February 7, 2023

February 7, 2023

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of February 6th and February 13th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our special contest for THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHER by Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo, which releases on April 10th and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. We are awarding an advance copy of the book to 50 readers and giving them the chance to share their comments about it with us. To win means that you are committed to reading THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHER and giving us your feedback on it by Friday, March 31st. The deadline for your contest entries is Friday, February 17th at noon ET.

In stores now is EXILES, the latest from New York Times bestselling author Jane Harper, who shows she is “peerless in creating an avalanche of suspense with intimate, character-driven set pieces.” (David Baldacci). One year ago, at a busy town festival on a warm spring night, a woman vanished into the crowd and no one has seen her since. Now, as investigator Aaron Falk looks into the case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to surface --- and secrets that show that the community is not as close as it appears.

Katherine B. Weissman has this to say in her review of this final installment in the Aaron Falk trilogy, which is a Bets On selection: “Harper is very good at casting a wide and subtle net of suspicion, and it wasn’t until fewer than 100 pages from the end, when the point of view temporarily shifts from Falk to that of other characters, that I began to suspect the truth.” Click here to read Carol's Bets On commentary, and don't miss her “Bookreporter Talks To” interview with Jane in Friday's Bookreporter Weekly Update newsletter.

Click here to read more about EXILES and order your copy.

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, February 8th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between February 7th and February 28th, along with a few from March and April, that she would like to get on your radar.

Wednesday, February 8th 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 Elinor Lipman about her latest novel, MS. DEMEANOR. Appearing on the Aftershow will be Nina de Gramont, the author of THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR.

Wednesday, February 8th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick’s will host James Patterson and Matt Eversmann as they discuss their new book, WALK THE BLUE LINE, with Neal Griffin, the Los Angeles Times bestselling author of BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.

Thursday, February 9th at 6pm ET: [words] Bookstore: Priscilla Gilman will be in conversation with bestselling author Nick Hornby about her memoir, THE CRITIC'S DAUGHTER, an exquisitely rendered portrait of her relationship with her father, writer and theater critic Richard Gilman.

Thursday, February 9th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick’s will host Tom Rob Smith as he discusses his new book, COLD PEOPLE, a masterful and unforgettable epic, as profoundly intimate as it is grand in scope.

Saturday, February 11th at 12:30pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick’s will host Jojo Moyes as she discusses her new book, SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES, with Laura Dave. Full of  Moyes’ signature humor, brilliant storytelling and warmth, this is a story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances.

Monday, February 13th at 5pm ET: RJ Julia Booksellers and Parnassus Books: Jojo Moyes will be in conversation with Lisa Taddeo about her latest novel, SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES, a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.

Monday, February 13th at 7:30pm ET: “Lisa Live!”: Join Lisa Scottoline every Monday night as she hosts her weekly “Talking LOYALTY” video series and Facebook Live events leading up to the publication of her historical novel, LOYALTY, on March 28th. And be sure to enter the LOYALTY Pre-order Sweepstakes!

Tuesday, February 14th at 6pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Michael Robotham will talk about his latest novel, LYING BESIDE YOU, a page-turning psychological thriller that marks the return of Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Special Contest for
THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHER by Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo, Releasing April 10th

On Sale the Week of February 6th in Hardcover

February 6th

WALK THE BLUE LINE by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann, with Chris Mooney (Biography)
Police officers risk their lives every day to protect and serve our homes, families and communities. These men and women are our eyes. Our ears. Our protectors. Those who wear a badge, doing their best to help people. These cops serve their communities. They serve their country. They’re in the business of saving lives --- even at the risk of their own. These patrol officers and K9 handlers, sheriffs and detectives, reveal what it’s really like to wear the uniform, to carry the weight of the responsibility they’ve been given. This is a calling. This is the job.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316406604

February 7th

B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found by Christie Tate (Memoir)
After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. But she soon realizes that the feeling of “apartness” that has plagued her since childhood isn’t magically going away now that she’s in a healthy romantic relationship. With her friend, Meredith, by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach --- and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. But when Meredith becomes ill and Christie’s baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she’s forced to face her deepest fears in honor of the woman who finally showed her how to be a friend.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668009420

BIG SWISS by Jen Beagin (Fiction/Humor)
Greta lives with her friend, Sabine, in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’ voice at the dog park. In a panic, she introduces herself with a fake name, and they quickly become enmeshed. Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone.
Scribner | 9781982153083

BRUTES by Dizz Tate (Fiction)
In Falls Landing, Florida --- a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes and scorched bougainvillea flowers --- something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of 13-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they see will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Catapult | 9781646221677

CALL AND RESPONSE: Stories by Gothataone Moeng (Fiction/Short Stories)
A young widow adheres to the expectations of wearing mourning clothes for nearly a year, though she's unsure what the traditions mean or whether she is ready to meet the world without their protection. An older sister returns home from a confusing time in America, only to explain at every turn why she’s left the land of opportunity. A younger sister hides her sexual exploits from her family, while her older brother openly flaunts his infidelity. The stories collected in CALL AND RESPONSE are strongly anchored in place --- in the village of Serowe, where the author is from, and in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana --- charting the emotional journeys of women seeking love and opportunity beyond the barriers of custom and circumstance.
Viking | 9780593490983

COLD PEOPLE by Tom Rob Smith (Dystopian Thriller/Science Fiction)
The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has 30 days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist --- Antarctica. COLD PEOPLE follows the perilous journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. But their goal is not merely to survive the present. Because as they cling to life on the ice, the remnants of their past swept away, they also must confront the urgent challenge: Can they change and evolve rapidly enough to ensure humanity’s future? Can they build a new society in the sub-zero cold?
Scribner | 9781982198404

THE CRADLE OF ICE by James Rollins (Fantasy/Adventure)
To stop the coming apocalypse, a fellowship was formed. A soldier, a thief, a lost prince and a young girl bonded by fate and looming disaster. Each step along this path has changed the party, forging deep alliances and greater enmities. All the while, hostile forces have hunted them, fearing what they might unleash. Armies wage war around them. For each step has come with a cost --- in blood, in loss, in heartbreak. Now they must split, traveling into a vast region of ice and to a sprawling capital of the world they’ve only known in stories. Time is running out, and only the truth will save us all.
Tor Books | 9781250766748

THE CRITIC'S DAUGHTER: A Memoir by Priscilla Gilman (Memoir)
Growing up on the Upper West Side of New York City in the 1970s, in an apartment filled with dazzling literary and artistic characters, Priscilla Gilman worshiped her brilliant, adoring and mercurial father --- the writer, theater critic and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman. But when Priscilla was 10 years old, her mother, renowned literary agent Lynn Nesbit, abruptly announced that she was ending the marriage. The resulting cascade of disturbing revelations --- about her parents’ hollow marriage, her father’s double life and tortured sexual identity --- fundamentally changed Priscilla’s perception of her father, as she attempted to protect him from the depression that had long shadowed him.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393651324

DON'T FEAR THE REAPER by Stephen Graham Jones (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock, Idaho. Convicted serial killer Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for 38 Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock. Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12, 2019, a Thursday. Thirty-six hours and 20 bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.
Gallery/Saga Press | 9781982186593

