January 25, 2022

January 25, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 24th and January 31st 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 special contest for WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS by Naima Coster, a New York Times bestseller and a "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club pick. This multigenerational novel of motherhood, race and the American family is now available in paperback, and we are awarding a copy to five lucky readers. The deadline for your entries is Friday, February 4th at noon ET.

For those of you who are doing online shopping, if you use the store links below, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases. We would appreciate your considering this!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.

Wednesday, January 26th at 7pm ET: American Booksellers Association/Publishers Lunch: Emma Straub will host the Buzz Books Editors Panel, a virtual event sponsored by Publishers Lunch and the American Booksellers Association. Six breakout authors will chat with their editors about their forthcoming titles.

Wednesday, January 26th at 7pm ET: Cuyahoga County Public Library: Fiona Davis will be in conversation with Jillian Cantor (author of BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS) about her latest historical novel, THE MAGNOLIA PALACE.

Wednesday, January 26th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Patti Callahan Henry --- will talk to Amor Towles about his most recent novel, THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Wednesday, January 26th at 8pm ET: Loyalty Bookstores: Loyalty is super psyched to celebrate the release of JOAN IS OKAY, the new novel from Weike Wang, who will be in conversation with Angie Kim.

Thursday, January 27th at 7pm ET: Belmont Books and Books & Books: Belmont Books and Books & Books will be co-hosting a virtual evening with author Thrity Umrigar, in conversation with Ellen Barry, whose New York Times articles inspired Thrity to write her new book, HONOR.

Thursday, January 27th at 8pm ET: Mystery to Me: Nick Petrie returns to Mystery to Me with the latest installment of his Peter Ash series, THE RUNAWAY. He will be in conversation with Bill Schweigart, author of the Fatal Folklore series.

Thursday, January 27th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Marie Benedict will discuss her new novel, HER HIDDEN GENIUS, which shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA.

Thursday, January 27th at 8:30pm ET: Murder By The Book: Fiona Davis is excited to join Murder By The Book for a virtual event celebrating the release of her new novel, THE MAGNOLIA PALACE.

Friday, January 28th at 8pm ET: Politics & Prose: Join P&P Live! with bestselling author and musician John Darnielle as he discusses his new novel, DEVIL HOUSE, with Casey Cep.

Saturday, January 29th at 6pm ET: The BookMark: Join The BookMark as they present Fiona Davis in conversation with Christina Baker Kline about her latest historical novel, THE MAGNOLIA PALACE.

Saturday, January 29th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's, in partnership with Books & Books, the Miami Book Fair and independent bookstores across the country, will host Isabel Allende as she discusses her new book, VIOLETA, with Victoria Alonso.

Monday, January 31st at 3pm ET: Simon & Schuster's Book Club Favorites: Jessamine Chan will join members of the Simon & Schuster team for a Facebook Live Book Club chat about THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS, which is January's pick for S&S's Book Club Favorites.

Monday, January 31st at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Fiona Davis will discuss her new work of historical fiction, THE MAGNOLIA PALACE, a tantalizing novel about the secrets, betrayal and murder within one of New York City's most impressive Gilded Age mansions.

Tuesday, February 1st at 7pm ET: Books & Books: Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present a virtual event with Julia May Jonas, who will discuss her debut novel, VLADIMIR, with Claire Dederer.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Special Contest for
WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS by Naima Coster
Enter to Win One of Five Paperback Copies

On Sale the Week of January 24th in Hardcover

January 25th

THE ACCOMPLICE by Lisa Lutz (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Owen Mann is charming, privileged and chronically dissatisfied. Luna Grey is secretive, cautious and pragmatic. Despite their differences, they form a bond the moment they meet in college. Their names soon become indivisible --- Owen and Luna, Luna and Owen --- and stay that way even after an unexplained death rocks their social circle. They’re still best friends years later, when Luna finds Owen’s wife brutally murdered. The police investigation sheds light on some long-hidden secrets, but it can’t penetrate the wall of mystery that surrounds Owen. To get to the heart of what happened and why, Luna has to dig up the one secret she’s spent her whole life burying.
Ballantine Books | 9781984818263

THE APPEAL by Janice Hallett (Mystery)
The Fairway Players, a local theater group, is in the midst of rehearsals when tragedy strikes the family of director Martin Hayward and his wife Helen, the play’s star. Their young granddaughter has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and with an experimental treatment costing a tremendous sum, their fellow castmates rally to raise the money to give her a chance at survival. But not everybody is convinced of the experimental treatment’s efficacy --- nor of the good intentions of those involved. As tension grows within the community, things come to a shocking head at the explosive dress rehearsal. The next day, a dead body is found, and soon an arrest is made. In the run-up to the trial, two young lawyers sift through the material with a growing suspicion that a killer may be hiding in plain sight.
Atria Books | 9781982187453

THE BROKEN TOWER by Kelly Braffet (Historical Fantasy)
Judah the Foundling chose freedom over betrayal when she leaped from the top of the castle tower. Now she finds herself wandering an unknown forest, far from everything and everyone she loves. For the first time in her life, she’s beyond the great Wall that surrounds Highfall castle. For the first time, she’s alone. But Judah isn’t free. Fiercely sought by those who believe she holds the key to unlocking the power trapped in the world, she must learn to navigate the dangers of an unfamiliar place. She knows that somewhere, her foster brother Gavin is in peril. To save him, she not only must learn to use the new power she discovers inside herself, she must survive.
Mira | 9780778331797

