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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of September 6th and September 13th 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 September, 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.
Our latest "Bookreporter Talks To" interview is with Ash Davidson, whose debut novel, DAMNATION SPRING, is a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection.
Set in a northern California town in the late ‘70s, the book tells the very human story of a family torn apart by the underlying effects of environmental destruction. Rich and his family have been longtime loggers in this area, and he sees an opportunity for a fortune to be made by buying a tract of forest to harvest. He keeps this purchase quiet, not even sharing it with his wife, Colleen. She recently lost a child, a stillbirth after a number of miscarriages, and as a midwife she is also seeing miscarriages across the community. A longtime friend of Colleen’s comes to the area and points out that the herbicides the logging company uses are infiltrating their water supply, and may be causing issues not only with the wildlife, but with the people as well.
Ash talks about the decade she spent writing DAMNATION SPRING and how the plot changed over time. She also discusses the development of the characters and how their stories were very much a reality for people living in that part of the country. There is a lot here for a book group discussion. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
August 27th marked the 25th anniversary of Bookreporter! Here's what Carol has to say about this major milestone and how we will be celebrating: "Twenty-five years ago on August 27th, the first screen of Bookreporter went live when we were on AOL and known as The Book Report. On one hand, it is hard to believe that much time has passed; it feels like a moment ago. But then we look back on all we have done, and it feels like a lifetime. Instead of just one day of celebrating, we have decided to spend some time over the next few months taking a walk down memory lane. I am so looking forward to this. Let's get the party started with a quick video toast to you from me. (Confession: I am not drinking champagne, as I am not a fan of that. The substitute bubbly beverage is ginger beer!)"
For those of you who are doing online shopping, if you use the store links below, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases. We would appreciate your considering this!
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
Now Available: IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACK
by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström
IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACK by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström (Fiction)
Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation’s largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi’s move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.
A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury and privilege --- a life she’s not sure she wants --- as the object of his unhealthy obsession.
And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny’s office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.
Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACK is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society.
Click here to read more about the book.
Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events
As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.
Wednesday, September 8th 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 welcome two journalist-turned-author guests as they commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11: Daryn Kagan (HOPE POSSIBLE) and Paula Faris (CALLED OUT).
Wednesday, September 8th at 8pm ET: Murder By The Book: Lisa Jewell will talk about her latest psychological thriller, THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED.
Wednesday, September 8th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Mike Lupica will discuss his latest Jesse Stone mystery, ROBERT B. PARKER'S STONE'S THROW, with special guest host Harlan Coben.
Wednesday, September 8th at 8pm ET: Politics and Prose Bookstore: Join P&P Live! to discuss Colm Tóibín's new novel, THE MAGICIAN, as part of their Irish Voices series.
Wednesday, September 8th at 8pm ET: Raven Book Store: William Kent Krueger will return to the Raven virtual stage for a thrilling discussion of his new Cork O'Connor novel, LIGHTNING STRIKE.
Thursday, September 9th at 3pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Alice Feeney will discuss ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist.
Thursday, September 9th at 7pm ET: The Bookworm: William Kent Krueger will virtually discuss LIGHTNING STRIKE, a powerful prequel to his Cork O’Connor series, and take questions from the audience.
Thursday, September 9th at 7:30pm ET: Parnassus Books: Parnassus Books is thrilled to welcome Lauren Groff to celebrate the release of her new book, MATRIX, which is this month's Barnes & Noble Book Club pick.
Saturday, September 11th at 7pm ET: Politics and Prose Bookstore: Lauren Groff will discuss her new novel, MATRIX, a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world, with Hernan Diaz.
Sunday, September 12th at 8pm ET: MJCCA Book Fest: MJCCA Book Fest in Your Living Room and the National JCC Literary Consortium present a virtual event featuring Billie Jean King, who will be in conversation with Katie Couric about her autobiography, ALL IN.
Monday, September 13th at 7pm ET: Brookline Booksmith: Celebrate the release of HER PERFECT LIFE with Hank Phillippi Ryan in a virtual launch party emceed by Jenna Blum and featuring Joseph Finder, Jennifer Hillier, Wanda Morris, Samantha Downing and Hannah Mary McKinnon.
Tuesday, September 14th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble Book Club: Barnes & Noble will host a Facebook Live discussion for their August Book Club selection, THE GUILT TRIP, featuring Sandie Jones in conversation with Clare Mackintosh.
This Week's Bonus News:
Our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks for September
Each month, we share top book picks from Indie Next and LibraryReads, as well as the Target Book Club title and Costco's "Buyer's Pick." We also feature a number of other prominent picks, including Oprah’s Book Club, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, Reese's Book Club, Jenna Bush Hager's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, and Simon & Schuster’s Book Club Favorites.
Below is a preview of September's "Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks." For the complete Indie Next and LibraryReads lists, as well as additional links pertaining to this month's selections, please click here.
Indie Next
#1 Pick: MATRIX by Lauren Groff
FERAL CREATURES by Kira Jane Buxton
HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead
THE INHERITANCE OF ORQUÍDEA DIVINA by Zoraida Córdova
LIGHTNING STRIKE by William Kent Krueger
LibraryReads
Top Pick: UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR by TJ Klune
THE CHARM OFFENSIVE by Alison Cochrun
CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Anthony Doerr
FUZZ: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead
Target Book Club
ELI'S PROMISE by Ronald H. Balson
Costco's "Buyer's Pick"
THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED by Lisa Jewell
Barnes & Noble Book Club
MATRIX by Lauren Groff
Reese's Book Club
L.A. WEATHER by María Amparo Escandón
Jenna Bush Hager's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang
"Good Morning America" Book Club
SEVERAL PEOPLE ARE TYPING by Calvin Kasulke
Simon & Schuster's Book Club Favorites
MAGIC LESSONS: Book #1 of the Practical Magic Series by Alice Hoffman
On Sale the Week of September 6th in Hardcover
September 7th
THE ARCHER by Shruti Swamy (Fiction)
Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother. Longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she ultimately must confront the tensions between romantic love, her art and the legacy of her own imperfect mother.
Algonquin Books | 9781616209902
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang (Memoir)
In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, her parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal,” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.
Doubleday | 9780385547215
BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU by Sally Rooney (Fiction)
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young, but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world in which they live. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374602604
BROTHERS ON THREE: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana by Abe Streep (Biography)
March 11, 2017, was a night to remember. In front of the hopeful eyes of thousands of friends, family members and fans, the Arlee Warriors would finally bring the high school basketball state championship title home to the Flathead Indian Reservation. The game would become the stuff of legend, with the boys revered as local heroes. The team’s place in Montana history was now cemented, but for starters Will Mesteth, Jr. and Phillip Malatare, life would keep moving on --- senior year was only just beginning. In BROTHERS ON THREE, we follow Phil and Will, along with their teammates, coaches and families, as they balance the pressures of adolescence, shoulder the dreams of their community, and chart their own individual courses for the future.
