July 13, 2021

July 13, 2021

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 12th and July 19th 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 July, which includes Indie Next, LibraryReads, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, Reese's Book Club, the "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, and more.

This is your last newsletter reminder to sign up for this month’s “Bookaccino Live” afternoon event, which will take place TOMORROW, Wednesday, July 14th at 2pm ET. Carol Fitzgerald will present a number of titles releasing between July 13th and August 3rd, along with a few from September, that she would like to get on your radar. Please keep in mind that 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 a prize! Be sure to register here by 1pm ET on Wednesday, and we will send you a list of the featured titles before the event.

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.

Wednesday, July 14th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between July 13th and August 3rd, along with a few from September, that she would like to get on your radar.

Wednesday, July 14th at 6:45pm ET: Smithsonian Associates: In a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, Daniel Silva discusses his career as a bestselling author of 24 novels, including his latest, THE CELLIST; the inspiration behind his thrilling storylines; and his writing process.

Wednesday, July 14th at 7pm ET: Brookline Booksmith: Celebrate the release of SUCH A QUIET PLACE, the newest thriller from bestselling author Megan Miranda. Megan will be in conversation with Rachel Hawkins, author of THE WIFE UPSTAIRS.

Wednesday, July 14th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors will talk to Paula McLain, whose latest novel is WHEN THE STARS GO DARK.

Thursday, July 15th at 6pm ET: Bethany Beach Books: Join Bethany Beach Books for a virtual author event with Megan Miranda in conversation with Cristina Alger about her new psychological thriller, SUCH A QUIET PLACE.

Thursday, July 15th at 7pm ET: Exeter Library: The Exeter Community Library welcomes Daniel Silva about his latest book, THE CELLIST. He will be in conversation with his wife, Jamie Gangel, a CNN Special Correspondent.

Thursday, July 15th at 7pm ET: Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Join Kathy Reichs and International Thriller Writers to celebrate 20 years of Temperance Brennan and the launch of THE BONE CODE. Special guests will be Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritsen, David Baldacci, Karin Slaughter and Louise Penny.

Thursday, July 15th at 7pm ET: RJ Julia Booksellers: RJ Julia’s presents a virtual event with Lisa Scottoline (ETERNAL) and her daughter, Francesca Serritella (GHOSTS OF HARVARD). These two masterful storytellers will share stories of the hidden strength of women.

Thursday, July 15th at 8pm ET: Instagram Live: Scott Shepherd will be in conversation with Wendy Walker on her Instagram page about his first mystery novel, THE LAST COMMANDMENT.

Thursday, July 15th at 8:30pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Christina Clancy as she discusses her new book, SHOULDER SEASON, in conversation with Sarah Z. Sleeper.

Monday, July 19th at 6pm ET: Square Books: Join Square Books for a conversation between Thriller Queens Megan Miranda and Wendy Walker in celebration of Megan's latest novel, SUCH A QUIET PLACE.

Monday, July 19th at 9pm ET: Book Soup: Book Soup presents screenwriter and showrunner Scott Shepherd, who will be in conversation with Julie Clark about his new book, THE LAST COMMANDMENT.

Tuesday, July 20th at 6pm ET: "Adriana Ink": Carol Fitzgerald will appear on the latest episode of Adriana Trigiani's weekly Facebook Live show, "Adriana Ink."

Tuesday, July 20th at 7pm ET: BookPeople: Ace Atkins will be in conversation with Joe R. Lansdale about THE HEATHENS, the latest installment in Atkins' Quinn Colson thriller series.

Tuesday, July 20th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Brad Thor as he discusses his new thriller, BLACK ICE, the 20th book in his Scot Harvath series.

Tuesday, July 20th at 7pm ET: William Morrow: Join Karin Slaughter in conversation with Alafair Burke to celebrate the publication of Karin’s latest stand-alone thriller, FALSE WITNESS. Surprise author guests will also join the broadcast!

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks for July

On Sale the Week of July 12th in Hardcover

July 13th

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE by Mike Gayle (Fiction)
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he learns that his daughter is coming for a visit. Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Along the way, Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all. Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538720165

APPLESEED by Matt Bell (Speculative Science Fiction/Thriller)
In 18th-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. The long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken --- and possibly healed. Fifty years from now, climate change has ravaged the Earth. One company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power --- and one of the company’s original founders intends to destroy what he helped build. A thousand years in the future, North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier --- and sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilization.
Custom House | 9780063040144

BRING YOUR BAGGAGE AND DON'T PACK LIGHT: Essays by Helen Ellis (Humor/Essays)
When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids; lost parents and lost jobs; dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year; and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing 50 won't be pushed around. In these 12 gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets 20 shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen."
Doubleday | 9780385546157

THE CASE OF THE MURDEROUS DR. CREAM: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb (True Crime)
In the span of 15 years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as 10 people in the United States, Britain and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. Structured around the doctor’s London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, THE CASE OF THE MURDEROUS DR. CREAM exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help.
Algonquin Books | 9781616206895

