on the edge of Manhattan. There he meets Sasha, who leaves coded messages in the copy she writes for advertising campaigns, and Bannor, whose detailed depictions of the future make Elliot think he may have actually been there. With these two unlikely allies, Elliot launches into the business of life, determined to be happy in spite of himself. Yet the hole in the heart is not so easily filled.
Harper | 9780062934963
THE BOY IN THE FIELD by Margot Livesey (Fiction)
One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe and Duncan Lang discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage.
Harper | 9780062946393
CHOPPY WATER: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods (Thriller/Adventure)
Stone Barrington and his friends are vacationing in Maine when their leisure is suddenly disrupted by extreme weather. To make matters worse, the inclement conditions allow for a menacing adversary to sneak in unnoticed and deliver a chilling message. Soon it becomes clear that the target of the incident is one of Stone's closest companions, and that these enemies have a grander scheme in mind. From the bustling streets of New York City to the sun-drenched shores of Key West, Stone intends to nab the criminals that appear behind him at every step. But his search only leads him further down a trail of peril and corruption, and he'll soon find that at the end of the road is a more dangerous foe than he could have imagined.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593188293
A HOUSE IS A BODY: Stories by Shruti Swamy (Fiction/Short Stories)
Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the 12 arresting stories of A HOUSE IS A BODY. In “Earthly Pleasures,” a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s professional crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain and power that contain the world.
Algonquin Books | 9781616209896
LAST CALL ON DECATUR STREET by Iris Martin Cohen (Fiction)
Despite vowing never to return to New Orleans when she left for college, Rosemary quickly finds herself back in her hometown --- kicked out of school, at odds with her best friend, and desperate to lose herself in a bright, kaleidoscopic nightlife of dive bars and burlesque dancing. This night, though, is different. An unlikely companion, a secret sorrow and an unexpected visitor force Rosemary to break free. From the burlesque stage in the French Quarter, strip clubs to strangers’ beds, a secret garden in Jackson Square, and ending at a raucous masquerade party, this night becomes a journey for Rosemary to come to grips with her past, grieve for those she has lost, and maybe --- finally --- acknowledge that she too deserves redemption.
Park Row | 9780778308164
THE LAST UNCHARTED SKY: Book Three in The Risen Kingdoms by Curtis Craddock (Historical Fantasy)
Isabelle and Jean-Claude undertake an airship expedition to recover a fabled treasure and claim a hitherto undiscovered craton for l'Empire Celeste. But Isabelle, resulting from a previous attack that tried to subsume her body and soul, suffers from increasingly disturbing and disruptive hallucinations. Disasters are compounded when the ship is sabotaged by an enemy agent, and Jean-Claude is separated from the expedition. In a race against time, Isabelle must figure out how to ward off her ailment before it destroys her and reunite with Jean-Claude to seek the fabled treasure as ancient secrets and a royal conspiracy threaten to undo the entire realm.
Tor Books | 9780765389657
LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL by Ronan Hession (Fiction)
Popular Irish musician Ronan Hession tells the story of two single, thirty-something men who still live with their parents and who are…nice. They take care of their parents and play board games together. They like to read. They take satisfaction from their work. They are resolutely kind. And they realize that none of this is considered…normal. LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL is the story of two friends struggling to protect their understanding of what’s meaningful in life.
Melville House | 9781612198484
LONE JACK TRAIL by Owen Laukkanen (Thriller/Adventure)
When a body washes up outside Deception Cove, Washington, Jess Winslow --- once a U.S. Marine, now a trainee sheriff's deputy --- is assigned to investigate. But when she realizes it's "Bad" Brock Boyd, a hometown celebrity lately fallen from grace, things become complicated. The last person seen with Boyd was her own boyfriend, Mason Burke. An ex-convict and newcomer in town, Mason is one of the only people who can understand Jess' haunting memories of her time in Afghanistan --- and her love for Lucy, her devoted service dog. However, as the facts of the case point ever more squarely at Mason, Jess must face that everything she thinks she knows about him might be wrong.