Celadon Books | 9781250210685
COUNTDOWN BIN LADEN: The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice by Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss (History)
On August 27, 2010, three CIA officers ask for a private meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta. During that secret session, they tell Panetta that agents have tracked a courier with deep Al Qaeda ties to a three-story house at the end of a dead-end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But they say it’s more than a house --- it’s a heavily protected fortress. Everyone understands that finally, after nearly a decade, maybe, just maybe, they’ve found the world’s most wanted man. In COUNTDOWN BIN LADEN, Chris Wallace delivers a thrilling new account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982176525
DEFENDING BRITTA STEIN by Ronald H. Balson (Legal Thriller)
Ole Henryks, a popular restaurateur, is set to be honored by the Danish/American Association for his many civic and charitable contributions. Ninety-year-old Britta Stein levels public accusations against Henryks by spray-painting “Coward,” “Traitor,” “Collaborator” and “War Criminal” on the walls of his restaurant. Mrs. Stein is ultimately taken into custody and charged with criminal defacement of property. She also becomes the target of a bitter lawsuit filed by Henryks and his son, accusing her of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. With the help of her investigator husband, Liam Taggart, attorney Catherine Lockhart must reach back into wartime Denmark and locate evidence that proves Mrs. Stein's innocence.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274809
FAULT LINES by Emily Itami (Fiction)
Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry. Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. But the further she falls into their relationship, the clearer it becomes that she is living two lives --- and in the end, we can choose only one.
Custom House | 9780063099807
A FIRE IN THE NIGHT by Christopher Swann (Mystery/Thriller)
Nick Anthony has retreated to the North Carolina mountains to mourn the untimely death of his wife. But when his estranged brother and sister-in-law die in a house fire, a stunned Nick learns he has a niece, Annalise, who is missing. At the scene of the crime, the men who set the fire have realized that Annalise, and the information they are looking for, got away. Feverish and exhausted, she stumbles onto her uncle's porch, throwing Nick into the middle of the mystery of her parents’ death and the dangerous criminals hunting her down. Hired to retrieve the stolen information at any price, private military contractor Cole and his team track Annalise to Nick’s cabin. But Nick has a hidden past of his own --- and more than a few deadly tricks up his sleeve.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643857565
FOREVER YOUNG: A Memoir by Hayley Mills (Memoir)
The daughter of acclaimed British actor Sir John Mills was still a preteen when she began her acting career and was quickly thrust into the spotlight. Under the wing of Walt Disney himself, Hayley Mills was transformed into one of the biggest child starlets of the 1960s. In her charming and forthright memoir, she provides a unique window into when Hollywood was still “Tinseltown” and the great Walt Disney was at his zenith. This behind-the-scenes look at the drama of having a sky-rocketing career as a young teen in an esteemed acting family will offer both her childhood impressions of the wild and glamorous world she was swept into, and the wisdom and broader knowledge that time has given her.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538704196
FORGOTTEN IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
The body was left in a dumpster, the victim a woman known for offering paper flowers in return for spare change --- and for keeping the cops informed of any infractions she witnessed on the street. But the notebook where she scribbled her intel on litterers and other such offenders is nowhere to be found. Then Eve Dallas is summoned away to a nearby building site to view more remains unearthed by recent construction work. She isn’t happy when she realizes that the scene of the crime belongs to her husband, Roarke. Now Eve must enter a complex world of real estate development, family history, shady deals and shocking secrets to find justice for two women whose lives were thrown away.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250272812
FRIENDS LIKE THESE by Kimberly McCreight (Psychological Thriller)
Everyone has those friends. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been, or how badly they’ve occasionally behaved, or how late it is when that call finally comes --- you show up. No questions asked. Honestly, that’s how the five of us ended up here in the Catskills. We did have the best of intentions. Especially after what happened to Alice all those years ago, we can’t bear to think of losing anyone else. In fact, we’ll do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ll go so much farther than we ever thought we would. In the end, maybe that’s what caught up with us. That, and the fact that we’re such a complicated group --- so much history and so many big personalities. Secrets, too, that can slip out at the most inopportune moments.
Harper | 9780063061569
THE GREAT GLORIOUS GODDAMN OF IT ALL by Josh Ritter (Fiction/Magical Realism)
In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, 99-year-old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin. Ever since young Weldon stepped foot in the deep Cordelia woods as a child, he dreamed of joining the rowdy ranks of his ancestors in their epic axe-swinging adventures. Local legend says their family line boasts some of the greatest lumberjacks to ever roam the American West. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the jacks are dying out, and it’s up to Weldon to defend his family legacy.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335522535
HAO: Stories by Ye Chun (Fiction/Short Stories)
By turns reflective and visceral, the stories in HAO examine the ways in which women can be silenced as they grapple with sexism and racism, and how they find their own language to define their experience. In “Gold Mountain,” a young mother hides above a ransacked store during the San Francisco anti-Chinese riot of 1877. In “A Drawer,” an illiterate mother invents a language through drawing. And in “Stars,” a graduate student loses her ability to speak after a stroke.
Catapult | 9781646220601
THE HERON'S CRY: A Detective Matthew Venn Novel by Ann Cleeves (Mystery)
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder --- Dr. Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases. Dr. Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Then another body is found --- killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
Minotaur Books | 9781250204479
HIGH STAKES by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Logan Tanner lives the exhilarating life of a professional gambler. But all the glitz and glamor hide a dark and violent past as an extractor --- a world that comes rushing back to him when Lara Balkon enters his life. Soon Logan is drawn into the conflict between two Russian mafia bosses over Lara, whose life now hangs in the balance. Logan has been offered something more valuable to him than money --- information he desperately needs --- in exchange for getting Lara out of Russia and to safety. Once together, Tanner discovers that Lara is a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Tanner’s search for the truth leads them to the bright lights of Las Vegas, where the person who was hunting Lara now lies in wait for them.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538713105
THE HOUSE OF ASHES by Stuart Neville (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Sara Keane’s husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a “fresh start” in the wake of her nervous breakdown. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless and friendless. When a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover. As the two women form a bond over their shared traumas, Sara finds the strength to stand up to her abuser, and Mary --- silent for six decades --- is finally ready to tell her story.
Soho Crime | 9781616957414
IN EVERY MIRROR SHE'S BLACK by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström (Fiction)
Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm. Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury and privilege as the object of his unhealthy obsession. And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728240381
THE INHERITANCE OF ORQUÍDEA DIVINA by Zoraida Córdova (Fiction/Magical Realism)
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers. Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line.
Atria Books | 9781982102548
INSEPARABLE written by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Sandra Smith (Fiction)
From the moment Sylvie and Andrée meet in their Parisian day school, they see in each other an accomplice with whom to confront the mysteries of girlhood. For the next 10 years, the two are the closest of friends and confidantes as they explore life in a post-World War I France, and as Andrée becomes increasingly reckless and rebellious, edging closer to peril. Sylvie sees a France of clashing ideals and religious hypocrisy --- and at an early age is determined to form her own opinions. Andrée is inclined to melodrama and romance. Despite their different natures, they rely on each other to safeguard their secrets while entering adulthood in a world that did not pay much attention to the wills and desires of young women.