THE CELLIST by Daniel Silva (Thriller/Adventure)
Once Russia’s richest man, Viktor Orlov now resides in splendid exile in London, where he has waged a tireless crusade against the authoritarian kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. Yet somehow, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia’s vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov’s name off his kill list. Gabriel Allon owes his very life to Viktor Orlov, and his desperate search for the truth eventually will take him to Geneva, where a private intelligence service controlled by a childhood friend of the Russian president is using KGB-style “active measures” to undermine the West from within. Known as the Haydn Group, the unit is plotting an unspeakable act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos and leave Russia unchallenged.
Harper | 9780062834867

COUNT THE WAYS by Joyce Maynard (Fiction)
Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner. Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart.
William Morrow | 9780062398277

EMBASSY WIFE by Katie Crouch (Political Thriller/Satire)
Meet Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. She suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s legal counsel but a secret agent in the CIA. The consummate embassy wife, she takes the newest trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda arrives in Namibia mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job so her husband, Mark, can have his family close by as he works on his Fulbright project. But once they’re settled in the sub-Saharan desert, Amanda sees clearly that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, has other reasons for returning. The situation grows even more fraught when their daughter becomes involved in an international conflict and their own government won’t stand up for her.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374280345

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP by Grady Hendrix (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Lynette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized --- someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece. But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night or how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
Berkley | 9780593201237

THE HEATHENS: A Quinn Colson Novel by Ace Atkins (Thriller)
Before he was an Army Ranger who came home to become Tibbehah County Sheriff and take down a corrupt system, Quinn Colson was a kid who got into a lot of trouble. So when juvenile delinquent TJ Byrd insists that she doesn’t know who killed her mother --- an unreliable addict who has disappeared --- Quinn is inclined to believe her. But no one else does. When she senses she’s about to take the fall for her mother’s murder, TJ, her boyfriend, her best friend and her nine-year-old brother go on the run. As Quinn’s friend and former deputy, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, tracks the kids across a trail of burglaries, stolen cars and even a kidnapping, intent on bringing TJ to justice, Quinn sets out to find the truth back in Tibbehah.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593328392

IT'S BETTER THIS WAY by Debbie Macomber (Fiction)
It’s been nearly six years since Julia Jones had her heart broken. After her husband became involved with another woman, she did everything she could to save their marriage, to no avail. Distraught after selling the family home, Julia moves into a condominium complex and embraces a fulfilling new life, one that doesn’t seem to need a man in it. That is, until she meets Heath Johnson, a handsome new resident in the building’s exercise room, and she can’t help but be drawn to him. As they begin to grow close, their friendship blossoms into an unexpected love. But when a dramatic revelation threatens the happiness they’ve found, Julia and Heath must reconcile their love for their children with their love for each other. If they can’t, their bright future together may be nothing but a dream.
Ballantine Books | 9781984818782

THE LAST COMMANDMENT: An Austin Grant of Scotland Yard Novel by Scott Shepherd (Mystery/Thriller)
Christmastime in London. When three seemingly unconnected victims are murdered with matching sequential Roman numerals carved into their foreheads, Metropolitan Police Commander Austin Grant finds his answer in one of the last places he’d expect: the Holy Bible. Each of the deaths correspond to a transgression of one of the Ten Commandments, and Grant must find the killer before the remaining Commandments are commemorated with homicides. Unfortunately for Grant, the next victim with a number on their forehead turns up not in London, but across the pond at the iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, turning this English murder case into a transatlantic manhunt spanning two global metropolises, each with its own rich history and culture.
Mysterious Press | 9781613162286

MIDNIGHT, WATER CITY by Chris McKinney (Science Fiction/Noir)
Year 2142: Earth is 40 years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective. When he arrives at her deep-sea home and finds Akira methodically dismembered, this detective will risk everything --- his career, his family, even his own life --- and delve back into his shared past with Akira to find her killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641292405

A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT: A Monk and Robot Book by Becky Chambers (Science Fiction/Adventure)
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
Tordotcom | 9781250236210

THE REHEARSALS by Annette Christie (Romantic Comedy)
Megan Givens and Tom Prescott are heading into what is supposed to be their magical wedding weekend on beautiful San Juan Island. But with two difficult families, 10 years of history and all too many secrets, things quickly go wrong. After a disastrous rehearsal dinner, they vow to call the whole thing off --- only to wake up the next morning stuck together in a time loop. Are they really destined to relive the worst day of their lives, over and over? And what happens if their wedding day does arrive?
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316592994

THE SHADOW PEOPLE by Joe Clifford (Noir Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Brandon Cossey’s childhood best friend, Jacob Balfour, has committed suicide. The news about Jacob, who had long battled schizophrenia, does not come as a surprise --- but the bizarre details surrounding his death do. When Jacob’s estranged grandfather, who also suffers from schizophrenia, arrives for the funeral, he tells Brandon that Jacob stumbled upon a secret so deadly he was murdered to keep it quiet. Soon afterwards, Brandon notices odd cars and lookalikes following him, his personal property is hacked and stolen, and he can no longer trust what he thinks he sees. As his grasp on reality recedes and falters, Brandon must question if a sinister gang of doppelgängers, whom Jacob dubbed “the Shadow People,” are really responsible.
Polis Books | 9781951709402

