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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 $38,138 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.
16 Mt. Bethel Road, Suite 365
Warren, NJ 07059
Thank you again for your consideration and your donation.
Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)
Happy New Year!
And welcome to our new subscribers, who discovered us over the holidays.
We are happy to have you here!
In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 4th and January 11th 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 Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks feature for January, which includes Indie Next, LibraryReads, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, the Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club, the Jenna Bush Hager "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, and more.
Also, we have updated our Books on Screen feature for this month. January's roundup includes the films The Reason I Jump, The Dig and The White Tiger; the series premieres of "All Creatures Great and Small" on PBS "Masterpiece" and "The Sister" on Hulu; the season premieres of "American Gods" on Starz, "A Discovery of Witches" on Sundance Now, "The Residence" on FOX, and The CW's "Nancy Drew," "Batwoman" and "Riverdale"; and the DVD release of Come Away.
For those of you who missed it, we have a video and podcast where Carol talks about each of the 42 Bookreporter.com Bets On books that we gave away in our End-of-the-Year Contest. We’ve cued where you can find each title --- and we also have links to the author interviews for the books mentioned where those are available. As we recorded this wrap-up, Carol realized that we interviewed 36 of the authors! We will announce the winners of the End-of-the-Year Contest shortly.
Last but certainly not least, please remember to sign up for this month's "Bookaccino Live" events.
On Wednesday, January 13th at 2pm ET, Carol will present titles releasing between January 12th and February 2nd, along with a few from March, that she would like to get on your radar. Click here to register. Those attending the live event will be asked to answer a survey about the books from the presentation that they are most interested in reading and will be eligible to win prizes.
And on Thursday, January 21st at 8pm ET, we will host our second "Bookaccino Live" Book Group Event. Our guest will be William Kent Krueger, who will talk about his most recent novel, THIS TENDER LAND. Click here to register. If you would like to be one of our “live panelists” and ask Kent a question, please also fill out this form.
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
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.
Tuesdays at 7:30pm ET: "Talking ETERNAL with Lisa Scottoline": Join Lisa Scottoline every Tuesday night at 7:30pm ET on Facebook as she premieres a new episode from her video series, "Behind the Book: Talking ETERNAL," which reveals behind-the-scenes looks at the inspirations of her upcoming historical fiction book, ETERNAL, releasing on March 23rd. And stay tuned because immediately following each video premiere, Lisa hosts a Facebook Live to talk about the video.
Wednesday, January 6th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe --- will talk to Diane Chamberlain, whose most recent novel is BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN.
Wednesday, January 6th at 7pm ET: Gibson's Bookstore Virtual Event: Gibson's is thrilled to virtually present New Hampshire author KJ Dell'Antonia, whose debut novel is THE CHICKEN SISTERS. She will be joined in conversation by her friend Jessica Hunt, the producer of New Hampshire Public Radio's "The Exchange."
Thursday, January 7th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Nick Petrie and Chris Hauty will be in conversation about their latest thrillers, THE BREAKER and SAVAGE ROAD.
Monday, January 11th at 7pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Jeff Lindsay, the bestselling author of the Dexter series, will discuss his new novel, FOOL ME TWICE.
Monday, January 11th at 7pm ET: Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books Virtual Event: Tune in with Uncle Bobbie to celebrate the January release of Robert Jones, Jr.'s groundbreaking first novel, THE PROPHETS. He will be in conversation with Kiley Reid, author of the New York Times bestseller SUCH A FUN AGE.
Tuesday, January 12th at 6pm ET: Fountain Bookstore Virtual Event: Fountain Bookstore's first event of the new year features two novels on children and women survivors of extreme weather in the 1800s. Authors Melanie Benjamin (THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD) and Greer Macallister (THE ARCTIC FURY) will discuss what inspired them to write about these little-known historical events.
Tuesday, January 12th at 7:30pm ET: Charis Books & More Virtual Event: Charis welcomes Robert Jones, Jr. in conversation with novelist Brit Bennett for a celebration of Jones' highly anticipated debut novel, THE PROPHETS.
Tuesday, January 12th at 8pm ET: Murder By The Book Virtual Event: Ace Atkins will join Murder By The Book to talk about his new Spenser novel, ROBERT B. PARKER'S SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.
Tuesday, January 12th at 9pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child will talk about their new Nora Kelly novel, THE SCORPION'S TAIL.
This Week's Bonus News:
Our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks for January
Each month, we share top book picks from Indie Next and LibraryReads, as well as the Target Book Club title and Pennie's Pick for Costco. We also feature a number of other prominent picks, including Oprah’s Book Club, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, the Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club, Jenna Bush Hager's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, the PBS NewsHour-New York Times “Now Read This” Book Club, and Simon & Schuster’s Book Club Favorites.
Below is a preview of January's "Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks." For the complete Indie Next and LibraryReads lists, as well as additional links pertaining to this month's selections, please click here.
Indie Next
#1 Pick: THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones, Jr.
WHAT COULD BE SAVED by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz
OUTLAWED by Anna North
THE HOUSE ON VESPER SANDS by Paraic O’Donnell
THE PUSH by Ashley Audrain
LibraryReads
Top Pick: THE WIFE UPSTAIRS by Rachel Hawkins
THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD by Melanie Benjamin
THE EX TALK by Rachel Lynn Solomon
THE HOUSE ON VESPER SANDS by Paraic O’Donnell
OUTLAWED by Anna North
Target Book Club
THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett
Pennie's Pick for Costco
THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE by Marie Benedict
Barnes & Noble Book Club
BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME by Julia Claiborne Johnson
Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club
OUTLAWED by Anna North
Jenna Bush Hager's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club
BLACK BUCK by Mateo Askaripour
"Good Morning America" Book Club
THE PUSH by Ashley Audrain
PBS NewsHour-New York Times “Now Read This” Book Club
TRICK MIRROR: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino
Simon & Schuster's Book Club Favorites
WHITE IVY by Susie Yang
On Sale the Week of January 4th in Hardcover
January 5th
ALL THE COLORS OF NIGHT by Jayne Ann Krentz (Romantic Suspense)
North Chastain possesses a paranormal talent that gives him the ability to track down the most dangerous psychic criminals. When his father suddenly falls into a coma-like state, North is convinced it was caused by a deadly artifact that traces back to the days of a secret government program known only as the Bluestone Project. He teams up with antiques expert Sierra Raines to find the artifact, and soon they find themselves at the scene of the Incident. The town and its residents were forever changed by the disaster in the nearby Bluestone Project labs. The pair unearths shocking truths about what happened that fateful night, but someone in town knows what they’ve discovered and will do anything to make sure the secrets stay buried.
Berkley | 9781984806819
AMERICAN TRAITOR: A Pike Logan Novel by Brad Taylor (Thriller/Adventure)
Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill are enjoying a sunny vacation down under when they get disturbing news: their friend and colleague, Clifford Delmonty, is in serious trouble. While working as a contractor at an Australian F-35 facility, the former Taskforce member --- callsign Dunkin --- saw something he shouldn’t have, and now he’s on the run from Chinese agents. Pike and Jennifer soon discover that Dunkin’s attackers are a dangerous link to a much larger scheme that could launch a full-on conflict between China and Taiwan. Pike learns that the Chinese have a devious plan to bait the island nation into all-out war by destabilizing the government and manipulating an artificial intelligence defense system.