ENCORE IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
It was a glittering event full of A-listers, hosted by Eliza Lane and Brant Fitzhugh, a celebrity couple who had conquered both Hollywood and Broadway. And now Eve Dallas has made her entrance --- but not as a guest. After raising a toast, Fitzhugh fell to the floor and died, with physical symptoms pointing to cyanide. From all accounts, he wasn’t the kind of star who made enemies. And since the champagne cocktail that killed him was originally intended for Eliza, it’s possible she was the real target, with a recently fired assistant, a bitter rival and an obsessed fan in the picture. With so many attendees, staff and servers, Eve has her work cut out determining who committed murder in the middle of the crowd --- and what their motivation was.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250284082

ENDPAPERS by Jennifer Savran Kelly (Fiction)
A bookbinder who works in conservation at the Met, Dawn Levit spends her free time scouting the city’s street art, hoping something might spark inspiration. Instead, everything looks like a dead end. And wherever she turns, her gender identity clashes with the rest of her life. Then, one day at work, Dawn finds something hidden behind the endpaper of an old book: the torn-off cover of a ’50s lesbian pulp novel, Turn Her About. On the front is a campy illustration of a woman looking into a handheld mirror and seeing a man’s face. And on the back is a love letter. Dawn latches onto the coincidence, becoming obsessed with tracking down the note’s author. Her fixation only increases when her best friend, Jae, is injured in a hate crime, for which she feels responsible.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751849

EVERY MISSING GIRL: A Kendall Beck Thriller by Leanne Kale Sparks (Mystery/Thriller)
The stunning landscape of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains are among our greatest natural treasures. But there are deadly secrets lurking in the craggy heights, and FBI Special Agent Kendall Beck and Denver Homicide Detective Adam Taylor team up to investigate a kidnapping. When Taylor’s niece, Frankie, suddenly vanishes at a local hockey rink, it’s clear that there’s a predator on the loose --- and now, the case has turned personal. One discovery after another leads Beck and Taylor closer to the truth, as they close in on the devastating truth about the fates of the missing girls --- and the many who came before them. Will they be able to find Frankie before it’s too late?
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639102303

FOR TWICE IN MY LIFE by Annette Christie (Romantic Comedy)
Layla’s chaotic life transformed when she met Ian Barnett. Ambitious, committed and thoughtful, Ian has been everything she'd dreamed of, and she knows he'd say the same of her. So when he breaks up with her out of the blue, Layla is stunned. What went wrong? But then Layla gets a call from the local hospital. Ian has had a biking accident. He's okay, but he needs someone --- his someone --- to get him home safely. As it becomes clear Ian doesn't remember he ended things, it also becomes clear that the accident has given him a new outlook on life…and Layla a second chance to get things right. That is, until Ian’s younger brother comes to town. Matt is restless, unpredictable and threatens to upset the careful balance Layla and Ian have rebuilt.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316451031

THE HOUSE GUEST by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Psychological Thriller)
Alyssa Macallan is terrified when she’s dumped by her wealthy and powerful husband. With a devastating divorce looming, she begins to suspect her toxic and manipulative soon-to-be-ex is scheming to ruin her --- leaving her alone and penniless. And when the FBI shows up at her door, Alyssa knows she really needs a friend. And then she gets one. A seductive new friend, one who’s running from a dangerous relationship of her own. Alyssa offers Bree Lorrance the safety of her guest house, and the two become confidantes. Then Bree makes a heart-stoppingly tempting offer. Maybe Alyssa and Bree can solve each other's problems. But no one is what they seem. And the fates and fortunes of these two women twist and turn until the shocking truth emerges.
Forge Books | 9781250849564

THE HOUSE OF EVE by Sadeqa Johnson (Historical Fiction)
1950s Philadelphia: Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par¬ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby --- and fitting in --- is easier said than done.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982197360

A KILLING OF INNOCENTS by Deborah Crombie (Mystery)
On a rainy November evening, trainee doctor Sasha Johnson hurries through the crowd in London's historic Russell Square. Out of the darkness, someone jostles her as they brush past. A moment later, Sasha stumbles and then collapses. When Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant, Doug Cullen, are called to the scene, they discover that she's been stabbed. Kincaid immediately calls in his detective wife, Gemma James, who recently has been assigned to a task force on knife crimes that are on the rise. As the team unravels the victim's tangled connections, another murder raises the stakes. Kincaid, Gemma and their colleagues must put even friendships on the line to find the killer stalking the dark streets of Bloomsbury.
William Morrow | 9780062993397

LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ: An Emma Djan Investigation by Kwei Quartey (Mystery)
Just as things at work are slowing down for PI Emma Djan, an old friend of her boss’s asks for help locating his missing daughter. According to her father, Ngozi had a bright future ahead of her when she became secretive and withdrawn. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was be with her handsome new beau, Femi, instead of attending law school in the fall. So when she disappears from her parents’ house in Nigeria the middle of a summer night, they immediately suspect that Femi was behind it and have reason to believe the pair has fled to Accra. During Emma’s first week on the case, Femi is found murdered at his opulent residence in Accra, and there are no signs of Ngozi at the scene. As Emma digs further, she discovers that Femi was part of a network of sex traffickers across West Africa.
Soho Crime | 9781641293396

LOOKING FOR JANE by Heather Marshall (Fiction)
2017: When Angela Creighton discovers a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession, she is determined to find the intended recipient. Her search takes her back to the 1970s when a group of daring women operated an illegal underground abortion network in Toronto. 1971: As a teenager, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was sent to a home for “fallen” women where she was forced to give up her baby for adoption. She proceeds to join the Jane Network as an abortion provider. 1980: After discovering a shocking secret about her family, Nancy Mitchell begins to question everything she has ever known. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she locates “Jane” and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network’s ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her.
Atria Books | 9781668013687

THE LOVE SCRIBE by Amy Meyerson (Fiction)
When Alice’s best friend, Gabby, is reeling from a breakup, Alice writes her a heartfelt story to cheer her up. While reading it in a café, Gabby meets the man of her dreams. Thinking the story might have some special power to it, Gabby shares it with her sister and other friends, who all find instant love. Word of mouth spreads, and Alice stumbles upon a new calling --- to be a love scribe. But not all the love stories she writes unfold as expected. And while Alice tries to harness her extraordinary gift, she is summoned to a mansion in the woods where she encounters the reclusive Madeline Alger and her mysterious library. As Alice struggles to write a story for Madeline, her most challenging assignment yet, she’s forced to confront her own guarded heart.
Park Row | 9780778387084

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen (Mystery/Thriller)
After scoring a plea deal in a high-profile murder trial, serial killer James Michael Barrett leads a grim parade of law enforcement officers to the body of his last victim. At the alleged burial site, the officers swing their shovels down and are met with a strange metallic sound they weren’t expecting. In a blink, a terrific explosion rocks the woods, killing Barrett and most of the officers instantly. The detonation is only the beginning of a shocking case for FBI consultant Kendra Michaels. A string of heinous murders in the style of the very-dead Barrett mysteriously continue, and it becomes clear that he may not have been working alone. But the killer has a terrifying plan that Kendra and her team are only beginning to understand.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538726235

