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Carol's latest "Bookreporter Talks To" interview is with Chris Whitaker, whose new book,
WE BEGIN AT THE END, is this month's Barnes & Noble Book Club pick and will be a Bets On selection.
Click on the image above for the video and here for the podcast.
In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of March 8th and March 15th 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 Spring Preview Contests and Feature, a series of 24-hour giveaways that are taking place on select days this month and next. Enter for your chance to win books that we know people will be talking about this spring --- and beyond.
Also, we are sharing Carol's latest "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Chris Whitaker, whose new book, WE BEGIN AT THE END, is this month’s Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, a #1 Indie Next pick, a LibraryReads selection, and an upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On title. The discussion opens with Chris sharing the circuitous --- and somewhat crazy --- route he took to becoming an author, and what drew him to write his lead character, 13-year-old Duchess. That story alone could be a book. They cover a lot of ground, including his writing process, while being careful to avoid all spoilers about the novel’s propulsive ending. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
This Month's "Bookaccino Live" Event: This is your last newsletter reminder to sign up for our next "Bookaccino Live” event, which will take place via Zoom TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 10th at 2pm ET. Carol will present titles releasing between March 9th and April 6th, along with a few from May, that she would like to get on your radar. Attendees of the live event will be invited to answer a survey about the books from the presentation that they are most interested in reading. Those who do will be eligible to win prizes! Be sure to register here by 10am ET tomorrow.
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, March 10th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between March 9th and April 6th, along with a few from May, that she would like to get on your radar.
Wednesday, March 10th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": Join the "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe --- for a virtual launch party of Patti Callahan's latest book, SURVIVING SAVANNAH, with surprise guests.
Thursday, March 11th at 2pm ET: Murder By The Book Virtual Event: S.J. Bennett will talk about THE WINDSOR KNOT, the first book in a series in which Queen Elizabeth II secretly solves crimes while carrying out her royal duties.
Thursday, March 11th at 6pm ET: Greenlight Bookstore Virtual Event: Kazuo Ishiguro --- author of NEVER LET ME GO and THE REMAINS OF THE DAY --- will discuss KLARA AND THE SUN, his first new novel since winning the Nobel Prize and this month's "GMA" Book Club pick, with LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND author Rumaan Alam.
Thursday, March 11th at 6:30pm ET: Books & Books Virtual Event: Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present "An Evening with Patricia Engel." Engel will be in conversation with Edwidge Danticat discussing her new novel, INFINITE COUNTRY, which is Reese's Book Club pick for this month.
Thursday, March 11th at 7pm ET: Pairings & Prose: A Virtual Adventure by the Book: Books and Wine! They are a perfect pairing, but with so many varietals of wine and books, the process of choosing one or the other can be overwhelming. Well, that is all about to change, as New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kate Quinn will be in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis about her latest gripping work of historical fiction, THE ROSE CODE. Click here for all the details!
Thursday, March 11th at 10pm ET: Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore Virtual Event: Mysterious Galaxy presents a virtual event with J.T. Ellison, who will be in conversation with special guest Lisa Unger about her new thriller, HER DARK LIES.
Sunday, March 14th at 3pm ET: Politics & Prose Virtual Event: Politics & Prose presents a virtual event with Walter Isaacson, the New York Times bestselling author of STEVE JOBS. Isaacson will be in conversation with Jane Pauley, host of "CBS Sunday Morning," to discuss his new biography of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, THE CODE BREAKER.
Sunday, March 14th at 5pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors will talk to Sadeqa Johnson about YELLOW WIFE.
Monday, March 15th at 7pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben will discuss his latest novel, WIN, with Barbara Peters.
Tuesday, March 16th at 7pm ET: Anderson's Bookshop Virtual Event: Join Anderson's Bookshops for a special virtual author event with Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. He will be in conversation with Washington Post book critic Ron Charles to discuss his new novel, KLARA AND THE SUN, this month's "GMA" Book Club pick.
Tuesday, March 16th at 7pm ET: Belmont Books Virtual Event: Join Belmont Books for a great night of historical fiction, as authors Patti Callahan and Whitney Scharer discuss Patti's latest book, SURVIVING SAVANNAH.
Tuesday, March 16th at 8pm ET: Magic City Books Virtual Event: Magic City Books is proud to welcome Harlan Coben for a virtual book launch event in celebration of his new thriller, WIN. Joining Harlan in conversation about his book will be Nicholas Sparks, whose most recent novel is THE RETURN.
Tuesday, March 16th at 9pm ET: Booksmith Virtual Event: Booksmith and The Bindery are very pleased to host Naima Coster for her novel, WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS, which is this month's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club pick. She will be in conversation with CANTORAS author and Booksmith BFF Carolina DeRobertis.
This Week's Bonus News: Bookreporter.com's
10th Annual Spring Preview Contests and Feature
Spring is in the air (or will be very soon)! We’ve already caught the fever --- and it’s being fueled by some wonderful new and upcoming releases. Our 10th annual Spring Preview Contests and Feature spotlights many of these picks, which we know people will be talking about over the next few months. We are hosting a series of 24-hour contests for these titles on select days through April 23rd at noon ET. You will need to check the site to see the featured book and enter to win. We also are sending a special newsletter to announce each title, which you can sign up for here.
This year's featured titles are:
Click here to read all the contest details
and learn more about our featured titles.