Ecco | 9780063075047
INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel (Biography)
In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods --- through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks and merciless Nazi raids --- until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him. And to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250267641
KARACHI VICE: Life and Death in a Divided City by Samira Shackle (Social Science)
Karachi. Pakistan’s largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people, twice the size of New York City. It is a place of political turbulence in which those who have power wield it with brutal and partisan force. It takes an insider to know where is safe, who to trust and what makes Karachi tick. In KARACHI VICE, Samira Shackle explores the city of her mother’s birth in the company of a handful of Karachiites. Their individual experiences unfold and converge, as Shackle tells the bigger story of Karachi over the past decade as it endures a terrifying crime wave: a period in which the Taliban arrive in Pakistan, adding to the daily perils for its residents and pushing their city into the international spotlight.
Melville House | 9781612199429
L.A. WEATHER by María Amparo Escandón (Fiction)
L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters --- Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers --- are blindsided and left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.
Flatiron Books | 9781250802569
LATE CITY by Robert Olen Butler (Fiction)
Sam Cunningham grows up in Louisiana with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what he eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the 20th century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters his at almost every turn.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802158826
THE MAGICIAN by Colm Tóibín (Historical Fiction)
In a stunning marriage of research and imagination, Colm Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is unparalleled and whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of illicit desire. THE MAGICIAN is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Thomas Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived --- the First World War, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War and exile. This is a man and a family fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed and unforgettable.
Scribner | 9781476785080
MATRIX by Lauren Groff (Historical Fiction)
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. Born the last in a long line of female warriors and crusaders, Marie is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?
Riverhead Books | 9781594634499
THE NECKLACE by Matt Witten (Thriller)
Susan Lentigo’s daughter was murdered 20 years ago --- and now, at long last, this small-town waitress sets out on a road trip all the way from Upstate New York to North Dakota to witness the killer’s execution. On her journey she discovers shocking new evidence that leads her to suspect the condemned man is innocent --- and the real killer is still free. Even worse, her prime suspect has a young daughter who’s at terrible risk. With no money and no time to spare, Susan sets out to uncover the truth before an innocent man gets executed and another little girl is killed. But the FBI refuses to reopen the case. Reaching deep, Susan finds an inner strength she never knew she had.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608094585
NEVER SAW ME COMING by Vera Kurian (Psychological Thriller)
Chloe Sevre is a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on yogalates, at frat parties and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her. Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study of psychopaths --- students like herself who lack empathy and can’t comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires them to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements. When one of the students in the study is found murdered in the psychology building, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey.
Park Row | 9780778311553
THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED by Lisa Jewell (Psychological Thriller)
On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend. One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite area for long walks, and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads “DIG HERE.” Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?
Atria Books | 9781982137366
NO GODS, NO MONSTERS by Cadwell Turnbull (Science Fiction/Fantasy)
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend's trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781982603724
A PLAY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD by Jai Chakrabarti (Fiction)
Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government --- the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor's guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves.
Knopf | 9780525658924
RIZZIO by Denise Mina (Historical Thriller)
On the evening of March 9, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed 56 times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatizes the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before. A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies, RIZZIO looks at a shocking historical murder through a modern lens --- and explores the lengths to which men and women will go in their search for love and power.
Pegasus Books | 9781643138459
ROBERT B. PARKER’S STONE’S THROW: A Jesse Stone Novel by Mike Lupica (Mystery)
The town of Paradise receives a tragic shock when the mayor is discovered dead. It's ostensibly suicide, but Jesse Stone has his doubts…especially because the piece of land where the man was found is the subject of a contentious and dodgy land deal. Two powerful moguls are fighting over the right to buy and develop the prime piece of real estate, and one of them has brought in a hired gun, an old adversary of Jesse’s: Wilson Cromartie, aka Crow. Meanwhile, the town council is debating if they want to sacrifice Paradise’s stately character for the economic boost of a glitzy new development. Tempers are running hot, and as the deaths begin to mount, it’s increasingly clear that the mayor may have been standing in the wrong person’s way.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525542117
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS by Alice Feeney (Psychological Thriller)
Things have been wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts --- paper, cotton, pottery, tin --- and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.
Flatiron Books | 9781250266101
THE STOLEN HOURS by Allen Eskens (Mystery/Thriller)
Lila Nash is on the verge of landing her dream job --- working as a prosecutor under the Hennepin County Attorney --- and has settled into a happy life with her boyfriend, Joe Talbert. But when a woman is pulled from the Mississippi River, barely alive, things in the office take a personal turn. The police believe the woman’s assailant is local photographer Gavin Spenser, but the case quickly flounders as the evidence wears thin. The more determined Lila is to put Gavin behind bars, the more elusive justice becomes. Battling a vindictive new boss and haunted by the ghosts of her own unspeakable attack, which she’s kept a dark secret for eight long years, Lila knows the clock is ticking down.
Mulholland Books | 9780316703499
STRIKING RANGE: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
He was suspect number one --- the man who tried to kill Deputy Mattie Cobb and may have killed her father 30 years earlier. But when Mattie and cold case detective Jim Hauck reach the Colorado state prison where they will finally get to interview him, he's found dead in his cell. There's only one clue: a map leading to Timber Creek and rugged Redstone Ridge. Mattie and her K-9 partner Robo journey into the burned forest surrounding Redstone Ridge. But before they can finish their search, they're called to help investigate the death of a young woman found in a campground filled with elk hunters. Identification of the deceased points to her having recently given birth, but the infant is nowhere to be found.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643857466
SUMMER LIGHT, AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT written by Jon Kalman Stefansson, translated by Philip Roughton (Fiction)
In a village of only 400 inhabitants, life could seem unremarkable. Yet in this remote town, a new road to the city has change on everyone’s minds. There is the beautiful, elusive Elisabet who cuts a surprisingly svelte path at The Knitting Company. Neighbors Kristin and Kjartan who seem…normal, but for their explosive passion that bewilders even themselves (and ignites the spectacular revenge of Kjartan’s wife). And then the most successful businessman in town decides to ditch his Range Rover and glamorous wife in exchange for Latin books and stargazing.
HarperVia | 9780063136472
THREE GIRLS FROM BRONZEVILLE: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner (Memoir)
Siblings Dawn and Kim, and their best friend Debra, were three Black girls who bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, and for a brief, wondrous moment, they are all giggles and dreams and promises of “friends forever.” But then fate intervenes, sending them careening in wildly different directions. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why?
