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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of August 9th and August 16th 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 new spotlight feature, “In Case You Missed It…and a Look Ahead”. Here we are sharing a book that you might not have read, and we also are getting the author’s next book on your radar. We kick off the feature with two books by Lisa Unger: CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45 (“In Case You Missed It”) and LAST GIRL GHOSTED (“A Look Ahead”).
We have two new "Bookreporter Talks To" interviews to share with you in this newsletter. First up is Megan Abbott, whose latest thriller, THE TURNOUT, is this month’s “Read with Jenna” Today Show Book Club pick. Sisters Dara and Marie Durant, whose parents ran the prestigious Durant School of Dance, have trained in ballet since they were children. Following the sudden deaths of their parents, the girls begin running the dance school together. Working with them is Charlie, a ballet student who was injured early in his career. He was like a son to the family and is now married to Dara. At the height of one of the most important events of the year, the annual performance of "The Nutcracker," a suspicious accident occurs that throws this troika and the entire studio into a tailspin.
Carol's conversation with Megan is fast-paced as they talk plot, characters and what a "turnout” is, as well as how tension is built in her writing. They also touch on her work in the entertainment industry, both on HBO’s “The Deuce” and her role as the creator, executive producer and showrunner of USA’s “Dare Me”, which is based on her book of the same name. Megan will be adapting THE TURNOUT for film as well, and they talk about the differences between writing a book and writing for the screen. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
Carol's second interview is with Chandler Baker, whose new novel, THE HUSBANDS, is this month’s “Good Morning America” Book Club pick and an upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. Nora Spangler is an attorney with more than her career on her plate. She’s up for partnership at her law firm, but at home she’s juggling everything when it comes to taking care of the kids and doing the chores. Her husband works hard at the office, but on the home front his task list is a lot lighter, and he is much more relaxed. When they plan to move to a new neighborhood, Nora finds the women there less challenged by their household tasks, as their husbands are helping out a lot more around the house. What’s happening there?
Carol talks to Chandler about “the second shift” and what it means for women, especially those with young children --- as well as the nod that THE HUSBANDS gives to THE STEPFORD WIVES. Chandler mentions the book that her friends were reading and discussing that inspired the story. They zero in on the characters and related their choices to our own lives, all while doing their best not to give anything away. Also, she talks about writing the screenplay for the book. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
This is your last newsletter reminder to sign up for this month’s “Bookaccino Live” afternoon event, which will take place TOMORROW, Wednesday, August 11th at 2pm ET. Carol will present a number of titles releasing between August 10th and September 7th, along with a few from October, that she thinks will be of interest to you. 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, August 11th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between August 10th and September 7th, along with a few from October, that she would like to get on your radar.
Wednesday, August 11th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe --- will talk to Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose latest novel is MALIBU RISING.
Thursday, August 12th at 3pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Christy Lefteri as she discusses her new book, SONGBIRDS, with Jeniffer Thompson. The novel is inspired by the real-life disappearance of domestic workers in Cyprus.
Thursday, August 12th at 8pm ET: Highland Park Public Library: Join Highland Park Public Library for an evening with Megan Miranda and Shari Lapena as they discuss their new books, SUCH A QUIET PLACE and NOT A HAPPY FAMILY. They will be joined in conversation with Mary Kubica, the bestselling author of suspense novels.
Monday, August 16th at 3pm ET: Murder By The Book: Sandie Jones will talk to Sara DiVello (a yoga teacher by day and mystery writer by night) about her new thriller, THE GUILT TRIP, which is this month's Barnes & Noble Book Club pick.
Monday, August 16th at 9pm ET: Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Join Jonathan Santlofer for the virtual launch of his latest novel, THE LAST MONA LISA, which explores the Mona Lisa's very real theft in 1911 and the present underbelly of the art world.
Tuesday, August 17th at 7pm ET: Tombolo Books: Naomi Hirahara, author of CLARK AND DIVISION, will be in conversation with bestselling author Michael Connelly, who calls the book "[a] telling and touching story that echoes across the decades."
Tuesday, August 17th at 7pm ET: Watermark Books & Café: Watermark Books & Café invites you to attend a virtual event with James Lee Burke, who will talk to John Grisham about ANOTHER KIND OF EDEN, the newest book in his Holland Family Saga.
Tuesday, August 17th at 9pm ET: Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child will discuss their new book, BLOODLESS, which finds Agent Pendergast facing his most unexpected challenge yet when bloodless bodies begin to appear in Savannah, GA.
This Week's Bonus News:
Our New Spotlight Feature:
"In Case You Missed It…and a Look Ahead"
Our First Featured Titles: CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45
and LAST GIRL GHOSTED by Lisa Unger
Sometimes you hear about a book and just do not have time to read it. Other times, you have missed hearing about a book, and we would like to tell you about it. We do not want you to miss books that we think you will enjoy! In our new feature, "In Case You Missed It...and a Look Ahead", we are sharing a book that you might not have read, and we also are getting the author’s next book on your radar. So then you never will need to say, “I missed it!”