On Sale the Week of March 8th in Hardcover
March 9th
2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (Speculative Thriller)
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.
Penguin Press | 9781984881250
ACTS OF DESPERATION by Megan Nolan (Fiction)
In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance, he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her. ACTS OF DESPERATION renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission, between escaping degradation and eroticizing it, between loving and being lovable. Author Megan Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, and how do we want it?
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316429856
THE ARSONISTS' CITY by Hala Alyan (Fiction)
The Nasr family is spread across the globe. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father and three American children all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780358126553
THE BEIRUT PROTOCOL: A Marcus Ryker Novel by Joel C. Rosenberg (Political Thriller)
A game-changing peace treaty between Israel and the Saudis is nearly done. The secretary of state is headed to the region to seal the deal. And Special Agent Marcus Ryker is leading an advance trip along the Israeli-Lebanon border, ahead of the secretary’s arrival. But when Ryker and his team are ambushed by Hezbollah forces, a nightmare scenario begins to unfold. The last thing the White House can afford is a new war in the Mideast that could derail the treaty and set the region ablaze. U.S. and Israeli forces are mobilizing to find the hostages and get them home, but Ryker knows the clock is ticking. When Hezbollah realizes who they’ve captured, no amount of ransom will save them --- they’ll be transferred to Beirut and then to Tehran to be executed on live television.
Tyndale House Publishers | 9781496437891
CLOUDMAKER by Malcolm Brooks (Historical Fiction)
The summer of 1937 will be a turning point for 14-year-old Houston “Huck” Finn. When he and a friend find a dead body in a local creek, with a rare Lindbergh flight watch on its wrist, it seems like a sign. Huck is building his own airplane. That summer also marks the arrival of his cousin Annelise, sent to live with the family under mysterious circumstances. It turns out she has had flying lessons --- another sign. As Huck’s airplane takes shape, so does his burgeoning understanding of the world, including the battle over worldliness vs. godliness that has split Annelise from her family and, in a quieter way, divides Huck’s family. Meanwhile, there’s the matter of the watch, which the dead man’s cohort of bank robbers would very much like back.
Grove Press | 9780802127051
THE CODE BREAKER: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson (Science/Biography)
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled THE DOUBLE HELIX on her bed. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982115852
THE DARK HEART OF FLORENCE: A Lady Emily Mystery by Tasha Alexander (Historical Mystery)
In Tasha Alexander’s 15th Lady Emily mystery, Colin Hargreaves’ focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence. He and his wife, Lady Emily, travel to Tuscany where a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor. Colin’s trusted colleague and fellow agent, Darius Benton-Stone, arrives to assist Colin, who insists their mission must remain top secret. Finding herself excluded from the investigation, Emily secretly launches her own clandestine inquiry into the murder, aided by her spirited and witty friend, Cécile. They soon discover that the palazzo may contain a hidden treasure dating back to the days of the Medici and the violent reign of the fanatic monk, Savonarola.
Minotaur Books | 9781250622068
EVERYTHING AFTER by Jill Santopolo (Fiction)
Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions 15 years ago: music and Rob. She's a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They're happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily's present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she'd hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily's past passions come roaring back into her life, she'll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593086964
FAST ICE: A Novel from the NUMA Files by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown (Thriller/Adventure)
In the early days of World War II, the infamous German Luftwaffe embarks upon an expedition to Antarctica, hoping to set up a military base to support their goal of world domination. Though the military outpost never comes to fruition, what the Nazis find on the icy continent indeed proves dangerous...and will have implications far into the future. In the present day, Kurt Austin and his assistant, Joe Zavala, embark for the freezing edge of the world after a former NUMA colleague disappears in Antarctica. While there, they discover a photo of the Luftwaffe expedition of 1939, and are drawn into a decades-old conspiracy. Even as they confront perilous waters and frigid temperatures, they also are up against a terrifying man-made weapon --- a fast-growing ice that could usher in a new Ice Age.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593327869
THE FOURTH CHILD by Jessica Winter (Fiction)
Book-smart, devoutly Catholic and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early 20s, she is raising three children. In the fall of 1991, she adopts a little girl from Eastern Europe. But Mirela is a difficult child. As Jane becomes consumed with chasing therapies that might help Mirela, her relationships with her family begin to fray. Feeling estranged from her mother and unsettled in her new high school, Lauren begins to discover the power of her own burgeoning creativity and sexuality. But when the teen is confronted with the limits of her youth and independence, Jane is forced to reconcile her principles and faith with her determination to keep her daughters safe.
Harper | 9780062971555
THE GIRLS ARE ALL SO NICE HERE by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn (Psychological Thriller)
Ambrosia Wellington receives in the mail an invitation to her 10-year reunion, along with an anonymous note that reads “We need to talk about what we did that night.” It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past aren’t as buried as she’d believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything. At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused --- the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982144623
HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE by Imbolo Mbue (Fiction)
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made --- and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Random House | 9780593132425
LAST CALL: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (True Crime)
The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight he has his sights set on a gray-haired man. He will not be his first victim. Nor will he be his last. The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the sky-high murder rates and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. LAST CALL tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him.
