July 12, 2022

July 12, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 11th and July 18th 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 "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com. Three book groups will win up to 12 copies of LIGHTNING STRIKE by William Kent Krueger, which was a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick when it released in hardcover last August and is now available in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, August 10th at noon ET.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, July 13th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between July 12th and August 2nd, along with a few from September, that she would like to get on your radar.

Wednesday, July 13th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome Ruth Ware for a live virtual event to celebrate the release of THE IT GIRL as part of their B&N Midday Mystery Virtual Event series. She will be in conversation with RECKLESS GIRLS author Rachel Hawkins.

Wednesday, July 13th at 7pm ET: Cuyahoga County Public Library: Join the Cuyahoga Library for a conversation with award-winning memoirist Wade Rouse, who writes fiction as Viola Shipman, about his latest novel, THE EDGE OF SUMMER.

Wednesday, July 13th 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 Katherine Center and Linda Holmes about their latest novels, THE BODYGUARD and FLYING SOLO.

Thursday, July 14th at 2pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: KJ Dell'Antonia, the New York Times bestselling author of THE CHICKEN SISTERS, will discuss her new novel, IN HER BOOTS, a delightfully entertaining story about a ruse that goes awry and a chaotic homecoming that proves that confronting your past can sometimes set you free.

Sunday, July 17th at 12pm ET: AMIT: AMIT cordially invites you to a conversation with #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva, who will talk about his latest Gabriel Allon thriller, PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, with his wife, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel.

Tuesday, July 19th at 2pm ET: Simon & Schuster's Book Club Favorites: Tom Perrotta will join members of the Simon & Schuster team to discuss his new novel, TRACY FLICK CAN'T WIN, which is July's pick for S&S's Book Club Favorites.

Tuesday, July 19th at 8pm ET: Fabled Bookshop & Cafe: Fabled's Book Club will discuss THE MEASURE for its July book club. Nikki Erlick will be on hand to talk about her debut novel, which also is this month's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club pick.

This Week's Bonus News:
ReadingGroupGuides.com's "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" Contest
Enter to Win Up to 12 Paperback Copies of LIGHTNING STRIKE by William Kent Krueger for Your Group

On Sale the Week of July 11th in Hardcover

July 12th

THE 6:20 MAN by David Baldacci (Thriller)
Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city's most prestigious investment firm. Then one morning, Devine's tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead. Sara Ewes, Devine's coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building, prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. If that wasn't enough, before the day is out, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538719848

AGENT JOSEPHINE: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis (Biography)
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. In AGENT JOSEPHINE, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers --- a cover for her spying work --- Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served --- the US, France and Britain.
PublicAffairs | 9781541700666

ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE: A Memoir by Seán Hewitt (Memoir)
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis. ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
Penguin Press | 9780593300084

AMERICAN CARTEL: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz (True Crime)
AMERICAN CARTEL is an unflinching and deeply documented dive into the culpability of the drug companies behind the staggering death toll of the opioid epidemic. It follows a small band of DEA agents led by Joseph Rannazzisi, a tough-talking New Yorker who had spent a storied 30 years bringing down bad guys, along with a band of lawyers, including West Virginia native Paul Farrell Jr., who fought to hold the drug industry to account in the face of the worst man-made drug epidemic in American history. It is the story of underdogs prevailing over corporate greed and political cowardice, persevering in the face of predicted failure, and how they found some semblance of justice for the families of the dead during the most complex civil litigation ever seen.
Twelve | 9781538737200

ANY OTHER FAMILY by Eleanor Brown (Fiction)
Though they look like any other family, they aren’t one --- not quite. They are three sets of parents who find themselves intertwined after adopting four biological siblings, having committed to keeping the children as connected as possible. At the heart of the family, the adoptive mothers grapple to define themselves and their new roles. As they set out on their first family vacation, all three are pushed into uncomfortably close quarters. And when they receive a call from their children’s birth mother announcing she is pregnant again, the delicate bonds the women are struggling to form threaten to collapse as they each must consider how a family is found and formed.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593328545

THE BEST IS YET TO COME by Debbie Macomber (Fiction)
A new beginning in charming Oceanside, Washington, is exactly what Hope Godwin needs after the death of her twin brother. There are plenty of distractions, like her cozy cottage with the slightly nosy landlords next door, and a brewing drama among her students at the local high school. But Hope still feels that something is missing. That is, until her landlords convince her to volunteer at their animal shelter. There she meets Shadow, a rescue dog that everyone has given up on, though Hope believes he’s worth saving. Like Shadow, shelter volunteer Cade Lincoln Jr. is suffering with injuries most can’t see. A wounded ex-marine, Cade identifies with Shadow, assuming they are both beyond help. Hope senses that what they each need is someone to believe in them, and she has a lot of love to give.
Ballantine Books | 9781984818843

BIG GIRL by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (Fiction)
Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem, eight-year-old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings. She’d rather paint alone in her bedroom or enjoy forbidden street foods with her father. For Malaya, the pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless, as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother. As she comes of age in the 1990s, she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, but her weight continues to climb --- until a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger, ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas surrounding women’s bodies and embracing her own desire.
Liveright | 9781324091417

THE BINDING ROOM: An Inspector Anjelica Henley Thriller by Nadine Matheson (Mystery/Thriller)
When Detective Anjelica Henley is called to investigate the murder of a popular preacher in his own church, she discovers a second victim, tortured and tied to a bed in an upstairs room. He is alive, but barely, and his body shows signs of a dark religious ritual. With a revolving list of suspects and the media spotlight firmly on her, Henley is left with more questions than answers as she attempts to untangle both crimes. But when another body appears, the case takes on a new urgency. Unless she can apprehend the killer, the next victim may just be Henley herself.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335426925