We are kicking off the feature with two books by Lisa Unger: CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45, which released in paperback in July and was a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick when it came out in hardcover last year, and LAST GIRL GHOSTED, which will be in stores on October 5th.
CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45 by Lisa Unger (Psychological Thriller)
Now Available in Paperback
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.
- Click here to read more about the book.
- Click here to read our review.
- Click here to read Carol's Bookreporter.com Bets On commentary.
- Click here to watch Carol's "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Lisa Unger.
- Click here to listen to a podcast of the interview.
LAST GIRL GHOSTED by Lisa Unger (Psychological Thriller)
On Sale October 5th
She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him --- hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love? But then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared --- profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted. Maybe it was her fault. She shared too much, too fast. Soon she learns there were others. Girls who thought they were in love. Girls who later went missing. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past --- and hers --- she finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she's not sure whether she's the predator --- or the prey.
- Click here to read more about the book.
Click here to read more in our
"In Case You Missed It...and a Look Ahead" feature.
On Sale the Week of August 9th in Hardcover
August 10th
THE ALMOST LEGENDARY MORRIS SISTERS: A True Story of Family Fiction by Julie Klam (Memoir)
Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the 20th century, the sisters’ parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage and promised to send for them when he settled in California --- a promise he never kept. The stories of these independent women intrigued Klam, but as she delved into them to learn more, she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue.
Riverhead Books | 9780735216426
AMERICAN ESTRANGEMENT: Stories by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (Fiction/Short Stories)
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain." His new collection of stories --- some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review and the Best American Short Stories --- is set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to readers of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles --- a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction --- even as they are battered by larger, often invisible, economic, political and racial forces of American society.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393541236
CUL-DE-SAC by Joy Fielding (Psychological Thriller)
Someone on this quiet, unassuming cul-de-sac will be shot dead in the middle of a sultry July night. Will it be Maggie, the perfectionist wife, or Craig, the husband who can’t quite live up to her expectations? Maybe it will be Nick, a highly respected oncologist, or his wife, Dani, a successful dentist, both with well-kept secrets of their own. Or Julia, an elderly widow, whose troubled grandson has recently moved in with her. Then there’s Olivia and her husband, Sean. Having lost his job at a prestigious advertising agency, Sean is depressed, resentful of his working wife and drinking heavily. And what of the newlyweds, Aiden and Heidi, whose marriage is already on the rocks? Matters aren’t helped when Heidi befriends Julia’s grandson, setting the stage for a major blowup.
Ballantine Books | 9781984820259
THE ETERNAL AUDIENCE OF ONE by Rémy Ngamije (Fiction)
Séraphin is a playlist-maker, nerd-jock hybrid, self-appointed merchant of cool, Rwandan, stifled and living in Windhoek, Namibia. Soon he will leave the confines of his family life for the cosmopolitan city of Cape Town, in South Africa, where loyal friends, hormone-saturated parties, adventurous conquests and race controversies await. More than that, his long-awaited final year in law school promises to deliver a crucial puzzle piece of the Great Plan immigrant: a degree from a prestigious university. But a year is more than the sum of its parts, and en route to the future, the present must be lived through and even the past must be survived.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982164423
EVERYTHING I HAVE IS YOURS: A Marriage by Eleanor Henderson (Memoir)
This is the true story of Eleanor Henderson’s 20-year marriage, which was defined by her husband Aaron’s chronic illness. One day, out of nowhere, a rash appeared on Aaron’s arms. Soon, it had morphed into painful lesions covering his body. Eleanor was as baffled as the doctors. There was no obvious diagnosis, let alone a cure. And as years passed and the lesions gave way to Aaron’s increasingly disturbed concerns about the source of his sickness, the husband she loved seemed to unravel before her eyes. A new fissure ruptured in their marriage, and new questions piled onto old ones: Where does physical illness end and mental illness begin? Where does one person end and another begin? And how do we exist alongside someone else’s suffering?
Flatiron Books | 9781250787941
GONE FOR GOOD by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery)
The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and there hasn’t been a trace of him in 20 years. Grace Harper, who uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group, believes that the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods in which he hunted. If she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity. Detective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she's at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved.
Minotaur Books | 9781250264602
THE HUMAN ZOO by Sabina Murray (Fiction)
Filipino-American Christina “Ting” Klein has just traveled from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino brought to America at the start of the 20th century to be exhibited as part of a "human zoo." It has been one year since Procopio “Copo” Gumboc swept the elections in an upset and took power as president. Arriving unannounced at her aging aunt’s aristocratic home, Ting quickly falls into upper-class Manila life. To make her way, she must balance the aristocratic traditions of her extended family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance, as well as temper her stance towards a regime her loved ones are struggling to survive.
