October 31, 2023

October 31, 2023

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of October 30th and November 6th 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 New Release Spotlight of SISTERS UNDER THE RISING SUN by Heather Morris, a novel of sisterhood, bravery and friendship in the darkest of circumstances from the bestselling author of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, CILKA'S JOURNEY and THREE SISTERS.

Our 12 ½ Annual Book Group Speed Dating event will take place THIS Friday, November 3rd at 1pm ET. If you are a librarian, bookseller or book club leader of three or more groups, and would be interested in attending this event, please email Carol and tell her a bit about yourself using the subject line “Speed Dating.” Although this is a “trade only” event, we will be sharing the publisher videos, PowerPoint slides and other materials with you later in November.

P.S. For those of you who shop online, if you use the store links that appear on our site for shopping, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound. As you read our reviews and features, we would appreciate your considering this as you buy!

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

Here are four upcoming virtual book and author events that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links for more info and to register.

Wednesday, November 1st at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Janice Hallett will talk about her new novel, THE CHRISTMAS APPEAL, an immersive holiday caper that follows the hilarious Fairway Players theater group as they put on a Christmas play --- and solve a murder that threatens their production.

Wednesday, November 1st 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 Angie Kim about her new novel, HAPPINESS FALLS, which is both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis.

Wednesday, November 1st at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Andrew Klavan will talk about his new mystery, THE HOUSE OF LOVE AND DEATH, the latest entry in his Cameron Winter series. The ex-spy-turned-English professor defies accepted narratives and corrupt local authorities to investigate the murder of a wealthy family in the Chicago suburbs.

Tuesday, November 7th at 8pm ET: Book Passage: Paul Auster will be in conversation with Rachel DeWoskin about his new novel, BAUMGARTNER, which asks the question: Why do we remember certain moments and forget others?

This Week's Bonus News:
Our New Release Spotlight of
SISTERS UNDER THE RISING SUN by Heather Morris

On Sale the Week of October 30th in Hardcover

October 31st

ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott (Historical Fiction)
Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations. They discover how their own lives as women on the periphery have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374610487

BEING HENRY: The Fonz...and Beyond by Henry Winkler (Memoir)
Henry Winkler, who was launched into prominence as “The Fonz” in “Happy Days,” has transcended the role that made him who he is. In this achingly vulnerable memoir, Henry shares the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you. Since the glorious era of “Happy Days” fame, Henry has endeared himself to a new generation with roles in such adored shows as “Arrested Development,” “Parks and Recreation” and “Barry,” where he’s been revealed as an actor with immense depth and pathos, a departure from the period of his life when he was so distinctly typecast as The Fonz, he could hardly find work.
Celadon Books | 9781250888099

THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters (Fiction)
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come. In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her --- and she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.
Catapult | 9781646221950

BLOOD SISTERS by Vanessa Lillie (Mystery/Thriller)
As an archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown 15 years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling. When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored --- as so often happens in cases of missing Native women. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades.
Berkley | 9780593550113

DIRTY THIRTY: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich (Mystery)
Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered a freelance assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (aka Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds out of his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day. As the body count rises and witnesses start to disappear, it won’t be easy for Stephanie to keep herself clean when everyone else is playing dirty. It’s a good thing Stephanie isn’t afraid of getting a little dirty, too.
Atria Books | 9781668003091

EDITH HOLLER by Edward Carey (Historical Fiction)
The year is 1901. England’s beloved queen has died, and her aging son has finally taken the throne. In the eastern city of Norwich, bright and inquisitive young Edith Holler spends her days among the boisterous denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave its confines. She decides to write a play of her own: a stage adaptation of the legend of Mawther Meg, a monstrous figure said to have used the blood of countless children to make the local delicacy known as Beetle Spread. But when her father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar, imposing woman --- heir to the actual Beetle Spread fortune --- Edith scrambles to protect her father, the theatre and her play from the newcomer’s sinister designs.
Riverhead Books | 9780593188903

