July 26, 2022

July 26, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 25th and August 1st 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 review of Jennifer Hillier's brilliant new thriller, THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK, which will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. Paris Peralta is suspected of killing her celebrity husband, and her long-hidden past now threatens to destroy her future. Scroll further down the newsletter for more about the book, including Carol's "Bookreporter Talks To" interview with Jennifer.

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 27th at 7pm ET: "Friends & Fiction": The "Friends & Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Patti Callahan Henry --- will talk to Jason Mott, whose most recent novel, HELL OF A BOOK, is now in paperback.

Wednesday, July 27th at 9pm ET: Best of Books: Join Best of Books and New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs to celebrate her newest novel, SUGAR AND SALT, a can’t-miss tale of friendship, hardship, redemption and love between a San Francisco baker and a barbecue master from Texas.

Thursday, July 28th at 2pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Sarah Pearse will discuss her new novel, THE RETREAT, which finds Detective Elin Warner uncovering the truth behind the suspicious deaths on a stunning island getaway.

Thursday, July 28th at 5:30pm ET: RJ Julia Booksellers: Join Sarah Pearse and Flynn Berry for a thrilling evening focusing on Pearse's latest book, THE RETREAT.

Saturday, July 30th at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Megan Miranda will discuss her new novel, THE LAST TO VANISH, a riveting thriller filled with taut suspense and shocking twists that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Monday, August 1st at 7pm ET: Books & Books: Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present a virtual event with Anthony Marra, who will discuss his new novel, MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS, with Celeste Ng.

This Week's Bonus News: Our Review of
THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK by Jennifer Hillier
An Upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On Title

On Sale the Week of July 25th in Hardcover

July 26th

THE BOOK OF GOTHEL by Mary McMyne (Historical Fantasy)
Haelewise has always lived under the shadow of her mother, Hedda. With her strange black eyes and even stranger fainting spells, she is shunned by her village, and her only solace lies in the stories her mother tells of child-stealing witches, of princes in wolf-skins, of an ancient tower cloaked in mist, where women will find shelter if they are brave enough to seek it. Then Hedda dies, and Haelewise sets out to find the legendary tower her mother used to speak of --- a place called Gothel, where Haelewise meets a wise woman willing to take her under her wing. But Haelewise is not the only woman to seek refuge at Gothel. It’s also a haven for a girl named Rika, who carries with her a secret the Church strives to keep hidden.
Redhook | 9780316393119

THE BOYS by Katie Hafner (Fiction)
When introverted Ethan Fawcett marries Barb, he has every reason to believe he will be delivered from a lifetime of solitude. She fills his world with a sense of adventure, expanding his horizons beyond his comfortable routine. Because Ethan fears becoming a father, one day Barb brings home two young brothers, Tommy and Sam, for them to foster, and Ethan immediately falls in love with the two boys. When the pandemic hits, he becomes obsessed with providing a perfect life for them. But instead of bringing Barb and Ethan closer together, the boys become a wedge in their relationship, as Ethan is unable to share with Barb a secret that has been haunting him since childhood.
Spiegel & Grau | 9781954118058

CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE by Oscar Hokeah (Fiction)
Ever Geimausaddle’s family faces myriad obstacles. His father’s injury at the hands of corrupt police, his mother's struggle to hold on to her job and care for her husband, the constant resettlement of the family, and the legacy of centuries of injustice all intensify Ever’s bottled-up rage. Meanwhile, all of Ever’s relatives have ideas about who he is and who he should be. His Cherokee grandmother urges the family to move across Oklahoma to find security; his grandfather hopes to reunite him with his heritage through traditional gourd dances; his Kiowa cousin reminds him that he’s connected to an ancestral past. And once an adult, Ever must take the strength given to him by his relatives to save not only himself but also the next generation of family.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751474

DESPERATE UNDERTAKING: A Flavia Albia Novel by Lindsey Davis (Historical Mystery)
In the first century, under Domitian's reign, strange and brutal goings-on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer, but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated and the political. Unfortunately, she's not very good at turning them down. This time a commission shows up on her doorstep --- someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome. So far, the only clue was the phrase that one survivor managed to croak: "The undertaker did it..." With little to go on and bodies starting to pile up, Albia has to unravel the strangest mystery of her career in short order if she is to stop this dismaying orgy of murder.
Minotaur Books | 9781250799883

THE HALF LIFE OF VALERY K by Natasha Pulley (Historical Thriller)
In 1963, in a Siberian prison, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive. But one day, Valery's university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the frozen camp to a mysterious unnamed city. It houses a set of nuclear reactors, and surrounding it is a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within. In City 40, Valery is expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises. Why is there so much radiation in this area? What, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635573275

AN HONEST LIVING by Dwyer Murphy (Noir Mystery)
After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with $10,000 in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true-crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick --- a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy --- lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions.
Viking | 9780593489246

IN THE MIDDLE OF HICKORY LANE by Heather Webber (Fiction)
Emme Wynn has wanted nothing more her whole life than to feel like part of a family. Having grown up on the run with her con artist mother, she’s been shuffled from town to town, drawn into bad situations, and has learned some unsavory habits that she’s tried hard to overcome. When her estranged grandmother tracks her down out of the blue and extends a job offer --- helping to run her booth at an open-air marketplace in small-town Sweetgrass, Alabama --- Emme is hopeful that she’ll finally be able to plant the roots she’s always dreamed of. But some habits are hard to break, and she risks her newfound happiness by keeping one big truth to herself.
Forge Books | 9781250774651