Celadon Books | 9781250224354
THE LITTLE FRENCH BRIDAL SHOP by Jennifer Dupee (Fiction)
When Larisa Pearl returns to her small seaside hometown in Massachusetts to manage her beloved great aunt's estate, she's a bit of an emotional mess. She's just lost her job and her boyfriend, and she's struggling to cope with her mother's failing health. When she passes by the window of The Little French Bridal Shop, a beautiful ivory satin wedding gown catches her eye. Now, to the delight of everyone in town, Larisa is planning her wedding. She has her dress, made floral arrangements and set the date. The only thing missing is the groom. Word about her upcoming nuptials has reached the ears of Jack Merrill. As teenagers, they spent time together on her great aunt's estate, building a friendship that could have become something more had they chosen different paths.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250271525
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: A Robin Lockwood Novel by Phillip Margolin (Legal Thriller)
Joe Lattimore, homeless and trying desperately to provide for his young family, agrees to fight in a no-holds-barred illegal bout, only to have his opponent die. Lattimore now finds himself at the mercy of the fight's organizers, who blackmail him into burglarizing a house. However, when he breaks in, he finds a murdered woman on the floor, and the police have received an anonymous tip naming him the murderer. Robin Lockwood, an increasingly prominent young attorney and former MMA fighter, agrees to take on his defense. The murdered woman's husband, Judge Anthony Carasco, has an alibi, and Lattimore's fingerprints are discovered at the scene. But Lockwood is convinced that her client has been framed.
Minotaur Books | 9781250258427
REALITY AND OTHER STORIES by John Lanchester (Supernatural Fiction/Short Stories)
In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James’ THE TURN OF THE SCREW, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers --- and since then Lanchester has written several more. REALITY AND OTHER STORIES gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of “The Twilight Zone” or “Black Mirror.” Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393540918
SARAHLAND: Stories by Sam Cohen (Fiction/Short Stories)
In SARAHLAND, Sam Cohen explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college Sarah passively consents to a form-life in pursuit of an MRS degree and is swept into a culture of normalized sexual violence. Another reveals a version of Sarah finding pleasure --- and a new set of problems --- by playing dead for a wealthy necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah uses fan fiction to work through romantic obsession. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narratives.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538735060
THE STILLS by Jess Montgomery (Historical Mystery)
Ohio, 1927: Moonshining is a way of life in rural Bronwyn County, and even the otherwise upstanding Sheriff Lily Ross has been known to turn a blind eye when it comes to stills in the area. But when 13-year-old Jebediah Ranklin almost dies after drinking tainted moonshine, Lily knows that someone has gone too far. With the help of organizer and moonshiner Marvena Whitcomb, she is determined to find out who. But then Lily’s nemesis, the businessman George Vogel, reappears in town with his new wife, Fiona. Along with them is her former brother-in-law, Luther Ross, now an agent for the newly formed Bureau of Prohibition. To Lily, it seems too much of a coincidence that they should arrive now.
Minotaur Books | 9781250623409
SURVIVING SAVANNAH by Patti Callahan (Historical Fiction)
When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she's shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of 11 who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah's society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions.
Berkley | 9781984803757
TRANSIENT DESIRES: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon (Mystery)
Two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Commissario Guido Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. He and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. As a result, Brunetti enlists the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802158178
THE WINDSOR KNOT by SJ Bennett (Mystery)
It is the early spring of 2016, and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals --- until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction. Unhappy at the mishandling of the case and concerned for her staff’s morale, the monarch decides to discreetly take matters into her own hands. The resolute Elizabeth will use her keen eye, quick mind and steady nerve to bring a murderer to justice.
William Morrow | 9780063050006
On Sale the Week of March 8th in Paperback
March 9th
ACT YOUR AGE, EVE BROWN by Talia Hibbert (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
No matter how hard she strives to do right, Eve Brown’s life always goes horribly wrong. Bed and breakfast owner Jacob Wayne is on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he turns her down. Then she hits him with her car --- supposedly by accident. Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is trying to help. Before long, she’s infiltrated his work, his kitchen --- and his spare bedroom. Sunny, chaotic Eve is Jacob’s natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else.
Avon | 9780062941275
THE BONE MAKER by Sarah Beth Durst (Dark Fantasy)
Paperback Original
Twenty-five years ago, five heroes risked their lives to defeat the bone maker Eklor --- a corrupt magician who created an inhuman army using animal bones. But victory came at a tragic price. Only four of the heroes survived. Since then, Kreya, the group’s leader, has exiled herself to a remote tower and devoted herself to one purpose: resurrecting her dead husband. But such a task requires both a cache of human bones and a sacrifice --- for each day he lives, she will live one less. She’d rather live one year with her husband than a hundred without him, but using human bones for magic is illegal in Vos. Defying the laws of the land exposes a terrible possibility: Maybe the dead don’t rest in peace after all.
Harper Voyager | 9780062888631
DEATH OF AN AMERICAN BEAUTY by Mariah Fredericks (Historical Mystery)
Jane Prescott attends the hottest and most scandalous show in town: the opening of an art exhibition, showcasing the cubists, that is shocking New York City. 1913 is also the 50th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation speech, and the city's great and good are determined to celebrate in style. Dolly Rutherford, heiress to the glamorous Rutherford’s department store empire, has gathered her coterie of society ladies to put on a play --- with Jane’s employer, Louise Tyler, in the starring role as Lincoln himself. But then a woman is found murdered outside Jane’s childhood home --- a refuge for women run by her uncle. Deeply troubled as her uncle falls under suspicion, Jane is determined to discover who is making death into their own twisted art form.