FROM A FAR AND LOVELY COUNTRY: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (24) by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni are approached by an American woman who seeks the help of Botswana’s premier detective. Julia’s beloved late grandfather was Botswanan, and he instilled in her an abiding love of his homeland. Now, years after his passing, Julia has come to visit the land he had spoken of so often and to find her relatives. Meanwhile, a second case leads Mma Ramotswe to look for assistance from an unexpected quarter. For the first time, Charlie leads his own investigation at the detective agency, going undercover into a dubious, word-of-mouth get-together known as the Cool Singles Evening Club, where married men are encouraged to pretend to be single and meet women under false pretenses. Who could be behind such a distasteful venture?
Pantheon | 9780593316993

THE HOUSE OF LOVE AND DEATH: A Cameron Winter Mystery by Andrew Klavan (Hard-boiled Mystery)
Three members of a wealthy family, along with their live-in nanny, are pulled from their burning mansion, already dead from gunshot wounds. The only survivor is a young boy whose memory of the event raises more questions than answers. The police seem happy to settle on a simple explanation and arrest the most obvious suspect, but Cameron Winter knows that obvious solutions are seldom the correct ones, and all too often they hide a darker truth. While Winter’s investigation is welcomed by many who knew the victims, the lead detective makes it clear he wants Winter not only to stop looking for answers, but to stay out of his town altogether. Winter begins to understand why as he slowly uncovers crimes and unsavory behavior that had been ignored long before the killings.
Mysterious Press | 9781613164464

A JOURNEY TO ST. THOMAS: Tales for Our Time by Josiah Hatch III (Fiction)
A JOURNEY TO ST. THOMAS is a modern reimagining of Geoffrey Chaucer’s THE CANTERBURY TALES. Hoping for an adventure (at a discounted price), two dozen strangers set sail for balmy St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. As different from one another as strangers can be, they agree to pass the time by telling stories. As the passengers share their stories, they begin to learn some astonishing things about their neighbors. Then, partway through the voyage, they are notified about a virus that has spread across the United States and their destination. The ship is quarantined, and they are destined to loll on the waves of the open sea until a port welcomes them. Stuck together in the confines of the ship, the group continues to regale each other with ingenious tales.
Fulcrum Publishing | 9781682753347

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due (Historical Fiction/Horror)
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory. Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982188344

THE SUN SETS IN SINGAPORE by Kehinde Fadipe (Fiction)
For Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK, Singapore is opportunity. Every day, brokering deals for her firm’s wealthy clientele, she gets closer to her ultimate goal: making partner. For Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker from Nigeria, Singapore is extravagance. Gucci, Prada, Hermès --- she loves nothing more than to luxuriate in the major department stores that call her name on Orchard Road. And for Lillian, a former pianist turned “trailing spouse” from the U.S., Singapore is reinvention. In a stunning apartment with 360° views, the island seems to glitter as far as the eye can see. But complications are looming in the form of an enigmatic stranger, whose presence exposes cracks in Singapore’s beguiling façade.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538741498

WHEN I'M DEAD: A Black Harbor Novel by Hannah Morrissey (Mystery/Thriller)
On a bone-chilling October night, Medical Examiner Rowan Winthorp investigates the death of her daughter’s best friend. Hours later, the tragedy hits even closer to home when she makes a devastating discovery --- her daughter, Chloe, is gone. But not without a trace. A morbid mosaic of clues forces Rowan and her husband to question how deeply they really knew their daughter. As they work closely to peel back the layers of this case, they begin to unearth disturbing details about Chloe and her secret transgressions…details that threaten to tear them apart. Amidst the noise of navigating her newfound grief and reconciling the sins of her past, an undeniable fact rings true for Rowan: karma has finally come to collect.
Minotaur Books | 9781250872340

November 1st

THE SPY COAST by Tess Gerritsen (Thriller)
Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she’s living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement. But when a body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes who haven’t forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends --- all retirees from the CIA --- to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This “Martini Club” of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they’re eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662515125