Simon & Schuster | 9781982107703
TRIPLE CROSS by Tom Bradby (Thriller)
Attempting to rebuild her shattered life on vacation in the South of France, former MI6 operative Kate Henderson receives an unexpected and most unwelcome visit from an old adversary: the UK Prime Minister. He has an extraordinary story to tell --- and he needs her help. A Russian agent has come forward with news that the PM has been the victim of the greatest misinformation play in the history of MI6. It's run out of a special KGB unit that exists for one purpose alone: to process the intelligence from “Agent Dante,” a mole right at the heart of MI6 in London. Against her better judgment, Kate is forced back into the fray in a top-secret, deeply flawed and dangerous investigation. But now she's damaged goods.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802159212
WINDSWEPT: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs (History/Travel Memoir)
Annabel Abbs’ WINDSWEPT is a beautifully written meditation on connecting with the outdoors through the simple act of walking. In captivating and elegant prose, Abbs follows in the footsteps of women who boldly reclaimed wild landscapes for themselves, including Georgia O’Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the French River Garonne, Daphne du Maurier along the River Rhône, and Simone de Beauvoir --- who walked as much as 25 miles a day in a dress and espadrilles --- through the mountains and forests of France.
Tin House Books | 9781951142704
On Sale the Week of September 6th in Paperback
September 7th
THE APPOINTMENT by Katharina Volckmer (Fiction)
In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds forth about her life and desires, her struggles with her sexuality and identity. Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years, determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. But the recent death of her grandfather, and an unexpected inheritance, make it clear that you cannot easily outrun your own shame --- whether it be physical, familial, historical, national or all of the above. Or can you? With Dr. Seligman’s help, our narrator will find out.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982150181
THE BEST OF ME by David Sedaris (Humor/Essays)
For more than 25 years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He also explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms --- at long last --- with the other.
Back Bay Books | 9780316242400
THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS by Jodi Picoult (Fiction)
Dawn Edelstein is on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband, but of a man she last saw 15 years ago: Wyatt Armstrong, who is now somewhere in Egypt working as an archaeologist. After the crash landing, the airline offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways --- the first known map of the afterlife.
Ballantine Books | 9781984818379
BUTTERFLY AWAKENS: A Memoir of Transformation Through Grief by Meg Nocero (Memoir)
Paperback Original
BUTTERFLY AWAKENS depicts the story of the extraordinary transformation of a forty-something Italian American attorney as she moves through unimaginable grief and sadness watching her beloved mother lose her battle to breast cancer. This tumultuous life experience shifts her world, causing her to question her life choices and opening her up to her soul’s calling. Meg Nocero brings readers along on her journey through a dark night of the soul as she deals with the grieving process, a toxic work environment, and intense stress that results in depression, anxiety and an acquired somatic nervous disorder called tinnitus. Through it all, she never gives up, instead looking for the help she needs to start to heal and find her light.
She Writes Press | 9781647421755
THE CHARM OFFENSIVE by Alison Cochrun (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show “Ever After.” As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star. Charlie doesn’t believe in true love and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars.
Atria Books | 9781982170714
CUYAHOGA by Pete Beatty (Fiction)
Big Son is a spirit of the times --- the times being 1837. Behind his broad shoulders, shiny hair and church-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by himself. The feats of this proto-superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey toasts but very little in the way of fortune. And without money, Big cannot become an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who may or may not want to be his wife, honestly). In pursuit of a steady wage, our hero hits the (dirt) streets of Ohio City and Cleveland, the twin towns racing to become the first great metropolis of the West. Their rivalry reaches a boil over the building of a bridge across the Cuyahoga River --- and Big stumbles right into the kettle.
Scribner | 9781982155568
DEAR ANN by Bobbie Ann Mason (Fiction)
Ann Workman is a misfit who has traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, Jimmy is also a misfit, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain. Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence --- and her own obsession with Jimmy --- as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago.
Harper Perennial | 9780062986665
THE DYNASTY by Jeff Benedict (Sports/Biography)
It’s easy to forget that the New England Patriots were once the laughingstock of the NFL, a nearly bankrupt team that had never won a championship and was on the brink of moving to St. Louis. Everything changed in 1994, when Robert Kraft acquired the franchise and brought on board head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Since then, the Patriots have become a juggernaut. How was their dynasty built, and how did it last for two decades? In THE DYNASTY, acclaimed journalist Jeff Benedict provides richly reported answers in a sweeping account based on exclusive interviews with more than 200 insiders, as well as never-before-seen recordings, documents and electronic communications.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982134112
THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR by Rose Carlyle (Psychological Thriller)
Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of her twin sister Summer’s seemingly never-ending good fortune. When Summer calls Iris to Thailand to help her sail the family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris has secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But after a disturbing incident in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. Now Iris has the chance to step into the golden life she’s always envied --- and get one step closer to the hundred-million-dollar inheritance left by her manipulative father. All Iris would need to do is ensure she’s the first of his seven children to fulfill the strange conditions of his will. But Iris soon discovers that her twin was keeping more than one secret, and her life lurches between glamorous dream and paranoid nightmare.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063030152
HERE FOR IT: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays by R. Eric Thomas (Memoir/Essays)
R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went --- whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city --- he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an “other” through the lens of his own life experience. Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by reenvisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.
Ballantine Books | 9780525621058
HERE WE ARE: My Friendship with Philip Roth by Benjamin Taylor (Memoir)
HERE WE ARE is Benjamin Taylor's unvarnished portrait of his best friend and one of America's greatest writers. Philip Roth's place in the canon is secure, but less clear is what the man himself was like. Here, we see Roth as a mortal man, experiencing the joys and sorrows of aging, reflecting on his own writing, and doing something we all love to do: passing the time in the company of his closest friend. An ode to friendship and its wondrous ability to brighten our lives in unexpected ways, Taylor’s memoir pays tribute to a friend in the way that only a writer can.
Penguin Books | 9780143133452
HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham (Biography)
John Lewis, who at age 25 marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9781984855046
HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (21) by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Precious Ramotswe loves her dependable old van. Yes, sometimes it takes a bit longer to get going now, and it has developed some quirks over the years, but it has always gotten the job done. This time, though, the world --- and Charlie --- may be asking too much of it, for when he borrows the beloved vehicle he returns it damaged. And, to make matters worse, the interior seems to have acquired an earthy smell that even Precious can't identify. But the olfactory issue is not the only mystery that needs solving. Mma Ramotswe is confronted by a distant relative, Blessing, who asks for help with an ailing cousin. The help requested is of a distinctly pecuniary nature, which makes both Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Makutsi suspicious.
Anchor | 9780593310953
IF THEN: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore (History)
The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics and disordered knowledge --- decades before Facebook, Amazon and Cambridge Analytica. Although Silicon Valley likes to imagine that it has no past, the scientists of Simulmatics are almost undoubtedly the long-dead ancestors of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk --- or so argues Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, in her account of the origins of predictive analytics and behavioral data science.
Liveright | 9781324091127
THE INHERITANCE by JoAnn Ross (Fiction)
Paperback Original
When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard --- and for a family they didn’t ask for. As the sisters reluctantly gather at the vineyard, they’re soon enchanted by the Swann family matriarch and namesake of Maison de Madeleine wines, whose stories of bravery in WWII France and love for a wounded American soldier will reveal the family legacy they've each inherited and change the course of all their lives.