BROTHER ALIVE by Zain Khalid (Fiction)
In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and share a bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and underserved neighborhoods. The three boys are an inseparable trio, but conspicuous: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean, and Youssef is indeterminately Middle Eastern. Youssef shares everything with his brothers, except for one secret: he sees a hallucinatory double, an imaginary friend who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting familiar he calls Brother. Brother persists as a companion into Youssef’s adult life, supporting him but also stealing his memories and shaking his grip on the world.
Grove Press | 9780802159762

CHRYSALIS by Lincoln Child (Technothriller)
Like millions of people around the world, Jeremy Logan (famed enigmalogist, or investigator of unexplained things) has grown to rely on his incredible new tech device. Made by Chrysalis, the global multibillion-dollar tech company, the small optical device connects people in a stunning new way, tapping into virtual reality for the first time on a wide scale. And yet, when Logan is summoned by Chrysalis to investigate a disturbing anomaly in the massive new product rollout, Logan is shocked to see the true scope of the massive company. He also quickly realizes that something in Chrysalis’s technology is very wrong and could be potentially devastating. The question is what, and where, is the danger coming from?
Doubleday | 9780385543675

CORINNE by Rebecca Morrow (Fiction)
You want to walk away from the things that are bad for you and never look back. That's what Corinne Callahan wants. Cast out of the fundamentalist church she was raised in and cut off from her family, Corinne builds a new life for herself. A good one. But she never stops missing the life --- and the love --- she's left behind. It's Enoch Miller who ruins everything for her. It was always Enoch Miller. She'll never get him out from under her skin.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250279996

THE CRANE WIFE: A Memoir in Essays by CJ Hauser (Memoir/Essays)
Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realized she'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. In THE CRANE WIFE, Hauser releases herself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. She kisses internet strangers and officiates at a wedding. She rereads REBECCA in the house her boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife. She writes about friends and lovers, blood family and chosen family, and asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all.
Doubleday | 9780385547079

CRYING IN THE BATHROOM: A Memoir by Erika L. Sánchez (Memoir)
Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the ’90s, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit and disappointment --- a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, but she still has an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit and singular powers of perception about the world around her. In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness and perception.
Viking | 9780593296936

DARK OBJECTS by Simon Toyne (Psychological Thriller)
A glamorous woman is murdered in her ultra-luxurious London mansion, and her husband goes missing. But according to public records, neither of them exists. The only leads police have are several objects arranged around the woman’s body, including a set of keys and a book called How to Process a Murder by Laughton Rees --- a book that appears to have helped the killer forensically cleanse the crime scene. Laughton Rees is an academic who doesn’t usually work live cases after the brutal murder of her mother as a teen left her traumatized and emotionally scarred. But the presence of her book at this scene draws her unwillingly into the high-profile investigation and media circus that springs up around it.
William Morrow | 9780062329790

DEATH AND THE CONJUROR: A Joseph Spector Locked-Room Mystery by Tom Mead (Historical Mystery)
In 1930s London, celebrity psychiatrist Anselm Rees is discovered dead in his locked study. There are no clues, no witnesses and no evidence of the murder weapon. The Scotland Yard detective on the case calls on retired stage magician-turned-part-time sleuth Joseph Spector, who has a knack for explaining the inexplicable, but even he finds that there is more to this mystery than meets the eye. When the investigation dovetails into that of an apparently impossible theft, the detectives consider the possibility that the two transgressions are related. And when a second murder occurs, this time in an impenetrable elevator, they realize that the crime wave will become even more deadly unless they can catch the culprit soon.
Mysterious Press | 9781613163184

EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES: Stories of Crime and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates (Crime Fiction/Short Stories)
Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date. Originally published in long out-of-print volumes, these tales have not appeared in any form this century --- until now.
Mysterious Press | 9781613163153

GODS OF WANT: Stories by K-Ming Chang (Fiction/Short Stories)
In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughters “Dog.” In “Xífù,” a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to rid the house of her. In “Mariela,” two girls explore one another’s bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark. And in “Resident Aliens,” a former slaughterhouse serves as a residence to a series of widows, each harboring her own calamitous secrets. With each tale, K-Ming Chang gives us her own take on a surrealism that mixes myth and migration, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian.
One World | 9780593241585

THE GREAT MAN THEORY by Teddy Wayne (Fiction/Humor)
Paul is a recently demoted adjunct instructor of freshman comp, a divorced but doting Brooklyn father, and a self-described “curmudgeonly crank” cataloging his resentment of the priorities of modern life in a book called The Luddite Manifesto. Outraged by the authoritarian creeps ruining the country, he is determined to better the future for his young daughter, one aggrieved lecture at a time. Shockingly, others aren't very receptive to Paul's scoldings. As one indignity follows the next, and Paul's disaffection with his circumstances and society mounts, he concocts a dramatic plan to right the world's wrongs and give himself a more significant place in it.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635578720