William Morrow | 9780062886064
BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME by Julia Claiborne Johnson (Historical Fiction)
It’s 1938, and women seeking a quick, no-questions split from their husbands head to Reno, Nevada. But they have to wait six weeks to become “residents.” Many of these wealthy, soon-to-be divorcees flock to the Flying Leap, a dude ranch that caters to their every need. Twenty-four-year-old Ward spent one year at Yale before his family lost everything in the Great Depression; now he’s earning an honest living as a ranch hand at the Flying Leap. Two new guests are about to upend everything he thinks he knows: Nina, a St. Louis heiress and amateur pilot back for her third divorce, and Emily, whose bravest moment in life was leaving her cheating husband back in San Francisco and driving herself to Reno.
Custom House | 9780062916365
BLACK BUCK by Mateo Askaripour (Satire/Dark Humor)
An unambitious 22-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother. A chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, New York City’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the 36th floor. After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780358380887
BONE CANYON by Lee Goldberg (Thriller)
A catastrophic wildfire scorches the Santa Monica Mountains, exposing the charred remains of a woman who disappeared years ago. The investigation is assigned to Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a position that forces her to prove herself again and again. This time, though, she has much more to prove. Bones don’t lie, and these have a horrific story to tell. Eve tirelessly digs into the past, unearthing dark secrets that reveal nothing about the case is as it seems. With almost no one she can trust, her relentless pursuit of justice for the forgotten dead could put Eve’s own life in peril.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542042710
THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE by Katrine Engberg (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
In the coronary care unit at one of Copenhagen’s leading medical centers, a nurse fills a syringe with an overdose of heart medication and stealthily enters the room of an older male patient. Six days earlier, a paperboy on his route in central Copenhagen stumbles upon the naked body of a dead woman. The cause of death is exsanguination, the draining of all the blood in her body. Lead investigator Jeppe Kørner takes on the investigation. His partner, Anette Werner, is restless at home with a demanding newborn and an equally demanding husband. While Jeppe pounds the streets looking for answers, Anette decides to do a little freelance sleuthing. But operating on her own exposes her to dangers she can’t even begin to fathom.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982127602
A CROOKED TREE by Una Mannion (Fiction)
It is the early 1980s, and 15-year-old Libby is obsessed with The Field Guide to the Trees of North America, a gift her Irish immigrant father gave her before he died. She finds solace in “The Kingdom,” a stand of red oak and thick mountain laurel near her home in suburban Pennsylvania, where she can escape from her large and unruly family and share menthol cigarettes and lukewarm beers with her best friend. One night, while driving home, Libby’s mother, exhausted and overwhelmed with the fighting in the backseat, pulls over and orders Libby’s little sister, Ellen, to walk home. What none of this family knows, as they drive off leaving a 12-year-old girl on the side of the road, is what will happen next.
Harper | 9780063049840
DEATH OF A MESSENGER: A Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery by Robert McCaw (Mystery/Thriller)
On Hawaii Island, an anonymous 911 caller reports a body at Pohakuloa, the Army’s live-fire training area. Hilo Chief Detective Koa Kane, a cop with his own secret criminal past, finds a mutilated corpse --- bearing all the hallmarks of ancient ritual sacrifice. He encounters a host of obstacles as he pursues the murderer --- an incompetent local medical examiner, hostility from both haoles (Westerners) and sovereignty advocates, and a myriad of lies. Koa races to discover whether the victim stumbled upon a gang of high-tech archaeological thieves, or learned a secret so shocking it cost him his life and put others in mortal danger.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608094035
FEATHERHOOD: A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie by Charlie Gilmour (Memoir)
One spring day, a baby magpie falls out of its nest and into Charlie Gilmour’s hands. Magpies, he soon discovers, are as clever and mischievous as monkeys. By the time the creature develops shiny black feathers that inspire the name Benzene, Charlie and the bird have forged an unbreakable bond. While caring for Benzene, Charlie comes across a poem written by his biological father, an eccentric British poet named Heathcote Williams, who vanished when Charlie was six months old. As he grapples with Heathcote’s abandonment, Charlie is drawn to the poem, in which Heathcote describes how an impish young jackdaw fell from its nest and captured his affection. Over time, Benzene helps Charlie unravel his fears about repeating the past --- and embrace the role of father himself.
Scribner | 9781501198502
THE FORTUNATE ONES by Ed Tarkington (Fiction)
When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when she arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world is an almost irresistible place where one can bend --- and break --- rules and still end up untarnished. As he gets drawn into a friendship with a charismatic upperclassman, Archer Creigh, and an affluent family that treats him like an adopted son, Charlie quickly adapts to life in the upper echelons of Nashville society. But over time, he is increasingly pulled into covering for Archer’s constant deceits and his casual bigotry.
Algonquin Books | 9781616206802
THE GATES OF ATHENS by Conn Iggulden (Historical Fiction)
Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army --- swollen by 10,000 warriors known as The Immortals --- have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path, vastly outnumbered, stands an army of freeborn Athenians. Among them is a clever, fearsome and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Against all odds, the Athenians emerge victorious. Ten years later, Xanthippus watches helplessly as Athens succumbs to the bitter politics of factionalism. Trust is at a low ebb when the Persians cross the Hellespont in ever greater numbers in their second attempt to raze Athens to the ground. Facing overwhelming forces by land and sea, the Athenians call on their Spartan allies for assistance --- to delay the Persians at the treacherous pass of Thermopylae.
Pegasus Books | 9781643136660
THE HEIRESS: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh by Molly Greeley (Historical Fiction)
As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh’s doctor prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley and Rosings. But Darcy does not love Anne or want her. In a frenzy of desperation, Anne discards her laudanum and flees to the London home of her cousin, Colonel John Fitzwilliam, who helps her through her painful recovery. Yet, once she returns to health, new challenges await.
William Morrow | 9780063032002
THE LIAR'S DICTIONARY by Eley Williams (Fiction/Humor)
Peter Winceworth, Victorian lexicographer, is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. His disaffection compels him to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young intern employed by the publisher, is tasked with uncovering these mountweazels before the work is digitized. She also has to contend with threatening phone calls from an anonymous caller. Is the change in the definition of marriage really that upsetting? And does the caller really intend for the Swansby's staff to 'burn in hell'?
Doubleday | 9780385546775
A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF by Peter Ho Davies (Fiction)
A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences a family can have: to have a child and, conversely, the decision not to have a child. A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests --- and questions that reverberate down the years. When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labor? When does chance become choice? When does a diagnosis become destiny? And when does fact become fiction?
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780544277717
NEIGHBORS by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
Meredith White was one of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces. But a personal tragedy cut her acting career short and alienated her from her family. For the last 15 years, Meredith has been living alone in San Francisco with two trusted caretakers. Then, on a muggy late summer day, a massive earthquake strikes Northern California. Without a moment’s hesitation, Meredith invites her stunned and shaken neighbors into her mostly undamaged home as the recovery begins. Without the walls and privacy of their own homes, one by one, new relationships are forged. In the heart of the crisis, Meredith finds herself venturing back into the world --- and suddenly sees her isolation, her estranged family and even her acting career in a whole new light.