THE STARTUP WIFE by Tahmima Anam (Fiction)
Brilliant coder and possessor of a Pi tattoo, Asha is poised to revolutionize artificial intelligence when she is reunited with her high school crush, Cyrus Jones. Cyrus inspires Asha to write a new algorithm. Before she knows it, she’s abandoned her PhD program, they’ve exchanged vows and gone to work at an exclusive tech incubator called Utopia. The platform creates a sensation, with millions of users seeking personalized rituals every day. Will Cyrus and Asha’s marriage survive the pressures of sudden fame, or will she become overshadowed by the man everyone is calling the new messiah?
Scribner | 9781982156183

STRANGE BEASTS OF CHINA written by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang (Metaphysical Fiction/Mystery)
In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness --- save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.
Melville House | 9781612199092

SUCH A QUIET PLACE by Megan Miranda (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Hollow’s Edge used to be a quiet place. But then came the murder of Brandon and Fiona Truett. A year and a half later, Hollow’s Edge is simmering. The residents are trapped, unable to sell their homes, confronted daily by the empty Truett house, and suffocated by their trial testimonies that implicated one of their own. Ruby Fletcher. And now, Ruby’s back. With her conviction overturned, Ruby waltzes right back to Hollow’s Edge, and into the home she once shared with Harper Nash. It’s increasingly clear that not everyone told the truth about the night of the Truett murders. And when Harper begins receiving threatening notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else becomes the killer’s next victim.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982147280

TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS: The 1969 NBA Finals: Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics, and a Very Young Sports Reporter by Leigh Montville (Sports)
Bill Russell and his juggernaut Boston Celtics, winners of 10 the previous 12 NBA championships, squeak through one more playoff run and land in the Finals again. Russell’s opponent? The fearsome 7’1” next-generation superstar, Wilt Chamberlain, recently traded to the LA Lakers to form the league’s first dream team. The 1969 Celtics are at the end of their dominance. The 1969 Lakers are unstoppable. Add to the mix one newly minted reporter. Covering the epic series is a wide-eyed young sports writer named Leigh Montville, who is ordered by his editor at The Boston Globe to get on a plane to L.A. to write about his luminous heroes. What follows is a raucous, colorful, joyous account of one of the greatest seven-game series in NBA history.
Doubleday | 9780385545198

THE THERAPIST by B. A. Paris (Psychological Thriller)
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive. As Alice is getting to know her neighbors, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets, and things are not as perfect as they seem.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274120

A TOUCH OF JEN by Beth Morgan (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia's entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit and new age mantra they know by heart. Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beachside paradise, threatening to erupt.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316704267

YOGA PANT NATION by Laurie Gelman (Fiction/Humor)
Jen Dixon of Overland Park, Kansas --- fearless mother of a fifth-grade boy and two thirty-something daughters --- is used to juggling a lot. But when the PTA president throws her a mandate to raise $10,000 for the fifth-grade class, even unflappable Jen is going to need more than her regular spin class to get her through this final year at William Taft Elementary School. In the midst of new complications --- organizing the class overnight to Topeka, an unexpected spin class fan in the form of her husband’s crazy ex-wife, and trying to navigate her parents’ sudden descent into apparent delusions --- Jen hardly has the patience to listen to yet another half-baked idea from WeFUKCT (We Fundraise Until Kingdom Come Team), her fundraising committee. But if anyone can get elementary parents to pull off the impossible, it’s Jen Dixon.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250777577

On Sale the Week of July 12th in Paperback

July 13th

AGE OF CONSENT by Amanda Brainerd (Fiction)
It’s 1983, and Justine and Eve are stuck at Griswold Academy, a Connecticut boarding school. Griswold is a far cry from Justine's bohemian life in New Haven, where her parents run a theater and struggle to pay the bills. Eve, the sophisticated daughter of status-obsessed Park Avenue parents, also feels like an outsider amidst Griswold's preppy jocks and debutantes. Despite their differences, they form a deep friendship. After a tumultuous school year, Eve and Justine spend the summer in New York City where they join Eve's childhood friend, India. All three are affected by their sexual relationships with older men and the power adults hold over them, even as the young women begin to assert their independence.
Penguin Books | 9781984879547

THE ANTIDOTE FOR EVERYTHING by Kimmery Martin (Fiction)
Georgia Brown’s profession as a urologist requires her to interact with plenty of naked men, but her romantic prospects have fizzled. The most important person in her life is her friend Jonah Tsukada, a funny, empathetic family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, and who has become as close as family to her. Just after Georgia leaves the country for a medical conference, Jonah shares startling news. The hospital is instructing doctors to stop providing medical care for transgender patients. Jonah, a gay man, is the first to be fired when he refuses to abandon his patients. When Georgia's attempts to address the situation result in incalculable harm, both she and Jonah find themselves facing the loss of much more than their careers.
Berkley | 9781984802842