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality. For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
Hogarth | 9780451495143

THE SANCTUARY by Katrine Engberg (Literary Thriller/Noir Mystery)
Jeppe Kørner, on leave from the police force and nursing a broken heart, has taken refuge on the island of Bornholm for the winter. Also on the island is Esther de Laurenti, a writer working on a biography of a female anthropologist with a mysterious past and coming to terms with her own crushing sense of loneliness in the wake of a dear friend’s death. When Jeppe lends a helping hand at the island’s local sawmill, he begins to realize that the island may not be the peaceful refuge it appears to be. Back in Copenhagen, Anette Werner is tasked with leading the investigation into a severed corpse discovered on a downtown playground. As she follows the strange trail of clues, they all seem to lead back to Bornholm.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781668002278

SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES by Jojo Moyes (Fiction)
Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope --- she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That’s because Sam Kemp --- in the bleakest point of her life --- has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag --- she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch-high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence makes her realize something must change --- and that thing is herself.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9781984879295

A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Fiction)
Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must and dreaming of a big future. Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of an ascendant politician. When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola's and Eniola’s lives become intertwined. In A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ shines her light on Nigeria, the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between.
Knopf | 9780525657644

SPILLANE: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor (Biography)
Beginning in 1947 with I, THE JURY and continuing with his next six novels, Mickey Spillane quickly amassed a readership in the tens of millions, becoming the bestselling novelist in the history of American publishing. There is, however, more to Spillane’s life than the books. He also starred as Mike Hammer in a movie, was a circus performer, worked with the FBI in capturing a notorious criminal, and starred in Miller Light beer commercials that were so popular they ran for a quarter of a century. Max Allan Collins became Spillane’s friend and collaborator, continuing the Mike Hammer series for years after the author's death. Now, with co-author James Traylor, Collins has produced the first comprehensive and authoritative profile of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.
Mysterious Press | 9781613163795

THE SPITE HOUSE by Johnny Compton (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house and his whole life behind in Maryland, he's desperate for money. When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it will help Eric understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250841414

STEALING by Margaret Verble (Historical Fiction)
Kit Crockett and her new neighbor, Bella, become fast friends. Both outsiders, they take comfort in each other’s company. But malice lurks near their quiet bayou, and Kit suddenly finds herself at the center of a tragic, fatal crime. Soon, Kit is ripped from her home and Cherokee family and sent to Ashley Lordard, a religious boarding school. Along with the other Native students, Kit is stripped of her heritage, force-fed Christian indoctrination, and sexually abused by the director. But Kit, as strong-willed and shrewd as ever, secretly keeps a journal recounting what she remembers --- and revealing just what she has forgotten. Over the course of STEALING, she slowly unravels the truth of how she ended up at the school --- and plots a way out.
Mariner Books | 9780063267053

STONE BLIND by Natalie Haynes (Historical Fiction)
The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change and feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene’s temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge --- on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon’s actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair, and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude. Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon.
Harper | 9780063258396

UNNATURAL HISTORY: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman (Psychological Thriller)
The newly hired personal assistant to a handsome, wealthy photographer is ready to greet her boss with coffee and good cheer. Instead, she finds him slumped in bed, shot to death. The victim recently had received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies. There are some, however, who view the whole thing as nothing more than crass exploitation. Has disgruntlement blossomed into homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim’s family? Then new murders arise, and Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis begin peeling back layer after layer of intrigue and complexity, culminating in one of the deadliest threats they’ve ever faced.
Ballantine Books | 9780525618614

UP WITH THE SUN by Thomas Mallon (Fiction)
Dick Kallman was an up-and-coming actor in the ’50s and ’60s --- until he wasn’t. A costar on Broadway, a member of Lucille Ball’s historic Desilu workshop, and finally a primetime TV actor, Dick had hustled to get his big break. But just as soon as his star began to rise, his roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight, his name out of tabloids and newspapers until his sensational murder in 1980. Through the eyes of his occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance Matt Liannetto, a tenderhearted but wry observer often on the fringes of Broadway’s big moments, Kallman’s life and death come into appallingly sharp focus.
Knopf | 9781524748197

VENCO by Cherie Dimaline (Magical Realism/Adventure)
Métis millennial Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she learns she’ll be evicted from her tiny Toronto apartment. But something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky one night. She burrows through a wall to find a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM. Lucky has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches across North America who have anxiously awaited her discovery. Enter VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money. Since colonial times, they have awaited the moment the seven spoons will come together and ignite a new era, returning women to their rightful power. But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move.
William Morrow | 9780063054899

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie (Historical Fantasy/Magical Realism)
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in 14th-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for her namesake, the goddess Pampa, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga --- “victory city” --- the wonder of the world. Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power.
Random House | 9780593243398

On Sale the Week of February 6th in Paperback

February 7th

BLACK GHOST OF EMPIRE: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra (History)
To understand why the shadow of slavery still haunts us today, we must look closely at the way it ended. Between the 1770s and 1880s, emancipation processes took off across the Atlantic world. But far from ushering in a new age of human rights and universal freedoms, these emancipations further codified the racial caste systems they claimed to disrupt. In this paradigm-altering book, acclaimed historian and professor Kris Manjapra identifies five types of emancipations across the globe and reveals that their perceived failures were not failures at all, but the predictable outcomes of policies designed first and foremost to preserve the status quo of racial oppression.
Scribner | 9781982123499

BOOTH by Karen Joy Fowler (Historical Fiction)
In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some 30 miles northeast of Baltimore and bears 10 children over the course of the next 16 years. Junius Booth is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But multiple scandals, family triumphs and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593331453

CHERISH FARRAH by Bethany C. Morrow (Psychological Thriller/Social Horror)
Farrah Turner is one of two Black girls in her country club community, and the only one with Black parents. Her best friend, Cherish Whitman, was adopted by a white, wealthy family. With Brianne and Jerry Whitman as parents, Cherish is given the kind of adoration and coddling that even upper-class Black parents can’t seem to afford --- and it creates a dissonance in her best friend that Farrah can exploit. When her own family is unexpectedly confronted with foreclosure, the calculating Farrah is determined to reassert the control she’s convinced she’s always had over her life by staying with Cherish. As troubled Farrah manipulates her way further into the Whitman family, the longer she stays, the more her own parents suggest that something is wrong in the Whitman house.
Dutton | 9780593185391

THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR by Nina de Gramont (Historical Fiction)
In 1925, Miss Nan O’Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie. In every way, she became a part of their life. Soon, Nan became Archie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him. Nan’s plot didn’t begin the day she met Archie and Agatha. It began decades before, in Ireland, when Nan was a young girl. She and the man she loved were a star-crossed couple who were destined to be together --- until the Great War, a pandemic and shameful secrets tore them apart. Then acts of unspeakable cruelty kept them separated. What drives someone to murder? What will someone do in the name of love? What kind of crime can someone never forgive?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250792631