Delacorte Press | 9781984821379
NICK by Michael Farris Smith (Historical Fiction)
Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's periphery, he was at the center of a very different story --- one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance --- doomed from the very beginning --- to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316529761
OUTLAWED by Anna North (Western/Adventure)
The day of her wedding, 17-year-old Ada's life looks good. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide if she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635575422
PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS by Chris Harding Thornton (Noir Thriller)
The Reddick family patriarch has decided, decades after authorities ended the search for his murdered boy’s body, to lay a headstone. Instead of bringing closure, this decision is the spark that threatens to set Pickard County ablaze. On a fateful night after the memorial service, sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen tails the youngest Reddick and town miscreant, Paul, through the abandoned farms and homes outside their run-down Nebraska town. The pursuit puts Harley in the path of Pam Reddick, a restless young woman who is drawn to his dark history. Unfolding over six tense days, PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS sets Harley and the Reddicks on a collision course --- propelling them toward an incendiary moment that will either redeem or end them.
MCD | 9780374231255
THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones, Jr. (Historical Fiction)
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man --- a fellow slave --- seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593085684
THE PUSH by Ashley Audrain (Psychological Thriller)
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter --- she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son, Sam, is born --- and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fallout forces Blythe to face the truth.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9781984881663
SAVAGE ROAD: A Hayley Chill Thriller by Chris Hauty (Political Thriller)
When a series of devastating cyber attacks rock the United States, Hayley Chill is tasked by the “deeper state” to track down their source. NSA analysts insist that Moscow is the culprit, but that accusation brings plenty of complications with Hayley directing the president as a double agent against the Russians. With increasing pressure on the president to steer him towards a devastating war, it’s up to Hayley to stop the mysterious computer hacker and prevent World War III --- while also uncovering some shocking truths about her own life.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982126612
TWENTY: A Jack Swyteck Novel by James Grippando (Legal Thriller)
Jack Swyteck receives an emergency text from Riverside Day School. Both his daughter, Righley, and his wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, are in danger. Andie hears the fire alarms, then loud popping noises and screams coming from the hallway. The police find a handgun on the school grounds registered to a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Amir is married to Andie’s friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution. When Xavier, Amir and Lilly’s oldest child, confesses to the crime, the local community’s anti-Muslim fervor explodes to levels unseen since 9/11. Jack must unearth the Khourys’ family secrets in order to expose the shocking truth and save his client from certain death.
Harper | 9780062915085
THE WIFE UPSTAIRS by Rachel Hawkins (Domestic Thriller)
Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates, the kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester, Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend. As Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past --- or his --- catches up to her?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250245496
On Sale the Week of January 4th in Paperback
January 5th
ALL THE BEST LIES by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery)
FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: Who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than 40 years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. They discover that young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good.
Minotaur Books | 9781250781642
BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN by Diane Chamberlain (Fiction)
North Carolina, 2018: Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, Morgan Christopher finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. But then a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep and the price of being different might just end in murder. What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250087348
BLAME THE DEAD by Ed Ruggero (Historical Thriller)
Sicily, 1943. Eddie Harkins, former Philadelphia beat cop turned Military Police lieutenant, reluctantly finds himself first at the scene of a murder at the US Army’s 11th Field Hospital. There the nurses contend with heat, dirt, short-handed staffs, the threat of German counterattack, an ever-present flood of horribly wounded GIs, and the threat of assault by one of their own --- at least until someone shoots Dr. Myers Stephenson in the head. With help from nurse Kathleen Donnelly, once a childhood friend and now perhaps something more, it soon becomes clear to Harkins that the unit is rotten to its core. As the battle lines push forward, Harkins is running out of time to find one killer before he can strike again.
Forge Books | 9781250312754
BROTHER & SISTER: A Memoir by Diane Keaton (Memoir)
When they were children in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1950s, Diane Keaton and her younger brother, Randy, were best friends and companions. Their mother captured their American-dream childhoods in her diaries, and on camera. But as they grew up, Randy became troubled, then reclusive. By the time he reached adulthood, he was divorced, an alcoholic, a man who couldn't hold on to full-time work --- his life a world away from his sister's, and from the rest of their family. Now Diane is delving into the nuances of their shared, and separate, pasts to confront the difficult question of why and how Randy ended up living his life on "the other side of normal."
Vintage | 9781101974278
CONSIDER THIS: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk (Memoir)
In CONSIDER THIS, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road and much more.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538717974
A DIVIDED LOYALTY: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd (Historical Mystery)
Chief Inspector Brian Leslie is sent to Avebury, a village set inside a great prehistoric stone circle not far from Stonehenge. A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recognizes her --- or admits to it. Despite a thorough investigation, it appears that her killer has simply vanished. Asked to take a second look at Leslie’s inquiry, Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge also finds very little to go on in Avebury, slowly widening his search beyond the village --- only to discover that unlikely (possibly even unreliable) clues are pointing him toward an impossible solution, one that will draw the wrath of the Yard down on him, and very likely see him dismissed if he pursues it.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062905543
THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett (Fiction)
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Harper Perennial | 9780062963680
ENTER THE AARDVARK by Jessica Anthony (Political Satire)
Early one August morning, millennial congressman Alexander Paine Wilson (R) receives a strange package in the mail. Inside is an enormous taxidermied aardvark. What does it mean? Well, everything. Hurtling from the beginning of the universe to present-day Washington, DC, this astonishing, edge-of-your-seat novel is at once a piercing look into the sick heart of our democracy and a profoundly moving meditation on the nature of love, power and evil. In the end, you will not only know the meaning of the aardvark, you will see our current reality through new eyes.
Back Bay Books | 9780316496131
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 | 9781250258816
FOLLOW ME TO GROUND by Sue Rainsford (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals --- or “Cures” --- by cracking open their damaged bodies or temporarily burying them in the reviving, dangerous Ground nearby. Ada, a being both more and less than human, is mostly uninterested in the Cures, until she meets a man named Samson. When they strike up an affair, to the displeasure of her father and Samson’s widowed, pregnant sister, Ada is torn between her old way of life and new possibilities with her lover --- and eventually comes to a decision that will forever change Samson, the town and the Ground itself.
Scribner | 9781982133641
THE GIMMICKS by Chris McCormick (Historical Fiction)
Ruben Petrosian grieves the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a crime still denied by the descendants of its perpetrators, and dreams of vengeance. When his orphaned cousin, Avo, comes to live with his family, Ruben’s life is transformed. But their paths diverge when Ruben vanishes --- drafted into an extremist group that will stop at nothing to make Turkey acknowledge the genocide. Unmoored by Ruben’s disappearance, Avo and his archrival, Mina, grow close in his absence. But fate brings the cousins together once more, when Ruben secretly contacts Avo, convincing him to leave Mina and join the extremists. Left to unravel the threads of this story is Terry “Angel Hair” Krill, whose life intersects with Avo, Ruben and Mina’s in surprising and devastating ways.
Harper Perennial | 9780062908582
THE GIRL IN WHITE GLOVES: A Novel of Grace Kelly by Kerri Maher (Historical Fiction)
Grace knows what people see. She’s the Cinderella story. An icon of glamour and elegance frozen in dazzling Technicolor. The picture of perfection. The girl in white gloves. But behind the lens, beyond the panoramic views of glistening Mediterranean azure, she knows the truth. The sacrifices it takes for an unappreciated girl from Philadelphia to defy her family and become the reigning queen of the screen. The heartbreaking reasons she trades Hollywood for a crown. The loneliness of being a princess in a fairy tale kingdom that is all too real. Hardest of all for her adoring fans and loyal subjects to comprehend is the harsh reality that to be the most envied woman in the world does not mean she is the happiest.