Minotaur Books | 9781250781703
THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER by Kaira Rouda (Psychological Thriller)
Exactly one year ago, Jane Harris’ oldest daughter, Mary, died in a tragic accident. Lost in a haze of anti-depressants, Jane barely has even left the house. Now that’s all about to change. It’s time for Jane to reclaim her life and her family. Jane’s husband, David, has planned a memorial service for Mary; three days later, their youngest daughter, Betsy, graduates high school. Yet as Jane reemerges into the world, it’s clear her family has changed without her. Her husband has been working long days --- and nights --- at the office. Her daughter seems distant, even secretive. And her beloved Mary was always such a good girl. But does someone know more about Mary, and about her last day, than they’ve revealed?
Graydon House | 9781525806421
HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT by Laura Hankin (Fiction)
After her former band shot to superstardom without her, Claire reluctantly agrees to a gig as a playgroup musician for wealthy infants on New York's Park Avenue. She is surprised to discover that she is smitten with her new employers, a welcoming clique of wellness addicts. There is perfect hostess Whitney, who is on the brink of social-media stardom and just needs to find a way to keep her flawless life from falling apart; caustically funny, recent stay-at-home mom Amara, who is struggling to embrace her new identity; and old money, veteran mom Gwen, who never misses an opportunity to dole out parenting advice. But as Claire grows closer to the stylish women who pay her bills, she uncovers secrets and betrayals that no amount of activated charcoal can fix.
Berkley | 9781984806246
HER DARK LIES by J.T. Ellison (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Jutting from sparkling turquoise waters off the Italian coast, Isle Isola is an idyllic setting for a wedding. In the majestic cliff-top villa owned by the wealthy Compton family, up-and-coming artist Claire Hunter will marry handsome, charming Jack Compton, surrounded by close family, intimate friends…and a host of dark secrets. From the moment Claire sets foot on the island, something seems amiss. Skeletal remains have just been found. There are other, newer disturbances, too. Menacing texts. A ruined wedding dress. And one troubling shadow hanging over Claire’s otherwise blissful relationship --- the strange mystery surrounding Jack’s first wife. Then a raging storm descends, the power goes out --- and the real terror begins.
Mira | 9780778388302
THE ILLNESS LESSON by Clare Beams (Historical Fiction)
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th-century New England. When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. It's not long, though, before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls' parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations --- based on a shocking historic treatment --- horrify Caroline.
Anchor | 9780525565475
THE KIDNAP YEARS: The Astonishing True History of the Forgotten Epidemic That Shook Depression-Era America by David Stout (True Crime/History)
The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America --- parents struggled to feed their children, and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with submachine guns and corrupt law enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. Jump into this forgotten history with Edgar Award-winning author David Stout as he explores the reports of missing people that inundated newspapers at the time. Learn the horrifying details of these abduction cases, from the methods used and the investigative processes to the personal histories of the culprits and victims.
Sourcebooks | 9781728217550
THE LOOK-ALIKE by Erica Spindler (Psychological Thriller)
Sienna Scott grew up in the dark shadow of her mother’s paranoid delusions. Now, Sienna has returned home to confront her past and the unsolved murder that altered the course of her life. In her mother’s shuttered house, a fear that’s always haunted Sienna rears its ugly head yet again: maybe it was she who had been the killer’s target that night. And now, with it, a terrifying new realization that the killer is still out there...and intends to take care of his unfinished business. As the walls close in, the line between memory and truth begins to blur. Has Sienna’s worst nightmare come true? Or is she, like her mother, losing her grip on reality? These questions take on a whole new meaning as Sienna tries to unmask a killer and finally prove that she may be her mother’s look-alike, but she’s not her clone.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250783417
MASTER CLASS by Christina Dalcher (Dystopian Thriller)
Every child's potential is regularly determined by a standardized measurement: their quotient (Q). Score high enough, and attend a top-tier school with a golden future. Score too low, and it's off to a federal boarding school with limited prospects afterwards. Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level, she is immediately forced to leave her top school for a federal institution hundreds of miles away. As a teacher, Elena thought she understood the tiered educational system, but as a mother whose child is now gone, her perspective is changed forever. She just wants her daughter back. And she will do the unthinkable to make it happen.
Berkley | 9780440000846
PRIVILEGE by Mary Adkins (Fiction)
Annie Stoddard was the smartest girl in her small public high school in Georgia, but now that she’s at Carter University, it feels like she has “Scholarship Student” written on her forehead. Bea Powers put aside misgivings about attending college in the South as a biracial student to take part in Carter’s Justice Scholars program, but it seems everyone has a different idea of what justice is. Stayja York works at the Coffee Bean, doling out almond milk lattes to entitled co-eds, while trying to put out fires on the home front and save for her own education. Their three lives intersect unexpectedly when Annie accuses fourth-year student Tyler Brand of sexual assault. Once Bea is assigned as Tyler’s student advocate, the girls find themselves on opposite sides as battle lines are drawn.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062887108
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE: A Memoir by Rebecca Solnit (Memoir)
Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful and adrift in the city that became her great teacher, and of the small apartment that, when she was 19, became the home in which she transformed herself. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer --- books themselves; the gay community that presented a new model of what else gender, family and joy could mean; and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West.