DEFENESTRATE by Renée Branum (Fiction)
Marta and her twin brother, Nick, have always been haunted and fascinated by an ancestral legend that holds that members of their family are doomed to various types of falls. And when their own family collapses in the wake of a revelation and a resulting devastating fight with their Catholic mother, the twins move to Prague, the city in which their “falling curse” began. There, Marta and Nick try to forge a new life for themselves. But their ties to the past and each other prove difficult to disentangle, and when they ultimately return to their midwestern home and Nick falls from a balcony himself, Marta is forced to confront the truths they've hidden from each other and themselves.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577396

DEVIL HOUSE by John Darnielle (Fiction)
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success --- and a movie adaptation --- to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected --- back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.
MCD | 9780374212230

EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma by Galit Atlas, PhD (Psychology/Mental Health)
The people we love and those who raised us live inside us; we experience their emotional pain, we dream their memories, and these things shape our lives in ways we don’t always recognize. EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE is about family secrets that keep us from living to our full potential, create gaps between what we want for ourselves and what we are able to have, and haunt us like ghosts. In this transformative book, Galit Atlas entwines the stories of her patients, her own stories and decades of research to help us identify the links between our life struggles and the “emotional inheritance” we all carry. For it is only by following the traces those ghosts leave that we can truly change our destiny.
Little, Brown Spark | 9780316492126

THE FIELDS by Erin Young (Thriller)
It starts with a body --- a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, arrives on the scene, an already horrific crime becomes personal when she discovers the victim was a childhood friend, connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind. The investigation grows complicated as more victims are found. Drawn deeper in, Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.
Flatiron Books | 9781250799395

GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American by Wajahat Ali (Memoir)
Growing up living the suburban American dream, young Wajahat Ali devoured comic books (devoid of brown superheroes) and fielded well-intentioned advice from uncles and aunties (“Become a doctor!”). While Ali was studying at University of California, Berkeley, 9/11 happened. Muslims replaced communists as America’s enemy #1, and he became an accidental spokesman and ambassador of all ordinary, unthreatening things Muslim-y. In GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM, Ali tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration and pop culture.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393867978

GOLIATH by Tochi Onyebuchi (Science Fiction)
In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked.
Tordotcom | 9781250782953

GOOD RICH PEOPLE by Eliza Jane Brazier (Psychological Thriller)
Lyla has always believed that life is a game she is destined to win, but her husband, Graham, takes the game to dangerous levels. The wealthy couple invites self-made success stories to live in their guesthouse and then conspires to ruin their lives. After all, there is nothing worse than a bootstrapper. Demi has always felt like the odds were stacked against her. At the end of her rope, she seizes a risky opportunity to take over another person’s life and unwittingly becomes the subject of the upstairs couple’s wicked entertainment. But Demi has been struggling forever, and she’s not about to go down without a fight. In a twist that neither woman sees coming, the game quickly devolves into chaos and rockets toward an explosive conclusion.
Berkley | 9780593198254

GREENWICH PARK by Katherine Faulkner (Domestic Thriller)
Helen’s idyllic life begins to change the day she attends her first prenatal class and meets Rachel, an unpredictable single mother-to-be. Rachel doesn’t seem very maternal, but Helen is still drawn to her. She makes Helen laugh, invites her confidences and distracts her from her fears. But her increasingly erratic behavior is unsettling. And Helen is not the only one who’s noticed. Her friends and family begin to suspect that her strange new friend may be linked to their shared history in unexpected ways. When Rachel threatens to expose a past crime that could destroy all of their lives, it becomes clear that there are more than a few secrets laying beneath the broad-leaved trees and warm lamplight of Greenwich Park.
Gallery Books | 9781982150310

HER HIDDEN GENIUS by Marie Benedict (Historical Fiction)
Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, Rosalind Franklin feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture --- one more after thousands --- she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins, who would rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens --- the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind never could have predicted.
Sourcebooks Landmark | ‎9781728229393

LAST SEEN ALIVE by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery/Thriller)
Boston detective Ellery Hathaway met FBI agent Reed Markham when he pried open a serial killer’s closet to rescue her. Years on, their relationship remains defined by that moment and by Francis Coben’s horrific crimes. To free herself from Coben’s legacy, Ellery had to walk away from Reed, too. But Coben is not letting go so easily. He has an impossible proposition: Coben will finally give up the location of the remaining bodies, on one condition --- Reed must bring him Ellery. But Ellery is the one living person who has seen the monster behind the mask, and she doesn’t believe he can be redeemed. Not after everything he’s done. Not after what she’s been through. And certainly not after a fresh body turns up with Coben’s signature all over it.
Minotaur Books | 9781250249678

LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME by Mike Chen (Science Fiction)
Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. Kass suspected that her college-dropout twin simply ran off, while Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob. When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's older, stranger and talking of an intergalactic war, but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast.
Mira | 9780778311737

THE MAGNOLIA PALACE by Fiona Davis (Historical Fiction)
Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, Lillian Carter's life has completely fallen apart. So when she stumbles upon an employment opportunity at the Frick mansion, she jumps at the chance. But before she knows it, she is pulled into a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels and family drama. Nearly 50 years later, mod English model Veronica Weber has her own chance to make her career within the walls of the former Frick residence, now converted into an impressive museum. But then she chances upon a series of hidden messages in the museum --- messages that will lead her on a hunt that not only could solve Veronica's financial woes, but could finally reveal the truth behind a decades-old murder in the infamous Frick family.
Dutton | 9780593184011