Berkley | 9780451492081
HIGHFIRE by Eoin Colfer (Fantasy/Humor)
In the days of yore, he flew the skies and scorched angry mobs. Now he hides from swamp tour boats and rises only with the greatest reluctance from his Laz-Z-Boy recliner. For centuries, he struck fear in hearts far and wide as Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie. Now he goes by Vern. He is the last of his kind, the last dragon. A canny Cajun swamp rat, young Everett “Squib” Moreau does what he can to survive and has finally decided to work for a shady smuggler. But on his first night, he witnesses his boss murdered by a crooked constable. Regence Hooke is not just a dirty cop who happens to want Squib’s momma in the worst way. When Hooke goes after his hidden witness with a grenade launcher, Squib finds himself airlifted from certain death by…a dragon?
Harper Perennial | 9780062938572
HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston (Fiction/Short Stories)
In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston --- the sole black student at the college --- was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives.
Amistad | 9780062915801
I JUST WANTED TO SAVE MY FAMILY: A Memoir written by Stéphan Pélissier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Memoir)
Paperback Original
For trying to save his in-laws, who were fleeing certain death in Syria, Stéphan Pélissier was threatened with 15 years in prison by the Greek justice system, which accused him of human smuggling. His crime? Having gone to search for the parents, brother and sister of his wife, Zéna, in Greece rather than leaving them to undertake a treacherous journey by boat to Italy. Their joy on finding each other quickly turned into a nightmare: Pélissier was arrested as a result of a missing car registration and thrown into prison. Although his relatives were ultimately able to seek asylum --- legally --- in France, Pélissier had to fight to prove his innocence, and to uphold the values of common humanity and solidarity in which he so strongly believes.
Other Press | 9781635420180
JOINT CUSTODY by Lauren Baratz-Logsted and Jackie Logsted (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
The Man has custody Monday through Friday, The Woman has custody on the weekends. But that's not enough for Gatz, who will do anything to bring them back together --- even if it kills him. And it almost did. Of course he knows chocolate is bad for him, especially two whole pounds of it, but it’s the risk he’s willing to take to get them back together. Gatz knows that The Man and The Woman are perfect for each other. How can they not see it too? She is an editor, and he’s a writer. She’s a social butterfly, and he’s as introverted as a guy can get. After the misguided death-by-chocolate attempt, Gatz thinks he still has time. But when New Man --- so handsome, so nice, so perfect --- enters The Woman's life, he realizes he’ll need to step up his game.
Berkley | 9780593199589
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARSON McCULLERS: A Memoir by Jenn Shapland (Memoir)
Jenn Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers’ life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others’ narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers’ life --- her history, her secrets, her legacy --- reveal to Shapland about herself?
Tin House Books | 9781951142292
NOT MY BOY by Kelly Simmons (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Hannah packs up her past and moves to the cottage next door to her sister, she hopes the luxe neighborhood and close family ties will be the perfect escape for her son and the shadows that trail them. But when a young girl goes missing days after they unload their final boxes and her son is quickly thrown under suspicion, Hannah must do whatever it takes to protect her child. Even if that means pointing the blame her sister's way instead. With investigators swarming and neighborhood scrutiny closing in, the divide between two sisters grows. As one fiercely defends her husband, the other shields her boy from the crime, keeping quiet the secrets that might unravel it all. And all the while, one young girl has vanished, and someone is to blame.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728217666
OUR DARKEST NIGHT: A Novel of Italy and the Second World War by Jennifer Robson (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive --- to leave Venice and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met. Nico Gerardi was studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary to run his family’s farm. He could not stand by when the fascists and Nazis began taking innocent lives. Rather than risk a perilous escape across the mountains, Nina will pose as his new bride. But Nico’s provincial neighbors are wary of this soft and educated woman they do not know. Even worse, their distrust is shared by a local Nazi official with a vendetta against Nico.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062674975
THE RED LOTUS by Chris Bohjalian (Thriller)
Alexis and Austin don't have a typical "meet cute" --- the couple comes together for the first time when Alexis, an emergency room doctor, sutures a bullet wound in Austin's arm. Six months later, they're on a romantic getaway in Vietnam: a bike tour on which Austin can show Alexis his passion for cycling, and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But then Austin fails to return from a solo ride. Alexis' boyfriend has vanished, the only clue left behind a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, she starts to uncover a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in?
Vintage | 9780525565963
RUST: A Memoir of Steel and Grit by Eliese Colette Goldbach (Memoir)
To ArcelorMittal Steel, Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In RUST, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love.
Flatiron Books | 9781250239419
SCARLET FEVER by Rita Mae Brown (Mystery)
Frigid February air has settled into the bones of the Blue Ridge Mountains, making for a slow foxhunting season, though “Sister” Jane Arnold’s enthusiasm is not so easily deterred. With the winter chill come tweed coats, blazing fireplaces --- and perhaps another to share the warmth with, as the bold hunting scarlets worn by the men in Sister Jane’s hunting club make the hearts of women flutter. Harry Dunbar, a member of the Jefferson Hunt club, is found with his skull cracked at the bottom of the stairs to a local store. There are no telltale signs of foul play --- save for the priceless (and stolen) Erté fox ring in his pocket. Sister and her hounds set out to uncover the truth: Was this simply an accident --- a case of bad luck --- or something much more sinister?
Ballantine Books | 9780593130025
THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY by Maisy Card (Fiction)
Stanford Solomon has a shocking, 30-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982117443
TOMBSTONE: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell by Tom Clavin (History)
On October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in 30 seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250214607
TWO’S COMPANY by Jill Mansell (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Celebrity couple Jack and Cass Mandeville are successful, good-looking, likable and famous for having an ideal marriage. On Jack's 40th birthday --- a milestone he's been both anticipating and dreading --- a stunning, and stunningly intelligent, redhead named Imogen turns up to interview the couple for a high-profile magazine. Like a bolt of lightning, Jack is hit with a midlife crisis of epic proportions, and Jack and Cass' proverbial bubble bursts. This drastic turn of events flips their lives upside down, and sends their entire family, friends, local community and fans around the country into a tailspin. Cass can only hope Jack will snap out of it soon, but it's too late already. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781492632573
UNCANNY VALLEY: A Memoir by Anna Wiener (Memoir)
In her mid-20s, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener --- stuck, broke and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial --- left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory and, of course, progress. Anna arrived during a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Picador | 9781250785695
WATCHING FROM THE DARK by Gytha Lodge (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Aidan Poole logs on to his laptop late at night to Skype his girlfriend, Zoe. To his horror, he realizes that there is someone else in her flat. Aidan can only listen to the sounds of a violent struggle taking place in the bathroom --- and then the sound of silence. When Aidan’s cryptic messages finally reach the police, Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens and his team take the case --- and discover the body. They soon find that no one has a bad word to say about Zoe, a bighearted young artist at the center of a curious web of waifs and strays, each relying on her for support, each hiding dark secrets and buried resentments. Has one of her so-called “friends” been driven to murder? Or does Aidan have the biggest secret of them all?