Penguin Books | 9780593083345
THE ROSE CODE by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. But war, loss and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear them apart. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, Osla, Mab and Beth are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter --- the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now the trio must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger --- and their true enemy --- closer.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062943477
SAVE ME FROM DANGEROUS MEN by S. A. Lelchuk (Thriller)
Nikki Griffin isn't your typical private investigator. In her office above her bookstore’s shelves and stacks, she also tracks certain men. Dangerous men. Men who have hurt the women they claim to love. And Nikki likes to teach those men a lesson, to teach them what it feels like to be hurt and helpless. When a regular PI job tailing Karen, a tech company's disgruntled employee who might be selling secrets, turns ugly and Karen's life is threatened, Nikki has to break cover and intervene. Karen tells Nikki that there are dangerous men after her. She says she'll tell Nikki what's really going on. But then something goes wrong, and suddenly Nikki is no longer just solving a case --- she's trying hard to stay alive.
Flatiron Books | 9781250170262
SPELLMAKER by Charlie N. Holmberg (Historical Fantasy/Mystery)
Paperback Original
England, 1895. An unsolved series of magician murders and opus thefts isn’t a puzzle to Elsie Camden. But to reveal a master spellcaster as the culprit means incriminating herself as an unregistered spellbreaker. When Elsie refuses to join forces with the charming assassin, her secret is exposed, she’s thrown in jail, and the murderer disappears. But Elsie’s hope hasn’t vanished. Through a twist of luck, the elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey helps Elsie join the lawful, but with a caveat: they must marry to prove their cover story. Forced beneath a magical tutor while her bond with Bacchus grows, Elsie seeks to thwart the plans of England’s most devious criminal --- if she can find them.
47North | 9781542022576
TOPICS OF CONVERSATION by Miranda Popkey (Fiction)
Composed almost exclusively of conversations between women --- the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves --- TOPICS OF CONVERSATION careens through 20 years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life. In exchanges about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage, Miranda Popkey touches upon desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy and guilt.
Vintage | 9780525566366
On Sale the Week of March 15th in Hardcover
March 16th
ARE WE THERE YET? by Kathleen West (Fiction)
On the same day Alice Sullivan learns that her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin. When it comes to light that the incident is part of a new behavior pattern for her son, one complete with fake social media profiles with a lot of questionable content, Alice’s social standing is quickly eroded to one of “those moms” who can’t control her kids. Soon she’s facing the very judgment she was all too happy to dole out when she thought no one was looking (or when she thought her house wasn’t made of glass). Then her mother unloads a family secret she’s kept for more than 30 years, and Alice’s entire perception of herself is shattered.
Berkley | 9780593098431
BODY OF STARS by Laura Maylene Walter (Dystopian Fiction)
Celeste Morton has eagerly awaited her passage to adulthood. Like every girl, she was born with a set of childhood markings --- the freckles, moles and birthmarks on her body that foretell her future and that of those around her --- and with puberty will come a new set of predictions that will solidify her fate. Celeste's beloved brother, Miles, is equally anticipating her transition to adulthood. As a skilled interpreter of the future, a field that typically excludes men, Miles considers Celeste his practice ground --- and the only clue to what his own future will bring. But when Celeste changes, she learns a devastating secret about Miles' fate. The lies of brother and sister eventually collide, leading to a tragedy that will irrevocably change Celeste's fate.
Dutton | 9780593183052
FESTIVAL DAYS by Jo Ann Beard (Essays)
When “The Fourth State of Matter,” her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa, was published in The New Yorker, Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form. Now, with FESTIVAL DAYS, Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work. In these nine pieces, she captures both the small, luminous moments of daily existence and those instances when life and death hang in the balance.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316497237
GATHERING DARK by Candice Fox (Thriller)
Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million-dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one. It’s been 10 years since Jessica arrested Blair for cold-blooded murder. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor late one night, she expects abuse, maybe even violence. What comes next is a plea for help.
Forge Books | 9781250317636
THE HOUSE UPTOWN by Melissa Ginsburg (Fiction)
Following her mother’s death, 14-year-old Ava is on a train heading to New Orleans, to stay with the grandmother she barely remembers. Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and painting, which has been her singular focus for years. Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, from whom she was estranged before her death. Now her presence is dredging up painful and disturbing memories, which forces Lane to retreat even further into her own mind. As Ava and Lane attempt to form a bond, the oppressive heat and history of New Orleans bears down on them, forcing a reckoning neither of them are ready for.
Flatiron Books | 9781250784186
THE JIGSAW MAN by Nadine Matheson (Mystery/Thriller)
On the day she returns to active duty with the Serial Crimes Unit, Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley is called to a crime scene. Dismembered body parts from two victims have been found by the river. The modus operandi bears a striking resemblance to Peter Olivier, the notorious Jigsaw Killer, who has spent the past two years behind bars. When he learns that someone is co-opting his grisly signature --- the arrangement of victims’ limbs in puzzle-piece shapes --- he decides to take matters into his own hands. As the body count rises, DI Henley is faced with an unspeakable new threat. Can she apprehend the copycat killer before Olivier finds a way to get to him first? Or will she herself become the next victim?