CODE NAME SAPPHIRE by Pam Jenoff (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
1942. Hannah Martel has narrowly escaped Nazi Germany after her fiancé was killed in a pogrom. When her ship bound for America is turned away at port, she has nowhere to go but to her cousin, Lily, who lives with her family in Brussels. Fearful for her life, Hannah is desperate to get out of occupied Europe. But with no safe way to leave, she must return to the dangerous underground work she thought she had left behind. Seeking help, Hannah joins the Sapphire Line, a secret resistance network led by a mysterious woman named Micheline and her enigmatic brother, Matteo. But when a grave mistake causes Lily’s family to be arrested and slated for deportation to Auschwitz, Hannah finds herself torn between her loyalties. How much is Hannah willing to sacrifice to save the people she loves?
Park Row | 9780778387091

A DANGEROUS EDUCATION by Megan Chance (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Rosemary Chivers is haunted by the choices she made as a teenager --- and by those made for her by a controlling mother. Now, in the Cold War era of conformity and suspicion, Rosemary is a modern new teacher at a school for troubled girls. She happens to know that one of the students is the child she gave up. But which one? Ignoring warnings, Rosemary forms an impenetrable bond with the three girls who are the right age. But these are no ordinary girls, and what begins as an effort to bring closure to her own rebellious youth soon spirals dangerously out of control. Rosemary is prepared to do anything to find her daughter. What she isn’t prepared for are the deadly consequences that come with discovery --- or just how wicked wayward girls can be.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542039024

THE ECHO MAN by Sam Holland (Psychological Thriller)
Detectives Cara Elliott and Noah Deakin are on the case of a series of seemingly unconnected murders, each different in method, but each shocking and brutal. As the body count increases, they can’t ignore the details that echo famous cases of the past --- Manson, Kemper, Dahmer and more. As Elliott and Deakin get closer to unmasking the killer, the murders are moving closer to home. Meanwhile, Jessica Ambrose is on the run. She’s been implicated as the arsonist who killed her neglectful husband and injured her young daughter. With the help of disgraced and suspended detective Nate Griffin, Jess discovers a shocking link between her case and that of the ultimate copycat killer working on his horrifying masterpiece.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639103874

EIGHT DAYS IN MAY: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich written by Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase (History)
In a bunker deep below Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945 --- Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer’s suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second World War in Europe. Far from it: the eight days that followed were among the most traumatic in modern history, witnessing not only the final paroxysms of bloodshed and the frantic surrender of the Wehrmacht, but the total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In EIGHT DAYS IN MAY, Volker Ullrich draws on an astonishing variety of sources, including diaries and letters of ordinary Germans, to narrate a society’s descent into Hobbesian chaos.
Liveright | 9781324092889

THE FIELDS by Erin Young (Thriller)
It starts with a body --- a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, arrives on the scene, an already horrific crime becomes personal when she discovers the victim was a childhood friend, connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind. The investigation grows complicated as more victims are found. Drawn deeper in, Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.
Flatiron Books | 9781250799418

FREE LOVE by Tessa Hadley (Historical Fiction)
1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability. Pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit and kisses Phyllis, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.
Harper Perennial | 9780063137837

HIDEOUT: An Alice Vega Novel by Louisa Luna (Thriller)
Alice Vega has made a career of finding the missing and vulnerable, but she's never had a case like that of Zeb Williams, missing for 30 years. It was 1984, and the big Cal-Stanford football game was tied with seconds left on the clock. Zeb Williams grabbed the ball and ran the wrong way, through the marching band, off the field and out of the stadium. He disappeared into legend, replete with Elvis-like sightings and a cult following. Zeb's cold trail leads Vega to southern Oregon, where she discovers an anxious community living under siege by a local hate group called the Liberty Boys. As Vega starts digging into the past, the mystery around Zeb's disappearance grows deeper, and the reach of the Liberty Boys grows more disturbing.
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard | 9781984898500

THE HOTEL NANTUCKET by Elin Hilderbrand (Fiction)
Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she’s named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes that her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner, Xavier Darling, as well as that of Shelly Carpenter, the wildly popular Instagram tastemaker who can help put them back on the map. And while the Hotel Nantucket appears to be a blissful paradise, complete with a celebrity chef-run restaurant and an idyllic wellness center, there’s a lot of drama behind closed doors.
Back Bay Books | 9780316258982

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 | 9781639102983

IN A NEW YORK MINUTE by Kate Spencer (Romantic Comedy)
Franny Doyle has been laid off from her (admittedly mediocre) job, the subway doors ripped her favorite silk dress to ruins, and now she’s flashed her unmentionables to half of lower Manhattan. On the plus side, a dashing stranger came to her rescue with his (Gucci!) suit jacket. On the not-so-plus side, he can’t get away from her fast enough. Worse yet? Someone posted their (entirely not) meet-cute online. Suddenly Franny and Hayes Montgomery III are the newest social media sensation. They couldn’t be a more disastrous match. Yet somehow, they keep running into each other --- and much to their surprise, they enjoy each other’s company. A lot. But when Franny’s whole world is turned upside down (again!), can she find the courage to trust in herself and finally have the life --- and love --- she’s always wanted?
Forever | 9781538737644

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (Memoir)
A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado privately was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But there were also moments of peace, joy and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250871084

INTO THE FOREST: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel (Biography)
In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods --- through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks and merciless Nazi raids --- until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him. And to discover that her daughter, Ruth, was the love of his life.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250874900

JOAN IS OKAY by Weike Wang (Fiction)
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary and successful. Once she and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780525563952

THE LAST GRUDGE: A Ghosts of the Past Novel by Max Seeck (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Powerful executive Eliel Zetterborg has been found murdered in his upscale Helsinki home. What at first seems like a straightforward case soon proves to be anything but when it becomes clear the murderer has other targets. The only clue the police have is a photo of Zetterborg with three men whose faces have all been scratched off. Detective Jessica Niemi has taken some time off from her work with the Helsinki police to track down the coven that nearly killed her, and her partner, Yusuf, is assigned to lead the investigation. But as Yusuf delves into the case, he realizes he needs Jessica’s help. And as they dig deeper, they realize that the evil they’ve been hunting all along has returned and is lying in wait for the right moment to strike.
Berkley | 9780593438848

A LEGACY OF BONES by Doug Burgess (Mystery)
Paperback Original
On Kaumaha Island (est. 1850), the statue of Amyas Lathrop conceals a terrible secret --- a legacy of massacres and madness that infects the island itself. Some will go to any lengths to keep it hidden, others to set it free. But which of them would kill? Cultural expert Winnie Te Papa, our very own Ms. Marple, will sift through the pieces to track a ruthless murderer through a tangled maze of family alliances, greedy developers, scholars, protestors and gangsters. Told in a dual timeline, Doug Burgess' intricate puzzle box mystery traces the consequences of an island's frenetic beginnings as they snowball through generations. Fans of HBO's “The White Lotus” will be intrigued by the ever hotly debated questions: What happens next, and who gets to decide?
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728259116