Grove Press | 9780802157508
ICE AND STONE: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller (Mystery)
When the bodies of two Indigenous women are found in the wilderness of northern California, it is only the latest horrific development in a string of similar crimes in the area. Despite all evidence to the contrary, officials rule the deaths isolated incidents, which soon join the ranks of countless other unsolved cases quickly dismissed by law enforcement. In a town where too many injustices are tolerated or brushed under the rug, only a few people remain who refuse to let a killer walk free. But Private Investigator Sharon McCone is one of those few. She is hired by an organization called Crimes Against Indigenous Sisters to go undercover in Meruk County --- a community rife with secrets, lies and corruption --- to expose the truth.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538733165
IN THE COUNTRY OF OTHERS by Leila Slimani (Fiction)
Mathilde, a spirited young Frenchwoman, falls in love with Amine, a handsome Moroccan soldier in the French army during World War II. After the war, the couple settles in Morocco. While Amine tries to cultivate his family farm's rocky terrain, Mathilde feels her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate, the lack of money, and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. Left increasingly alone to raise her two children in a world whose rules she does not understand, Mathilde goes from being reduced to a farmer's wife to defying the country's chauvinism and repressive social codes by offering medical services to the rural population. As tensions mount between the Moroccans and the French colonists, Amine finds himself caught in the crossfire.
Penguin Books | 9780143135975
THE KING OF INFINITE SPACE by Lyndsay Faye (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Ben Dane’s Broadway theater baron father is dead --- but by purpose or by accident? Unable to face alone his mother's ghastly remarriage to his uncle, he turns to his dearest friend, Horatio Patel, whom he hasn't seen since their relationship changed forever from platonic to something...other. Horatio is on the first flight to NYC when he finds himself next to a sly tailor who portends inevitable disaster and seems ominously like an architect of mayhem himself. Meanwhile, Ben's ex-fiancé Lia has been drawn into the fold of three florists from New Orleans --- seemingly ageless sisters who teach her the language of flowers, and whose magical bouquets hold both curses and cures. For a price. On one explosive night these kinetic forces will collide, and the only possible outcome is death.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525535898
MRS. MARCH by Virginia Feito (Psychological Thriller)
George March’s new novel is a smash. No one could be prouder than his dutiful wife, Mrs. March, who revels in his accolades. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that her husband’s latest protagonist --- a detestable character named Johanna --- is based on Mrs. March herself. What could have merited this humiliation? That one casual remark robs Mrs. March of the belief that she knew everything about her husband --- and herself --- thus sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey. While snooping in George’s office, Mrs. March finds a newspaper clipping about a missing woman. Did George have anything to do with her disappearance?
Liveright | 9781631498619
THE OPHELIA GIRLS by Jane Healey (Fiction)
In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaus. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks. Twenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and 17-year-old Maeve. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and gives Maeve the attention she longs for. She is recently in remission, unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary?
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780358106418
SHE WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING by Sarah Adlakha (Fiction)
When 39-year-old Maria Forssmann wakes up in her 17-year-old body, she doesn’t know how she got there. All she does know is that she has to get back: to her home in Bienville, Mississippi, to her job as a successful psychiatrist and, most importantly, to her husband, daughters and unborn son. But she also knows that, in only a few weeks, a devastating tragedy will strike her husband, a tragedy that will lead to their meeting each other. Can she change time and still keep what it’s given her?
Forge Books | 9781250774552
THE SHIMMERING STATE by Meredith Westgate (Dystopian Fiction)
Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental memory treatment for Alzheimer’s using a new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother. Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet. She still waitresses during her off-hours at the Chateau Marmont, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin --- or Mem --- among the Hollywood elite. When Lucien and Sophie meet at the Center, they have no memory of how they got there --- or why they feel so inexplicably drawn to one another. Is it attraction, or something they cannot remember from “before”?
Atria Books | 9781982156718
THE SHOW GIRL by Nicola Harrison (Historical Fiction)
It's 1927 when Olive McCormick moves from Minneapolis to New York City determined to become a star in the Ziegfeld Follies. Extremely talented as a singer and dancer, it takes every bit of perseverance to finally make it on stage. And once she does, all the glamour and excitement is everything she imagined and more. Then she meets Archie Carmichael. Handsome and wealthy, Archie is the only man she has ever met who seems to accept her modern ways --- her independent nature and passion for success. But once she accepts his proposal of marriage, he starts to change his tune. Olive must decide if she is willing to reveal a devastating secret and sacrifice the life she loves for the man she loves.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250200150
THIS WILL ALL BE OVER SOON: A Memoir by Cecily Strong (Memoir)
Cecily Strong had a special bond with her cousin, Owen. And so she was devastated when, in early 2020, he passed away at age 30 from the brain cancer glioblastoma. Before Strong could attempt to process her grief, another tragedy struck: the coronavirus pandemic. Following a few harrowing weeks in the virus epicenter of New York City, Strong relocated to an isolated house in the woods upstate. Here, trying to make sense of Owen’s death and the upended world, she spent much of the ensuing months writing. The result is THIS WILL ALL BE OVER SOON --- a raw, unflinching memoir about loss, love, laughter and hope.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982168315
TOKYO REDUX by David Peace (Historical/Noir Mystery)
Starting in American-occupied Tokyo, where tension and confusion reign, American detective Harry Sweeney leads the missing-person investigation for General MacArthur's GHQ. Fifteen years later, as Tokyo prepares for the global spotlight as host of the summer Olympics, private investigator Murota Hideki --- who was a policeman during the Occupation --- is confronted by this very same case, and is forced to address something he's been hiding for more than a decade. And 20-plus years after that, as Emperor Shōwa lays dying, Donald Reichenbach, an aging American eking out a living in Japan teaching and translating, discovers that the final reckoning of the greatest mystery of the era is now in his hands.