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9781984818096
WEST END GIRLS by Jenny Colgan (Fiction)
Paperback Original
They may be twins, but Lizzie and Penny Berry are complete opposites. Penny is the life of the party, while Lizzy is often left out of the crowd. The one trait they do share is a longing to do something spectacular with their lives, and as far as these two are concerned, there’s no better place to make their dreams come true than London. Presented with a once-in-a-lifetime house-sit at their grandmother’s home in a very desirable London neighborhood, it finally seems like Lizzie and Penny are a step closer to the exciting cosmopolitan life they’ve always wanted. But the more time they spend in the big city, they quickly discover it’s nothing like they expected. They may have to dream new dreams…but are they up to the challenge?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062869623
WHAT WAITS FOR YOU by Joseph Schneider (Mystery)
Paperback Original
An elderly couple's home is transformed into a scene straight out of a horror film, their mutilated bodies the only clue left behind by the killer --- and they are only the unlucky first in a series of impossible murders. Soon dubbed the Eastside Creeper, the murderer camps out undetected in his victims' homes until he's ready to strike. After killing, he vanishes like smoke. Considered an expert in the grotesque, Detective Tully Jarsdel lands this seemingly unsolvable case. An academic-turned-cop, Jarsdel is intrigued by the Eastside Creeper. As the murders become more gruesome and the clues more inscrutable, widespread panic sets in. Jarsdel's unconventional methods may be the only thing left between a killer and a city about to descend into chaos.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781492684473
On Sale the Week of January 11th in Hardcover
January 12th
ACROSS THE GREEN GRASS FIELDS by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated of late. When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies and other magical equines --- a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes. But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem.
Tordotcom | 9781250213594
AFTERSHOCKS: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu (Memoir)
Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, he would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. After her father’s passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo. Nadia arrived in New York feeling uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982111229
BEFORE THE RUINS by Victoria Gosling (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
It's the summer of 1996, and school is out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet the charming and unreliable David, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates the dynamics of their lifelong friendship. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen 50 years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game begins --- which grows to encompass years of secrets, lies and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250759153
THE BREAKER: A Peter Ash Novel by Nick Petrie (Thriller)
When Peter Ash --- a man wanted by two governments --- spots a suspicious armed man walking into a crowded market, he knows he can't stand by and do nothing. The young gunman appeared to have one target and one mission, but when he escapes, it seems there is more to the encounter than meets the eye. Peter's hunch is proven correct when a powerful associate from his past appears with an interest in the crime, and an irresistible offer: if he and his girlfriend June solve this mystery, Peter's record will be scrubbed clean. While Peter and his friend Lewis trace the gunman, reporter June digs into the victim of the incident, a man whose face rings a bell in her memory.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525535478
BRYANT & MAY: ORANGES AND LEMONS by Christopher Fowler (Mystery)
On a spring morning in London’s Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is nearly killed by a van. It’s an absurd near-death experience, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker’s state of mind just prior to his accident. The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit --- the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled, and once again what should be a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics, and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude --- and a surprising secret.
Bantam | 9780525485926
THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING by Jamie Harrison (Fiction)
For Polly, the small town of Livingston, Montana, is a land charmed by raw, natural beauty and a close network of family that extends back generations. But the summer of 2002 finds Polly at a crossroads: a recent head injury has scattered her perception of the present, bringing to the surface long-forgotten events. As Polly's many relatives arrive for a family reunion during the Fourth of July holiday, a beloved friend goes missing on the Yellowstone River. Search parties comb the river as carefully as Polly combs her mind, and over the course of one fateful week, Polly arrives at a deeper understanding of herself and her larger-than-life relatives.
Counterpoint | 9781640092341
THE CHARMED WIFE by Olga Grushin (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Cinderella married the man of her dreams --- the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, 13 and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up and exhausted, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming. Instead, she wants him dead.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593085509
THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD by Melanie Benjamin (Historical Fiction)
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats --- leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as 16 were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm.
Delacorte Press | 9780399182280
THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED: Stories written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Fiction/Short Stories)
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken --- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history --- with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Hogarth | 9780593134078
DEEP INTO THE DARK by P. J. Tracy (Mystery/Thriller)
Sam Easton --- a true survivor --- is home from Afghanistan, trying to rebuild a life in his hometown of LA. Separated from his wife, bartending and therapy sessions are what occupy his days and nights. When friend and colleague Melody Traeger is beaten by her boyfriend, she turns to Sam for help. When the boyfriend turns up dead the next day, a hard case like Sam is the perfect suspect. But LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan, whose brother recently died serving overseas, is sympathetic to Sam's troubles and can't quite see him as a killer. She's more interested in the secrets Melody might be keeping and the developments in another murder case on the other side of town.
Minotaur Books | 9781250754943
HADES, ARGENTINA by Daniel Loedel (Fiction)
In 1976, Tomás Orilla is a medical student in Buenos Aires, where he has moved in hopes of reuniting with Isabel, a childhood crush. But the reckless passion that has long drawn him is leading Isabel ever deeper into the ranks of the insurgency fighting an increasingly oppressive regime. Tomás has always been willing to follow her anywhere and do anything to prove himself. Yet what exactly is he proving, and at what cost to them both? It will be years before a summons back arrives for Tomás, now living as Thomas Shore in New York. What awaits him is an odyssey into the past, an encounter with the ghosts that lurk there, and a reckoning with the fatal gap between who he has become and who he once aspired to be.
Riverhead Books | 9780593188644
THE HOUSE ON VESPER SANDS by Paraic O'Donnell (Historical Mystery)
London, 1893: High up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O’Donnell’s Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: Why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances? On the case is Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. Gideon Bliss, a Cambridge dropout in love with one of the missing girls, stumbles into a role as Cutter’s sidekick. And clever young journalist Octavia Hillingdon sees the case as a chance to tell a story that matters.
Tin House Books | 9781951142247
THE LAST GARDEN IN ENGLAND by Julia Kelly (Historical Fiction)
Present day: Emma Lovett has been tasked to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero, Venetia Smith. 1907: When Venetia Smith is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph. 1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life. When war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
Gallery Books | 9781982107826
THE LAST PROTECTOR by Andrew Taylor (Historical Thriller)
No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. The consequences could be catastrophic. James Marwood, a traitor’s son turned government agent, is tasked with uncovering Cromwell’s motives. But his assignment is complicated by his friend --- the regicide’s daughter, Cat Lovett --- who knew the Cromwells as a child, and who now seems to be hiding a secret of her own about the family. Both Marwood and Cat know they are putting themselves in great danger. And when they find themselves on a top secret mission in the Palace of Whitehall, they realize they are risking their lives…and could even be sent to the block for treason.
HarperCollins | 9780008433857
LIFE AMONG THE TERRANAUTS: Stories by Caitlin Horrocks (Fiction/Short Stories)
Following her first novel, THE VEXATIONS, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a much-anticipated collection of short stories. In her signature, genre-defying style, she explodes our notions of what a story can do and where it can take us. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories, residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316316972
THE LOST BOYS: A Decker/Lazarus Novel by Faye Kellerman (Mystery)
When Bertram Telemann, a developmentally disabled man, goes missing from a local diner near Greenbury, the entire community of the small upstate New York town volunteers to search the surrounding woods. When no trace of him is found, the disappearance quickly becomes an official missing persons case and is assigned to detectives Peter Decker and his partner, Tyler McAdams. As their investigation deepens, Decker becomes convinced that Bertram had left with someone he knew. Soon he discovers that Elsie Schulung, a recently fired nurse who had worked at the home, seemed to be especially interested in Bertram. But answers prove elusive when Elsie disappears and human blood is found in her kitchen. However, the complications are only beginning.