A BEAUTIFULLY FOOLISH ENDEAVOR by Hank Green (Science Fiction/Humor)
The Carls disappeared the same way they appeared, in an instant. While the robots were on Earth, they caused confusion and destruction with only their presence. Part of their maelstrom was the sudden viral fame and untimely death of April May: a young woman who stumbled into Carl’s path, giving them their name, becoming their advocate, and putting herself in the middle of an avalanche of conspiracy theories. Months later, April’s friends are trying to find their footing in a post-Carl world. Just as it is starting to seem like the gang may never learn the real story behind the events that changed their lives forever, a series of clues arrive --- mysterious books that seem to predict the future and control the actions of their readers --- all of which seems to suggest that April could be very much alive.
Dutton | 9781524743499

BETTY by Tiffany McDaniel (Historical Fiction)
“A girl comes of age against the knife.” So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit in the rural town of Breathed, Ohio, is one of poverty and violence --- both from outside the family and, devastatingly, from within. But despite the hardships she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father’s brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination. In the face of all to which she bears witness, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.
Vintage | 9781984897947

CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45 by Lisa Unger (Psychological Thriller)
Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she has been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again. Then the nanny disappears. As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder who Martha really was. But she is hardly prepared for what she will discover.
Park Row | 9780778389293

ELIOT NESS AND THE MAD BUTCHER: Hunting a Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz (True Crime)
In 1934, the nation’s most legendary crime-fighter --- fresh from taking on the greatest gangster in American history --- arrived in Cleveland, a corrupt and dangerous town about to host a world's fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started turning up. The young detective, already battling the mob and crooked cops, found his drive to transform American policing subverted by a menace largely unknown to law enforcement: a serial murderer. Eliot Ness' greatest case had begun. Now, Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz uncover this lost crime epic, delivering a gripping nonfiction account based on decades of groundbreaking research.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062881984

THE EMPIRE OF GOLD by S. A. Chakraborty (Historical Fantasy)
After a brutal conquest stripped Daevabad of its magic, Nahid leader Banu Manizheh and her resurrected commander, Dara, must try to repair their fraying alliance and stabilize a fractious, warring people. But the bloodletting and loss of his beloved Nahri have unleashed the worst demons of Dara’s dark past. To vanquish them, he must face some ugly truths about his history and put himself at the mercy of those he once considered enemies. Having narrowly escaped their murderous families and Daevabad’s deadly politics, Nahri and Ali, now safe in Cairo, face difficult choices of their own. As peace grows more elusive and old players return, Nahri, Ali and Dara come to understand that in order to remake the world, they may need to fight those they once loved and take a stand for those they once hurt.
Harper Voyager | 9780062678171

THE FINISHER: A Peter Diamond Investigation by Peter Lovesey (Mystery)
Through a particularly ill-fated series of events, Maeve Kelly, an elementary school teacher whose mother always assured her “curvy” girls shouldn’t waste their time trying to be fit, has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath’s springtime half marathon. The training is brutal, but she must disprove her mother and collect pledges for her aunt’s beloved charity. Meanwhile, Detective Peter Diamond is tasked with crowd control on the raucous day of the race --- and catches sight of a violent criminal he put away a decade ago. Diamond’s hackles are already up when he learns that one of the runners never crossed the finish line and disappeared without a trace. Was Diamond a spectator to murder?
Soho Crime | 9781641292887

THE HEIR AFFAIR by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan (Romantic Comedy)
After a scandalous secret turns their fairy-tale wedding into a nightmare, Rebecca "Bex" Porter and her husband, Prince Nicholas, are in self-imposed exile. Cutting themselves off from friends and family, and escaping the world's judgmental eyes, feels like the best way to protect their fragile, all-consuming romance. But when a crisis forces the new Duke and Duchess back to London, the Band-Aid they'd placed over their problems starts to peel at the edges. Now, as old family secrets and new ones threaten to derail her new royal life, Bex has to face the emotional wreckage she and Nick left behind: with the Queen, with the world, and with Nick's brother Freddie, whose sins may not be so easily forgotten --- or forgiven.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538715932

IMPERSONATION by Heidi Pitlor (Fiction)
Allie Lang is a professional ghostwriter and a perpetually broke single mother. Years of navigating her own and America’s cultural definitions of motherhood have left her a lapsed idealist. Lana Breban is a powerhouse lawyer, economist and advocate for women’s rights with designs on elected office. She and her staff have decided she needs help softening her public image and that a memoir about her life as a mother will help. When Allie lands the job as Lana’s ghostwriter, it seems as if things will finally go Allie’s way. But then childcare arrangements unravel, she falls behind on her rent, it turns out that Lana is better at critiquing than actually providing material, and Allie’s boyfriend decides to go on a road trip toward self-discovery.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751443