GROUPIES by Sarah Priscus (Fiction)
After her mother’s death, Faun Novak, a naïve college dropout, grabs her Polaroid and hops a Greyhound to Los Angeles. There, she reconnects with her charismatic childhood friend Josie, now an up-and-coming model and muse. To make their reunion even sweeter, Josie is now dating Cal Holiday, the frontman of the superstar rock band Holiday Sun. Among the band's groupies are a doting high school girl at war with her mother; a drug-dealing wife and new mom who longs to be a star herself; and a cynical mover-and-shaker with a soft spot for Holiday Sun’s bassist. But just as everything is going great and her boring, old life is falling away, Faun realizes just how blind she has been to the darkest corners of this glamorous musical dreamland as the summer heats up and everything spirals out of control.
William Morrow | 9780063218017

HELLTOWN: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman (True Crime)
In the winter of 1969, the bodies of four young women were discovered in a cemetery near the tip of Cape Cod. In a place once known as Helltown, the victims had been shot, stabbed, dismembered and mutilated. As investigators would soon learn, the perpetrator was a young, handsome serial killer named Tony Costa. A bizarre former taxidermist with a split personality and penchant for violence, Costa ultimately mobilized friends in the hippie community for support and retribution, and captivated literary icons and rivals Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Costa embarked on a daring cat-and-mouse game with investigators, who --- as the body count kept growing --- were desperate to put an end to the killing season on Cape Cod.
Sourcebooks | 9781728245959

ICED: A Dick Francis Novel by Felix Francis (Thriller)
Seven years ago, Miles Pussett was a steeplechase jockey, loving the rush of the race. But after an unfortunate event, he left horseracing behind and swore he would never return. Now he gets his adrenaline rush from riding headfirst down the Cresta Run, a three-quarter-mile Swiss ice chute, reaching speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. Finding himself in St Moritz during the same weekend as White Turf, when high-class horseracing takes place on the frozen lake, he gets talked into helping out with the horses. When he discovers something suspicious is going on in the races, something that may have a profound impact on his future, Miles begins a search for answers. But someone is adamant about stopping him --- and they’ll go to any length to do it.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639102921

THE IT GIRL by Ruth Ware (Psychological Thriller)
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends --- Will, Hugh, Ryan and Emily --- during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982155261

A LADY'S GUIDE TO FORTUNE-HUNTING by Sophie Irwin (Historical Fiction)
Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father’s massive debts, she has only 12 weeks to save her family from ruin. Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season. Kitty may be neither accomplished nor especially genteel, but she is imbued with cunning and ingenuity, and knows that risk is just part of the game. The only thing she doesn’t anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9780593491348

THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS: A Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Memoir)
Ingrid Rojas Contreras' maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. While living in the U.S. in her 20s, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before. Decades ago, Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”
Doubleday | 9780385546669

THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH by Monique Roffey (Fiction/Magical Realism)
In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman. Now David must work to win Aycayia's trust while she relearns what it is to be human, navigating not only her new body but also her relationship with others on the island. As David and Aycayia grow to love each other, they juggle both the joys and the dangers of life on shore. But will the former mermaid be able to escape her curse?
Knopf | 9780593534205

OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield (Fiction)
Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
Flatiron Books | 9781250229892

PERIL AT THE EXPOSITION by Nev March (Historical Mystery)
1893: Newlyweds Captain Jim Agnihotri and Diana Framji are settling into their new home in Boston, Massachusetts, having fled the strict social rules of British Bombay. Jim, now a detective at the Dupree Agency, is teaching Diana the art of deduction he’s learned from his idol, Sherlock Holmes. Everyone is talking about the preparations for the World's Fair in Chicago. Captain Jim will experience it first-hand: he's being sent to Chicago to investigate the murder of a man named Thomas Grewe. As Jim probes the underbelly of Chicago’s docks, warehouses and taverns, he discovers deep social unrest and some deadly ambitions. When Jim goes missing, young Diana must venture to Chicago's treacherous streets to learn what happened.
Minotaur Books | 9781250855039

THE POET'S HOUSE by Jean Thompson (Fiction)
Carla is in her 20s and still unsure what direction her life will take. Viridian is a lauded and lovely aging poet whose reputation has been defined by her infamous affair with a famous male poet, Mathias, many years earlier. When Carla is hired to work at Viridian's house, she is perplexed by this community of writers. And still she becomes enamored with Viridian and her whole circle, and especially with the power of words. As Viridian’s standing begins to fade, a number of people angle to gain possession of Mathias’ cycle of poems written about Viridian, a cycle he famously burned as he read them. Yet long after Mathias' death, one copy may still rest with Viridian. If so, why won't she release it?
Algonquin Books | 9781643751566

A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY A Monk and Robot Book by Becky Chambers (Science Fiction/Adventure)
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. Becky Chambers' new series continues to ask: In a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
Tordotcom | 9781250236234

SISTER MOTHER WARRIOR by Vanessa Riley (Historical Fiction)
Vanessa Riley, the acclaimed author of ISLAND QUEEN, brings readers a vivid, sweeping novel of the Haitian Revolution based on the true-life stories of two extraordinary women: Marie-Claire Bonheur, the first Empress of Haiti, and Gran Toya, a West African-born warrior who helped lead the rebellion that drove out the French and freed the enslaved people of Haiti. SISTER MOTHER WARRIOR tells the often-overlooked history of the most successful Black uprising in history. Riley celebrates the tremendous courage and resilience of the revolutionaries, and the formidable strength and intelligence of Toya, Marie-Claire and the countless other women who fought for freedom.
William Morrow | 9780063073548

UPGRADE by Blake Crouch (Science Fiction/Thriller)
At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything's different. He just feels a little…sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep. But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him --- even those he loves most --- in whole new ways. The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy. Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large --- at a terrifying cost.
Ballantine Books | 9780593157534