MERMAID CONFIDENTIAL by Tim Dorsey (Mystery/Humor)
Serge A. Storms and his permanently baked sidekick, Coleman, have decided to pump the brakes and live on island time. After years of manic road tripping across their beloved Sunshine State, the irrepressible anti-heroes drop anchor in the Florida Keys. They settle down in Pelican Bay, a thriving condo complex with scenic views and friendly neighbors. But the community is at war with investors who are buying up units and leasing them to young vacationers who party at all hours. Meanwhile, the island chain’s long and rich smuggling heritage is causing mayhem --- a gang war erupts when a local drug lord passes the family business to his young, enterprising son, and the sun-loving residents are suddenly dodging bullets.
William Morrow | 9780062967534

NOTES ON AN EXECUTION by Danya Kukafka (Literary Thriller)
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in 12 hours. He knows what he’s done and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. Through a kaleidoscope of women, we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a 17-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy.
William Morrow | 9780063052734

PERPETUAL WEST by Mesha Maren (Fiction)
When Alex and Elana move from small-town Virginia to El Paso, they are just a young married couple, intent on a new beginning. Mexican by birth but adopted by white American Pentecostal parents, Alex is hungry to learn about the place where he was born. He spends every free moment across the border in Juárez studying lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) for his graduate work in sociology. Meanwhile, Elana feels disillusioned by academia and has stopped going to class. She has no idea that Alex has fallen in love with Mateo, a lucha libre fighter. When Alex goes missing and Elana can’t determine whether he left of his own accord or was kidnapped, it’s clear that neither of them has been honest about who they are.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750941

A PREVIOUS LIFE by Edmund White (Fiction/Humor)
Sicilian aristocrat and musician Ruggero and his younger American wife, Constance, agree to break their marital silence and write their Confessions. Until now they had a ban on speaking about the past, since transparency had wrecked their previous marriages. As the two alternate reading the memoirs they've written about their lives, Constance reveals her multiple marriages to older men, and Ruggero details the affairs he's had with men and women across his lifetime --- most importantly his passionate affair with the author Edmund White.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577273

QUICKSILVER by Dean Koontz (Supernatural Thriller)
Raised in an orphanage, Quinn Quicksilver had a happy if unexceptional life. Until the day of “strange magnetism.” It compelled him to drive out to the middle of nowhere. It helped him find a coin worth a lot of money. And it practically saved his life when two government agents showed up in the diner in pursuit of him. Now Quinn is on the run from those agents, fleeing for his life. During a shoot-out at a forlorn dude ranch, he finally meets his destined companions: Bridget Rainking, a beauty as gifted in foresight as she is with firearms, and her grandpa Sparky, a romance novelist with an unusual past. Barreling through the Sonoran Desert, the formidable trio is impelled by that same inexplicable magnetism toward the inevitable.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542019880

ROAD OF BONES by Christopher Golden (Supernatural Thriller)
Known as the Road of Bones, Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Fascinated by the history, documentary producer Felix “Teig” Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing Life and Death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. But when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girl --- and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be. This harrowing journey will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274304

UNDERMONEY by Jay Newman (Political Thriller)
When a U.S. airdrop of billions of dollars disap¬pears in the desert sands of Syria, only a small group of military operatives knows its ultimate destination or why it has been stolen. Their goal is no less than the restoration of America’s geopolitical dominance on the global stage. Essential to this scheme are Greta Webb, a sophisticated CIA operative who is an expert on dark money, and Elias Vicker, the damaged, dangerous soul who runs the world’s largest hedge fund. To achieve its goals, the group must form dangerous alliances. One is with the hidden family that manages the largest private pool of capital that has ever existed. Another is with Fyodor Volk, the ruthless founder of Russia’s most successful private military company, a mercenary with ties to Vladimir Putin.
Scribner | 9781982156022

VIOLETA by Isabel Allende (Historical Fiction)
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy.
Ballantine Books | 9780593496206

On Sale the Week of January 24th in Paperback

January 25th

THE BULLET: An Eve Duncan Novel by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Diane Connors is a dedicated doctor with the world’s biggest secret, a discovery that could have shocking global ramifications. But while conducting private research trials, word has gotten out. The wrong people have heard the news and now want to hide Diane’s achievement for their own ends. With nowhere else to turn, Diane finds herself on the doorstep of the last man she wants to ask for help: her ex-husband, Joe Quinn. Joe has remarried, and he and his wife, Eve Duncan, seem blissfully happy in their quiet, rural life until they are faced with the challenge of risking it all for the greater good. Now Eve is trapped in a web of murder and deceit as powerful enemies rush to cover up the truth.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538713181

CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES by Rebecca Sacks (Fiction)
Hamid, a college student, has entered Israeli territory illegally for work. Rushing past soldiers, he bumps into Vera, a German journalist headed to Jerusalem to cover the story of Salem, a Palestinian boy beaten into a coma by a group of revenge-seeking Israeli teenagers. On her way to the hospital, Vera runs in front of a car that barely avoids hitting her. The driver is Ido, a new father traveling with his American wife and their baby. Ido is distracted by thoughts of a young Jewish girl murdered by a terrorist who infiltrated her settlement. Ori, a 19-year-old soldier from a nearby settlement, is guarding the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem through which Samar --- Hamid’s professor --- must pass.
Harper Perennial | 9780063011489

THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS by Eva Jurczyk (Literary Mystery)
Paperback Original
Liesl Weiss long ago learned to be content working behind the scenes in the distinguished rare books department of a large university. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing. Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book, but is told repeatedly to keep quiet, to keep the doors open and the donors happy. But then a librarian unexpectedly stops showing up to work. Liesl must investigate both disappearances, unspooling her colleagues' pasts like the threads of a rare book binding as it becomes clear that someone in the department must be responsible for the theft.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728238593

FINDING ASHLEY by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
Once a bestselling author, Melissa Henderson now pours all her energy into renovating a Victorian house nestled in the foothills of rural New England. Six years ago, she lost her young son to cancer, and her marriage dissolved. After a wildfire that threatens her home appears on the news, Melissa receives a call from her sister, Hattie. They were close once, but that was before Melissa withdrew from the world. Now Hattie, who became a nun at 25, is determined to help Melissa turn a new page. At 16, a pregnant Melissa was sent to a gloomy convent in Ireland to have --- and give up --- her baby. Hattie now feels compelled to embark on a journey that will change both their lives forever, and track down the child Melissa gave up.
Dell | 9781984821485

THE FIVE WOUNDS by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Fiction)
It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path. THE FIVE WOUNDS spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, to whom Angel isn’t speaking; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324020219

FLOWERS OF DARKNESS by Tatiana de Rosnay (Mystery/Thriller)
Author Clarissa Katsef is struggling to write her next book. She’s just snagged a brand new artist residency in an ultra-modern apartment, with a view of all of Paris. But since moving in, she has had the feeling of being watched. Is there reason to be paranoid? Or is her distraction and discomfort the result of her husband’s recent shocking betrayal? Or is it that her beloved Paris lies altered outside her windows? A city that will never be quite the same, a city with a scar at its center? Clarissa enlists her beloved granddaughter in her investigation of the mysterious, high-tech building even as she finds herself drawn back into the orbit of her first husband, who shares the past grief that she has never quite let go.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250828705

GATHERING DARK by Candice Fox (Thriller)
Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million-dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one. It’s been 10 years since Jessica arrested Blair for cold-blooded murder. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor late one night, she expects abuse, maybe even violence. What comes next is a plea for help.
Forge Books | 9781250317629

THE GOOD WIFE OF BATH by Karen Brooks (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
England, 1364: When married off at the age of 12 to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does. She was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter. Aided by a head for business (and a surprisingly kind husband), Eleanor manages to turn her first marriage into success, and she rises through society from a cast-off farm girl to a woman of fortune who becomes a trusted friend of the social-climbing poet Geoffrey Chaucer. But more marriages follow, several pilgrimages, numerous lovers, murder, mayhem and many turns of fortune’s wheel as Eleanor pursues the one thing that all women want: control of their own lives.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063142831

THE HEIRESS: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh by Molly Greeley (Historical Fiction)
As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh’s doctor prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley and Rosings. But Darcy does not love Anne or want her. In a frenzy of desperation, Anne discards her laudanum and flees to the London home of her cousin, Colonel John Fitzwilliam, who helps her through her painful recovery. Yet, once she returns to health, new challenges await.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063032019

HOUR OF THE WITCH by Chris Bohjalian (Historical Thriller)
Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary --- who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony --- soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to escape not only her marriage, but also the gallows.
Vintage | 9780525432692

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN by Joan Didion (Essays)
These 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. Here, Joan Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it"), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In "Why I Write," Didion ponders the act of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one "that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men," these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed.
Vintage | 9780593312193

THE NARROWBOAT SUMMER by Anne Youngson (Fiction)
Eve has left her 30-year career to become a Free Spirit; Sally has waved goodbye to her indifferent husband and two grown-up children; and Anastasia, a defiantly independent narrowboat-dweller is suddenly landlocked and vulnerable. Before they quite know what they’ve done, Sally and Eve agree to drive Anastasia’s narrowboat on a journey through the canals of England, as she awaits a life-saving operation. As they glide through the countryside, the eccentricities and challenges of narrowboat life draw them inexorably together, and a tender and unforgettable story unfolds. At summer’s end, all three women must decide whether to return to the lives they left behind, or forge a new path forward.
Flatiron Books | 9781250764621

NOT DARK YET: A DCI Banks Novel by Peter Robinson (Mystery/Thriller)
When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. They hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings. However, instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062994967

THE OVERNIGHT GUEST by Heather Gudenkauf (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace. As the storm worsens, Wylie finds herself trapped inside the house, haunted by the secrets contained within its walls --- haunted by secrets of her own. Then she discovers a small child in the snow just outside. After bringing the child inside for warmth and safety, she begins to search for answers. But soon it becomes clear that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought, and someone is willing to do anything to find them.
Park Row | 9780778311935

THE PATH TO SUNSHINE COVE by RaeAnne Thayne (Fiction)
Jessica Clayton has made a career out of helping others downsize --- because she’s learned the hard way that the less “stuff,” the better, a policy she applies equally to her relationships. But a new client is taking Jess back to Cape Sanctuary, a town she once called home…and that her little sister, Rachel, still does. The years apart haven’t made a dent in the guilt Jess still carries after a handgun took the lives of both their parents and changed everything between them. With the demands of her youngest child’s disability, Rachel’s marriage has begun to fray at the seams. Against her judgment, Jess finds herself becoming attached --- to her sister and her family, even to her client’s interfering son, Nate --- and it’s time to put everything on the line.
HQN | 9781335534996

PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS by Chris Harding Thornton (Noir Thriller)
In a dusty town in Nebraska’s rugged sandhills, sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen patrols the streets at night, on the lookout for something to take his mind off the past, which weighs him down like an anvil. And he’s not the only one --- Pickard County is full of restless souls looking for change. Pam bristles against her role as wife and mother, hemmed in by the tragic history of the Reddick family, which is still coping, decades later, with the murder of one of its own. Her husband, Rick, bows beneath the pressures of raising a family while struggling with the wreckage of his youth. And then there’s Paul, the youngest Reddick, town miscreant and flint to Harley’s steel --- and in this stark, Shakespearean drama, it’s just a matter of time until their conflict throws the spark that will burn Pickard County to the ground.
Picador | 9781250829597

ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE EXILE by Joshua Hood (Thriller/Adventure)
After the revival of Operation Treadstone, former agent Adam Hayes has retreated to Africa, determined to leave behind the black-ops CIA program for good. But his quiet life in Africa changes irrevocably when, while attempting to complete a charitable mission in Burkina Faso, Hayes is attacked by extremists. Forced to make an unexpected landing, his plane is damaged. In order to get back in the air, Hayes agrees to transport a passenger --- Zoe Cabot, the daughter of a tech baron --- to a small coastal city. But just after Hayes completes his flight, Zoe is kidnapped. During his search for Zoe, Hayes funs afoul of multiple enemies, including a rogue Treadstone operative, all of whom are searching for him.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525542643

A SAINT FROM TEXAS by Edmund White (Fiction)
Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far more dramatic and tragic fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy's land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams --- ones that will carry them far from Texas and from each other. As the decades unfold, Yvonne will ascend the highest ranks of Parisian society as Yvette gives herself to a lifetime of worship and service in the streets of Jericó, Colombia. And yet, even as they remake themselves in their radically different lives, the twins find that the bonds of family and the past are unbreakable.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577051

THE SAINTS OF SWALLOW HILL by Donna Everhart (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
For Rae Lynn Cobb, a young woman disguised as a man, the Swallow Hill turpentine camp offers distance and anonymity from those who would wrongly imprison her for killing her husband. For charming bachelor Del Reese, it’s a place where backbreaking work might drown out memories of a recent trauma. The squalid camp is ruled by a sadistic boss named Crow and the greedy commissary owner Otis Riddle, a man who takes out his frustrations on his browbeaten wife, Cornelia. As Rae Lynn forges a deeper friendship with both Del and Cornelia, she begins to envision a path out of the camp. But she will have to come to terms with her past before she can open herself to a new life and seize the chance to begin again.
Kensington | 9781496733320

SOMETHING’S GUAVA GIVE: A Tropical Island Cozy Mystery by Carrie Doyle (Cozy Mystery)
Paperback Original
Plum Lockhart went out on a limb when she ditched her corporate job in New York City and moved to the Caribbean island of Paraiso. Now the head of her own villa broker agency, Plum spends her days chasing down clients and lounging on white sand beaches. But the sweet life turns sour when a publishing heiress is found dead at the mansion of an eccentric tycoon, Dieter Friedrich. Even worse, Plum's old colleague cashes in a favor and asks her to investigate. Friedrich is known for his shady dealings, but he's not the only bad apple on the island. Plum will have to contend with a scheming millionaire, a sleazy rock star and devious B-list celebrities. And joining Plum once again is Juan Kevin Munoz, the distractingly gorgeous Director of Security.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728232362

THE SON OF MR. SULEMAN by Eric Jerome Dickey (Romance)
Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure. He is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, Pi is being blackmailed by a powerful white professor who threatens to claim he assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite. When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. But Pi’s whirlwind romance is interrupted when his absentee father passes away, and Pi is called to Los Angeles to both collect his inheritance and learn about the man who never acknowledged him.
Dutton | 9781524745240

THE SWALLOWED MAN by Edward Carey (Historical Fantasy)
A lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, Giuseppe --- better known as Geppetto --- carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, Geppetto screams…and the boy, Pinocchio, escapes into the night. Though he returns the next day, the wily boy torments his father, challenging his authority and making up stories --- whereupon his nose, the very nose his father carved, grows before his eyes. When the boy disappears after one last fight, the father follows a rumor to the coast and out into the sea, where he is swallowed by a great fish. He hunkers in the creature’s belly awaiting the day when he will reconcile with the son he drove away.
Riverhead Books | 9780593188880

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE MURDER: A Hannah Swensen Mystery with Recipes! by Joanne Fluke (Cozy Mystery)
Hannah Swensen is up to her ears with Easter orders rushing in at The Cookie Jar, plus a festive meal to prepare for a dinner party at her mother’s penthouse. But everything comes crashing to a halt when Hannah receives a panicked call from her sister, Andrea --- Mayor Richard Bascomb has been murdered…and Andrea is the prime suspect. Even with his reputation for being a bully, Mayor Bascomb had been unusually testy in the days leading up to his death, leaving Hannah to wonder if he knew he was in danger. There are plenty of suspects to sift through for sure. And as orders pile up at The Cookie Jar --- and children line up for Easter egg hunts --- Hannah must spring into investigation mode and identify the real killer…before another murder happens!
Kensington | 9781496718938

WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS by Naima Coster (Fiction)
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next 20 years. As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles and Paris. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538702338

On Sale the Week of January 31st in Hardcover

February 1st

BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson (Fiction)
Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
Ballantine Books | 9780593358337

THE BOOKS OF JACOB written by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft (Historical Fiction)
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas --- and a new unrest --- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.
Riverhead Books | 9780593087480