IN THE VALLEY: Stories and a Novella Based on SERENA by Ron Rash (Fiction/Short Stories)
In these 10 stories, Ron Rash has created a mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us, from the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit to the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain. "Baptism" was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2018, and "Neighbors" was selected by Jonathan Lethem for THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child who threatens all she has accomplished.
Anchor | 9780525564225

THE LAKEHOUSE by Joe Clifford (Psychological Thriller)
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicions...but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door. When Tracy Somerset, a divorced mother from the small town of Covenant, CT, meets a handsome stranger in a midnight Walmart, she has no idea she is speaking with Todd Norman, the former Wall Street financier dubbed “The Banker Butcher” by the New York tabloids. The following morning, on the beach by Norman’s back-under-construction lakehouse, another young woman’s body is discovered.
Polis Books | 9781951709716

MOTHER DAUGHTER WIDOW WIFE by Robin Wasserman (Fiction)
Wendy Doe is a woman with no past and no future. Without any memory of who she is, she’s diagnosed with dissociative fugue, a temporary amnesia that could lift at any moment --- or never at all --- and invited by Dr. Benjamin Strauss to submit herself for experimental observation at his Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research. With few better options, Wendy feels she has no choice. To Dr. Strauss, Wendy is a female body, subject to his investigation and control. To Strauss’ ambitious student, Lizzie Epstein, she’s an object of fascination, a mirror of Lizzie’s own desires, and an invitation to wonder: Once a woman is untethered from all past and present obligations of womanhood, who is she allowed to become?
Scribner | 9781982139506

MOTHER LAND by Leah Franqui (Fiction)
When Rachel Meyer, a thirtysomething foodie from New York, agrees to move to Mumbai with her Indian-born husband, Dhruv, she knows some culture shock is inevitable. But the ex-pat American’s sense of adventure is sorely tested when her mother-in-law, Swati, suddenly arrives from Kolkata with an even more shocking announcement: she has left her husband of more than 40 years and is moving in with them. When Dhruv is called away on business, these two strong-willed women from such very different backgrounds, who see life so differently, are alone together in a home that each is determined to run in her own way --- a situation that ultimately brings into question the very things in their lives that had seemed perfect and permanent…with results neither of them expect.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062938855

ONE YEAR OF UGLY by Caroline Mackenzie (Fiction/Humor)
After fleeing crumbling, volatile Venezuela, Yola Palacio wants nothing more than to settle into a peaceful new life in Trinidad with her family. And who cares if they’re there illegally --- aren’t most of the people on the island? But life for the Palacios is far from quiet --- and when Yola’s Aunt Celia dies, the family once again finds their lives turned upside down. For Celia had been keeping a very big secret --- she owed a LOT of money to a local criminal named Ugly. And without the funds to pay him off, Ugly has the entire family do his bidding until Celia’s debt is settled. But in the midst of the turmoil appears Roman, Ugly’s distractingly gorgeous right-hand man. And although she knows it’s terrible and quite possibly dangerous, Yola just can’t help but give in to the attraction. Where, though, do Roman’s loyalties lie?
Simon & Schuster | 9781982128920

PLAYING NICE by JP Delaney (Psychological Thriller)
Miles Lambert breaks the devastating news that Pete Riley’s son, Theo, isn’t actually his son --- he is the Lamberts’, switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they’ve been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again. The two families take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents --- or even each other?
Ballantine Books | 9781984821362

PRIDE OF EDEN by Taylor Brown (Fiction)
Retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, elephants and other creatures for Little Eden, a wildlife sanctuary near the abandoned ruins of a failed development on the Georgia coast. But when Anse’s prized lion escapes, he becomes obsessed with replacing her --- even if the means of rescue aren’t exactly legal. From the rhino wars of Africa to the battle for the Baghdad Zoo, from the edges of the Okefenokee Swamp to a remote private island off the Georgia coast, Anse and his team battle an underworld of smugglers, gamblers, breeders, trophy hunters and others who exploit exotic game.
Picador | 9781250803047

RACHEL TO THE RESCUE by Elinor Lippman (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Paperback Original
Rachel Klein is sacked from her job at the White House after she sends an email criticizing Donald Trump. As she is escorted off the premises, she is hit by a speeding car, driven by what the press will discreetly call "a personal friend of the President." Does that explain the flowers, the get-well wishes at a press briefing, and the hush money offered by a lawyer at her hospital bedside? Rachel’s recovery is soothed by comically doting parents, matchmaking roommates, a new job as aide to a journalist whose books aim to defame the President, and unexpected love at the local wine store. But secrets leak, and Rachel’s new-found happiness has to make room for more than a little chaos. Will she bring down the President? Or will he manage to do that all by himself?
Mariner Books | 9780358653257

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 | 9781542019538

THE THIRTY NAMES OF NIGHT by Zeyn Joukhadar (Fiction)
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than 60 years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s --- and his grandmother’s --- in ways he never could have expected.
Atria Books | 9781982121525

THE TROUBLE WITH PEACE by Joe Abercrombie (Historical Fantasy)
Savine dan Glokta, once Adua's most powerful investor, finds her judgment, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way. For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye…before it kills her. Unrest worms into every layer of society. The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.
Orbit | 9780316187190