VENOMOUS LUMPSUCKER by Ned Beauman (Dystopian Thriller/Dark Humor)
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions. Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker’s last-known habitat. Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker, and the further they go, the deeper they’re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks.
Soho Press | 9781641294126

WE LIE HERE by Rachel Howzell Hall (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
TV writer Yara Gibson is back in her hometown of Palmdale, California, to host her parents’ 20th anniversary party. Everything is going according to plan until she receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life. The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother and insists on talking to Yara “before it’s too late.” But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662500329

WHAT MOVES THE DEAD by T. Kingfisher (Horror)
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250830753

WINTER WORK by Dan Fesperman (Thriller)
On a chilly early morning walk on the wooded outskirts of Berlin, Emil Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named Lothar, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder. A few months earlier he would have known just what to do, but now, as East Germany disintegrates, being a Stasi colonel is more of a liability than an asset. More troubling still is that Emil and Lothar were involved in a final clandestine mission, one that has clearly turned deadly. Now Emil must finish the job alone, on uncertain ground where old alliances seem to be shifting by the day.
Knopf | 9780593321607

On Sale the Week of July 11th in Paperback

July 12th

ALL THE DIRTY SECRETS by Aggie Blum Thompson (Domestic Thriller)
Paperback Original
One warm summer night 25 years ago, Liza Gold and her friends celebrated their high school graduation with a party on the beach. It should have been the best night of their lives, but one of them never came back out of the ocean. The tragedy haunted Liza Gold for years. Now, she's a recently divorced working mom struggling to connect with her standoffish teenage daughter, Zoe, when history repeats itself. Another young woman has drowned at Beach Week, and this time the victim is Zoe’s secret best friend. Liza begins to suspect that the two deaths are somehow related, which causes her to face hard truths and take an unflinching look at the people she’s called her closest friends for the past two decades. She must discover what really happened to both women before it’s too late.
Forge Books | 9781250773982

BATTLE FOR THE BIG TOP: P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus by Les Standiford (History)
Millions have sat under the “big top,” watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men whose creativity, ingenuity and determination created one of our country’s most beloved pastimes. In BATTLE FOR THE BIG TOP, New York Times bestselling author Les Standiford brings to life a remarkable era when three circus kings --- James Bailey, P.T. Barnum and John Ringling --- all vied for control of the vastly profitable and influential American Circus. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147 years, hold a nation spellbound.
PublicAffairs | 9781541762275

BET ON IT by Jodie Slaughter (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
The first time Aja Owens encounters the man of her dreams, she’s having a panic attack in the frozen foods section of the Piggly Wiggly. The second time, he’s being introduced to her as her favorite bingo buddy’s semi-estranged grandson. From there, all it takes is one game for her to realize that he’s definitely going to be a problem. In Walker Abbott’s mind, there are only two worthwhile things in Greenbelt, South Carolina --- the peach cobbler at his old favorite diner and his ailing grandmother. Dragging himself back after more than a decade away, he’s counting down the days until Gram heals and he can get back to his real life. Just when he thinks his plan is solid, enter Aja to shake everything up.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250821829

BETTER TO HAVE GONE: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia by Akash Kapur (Memoir/History)
It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world --- Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, and the future is bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in BETTER TO HAVE GONE, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice.
Scribner | 9781501132520

DEAR MISS METROPOLITAN by Carolyn Ferrell (Fiction)
Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via “Soul Train”; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay; and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens. On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance. Among them is lifetime resident Miss Metropolitan, advice columnist for the local weekly. But how could anyone who fancies herself a “newspaperwoman” have missed a horror story unfolding right across the street? And why is it that only two of the three girls --- now women --- were found?
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250839015

THE DISINVITED GUEST by Carol Goodman (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
Lucy Harper still has traumatic memories and lingering health problems from the 2020 pandemic. So, when a new virus surfaces years later, she and her husband, Reed, seek refuge on his family’s private island off the coast of Maine. Ostensibly safely sequestered with their five closest friends and family, Lucy should feel at ease. So why does she feel the weight of the island’s dark history pushing down on the group? As Lucy uncovers Reed’s family secrets and the island’s history as a quarantine hospital for typhus patients, she becomes obsessed with the past and feels her own grip on reality slipping. Tempers flare, strange signs appear in the woods, and accidents turn deadly. Is the island haunted by the dead? Or is someone amongst the living taking their revenge?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063020702

THE EDGE OF SUMMER by Viola Shipman (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Devastated by the sudden death of her mother --- a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel --- Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to head north to the Michigan resort town where she believes she’ll find answers to the lifelong questions she’s had about not only her mother’s past but also her own place in the world. Recalling Miss Mabel’s sewing notions that were her childhood toys, Sutton buys a collection of buttons at an estate sale from Bonnie Lyons, the imposing matriarch of the lakeside community. Propelled by a handful of trinkets left behind by her mother and glimpses into the history of the magical lakeshore town, Sutton becomes tantalized by the possibility that Bonnie is the grandmother she never knew. But is she?
Graydon House | 9781525811425