LIKE A SISTER by Kellye Garrett (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
When the body of reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. A tragedy, certainly, but not a crime. Yet Columbia grad student Lena --- principled, headstrong and allergic to the spotlight --- knows that can’t be the case. Despite the bitter truth that the two hadn’t spoken in two years, they were half-sisters. Lena knew Desiree. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. Something is very wrong with the facts. So why is no one listening? While the two sisters had been torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their difficult father, Lena becomes determined to find justice for Desiree. Even if that means untangling her family’s darkest secrets --- or ending up dead herself.
Mulholland Books | 9780316256773

LOVE & SAFFRON: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love by Kim Fay (Historical Fiction)
Creamy risotto alla Milanese. Mussels in a hot, buttery broth. Chicken spiced with cinnamon and cloves. Joan Bergstrom and Imogen Fortier understand the key to a savored life --- delicious food. Young Joan is just discovering herself as a food writer in bustling Los Angeles, while experienced columnist Imogen is settled in her decades-long marriage on Camano Island outside Seattle. When Joan sends a fan letter to Imogen with an enclosed packet of saffron and a recipe, their journey of culinary exploration and soul-deep friendship begins. A long-lost flavor surfaces buried memories, and a quest to make carne asada opens the doors of a sheltered life. Into this beautiful, intimate world comes the ultimate test of their friendship, and of their belief that food and love can sustain us during our darkest hours.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593419359

THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST by Allison Pataki (Historical Fiction)
Marjorie Merriweather Post’s journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father’s barn as a young girl. No one could have predicted that C. W. Post’s Cereal Company would grow into the General Foods empire, with Marjorie as its heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history in the process. Before turning 30, she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the United States. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy. And yet Marjorie’s story, though full of beauty and grandeur, set in the palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult.
Ballantine Books | 9780593355701

THE MATCH by Harlan Coben (Thriller)
A DNA match on an online ancestry database brings Wilde closer to his past than he’s ever dreamed and finally gives him the opening he needs to track down his father. But meeting the man brings up more questions than answers. So Wilde reaches out to his last, most desperate lead: a second cousin who disappears as quickly as he resurfaces, having experienced an epic fall from grace. Was his cousin’s downfall a long time coming? Or was he the victim of a conspiracy as cunning as it is complex? And how does it all connect to the man once known as The Stranger, a treacherous fugitive with a growing following whose mission and methods have only turned more dangerous with time?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538748299

MAUREEN: A Harold Fry Novel by Rachel Joyce (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Maureen and Harold Fry have settled into a quiet life, but when an unexpected message from the North disturbs their peaceful equilibrium, Maureen realizes that it’s now her turn to make a journey. But she is not like her affable, easygoing husband. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets --- and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there.
Dial Press Trade Paperback | 9780593446423

MEANT TO BE by Jude Deveraux (Romance)
It’s 1972, and times are changing. In the small farming community of Mason, Kansas, Vera and Kelly Exton are known for their ambitions. Vera is an activist who wants to join her boyfriend in the Peace Corps. But she is doing her duty caring for her widowed mother and younger sister until Kelly is firmly established. Kelly is studying to become a veterinarian. She plans to marry her childhood sweetheart and eventually take over his father’s veterinary practice. But it’s a tumultuous time, and neither sister is entirely happy with the path that’s been laid out for her. As each evaluates her options, everything shifts. Do you do what’s right for yourself or what others want?
Mira | 9780778333739

MERCY STREET by Jennifer Haigh (Fiction)
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia’s days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy’s, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11 --- the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.
Ecco | 9780061763328

MURDER AT THE PORTE DE VERSAILLES: An Aimée Leduc Investigation Set in Paris by Cara Black (Mystery)
In the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory --- and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails. Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s.
Soho Crime | 9781641294553

MY LOVELY WIFE by Samantha Downing (Psychological Thriller)
Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored. We look like a normal couple. We're your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with. We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
Berkley | 9780593637753

NINE LIVES by Peter Swanson (Mystery/Thriller)
Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. None of them know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke --- until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they’re located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it? FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062980083

OLGA DIES DREAMING by Xochitl Gonzalez (Fiction)
It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets. Olga and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Flatiron Books | 9781250786180

ON A NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS by Andrea Yaryura Clark (Fiction)
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world --- until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little. When the family travels to Buenos Aires for Santiago's UN ambassadorial appointment, Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the military dictatorship of 1976.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538720301

THE PALACE PAPERS: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil by Tina Brown (Biography)
“Never again” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Princess Diana’s tragic death. More specifically, there could never be “another Diana” --- a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where Tina Brown’s THE DIANA CHRONICLES left off, THE PALACE PAPERS reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet. Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last 25 years.
Crown | 9780593138113

THE PARADOX HOTEL by Rob Hart (Technothriller/Mystery)
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder. Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing is simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past. Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion --- and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls. None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see. On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. The U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology --- and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
Ballantine Books | 9781984820662

RADICAL LOVE: From Separation to Connection with the Earth, Each Other, and Ourselves by Satish Kumar (Philosophy/Inspirational)
Paperback Original
Environmental activist Satish Kumar is well known for his epic walk for world peace in his youth in the 1960s from India to the nuclear capitals of Moscow, Paris, London and Washington, DC. Wherever he traveled, he found that human beings were capable of a love that could overcome hatred and division. Settling down in the UK, he married his wife, June Mitchell, and founded eco-university Schumacher College in Devon, eventually becoming a leading figure in the UK green movement. RADICAL LOVE distills the author's lifetime of experience as a lover, parent, activist and educator into simple lessons on transforming our time of ecological crisis, conflict and scarcity into one in which we experience harmony with nature, safety and abundance.
Parallax Press | 9781952692352

RIZZOLI & ISLES: LISTEN TO ME by Tess Gerritsen (Thriller)
Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are newly plagued by what seems like a completely senseless murder. Sofia Suarez, a widow and nurse who was universally liked by her neighbors, lies bludgeoned to death in her own home. But anything can happen behind closed doors, and Sofia seemed to have plenty of secrets in her last days, making covert phone calls to traceless burner phones. When Jane finally makes a connection between Sofia and the victim of a hit-and-run from months earlier, the case only grows more blurry. What exactly was Sofia involved in? One thing is clear: The killer will do anything it takes to keep their secret safe.
Ballantine Books | 9780593497159

SANKOFA by Chibundu Onuzo (Fiction)
Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president --- some would say dictator --- of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive. When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny and fascinating.
Catapult | 9781646221585

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan (Fiction)
Frida Liu doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Until Frida has a very bad day. The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed.
S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781982156138

SCOUNDREL: The True Story of the Murderer Who Charmed His Way to Fame and Freedom by Sarah Weinman (True Crime)
In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s SCOUNDREL leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame...and eventually to attempting murder again.
Ecco | 9780062899774

SECRET IDENTITY by Alex Segura (Literary Mystery)
Carmen Valdez, an assistant at Triumph Comics, is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to figure out what happened to him. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.
Flatiron Books | 9781250801760