Hanover Square Press | 9781335146564
THE LAMPLIGHTERS by Emma Stonex (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
It's New Year's Eve, 1972, when a boat pulls up to the Maiden Rock lighthouse with relief for the keepers. But no one greets them. When the entrance door, locked from the inside, is battered down, rescuers find an empty tower. A table is laid for a meal not eaten. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a storm raging round the tower, but the skies have been clear all week. And the clocks have all stopped at 8:45. Two decades later, the wives who were left behind are visited by a writer who is determined to find the truth about the men's disappearance. Moving between the women's stories and the men's last weeks together in the lighthouse, long-held secrets surface and truths twist into lies as we piece together what happened, why and who to believe.
Viking | 9781984882158
MEANT TO BE by Jude Deveraux (Romance)
It’s 1972, and times are changing. In the small farming community of Mason, Kansas, Vera and Kelly Exton are known for their ambitions. Vera is an activist who wants to join her boyfriend in the Peace Corps. But she is doing her duty caring for her widowed mother and younger sister until Kelly is firmly established. Kelly is studying to become a veterinarian. She plans to marry her childhood sweetheart and eventually take over his father’s veterinary practice. But it’s a tumultuous time, and neither sister is entirely happy with the path that’s been laid out for her. As each evaluates her options, everything shifts. Do you do what’s right for yourself or what others want?
Mira | 9780778331445
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, NEW YORK: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation by Thomas Dyja (History)
Dangerous, filthy and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble: New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next 30-plus years, though, it became a different place --- kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been. NEW YORK, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, Thomas Dyja’s sweeping account of this metamorphosis, shows it wasn’t the work of a single policy, mastermind or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime. Instead, three New Yorks evolved in turn.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982149789
NOT DARK YET: A DCI Banks Novel by Peter Robinson (Mystery/Thriller)
When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. They hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings. However, instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.
William Morrow | 9780062994950
ON HARROW HILL: A Dave Gurney Novel by John Verdon (Mystery/Thriller)
The idyllic community of Larchfield is rocked to its core when Angus Russell, its wealthiest and most powerful citizen, is found dead in his mansion on Harrow Hill. A preliminary analysis of DNA gathered at the crime scene points to the guilt of local bad boy Billy Tate. However, Tate fell from the roof of a local church and was declared dead by the medical examiner the day before Russell was killed. When police rush to the mortuary, they discover that Tate's coffin has been broken open from the inside, and the body is gone. A series of murders soon follows as Larchfield loses its collective mind. Ex-NYPD detective Dave Gurney finds himself not only facing down a murderer, but struggling to restore order to the town rapidly spiraling out of control.
Counterpoint | 9781640093102
THE PERFORMANCE by Claire Thomas (Fiction)
One night, three women go to the theater to see a play. Wildfires are burning in the hills outside, but inside the theater it is time for the performance to take over. Margot is a successful, flinty professor on the cusp of retirement, distracted by her fraught relationship with her adult son and her ailing husband. After a traumatic past, Ivy is now a philanthropist with a seemingly perfect life. Summer is a young drama student, an usher at the theater, and frantically worried for her girlfriend whose parents live in the fire zone. While the performance unfolds on stage, so does the compelling trajectory that will bring these three women together, changing them all.
Riverhead Books | 9780593329160
SAVING GRACE by Debbie Babitt (Psychological Thriller)
For 24 years, Mary Grace Dobbs has been searching for salvation. Orphaned at 11, she was forced to go live with her Bible salesman uncle, wheelchair-bound aunt, and a cousin who tortured and killed small animals. At school, a bully made her life a nightmare. Everything changed when a newcomer to town became her only best friend, and changed a second time when that friend and another classmate vanished two months later, never to be seen again. Today, Mary Grace is the first female sheriff of her rural town, a position that doesn’t sit well with some of the locals. Keeping order and her demons at bay becomes an impossible task when the Black drifter suspected in the earlier disappearances returns to Repentance...and another sixth grader vanishes.
Scarlet | 9781613162064
SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic by Glenn Frankel (Performing Arts/History)
Glenn Frankel’s SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY tells the story of a modern classic that, by all accounts, should never have become one in the first place. The film’s boundary-pushing subject matter --- homosexuality, prostitution, sexual assault --- earned it an X rating when it first appeared in cinemas in 1969. For Midnight Cowboy, director John Schlesinger enlisted Jerome Hellman, a producer coming off his own recent flop and smarting from a failed marriage, and Waldo Salt, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter with a tortured past. The decision to shoot on location in New York, at a time when the city was approaching its gritty nadir, backfired when a sanitation strike filled Manhattan with garbage fires and fears of dysentery.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374209018
SILENCE IS A SENSE by Layla AlAmmar (Fiction)
A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors across the way. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the column she writes for a magazine under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it --- or revealing anything about herself. Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that is quickly becoming her own?
Algonquin Books | 9781643750262
SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE: The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets ― the Best Worst Team in Sports by Devin Gordon (Sports)
In SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again.
Harper | 9780062940025
THE SWEET TASTE OF MUSCADINES by Pamela Terry (Fiction)
Lila Bruce Breedlove never quite felt at home in Wesleyan, Georgia, especially after her father’s untimely demise when she was a child. Both Lila and her brother, Henry, fled north after high school, establishing fulfilling lives of their own. In contrast, their younger sister, Abigail, opted to remain behind to dote on their domineering, larger-than-life mother, Geneva. When their elderly mother dies suddenly and suspiciously in the muscadine arbor behind the family estate, Lila and Henry return to the town that essentially raised them. But as they uncover more about Geneva’s death, shocking truths are revealed that overturn the family’s history as they know it, sending the pair on an extraordinary journey to chase a truth that will dramatically alter the course of their lives.