On Sale the Week of October 30th in Paperback

October 31st

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by P. J. Tracy (Mystery/Thriller)
Los Angeles has many faces: the real LA where regular people live and work, the degenerate underbelly of any big city, and the rarefied world of wealth, power and celebrity. LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan’s latest case plunges her into this insular realm of privilege and gives her a glimpse of the decay behind the glitter. Beloved actor Evan Hobbes is found in the rubble of a Malibu rockslide, a day after a fake video ruins his career. It’s not clear to Nolan if it’s an accident, a suicide or a murder, and things get murkier as the investigation expands to his luminary friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, Hobbes’ agent is dealing with damage control, his psychotic boss and a woman he’s scorned.
Minotaur Books | 9781250859969

FLIGHT by Lynn Steger Strong (Fiction)
It’s December 22nd, and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.
Mariner Books | 9780063135154

A HEART THAT WORKS by Rob Delaney (Memoir)
In 2018, Rob Delaney’s two-year-old son, Henry, died of a brain tumor. A HEART THAT WORKS is Delaney’s intimate, unflinching and at times fiercely funny exploration of Henry’s beautiful, bright life and the devastation of his loss --- from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that followed through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. In the madness of his grief, Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind. Profound, painful, full of emotion and bracingly honest, Delaney’s memoir offers solace to those who have faced devastation and shows us how grace may appear even in the darkest times.
Spiegel & Grau | 9781954118560

THE HOSTAGE by A. F. Carter (Mystery/Thriller)
A new Nissan plant is coming to the depressed Rust Belt town of Baxter, and Captain Delia Mariola has been busy cleaning up the crime-addled city ever since the deal was announced. But when the 15-year-old daughter of the lead bidder on the construction project --- a wealthy out-of-towner --- suddenly disappears, and it becomes clear that a professional kidnapping ring may be responsible, Delia realizes that the factory’s influx of cash could bring with it an entirely new sort of danger, never before considered in this working class milieu. Though Elizabeth’s abduction was well-planned and bearing the mark of an experienced team, her captors could not have anticipated the quick and clever brilliance of the exceptionally smart teen.
Mysterious Press | 9781613164693

ILLUMINATION: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method by Rebecca Li (Spirituality/Personal Growth)
Paperback Original
Silent illumination, a way of penetrating the mind through curious inquiry, is an especially potent, accessible and portable meditation practice perfectly suited for a time when there is so much fear, upheaval and sorrow in our world. It is a method of reconnecting with our true nature, which encompasses all that exists and where suffering cannot touch us. The practice of silent illumination is simple, allowing each moment to be experienced as it is in order to manifest our innate wisdom and natural capacity for compassion. After guiding readers through the history and practice of silent illumination, Rebecca Li shows us how we can recognize and unlearn our “modes of operation” --- habits of mind that get in the way of being fully present and engaged with life.
Shambhala | 9781645470892

THE PALEONTOLOGIST by Luke Dumas (Literary Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
Curator of paleontology Dr. Simon Nealy never expected to return to his Pennsylvania hometown, let alone the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History. He was just a boy when his six-year-old sister, Morgan, was abducted from the museum under his watch. After a recent breakup and the death of the aunt who raised him, Simon feels drawn back to the place where Morgan vanished. But from the moment he arrives, things aren’t what he expected. The Hawthorne is a crumbling ruin and plummeting toward financial catastrophe. Worse, Simon begins seeing and hearing things he can’t explain. Terrified he’s losing his grasp on reality, Simon turns to the handwritten research diaries of his predecessor and uncovers a blood-soaked mystery 150 million years in the making that could be the answer to everything.
Atria Books | 9781668018262

THE RESEMBLANCE by Lauren Nossett (Mystery/Thriller)
On a chilly November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps off a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling. Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. An Athens native and the daughter of a UGA professor, she knows all its shameful histories, from the skull discovered under the foundations of Baldwin Hall to the hushed-up murder-suicide in Waddel. But in the course of investigating this hit-and-run, she will uncover more chilling secrets as she explores the sprawling, interconnected Greek system that entertains and delights the university’s most elite and connected students.
Flatiron Books | 9781250843265