Knopf | 9780307263766
VORTEX: An FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter (Thriller)
Seven years ago, Mia Briscoe was at a college frat rave with her best friend, Serena, when a fire broke out. Everyone was accounted for except Serena, who was never seen or heard from again. Now an investigative journalist covering the political scene in New York City, Mia discovers old photos taken the night of Serena’s disappearance and begins to uncover a sinister string of events going all the way back to that disastrous party. Working with Sherlock, the secrets begin to unravel. But some very powerful --- and very dangerous --- people will do anything to keep them from learning the truth.
William Morrow | 9780063004085
YOURS CHEERFULLY by AJ Pearce (Historical Fiction)
Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. The Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort. But when Emmy and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.
Scribner | 9781501170096
On Sale the Week of August 9th in Paperback
August 10th
1st CASE by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts (Thriller)
Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's computer. Yet her mentor, Eve Abajian, arranges a new beginning for her --- as an intern in the FBI's Boston field office. Her new supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge William Keats, sees in Angela a fellow prodigy. But Angela's skills come with a natural curiosity, which is also a dangerous liability. With little training, Angela is quickly plunged into a tough case: tracking murderous brothers who go by the Poet and the Engineer. When Keats tells her to "watch and listen," Angela's mind kicks into overdrive. The obsessive thinking that earned her A’s on campus can prove fatal in the field.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538714973
AFTERLAND by Lauren Beukes (Dystopian Thriller/Science Fiction)
Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence --- and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie --- all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home. To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step…even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.
Mulholland Books | 9780316267854
THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS by Becky Mandelbaum (Fiction)
It’s late 2016 when Ariel discovers that her mother Mona’s animal sanctuary in Western Kansas has not only been the target of anti-Semitic hate crimes, but that it’s also for sale, due to hidden financial ruin. Estranged from her mother for six years, Ariel knows she has to return to her childhood home --- especially since her own past may have played a role in the attack on the sanctuary. Ariel expects tension, maybe even fury, but she doesn’t anticipate that her first love, a ranch hand named Gideon, will still be working at the Bright Side. Meanwhile, Ariel’s charming but hapless fiancé, Dex, grows paranoid about her sudden departure. After uncovering Mona’s address, he sets out to confront Ariel, but instead finds her grappling with the life she’s abandoned.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982112998
BROKEN by Don Winslow (Thriller)
In six intense short novels connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt and redemption, BROKEN is #1 international bestseller Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heart-stopping, heartbreaking best. Here, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life on and off the job, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters and fugitives, the lost souls driving without headlights through the dark night on the American criminal highway.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062988898
COBBLE HILL by Cecily von Ziegesar (Fiction)
Welcome to Cobble Hill. In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her husband, Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones everywhere. Roy, a newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, a nervous, introverted industrial designer, struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife, Elizabeth.
Atria Books | 9781982147044
FALLOUT: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World by Lesley M.M. Blume (History)
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the U.S. government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked --- until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982128531
HANGING FALLS: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
Officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, stumble upon a body floating at the edge of a lake. Robo catches human scent, which leads to an enigmatic forest-dweller who quickly becomes the prime suspect. Mattie identifies the victim and discovers an odd religious cult whose dress and manners harken back to the 19th century. As the list of suspects grows, an unexpected visit from members of Mattie's long-lost family sheds new light on her childhood as they help Mattie piece together details of the fateful night when she was abducted at age two. The tangled threads of the investigation and family dynamics begin to intertwine --- but darkness threatens to claim a new victim before Mattie and Robo can track down the killers.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643858098
HERE WE ARE by Graham Swift (Historical Fiction)
It is 1959 in Brighton, England, and the theater at the end of the famous pier is having its best summer season in years. Ronnie, a brilliant young magician, and Evie, his dazzling assistant, are top of the bill, drawing a full house every night. And Jack is everyone’s favorite master of ceremonies, holding the whole show together. But as the summer progresses, the drama among the three begins to overshadow their success onstage, setting in motion events that will reshape their lives.
Vintage | 9781984899521
JANE AUSTEN AT HOME: A Biography by Lucy Worsley (Biography)
Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses --- both grand and small --- of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a "life without incident." She examines the rooms, spaces and possessions that mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250799968
LIFE IN A COLD CLIMATE: NANCY MITFORD: The Biography by Laura Thompson (Biography)
Nancy Mitford was, in the words of her sister Lady Diana Mosley, “very complex.” Her highly autobiographical early work, the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism, and the vast body of letters to her family, to friends such as Evelyn Waugh, and to the great love of her life, Gaston Palewski, all tell an intriguing story. Drawing from these, as well as conversations with Mitford’s two surviving sisters, acquaintances and colleagues, prize-winning author Laura Thompson has fashioned a portrait of a contradictory and courageous woman.