Ballantine Books | 9780593158456
WIN by Harlan Coben (Mystery/Thriller)
Over 20 years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors --- and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead --- not only on Patricia's kidnapping, but also on another FBI cold case --- with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man: Windsor Horne Lockwood III…or Win, as his few friends call him.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538748213
On Sale the Week of March 15th in Paperback
March 16th
88 NAMES by Matt Ruff (Science Fiction/Technothriller)
John Chu is a “sherpa,” a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. His new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person” with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. He also has to worry about “Ms. Pang,” who may or may not be an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who isn’t the type to let an international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.
Harper Perennial | 9780062854681
THE BACK ROADS TO MARCH: The Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season by John Feinstein (Sports)
John Feinstein pulls back the curtain on college basketball's lesser-known Cinderella stories --- the smaller programs who no one expects to win, who have no chance of attracting the most coveted high school recruits. To tell this story, Feinstein follows a handful of players, coaches and schools who dream, not of winning the NCAA tournament, but of making it past their first or second round games. Every once in a while, one of these coaches or players is plucked from obscurity to lead a major team or to play professionally, cementing their status in these fiercely passionate fan bases as a legend. These are the gifted players who aren't handled with kid gloves --- they're hardworking, gritty teammates who practice and party with everyone else.
Anchor | 9780525564751
BUBBLEGUM by Adam Levin (Fiction)
BUBBLEGUM is set in an alternate present-day world in which the internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology --- a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio --- has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.
Anchor | 9780525566489
CHARLOTTE WALSH LIKES TO WIN by Jo Piazza (Fiction)
Charlotte Walsh is running for Senate in the most important race in the country during a midterm election that will decide the balance of power in Congress. Once the campaign gets underway, Charlotte is blindsided by just how dirty her opponent is willing to fight, how harshly she is judged by the press and her peers, and how exhausting it becomes to navigate a marriage with an increasingly ambivalent and often resentful husband. When the opposition uncovers a secret that could threaten not just her campaign but everything Charlotte holds dear, she must decide just how badly she wants to win and at what cost.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501179433
DOCILE by K.M. Szpara (Science Fiction)
To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. Too bad Elisha’s contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects --- and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.
Tordotcom | 9781250216335
THE EIGHTH GIRL by Maxine Mei-Fung Chung (Psychological Thriller)
Beautiful. Damaged. Destructive. Meet Alexa Wú, a brilliant yet darkly self-aware young woman whose chaotic life is controlled by a series of alternate personalities. When Alexa’s friend, Ella, gets a job at a high-end gentlemen’s club, she catches the attention of its shark-like owner and is gradually drawn into his inner circle. As Alexa’s world becomes intimately entangled with Ella’s, she soon finds herself the unwitting keeper of a nightmarish secret as she follows Ella into London’s cruel underbelly. Threatened and vulnerable, Alexa will discover if her multiple personalities are her greatest asset or her most dangerous obstacle.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062931139
EXCITING TIMES by Naoise Dolan (Fiction)
Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children. Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks if he loves her, he cannot say more than "I like you a great deal." Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her --- and wants her. But then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong. Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?
Ecco | 9780062968753
THE FAMILIAR DARK by Amy Engel (Mystery/Thriller)
Set in the poorest part of the Missouri Ozarks, in a small town with big secrets, THE FAMILIAR DARK opens with a murder. Eve Taggert, desperate with grief over losing her daughter, takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened. Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life, having been raised by a hard-edged mother whose lessons Eve tried not to pass on to her own daughter. But Eve may need her mother's cruel brand of strength if she's going to face the reality about her daughter's death and about her own true nature. Her quest for justice takes her from the seedy underbelly of town to the quiet woods and, most frighteningly, back to her mother's trailer for a final lesson.
Dutton | 9781524746001
THE GOOD KILLER by Harry Dolan (Thriller)
Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living quietly and cautiously in Houston when a troubled, obsessive stranger shatters the safety they have carefully constructed for themselves. Sean is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen, scorned by a woman he’s been dating, pulls out a gun at the store where she works and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots --- becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news. But Sean’s newfound notoriety exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past. One of them blames Sean for his brother’s death. The other wants to recover a treasure that Sean and Molly stole from him.
Mysterious Press | 9780802148421
THE HERD by Andrea Bartz (Psychological Thriller)
THE HERD is the name of the elite women-only coworking space in New York that prides itself on mentorship and empowerment. Among the hopefuls is Katie Bradley, who has an in, thanks to her sister, Hana, an original Herder and the best friend of Eleanor Walsh, the Herd’s charismatic founder. As head of PR, Hana is working around the clock to prepare for a huge announcement from Eleanor --- one that will change the trajectory of the Herd forever. But on the night of the glitzy Herd news conference, Eleanor vanishes without a trace. As Hana struggles to figure out what her friend was hiding and Katie chases the story of her life, the sisters must face the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other.