William Morrow | 9780062910455
THE OTHER MOTHER by Matthew Dicks (Fiction)
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is dealing with a lot. His father's sudden death; his mother's new husband, Glen, who he loathes; his two younger siblings, who he looks after more and more now that his mother works extra shifts. And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The “other mother.” No one else seems to notice that the real version is missing. His brother, his sister and even Glen act as if everything is normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250103468
PEOPLE LIKE HER by Ellery Lloyd (Psychological Thriller)
To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest “Instamum” who always tells it like it is. To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse who is chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life. To one of Emmy’s dangerously obsessive followers, she’s the woman who has everything --- but deserves none of it. As Emmy’s marriage begins to crack under the strain of her growing success and her moral compass veers wildly off course, the more vulnerable she becomes to a very real danger circling ever closer to her family.
Harper | 9780062997395
THE REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO RAYMUNDO MATA by Gina Apostol (Historical Fiction)
Gina Apostol’s second novel takes the form of a memoir by one Raymundo Mata, a half-blind bookworm and revolutionary, tracing his childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of writer and fellow revolutionary Jose Rizal. Mata’s 19th-century story is complicated by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s) and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin. In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation’s great writer, Jose Rizal, who was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities and is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence.
Soho Press | 9781641291835
ROBERT B. PARKER'S SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME: A Spenser Novel by Ace Atkins (Mystery)
Ten years ago, Spenser helped a teenage girl named Mattie Sullivan find her mother's killer and take down an infamous Southie crime boss. Now Mattie is a college student with a side job working for the tough but tender private eye. Her first big case involves a 15-year-old girl assaulted by a much older man at one of Boston's most prestigious private clubs. The girl, Chloe Turner, only wants the safe return of her laptop and backpack. But like her mentor and boss, Mattie has a knack for asking the right questions of the wrong people. Soon Spenser and Mattie find ties between the exploitation of dozens of other girls from working class families to an eccentric billionaire and his sadistic henchwoman.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525536857
THE SCORPION'S TAIL by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
A mummified corpse is found in the cellar of an abandoned building in a remote New Mexico ghost town. Rookie FBI Agent Corrie Swanson is assigned to ID the body and determine the cause of death. She brings archaeologist Nora Kelly to excavate the body and lend her expertise to the investigation, and together they uncover something unexpected and shocking: the deceased apparently died in agony, in a fetal position, skin coming off in sheets, with a rictus of horror frozen on his face. Hidden on the corpse lies a 16th-century Spanish gold cross of immense value. When at last they identify the body --- and the bizarre cause of death --- Corrie and Nora open a door into a terrifying, secret world of ancient treasure and modern obsession.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538747278
THE SECRET LIFE OF DOROTHY SOAMES: A Memoir by Justine Cowan (Memoir)
Justine Cowan had always been told that her mother came from royal blood. The proof could be found in her mother’s elegance, her upper crust London accent --- and in a cryptic letter hinting at her claim to a country estate. But beneath the polished veneer lay a fearsome, unpredictable temper that drove Justine from home the moment she was old enough to escape. Years later, when her mother sent her an envelope filled with secrets from the past, she buried it in the back of an old filing cabinet. Overcome with grief after her mother’s death, Justine found herself drawn back to that envelope. Its contents revealed a mystery that stretched back to the early years of World War II and beyond, into the dark corridors of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.
Harper | 9780062991010
SLEEP WELL, MY LADY: An Emma Djan Investigation by Kwei Quartey (Mystery)
Hard-hitting talk show host Augustus Seeza has become a household name in Ghana, though notorious for his lavish overspending, alcoholism and womanizing. He’s dating the imposing, beautiful Lady Araba, who leads a self-made fashion empire. Fearing Augustus is only after her money, Araba’s religious family intervenes to break them up. A few days later, Araba is found murdered in her bed. Her driver is arrested after a hasty investigation, but Araba’s favorite aunt, Dele, suspects Augustus Seeza was the real killer. Almost a year later, Dele approaches Emma Djan, the only female PI at her agency. To solve Lady Araba’s murder, Emma must not only go on an undercover mission that dredges up trauma from her past, but navigate a long list of suspects with strong motives.
Soho Crime | 9781641292078
SPIN: A Captain Chase Novel by Patricia Cornwell (Thriller)
In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wrong, Captain Calli Chase comes face-to-face with her missing twin sister --- as well as the startling truth of who they really are. Now, a top secret program put in motion years ago has spun out of control, and only Calli can redirect its course. Aided by cutting-edge technologies, the NASA investigator and scientist turned Space Force pilot sets out on a frantic search for the missing link between the sabotaged rocket launch and her predetermined destiny…a search that someone else seems very interested in stopping. From NASA to the Chase family farm, to the White House to distant orbits of space, Calli plays a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek with a cunning and ruthless adversary.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542044783
SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss (Fiction)
They rarely speak to each other, but they take notice --- watching from the safety of their cabins, making judgments from what little they know of their temporary neighbors. At daylight, a mother races up the mountain, fleeing into her precious dose of solitude. A retired man studies her return as he reminisces about the park’s better days. A young woman wonders about his politics as she sees him head for a drive with his wife. A teenage boy escapes the scrutiny of his family, braving the dark waters of the loch in a kayak. This cascade of perspective shows each wrapped up in personal concerns as they begin to notice one particular family that doesn’t seem to belong. Tensions rise, until nightfall brings an irrevocable turn.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374105938
A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders (Literary Criticism/Essays)
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
Random House | 9781984856029
THAT OLD COUNTRY MUSIC: Stories by Kevin Barry (Fiction/Short Stories)
With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character and setting in these 11 exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in THAT OLD COUNTRY MUSIC represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
Doubleday | 9780385540339
WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG by Julie Carrick Dalton (Literary Mystery)
Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend, Daniela Garcia, brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined. Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals.
Forge Books | 9781250269188
WALKING WITH GHOSTS: A Memoir by Gabriel Byrne (Memoir)
Born to working class parents and the eldest of six children, Gabriel Byrne harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. At 11 years old, he found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, he had been expelled and quickly returned to his native city of Dublin. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary 40-year career in film and theater. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.
Grove Press | 9780802157126
WHAT COULD BE SAVED by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz (Fiction)
Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston raise their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand.
Atria Books | 9781982150617
YELLOW WIFE by Sadeqa Johnson (Historical Fiction)
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her 18th birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured and sold every day. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit her Jailer, and soon she faces the ultimate sacrifice.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982149109
On Sale the Week of January 11th in Paperback
January 12th
A BEAUTIFUL CRIME by Christopher Bollen (Literary Thriller)
When Nick Brink and his boyfriend, Clay Guillory, meet up on the Grand Canal in Venice, they have a plan in mind --- and it doesn’t involve a vacation. Nick and Clay are running away from their turbulent lives in New York City, each desperate for a happier, freer future someplace else. Their method of escape? Selling a collection of counterfeit antiques to a brash, unsuspecting American living out his retirement years in a grand palazzo. As it turns out, tricking a millionaire out of money isn’t as easy as it seems. As Nick falls under the spell of the city’s decrepit magic, Clay comes to terms with personal loss and the price of letting go of the past. Their future awaits, but it is built on disastrous deceits, and more than one life stands in the way of their dreams.
Harper Perennial | 9780062853899
THE BETTER LIAR by Tanen Jones (Psychological Thriller)
Robin Voigt is dead. If Leslie had arrived at her sister’s apartment just hours earlier, this would have been their first reunion in a decade. In the years since Robin ran away from home as a teenager, Leslie has stayed in New Mexico, taking care of their dying father. But when he passed away, Leslie received a rude awakening: She and Robin would receive the inheritance he left them together --- or not at all. Now her half of the money may be beyond her grasp. When she meets a charismatic young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Robin, the two make a reckless bargain: Mary will impersonate Robin for a week in exchange for Robin’s half of the cash. But neither realizes how high the stakes will become when Mary takes a dead woman’s name.