GAME ON: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich (Mystery)
When Stephanie Plum is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in her apartment, she wishes she didn’t keep her gun in the cookie jar in her kitchen. And when she finds out the intruder is fellow apprehension agent Diesel, six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude who she hasn’t seen in more than two years, she still thinks the gun might come in handy. It turns out Diesel and Stephanie are on the trail of the same fugitive: Oswald Wednesday, an international computer hacker as brilliant as he is ruthless. Unsure if Diesel is her partner or her competition in this case, she’ll need to watch her back every step of the way as she sets the stage to draw Wednesday out from behind his computer and into the real world.
Atria Books | 9781982154899

LANGUAGES OF TRUTH: Essays 2003-2020 by Salman Rushdie (Essays)
Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, LANGUAGES OF TRUTH chronicles Salman Rushdie’s intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of “truth,” revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism and censorship.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593133194

A LITTLE HOPE by Ethan Joella (Fiction)
Freddie and Greg Tyler seem to have it all: a comfortable home, a beautiful young daughter, a bond that feels unbreakable. But when Greg is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the sense of certainty they once knew evaporates. Throughout their town, friends and neighbors face the most difficult of life’s challenges and are figuring out how to survive thanks to love, grace and hope.
Scribner | 9781982171209

MORE THAN I LOVE MY LIFE written by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen (Fiction)
MORE THAN I LOVE MY LIFE is the story of three strong women: 90-year-old Vera; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at 39 is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili --- abandoned by Nina when she was just three --- has always been close to her grandmother. With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera was imprisoned and tortured for three years as a young wife after she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey lays bare the intertwining of fear, love and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion.
Vintage | 9780593312599

NEW WAVES by Kevin Nguyen (Fiction)
Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company’s sole Black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he’s nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup’s user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret --- and wondering if her death really was an accident. When Lucas hacks into Margo’s computer looking for answers, he is drawn into her private online life and realizes just how little he knew about his best friend.
One World | 9781984855251

OUT OF HER DEPTH by Lizzy Barber (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
In the lush green hills beyond Florence sits the Villa Medici, a graceful pensione surrounded by manicured gardens. Rachel, a college student from an unfashionable London suburb, can’t believe her luck in landing a summer job here. Especially when she’s drawn into a circle of privileged young sophisticates, including her glamorous coworker Diana, who promises to help Rachel win the affections of handsome, confident Sebastian. But as champagne flows and rivalries fester in the Tuscan countryside, Rachel realizes that Diana has motivations of her own. She feels the stakes rising along with the temperature until, one night, something snaps. Someone dies. And nothing will ever be the same.
Mira | 9780778386445

THE PARTY CRASHER by Sophie Kinsella (Fiction/Humor)
It’s been almost two years since Effie’s beloved parents got divorced. Since then, she’s become estranged from her father and embarked on a feud with his much younger girlfriend, Krista. And now Greenoaks, the rambling Victorian country house Effie called home her whole life, has been sold. When Krista decides to throw a grand “house cooling” party, Effie is originally left off the guest list --- and then receives a last-minute “anti-invitation.” Effie declines, but then remembers a beloved childhood treasure is still hidden in the house. Her only chance to retrieve it is to break into Greenoaks while everyone is busy celebrating. As Effie sneaks around the house, she realizes the secrets Greenoaks holds aren’t just in the dusty passageways and hidden attics she grew up exploring.
Dial Press Trade Paperback | 9780593449189

SHOULDER SEASON by Christina Clancy (Fiction)
Nineteen-year-old Sherri Taylor plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she’s ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and factory workers for the defining experience of her life. Living in the “bunny hutch” --- Playboy’s version of a college dorm --- Sherri gets her education in the joys of sisterhood, the thrill of financial independence, the magic of first love, and the heady effects of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But as spring gives way to summer, Sherri finds herself caught in a romantic triangle --- and the tragedy that ensues will haunt her for the next 40 years.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250761507

THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR by Liv Constantine (Psychological Thriller)
Addison is about to get married but is not looking forward to the big day. She doesn't know who she really is. A few years ago, a kind driver found her bleeding next to a New Jersey highway and rescued her. While her physical wounds healed, Addison’s memory never returned. She doesn’t know her real name. Or how she ended up injured on the side of a road. Or why she can’t shake the notion that she may have done something very, very bad. In a posh home in the Boston suburbs, Julian tries to figure out what happened to his loving, caring wife, Cassandra, who disappeared without a trace two years ago. She never would have left him and their seven-year-old daughter Valentina of her own free will. Or would she?
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062967336

THEY DROWN OUR DAUGHTERS by Katrina Monroe (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
They say Cape Disappointment is haunted. That's why tourists used to flock there in droves. Now they’re long gone, and when Meredith Strand and her young daughter return to Meredith's childhood home after an acrimonious split from her wife, the Cape seems more haunted by regret than any malevolent force. But her mother, suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, is convinced the ghost stories are real. Not only is there something in the water, but it's watching them. Waiting for them. Reaching out to Meredith's daughter the way it has to every woman in their line for generations --- and if Meredith isn't careful, all three women, bound by blood and heartbreak, will be lost one by one to the ocean's mournful call.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728248202

On Sale the Week of July 18th in Hardcover

July 18th

SHATTERED: A Michael Bennett Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Thriller)
NYPD master homicide investigator Michael Bennett and top FBI abduction specialist Emily Parker have a history. Working case after case, each can predict the other’s next move. So when she fails to show at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Bennett risks venturing far outside his jurisdiction. The investigation he undertakes is the most brilliant detective work of his career…and the most intensely personal. A portrait begins to emerge of a woman as adept at keeping secrets as forging powerful connections. A woman whose enemies had both the means and the motives to silence the real Emily Parker --- and her protectors.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316499484