THE LAST TO VANISH by Megan Miranda (Psychological Thriller)
Ten years ago, Abigail Lovett fell into a job she loves, managing The Passage Inn, a cozy, upscale resort nestled in the North Carolina mountain town of Cutter’s Pass. Cutter’s Pass is best known for its outdoor offerings and mysterious history. As the book begins, the string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, disappears himself. When she finds incriminating evidence that may bring the community closer to the truth, Abby soon discovers how little she knows about her coworkers, neighbors and even those closest to her.
Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781982147310

THE NEW NEIGHBOR by Karen Cleveland (Thriller)
Facing an empty nest and a broken marriage, CIA analyst Beth Bradford is moving from the cul-de-sac she’s long called home, and the CIA is removing her from the case that’s long been hers: tracking an elusive Iranian intelligence agent known as The Neighbor. Madeline Sterling moves into Beth’s old house. She has what Beth once had: an adoring husband, three beautiful young children, and the close-knit group of neighbors on the block. Now she has it all. And Beth --- who can’t stop watching the woman stepping in to her old life --- thinks the new neighbor has something else too: ties to Iranian intelligence. Is Beth just jealous? Paranoid? Or is something more at play?
Ballantine Books | 9780593358023

ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE SACRIFICE by Brian Freeman (Thriller/Adventure)
Jason Bourne has faced many killers before, but none as dangerous or as cruelly inventive as the assassin who calls himself Lennon. Bourne thought he had Lennon cornered in Iceland, only to have the killer escape in a fiery explosion. Now Lennon’s trail leads Bourne to New York and then to Washington --- and the body count rises with each deadly encounter. But who is Lennon working for? Bourne believes the assassin has a shadowy new employer called the Pyramid. The only clue to the group’s agenda is a young German woman murdered in Washington on her way to a covert meeting. But the woman’s entire identity turns out to be a lie, and news reports of her death have been strangely twisted and suppressed.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593419854

SUGAR AND SALT by Susan Wiggs (Fiction)
Jerome “Sugar” Barnes learned the art of baking in his grandma’s bakery, also called Sugar, on historic Perdita Street in San Francisco. He supplies baked goods to the Lost and Found Bookshop across the street. When the restaurant that shares his commercial kitchen loses its longtime tenant, a newcomer moves in: Margot Salton, a barbecue master from Texas. Margot isn’t exactly on the run, but she needs a fresh start. She’s taken care of herself her whole life, and her dream has been to open a restaurant somewhere far, far from Texas. Margot instantly takes to Jerome’s grandmother, the lively, opinionated Ida. The older woman proves to be a good mentor, and Margot is drawn to Jerome. But just as she starts to relax into a happy new future, Margot’s past in Texas comes back to haunt her.
William Morrow | 9780062914224

THE UNKEPT WOMAN: A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery by Allison Montclair (Historical Mystery)
The Right Sort Marriage Bureau was founded in 1946 by two disparate individuals: Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, whose husband was killed in the recent World War, and Miss Iris Sparks, who worked as an intelligence agent during the recent conflict, though this is not discussed. Miss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss, and it seems that Iris' past may well cause something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances and her son --- a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls.
Minotaur Books | 9781250750341

On Sale the Week of July 25th in Paperback

July 26th

BOOKED ON A FEELING by Jayci Lee (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Lizzy "Overachiever" Chung, Esq. has her life mapped out neatly: Become a lawyer. Check. Join a prestigious law firm. Check. Make partner. In progress. If all goes according to plan, she will check off that last box in a couple of years. What was not in her plans was passing out from a panic attack during a pivotal moment in her career. Lizzy is now in Weldon for three weeks to shed the burnout and figure out what went wrong. And what better place to recharge than the small California town where she spent her childhood summers with her best friend, Jack Park. Jack didn't expect to see Lizzy back in Weldon, but now he has three weeks to spend with the girl of his dreams. Except she doesn't know of his decades-long crush on her --- and he intends to keep it that way.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250621146

THE BUTLER by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
Joachim von Hartmann was born and raised in Buenos Aires by his loving German mother, inseparable from his identical twin. When Joachim moves to Paris with his mother in his late teens, his twin stays behind and enters a dark world. Meanwhile, Joachim begins training to be a butler, fascinated by the precision and intense demands, and goes on to work in some of the grandest homes in England. His brother never reappears. Olivia White has given 10 years of her life to her magazine, which failed, taking all her dreams with it. A bequest from her mother allows her a year in Paris to reinvent herself. She needs help setting up a home in a charming Parisian apartment. It is then that her path and Joachim’s cross.
Dell | 9781984821546

THE COVER WIFE by Dan Fesperman (Thriller)
When CIA agent Claire Saylor is told that she’ll be going undercover in Hamburg to pose as the wife of an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran’s promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment for past unorthodox behavior. But when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another Agency maverick, she realizes there may be more to this mission than meets the eye --- and not just for professional reasons. Meanwhile, across town in Hamburg, Mahmoud, a recent Moroccan émigré, begins to fall under the sway of a group of radicals at his local mosque. The deeper he’s drawn into the group, the greater the danger he faces, and he is soon torn between his obligations to them and his feelings toward a beautiful westernized Muslim woman.
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard | 9781984899156