Ballantine Books | 9781984821232
BLINDSIDE: A Detective Michael Bennett Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Thriller)
The mayor of New York has a daughter who's missing and in danger. Detective Michael Bennett has a son who's in prison. The two strike a deal. Bennett and the mayor have always had a tense relationship, but now the mayor sees in Bennett a discreet investigator with family worries of his own. Just one father helping another. The detective leaps into the case, and sources lead him to a homicide in the Bronx. The victim has ties to a sophisticated hacking operation --- and also to the mayor's missing daughter, Natalie, a 21-year-old computer prodigy. The murder is part of a serial killing spree, one with national security implications. And suddenly Bennett is at the center of a dangerous triangle anchored by the NYPD, the FBI and a transnational criminal organization.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538764398
CLEANNESS by Garth Greenwell (Fiction)
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection.
Picador | 9781250785664
THE COYOTES OF CARTHAGE by Steven Wright (Political Thriller)
Despite being a successful political consultant, Dre Ross’ aggressive tactics have put him on thin ice with his boss, Mrs. Fitz. She exiles him to the backwoods of South Carolina with $250,000 of dark money to introduce a ballot initiative on behalf of a mining company. The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting to sell their pristine public land to the highest bidder. Dre, an African-American outsider, can’t be the one to collect the signatures needed to get on the ballot. So he hires a blue-collar couple, Tyler Lee and his pious wife, Chalene, to act as the initiative’s public face. As lines are crossed and lives ruined, Dre’s increasingly cutthroat campaign threatens the very soul of Carthage County and perhaps the last remnants of his own humanity.
Ecco | 9780062951687
DEAD TO HER by Sarah Pinborough (Psychological Thriller)
Marcie’s affair with Jason Maddox catapulted her into the world of the elite. Old money, old ties, old secrets. Marcie may have married into this world, but she’ll never be part of it. Then Jason’s boss brings back a new wife from his trip to London. Young, attractive, reckless --- nobody can take their eyes off Keisha. Including Marcie’s husband. Some people would kill for the life Marcie has. What will she do to keep it?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062856838
DEAR MISS KOPP: A Kopp Sisters Novel by Amy Stewart (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
The U.S. has finally entered World War I. Constance is chasing down suspected German saboteurs and spies for the Bureau of Investigation, while Fleurette is traveling across the country entertaining troops with song and dance. Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location in France, Norma is overseeing her thwarted pigeon project for the Army Signal Corps. When Aggie, a nurse at the American field hospital, is accused of stealing essential medical supplies, the intrepid Norma is on the case to find the true culprit. The far-flung sisters --- separated for the first time in their lives --- correspond with news of their days. The world has irrevocably changed. Will they be content to return to the New Jersey farm when the war is over?
Mariner Books | 9780358093121
EVERYWHERE YOU DON’T BELONG by Gabriel Bump (Fiction)
Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. Yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place --- to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750859
FIND ME IN HAVANA by Serena Burdick (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Cuba, 1936: When Estelita Rodriguez sings in a hazy Havana nightclub for the very first time, she is nine years old. From then on, that spotlight of adoration --- from Havana to New York’s Copacabana and then Hollywood --- becomes the one true accomplishment no one can take from her. Not the 1933 Cuban Revolution that drove her family into poverty. Not the revolving door of husbands or the fickle world of film. Thirty years later, her young adult daughter, Nina, is blindsided by her mother’s mysterious death. Seeking answers, the grieving Nina navigates the troubling, opulent memories of their life together and discovers how much Estelita sacrificed to live the American dream on her own terms.
Park Row | 9780778389361
THE FOREVER GIRL by Jill Shalvis (Romance)
Paperback Original
When Maze returns to Wildstone for the wedding of her estranged BFF and the sister of her heart, it’s also a reunion of a once ragtag team of teenagers who had only each other until a tragedy tore them apart and scattered them wide. Now as adults together again in the lake house, there are secrets and resentments mixed up in all the amazing childhood memories. Unexpectedly, they instantly fall back into their roles: Maze their reckless leader, Cat the den mother, Heather the beloved baby sister, and Walker, a man of mystery. Life has changed all four of them in immeasurable ways. Maze and Cat must decide if they can rebuild their friendship, and Maze discovers her long-held attraction to Walker hasn’t faded with the years but has only grown stronger.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062897855
HEART OF JUNK by Luke Geddes (Fiction/Humor)
The city of Wichita, Kansas, is wracked with panic over the abduction of toddler pageant princess Lindy Bobo. However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Rather than focus on Lindy, they are consumed by another drama: the impending arrival of Mark and Grant from the famed antiques television show “Pickin’ Fortunes,” who are planning to film an episode at The Heart of America and secretly may be the last best hope of saving the mall from bankruptcy. Yet the mall and the missing beauty queen have more to do with each other than these vendors might think, and before long, the group sets in motion a series of events that lead to surprising revelations about Lindy’s whereabouts.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982106676
THE HOLLOWS by Jess Montgomery (Historical Mystery)
Ohio, 1926: For many years, the railroad track in Moonvale Tunnel has been used as a shortcut through the Appalachian hills. When an elderly woman is killed walking along the tracks, the brakeman tells tales of seeing a ghostly female figure dressed all in white. Newly elected Sheriff Lily Ross is called on to the case to dispel the myths. With the help of her friends, Marvena Whitcomb and Hildy Cooper, Lily follows the woman’s trail to The Hollows --- a notorious asylum --- and they begin to expose dark secrets long-hidden by time and the mountains.
Minotaur Books | 9781250781697
THE KING’S EVIL by Andrew Taylor (Historical Thriller)
London, 1667. In the Court of Charles II, it’s a dangerous time to be alive --- a wrong move may lead to disgrace, exile or death. Therefore, the discovery of a body at Clarendon House, the palatial home of one of the highest courtiers in the land, could have catastrophic consequences. James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is ordered to cover up the murder. But the dead man is Edward Alderley, the cousin of one of Marwood’s acquaintances. Cat Lovett had every reason to want her cousin dead. Since his murder, she has vanished, and all the evidence points to her as the killer. Marwood is determined to clear Cat’s name and discover who really killed Alderley. But time is running out for everyone. If he makes a mistake, it could threaten not only the government but the King himself.
HarperCollins | 9780008433864
LANA’S WAR by Anita Abriel (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Paris, 1943: Lana Antanova is on her way to see her husband with the thrilling news that she is pregnant. But when she arrives at the convent where he teaches music, she’s horrified to see Gestapo officers execute him for hiding a Jewish girl in the piano. A few months later, grieving both her husband and her lost pregnancy, Lana is shocked when she’s approached to join the resistance on the French Riviera. Lana’s cover story makes her the mistress of Guy Pascal, a wealthy Swiss industrialist and fellow resistance member, in whose villa in Cap Ferrat she lives. Consumed by her work, she doesn’t expect to become attached to a young Jewish girl or wonder about the secrets held by the man whose house she shares.
Atria Books | 9781982147679
THE LAST PASSENGER: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch (Historical Mystery)
London, 1855. A young and eager Charles Lenox faces his toughest case yet: a murder without a single clue. Slumped in a third-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a handsome young gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets and no sign of identification on his person. And putting together the clues to the mystery of the man’s identity only raises more questions, when Lenox discovers that the crime has a significant connection to America. As he seeks to solve this impossible case, the young Lenox must confront an equally troublesome problem in his personal life. Kitty Ashbrook, beautiful and cultured, appears to be his soulmate --- but love comes with obstacles of its own.