A VERY PUNCHABLE FACE: A Memoir by Colin Jost (Memoir/Essays)
If there’s one trait that makes someone well suited to comedy, it’s being able to take a punch --- metaphorically and, occasionally, physically. From growing up in a family of firefighters on Staten Island to commuting three hours a day to high school and “seeing the sights” (like watching a Russian woman throw a stroller off the back of a ferry), to attending Harvard while Facebook was created, "Saturday Night Live" head writer and Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost shares how he has navigated the world like a slightly smarter Forrest Gump. For every accomplishment (hosting the Emmys), there is a setback (hosting the Emmys). And for every absurd moment (watching paramedics give CPR to a raccoon), there is an honest, emotional one (recounting his mother’s experience on the scene of the Twin Towers’ collapse on 9/11).
Crown | 9781101906347

VESPER FLIGHTS by Helen Macdonald (Nature/Essays)
In VESPER FLIGHTS, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best-loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.
Grove Press | 9780802158673

WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Katherine Center (Fiction)
Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn’t always that way. Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn’t always that way. And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before --- at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him --- but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. And then Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there. He is now a suit-and-tie-wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he’s willing to destroy it.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250219374

WHILE WE WERE DATING by Jasmine Guillory (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
When Ben Stephens lands a huge ad campaign featuring movie star Anna Gardiner, it’s hard to keep it purely professional. Anna is not just gorgeous and sexy, she’s also down to earth and considerate, and he can’t help flirting a little. Anna Gardiner is on a mission: to make herself a household name, and this ad campaign will be a great distraction while she waits to hear if she’s booked her next movie. However, she didn’t expect Ben Stephens to be her biggest distraction. Their light-hearted banter takes a turn for the serious when Ben helps Anna in a family emergency, and they reveal truths about themselves to each other, truths they’ve barely shared with those closest to them.
Berkley | 9780593100851

On Sale the Week of July 19th in Hardcover

July 20th

BETTER TO HAVE GONE: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur (Memoir/History)
It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world --- Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, and the future is bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in BETTER TO HAVE GONE, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice.
Scribner | 9781501132513

BLACK ICE by Brad Thor (Political Thriller)
Scot Harvath is having his best summer ever. With a cottage on the fjord, a boat and his beautiful girlfriend Sølvi, he has everything he could possibly want. But out of vacation days and long overdue back home, America’s top spy has a decision to make --- return, or submit his resignation. When his deadly past comes calling, though, he’ll be left with no choice at all. Leaving his favorite Oslo café, Harvath watches as a ghost climbs out of a taxi --- a man he killed years ago, halfway around the world. How is he still alive? And what is he doing in Norway? In a race against time that will take him high above the Arctic Circle, Harvath will be tested in ways he has never imagined and pushed to a limit few human beings could ever endure.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982104122

THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS by Chuck Wendig (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father --- and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have --- and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again…and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.
Del Rey | 9780399182136

FALSE WITNESS by Karin Slaughter (Mystery/Thriller)
Leigh Collier is an up-and-coming defense attorney and is managing to successfully coparent through a pandemic. But her ordinary life masks a childhood no one should have to endure. On a Sunday night at her daughter’s school play, she gets a call from one of the firm's partners who wants Leigh to come on board to defend a wealthy man accused of multiple counts of rape. When she meets the accused face-to-face, she realizes it’s no coincidence that he’s specifically asked for her to represent him. He may know what happened over 20 years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades avoiding her past. The only person who can help is her younger, estranged sister Callie --- the last person Leigh would ever want to drag into this after all they’ve been through.
William Morrow | 9780062858092

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by Samantha Downing (Psychological Thriller)
Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the prestigious Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. He says his wife couldn’t be more proud --- though no one has seen her in a while. Teddy really can’t be bothered with a few mysterious deaths on campus that are looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is pushing these kids to their full academic potential. All he wants is for his colleagues --- and the endlessly meddlesome parents --- to stay out of his way. If not, well, they’ll get what they deserve. It’s really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.
Berkley | 9780593100974

GOLDEN BOY: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite by John Glatt (True Crime)
By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. With his striking good looks, he moved with ease through glittering social circles and followed in his father’s footsteps to Princeton. But Tommy always felt different. The cracks in his façade began to show in warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia and an inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his former best friend’s Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect --- but he was never charged. Just months later, he shot his father point-blank in the head. Journalist John Glatt takes an in-depth look at the devastating crime that rocked Manhattan’s upper class.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250271020

INTIMACIES by Katie Kitamura (Fiction)
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend, Jana, witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. Soon she’s pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
Riverhead Books | 9780399576164

THE LIGHTS OF SUGARBERRY COVE by Heather Webber (Fiction)
Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about southern cooking and family. But despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night Sadie almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted. So why is she so unhappy? When their mother suffers a minor heart attack, the two sisters come home to run the inn while she recovers. With a little help from the inn’s quirky guests, they may come to terms with their strained relationships, accept the past and rediscover a little lake magic.
Forge Books | 9781250774620