HQN | 9781335418562
THE INVENTION OF SOUND by Chuck Palahniuk (Fiction)
Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, 17 years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists, creating the immersive sounds that give Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real. Soon Foster and Ives find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood's glamorous façade.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538717981
JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall (Biography)
Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This first volume spans the first 39 years of JFK’s life --- from birth through his decision to run for president --- to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings and his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812987027
THE LIVING AND THE LOST by Ellen Feldman (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother, David, manage to escape to the States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and graduates to a magazine job in Philadelphia. David enlists in the army and is eventually posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland, which trains German-speaking men for intelligence work. Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250780829
THE LIVING DEAD by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus (Horror)
A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead. In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly risen friends and family. On a U.S. aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones, while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In D.C., an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250305275
MAGIC LESSONS: Book #1 of the Practical Magic Series by Alice Hoffman (Historical Fiction/Magical Realism)
Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Unnamed Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift, and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back. When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982108854
MASTERMIND: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller by Andrew Mayne (Thriller)
Paperback Original
A mysterious electrical storm plunges Manhattan into darkness. As a strange, smothering fog rolls in, all communication crashes. In the blink of an eye, the island seems to vanish into a void. FBI Special Agent Jessica Blackwood and brilliant scientist Dr. Theo Cray know this isn’t a freak accident. It’s a sinister sleight of hand. Their greatest adversary, a serial killer and cultist known as the Warlock, has escaped during a prison transfer in New York. A depraved master of manipulation, he promised the end of days. He’s making good on it. One by one, cities across the globe are erupting in chaos as they disappear into the same black holes. But the voids are just a warm-up for something bigger.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542020398
MILL TOWN: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault (Memoir)
Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In MILL TOWN, Arsenault illuminates the rise and collapse of the working class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250799685
MISS KOPP INVESTIGATES: A Kopp Sisters Novel by Amy Stewart (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Winter 1919: Norma is summoned home from France, Constance is called back from Washington, and Fleurette puts her own plans on hold as the sisters rally around their recently widowed sister-in-law and her children. How are four women going to support themselves? A chance encounter offers Fleurette a solution: clandestine legal work for a former colleague of Constance’s. She becomes a “professional co-respondent,” posing as the “other woman” in divorce cases so that photographs can be entered as evidence to procure a divorce. One client’s suspicious behavior leads Fleurette to uncover a much larger crime, putting her in the unlikely position of amateur detective.
Mariner Books | 9780358093114
THE NEW ONE: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad written by Mike Birbiglia, with poems by J. Hope Stein (Memoir/Humor)
In 2016, comedian Mike Birbiglia and poet Jennifer Hope Stein took their 14-month-old daughter, Oona, to the Nantucket Film Festival. When the festival director picked them up at the airport, she asked Mike if he would perform at the storytelling night. She said, "The theme of the stories is jealousy." Jen quipped, "You're jealous of Oona. You should talk about that." And so Mike began sharing some of his darkest and funniest thoughts about the decision to have a child. Over the next couple of years, these stories evolved into a Broadway show, and the more Mike performed it, the more he heard how it resonated --- not just with parents but also with people who resist all kinds of change. So he pored over his journals, dug deeper and created this book.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538701522
ONE LIFE by Megan Rapinoe, with Emma Brockes (Memoir)
Only four years old when she kicked her first soccer ball, Megan Rapinoe developed a love --- and clear talent --- for the game at a young age. But it was her parents who taught her that winning was much less important than how she lived her life. From childhood on, she always did what she could to stand up for what was right --- even if it meant going up against people who disagreed. In ONE LIFE, Rapinoe invites readers on a remarkable journey, looking back on both her victories and her failures, and pulls back the curtain on events we know only from the headlines.
Penguin Books | 9781984881182
THE ORPHAN’S SONG by Lauren Kate (Historical Romance)
When Violetta and Mino meet, one finds true love and the other denies it. Both orphans at the Hospital of the Incurables in Venice, an orphanage and music conservatory, they meet and make music together clandestinely until Violetta is selected for the Incurables' renowned chorus. In order to join, she signs an oath never to sing beyond the church doors, effectively sequestering herself for life. Mino flees, heartbroken. Too late, Violetta realizes what she has lost. In rebellion she begins a dangerous and forbidden nightlife, unknowingly drawing closer to Mino as he searches Venice for his long-lost mother. Mino and Violetta must each journey through passion, heartache and betrayal before a dangerous secret reunites them, leading to a shocking and final confrontation.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780735212589
PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke (Dark Fantasy)
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. There is one other person in the house --- a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577808
A QUESTION OF BETRAYAL: An Elena Standish Novel by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, has lost contact with its informant in northern Italy, just as important information about the future plans of Austria and Nazi Germany is coming to light. And young Elena Standish is the only person who can recognize MI6’s man --- because he is her former lover. Aiden Strother betrayed her six years before, throwing shame on her entire family. Now, with so much to prove, Elena heads to Trieste to track down Aiden and find out what happened to his handler, who has mysteriously cut off contact with Britain. As Elena gets word of a secret group working to put Austria in the hands of Germany, her older sister, Margot, is in Berlin to watch a childhood friend get married --- to a member of the Gestapo.
Ballantine Books | 9780593129579
SAVAGE KISS written by Roberto Saviano, translated by Antony Shugaar (Fiction)
Nicolas Fiorillo and his gang of children --- his paranza --- control the squares of Forcella after their rapid rise to power. But it isn't easy being at the top. Now that the Piranhas have power in the city, Nicolas must undermine the old families of the Camorra and remain united among themselves. Every paranzino has his own vendettas and dreams to pursue --- dreams that might go beyond the laws of the gang. A new war may be about to break out in this city of cutthroat bargaining, ruthless betrayal and brutal revenge. Roberto Saviano continues the story of the disillusioned boys of Forcella, the paranzini ready to give and receive kisses that leave a taste of blood.
Picador | 9781250800138
THE SCORPION’S TAIL by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
A mummified corpse is found in the cellar of an abandoned building in a remote New Mexico ghost town. Rookie FBI Agent Corrie Swanson is assigned to ID the body and determine the cause of death. She brings archaeologist Nora Kelly to excavate the body and lend her expertise to the investigation, and together they uncover something unexpected and shocking: the deceased apparently died in agony, in a fetal position, skin coming off in sheets, with a rictus of horror frozen on his face. Hidden on the corpse lies a 16th-century Spanish gold cross of immense value. When at last they identify the body --- and the bizarre cause of death --- Corrie and Nora open a door into a terrifying, secret world of ancient treasure and modern obsession.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538747285
SEND FOR ME by Lauren Fox (Historical Fiction)
Growing up working at her parents’ popular bakery in Germany, Annelise has always imagined a future full of delicious possibilities. Despite rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them. But as she falls in love, marries and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer. Soon Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain. Two generations later, Annelise’s granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of the letters her great-grandmother wrote from Germany, she sees the history of her family’s sacrifices in a new light.