CATCH THE SPARROW: A Search for a Sister and the Truth of Her Murder by Rachel Rear (True Crime/Memoir)
Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry. But then, one morning, she was gone. Around Rochester --- a region that has spawned such serial killers as Arthur Shawcross and the “Double Initial” killer --- Stephanie's disappearance was just a familiar sort of news item. But Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story of a missing woman: Rachel's mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577235

THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR by Nina de Gramont (Historical Fiction)
London, 1925: In a world of townhomes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie. The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those 11 mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274618

CIRCUS OF WONDERS by Elizabeth Macneal (Historical Fiction)
In 1860s England, circus mania is sweeping the nation. When Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders pitches its tent in a poor coastal town, the life of one young girl changes forever. Sold to the ringmaster as a “leopard girl” because of the birthmarks that cover her body, Nell is utterly devastated. But as she grows close to the other performers, she finds herself enchanted by the glittering freedom of the circus, and by her own role as the Queen of the Moon and Stars. Before long, Nell’s fame spreads across the world --- and with it, a chance for Jasper Jupiter to grow his own name and fortune. But what happens when her fame begins to eclipse his own, when even Jasper’s loyal brother, Toby, becomes captivated by Nell?
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982106799

DON'T CRY FOR ME by Daniel Black (Fiction)
As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay. But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335425737

THE FAMILY CHAO by Lan Samantha Chang (Literary Mystery)
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for 35 years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last. Before long, brash, charismatic and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead --- presumed murdered --- and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393868074

FINLAY DONOVAN KNOCKS 'EM DEAD by Elle Cosimano (Mystery/Humor)
Finlay Donovan is once again struggling to finish her next novel and keep her head above water as a single mother of two. On the bright side, she has her live-in nanny and confidant Vero to rely on, and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish. On the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like. Meanwhile, Vero is keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life.
Minotaur Books | 9781250242181

FREE LOVE by Tessa Hadley (Historical Fiction)
1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability. Pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit and kisses Phyllis, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.
Harper | 9780063137776

A GAME OF FEAR: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd (Historical Mystery)
Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past. The lady of the house claims she saw a violent murder --- but there is no body, no blood. She also insists she recognized the killer: Captain Nelson. Only it could not have been Nelson because he died during the war. Everyone in the village believes that Lady Benton’s losses have turned her mind --- she is, after all, a grieving widow and mother --- but the woman Rutledge interviews is rational and self-possessed. And then there is Captain Nelson: what really happened to him in the war? The more Rutledge delves into this baffling case, the more suspicious tragedies he uncovers.
William Morrow | 9780062905598

THE GOODBYE COAST: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Joe Ide (Hard-boiled Mystery)
In THE GOODBYE COAST, Philip Marlowe is a quiet, lonely and remarkably capable and confident private detective. However, he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective who has given in to drink after the death of Marlowe’s mother. Marlowe, against his better judgment, accepts two missing person cases --- the first, a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet; the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the center of the novel is Marlowe’s troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who’s unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy.
Mulholland Books | 9780316459273

HEARTBREAK: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams (Memoir)
When her 25-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn’t expect is that she’ll end up in the hospital, examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, Williams tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks in a laboratory while looking at pictures of her ex, and ventures to the wilderness in search of awe as an antidote to loneliness.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324003489

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (Memoir)
A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado privately was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But there were also moments of peace, joy and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250776747

MARION LANE AND THE DEADLY ROSE by T.A. Willberg (Historical Mystery)
It’s 1959, and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him The Florist because of the rose he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the Inquirers at Miss Brickett’s for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane is assigned the case. But she’s already dealing with a mystery of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of the three new recruits should not be trusted. She dismisses the letter at first, focusing on The Florist case, but her informer seems to be one step ahead, predicting what will happen before it does. But when a fellow second-year Inquirer is murdered, Marion takes matters into her own hands.
Park Row | 9780778311942

MERCY STREET by Jennifer Haigh (Fiction)
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia’s days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy’s, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11 --- the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.
Ecco | 9780061763304

OTHER PEOPLE'S CLOTHES by Calla Henkel (Thriller/Humor)
Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in Berlin. She relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star. When Hailey stumbles on a posting for a high-ceilinged, prewar sublet by well-known thriller writer Beatrice Becks, the girls snap it up. Convinced that Beatrice intends to use their lives as inspiration for her next novel, Hailey vows to craft main-character-worthy personas. As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living --- and how it will end.
Doubleday | 9780385547352

READER, I BURIED THEM & OTHER STORIES by Peter Lovesey (Mystery/Short Stories)
More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his 100th short story, Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection --- 18 yarns of mystery, melancholy and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery and the book publishing industry. The collection includes that first story that launched his story-writing career, as well as three exclusive new stories. In addition, Lovesey fans will delight in a personal essay by the author about the historical inspirations --- and in an appearance by the irascible Bath detective Peter Diamond.
Soho Crime | 9781641293617

RECITATIF: A Story by Toni Morrison (Fiction)
In this 1983 short story --- the only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote --- we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
Knopf | 9780593315033

THANK YOU, MR. NIXON: Stories by Gish Jen (Fiction/Short Stories)
Beginning with a cheery letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to “poor Mr. Nixon” in hell, Gish Jen embarks on a fictional journey through U.S.-China relations, capturing the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change. Opal Chen reunites with her Chinese sisters after 40 years; newly cosmopolitan Lulu Koo wonders why Americans “like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes”; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their “number-one daughter” in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on “no politics, just make money,” finds she must reassess her mother’s philosophy.
Knopf | 9780593319895

THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by Brendan Slocumb (Mystery/Thriller)
Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream --- he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition, the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad before it’s too late.
Anchor | 9780593315415

VLADIMIR by Julia May Jonas (Fiction)
“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982187637

WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW by Kai Harris (Fiction)
WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down. Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets.
Tiny Reparations Books | 9780593185346

On Sale the Week of January 31st in Paperback

February 1st

AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins (Fiction)
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250209788

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS by Jillian Cantor (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby. Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire. Their stories unfold in the years leading up to that fateful summer of 1922, when all three of their lives are on the brink of unraveling. Each woman is pulled deeper into Gatsby’s romantic obsession, with devastating consequences for all of them.
Harper Perennial | 9780063051263

BENEATH THE KEEP: A Novel of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (Fantasy/Adventure)
The Tearling, founded as a utopia, has collapsed and reverted to feudalism. As the gap between rich and poor widens and famine threatens the land, rumors of a prophecy begin to spread: a great hope, a True Queen who will ascend and save the kingdom. But rumors will not help Lazarus, a boy on the verge of manhood, trapped in the clandestine underworld known as the Creche. Enlisted from his earliest days to kill without mercy, he has never seen sun or sky, not until a quest for vengeance propels him above ground. There he finds a calling amid a royal court rife with intrigue and danger, where he meets Niya, Princess Elyssa’s handmaid, who is not what she appears to be and whose true identity will spell death if revealed.
Dutton | 9781524742744

BLACK GIRLS MUST BE MAGIC by Jayne Allen (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Discovering she’s pregnant, Tabitha Walker throws herself headfirst into the world of “single mothers by choice.” Between her job, doctor’s appointments and preparing for the baby, she’s worn out. And that’s before her boss at the local news station starts getting complaints from viewers about Tabitha’s natural hair. When an unexpected turn of events draws Marc --- her on- and off-again ex-boyfriend --- back into her world with surprising demands, and the situation at work begins to threaten her livelihood and her identity, Tabitha must make some tough decisions about her and her baby’s future. It takes a village to raise a child, and Tabitha turns to the women who have always been there for her.
Harper Perennial | 9780063137929

THE BLADE BETWEEN by Sam J. Miller (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill, and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge. Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become --- overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.
Ecco | 9780062969835

BLOOD GROVE: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley (Mystery)
Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. He and his lover were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences. Meanwhile, Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.
Mulholland Books | 9780316491167

COUNT YOUR LUCKY STARS by Alexandria Bellefleur (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot Cooper comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant --- her childhood friend, her first love, her first everything. In the decade since she last saw Margot, Olivia’s life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. When a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers up her spare room. As they spend time in close quarters, Margot starts to question her no-strings stance. Olivia is everything she’s ever wanted, but Margot let her in once and it ended in disaster. Will history repeat itself, or should she count her lucky stars that she gets a second chance with her first love?
Avon | 9780063000889

THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED: Stories written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Fiction/Short Stories)
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken --- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history --- with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Hogarth | 9780593134092

ETERNAL by Lisa Scottoline (Historical Fiction)
Elisabetta, Marco and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics prodigy, kindhearted and thoughtful, the son of a lawyer and a doctor. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear --- their families, their homes and their connection to one another --- is tested in ways they never could have imagined.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525539797

GIRL A by Abigail Dean (Psychological Thriller)
Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents --- her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the home into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings --- and with the childhood they shared.
Penguin Books | 9780593295861

HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE by Imbolo Mbue (Fiction)
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made --- and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593132449

THE KINDEST LIE by Nancy Johnson (Fiction)
Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but she's uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to --- and was forced to leave behind --- when she was a teenager. Returning home, Ruth discovers that the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063005648

LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21st CENTURY: Stories by Kim Fu (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
In these 12 tales, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
Tin House Books | 9781951142995

LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY by Zak Salih (Fiction)
It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of belonging Sebastian craves. While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession.
Algonquin Books | 9781643752075

THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH: The Life of James Beard by John Birdsall (Biography)
In the first portrait of James Beard in 25 years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard’s life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the 20th century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine. THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH is informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324020240

MY BRILLIANT LIFE written by Ae-ran Kim, translated by Chi-Young Kim (Fiction)
Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang --- his 60-year-old neighbor and best friend --- and through the books he reads to visit the places he otherwise would never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing together his parents’ often embellished stories about his family and childhood. He hopes to present it on his birthday, as a final gift to his mom and dad --- their own falling-in-love story. Through it all, Areum and his family will have you laughing and crying, for all the right reasons.
Forge Books | 9781250750563

MY YEAR ABROAD by Chang-rae Lee (Fiction)
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong and of himself. The narrative alternates between Tiller’s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future.
Riverhead Books | 9781594634581

RAMSES THE DAMNED: THE REIGN OF OSIRIS by Anne Rice and Christopher Rice (Supernatural Thriller/Romance)
Paperback Original
A pharaoh made immortal by a mysterious and powerful elixir, Ramses the Great became counselor and lover to some of Egypt's greatest and most powerful rulers before he was awakened from centuries of slumber to the mystifying and dazzling world of Edwardian England. Having vanquished foes both human and supernatural, he's found love with the beautiful heiress Julie Stratford, daughter of Lawrence Stratford, the slain archaeologist who discovered his tomb. Now, with the outbreak of a world war looming, Ramses and those immortals brought forth from the mists of history by his resurrection will face their greatest test yet.
Anchor | 9781101970331