FOR BUTTER OR WORSE by Erin La Rosa (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
All chef Nina Lyon wants is to make a name for herself in the culinary world and inspire young women everywhere to do the same. Now, as co-host of the competitive reality TV series “The Next Cooking Champ!”, she finally has a real shot at being top tier in the foodie scene. Too bad her co-host happens to be Hollywood’s smarmiest jerk. Restaurateur Leo O’Donnell never means to get under Nina’s skin. So nothing prepares him for the fallout after he takes one joke a smidge too far and Nina quits --- on live TV. To make matters worse, the two are caught in what looks like a compromising situation by the paparazzi. It turns out that a “secret romance” between Nina and Leo may be just what their careers need most.
HQN | 9781335506344

GOLDEN BOY: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite by John Glatt (True Crime)
By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. With his striking good looks, he moved with ease through glittering social circles and followed in his father’s footsteps to Princeton. But Tommy always felt different. The cracks in his façade began to show in warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia and an inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his former best friend’s Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect --- but he was never charged. Just months later, he shot his father point-blank in the head. Journalist John Glatt takes an in-depth look at the devastating crime that rocked Manhattan’s upper class.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks | 9781250086068

THE HERON’S CRY: A Detective Matthew Venn Novel by Ann Cleeves (Mystery)
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder --- Dr. Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases. Dr. Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Then another body is found --- killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
Minotaur Books | 9781250204486

THE KINGDOMS by Natasha Pulley (Alternate History/Fantasy)
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the 19th-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English --- instead of French --- the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635579529

THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman (Mystery)
Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim --- the Thursday Murder Club --- are still riding high off their recent real-life murder case and are looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet at Cooper’s Chase, their posh retirement village. But they are out of luck. An unexpected visitor --- an old pal of Elizabeth’s (or perhaps more than just a pal?) --- arrives, desperate for her help. He has been accused of stealing diamonds worth millions from the wrong men, and he’s seriously on the lam. Then, as night follows day, the first body is found. But not the last. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim are up against a ruthless murderer who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can our four friends catch the killer before the killer catches them?
Penguin Books | 9781984881014

MONSTER HUNTER BLOODLINES by Larry Correia (Urban Fantasy/Adventure)
The chaos god Asag has been quiet since the destruction of the City of Monsters, but Monster Hunter International knows that he is still out there. When Owen and the MHI team discover that one of Isaac Newton's Ward Stones is being auctioned off by Reptoids who live deep beneath Atlanta, they decide to steal the magical superweapon and use it to destroy Asag once and for all. But before the stone can be handed off, it is stolen by a mysterious thief with ties to MHI and the Vatican's Secret Guard. It's a race against time, the Secret Guard, a spectral bounty hunter and a whole bunch of monsters to acquire the Ward Stone and use it against Asag. For as dangerous as the chaos god is, there is something much older --- and infinitely more evil --- awakening deep in the jungles of South America.
Baen | 9781982192044

NEW TEETH: Stories by Simon Rich (Fiction/Short Stories)
Called a “comedic Godsend” by Conan O’Brien and “the Stephen King of comedy writing” by John Mulaney, Simon Rich is back with NEW TEETH, his funniest and most personal collection yet. Two murderous pirates find a child stowaway on board and attempt to balance pillaging with co-parenting. A woman raised by wolves prepares for her parents’ annual Thanksgiving visit. An aging mutant superhero is forced to learn humility when the mayor kicks him upstairs to a desk job. And in the hard-boiled caper “The Big Nap,” a weary two-year-old detective struggles to make sense of “a world gone mad.”
Back Bay Books | 9780316536677

THE OTHER GUEST by Helen Cooper (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
One year ago, Leah’s feisty 21-year-old niece, Amy, mysteriously drowned in the beautiful lake near her family-owned resort in Northern Italy. Now, Leah’s grief has caught up with her, and she decides to return to Lake Garda for the first time since Amy’s death. What she finds upon her arrival shocks her --- her sister, brother-in-law and surviving niece, Olivia, seem to have erased all memories of Amy and fought to have her death declared an accidental drowning, despite murky circumstances. Leah knows she must look beyond the resort’s beautiful façade and uncover what truly happened to Amy, even if her digging places both her family ties and her very life in danger.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593422595

OVER MY DEAD BODY by Jeffrey Archer (Mystery/Thriller)
In London, the Metropolitan Police set up a new Unsolved Murders Unit --- a cold case squad --- to catch the criminals nobody else can. In Geneva, millionaire art collector Miles Faulkner --- convicted of forgery and theft --- was pronounced dead two months ago. So why is his unscrupulous lawyer still representing a dead client? On a luxury liner en route to New York, the battle for power within a wealthy dynasty is about to turn to murder. And at the heart of all three investigations are Detective Chief Inspector William Warwick, rising star of the department, and ex-undercover agent Ross Hogan, brought in from the cold. But can they catch the killers before it’s too late?
HarperCollins | 9780008522681

PHOSPHORESCENCE: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark by Julia Baird (Memoir)
After surviving a difficult heartbreak and battle with cancer, acclaimed author and columnist Julia Baird began thinking deeply about how we, as people, persevere through the most challenging circumstances. She started to wonder, when we are overwhelmed by illness, loss or pain, or a tragedy outside our control: How can we keep putting one foot in front of the other? Baird went in search of the magic that fuels the light within --- our own phosphorescence. In PHOSPHORESCENCE, she reflects on the things that lit her way through the darkness, especially the surprising strength found in connecting with nature and not just experiencing awe and wonder about the world around her, but deliberately hunting it, daily.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593236932