Vintage | 9781101972045
SENSATION MACHINES by Adam Wilson (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Michael and Wendy Mixner are a Brooklyn-based couple whose marriage is failing in the wake of a personal tragedy. Michael, a Wall Street trader, is meanwhile keeping a secret: he lost the couple’s life savings when a tanking economy caused a major market crash. And Wendy, a digital marketing strategist, has been hired onto a data-mining project of epic scale, whose mysterious creator has ambitions to solve a national crisis of mass unemployment and reshape America’s social and political landscapes. When Michael’s best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy’s client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple --- and the country.
Soho Press | 9781641292863
SHE COME BY IT NATURAL: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh (Music/Biography)
Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular vulnerabilities --- and strengths --- of women in working poverty. Meanwhile, country songs by female artists played in the background, telling powerful stories about life, men, hard times and surviving. In her family, she writes that “country music was foremost a language among women. It’s how we talked to each other in a place where feelings aren’t discussed.” And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton. In SHE COME BY IT NATURAL, Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women as exemplified by Dolly Parton’s life and art.
Scribner | 9781982157296
THE SUMMONING by J.P. Smith (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Every year, as the anniversary of 9/11 inches closer on the calendar, Kit Capriol scans the memorials published in the New York Times. It's a simple thing to look up a name and phone number, and reach out to surviving family members who might still be yearning for connection with their lost loved one. After her husband went down in the North Tower, Kit scraped by as an actress. But now her daughter Zoey is in the hospital, bills are due and the acting work has dried up. Becoming a medium is almost too easy for someone used to pretending for a living. Now, though, something has changed. The seances Kit holds in her apartment are starting to feel unsettlingly real, and the intriguing man she met at a local bar could be more complicated than he seems.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728243177
TALKING TO GOATs: The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard by Jim Gray (Memoir)
In TALKING TO GOATs, award-winning broadcaster Jim Gray looks back at his four decades of sports reporting from the unparalleled perspective of one of the world’s most respected and skilled interviewers. The book features numerous world-class athletes, including Muhammad Ali, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Floyd Mayweather, Michael Phelps, Mike Tyson and Tiger Woods, and world leaders George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev and many more. On each page, Jim gives the reader a coveted all-access pass as he reviews the best interviews, the best athletes and the best games in modern sports history. It’s like a personal introduction to the characters and careers of these heroes and villains we’ve known since childhood.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062992079
THREE-RING CIRCUS: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty by Jeff Pearlman (Sports)
In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant, and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles.
Mariner Books | 9780358627968
TOM SEAVER: A Terrific Life by Bill Madden (Biography)
He was called Tom Terrific for a reason. Tom Seaver was one of the most talented and popular players in the history of baseball. He is one of only two pitchers with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts and an ERA under 3.00. He was a three-time Cy Young Award winner, 12-time All-Star, and was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame with the highest percentage ever at the time. Popular among players and fans, Seaver was fiercely competitive but always put team success ahead of personal glory. Drawing in part on their long relationship, New York Daily News baseball columnist Bill Madden offers a deeply personal and fascinating portrait of one of the greatest and most admired players of all time.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982136222
UNFORGETTING: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas by Roberto Lovato (Memoir)
The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming in California. He eventually traded the violence of the streets for human rights advocacy in wartime El Salvador, where he joined the guerilla movement against the U.S.-backed, fascist military government responsible for some of the most barbaric massacres and crimes against humanity in recent history. In UNFORGETTING, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with firsthand reportage on gang life, state violence and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States.
Harper Perennial | 9780062938527
WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH by Sigrid Nunez (Fiction)
A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people, the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.
Riverhead Books | 9780593191422
On Sale the Week of September 13th in Hardcover
September 14th
THE ACTUAL STAR by Monica Byrne (Science Fiction)
THE ACTUAL STAR takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents. Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion and racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change. In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate --- until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.
Harper Voyager | 9780063002890
APPLES NEVER FALL by Liane Moriarty (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. But after 50 years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable? One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted. Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250220257
ASSEMBLY by Natasha Brown (Fiction)
Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going. The narrator of ASSEMBLY is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: Is it time to take it all apart?
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316268264
DARK THINGS I ADORE by Katie Lattari (Psychological Thriller)
1988. A group of outcasts gather at a small, prestigious arts camp nestled in the Maine woods. They're the painters: bright, hopeful, teeming with potential. But secrets and dark ambitions rise like smoke from a campfire, and the truths they tell will come back to haunt them in ways more deadly than they dreamed. 2018. Esteemed art professor Max Durant arrives at his protégé's remote home to view her graduate thesis collection. He knows Audra is beautiful and brilliant, but he doesn't know that she has engineered every aspect of their weekend together. Only Audra knows what happened that summer in 1988. Max's secret, and the dark things that followed. And even though it won't be easy, Audra knows someone must pay.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728229843
ENEMY AT THE GATES: A Mitch Rapp Novel by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills (Political Thriller)
Mitch Rapp has worked for a number of presidents over his career, but Anthony Cook is unlike any he’s encountered before. Cunning and autocratic, he feels no loyalty to America’s institutions and is distrustful of the influence Rapp and CIA director Irene Kennedy have in Washington. Meanwhile, when Kennedy discovers evidence of a mole scouring the Agency’s database for sensitive information on Nicholas Ward, the world’s first trillionaire, she convinces Rapp to take a job protecting him. In doing so, he finds himself walking an impossible tightrope: Keep the man alive, but also use him as bait to uncover a traitor who has seemingly unlimited access to government secrets.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982164881
FUZZ: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach (Science/Humor)
What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324001935
HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead (Historical Fiction)
To his customers and neighbors on 125th Street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can he avoid getting killed; save his cousin, Freddie, who falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa (the “Waldorf of Harlem”); and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
Doubleday | 9780385545136
HER PERFECT LIFE by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Psychological Thriller)
Beloved television reporter Lily Atwood has it all --- fame, fortune, Emmys, an adorable seven-year-old daughter, and the hashtag her loving fans created: #PerfectLily. To keep it, all she has to do is protect one life-changing secret. Her own. Lily has an anonymous source who feeds her story tips --- but suddenly, the source begins telling Lily inside information about her own life. How does he --- or she --- know the truth? Lily understands that no one reveals a secret unless they have a reason. Now she’s terrified someone is determined to destroy her world --- and with it, everyone and everything she holds dear. How much will she risk to keep her perfect life?
Forge Books | 9781250258885
THE MISSING HOURS by Julia Dahl (Thriller)
From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU’s freshman class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows. Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful --- and then one drunken night everything changes. She cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing. Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.
Minotaur Books | 9781250083722
MY SWEET GIRL by Amanda Jayatissa (Psychological Thriller)
Ever since she was adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage, Paloma has had the best of everything. Now at 30 years old and recently cut off from her parents’ funds, she decides to sublet the second bedroom of her overpriced San Francisco apartment to Arun, who recently moved from India. Arun eventually discovers Paloma's darkest secret, one that could jeopardize her own fragile place in this country. Before Paloma can pay Arun off, she finds him face down in a pool of blood. She flees the apartment, but by the time the police arrive, there's no body --- and no evidence that Arun ever even existed in the first place. Paloma is terrified that this is all somehow tangled up in the desperate actions she took to escape Sri Lanka so many years ago.