Pegasus Books | 9781643137728
THE LIGHT OF LUNA PARK by Addison Armstrong (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
New York City, 1926. Nurse Althea Anderson's heart is near breaking when she witnesses another premature baby die at Bellevue Hospital. So when she reads an article detailing the amazing survival rates of babies treated in incubators in an exhibit at Luna Park, Coney Island, it feels like the miracle she has been searching for. But the doctors at Bellevue dismiss Althea and this unconventional medicine, forcing her to make a choice between a baby's life and the doctors' wishes that will change everything. Twenty-five years later, Stella Wright is falling apart. Her mother has just passed, she quit a job she loves, and her marriage is struggling. Then she discovers a letter that brings into question everything she knew about her mother, and everything she knows about herself.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593328040
NEVER TURN BACK by Christopher Swann (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
Ethan Faulkner is a precocious child with a brilliant but troublesome sister, a war vet for a father, and a weary mother trying to manage their family. One night a young woman rings their doorbell, desperate to hide from two men who are pursuing her, when one of the two barges in after her. The struggle leaves both of Ethan's parents dead. Years later, Ethan hasn't quite followed through on his promise to his dying father --- to take care of his sister. Quite frankly, he wants her to suffer for preventing him from getting to his dad before he died all those years ago. When news of a brutal murder breaks with evidence pointing to Ethan as the prime suspect, all the painful memories of his past come rushing to meet him.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643858081
THE NIGHT WE BURNED by S. F. Kosa (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Dora is always aware of the line between fact and fiction. As a fact checker at an online magazine, her job depends on it. And as a woman outrunning her secrets, so does her life. But when a colleague decides to pursue a story about a murder in her hometown, one linked to a deadly fire at a cult compound 20 years prior, suddenly all of Dora's carefully spun deceptions are at risk. And if she can't stop the story, her entire life is on the line. As Dora works with her colleague, altering facts to hide her past along the way, she's thrown back into a world she tried desperately to leave behind. As her lies pile up, so do the murders. Until Dora realizes she won't be lucky enough to escape twice.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728215594
ONE YEAR GONE by Avery Bishop (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
“Sometimes teenagers run away…. Give her a few days. She’ll be back.” That’s what the police tell Jessica Moore when her 17-year-old daughter, Wyn, vanishes. All signs point to this being true. But days become weeks. Weeks become months. And Jessica begins to fear the terrible truth --- that she may never see her daughter again. Then, one year later, Jessica gets a flurry of text messages from Wyn that freeze her blood: mom. please help. i think he’s going to kill me. But Wyn’s terrified plea comes with a warning not to call the police. Her kidnapper wears a badge. Delving into the months leading up to Wyn’s disappearance, Jessica stumbles upon information that could put her own life in danger.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542018708
THE PERFECT FAMILY by Robyn Harding (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Thomas and Viv Adler are the envy of their neighbors. Until one morning, when they wake up to find their porch has been pelted with eggs. Thomas insists it’s a prank. But when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and their car’s tires are punctured, the family begins to worry. Surveillance cameras show nothing but grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies. And the police dismiss the attacks, insisting they’re just the work of bored teenagers. Unable to identify the perpetrators, the Adlers are helpless as the assaults escalate into violence, and worse. And each new violation brings with it a growing fear. Because everyone in the Adler family is keeping a secret --- not just from the outside world, but from each other.
Gallery Books | 9781982169398
THE RETURN by Nicholas Sparks (Romance)
Trevor Benson never intended to move back to New Bern, North Carolina. But when a mortar blast sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he'd inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any. Trevor isn't prepared to fall in love with a local. Yet, from their very first encounter, he feels a connection with deputy sheriff Natalie Masterson that he can't ignore. But she remains frustratingly distant, making him wonder what she's hiding. Trevor hopes that Callie, a sullen teenage girl who lives down the road, can shed light on the mysterious circumstances of his grandfather's death. She offers few clues --- until a crisis triggers a race to uncover the true nature of her past.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538728581
SHADOW HILL: A Geneva Chase Crime Reporter Mystery by Thomas Kies (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Just days before an oil executive is scheduled to give a pseudo-scientific report to Congress, aiming to delay crucial action on climate change for decades, he and his wife are found shot to death in their Greenwich, Connecticut home. It's ruled a murder-suicide, but their son refuses to accept this conclusion and hires Geneva Chase, ex-journalist-turned-detective, to prove otherwise. With the report still due to Congress, the lead scientist of the study gone missing, climate activists turning violent, and members of the executive's family seeking revenge, Geneva races to find answers, stay alive and stop the report from reaching Washington.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464214400
THE SOCRATES EXPRESS: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers by Eric Weiner (Philosophy/Essays)
We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt and points in between to reconnect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781501129025
THIS IS THE NIGHT OUR HOUSE WILL CATCH FIRE: A Memoir by Nick Flynn (Memoir)
When Nick Flynn was seven years old, his mother set fire to their house. The event loomed large in his imagination for years, but it’s only after having a child of his own that he understands why. He returns with his young daughter to the landscape of his youth, reflecting on how his feral childhood has him still in its reins, and forms his memories into lyrical bedtime stories populated by the both sinister and wounded Mister Mann. THIS IS THE NIGHT OUR HOUSE WILL CATCH FIRE unravels the story of the fire that Flynn had to escape, and the ways in which, as an adult, he has carried that fire with him until it threatens to burn down his own house.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393867428
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH by Gilly Macmillan (Psychological Thriller)
Lucy Harper’s talent for writing bestselling novels has given her fame, fortune and millions of fans. It’s also given her Dan, her needy, jealous husband whose own writing career has gone precisely nowhere. Now Dan has vanished. But this isn’t the first time that someone has disappeared from Lucy’s life. Three decades ago, her little brother Teddy also went missing and was never found. Lucy, the only witness, helplessly spun fantasy after fantasy about Teddy’s disappearance. But now Lucy is a grown woman who can’t hide behind fiction any longer. The world is watching, and her whole life is under intense scrutiny. Could she have hurt Teddy? Did she kill Dan? Finally, now, Lucy Harper is going to tell the truth.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062875594
TROUBLE THE SAINTS by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Historical Fantasy)
Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens. Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything --- not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams. Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side --- and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late. Is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?