POINT LAST SEEN by Christina Dodd (Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Adam Ramsdell pulls Elle’s half-frozen body from the surf on a lonely California beach, she has no memory of what her full name is and how she got those bruises ringing her throat. Elle finds refuge in Adam’s home on the edge of Gothic, a remote village located between the steep lonely mountains and the raging Pacific Ocean. As flashes of her memory return, Elle faces a terrible truth --- buried in her mind lurks a secret so dark it could get her killed. Everyone in Gothic seems to hide a dark past. Even Adam knows more than he will admit. Until Elle can unravel the truth, she doesn’t know who to trust, when to run, and who else might be hurt when the killer who stalks her nightmares appears to finish what he started.
HQN | 9781335623973

THE RUNAWAY: A Peter Ash Novel by Nick Petrie (Thriller)
War veteran Peter Ash is driving through northern Nebraska when he encounters a young pregnant woman alone on a gravel road, her car dead. Peter offers her a lift, but what begins as an act of kindness soon turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase across the lonely highways with the woman’s vicious ex-cop husband hot on their trail. The pregnant woman has seen something she was never meant to see…but protecting her might prove to be more than Peter can handle. In order to save the woman and himself, Peter must use everything he has learned during his time as a Marine, including his knowledge of human nature, in order to escape a ruthless killer with instincts and skills that match --- and perhaps exceed --- Peter’s own.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525535522

SOME OF IT WAS REAL by Nan Fischer (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Psychic-medium Sylvie Young starts every show with her origin story, telling the audience how she discovered her abilities. But she leaves out a lot --- the plane crash that killed her parents, an estranged adoptive family who tends orchards in rainy Oregon, and panic attacks. After a catastrophic reporting error, Thomas Holmes’ next story at the L.A. Times may be his last, but he has a great personal pitch. “Grief vampires” like Sylvie who prey upon the loved ones of the deceased have bankrupted his mother. He’s dead set on using his last-chance article to expose Sylvie as a conniving fraud and resurrect his career. When Sylvie and Thomas collide, a game of cat and mouse ensues, but the secrets they’re keeping from each other are nothing compared to the mysteries and lies they unearth about Sylvie’s past.
Berkley | 9780593438695

SWAN DIVE: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina by Georgina Pazcoguin (Memoir)
In this love letter to the art of dance and the sport that has been her livelihood, the New York City Ballet’s first Asian American female soloist, Georgina Pazcoguin, lays bare her unfiltered story of leaving small-town Pennsylvania for New York City and training amid the unique demands of being a hybrid professional athlete/artist, all before finishing high school. She pitches us into the fascinating, whirling shoes of dancers in one of the most revered ballet companies in the world with an unapologetic sense of humor about the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest mentality at NYCB. Some swan dives are literal: even in the ballet, there are plenty of face-plants, backstage fights, late-night parties and raucous company bonding sessions.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250811462

WIDESPREAD PANIC by James Ellroy (Historical Mystery)
Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ’50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp --- and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet --- and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson --- Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.
Vintage ‎| 9780593313107

THE WOMAN WITH TWO SHADOWS: A Novel of WWII by Sarah James (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Lillian Kaufman hasn't heard from her twin sister since Eleanor left for a mysterious job at an Army base somewhere in Tennessee. When she learns, on an unexpected phone call, that Eleanor is missing, Lillian takes a train from New York down to Oak Ridge to clear up the matter. It turns out that the only way into Oak Ridge is to assume Eleanor's identity, which Lillian plans to do swiftly and perfectly. But Eleanor has vanished without a trace --- and she's not the only one. How do you find someone in a town so dangerous it doesn't officially exist, when technically you don't exist either? Lillian is thrust into the epicenter of the gravest scientific undertaking of all time, with no idea who she can trust. And the more she pretends to be Eleanor, the more she loses her grip on herself.
Sourcebooks Landmark ‎| 9781728249537

On Sale the Week of August 1st in Hardcover

August 1st

KISMET by Amina Akhtar (Thriller/Humor)
Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person --- until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst. Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona. Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses... Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour? When the glam gurus around town start turning up gruesomely murdered, Ronnie has her answer: all is not well in wellness town. As Marley’s blind ambition veers into madness, Ronnie fears for her life.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542034265

August 2nd

ALIAS EMMA by Ava Glass (Thriller)
A newly minted secret agent, Emma Makepeace has barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. She must covertly travel across one of the world’s most watched cities to bring the reluctant --- and handsome --- son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don’t find him first. With London’s famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city’s streets, alleys and gutters. This will take all of Emma’s skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when her handler goes dark, there’s no one left to trust. And just one wrong move will get them both killed.
Bantam | 9780593496794

ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT by Sarah Thankam Mathews (Fiction)
Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that is the key that unlocks every door. She begins dating women --- soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads, jobs go off the rails, and evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that her friend, Tig, begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.
Viking | 9780593489123

BLACK DOG: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods (Thriller/Adventure)
After returning home from a treacherous adventure, Stone Barrington is all too happy to settle back down in his New York City abode. But when he's introduced to a glamorous socialite with a staggering inheritance, Stone realizes his days are about to be anything but quiet. As it turns out, his intriguing new companion has some surprisingly familiar ties and other far more sinister ones --- including a nefarious enemy who gets too close for comfort. When it becomes clear that this miscreant will stop at nothing to get what he wants and will endanger all whom Stone holds dear, Stone must step in to protect his friends and prevent a dangerous madman from wreaking havoc across the city.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593540008

THE BOOK EATERS by Sunyi Dean (Gothic Horror/Fantasy)
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries. Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon --- like all other book eater women --- is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger --- not for books, but for human minds.
Tor Books | 9781250810182