July 19th

THE BIG DARK SKY by Dean Koontz (Supernatural Thriller)
As a girl, Joanna Chase thrived on Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana until tragedy upended her life. Now 34 and living in Santa Fe, she begins to receive pleas: I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me. Heeding the disturbing appeals, Joanna is compelled to return to Montana, and to a strange childhood companion she had long forgotten. People from all walks of life have converged at the remote Montana ranch. They are haunted, on the run, obsessed and seeking answers to the same omniscient danger Joanna came to confront. All the while, on the outskirts of Rustling Willows, a madman lurks with a vision to save the future. Mass murder is the only way to see his frightening manifesto come to pass.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542019927

THE BIRDCAGE by Eve Chase (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
When half-sisters Kat, Flora and Lauren are unexpectedly summoned to Rock Point, their wild and remote Cornish summer home, it's not a welcome invitation. They haven't been back since that fateful summer 20 years ago --- a summer they're desperate to forget. But when they arrive, it's clear they're not alone. Someone is lurking in the shadows, watching their every move. Someone who remembers exactly what they did. Will the sisters be able to protect the dark past of Rock Point? Or are some secrets too powerful to remain under lock and key?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525542414

THE BODYGUARD by Katherine Center (Romantic Comedy)
Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker. When Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. There's only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah --- against her will and her better judgment --- finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250219398

THE BOOK OF SAND by Mo Hayder, writing as Theo Clare (Science Fiction/Fantasy)
Sand. A hostile world of burning sun. Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins. In the distance, a group of people --- a family --- walks toward us. To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs. It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia, when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life --- except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she's beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is.
Blackstone Publishing | 9798200920396

BRIEFLY, A DELICIOUS LIFE by Nell Stevens (Historical Fiction)
In 1473, 14-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly 400 years later, when George Sand, her two children and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there. A spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants. Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing --- the impossible love of a teenage ghost for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists.
Scribner | 9781982190941

DARK EARTH by Rebecca Stott (Historical Fantasy)
The year is 500 AD. Sisters Isla and Blue live in the shadows of the Ghost City, the abandoned ruins of the once-glorious mile-wide Roman settlement Londinium on the bank of the River Thames. But the small island they call home is also a place of exile for Isla, Blue and their father, a legendary blacksmith accused of using dark magic to make his firetongue swords --- formidable blades that cannot be broken --- and cast out from the community. When he dies suddenly, the sisters find themselves facing enslavement by the local warlord and his cruel, power-hungry son. Their only option is to escape to the Ghost City, where they discover an underworld of rebel women living secretly amid the ruins.
Random House | 9780812989113

THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Historical/Science Fiction)
Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a researcher who is either a genius or a madman. Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his experiments. The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities. All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.
Del Rey | 9780593355336

DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald (Memoir/Essays)
Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives --- or so he was told. In DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS, Fitzgerald recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635573978

GRACE UNDER FIRE by Julie Garwood (Romantic Suspense)
It is supposed to be a quick visit to Boston for the Buchanan anniversary party, then on to Scotland to collect an inheritance. But after getting lost, Grace Isabel MacKenna ends up with a wounded man stumbling into her arms --- and his shooter coming after them both. When she fires back in self-defense, she doesn’t expect him to drop dead. After Isabel endures an interrogation by police, she is free to go, thanks to the Buchanans dispatching former Navy SEAL and now lawyer Michael Buchanan to assist her. Isabel has harbored an extreme dislike for Michael for years, so gratitude is difficult to muster. Michael has appointed himself her de facto guardian, and she’s stuck with him despite their constant bickering and sizzling attraction.
Berkley | 9780593546291

HOKULOA ROAD by Elizabeth Hand (Mystery/Thriller)
On a whim, Grady Kendall applies to work as a live-in caretaker for a luxury property in Hawaiʻi. Within days he's flying out to an estate on remote Hokuloa Road, where he quickly uncovers a dark side to the island’s idyllic reputation: it has long been a place where people vanish without a trace. When a young woman from his flight becomes the next to disappear, Grady is determined --- and soon desperate --- to figure out what's happened to Jessie, and to all those staring out of the island’s “missing" posters. But working with Raina, Jessie’s fiercely protective best friend, to uncover the truth is anything but easy. With an inexplicable and sinister presence stalking his every step, Grady can only hope he'll find the answer before it's too late.
Mulholland Books | 9780316542043

JUST LIKE HOME by Sarah Gailey (Gothic Thriller)
“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories, she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family. Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting. But who else could it possibly be? There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House.
Tor Books | 9781250174727

THE KINGDOMS OF SAVANNAH by George Dawes Green (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo Peep’s, one of the town’s favorite watering holes. Within an hour, however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be “disappeared.” An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an imperious, demanding and conniving woman, whose four grown children are weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying truths --- truths that will rock Savannah’s power structure to its core.
Celadon Books | 9781250767448

THE LAST HOURS IN PARIS by Ruth Druart (Historical Fiction)
Elise is a young French woman secretly helping the resistance in German-occupied Paris. Sebastian is a young German soldier working as a translator. They meet, fall in love, and are relishing in the unforeseen happiness they have found in one another, despite being on opposite sides of the war. After liberation, however, the young couple is tragically torn apart, with Sebastian arrested by the French resistance and Elise captured and shamed as a “collabo” by her own people, before being sent to Brittany, France, for her own protection. The lovers are parted, each believing the other to be lost forever. Years later, Sebastian must make the most difficult decision of his life: honor his duty to his new family, or return to his first great love.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538735213