SECRETLY YOURS by Tessa Bailey (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Hallie Welch fell hard for Julian Vos at 14 after they almost kissed in the dark vineyards of his family’s winery. Now the prodigal hottie has returned to their small Napa town, and Hallie is hired to revamp the gardens on the Vos estate. But the grumpy professor isn’t the teenager she remembers, and their polar opposite personalities clash spectacularly. One wine-fueled girls’ night later, Hallie can’t shake the sense that she did something reckless --- and then she remembers the drunken secret admirer letter she left for Julian. On sabbatical from his ivy league job, Julian plans to write a novel. But having Hallie garden right outside his window is the ultimate distraction. There’s something so familiar about her...and her very presence is turning his world upside down.
Avon | 9780063238985

SHADOWS OF PECAN HOLLOW by Caroline Frost (Fiction)
It was 1970 when 13-year-old runaway Kit Walker was abducted by Manny Romero, a smooth-talking, low-level criminal, who first coddled her and then groomed her into his partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny were infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome. Twenty years after they meet, Kit has scraped together a life for herself and her daughter amongst the pecan trees and muddy creeks of the town of Pecan Hollow, far from Manny. But when he shows up at her doorstep a new man, fresh out of prison, Kit is forced to reckon with the shadows of her past, and her community is sent into a tailspin.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063065352

SOMETHING WILDER by Christina Lauren (Romantic Comedy)
Growing up the daughter of notorious treasure hunter and absentee father Duke Wilder left Lily without much patience for the profession…or much money in the bank. But Lily is nothing if not resourceful, and now she uses Duke’s coveted hand-drawn maps to guide tourists on fake treasure hunts through the red rock canyons of Utah. It pays the bills but doesn’t leave enough to fulfill her dream of buying back the beloved ranch her father sold years ago, and definitely not enough to deal with the sight of the man she once loved walking back into her life with a motley crew of friends ready to hit the trails.
Gallery Books | 9781982173418

TRULY, MADLY: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century by Stephen Galloway (Biography)
In 1934, a friend brought fledgling actress Vivien Leigh to see "Theatre Royal," where she would first lay eyes on Laurence Olivier in his brilliant performance as Anthony Cavendish. That night, she confided to a friend that he was the man she was going to marry. There was just one problem: she was already married --- and so was he. TRULY, MADLY is the biography of a marriage, a love affair that still captivates millions, even decades after both actors' deaths. Vivien and Larry seemed to have it all. Yet, in their own minds, they were doomed, blighted by her long-undiagnosed mental illness, which transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538731987

WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW by Kai Harris (Fiction)
WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down. Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets.
Tiny Reparations Books | 9780593185360

WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS by Heather O'Neill (Historical Fiction)
Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.
Riverhead Books | 9780593422915

WILD AND WICKED THINGS by Francesca May (Historical Fantasy)
On Crow Island, people whisper that real magic lurks just below the surface. Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one. Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor. Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island's extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world, where the cost of illicit magic might be death.
Redhook | 9780316287265

On Sale the Week of February 13th in Hardcover

February 14th

THE APPLICANT by Nazlı Koca (Fiction)
Leyla, a Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her failure. She attempts to find solace in the techno beats of Berlin’s nightlife but with little success. Right as the clock winds down on the hold on her visa, Leyla meets a conservative Swedish tourist and --- against her political convictions and better judgment --- begins to fall in love, or something like it. Will she accept an IKEA life with the Volvo salesman and relinquish her creative dreams, or return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, her father’s ghost still haunting their lives?
Grove Press | 9780802160546

BLACK WOLF by Kathleen Kent (Thriller)
It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission with the CIA. To the prying eyes of the KGB, she is merely a secretary; to her CIA minders, she is the only one who can stop the flow of nuclear weapons from the crumbling Soviet Union into the Middle East. For Mel has a secret: she is a “super recognizer,” someone who never forgets a face. But no training could prepare her for the reality of life undercover, and for the streets of Minsk, where women have been disappearing. Soviet law enforcement is firm: murder is a capitalist disease. But could a serial killer be at work? As Mel searches for answers, she catches the eye of an entirely different kind of threat: the elusive and petrifying “Black Wolf,” head of the KGB.
Mulholland Books | 9780316280211

BRIGHT AND DEADLY THINGS by Lexie Elliott (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
The Chalet des Anglais should be the ideal locale for recently widowed Oxford don Emily to begin cutting through the fog of her grief. The rustic chalet nestled at the foot of the verdant, snow-topped Alps should afford Emily both time and space to heal. Joining her will be a collection of friends from the university, as well as other fellows, graduates and undergraduates. Something feels off, though, heightening Emily’s existing grief-induced anxiety. Her friends and colleagues are behaving oddly, and as hostilities grow, she begins to wonder if the chalet’s dark history has cast a shadow over the retreat. When a student disappears, Emily realizes that she’d better separate friend from foe, and real from imagined --- or the next disappearance may be her own.
Berkley | 9780593098721

THE CLIFF'S EDGE: A Bess Crawford Mystery by Charles Todd (Historical Mystery)
Restless and uncertain of her future in the wake of World War I, former battlefield nurse Bess Crawford agrees to travel to Yorkshire to help a friend of her cousin Melinda through surgery. But circumstances change suddenly when news of a terrible accident reaches them. Bess agrees to go to isolated Scarfdale and the Neville family, where one man has been killed and another gravely injured. The police are asking questions, and Bess is quickly drawn into the fray as two once close families take sides. When another tragedy strikes, the police are ready to make an arrest. What dark truth is behind these deaths? And what about the tale of an older murder --- one that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Nevilles?
William Morrow | 9780063039940

DEATH OF A TRAITOR: A Hamish Macbeth Murder Mystery by M. C. Beaton with R.W. Green (Mystery)
Kate Hibbert is all too eager to lend a hand to her neighbors. Although she has been a resident of the sleepy village of Lochdubh for only a year, in that time Kate has alienated one too many of its residents with her interfering --- and not entirely well-intentioned --- ways. When Kate’s neighbor sees her lugging a heavy suitcase to the bus stop, he hopes that the prying woman is leaving for good. But two weeks later, Kate’s cousin arrives in town with the news that Kate has gone missing --- and she demands that the local police step in. Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is called in to investigate the disappearance, and soon he is befuddled by a storm of lies, intrigue and scandal…and the sneaking suspicion that Kate was someone much more sinister than she claimed.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538746769

ESSEX DOGS by Dan Jones (Historical Thriller)
July 1346. Ten men land on the beaches of Normandy. They call themselves the Essex Dogs: an unruly platoon of archers and men-at-arms led by a battle-scarred captain whose best days are behind him. The fight for the throne of the largest kingdom in Western Europe has begun. Heading ever deeper into enemy territory toward Crécy, this band of brothers knows they are off to fight a battle that will forge nations and shape the very fabric of human lives. But first they must survive a bloody war in which rules are abandoned and chivalry itself is slaughtered.
Viking | 9780593653784

HOURGLASS by Keiran Goddard (Fiction)
The second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar. It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp. We were good at that. We could have fit an entire universe inside a matchbox. Exquisitely crafted, richly imagined and as funny as it is moving, HOURGLASS is an unusual and uniquely told love story. Turning time upside down, it combs the wreckage of personal heartbreak for something universal and asks what it means to lose what you love.
Europa Editions | 9781609458171