Mulholland Books | 9780316448758
THE MONSTERS WE MAKE by Kali White (Mystery/Thriller)
It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing. Hours later, 12-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, hiding a terrible secret. Crystal, Sammy's 17-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award-winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship --- and a ticket out of their small Iowa town. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, officer Dale Goodkind is forced to face his own demons.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643853888
THE NEW CHARDONNAY: The Unlikely Story of How Marijuana Went Mainstream by Heather Cabot (Business & Economics/Social Science)
In this deeply reported journey into the new world of legal cannabis, award-winning reporter Heather Cabot takes readers on the road with Snoop Dogg and his business partner, Ted Chung, as they roll out the star’s own brand of bud; to California wine country, where chefs and vintners are ushering in a new age of elevated dining; on wild adventures with marijuana mogul Beth Stavola, for whom fending off shady characters is just another day at the office; and to rural Canada to meet the Willy Wonka of Weed. Drawing on exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in the world of cannabis, THE NEW CHARDONNAY explores the confluence of social, economic and political forces that have brought marijuana into the mainstream.
Currency | 9781984826244
THE NEW WILDERNESS by Diane Cook (Fiction)
Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now. Bea, Agnes and 18 others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.
Harper | 9780062333131
OLIVE THE LIONHEART: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman's Journey into the Heart of Africa by Brad Ricca (Biography)
In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a 30-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa. So she went to find him. In jungles, swamps, cities and deserts, Olive and her two companions, the Talbots, come face to face with cobras and crocodiles, wise native chiefs, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. Olive awakens to the many forces around her, from shadowy colonial powers to an invisible Islamic warlord who may hold the key to Boyd’s disappearance. As these secrets begin to unravel, Olive is forced to confront the darkest, most shocking secret of all: why she really came to Africa in the first place.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250207012
A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke (Thriller)
The Shondell and Balangie families are longtime enemies in the New Iberia criminal underworld and show each other no mercy. Yet their youngest heirs, Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie, have fallen in love and run away after Isolde was given as a sex slave to Johnny’s uncle. As he seeks to uncover why, Detective Dave Robicheaux gets too close to both Isolde’s mother and the mistress of her father, a venomous New Orleans mafioso whose jealousy has no bounds. In retribution, he hires a mysterious assassin to go after Robicheaux and his longtime partner, Clete Purcel. In order to defeat the hitman and rescue Johnny and Isolde, Robicheaux will have to overcome the demons that have tormented him throughout his adult life.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982151683
THEN SHE VANISHED by T. Jefferson Parker (Thriller)
Private Investigator Roland Ford has taken a job for a fellow Marine and a rising politician, Dalton Strait. His wife, Natalie, has gone missing, leaving behind a cryptic plea for help. Strait has made many enemies during his time in politics, all of whom could be looking for revenge. But as Ford digs into the details of a troubled marriage, Natalie's disappearance becomes more and more complicated. Meanwhile, the bombings in the city intensify, with a mysterious group known only as the Chaos Committee claiming responsibility. Ford soon learns that the seemingly random attacks may be connected to the case he's on --- and suddenly, his hunt for a missing woman might decide the fate of an entire city.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525537670
A TRAVELER AT THE GATES OF WISDOM by John Boyne (Fiction)
This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons --- one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars in the third, the world will change around them, but their destinies remain the same. It must play out as foretold.
Hogarth | 9780593230152
WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK by Julia Heaberlin (Psychological Thriller)
It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her brother, Wyatt, was cleared of wrongdoing by the police, but he was tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and is in a new documentary about the crime. When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town’s youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can’t look away. She shares a wound that won’t close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.
Ballantine Books | 9780525621676
On Sale the Week of August 10th in Paperback
August 11th
AIN'T NOBODY NOBODY by Heather Harper Ellett (Mystery/Thriller)
Still reeling from the scandal that cost him his badge, Randy Mayhill sees a return from community exile in the form of a dead hog trapper perched on a fence. The fence belongs to the late Van Woods, Mayhill’s best friend and the reason for his spectacular fall. Determined to protect Van’s land and family from another scandal, Mayhill ignores the sheriff who replaced him and investigates the death of the unidentified man. His quest crosses with two others: Birdie, Van’s surly, mourning daughter, who has no intention of sitting idly by and leaving her father’s legacy in Mayhill’s hands; and Bradley, Birdie’s slow, malnourished but loyal friend, whose desperation to escape a life of poverty has him working with local criminals, and possibly a murderer.