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN WOMAN by Daniel Silva (Thriller/Adventure)
Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems.
Harper | 9780062834850

THE RETREAT by Sarah Pearse (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
An idyllic wellness retreat has opened on an island off the English coast, promising rest and relaxation --- but the island itself, known locally as Reaper’s Rock, has a dark past. Once the playground of a serial killer, it’s rumored to be cursed. A young woman is found dead below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. But Detective Elin Warner soon learns the victim wasn’t a guest --- in fact, she wasn’t meant to be on the island at all. And they would do anything to escape. The longer Elin stays, the more secrets she uncovers. When someone else drowns in a diving incident, Elin begins to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests at this luxury resort?
Pamela Dorman Books | 9780593489420

SHMUTZ by Felicia Berliner (Fiction)
Like the other women in her Brooklyn Hasidic community, Raizl expects to find a husband through an arranged marriage. Unlike the other women, Raizl has a secret. With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As Raizl dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Between combative visits with her shrink to complicated arranged dates, Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the more conventional expectations of the family she loves.
Atria Books | 9781982177621

SHOULD I FALL by Scott Shepherd (Mystery/Thriller)
When John Frankel’s ex-wife is discovered dead on the floor of his Manhattan studio apartment, the NYPD detective instantly becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Then more information surfaces, linking his gun to the fatal bullet, a motive is discovered and Frankel flees the city, all of which further convinces his colleagues of his guilt. In spite of the mounting evidence, Frankel’s bride-to-be, Rachel Grant, and her father, Austin Grant, formerly of Scotland Yard, are certain of his innocence. But with the police under orders to use whatever force necessary to stop what they view as a dangerous criminal, the duo will have to act fast before the manhunt goes violently wrong.
Mysterious Press | 9781613163122

THE SWEET REMNANTS OF SUMMER: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Isabel Dalhousie is invited to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. There she meets a woman named Laura, whose husband --- a prominent wine merchant from an illustrious family --- and son are at odds. Laura asks Isabel to arbitrate between them. Isabel is reluctant to intervene in a familial drama but feels obligated to help. Meanwhile, her husband Jamie is helping to select a new cellist for his ensemble but suspects that the conductor’s attention may be focused on something other than his favored candidate’s cello skills. Jamie feels it’s important that the most qualified applicant gets the job. But how to determine if the conductor has the right qualifications in mind?
Pantheon | 9780593316948

THE SWELL by Allie Reynolds (Thriller)
Three years ago, passionate surfer Kenna Ward lost her two great loves. After her boyfriend drowned, she hung up her surfboard and swore off the water for good. But she is drawn back to the beach when her best friend, Mikki, announces her sudden engagement to a man Kenna has never met --- a member of a tight-knit group of surfers. Kenna travels to a remote Australian beach, entering a dangerous world far from civilization. She is tempted back into the surf, and drawn into the dazzling group and the beach they call their own. But this coastal paradise has a dark side, and members of the group begin to go missing. Kenna realizes that in order to protect Mikki and learn more about the surfers, she must become one of them…without becoming one of their victims.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593187876

SWITCHBOARD SOLDIERS by Jennifer Chiaverini (Historical Fiction)
In June 1917, General John Pershing arrived in France to establish American forces in Europe. He immediately found himself unable to communicate with troops in the field. Pershing needed operators who could swiftly and accurately connect multiple calls, speak fluent French and English, remain steady under fire, and be utterly discreet. At the time, nearly all well-trained American telephone operators were women --- but women were not permitted to enlist, or even to vote in most states. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army Signal Corps promptly began recruiting them. More than 7,600 women responded; they served with honor and played an essential role in achieving the Allied victory. Their story has never been the focus of a novel…until now.
William Morrow | 9780063080690

THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK by Jennifer Hillier (Psychological Thriller)
When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom --- covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her --- she knows she'll be charged with murder. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it's only a matter of time before someone from her long-hidden past recognizes her and destroys the new life she's worked so hard to build. Twenty-five years earlier, Ruby Reyes was convicted of a similar murder in a trial that riveted Canada in the early ’90s. Reyes knows who Paris really is, and when she's unexpectedly released from prison, she threatens to expose all of Paris' secrets. Left with no other choice, Paris must finally confront the dark past she escaped.
Minotaur Books | 9781250763167

THE WEDDING PLOT: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier (Mystery)
When Mercy Carr’s grandmother, Patience, marries her longtime beau, Claude Renault, at the five-star Lady’s Slipper Inn, it promises to be the destination wedding of the year. Just as the four-day extravaganza is due to begin, the inn’s spa director, Bodhi St. George, disappears --- and Mercy’s mother, Grace, sends Mercy and Elvis to find him. But what they discover instead is a stranger skewered by a pitchfork in the barn on the goat farm where St. George lived. As Mercy tries to figure out who the victim is and where St. George is hiding, the bride and groom’s estranged relations gather for the first of the pre-wedding festivities. Long-buried rivalries and resentments surface --- and Mercy realizes that they’re all keeping secrets that could tear both families apart.
Minotaur Books | 9781250822369