Ballantine Books | 9781984826381
THE LEONARDO GULAG by Kevin Doherty (Historical Thriller)
Stalin’s Russia, 1950. Brilliant young artist Pasha Kalmenov is arrested and sent without trial to a forced-labor camp in the Arctic gulag. This is a camp like no other. Although conditions are harsh and degrading, the prisoners are not to be worked to death in a coal mine or on a construction project. Their task is to forge the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. There is a high price to be paid for failing to reach the required standard of perfection --- particularly as the camp commandant has his own secret agenda. When the executions begin, Pasha realizes that only his artistic talent can protect him. But for how long? Worse horrors are to come. If he survives them, will life still be worth living?
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608094356
THE MANY LIVES OF MICHAEL BLOOMBERG by Eleanor Randolph (Biography)
With unprecedented access, veteran New York Times reporter and editorial writer Eleanor Randolph offers a revealing portrait of one of the richest and famously private/public figures in the country. Michael Bloomberg’s life sounds like an exaggerated version of The American Story, except his adventures are real. From modest Jewish middle class (and Eagle Scout) to Harvard MBA to Salomon Brothers hot shot (where he gets “sent upstairs” and later fired) to creator of the machine that would change Wall Street and the rest of the world and make him a billionaire (a description by the author makes the invention clear to non-engineers), Randolph’s account of Bloomberg’s life and times reads almost like a novel, a quintessentially American story.
Simon & Schuster | 9781476772219
MISS AUSTEN: A Novel of the Austen Sisters by Gill Hornby (Historical Fiction)
England, 1840. For the two decades following the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen has lived alone, spending her days visiting friends and relations and quietly, purposefully working to preserve her sister’s reputation. Now in her 60s and increasingly frail, Cassandra goes to stay with the Fowles of Kintbury, family of her long-dead fiancé, in search of a trove of Jane’s letters. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?
Flatiron Books | 9781250252210
THE MOUNTAINS SING by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Historical Fiction)
THE MOUNTAINS SING tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but her family as well.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751351
AN OCEAN WITHOUT A SHORE by Scott Spencer (Fiction)
Since their college days, Kip Woods has been infatuated with Thaddeus Kaufman, who, years later, is a married father of two children and desperately trying to revive a failing career. Kip’s devotion to Thaddeus has been life-defining and destiny-altering, but it has been one that Thaddeus has either failed to notice or refused to acknowledge. But over the course of the novel, set against a background of privilege and affluence in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, Kip will be forced to reckon with the prison of his own making and decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for a love that may never be shared.
Ecco | 9780062851642
THE OPERATOR by Gretchen Berg (Historical Fiction)
Nobody knows the people of Wooster, Ohio, better than switchboard operator Vivian Dalton. Vivian and the other women who work at Bell on East Liberty Street connect lines and lives. They aren’t supposed to listen in on conversations, but they do, and they all have opinions on what they hear. One cold December night, Vivian listens in on a call between that snob Betty Miller and someone whose voice she can’t quite place, and hears something shocking. Betty’s mystery friend has news that, if true, will shatter Vivian’s tidy life in Wooster, humiliating her and making her the laughingstock of the town. Vivian is going to get to the bottom of that rumor. She wants the truth, no matter how painful it may be.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062917195
STEALING HOME: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between by Eric Nusbaum (Sports/History)
Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now L.A. would be getting a different sort of utopian fantasy --- a glittering, ultra-modern stadium. But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood's families.
PublicAffairs | 9781541742222
THICK AS THIEVES by Sandra Brown (Thriller)
Twenty years ago in the dead of night, four seemingly random individuals pulled the ultimate heist and almost walked away with half a million dollars. But by daybreak, one of them was in the hospital, one was in jail, one was dead, and one got away with it. Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago, has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks, she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know that two of her father's co-conspirators --- a war hero and a corrupt district attorney --- are watching her every move.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538751923
THREE BROTHERS: Memories of My Family written by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas (Memoir)
In THREE BROTHERS, Yan Lianke brings the reader into his childhood home in Song County in Henan Province, chronicling the extraordinary lives of his father and uncles, as well as his own. Living in a remote village, Yan’s parents are so poor that they can only afford to use wheat flour on New Year and festival days. Yan yearns to somehow leave the village, and soon novels become an escape. In the evenings, after finishing back-breaking shifts hauling stones at a cement factory, he sets to work writing. He is ultimately delivered from the drudgery and danger of manual labor by a career in the Army, but he is filled with regrets as he recalls these years of scarcity, turmoil and poverty.
Grove Press | 9780802148629
TRACE ELEMENTS: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon (Mystery)
When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises that he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.
Grove Press | 9780802148681
THE WHISPERING HOUSE by Elizabeth Brooks (Gothic Mystery)
Paperback Original
Freya Lyell is struggling to move on from her sister Stella’s death five years ago. Visiting the bewitching Byrne Hall, only a few miles from the scene of the tragedy, she discovers a portrait of Stella --- a portrait she had no idea existed, in a house Stella never set foot in. Or so she thought. Driven to find out more about her sister’s secrets, Freya is drawn into the world of Byrne Hall and its owners: charismatic artist Cory and his sinister, watchful mother. But as Freya lingers in this mysterious, centuries-old house, her relationship with Cory crosses the line into obsession, and the darkness behind the locked doors of the estate threatens to spill out.
Tin House Books | 9781951142360
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