Minotaur Books | 9781250312211
LAYING BONES: A Texas Red River Mystery by Reavis Z. Wortham (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Constable Ned Parker is looking into the seemingly accidental death of his nephew R. B., who was found in his overturned pickup near Sanders Creek bridge. At first it appears that R. B. drowned in the shallow water, but something doesn't add up for Ned, who begins turning over stones in search of what really happened the night R. B. died. Eventually, the investigation leads Ned back to the Starlite Club, a dangerous honky-tonk recently constructed in a no-man's land on the Lone Star side of the Red River. Although his investigation uncovers suspicious characters, drugs and gambling, it's the series of murders that eliminated any potential witnesses to what happened to R. B. on that cold January night that's the most troubling.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464214370
LITTLE GODS by Meng Jin (Fiction)
On the night of June 4th, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind’s arrow of time. When Su Lan dies unexpectedly 17 years later, it is her daughter Liya who inherits the silences and contradictions of her life. Liya, who grew up in America, takes her mother’s ashes to China. In a territory inhabited by the ghosts of the living and the dead, Liya’s memories are joined by those of two others: Zhu Wen, the woman last to know Su Lan before she left China, and Yongzong, the father Liya has never known.
Custom House | 9780062935960
MINUS ME by Mameve Medwed (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Annie and her devoted but comically incompetent childhood sweetheart, Sam, are the owners and operators of Annie's, a gourmet sandwich shop, home to the legendary Paul Bunyan Special Sandwich --- their "nutritionally challenged continual source of income and marital harmony and local fame." But into their mostly charmed marriage comes the scary medical diagnosis for Annie --- and the overwhelming challenge of finding a way to help Sam go on without her. Annie decides to leave Sam step-by-step instructions for a future without her, and considers her own replacement in his heart and their bed. Her best-laid plans grind to a halt with the unexpected appearance of Ursula, Annie's Manhattan diva of a mother, who brings her own brand of chaos and disruption into their lives.
Alcove Press | 9781643856438
THE MOMENT OF LIFT: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates (Social Science/Women's Studies)
For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. In THE MOMENT OF LIFT, Melinda shares lessons she’s learned from the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction, “That is why I had to write this book --- to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”
Flatiron Books | 9781250257727
THE PERFECT GUESTS by Emma Rous (Gothic Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
1988. Beth Soames is 14 years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. But when they ask her to help them with a harmless game, nothing is ever the same. 2019. Sadie Langton is an actress struggling to make ends meet when she lands a well-paying gig to pretend to be a guest at a weekend party. As day turns to night, Sadie starts to feel that there’s something off about the glamorous guests who arrive at Raven Hall. As the party begins, it becomes chillingly apparent that their unseen host is playing games with everyone...including her.
Berkley | 9780440000488
THE PERSUASION by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past. Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself…and wants Seth Caleb dead. As Jane and Seth chase down their bloodthirsty adversary, they finally commit to a life together. As the two come face to face with danger, one thing is made clear: it will take both of them working together to confront and defeat this evil.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538762943
PLAY THE RED QUEEN by Juris Jurjevics (Mystery)
Vietnam, 1963. A female Viet Cong assassin is trawling the boulevards of Saigon, catching US Army officers off-guard with a single pistol shot, then riding off on the back of a scooter. Although the US military is not officially in combat, 16,000 American servicemen are stationed in Vietnam “advising” the military and government. Among them are Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, two army investigators who have been tasked with tracking down the daring killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641292139
THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen (Dystopian Fiction/Humor)
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one “Aunt Nettie,” a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet and oddly human --- even funny. The people: divided. The “angelfair” Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if they’re lucky, on water if they’re not. The story: To a Surplus couple --- he once a professor, she still a lawyer --- is born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.
Vintage | 9780525657224
THE SECRET GUESTS by Benjamin Black (Historical Fiction)
Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety. In THE SECRET GUESTS, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in “neutral” Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over “Ellen” and “Mary” at Clonmillis Hall. Soon suspicions about the guests’ true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise.
Picador | 9781250787606
SHANGHAI SECRETS: A Roland Sinclair WWII Mystery by Sulari Gentill (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Shanghai, 1935. Black sheep gentleman Rowland Sinclair arrives with his bohemian housemates from Sydney, Australia, to represent his family's interests at international negotiations. A beautiful Russian taxi girl --- who once claimed to be the Princess Anastasia and who danced in Rowly's arms the night before --- is found slain in his suite. Out of sympathy for the murdered girl and to clear his name, Rowly and his companions embark upon their own investigation. They soon discover there are many people who may have wanted Alexandra Romanovna dead. As they are drawn deeper into Shanghai society and its underworld, Rowly searches for answers in a strange city determined to ruin him.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464213618
SO WE CAN GLOW: Stories by Leesa Cross-Smith (Fiction/Short Stories)
From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories --- ranging from the ’80s and ’90s to present day --- expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more. On a hot July night, teenage girls sneak out of the house to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they proclaim their adoration for the same man. A woman luxuriates in a fantasy getaway to escape her past. A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store, and a laundress's life is consumed by her obsession with a baseball star. After the death of a sister, two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538715345
A STRANGER AT THE DOOR by Jason Pinter (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Rachel Marin discovers an ominous email that her teenaged son’s teacher sent to her just before he was killed, she knows she must help bring the perpetrator to justice. But soon a figure from her past reappears, threatening to expose Rachel’s darkest secrets if she doesn’t tread lightly. And when her son is recruited by a shadowy businessman who may be connected to the murder, Rachel knows this has just gotten very, very personal. Someone out there is dead set on keeping this grisly cover-up good and buried, which means if Rachel isn’t careful, it’s only a matter of time before her dream life becomes her worst nightmare.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542005944
TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO by Walter Mosley (Mystery)
Leonid McGill has spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking. Phillip "Catfish" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret.
Mulholland Books | 9780316491150
WE WISH YOU LUCK by Caroline Zancan (Fiction)
It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible and brilliant. After Simone --- young, bestselling author and erstwhile model --- shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious. Love. Death. Revenge. These age-old tropes come to life as the semesters unfold. The threesome came to study writing, to be writers, and this is the story they've woven together: of friendship and passion, of competition and envy, of creativity as life and death.
Riverhead Books | 9780525534945
WHERE REASONS END by Yiyun Li (Fiction)
The narrator of WHERE REASONS END writes, “I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words.” Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, WHERE REASONS END trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9781984801654
THE WORDS I NEVER WROTE by Jane Thynne (Fiction)
New York, present day: Juno Lambert buys a 1931 Underwood typewriter that once belonged to celebrated journalist Cordelia Capel. Within its case, she discovers an unfinished novel, igniting a transatlantic journey to fill the gaps in the story of Cordelia and her sister and the secret that lies between them. Europe, 1936: Cordelia’s socialite sister, Irene, marries a German industrialist who whisks her away to Berlin. The sisters exchange letters, and Cordelia discovers that Irene’s husband is a Nazi sympathizer. As life in Nazi Germany darkens, Irene no longer dares admit what her existence is truly like. Knowing that their letters cannot tell the whole story, Cordelia decides to fill in the blanks by sitting down with her Underwood and writing the truth.
Ballantine Books | 9781524796617
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