THE WORK WIFE by Alison B. Hart (Fiction)
Zanne Klein never planned to be a personal assistant to Hollywood royalty Ted and Holly Stabler. But a decade in at 38, that's exactly how she spends her days. However, today is no ordinary day at the Stabler estate. Tonight, everyone who's anyone will be there for the Hollywood event of the season, and if the party is a success, that chief of staff job Zanne has been chasing may soon be hers. Which means she can buy a house, give her girlfriend the life she deserves, and pay off her student loans. But when Ted’s former business partner, Phoebe Lee, unexpectedly shows up right before go time, Zanne suddenly has a catastrophe unfolding before her --- one with explosive consequences.
Graydon House | 9781525899768

On Sale the Week of July 18th in Paperback

July 19th

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.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250220271

GRAVE RESERVATIONS by Cherie Priest (Mystery)
Leda Foley is a devoted friend, struggling travel agent and inconsistent psychic. Impulsively rebooking Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, she has no idea that her life is about to change in ways she never could have foretold. When his original plane blows up on the runway, Grady begins to suspect that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack. Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees to join the investigation for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda performs klairvoyant karaoke at her favorite bar, singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a ragtag group of bar patrons and pals, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer --- and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.
Atria Books | 9781982168902

INTIMACIES by Katie Kitamura (Fiction)
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend, Jana, witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. Soon she’s pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
Riverhead Books | 9780399576171

A MASTER OF DJINN by P. Djèlí Clark (Historical Fantasy)
When someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 40 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. Alongside her Ministry colleagues and a familiar person from her past, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city --- or face the possibility that he could be exactly who he seems.
Tordotcom | 9781250267665

ONE STEP TOO FAR by Lisa Gardner (Mystery/Thriller)
Timothy O’Day knew the woods. Yet when he disappeared on the first night of a bachelor party camping trip, he didn’t leave a trace. What he did leave behind were two heartbroken parents, a crew of guilt-ridden groomsmen and a pile of clues that don’t add up. Frankie Elkin doesn’t know the woods, but she knows how to find people. So when she reads that Timothy’s father is organizing one last search, she heads to the mountains of Wyoming to join the rescue team. But as they head into the wild, it becomes clear that someone out there is willing to do anything to stop them. Soon they’re running out of time and up against the worst that man and nature have to offer, discovering the evil that awaits those who go one step too far.
Dutton | 9780593185438

PEPPERMINT BARKED: A Spice Shop Mystery by Leslie Budewitz (Cozy Mystery)
Paperback Original
As the holiday season lights up Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market, Pepper Reece’s beloved Spice Shop is brimming with cinnamon, nutmeg and shoppers eager to stuff their stockings. Add to the mix a tasty staff competition --- a peppermint bark-off --- along with Victorian costumes for this year’s Dickensian Christmas theme, and Pepper almost forgets to be nervous about meeting her fisherman boyfriend’s brother for the first time. But when a young woman working in her friend Vinny’s wine shop is brutally assaulted, costumed revelers and holiday cheer are the last things on Pepper’s mind. Who would want to hurt Beth? Or were they looking for Vinny instead?
Seventh Street Books | 9781645060543

THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER by James Patterson and Bill Clinton (Political Thriller)
Matthew Keating, a one-time Navy SEAL --- and a past president --- has always defended his family as staunchly as he has his country. Now those defenses are under attack. A madman abducts Keating’s teenage daughter, Melanie --- turning every parent’s deepest fear into a matter of national security. As the world watches in real time, Keating embarks on a one-man special-ops mission that tests his strengths: as a leader, a warrior and a father.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538703151

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 | 9781542019903

THE WONDER TEST by Michelle Richmond (Thriller)
Escaping New York City and the espionage case that made her question everything, recently widowed FBI Agent Lina Connerly returns home to sell the house she has inherited in tony Greenfield, California. Adrift and battling insomnia, she discovers that her father's sleepy hometown has been transformed into a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with an annual exam called The Wonder Test. When students at her son's high school go missing, reappearing under mysterious circumstances on abandoned beaches, Lina must summon her strength and her investigative instincts, pushing her own ethical boundaries to the limits in order to solve the crimes. Meanwhile, an old espionage case called Red Vine keeps calling her back into the fold.
Atlantic Monthly Press ‎| 9780802159892

THE WRONG KIND OF WOMAN by Sarah McCraw Crow (Fiction)
In late 1970, Oliver Desmarais drops dead in his front yard while hanging Christmas lights. In the year that follows, his widow, Virginia, struggles to find her place on the campus of the elite New Hampshire men’s college where Oliver was a professor. While Virginia had always shared her husband’s prejudices against the four outspoken, never-married women on the faculty, she now finds herself depending on them, even joining their work to bring the women’s movement to Clarendon College. Soon, though, reports of violent protests across the country reach this sleepy New England town, stirring tensions between the fraternal establishment of Clarendon and those calling for change. Virginia must decide if she’s willing to put herself and her family at risk for a cause that had never felt like her own.
Mira | 9780778312314

YOU CAN RUN by Karen Cleveland (Thriller)
We have your son. It’s the call that’s every parent’s nightmare. And for CIA analyst Jill Bailey, it’s the call that changes everything. It’s Jill’s job to vet new CIA sources. Like Falcon, who’s been on the recruitment fast track. But before she can get to work, Jill learns that her son has been taken. And to get him back, she does something she thought she’d never do. Alex Charles, a hard-hitting journalist, begins to investigate an anonymous tip: an explosive claim about the CIA’s hottest new source. The tip --- and a fierce determination to find the truth --- leads Alex to Jill, who would rather remain hidden. As the two begin to work together, they uncover a vast conspiracy that will force them to confront their loyalties to family and country.
Ballantine Books | 9780593358016

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