DANGEROUS RHYTHMS: Jazz and the Underworld by T. J. English (True Crime/History)
DANGEROUS RHYTHMS tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th-century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century, mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob --- including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano --- provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed. Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men.
William Morrow | 9780063031418

THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME by Gabino Iglesias (Noir Thriller)
Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness and his marriage on the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, he agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation.
Mulholland Books | 9780316426916

DIRT CREEK by Hayley Scrivenor (Mystery)
When 12-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home. When school friend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?
Flatiron Books | 9781250834751

DRAGONS OF DECEIT: Dragonlance Destinies, Volume 1 by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (Fantasy/Adventure)
Destina Rosethorn believes herself to be a favored child of destiny. But when her father dies in the War of the Lance, she watches her carefully constructed world come crashing down. She loses not only her beloved father but also the legacy he has left her: the family lands and castle. To save her father, she hatches a bold plan --- to go back in time and prevent his death. First, she has to secure the Device of Time Journeying. But to change time, she’ll need another magical artifact --- the most powerful and dangerous artifact ever created. Destina’s quest sets in motion a chain of disastrous events that threaten to divert the course of the River of Time, alter the past and forever change the future.
Random House Worlds | 9781984819321

GANGLAND by Chuck Hogan (Thriller)
In the late 1970s, The Outfit has the entire city of Chicago in its hands. Tony Accardo is its fearless leader. Nicky Passero is his loyal soldier, though no one knows he has a direct line in to the boss of bosses. When the Christmas gift Accardo got for his wife, an inscribed bracelet with gold and diamond inlay, is stolen along with other items in a jewelry heist, Nicky is charged with tracking down and returning all of the items --- by whatever means necessary. Forced into an impossible situation, Nicky must find a way to carry out Accardo's increasingly unhinged instructions and survive the battle for control of Chicago. What Accardo doesn't know: Nicky has a secret that has made his life impossible and has put him in the pocket of the FBI.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538751756

IN PLAIN VIEW: The Daily Lives of Amish Women by Judy Stavisky (Memoir)
What does the life of an Amish woman really look like? Over the course of a decade, author Judy Stavisky, a curious outsider, spent hundreds of hours getting to know the women of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County Amish community to find out the answer to this question. She joined mothers and grandmothers, unmarried women and teens, on their shopping excursions for household items, fabric and groceries. They drove miles between undulating fields and shared hundreds of hours of conversation on everyday topics. As relationships evolved into enduring friendships, she grew to understand firsthand how Amish women bind their families and communities together.
Herald Press | 9781513809816

THE LAST WHITE MAN by Mohsin Hamid (Fiction)
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’ skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Reports of similar events soon begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’ father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading.
Riverhead Books | 9780593538814

LISTENING WELL: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life by Heather Morris (Memoir)
In LISTENING WELL, Heather Morris explores her extraordinary talents as a listener --- a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, and the bestselling follow-up, CILKA’S JOURNEY. Now Heather shares the story behind her inspirational writing journey and the defining experiences of her life, including her profound friendship with Lale, and explores how she learned to really listen to the stories people told her --- skills she believes we all can learn.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250276919

THE LOST KINGS by Tyrell Johnson (Psychological Thriller)
Twins Jeanie and Jamie King are inseparable. Stuck in a cabin in rural Washington with their alcoholic father, they cling to one another for safety and companionship. Until one night, when their father comes home covered in blood. The next day, he’s gone…and so is Jamie. Jeanie’s whole world is turned upside down. Not only has she lost her beloved brother, but with no family left in Washington, she is ripped from everything she knows, including Maddox, the boy she could be learning to love. Twenty years later, Jeanie is in England. She keeps her demons at bay by drinking too much, sleeping with a married man, and speaking to a therapist she doesn’t respect. But her old life catches up to her when Maddox reappears, claiming to have tracked down her dad.
Anchor | 9780593466865

THE MANY DAUGHTERS OF AFONG MOY by Jamie Ford (Historical Fiction)
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family. As painful recollections affect her present life, she discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period. A stranger who has loved her through all of her genetic memories.
Atria Books | 9781982158217

MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS by Anthony Marra (Historical Fiction)
Born in Rome, Maria Lagana immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest. Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across LA, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate --- and her own.
Hogarth | 9780451495204

MIKA IN REAL LIFE by Emiko Jean (Fiction)
At 35, Mika Suzuki is at the lowest point of her life when she receives a phone call from Penny, the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother; in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully fledged fake life. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny’s adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all --- love, her daughter, the life she’s always wanted --- or will her deceptions ultimately catch up to her?
William Morrow | 9780063215689

ON JAVA ROAD by Lawrence Osborne (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
After two decades as a journalist in Hong Kong, ex-pat Englishman Adrian Gyle has very little to show for it. Evenings are whiled away with soup dumplings and tea at Fung Shing, the restaurant downstairs from his home on Java Road, watching the city erupt in violence as pro-democracy demonstrations hit ever closer to home. Watching from the skyrises is Adrian’s old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. Just as Gyle prepares to turn his back on Hong Kong, he finds one last intrigue: the mysterious Rebecca, a student involved in the protests, and the latest of Jimmy’s reckless dalliances. But when Rebecca goes missing and Jimmy hides, Gyle feels that old familiar urge to investigate.
Hogarth | 9780593242322

PROPERTIES OF THIRST by Marianne Wiggins (Historical Fiction)
Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife, Lou, raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy. But when the government decides to build a Japanese-American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years.
Simon & Schuster | 9781416571261

THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty (Fiction)
The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind as well. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors an extraordinary fear. But C4 is of particular interest. Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by the structures, people and places that not only failed her but actively harmed her. Now all Blandine wants is an escape, a true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads.
Knopf | 9780593534663

RECKONING: An FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter (Thriller)
When she was 12 years old, Kirra Mandarian’s parents were murdered. Fourteen years later, Kirra is a commonwealth attorney, and her goal is to find out who killed her parents and why. She quickly learns that big-time criminals are very dangerous indeed and realizes she needs Dillon Savich’s help. Emma Hunt, a piano prodigy and the granddaughter of powerful crime boss Mason Lord, was only six years old when she was abducted. She was saved by her adoptive father, San Francisco federal judge Ramsey Hunt. Now a 12-year-old with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, she narrowly saves herself from a would-be kidnapper. Lacey Sherlock and officers from METRO are assigned to protect her, but things don’t turn out as planned.
William Morrow | 9780063004139

SHUTTER by Ramona Emerson (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. She’s been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. When she is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim --- who insists she was murdered --- latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers. Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels.
Soho Crime | 9781641293334

SMELLS LIKE TWEEN SPIRIT by Laurie Gelman (Fiction/Humor)
As a new Mat Mom of the Pioneer Middle School (PMS) Wrestling team, Jen Dixon faces the somewhat terrifying new social dynamics of the wrestling moms with her trademark combination of reluctance and exceptional delivery. These parents seem perfectly unassuming, until their kids start to wrestle, and they become raging pubescent monsters. Learning to navigate this new world while fielding calls from the principal because of Max’s newfound misogynistic behavior, Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle-school life --- with her loyal spin class attendees and her bossy four-year-old granddaughter giving her the strength she needs to press on.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250777591

WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL by Jillian Medoff (Fiction)
Cassie Quinn knows a few things. One: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother, Billy, is not a rapist. When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie joins forces with her big brother, Nate, and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile --- white, athletic and privileged --- that makes headlines and sways juries. As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, Cassie vows she’ll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?
Harper | 9780063142022

WHERE THE SKY BEGINS by Rhys Bowen (Historical Fiction)
London, 1940. Bombs fall, and Josie Banks’ world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home is a ruin of rubble and ash. Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Josie convinces Miss Harcourt to let her open a humble tea shop, seeing it as a chance for everyone to begin again. When Josie meets Mike Johnson, a handsome Canadian pilot stationed at a neighboring bomber base, a growing intimacy brings her an inner peace she’s never felt before. Then Stan returns from the war. Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542028868

WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME by Gillian McAllister (Psychological Thriller)
Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your 17-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered. That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake...and it is yesterday. And then you wake again...and it is the day before yesterday. Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime --- and you don’t have a choice but to find it.
William Morrow | 9780063252349

On Sale the Week of August 1st in Paperback

August 2nd

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE by Mike Gayle (Fiction)
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he learns that his daughter is coming for a visit. Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Along the way, Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all. Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538720172

ALL’S WELL by Mona Awad (Fiction)
The accident that ended Miranda Fitch’s burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well,” she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging “Macbeth” instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers. That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of her past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.
Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781982169671

ANOTHER KIND OF EDEN by James Lee Burke (Historical Thriller)
The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard finds work on a farm in Denver and meets Joanne McDuffy, a fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne’s involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult. When a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power --- and evil.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982151720

THE APOLLO MURDERS by Chris Hadfield (Thriller)
NASA is about to launch Apollo 18. While the mission has been billed as a scientific one, flight controller Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis knows there is a darker objective. Intelligence has discovered a secret Soviet space station spying on America, and Apollo 18 may be the only chance to stop it. But even as Kaz races to keep the NASA crew one step ahead of their Russian rivals, a deadly accident reveals that not everyone involved is quite who they were thought to be. With political stakes stretched to the breaking point, the White House and the Kremlin can only watch as their astronauts collide on the lunar surface, far beyond the reach of law or rescue.
Mulholland Books | 9780316264631

THE ARSONISTS’ CITY by Hala Alyan (Fiction)
The Nasr family is spread across the globe. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father and three American children all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.
Harper Perennial | 9780358695233

AS THE WICKED WATCH: The First Jordan Manning Novel by Tamron Hall (Mystery/Thriller)
When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. She is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women --- many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized and all of them quickly forgotten. All until Masey James, a 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot. Putting the rest of her work and her (fraying) personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that Black children rarely receive.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063037045

BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King (Thriller)
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
Gallery Books | 9781982173623

THE CAPE DOCTOR by E. J. Levy (Historical Fiction)
Beginning in Cork, Ireland, THE CAPE DOCTOR recounts Jonathan Mirandus Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the new-found freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived. When he befriended the aristocratic Cape Governor, the doctor rose to the pinnacle of society, before the two were publicly accused of a homosexual affair that scandalized the colonies and nearly cost them their lives.
Back Bay Books | 9780316536592

CHOUETTE by Claire Oshetsky (Fiction)
Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,” she warns him. “This baby is an owl-baby.” When Chouette is born small and broken-winged, Tiny works around the clock to meet her daughter’s needs. Left on her own to care for a child who seems more predatory bird than baby, Tiny vows to raise Chouette to be her authentic self. Even in those times when Chouette’s behaviors grow violent and strange, Tiny’s loving commitment to her daughter is unwavering. When she discovers that her husband is on an obsessive and increasingly dangerous quest to find a “cure” for their daughter, Tiny must decide if Chouette should be raised to fit in or to be herself --- and learn what it truly means to be a mother.
Ecco | 9780063066687

THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
1943. As war in the Pacific rages on, Isabel Cooper and her codebreaker colleagues huddle in “the dungeon” at Station HYPO in Pearl Harbor, deciphering secrets plucked from the airwaves in a race to bring down the enemy. Isabel, who only wishes to avenge her brother’s death, meets his best friend, a hotshot pilot with secrets of his own. 1965. Fledgling journalist Lu Freitas comes home to Hawai'i to cover the grand opening of the glamorous Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. When a high-profile guest goes missing, Lu forms an unlikely alliance with an intimidating veteran photographer to unravel the mystery. The two make a shocking discovery that stirs up memories and uncovers an explosive secret from the war days. A secret that only a codebreaker can crack.
Mira | 9780778386452

THE COUPLE AT NUMBER 9 by Claire Douglas (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations, the last thing she expects is builders uncovering human remains. Forensics indicate that the two bodies have been buried at least 30 years. Saffy has nothing to worry about --- until the police launch a murder inquiry and ask to speak to the cottage’s former owner: her grandmother, Rose. Rose is in a nursing home, and Alzheimer’s means her memory is increasingly confused. She can’t help the police, but it's clear she remembers something. As Rose’s fragmented memories resurface, and the police dig ever deeper, Saffy fears that she and the cottage are being watched. What happened 30 years ago? Why did no one miss the victims? What part did her grandmother play? And is Saffy now in danger?
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063138148

GIRL, 11 by Amy Suiter Clarke (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Elle Castillo hosts a popular true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases of missing and abducted children. After four seasons of successfully solving these cases in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK was terrorizing the community, kidnapping and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. Then, after he took his 11-year-old victim, the pattern --- and the murders --- abruptly stopped. When Elle follows up on a listener tip only to discover the man’s dead body, she feels at fault. Then, within days, a child is abducted --- a young girl who seems to fit suspiciously into the TCK sequence halted decades before.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780358697411

HER HONOR: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It by LaDoris Hazzard Cordell (Memoir)
Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. HER HONOR is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys, and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures.
Celadon Books | 9781250269591

HOLDOUT by Jeffrey Kluger (Thriller)
Walli Beckwith is a model astronaut. She graduated at the top of her class from the Naval Academy, had a successful career flying fighter jets, and has spent more than 300 days in space. So when she refuses to leave her post aboard the International Space Station following an accident that forces her fellow astronauts to evacuate, her American and Russian colleagues are mystified. For Walli, the matter at hand feels all too clear and terrifying for her to be worried about ruining her career. She is stuck in a race against time to save a part of the world that seems to have been forgotten, and also the life of the person she loves the most. She will go to any length necessary, using the only tool she has, to accomplish what she knows is right.
Dutton | 9780593184714

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK by Derek B. Miller (Historical Fiction)
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Sheldon, along with his teenage cousins and his best friend, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hitmen and angry accordion players, all while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills.
Mariner Books | 9780358697466

THE INVISIBLE by Michelle Dunne (Thriller)
Paperback Original
People have become one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Trafficked on the promise of a new life only to be hidden away as modern-day slaves. When Lena, a raped and badly beaten Syrian woman, literally falls into Lindsey Ryan’s life, she’s left with no choice but to find her part in this new war and play it as best she can. But before she can work out a safe plan to get Lena away from her very own hell at the hands of Patrick Adebayo, Lindsey hears of an unconscious child being smuggled into Patrick’s building just two doors up. Despite having Patrick’s unwanted attention, she has to help the child and get Lena to safety regardless of the cost. In doing so, she finds herself face to face with the worst of humanity.
Polis Books | 9781951709822

THE JOY AND LIGHT BUS COMPANY: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (22) by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni attends a course hosted by the local chamber of commerce entitled “Where Is Your Business Going?” But rather than feeling energized, he comes back in low spirits, unsure how to grow the already venerable and successful Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Then an old friend from school approaches him about a new business venture that could be just the ticket. When it turns out he will need to mortgage his property in order to pursue this endeavor, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi wonder what this will mean for his current business --- as well as their own. Meanwhile, when a concerned son learns that his aging father’s nurse now stands to inherit the family home, he begins to doubt her intentions and takes his case to Botswana’s premier detective agency.
Anchor | 9780593310946

THE LIES I TOLD by Mary Burton (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Twin sisters Marisa and Clare Stockton were 16 when Clare’s body was found in Virginia’s James River. No arrests were made. Fourteen years later, Marisa’s friends and dedicated career as a photographer help her to cope with the open wound of the past. But she still feels the hurt. A recent car crash has erased 10 days of Marisa’s memories --- a black hole leading up to the accident that’s left her disoriented. Every text and phone call from that crucial missing time has vanished, along with her phone. And there’s the growing fear that her near-fatal accident was no accident at all. As dreams of Clare and nightmares of the crash begin to converge, so do two disturbing puzzles 14 years apart.
Montlake | 9781542032636

THE LIGHT OF DAYS: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion (History)
Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. These “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. THE LIGHT OF DAYS at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062874221

MADE IN CHINA: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu (Memoir)
As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.
Catapult | 9781646221523

MALEFACTOR by Robert Repino (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction/Thriller)
Over a decade has passed since the ant queen began her apocalyptic war with the humans. In the aftermath, she leaves behind a strange legacy: a race of uplifted animals now trying to make their way in the world they destroyed. While the conflict has left deep scars, it also has allowed both sides to demonstrate feats of courage and compassion that were never possible before. And now the survivors have a fleeting chance to build a lasting peace. But the holy city of Hosanna --- where animals and humans form a joint government --- finds itself surrounded by wolves who are determined to retake the land. A powerful matriarch has united the rival wolf packs, and the looming violence soon pulls in those who sought to escape.
Soho Press | 9781641293747