Polis Books | 9781951709167
BARNUM: An American Life by Robert Wilson (Biography)
Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s biography captures the full genius, infamy and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life --- yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501118715
THE BOOK OF DREAMS by Nina George (Fiction)
Henri Skinner is a hardened ex-war reporter on the run from his past. On his way to see his son, Sam, for the first time in years, Henri collides with oncoming traffic. He is rushed to a nearby hospital where he floats, comatose, between dreams. After the accident, Sam --- a 13-year-old synesthete with an IQ of 144 and an appetite for science fiction --- waits by his father’s bedside every day. There he meets Eddie Tomlin, a woman forced to confront her love for Henri after all these years, and 12-year-old Madelyn Zeidler, a coma patient like Henri and the sole survivor of a traffic accident that killed her family. As these four very different individuals fight --- for hope, for patience, for life --- they are bound together inextricably, facing the ravages of loss and first love side by side.
Ballantine Books | 9780525572541
CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Hallie Ephron (Psychological Thriller)
Emily Harlow, a professional organizer, is married to a man who can’t drive past a yard sale without stopping. He’s filled their basement, attic and garage with his finds. The larger his “collection” becomes, the deeper the distance grows between Emily and the man she married. Luckily, Emily has two new clients to distract herself: an elderly widow whose husband left behind a storage unit she didn’t know existed, and a young wife whose husband won’t allow her stuff into their house. Emily’s initial meeting with the young wife takes a detour when the women end up fantasizing about how much more pleasant life would be without their collecting spouses. But the next day, Emily finds herself in a mess that might be too big for her to clean up.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062473660
CHER AMI AND MAJOR WHITTLESEY by Kathleen Rooney (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.
Penguin Books | 9780143135425
DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD written by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Literary Mystery/Dark Humor)
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind.
Riverhead Books | 9780525541349
THE LAST OCEAN: What Dementia Teaches Us About Love by Nicci Gerrard (Memoir)
After a diagnosis of dementia, Nicci Gerrard’s father, John, continued to live life on his own terms, alongside the disease. But when an isolating hospital stay precipitated a dramatic turn for the worse, Gerrard --- an award-winning journalist and author --- recognized that it was not just the disease, but misguided protocol and harmful practices that cause such pain at the end of life. Gerrard was inspired to seek a better course for all who suffer because of the disease. THE LAST OCEAN is Gerrard’s investigation into what dementia does to both the person who lives with the condition and to their caregivers.
Penguin Books | 9780525521983
THE LIAR by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (Fiction)
Nofar is an average teenage girl --- so average, in fact, that she's almost invisible. Serving customers ice cream all summer long, she is desperate for some kind of escape. One afternoon, a terrible lie slips from her tongue. And suddenly everyone wants to talk to her: the press, her schoolmates, even the boy upstairs. He is the only one who knows the truth, and he is demanding a price for his silence. Then Nofar meets Raymonde, an elderly immigrant whose best friend has just died. Raymonde keeps her friend alive the only way she knows how, by inhabiting her stories. But soon, Raymonde's lies take on a life of their own.
Back Bay Books | 9780316445405
THE MIDWIFE MURDERS by James Patterson and Richard DiLallo (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
To Senior Midwife Lucy Ryuan, pregnancy is not an unusual condition, it's her life's work. But when two kidnappings and a vicious stabbing happen on her watch in a university hospital in Manhattan, her focus abruptly changes. Something has to be done, and Lucy is fearless enough to try. Rumors begin to swirl, blaming everyone from the Russian Mafia to an underground adoption network. The feisty single mom teams up with a skeptical NYPD detective to solve the case, but the truth is far more twisted than Lucy ever could have imagined.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538718872
NIGHTS IN WHITE CASTLE: A Memoir by Steve Rushin (Memoir)
It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace the cover of a book jacket. And it ends at a desk in the legendary Time & Life building, with that same boy --- now in his early 20s and writing professionally --- reflecting on how he got there from what seems like a distant universe. In between, Steve Rushin whisks us along on an extraordinarily funny and tender journey. From a menial summer job at suburban Bennigan's, to first-time college experiences in Milwaukee, to surviving early adulthood in seedy New York City, NIGHTS IN WHITE CASTLE will remind any reader of those special moments when they too went from innocence to experience.