IF A POEM COULD LIVE AND BREATHE: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love by Mary Calvi (Historical Fiction)
Cambridge, 1878. The era of the Gilded Age. Alice Lee sets out to break from the norms of her mother’s generation. Women are fighting for educational opportunities and exploring a new sense of intellectual and personal freedom. Native New Yorker and Harvard student Teddy Roosevelt is on his own journey of discovery, and when they meet, unrelenting currents of love change the trajectory of his life forever. Studded with the real love letters between a young Theodore Roosevelt and Boston beauty Alice Lee --- many of them never before published --- IF A POEM COULD LIVE AND BREATHE makes vivid what many historians believe to be the pivotal years that made the future president into the man of action that defined his political life and cemented his legacy.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250277831

IRON CURTAIN: A Love Story by Vesna Goldsworthy (Fiction)
Milena Urbanska is a red princess living in a Soviet satellite state in the 1980s. She enjoys limitless luxury and limited freedom; the end of the Cold War seems unimaginable. When she meets Jason, a confident but politically naive British poet, they fall into bed together. Before long, Milena is planning her escape. She follows Jason to London, where she’s shocked to find herself living in bohemian poverty. The rented apartment is dingy, the food disgusting and Jason’s family withholding, but at least there are no hidden cameras recording her every move. As she adjusts to her new life, however, Milena discovers the dark side of Jason’s idea of freedom.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324021728

THE LAST ORPHAN: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz (Thriller)
As a child, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as an off-the-books assassin for the government as part of the Orphan program. When he broke with the program, he remade himself as The Nowhere Man, dedicated to helping the most desperate in their times of trouble, and found himself slowly back on the government's radar. But Orphan X has always been several steps ahead of his pursuers. Until he makes one little mistake. Now the President has him in her control and offers Evan a deal --- eliminate a rich, powerful man she says is too dangerous to live, and she'll let Evan survive. But when Evan left the Program, he swore to only use his skills against those who really deserve it. Now he has to decide what's more important --- his principles or his life.
Minotaur Books | 9781250252326

THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE by Roshani Chokshi (Magical Realism/Romance)
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. In exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past. But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo’s dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife’s secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage…or their lives.
William Morrow | 9780063206502

THE LAUGHTER by Sonora Jha (Fiction)
Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor. Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver’s long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Drawn to them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent. After protests break out demanding diversity across the university, Oliver finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems.
HarperVia | 9780063240254

LYING BESIDE YOU: A Cyrus Haven Novel by Michael Robotham (Psychological Thriller)
As a boy, Cyrus Haven survived a family massacre and slowly pieced his life back together. Now, after almost 20 years, his brother is applying to be released from a secure psychiatric hospital --- and Cyrus is expected to forgive Elias and welcome him home. Cyrus is now a successful psychologist, working with the police, and sharing his house with Evie Cormac, a damaged and gifted teenager who can tell when someone is lying. When a man is murdered and his daughter disappears, Cyrus is called in to help piece together Maya Kirk’s last hours. Police believe she was drugged and driven away from the same bar where Evie is working. A second victim is soon taken, and Evie is the only person who glimpsed the man behind the wheel. But only two people believe her. One is Cyrus. The other is the killer.
Scribner | 9781982166489

MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR by Daisy Alpert Florin (Fiction)
It’s 1998, and Isabel Rosen has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder. But now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place --- until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling. Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel’s writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful and talented. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is --- for better and worse.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250857033

ON THE SAVAGE SIDE by Tiffany McDaniel (Fiction)
Arcade and Daffodil are twins born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother’s stories. Together, they disappear into their imaginations and forge a world all their own. But what the two sisters can’t escape are the generational ghosts that haunt their family. Growing up in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the sisters cling tightly to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with the memories of her early life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. As her friends disappear around her, Arcade is forced to reckon with the past while the killer circles closer.
Knopf | 9780593320709

PLAYHOUSE by Richard Bausch (Fiction)
As renovations begin at the Shakespeare Theater of Memphis, life for the core members of the company seems to be falling into disarray. Their trusted director has just retired, and theater manager Thaddeus Deerforth dreads the arrival of an imperious, inscrutable visiting director. Claudette, struggling to make ends meet as an actor and destabilized by family troubles, is getting frequent calls from her ex-boyfriend --- and also the narcissistic, lecherous television actor who has been recruited to play King Lear in their fall production. Also invited to the cast is Malcolm Ruark, a disgraced TV anchor muddling through the fallout of a scandal involving his underaged niece --- and suddenly in an even more precarious situation when the same niece, now 18, is cast to play Cordelia.
Knopf | 9780451494849

THE SUN WALKS DOWN by Fiona McFarlane (Fiction)
In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him. As they scour the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly --- newlyweds, farmers, mothers, indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, artists, schoolteachers, widows, maids and policemen --- confront their relationships, both with one another and with the landscape they inhabit. The colonial Australia of THE SUN WALKS DOWN is noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods --- the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374606237

TELL HER EVERYTHING by Mirza Waheed (Fiction)
As he prepares for a visit from his estranged daughter, Dr K, a retired surgeon enjoying the comforts of retirement in London, rehearses the conversations he will have with her over the course of her visit. It’s been years since he has seen her. He spent much of his time polishing the confession he wants to make to her. As her visit gets closer, he recalls the country, a prosperous oil monarchy, he left India for to make his home and career. A dream job, the hospital he worked was just a 10-minute walk from home. He had access to a lifestyle that he never would have had back home. Money and success came quickly, but the price was steep and often unbearable, especially to a wife and daughter who watch him walk the perilous path of lifelong ambition.
Melville House | 9781685890438

VARINA PALLADINO'S JERSEY ITALIAN LOVE STORY by Terri-Lynne DeFino (Fiction)
Lively widow Varina Paladino has lived in the same house in Wyldale, New Jersey, her entire life. The town might be slightly stuck in the 1960s, but its population is getting younger and the Paladinos are embracing the change. What Varina is not embracing is dating. Running Paladino’s Italian Specialties grocery, caring for her mother and keeping her large, loud Jersey Italian family from killing one another take up all of Varina’s energy anyway. Sylvia Spini worries about her daughter being left all alone when she dies; she knows what it is to be old and alone. So when her granddaughter, Donatella, comes to her with an ill-conceived plan to find Varina a man, she dives in. The three men of the family are each secretly plotting their own big life changes, which will throw everyone for a loop.
William Morrow | 9780063228436

On Sale the Week of February 13th in Paperback

February 14th

3 DAYS TO LIVE by James Patterson (Thriller)
Paperback Original
The people closest to you can be your most dangerous enemies in this heart-pounding collection of three brand-new thrillers from the master of suspense. A CIA-agent bride is on her European honeymoon when she and her husband are poisoned --- leaving her 72 hours to take revenge (with Duane Swierczynski). When a deal goes bad on a tech executive in Washington, DC, he turns an order to kill his family into a chance to relive his military glory days (with Bill Schweigart). A Los Angeles doctor trusts her two housekeepers, but when she’s murdered in a botched attempt to steal drugs, the pair of grifters vie to control their former employer’s estate --- facing off against the Russian mob (with Julie Margaret Hogben).
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538752746