Tor Books | 9781250175359
WHERE I COME FROM: Stories from the Deep South by Rick Bragg (Essays)
In this irresistible collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns culled from his best-loved pieces in Southern Living and Garden & Gun, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Rick Bragg muses on everything from his love of Tupperware to the decline of country music; from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pickup truck; and from the best way to kill fire ants to why any self-respecting Southern man worth his salt should carry a good knife. WHERE I COME FROM celebrates “a litany of great talkers, blue-green waters, deep casseroles, kitchen-sink permanents, lying fishermen, haunted mansions, and dogs that never die, things that make this place more than a dotted line on a map or a long-ago failed rebellion, even if only in some cold-weather dream.”
Vintage | 9780593310809
On Sale the Week of August 16th in Hardcover
August 16th
THE NOISE by James Patterson and J. D. Barker (Psychological Thriller)
In the shadow of Mount Hood, 16-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister, Sophie, when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the sound only gets worse.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316499873
August 17th
56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard (Psychological Thriller)
56 days ago. Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 days ago. When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who --- and what --- he really is. Today. Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?
Blackstone Publishing | 9781982694654
ALL IN: An Autobiography by Billie Jean King, with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers (Autobiography)
In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to find her true self. She recounts her groundbreaking tennis career --- six years as the top-ranked woman in the world, 20 Wimbledon championships, 39 grand slam titles, and her watershed defeat of Bobby Riggs in the famous "Battle of the Sexes." She poignantly recalls the cultural backdrop of those years and the profound impact on her worldview from the women's movement, the assassinations and anti-war protests of the 1960s, the civil rights movement and, eventually, the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Knopf | 9781101947333
ANOTHER KIND OF EDEN by James Lee Burke (Historical Thriller)
The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard finds work on a farm in Denver and meets Joanne McDuffy, a fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne’s involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult. When a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power --- and evil.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982151713
THE BARCELONA COMPLEX: Lionel Messi and the Making --- and Unmaking --- of the World's Greatest Soccer Club by Simon Kuper (Sports/History)
FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is “More than a club.” But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club’s two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time.
Penguin Press | 9780593297711
BLOODLESS: A Pendergast Novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
On the evening of November 24, 1971, D. B. Cooper hijacked Flight 305 with a fake bomb, collected a ransom of $200,000, and then parachuted from the rear of the plane, disappearing into the night…and into history. Fifty years later, Agent Pendergast takes on a bizarre and gruesome case: in the ghost-haunted city of Savannah, Georgia, bodies are found with no blood left in their veins --- sowing panic and reviving whispered tales of the infamous Savannah Vampire. As the mystery rises along with the body count, Pendergast and his partner, Agent Coldmoon, race to understand how --- or if --- these murders are connected to the only unsolved skyjacking in American history.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538736708
COMPLICATIONS by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
The Hotel Louis XVI has been the most lauded boutique hotel in all of Paris for decades, attracting an international clientele of the rich and famous. Now, after four years of renovations and the death of its legendary and beloved manager, it is set to reopen its doors at last. An esteemed group of loyal returning guests will descend upon the hotel, joined by a number of new faces who have managed to secure coveted bookings in the wake of last-minute cancellations. Awaiting them all is the Louis XVI’s new manager, Olivier Bateau, and his level-headed assistant manager, Yvonne Philippe. But they quickly realize that anything can happen at any moment, and on one cool September evening, everything does.
Delacorte Press | 9781984821492
THE DARKNESS KNOWS by Arnaldur Indridason (Mystery)
A frozen body is discovered in the icy depths of Langjökull glacier, apparently that of a businessman who disappeared 30 years before. At the time, an extensive search and police investigation yielded no results --- one of the missing man’s business associates was briefly held in custody, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Now the associate is arrested again, and Konrad, the retired policeman who originally investigated the disappearance, is called back to reopen the case that has weighed on his mind for decades. When a woman approaches him with new information that she obtained from her deceased brother, progress can finally be made in solving this long-cold case.