Back Bay Books | 9780316419390
NO OFFENSE by Meg Cabot (Romance)
Paperback Original
A broken engagement only gave Molly Montgomery additional incentive to follow her dream job. Now, as Little Bridge Island Public Library’s head of children’s services, Molly hopes the messiest thing in her life will be her sticky-note-covered desk. But fate --- in the form of a newborn left in the restroom --- has other ideas. So does the sheriff who comes to investigate the “abandonment.” When John Hartwell insists that whoever left the baby is a criminal, Molly begs to differ and asks what he’s doing about the Island’s real crime wave. Not the best of starts, but the man’s arrogance is almost as distracting as his blue eyes. John would be pretty irritated if one of his deputies had a desk as disorderly as Molly’s. Good thing she doesn’t work for him, considering how attracted he is to her.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062890078
THE OTHER MRS. by Mary Kubica (Psychological Thriller)
Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie. But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.
Park Row | 9780778389354
THE SECOND FOUNDING: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner (History)
The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner’s history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre-Civil War mass meetings of African-American “colored citizens” and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late 19th century.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393358520
THIS CHAIR ROCKS: A Manifesto Against Ageism by Ashton Applewhite (Sociology)
In our youth-obsessed culture, we’re bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. THIS CHAIR ROCKS traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life.
Celadon Books | 9781250297259
TRACKING GAME: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
An explosion outside a community dance sends Mattie Cobb and Cole Walker reeling into the night, where they discover a burning van and beside it the body of outfitter Nate Fletcher. But the explosion didn't kill Nate --- it was two gunshots to the heart. The investigation leads them to the home of rancher Doyle Redman, whose daughter is Nate's widow, and the object of one of their suspect's affection. But before they can make an arrest, they receive an emergency call from a man who's been shot in the mountains. Mattie and her K-9 partner, Robo, rush to the scene, only to be confronted by the ominous growl of a wild predator. They journey into the cold, misty mountains to track the animal --- but discover something even more deadly.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643855639
UNTIL I FIND YOU by Rea Frey (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Since Rebecca Gray was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, everything in her life consists of numbers. Each day her world grows a little darker, and each step becomes a little more dangerous. Following days of feeling like someone is watching her, Bec awakes at home to the cries of her son in his nursery. When it’s clear he’s not going to settle, Bec goes to check on him. She reaches in and picks him up. But he’s not her son. And no one believes her. In a world where seeing is believing, Bec must rely on her own conviction and a mother’s instinct to uncover the truth about what happened to her baby and bring him home for good.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250241580
WAISTED by Randy Susan Meyers (Fiction)
Alice and Daphne harbor the same secret: obsession with their weight overshadows concerns about their children, husbands and work. The two women meet at Waisted. Located in a remote Vermont mansion, the program promises fast, dramatic weight loss, and Alice, Daphne and five other women are desperate enough to leave behind their families for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The catch? They must agree to always be on camera; afterward, the world will see “Waisted: The Documentary.” The women soon discover that the filmmakers have trapped them in a cruel experiment. With each pound lost, they edge deeper into obsession and instability...until they decide to take matters into their own hands.
Washington Square Press | 9781501131394
WHERE THE LIGHT ENTERS by Sara Donati (Historical Fiction)
Obstetrician Dr. Sophie Savard returns home to the achingly familiar rhythms of Manhattan in the early spring of 1884 to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. With the help of Dr. Anna Savard, her dearest friend, cousin and fellow physician, she plans to continue her work aiding the disadvantaged women society would rather forget. As Sophie sets out to construct a new life for herself, Anna's husband, Detective-Sergeant Jack Mezzanotte, calls on them both to consult on two new cases: the wife of a prominent banker has disappeared into thin air, and the corpse of a young woman is found with baffling wounds that suggest a killer is on the loose. Unable to ignore the plight of New York's less fortunate, these intrepid cousins draw on all resources to protect their patients.
Berkley | 9781101987254
THE WISDOM OF SALLY RED SHOES by Ruth Hogan (Fiction)
Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, Masha's life was forever changed by a tragic event 12 years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds comfort in her faithful canine companion Haizum, and peace in the quiet lanes of her town's swimming pool. Almost without her realizing it, her life has shuddered to a halt. It’s only when Masha begins an unlikely friendship with the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice and a penchant for saying just what she means, that a new world of possibilities opens up: new friendships, new opportunities and even a chance for new love. But just as Masha dares to imagine the future, her past comes roaring back.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643853536
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