AGATHA CHRISTIE: First Lady of Crime edited by H. R. F. Keating (Essays)
Agatha Christie was not only the most successful author of detective stories the world has ever known, she was also a mystery in herself, giving only the rarest interviews --- declining absolutely to become any sort of public figure --- and a mystery, too, in the manner in which she achieved her astonishing success. Distinguished crime novelist (and acclaimed critic) H. R. F. Keating brings together a dozen noted writers from both sides of the Atlantic to throw light on the ever-intriguing Dame Agatha. Some essays analyze Christie’s art itself; others explain the reasons for her success --- not just the books, but also in film and theater.
Pegasus Crime | 9781639362943

THE CAGE by Bonnie Kistler (Psychological Thriller)
On a cold, misty Sunday night, two women are alone in the offices of fashion conglomerate Claudine de Martineau International. One is the company’s human resources director. Impeccably dressed and perfectly coiffed, she sits at her desk and stares somberly out the window. Down the hall, her colleague, one of the company’s lawyers, is buried under a pile of paperwork, frantically rushing to finish. Leaving at the same time, the two women, each preoccupied by her own thoughts, enter the elevator that will take them down from the 30th floor. When they arrive at the lobby, one of the women is dead. Was it murder or suicide?
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063089167

CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (History/Sociology)
Beyond race, class or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma and more. Using riveting stories about people --- including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others --- she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. CASTE is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593230275

DIABLO MESA: A Nora Kelly Novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
Lucas Tappan, a wealthy and eccentric billionaire and founder of Icarus Space Systems, approaches the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute with an outlandish proposal --- to finance a careful, scientific excavation of the Roswell Incident site, where a UFO is alleged to have crashed in 1947. A skeptical Nora Kelly is tasked with the job. Nora's excavation immediately uncovers two murder victims buried at the site, faces and hands obliterated with acid to erase their identities. Special Agent Corrie Swanson is assigned to the case. As Nora’s excavation proceeds, uncovering things both bizarre and seemingly inexplicable, Corrie’s homicide investigation throws open a Pandora's box of espionage and violence.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538736760

GROUNDSKEEPING by Lee Cole (Fiction)
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early 20s, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college, in exchange for which he is permitted to take a writing course. Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks --- a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma --- who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants --- struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family and home.
Vintage | 9780593314784

HEARTBREAK: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams (Memoir)
When her 25-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much --- and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324050452

MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING by Marlon James (Historical Fantasy)
In BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud --- seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch --- that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.
Riverhead Books | 9780735220218

A NARROW DOOR by Joanne Harris (Psychological Thriller)
It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely 40, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered. But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She'll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. After all, you can't keep a good woman down.
Pegasus Crime | 9781639363667

OUR AMERICAN FRIEND by Anna Pitoniak (Thriller)
Paris, 1974. Lara Orlov and her family arrive from Moscow at the height of the Cold War, thanks to her father’s position as a diplomat. The years pass, and Lara becomes more and more enamored with the City of Lights. As a teenager in Paris, she falls deeply in love with fellow Russian expat Sasha, who opens her eyes to the ills of the Soviet Union. Decades later, journalist Sofie Morse gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine. She knows little about Lara --- only that she was born in Soviet Russia and raised in Paris before marrying Henry Caine, the brash future president. After decades of silence, Lara is finally ready to speak candidly about her past. As Sofie begins to write Lara’s biography, she can’t help but wonder: Why is Lara revealing such sensitive information? And why now?
Simon & Schuster | 9781982158965

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 Paperbacks | 9780062834980

THE RECOVERY AGENT by Janet Evanovich (Thriller/Adventure)
As a recovery agent, Gabriela Rose is hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms or missing assets of any kind. But her latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire. It’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast. Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Cortez. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it --- Gabriela’s ex-husband, Rafer. It’s Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he’s not about to let Gabriela find it without him. It’s going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who also has been searching for the fabled ring.
Atria Books | 9781982154929

THE THOUSAND EYES by A. K. Larkwood (Fantasy/Adventure)
Two years after defying the wizard Belthandros Sethennai and escaping into the great unknown, Csorwe and Shuthmili have made a new life for themselves, hunting for secrets among the ruins of an ancient snake empire. Along for the ride is Tal Charossa, determined to leave the humiliation and heartbreak of his hometown far behind him, even if it means enduring the company of his old rival and her insufferable girlfriend. All three of them would be quite happy never to see Sethennai again. But when a routine expedition goes off the rails and a terrifying imperial relic awakens, they find that a common enemy may be all it takes to bring them back into his orbit.
Tor Books | 9781250238955

A THOUSAND STEPS by T. Jefferson Parker (Historical Thriller)
Laguna Beach, California, 1968. Folks from all over are flocking there seeking peace, love and enlightenment. Matt Anthony is just trying to get by. Matt is 16, broke and never sure where his next meal is coming from. Mom is a stoner, his deadbeat dad is a no-show, his brother is fighting in Vietnam…and his big sister, Jazz, has just gone missing. The cops figure she’s just another runaway hippie chick, enjoying a summer of love, but Matt doesn’t believe it. Not after another missing girl turns up dead on the beach. In a town where the cops don’t trust the hippies and the hippies don’t trust the cops, uncovering what’s really happened to Jazz is going to force Matt to grow up fast.
Forge Books | 9781250890214

WATERGATE: A New History by Garrett M. Graff (History/Politics)
In the early hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard named Frank Wills enters six words into the log book of the Watergate office complex that will change the course of history: 1:47 AM Found tape on doors; call police. The subsequent arrests of five men seeking to bug and burgle the Democratic National Committee offices --- three of them Cuban exiles, two of them former intelligence operatives --- quickly unravels a web of scandal that ultimately ends a presidency and forever alters views of moral authority and leadership. Watergate becomes a shorthand for corruption, deceit and unanswered questions. Now, award-winning journalist Garrett M. Graff explores the full scope of this unprecedented moment from start to finish in the first comprehensive, single-volume account in decades.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982139179

WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Fiction/Magical Realism)
In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St. Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out. Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where a reckoning with fate beckons them both.
Anchor | 9780593313619

THE YEAR OF THE HORSES: A Memoir by Courtney Maum (Memoir)
At the age of 37, Courtney Maum finds herself in an indoor arena in Connecticut, moments away from stepping back into the saddle. For her, this is not just a riding lesson, but a last-ditch attempt to pull herself back from the brink even though riding is a relic from the past she walked away from. Although Maum does know what depression looks like, she finds herself refusing to admit, at this point in her life, that it could look like her: a woman with a privileged past, a mortgage, a husband, a healthy child and a published novel. When both therapy and medication fail, Courtney returns to her childhood passion of horseback riding as a way to recover the joy and fearlessness she once had access to as a young girl.
Tin House Books | 9781953534828

THE YOUNGER WIFE by Sally Hepworth (Domestic Thriller)
A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself. Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money. With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is. Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses
in all of them?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250229687

Please visit the other websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com: ReadingGroupGuides.com and AuthorsOnTheWeb.com.

And be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.