Berkley | 9780593335086
NICE GIRLS by Catherine Dang (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Mary used to be such a nice girl. She was the resident whiz kid of Liberty Lake, Minnesota --- the quiet, chubby teen with the scholarship to an Ivy League school. But three years later, “Ivy League Mary” is back --- a thinner, cynical, restless failure who was kicked out of Cornell at the beginning of her senior year and won’t tell anyone why. Then rising social media star Olivia Willand goes missing. Once Olivia’s best friend, Mary knows better than anyone that behind the Instagram persona hides a willful, manipulative girl with sharp edges. As the town obsesses over perfect, lovely Olivia, Mary wonders if her disappearance might be tied to another missing person: 19-year-old DeMaria Jackson, whose case has been widely dismissed as a runaway.
William Morrow | 9780063027558
AN OBSERVANT WIFE by Naomi Ragen (Fiction)
From the joy of their wedding day, Yaakov and Leah are soon plunged into the complex reality of their new lives together. Yaakov leaves his beloved yeshiva to work in the city, and Leah confronts the often agonizing restrictions imposed by religious laws governing even the most intimate moments of their married lives. Adding to their difficulties is the hostility of some in the community who continue to view Leah as a dangerous interloper, questioning her sincerity and adherence to religious laws. In the midst of their heartfelt attempts to reach a balance between their human needs and their spiritual obligations, the discovery of a secret, forbidden relationship between troubled teenage daughter Shaindele and a local boy precipitates a maelstrom of life-changing consequences for all.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250260079
THE SPECTACULAR by Zoe Whittall (Fiction)
It’s 1997, and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. She plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border. Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in 10 years --- on the cover of a music magazine. Ruth is 83 and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it’s time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again.
Ballantine Books | 9781524799410
TALK TO ME by T.C. Boyle (Fiction)
When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we know it. What if it were possible to speak to the members of another species --- to converse with them, not just give commands or coach them but to really have an exchange of ideas and a meeting of minds?
Ecco | 9780063052857
THINGS I HAVE WITHHELD: Essays by Kei Miller (Essays)
In a deeply moving, critical and lyrical collection of interconnected essays, award-winning writer Kei Miller explores the silences in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it --- "to risk words, to risk truth; and through the body and the histories those bodies inherit" the crimes that haunt them, and how the meanings of our bodies can shift as we move through the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood. Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice from a black, male, queer perspective.
Grove Press | 9780802158956
TRAVELS WITH GEORGE: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick (History/Travel Memoir)
When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing --- Americans. In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called "the infant woody country" to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wife Melissa and their dog Dora, Philbrick follows Washington's presidential excursions.
Viking | 9780525562177
UNBOUND: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke (Memoir)
As a child, Tarana Burke reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess what she thought of as her own sins for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two. One side was the bright, intellectually curious third-generation Bronxite steeped in Black literature and power, and the other was the bad, shame-ridden girl who thought of herself as a vile rule breaker, not of a victim. Tarana fought to reunite her fractured soul, through organizing, pursuing justice and finding community. In her debut memoir, she shares her extensive work supporting and empowering Black and brown girls, and the devastating realization that to truly help these girls she needed to help that scared, ashamed child still in her soul.
Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book | 9781250621733
THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie (Historical Fantasy)
Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds. With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies…while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.
Orbit | 9780316187244
THE WORLD PLAYED CHESS by Robert Dugoni (Fiction)
In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now 40 years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer --- Vincent’s last taste of innocence and first taste of real life --- dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life and seeking one’s own destiny.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542029377
On Sale the Week of September 13th in Paperback
September 14th
24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid by Willie Mays and John Shea (Sports/Memoir)
Widely regarded as the greatest all-around player in baseball history because of his unparalleled hitting, defense and baserunning, the beloved Willie Mays offers people of all ages his lifetime of experience meeting challenges with positivity, integrity and triumph in 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid. Presented in 24 chapters to correspond with his universally recognized uniform number, Willie’s memoir provides more than the story of his role in America’s pastime. This is the story of a man who values family and community, engages in charitable causes, especially involving children, and follows a philosophy that encourages hope, hard work and the fulfillment of dreams.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250828354
ADRIANNE GEFFEL: A Fiction by David Hajdu (Fiction)
Adrianne Geffel was a one-of-a-kind artist, a pianist and composer with a rare neurological condition that enabled her to make music that was nothing less than pure, unmediated emotional expression. She and her sensibility are now fully integrated into the cultural lexicon; her music has been portrayed, represented and appropriated endlessly in popular culture. But what do we really know about her? Despite her renown, Geffel vanished from public life, and her whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. David Hajdu cuts through the noise to tell the full story of Geffel’s life and work, piecing it together through the memories of those who knew her, inspired her and exploited her --- her parents, teachers, best friend, manager, critics and lovers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393868340
A LOT LIKE ADIÓS by Alexis Daria (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
After burning out in her corporate marketing career, Michelle Amato has built a thriving freelance business as a graphic designer. She’s perfectly fine being the black sheep of her marriage-obsessed Puerto Rican-Italian family. The only guy who ever made her want happily-ever-after disappeared 13 years ago. Gabriel Aguilar left the Bronx at 18 to escape his parents’ demanding expectations, but it also meant saying goodbye to Michelle. He’s now the successful co-owner of LA’s hottest celebrity gym, with an investor who insists on opening a New York City location. It’s the last place Gabe wants to go, but when Michelle is unexpectedly brought on board to spearhead the new marketing campaign, everything Gabe has been running from catches up with him.
Avon | 9780062959966
CHICAGO’S GREAT FIRE: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City by Carl Smith (History)
Remarkably, no carefully researched popular history of the Great Chicago Fire has been written until now, despite it being one of the most cataclysmic disasters in U.S. history. Building the story around memorable characters, both known to history and unknown, including the likes of General Philip Sheridan and Robert Todd Lincoln, eminent Chicago historian Carl Smith chronicles the city’s rapid growth and place in America’s post-Civil War expansion. The dramatic story of the fire --- revealing human nature in all its guises --- became one of equally remarkable renewal, as Chicago quickly rose back up from the ashes thanks to local determination and the world’s generosity and faith in Chicago’s future.
Grove Press | 9780802159120
DEADLY CROSS: An Alex Cross Thriller by James Patterson (Thriller)
Kay Willingham led a life as glamorous as it was public --- she was a gorgeous Georgetown socialite, philanthropist and the ex-wife of the vice president. So why was she parked in a Bentley convertible idling behind a DC private school, in the middle of the night, with the man who was the head of that school? Who shot them both, point blank, and why? The shocking double homicide is blazed across the internet, TV, newspapers --- and across Alex Cross' mind. Kay had been his patient once. And maybe more. She had many enemies, but all of them seemed to need her alive. The harder the investigators push, the more resistance they find when they leave behind the polite law offices and doctors' quarters of the state capital.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538703557
EARTHEATER written by Dolores Reyes, translated by Julia Sanches (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, EARTHEATER is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth --- a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Eartheater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.