Minotaur Books | 9781250765468
THE FAMILY PLOT by Megan Collins (Psychological Thriller)
Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, Dahlia Lighthouse is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were 16. After several years away and following her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body --- Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax. Dahlia is quick to blame Andy’s murder on the serial killer who terrorized the island for decades, while the rest of her family reacts to the revelation in unsettling ways. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.
Atria Books | 9781982163846
THE GARDEN HOUSE by Marcia Willett (Fiction)
Fresh out of university and right on the precipice of adulthood, El is trying her best to figure out what she really wants from life. This is complicated by the fact that she is also dealing with the loss of her father, Martin. After his sudden death, El inherits and moves into his home just outside Tavistock, in the Devon countryside. Her stepbrother, Will, comes to help her through her grief and to go through her father’s belongings. As El spends time in her father’s home, she uncovers more about his life, and the secrets he had been keeping from her and her family. This includes mysterious messages on his phone from someone El suspects may have been more than just a friendly acquaintance.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250760265
GETAWAY by Zoje Stage (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Imogen and Beck, two sisters who couldn't be more different, have been friends with Tilda since high school. Once inseparable, over two decades the women have grown apart. But after Imogen survives a traumatic attack, Beck suggests they all reunite to hike deep into the Grand Canyon’s backcountry. A week away, secluded in nature…surely it’s just what they need. But as the terrain grows tougher, tensions from their shared past bubble up. And when supplies begin to disappear, it becomes clear that secrets aren’t the only thing they’re being stalked by.
Mulholland Books | 9780316242509
HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND by Lexie Elliott (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Georgie, Lissa and Bronwyn have been inseparable since dominating their college swim team. Swimming has always been an escape from their own problems, but now their shared passion has turned deadly. How can it be true that Lissa, the strongest swimmer they know, drowned? Granted, there is something strange about Kanu Cove, where Lissa was last seen, swimming off the coast of the fabulous island resort she owned with her husband. Lissa’s closest friends gather at the resort to honor her life, but Georgie and Bron can’t seem to stop looking over their shoulders. As the weather turns ominous, trapping the funeral guests together on the island, nobody knows who they can trust.
Berkley | 9780593098691
THE ISLAND by Ben Coes (Political Thriller)
Iran has been planning a revenge attack on America for years, which involves assassinating U.S. President J. P. Dellenbaugh and neutralizing their most successful agent, Dewey Andreas. The first pre-emptive attack against Dewey fails, but it worries the head of the CIA enough that he sends him out of town and off the grid. Muhammed el-Shakib, head of Iran's military and intelligence agency, launches a bold strike. When the President arrives in New York to address the U.N., embedded terrorist assets blow up the bridges and tunnels that connect Manhattan to the mainland. Taking control of the island with its hidden forces, they race to the U.N. in search of Dellenbaugh and to launch an even deadlier attack that will wreak unimaginable destruction on the country itself.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250140821
TWO-WAY MIRROR: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson (Biography)
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention. TWO-WAY MIRROR is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more than three decades. With unique access to the poet’s abundant correspondence, Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324002956
VELVET WAS THE NIGHT by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Noir Thriller)
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman --- and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists.
Del Rey | 9780593356821
VIRAL by Robin Cook (Medical Thriller)
Brian Murphy’s wife, Emma, is diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis, a rare and highly lethal mosquito-borne viral disease. Their young daughter then begins to exhibit alarming physical and behavioral symptoms, too. Emma’s harrowing hospital stay becomes even more fraught when Brian receives a staggering hospital bill full of outrageous charges and murky language, and his health insurance company refuses to cover any of the cost. To get to the bottom of the predatory practices targeting his loved ones and countless others, he must uncover the dark side of an industry that has strayed drastically from its altruistic roots --- and bring down the callous executives preying on the sick and defenseless before the virus can claim even more people.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593328293
On Sale the Week of August 16th in Paperback
August 17th
THE BASS ROCK by Evie Wyld (Fiction)
Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has always borne witness to the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries, the fates of three women are inextricably linked to this place and to one another. Sarah, accused of being a witch, is fleeing for her life; Ruth, in the aftermath of the Second World War, is navigating a new marriage and the strange waters of the local community; and six decades later, Viv, still mourning the death of her father, is cataloging Ruth's belongings in the now-empty house. As each woman's story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that their choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men who seek to control them. But in sisterhood there is also the possibility of survival and a new way of life.
Vintage | 9780525432708
BEFORE YOU GO by Tommy Butler (Fiction)
In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake --- if it was a mistake --- until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support group on the edge of Manhattan. There he meets Sasha, who leaves coded messages in the copy she writes for advertising campaigns, and Bannor, whose detailed depictions of the future make Elliot think he may have actually been there. With these two unlikely allies, Elliot launches into the business of life, determined to be happy in spite of himself. Yet the hole in the heart is not so easily filled.
Harper Perennial | 9780062934970
THE BOOKSELLER’S SECRET: A Novel of Nancy Mitford and WWII by Michelle Gable (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
London, 1942. Still recovering from a devastating loss, Nancy Mitford is estranged from her husband and has given up her writing career. Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay. Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present.