RADIANT FUGITIVES by Nawaaz Ahmed (Fiction)
Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’ attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera. But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding and complicated layers of love.
Counterpoint | 9781640095533

SAVAGE TONGUES by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Fiction)
It’s summer when Arezu, an Iranian-American teenager, goes to Spain to meet her estranged father at an apartment he owns there. He never shows up, instead sending her a weekly allowance, care of his step-nephew, Omar, a 40-year-old Lebanese man. As the weeks progress, Arezu is drawn into a mercurial, charged and ultimately catastrophic affair with Omar, a relationship that shatters her just at the cusp of adulthood. Two decades later, Arezu inherits the apartment. She returns with her best friend, Ellie, an Israeli-American scholar devoted to the Palestinian cause, to excavate the place and finally put to words a trauma she’s long held in silence.
Mariner Books | 9780358695301

THE SHADOW LILY by Johanna Mo (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Small-town police detective Hanna Duncker has a past. Her deceased father was convicted of murder and arson long ago, and she has taken up residence and resumed her police career in her hometown after his death. She and her partner, Erik Lindgren, are called to investigate the disappearance of a father and his infant son from their home while his wife was away on a weekend trip. As the investigation unfolds, Hanna makes a breakthrough in her ongoing private investigation of her father’s crimes: a discovery that could change everything she thought she'd learned so far.
Penguin Books | 9780143136699

SHADOWS REEL: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered. At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why? When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls? Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for the man who stole his falcons and attacked his wife.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593331286

SONGS FOR THE FLAMES: Stories by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Fiction/Short Stories)
The characters in SONGS FOR THE FLAMES are men and women touched by violence --- sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing --- but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale. And the search for a book leads a writer to the fascinating story of why a woman is buried next to a graveyard, rather than in it --- and the remarkable account of her journey from France to Colombia as a child orphan.
Riverhead Books | 9780593190142

THE SPECKLED BEAUTY: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg (Memoir)
Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the FedEx man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, 76 pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon.
Vintage | 9780593081419

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING by Julia Whelan (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
When audiobook narrator Sewanee Chester arrives in Las Vegas last-minute for a book convention, she unexpectedly spends a whirlwind night with a charming stranger. On her return home, she discovers that one of the world’s most beloved romance novelists wanted her to perform her last book --- with Brock McNight, the industry’s hottest, most secretive voice. As Sewanee begins working on the project, resurrecting her old romance pseudonym, she and Brock forge a real connection, hidden behind the comfort of anonymity. Soon, she is dreaming again. But secrets are revealed, and the realities of life come crashing down around her once more.
Avon | 9780063095564

THE THERAPIST by B. A. Paris (Psychological Thriller)
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive. As Alice is getting to know her neighbors, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets, and things are not as perfect as they se
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250784056

WE ARE NOT LIKE THEM by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza (Fiction)
Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young and is finally pregnant after years of trying. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty.
Atria Books | 9781982181048

WHISPER ROOM: A Geneva Chase Crime Reporter Mystery by Thomas Kies (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Geneva Chase encounters a deceptive cast of suspects who pull her into a high-speed chase into the Whisper Room, a dating app for only the most elite members of society --- where affairs, blackmail and murder are all on the menu. When wealthy men crave no-strings-attached encounters, the Whisper Room promises to deliver. Escorts are turning up dead, and Geneva is ready to dive into the exclusive dating ring and catch the killer. But then one of the Whisper Room's escorts turns up murdered --- and she looks a lot like the blond in the blackmail video. The more Geneva digs, the more blackmail victims and potential suspects she finds --- and the more people she angers. Dangerous people, with links to organized crime and human trafficking. Will this story of a lifetime put a premature end to her own?
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728254579

THE WILD HUNT by Emma Seckel (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Leigh Welles has not set foot on the island in years. But when she finds herself called home from life on the Scottish mainland by her father’s unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. But this October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, birdlike creatures of Celtic legend --- whispered to carry the souls of the dead --- have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war’s wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a young man disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island’s dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own.
Tin House Books | 9781953534224

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie (Historical Fantasy)
Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds. With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies…while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.
Orbit | 9780316187220

THE WISH by Nicholas Sparks (Romance)
1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind…until she met Bryce Trickett, a teenager who introduced her to photography. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him and tells him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier --- and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538728604

WISH YOU WERE GONE by Kieran Scott (Domestic Thriller)
Emma Walsh has finally worked up the courage to confront her husband, James, about his drinking. But he never shows up to meet her as planned. His body lies crumpled amidst the wreckage of his flashy car, which has been smashed to its final resting place halfway through the back wall of their suburban house’s garage. In the aftermath of the fatal crash, Emma and her teenage children begin to embrace life without James’ looming, volcanic presence. It turns out that her husband’s legacy as an upstanding business owner and family man shines only because so many people, for so long, were so willing to keep his secrets --- secrets that twist into new and unexpected shapes as the mysterious details of his last day of life begin to come to light.
Gallery Books | 9781982153991

A WOMAN OF INTELLIGENCE by Karin Tanabe (Historical Thriller)
A former translator for the United Nations, Katharina Edgeworth --- now the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon and heir to a shipping fortune --- is desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job. Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret soon threatens to ruin her.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250231512

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