THE MAN WITH THE SILVER SAAB: A Detective Varg Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery/Humor)
Detective Ulf Varg is a man of refined tastes who is quite familiar with the art scene in Malmö. So when art historian Anders Kindgren visits the Department of Sensitive Crimes to report a series of bizarre acts that have been committed against him, Ulf and his team swing into action. Fish stuffed into the vents of Kindgren’s car and a manipulated footnote in a recent publication would be cause enough for an investigation. But when a painting Kindgren had confidently appraised as genuine is later declared to be a fake, it’s clear that someone is out to tarnish his reputation. Meanwhile, Ulf is also weathering personal issues, which quickly spiral out of control. When blood belonging to his lip-reading dog, Martin, is found in the back of his classic Saab, Ulf finds himself the subject of a departmental investigation.
Pantheon | 9780593316108

THE PAST IS RED by Catherynne M. Valente (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction/Humor)
The future is blue. Endless blue…except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown. Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time. But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
Tordotcom | 9781250301130

RED TRAITOR by Owen Matthews (Historical Thriller)
The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is chasing a white elephant: the long-rumored existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power. In a wild-goose chase that has Vasin engaged in high-stakes espionage against a rival State agency, he first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr. As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines are ordered to make a covert run at the American blockade in the Caribbean --- each sub carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads.
Doubleday | 9780385543422

THE RETREAT by Elisabeth de Mariaffi (Psychological Thriller)
Maeve Martin arrives at the High Water Center for the Arts, a gorgeous lodge nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains, determined to do one thing: begin her own dance company. A retired performer and mother of two, time is running out for her to find her feet again after the collapse of her disastrous --- and violent --- marriage. But when an avalanche strikes, Maeve finds herself trapped with six other guests. At first, there’s a sense of camaraderie. But as the days pass and the storm rages on outside, tensions start to run high. Then the first guest meets an unspeakable death. Followed by another. Soon Maeve must admit how little she knows about these strangers --- and how useless a locked door is if the darkness is already inside.
Mulholland Books | 9780316706308

SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN by Shelley Parker-Chan (Historical Fantasy)
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.
Tor Books | 9781250621801

WHAT STRANGE PARADISE by Omar El Akkad (Fiction)
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese and Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna is a teenage girl who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir’s life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety.
Knopf | 9780525657903

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG by Richard Roper (Fiction)
Joel and Theo haven’t spoken since the summer they turned 16, but that’s about to change. From the outside Joel looks like the picture of success: a TV scriptwriter with a smash hit who’s still together and in love with his teenage sweetheart, Amber. But he's falling apart at the seams. He's headed home to reconnect with Theo, who has been living in his parents' shed, nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego. Then he gets evicted on his 30th birthday. He thinks he's done with the real world --- until it shows up on his doorstep. One of them is keeping a secret, and the other is living a lie. But can the promise they once made to walk all 184 miles of the Thames Path help them find their way back to the truth --- and to their friendship?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525539919

A WOMAN OF INTELLIGENCE by Karin Tanabe (Historical Thriller)
A former translator for the United Nations, Katharina Edgeworth --- now the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon and heir to a shipping fortune --- is desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job. Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret soon threatens to ruin her.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250231505

On Sale the Week of July 19th in Paperback

July 20th

AUSTEN YEARS: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen (Memoir)
In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing and imagining through Austen’s novels. AUSTEN YEARS is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism and biographical and historical material about Austen herself.
Picador | 9781250798572

THE BONES OF WOLFE: A Border Noir by James Carlos Blake (Noir Thriller)
Rudy and Frank Wolfe are engaging in routine miscellaneous business for their family when they stumble upon a stash of high-quality pornographic films in a raid. The plot thickens when their Aunt Catalina, the family matriarch aged 115, recognizes a resemblance to her long-lost sister in one of the young performers. Catalina tasks the boys with tracking the girl down, however improbable a connection may be. Soon, Rudy and Frank find themselves moving away from the world of porn and towards the upper echelons of the Sinaloa drug cartel, where the mysterious woman has become a particular favorite of the head narco. For their aunt, the woman and themselves, Frank and Rudy must find a way to extract her from the cartel.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802156952

CROOKED HALLELUJAH by Kelli Jo Ford (Fiction)
It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and 15-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church --- a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. CROOKED HALLELUJAH tells the stories of Justine --- a mixed-blood Cherokee woman --- and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802149138

THE GOOD LIE by A. R. Torre (Domestic Thriller)
Paperback Original
Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore has spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives --- predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. Defense attorney Robert Kavin’s son fell prey to the BH Killer. Convinced of Thompson’s innocence, he steps in to represent him. Now Robert wants Gwen to interview the accused, create a psych profile of the killer and his victims, and help clear his client’s name. As Gwen and Robert grow closer and she dives deeper into the investigation, grave questions arise. So does Gwen’s suspicion that Robert is hiding something --- and that he might not be the only one with a secret.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542020169