Graydon House | 9781525806469
CROSSHAIRS by Catherine Hernandez (Dystopian Fiction)
Kay, the gay son of Filipino and Jamaican immigrants, is on the run from a fascist regime operated by a paramilitary group known as the Boots. Those who fall at the bottom of the Boots’ social stratification are rendered “Other” and subsequently sent to work camps. They suffer violence that pushes them further into this otherness, although the new regime labels these sweeping acts the “Renovation.” Kay’s account of these events is a silent letter to his lover, Evan, from whom he is separated when the Renovation’s plans fall rapidly into place. When Kay finds himself on the run again, he lands in the front lines of a civilian-led movement called the Resistance.
Atria Books | 9781982146030
CRY BABY: A Tom Thorne Novel by Mark Billingham (Mystery/Thriller)
In the summer of 1996, two boys run from a playground into the adjoining woods, but only one comes out. DS Tom Thorne takes on a case that quickly spirals out of control when two people connected with the missing boy are murdered. As London prepares to host the European Soccer Championships, Thorne fights to keep on top of a baffling investigation while also dealing with the ugly fallout of his broken marriage.
Grove Press | 9780802149473
FIRE AND VENGEANCE: A Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mystery by Robert McCaw (Mystery/Thriller)
Hilo, Hawaiʻi Chief Detective Koa Kāne learns that an elementary school was placed atop a volcanic vent, which has now exploded. The subsequent murders of the school’s contractor and architect only add urgency to his search for the truth. As Koa’s investigation heats up, his brother collapses in jail from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor. Using his connections, Koa devises a risky plan to win his brother’s freedom. As Koa gradually unravels the obscure connections between multiple suspects, he uncovers a 40-year-old conspiracy. When he is about to apprehend the perpetrators, his investigation suddenly becomes entwined with his brother’s future, forcing Koa to choose between justice for the victims and his brother’s freedom.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608094417
KILLER, COME BACK TO ME: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury (Hard-boiled Crime Fiction/Short Stories)
Honoring the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, this definitive collection of the master's less well-known crime fiction, published in a high-grade premium collectible edition, features classic stories and rare gems. Is it murder to destroy a robot if it looks and speaks and thinks and feels like a human being? Can a ventriloquist be incriminated by the testimony of his own dummy? Can a time traveler prevent his younger self from killing the woman they both loved? And can the survivor of a pair of Siamese twins investigate his own brother's murder? No other writer has ever rivaled the imagination and narrative gifts of Ray Bradbury, and the 20 stories in KILLER, COME BACK TO ME demonstrate this singular writer's extraordinary range, influence and emotional power.
Hard Case Crime | 9781789096651
THE LAST MONA LISA by Jonathan Santlofer (Thriller)
Paperback Original
August, 1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincent Peruggia. Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now returned to the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911. Present day: Art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar but curiously helpful woman. Soon, Luke tumbles deep into the world of art and forgery, a land of obsession and danger.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728240763
NIGHT MUSIC by Jojo Moyes (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside. With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions. As she fights to make her house a home, passions and lives collide. Isabel will discover an instinct for survival she never knew she had --- and that a heart can play a new song.
Penguin Books | 9780735222311
NO WITNESS: A Cal Claxton Mystery by Warren C. Easley (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Running a one-man law practice in the heart of Oregon's wine country, Cal Claxton hires a young, undocumented man as an assistant. Timoteo Fuentes is a bright, hardworking student by day and Cal's legal clerk by night. When one of Timoteo's family members is brutally murdered, the migrant community is reluctant to cooperate with the police investigation for fear of deportation. Devastated by the loss and nervous about engaging with the legal system, the family turns to Cal for help. With Timoteo protected as a "Dreamer" from deportation, the two begin a dangerous investigation of ruthless people who leverage the fear of a vulnerable population for profit and an assassin who is as cunning as he is deadly.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464214431
OLIVE THE LIONHEART: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman's Journey into the Heart of Africa by Brad Ricca (Biography)
In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a 30-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa. So she went to find him. In jungles, swamps, cities and deserts, Olive and her two companions, the Talbots, come face to face with cobras and crocodiles, wise native chiefs, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. Olive awakens to the many forces around her, from shadowy colonial powers to an invisible Islamic warlord who may hold the key to Boyd’s disappearance. As these secrets begin to unravel, Olive is forced to confront the darkest, most shocking secret of all: why she really came to Africa in the first place.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250796691
SHOW THEM YOU’RE GOOD: Four Boys and the Quest for College by Jeff Hobbs (Social Sciences)
Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. Blending complex social issues with each individual experience, Jeff Hobbs takes us deep inside these boys’ worlds. The foursome includes Carlos, the younger son of undocumented delivery workers, who aims to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and attend an Ivy League college; Tio harbors serious ambitions to become an engineer, despite a father who doesn’t believe in him; Jon struggles to put distance between himself and his mother, who is suffocating him with her own expectations; and Owen, raised in a wealthy family, can’t get serious about academics but knows he must.
Scribner | 9781982116347
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