THE ROPE: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP by Alex Tresniowski (True Crime/History)
In Asbury Park, New Jersey, 10-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured for the first time. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces --- religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics and America’s Jim Crow racial violence.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982114039

THE SIREN by Katherine St. John (Thriller)
In the midst of a sizzling hot summer, some of Hollywood's most notorious faces are assembled on the idyllic Caribbean island of St. Genesius to film The Siren. Three very different women arrive on set, each with her own motive. Stella, an infamously unstable actress, is struggling to reclaim the career she lost in the wake of multiple, very public breakdowns. Taylor, a fledgling producer, is anxious to work on a film she hopes will turn her career around after her last job ended in scandal. And Felicity, Stella's mysterious new assistant, harbors designs of her own that threaten to upend everyone's plans. With a hurricane brewing offshore, each woman finds herself trapped on the island, united against a common enemy. But as deceptions come to light, misplaced trust may prove more perilous than the storm itself.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538733677

SMALLTIME: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto (Memoir)
SMALLTIME is a riveting American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, Russell Shorto’s great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life --- and wife --- in a Pennsylvania mining town. It’s a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him. The book draws an intimate portrait of a mobster and his wife, sudden riches, and the toll a lawless life takes on one family. But SMALLTIME is something more. The author enlists his ailing father --- Tony, the mobster’s son --- as his partner in the search for their troubled patriarch.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324020172

THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM: Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (Fiction/Short Stories)
In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half-brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. Elizabeth McCracken traces how our closely held desires --- for intimacy, atonement, comfort --- bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time.
Ecco | 9780062971258

STEPMOTHERLAND: Poems by Darrel Alejandro Holnes (Poetry)
Paperback Original
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’ first full-length collection is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes’ work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life.
University of Notre Dame Press | 9780268202163

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE DUTCH PAINTER by Timothy Miller (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
When Sherlock Holmes finds himself chasing an art dealer through the streets of Paris, he’s certain he’s smoked out one of the principals of a cunning forgery ring responsible for the theft of some of the Louvre’s greatest masterpieces. But he doesn’t know that the dealer, Theo Van Gogh, is rushing to the side of his brother, who lies dying of a gunshot wound in Auvers. He doesn’t know that the dealer’s brother is a penniless misfit artist named Vincent, known to few and mourned by even fewer. Officialdom pronounces the death a suicide, but a few minutes at the scene convinces Holmes it was murder. And he’s bulldog-determined to discover why a penniless painter who harmed no one had to be killed --- and who killed him.
Seventh Street Books | 9781645060420

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE by Carola Lovering (Psychological Thriller)
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips, she’s also battled crippling OCD, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result. But now Burke says he wants her. Forever. But Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends. In a third perspective, set 30 years earlier, a scrappy 17-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past --- or will he find his way into her future?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250759900

TRULY LIKE LIGHTNING by David Duchovny (Fiction)
For the past 20 years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and 10 children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence --- controversial, difficult but Edenic --- is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.
Picador | 9781250829603

THE URSULINA by Brian Freeman (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
The mythical beast goes by many names. Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti. In Black Wolf County, he's called the Ursulina. But to Deputy Rebecca Colder, the beast is no myth. A serial killer has taken on the identity of the monster --- and with each body left behind, there's a chilling message written in blood: I am the Ursulina. In this follow-up to THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW, Brian Freeman takes us on Rebecca's dark journey to reveal the truth about the Ursulina --- a journey that ultimately leads to an excruciating choice that will change her life forever.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781665109697

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett (Fiction)
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Riverhead Books | 9780525536963

WEDDING STATION by David Downing (Historical Thriller)
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin is set ablaze. It’s just a month after Hitler’s inauguration as Chancellor of Germany, and the Nazis use the torching to justify a campaign of terror against their political opponents. John Russell’s recent separation from his wife threatens his right to reside in Germany and any meaningful relationship with his six-year-old son, Paul. He has just secured work as a crime reporter for a Berlin newspaper, and the crimes that he has to report --- the gruesome murder of a rent boy, the hit-and-run death of a professional genealogist, the suspicious disappearance of a Nazi-supporting celebrity fortune teller --- are increasingly entangled in the wider nightmare engulfing Germany.
Soho Crime | 9781641293471

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller (Memoir)
Tessa Miller was an ambitious twentysomething writer in New York City when, on a random fall day, her stomach began to seize up. At first, she toughed it out through searing pain, taking sick days from work, unable to leave the bathroom or her bed. But when it became undeniable that something was seriously wrong, Miller gave in to family pressure and went to the hospital --- beginning a yearslong nightmare of procedures, misdiagnoses and life-threatening infections. Once she was finally correctly diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Miller faced another battle: accepting that she will never get better.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250751478

WHEN HARRY MET MINNIE: A True Story of Love and Friendship by Martha Teichner (Memoir)
There’s a special camaraderie among early-morning dog walkers. Gathering at dog runs in the park, or strolling through the farmer's market at Union Square before the bustling crowd appears, fellow pet owners become familiar --- as do the personalities of their beloved animals. In this special space and time, a chance encounter with an old acquaintance changed Martha Teichner’s world. As fate would have it, her friend knew someone who was dying of cancer, from exposure to toxins after 9/11, and desperate to find a home for her dog, Harry. He was a Bull Terrier --- the same breed as Martha’s dear Minnie. What begins as a transaction involving a dog becomes a deep and meaningful friendship between two women with complicated lives and a love of Bull Terriers in common.
Celadon Books | 9781250212528

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