HEAVEN AND EARTH written by Paolo Giordano, translated by Anne Milano Appel (Fiction)
Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves, and taciturn, proud people. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother's paperbacks. Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the farm next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern --- the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond. But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers.
Penguin Books | 9781984877338

ISN’T IT BROMANTIC? by Lyssa Kay Adams (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
As the daughter of a Russian journalist who mysteriously disappeared, Elena Konnikova escaped danger the only way she knew how: She married her childhood friend, Vladimir, and moved to the United States. Vlad thought he could be content with his marriage of convenience, but it’s become too difficult to continue in a one-sided relationship. He joined the Bromance Book Club to learn how to make his wife love him, but all he’s learned is that he deserves more. The bros are unwilling to let Vlad forgo true love --- and this time they’re not operating solo. They join forces with Vlad’s neighbors, a group of meddling widows who call themselves the Loners. But just when things finally look promising, Elena’s past life intrudes and their happily ever after is cast into doubt.
Berkley | 9780593332771

NORTHERNMOST by Peter Geye (Fiction)
In 1897, Odd Einar Eide returns home from a near-death experience in the Arctic only to discover his own funeral underway. His wife, Inger, is slow to warm back up to him, having spent many sleepless nights convinced she had lost both him and their daughter, Thea, who traveled to America two years earlier but has yet to send even a single letter back to them in Hammerfest. More than a century later, Greta Nansen has finally begun to admit to herself that her marriage is over. Desperately unhappy and unfulfilled, she makes the decision to follow her husband from their home in Minnesota to Oslo, where he has traveled for work, to end it once and for all. But on impulse, she diverts her travels to Hammerfest: the town of her ancestors, the town where her great-great-grandmother Thea was born --- and never returned.
Vintage | 9780525565352

NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE by Claire North (Post-Apocalyptic Thriller)
Paperback Original
Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age --- a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven's world, such material must be closely guarded so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated. But when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life will be turned upside down. Torn between friendship and faith, Ven must decide how far he's willing to go to save this new world --- and how much he is willing to lose.
Orbit | 9780316498838

PEW by Catherine Lacey (Fiction)
In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. By the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are --- a devil or an angel or something else entirely --- is dwarfed by even larger truths.
Picador | 9781250798534

THE SINFUL LIVES OF TROPHY WIVES by Kristin Miller (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Mystery writer Brooke Davies has had no problem playing the role of a doting housewife. But as she befriends other wives on the street and spends considerable time away from her husband Jack, he worries if he doesn’t control Brooke’s every move, she will reveal the truth behind their “perfect” marriage. Erin King, famed news anchor and chair of the community board, is no stranger to maintaining an image --- though being married to a plastic surgeon helps. But the skyrocketing success of her career has worn her love life thin, and her professional ambitions have pushed Mason away. Quitting her job is a Hail Mary attempt at keeping him interested, to steer him away from finding a young trophy wife. But is it enough, and is Mason truly the man she thought he was?
Ballantine Books | 9781524799526

THE STORYTELLERS: Straight Talk from the World's Most Acclaimed Suspense & Thriller Authors edited by Mark Rubinstein (Essays)
Paperback Original
Have you ever read a suspense novel so good you had to stop and think to yourself, ''How did the author come up with this idea? Their characters? Is some of this story real?'' For over five years, Mark Rubinstein had the chance to ask the most well-known authors in the field just these kinds of questions in interviews for the Huffington Post. Collected here are interviews with 47 accomplished authors, including Michael Connelly, Ken Follett, Meg Gardiner, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman and Don Winslow. These are their personal stories in their own words, much of the material never before published. How do these writers' life experiences color their art? Find out their thoughts, inspirations and candid opinions. Learn more about your favorite authors, how they work and who they truly are.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781094138176

THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Michele Campbell (Psychological Thriller)
Meet the first Mrs. Ford. Beautiful. Accomplished. Wealthy beyond imagination. Married to a much younger man. And now, she’s dead. Meet the second Mrs. Ford. Waitress. Small-town girl. Married to a man she never forgot, from a summer romance 10 years before. And now, she’s wealthy beyond imagination. Who is Connor Ford? Two women loved him. And knew him as only wives can know. Set amongst the glittering mansions of the Hamptons, THE WIFE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is about the lives of those who will do anything for love and money. Who is the victim? Who is the villain? And who will be next to die?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250313348

WONDERLAND by Zoje Stage (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
After years of city life, Orla and Shaw Bennett are ready for the quiet of New York's Adirondack mountains --- or at least, they think they are. Settling into the perfect farmhouse with their two children, they are both charmed and unsettled by the expanse of their land, the privacy of their individual bedrooms, and the isolation of life a mile from any neighbor. But none of the Bennetts could expect what lies waiting in the woods, where secrets run dark and deep. When something begins to call to the family --- from under the earth, beneath the trees and within their minds --- Orla realizes she might be the only one who can save them…if she can find out what this force wants before it's too late.
Mulholland Books | 9780316458528

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