HarperVia | 9780062987754
FAREWELL BLUES: A Lady Adelaide Mystery by Maggie Robinson (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Lady Adelaide Compton had prepared herself to say goodbye forever to Detective Inspector Devenand Hunter. It would be a welcome relief not to get mixed up in any more murders, even if it meant never working alongside the handsome detective again. Wouldn't it? But then Addie's prim and proper mother, Constance, the Dowager Marchioness of Broughton, is accused of murdering her secret lover, and there can't be enough gentlemen detectives on hand to find the truth. The dead Duke of Rufford appeared to lead a blameless life, but appearances can be deceiving. And unless Addie and Dev work together, Constance will hang --- which is no one's idea of a happy ending.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464215193
HITLER: DOWNFALL, 1939-1945 written by Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase (Biography)
In the summer of 1939, Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Having consolidated political control in Germany, he was at the helm of a newly restored major world power and now perfectly positioned to realize his lifelong ambition: to help the German people flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Beginning a war allowed Hitler to take his ideological obsessions to unthinkable extremes, including the mass genocide of millions, which was conducted not only with the aid of the SS, but with the full knowledge of German leadership. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Now, Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler’s character and personality.
Vintage | 9781101872062
THE KILLINGS AT KINGFISHER HILL: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah (Historical Mystery)
Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family. The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062792389
THE LAST GARDEN IN ENGLAND by Julia Kelly (Historical Fiction)
Present day: Emma Lovett has been tasked to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero, Venetia Smith. 1907: When Venetia Smith is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph. 1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life. When war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
Gallery Books | 9781982107833
THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS by Ali Hazelwood (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships. But her best friend does. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor --- and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.
Berkley | 9780593336823
A MOST CLEVER GIRL: A Novel of an American Spy by Stephanie Marie Thornton (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Reeling from the death of her mother and President Kennedy’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep demanding answers to the shocking mystery she just uncovered about her family. What she doesn’t expect is for Bentley to ensnare her in her own story of becoming a controversial World War II spy and Cold War informer. Recruited by the American Communist Party to spy on fascists at the outbreak of World War II, a young Bentley --- code name Clever Girl --- finds she has an unexpected gift for espionage. But after falling desperately in love with her handler, Elizabeth learns he is actually a Russian spy. As Catherine listens to Elizabeth's harrowing tale, she discovers that the women's lives are linked in shocking ways.
Berkley | 9780593198407
THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP PRESENTS THE BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR: 2021 edited by Lee Child, series edited by Otto Penzler (Mystery/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
Mysterious Press | 9781613162385
RIGHT BEHIND HER by Melinda Leigh (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Twenty-seven years ago, Sheriff Bree Taggert’s father killed her mother, then himself. Now Bree and her younger brother, Adam, find human bones on the grounds of their abandoned family farm. The remains are those of a man and a woman, both murdered in the same horrible way. When the investigation determines the murders occurred 30 years ago, Bree’s dead father becomes a suspect, forcing Bree to revisit the brutal night she has spent most of her life trying to forget. The only other suspect is an unlikely squatter on the Taggert farm who claims to know secrets about Bree’s past. When he mysteriously disappears and Bree’s niece is kidnapped, the cold case heats up. Bree has stoked the rage of a murderer who will do anything to keep his identity --- and motives --- a secret.
Montlake | 9781542007047
SAVING FREEDOM: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization by Joe Scarborough (History)
The year was 1947. The Soviet Union had moved from being America’s uneasy ally in the Second World War to its most feared enemy. With Joseph Stalin’s ambitions pushing westward, Turkey was pressured from the east while communist revolutionaries overran Greece. The British Empire was battered from its war with Hitler and suddenly teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Only America could afford to defend freedom in the West, and the effort was spearheaded by a president who hadn’t even been elected to that office. But Truman would wage a domestic political battle that carried with it the highest of stakes, inspiring friends and foes alike to join in his crusade to defend democracy across the globe.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062950505
SEX WITH PRESIDENTS: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House by Eleanor Herman (Popular History)
While Americans have a reputation for being strait-laced, many of the nation’s leaders have been anything but puritanical. In this entertaining and eye-opening book, Eleanor Herman revisits some of the sex scandals that have rocked the nation's capital and shocked the public, while asking the provocative questions: Does rampant adultery show a lack of character or the stamina needed to run the country? Or perhaps both? While Americans have judged their leaders' affairs harshly compared to other nations, did they mostly just hate being lied to? And do they now clearly care more about issues other than a politician’s sex life?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063021914
SNOW by John Banville (Historical Mystery)
Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957, and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns that the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets threaten to obliterate everything.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335629036
THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS by Micah Nemerever (Fiction)
When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, he is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than he ever could have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel. As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.
Harper Perennial | 9780062963642
TO HOLD UP THE SKY by Cixin Liu (Science Fiction/Short Stories)
In TO HOLD UP THE SKY, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space --- from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physics to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able to begin anew; to the very collapse of the universe itself. Written between 1999 and 2017 and never before published in English, these stories came into being during decades of major change in China.
Tor Books | 9781250306067
WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper (True Crime/Memoir)
1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death. Forty years later, a curious undergrad named Becky Cooper will hear the first whispers of the story --- a tale of gender inequality in academia, a “cowboy culture” among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538746851
A WILD WINTER SWAN by Gregory Maguire (Historical Fiction/Magical Realism)
Following her brother's death and her mother's emotional breakdown, Laura now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her grandparents. The quiet, awkward teenager has been getting into trouble at home and has been expelled from her high school. When Christmas is over and the new year begins, Laura may find herself at boarding school in Montreal. Nearly unmoored from reality through her panic and submerged grief, Laura is startled when a handsome swan boy with only one wing lands on her roof. She tries to build him a wing so he can fly home. Little does she know that her struggle to find help for her new friend parallels that of her grandparents, who are desperate for a distant relative’s financial aid to save the family store.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062980793
September 15th
THE MAN IN MILAN by Vito Racanelli (Thriller)
When NYPD detectives Paul Rossi and Hamilton P. Turner begin investigating the Sutton Place murder of an Italian air force pilot, they find themselves sucked into the potential cover-up of the Ustica massacre, the most horrific aviation crime in Italian history. But as they begin investigating, Rossi and Turner come up against NYPD bureaucratic obstacles and stonewalling by the Italian Consulate in New York City. Lieutenant Laura Muro, the policewoman sister of the victim, comes to New York to aid the investigation, but soon the trio find themselves in the crosshairs of the Gladio, Italy’s powerful, shadowy political cabal whose reach extends to the highest reaches of New York political and ruling class.
Polis Books | 9781951709624
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