A STRANGE HABIT OF MIND: A Cameron Winter Mystery by Andrew Klavan (Hard-boiled Mystery)
The world of Big Tech is full of eccentric characters, but shamanic billionaire Gerald Byrne may be the strangest of the bunch. The founder of Byrner, a global social media platform, Byrne is known for speaking with vague profundity and dabbling in esoteric spiritual practices. And every person who gets in the way of his good work seems to die. When a former student commits suicide, English professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter takes it upon himself to understand why. The young man was expelled from the university in an unfortunate episode that left Winter sympathetic to his plight. After a prolonged silence, he reached out to his teacher with two words just before taking the fatal plunge from the roof of his San Francisco apartment: “Help me.”
Mysterious Press | 9781613164679

TOAD by Katherine Dunn (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Sally Gunnar spends her days alone at home, reading drugstore mysteries, polishing the doorknobs and waxing the floors. Her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. She broods over her deepest regrets: her blighted romances with self-important men, her lifelong struggle to feel at home in her own body, and her wayward early 20s, when she was a fish out of water among a group of eccentric, privileged young people at a liberal arts college. There was Sam, an unabashed collector of other people’s stories; Carlotta, a troubled free spirit; and Rennel, a self-obsessed philosophy student. Self-deprecating and sardonic, Sally recounts their misadventures, up to the tragedy that tore them apart.
Picador | 9781250872296

TRESPASSES by Louise Kennedy (Historical Fiction)
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast, teaching at a parochial school and moonlighting at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a Protestant barrister who has made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment, Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.
Riverhead Books | 9780593540909

On Sale the Week of November 6th in Hardcover

November 7th

AGAIN AND AGAIN by Jonathan Evison (Fiction)
Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many --- all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it. Who is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago? As Angel comes to learn the truth about Geno, so, too, does the reader. As his miraculous story comes to a head, so does the biggest truth of all: that love --- timeless, often elusive --- is sometimes right in front of us.
Dutton | 9780593184158

BAUMGARTNER by Paul Auster (Fiction)
The life of Sy Baumgartner --- phenomenologist, noted author and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor --- had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next 40 years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802161444

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WILD by Peggy Townsend (Thriller)
It’s summer in Alaska, and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and gray. Around her is thick forest and jagged mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape. Carrying her own secrets and a fierce need to protect her young son, Liv must navigate a new world where extreme weather, starvation and dangerous wildlife are not the only threats she faces. With winter's arrival imminent, she knows she must reckon with her past and the choices that brought her to the unforgiving Alaskan landscape if she is ever going to make it out alive.
Berkley | 9780593638088

BETRAYAL: A Robin Lockwood Novel by Phillip Margolin (Legal Thriller)
Robin Lockwood is now a prominent defense attorney in Portland, Oregon, but a decade ago, she was a ranked and rising MMA fighter. Her career came to a quick end when she was knocked out and concussed in the first round by Mandy Kerrigan. Now the situation couldn't be more different, with Kerrigan arrested for the quadruple murder of the entire Finch family...and Kerrigan's only possible friend is the attorney she beat so many years ago. For Robin, it's no simple case: Margaret Finch was a lawyer working for vicious Russian mobsters, and was in the crosshairs of both the mobsters and the widower of a woman a client killed. To complicate matters further, the DA who Robin is facing is the man she's just started dating, the first person she's begun seeing seriously after her husband was killed.
Minotaur Books | 9781250885791

BLOOD BETRAYAL: A Detective Inaya Rahman Novel by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Mystery/Thriller)
In Blackwater Falls, Colorado, veteran police officer Harry Cooper is hot on the heels of some local vandals when the situation turns deadly: believing one of them has a gun, Harry opens fire and Duante Reed, a young Black man, is killed. The "gun" in his hands was a bottle of spray paint. Meanwhile, in nearby Denver, a drug raid goes south and a Latino teen, Mateo Ruiz, is also killed. Detective Inaya Rahman is all too familiar with the name of the young cop who has seemingly killed Mateo: Kelly Broda. Kelly is the son of the police officer John Broda, who led a violent attack on her when they were both in Denver. No one is more surprised than Inaya when John turns up on her doorstep, pleading for her help in proving the innocence of his son.
Minotaur Books | 9781250822406

BREAKING TWITTER: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History by Ben Mezrich (Business & Economics)
BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time --- Elon Musk --- and the company that represents our culture’s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed, or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? What, really, is his end goal?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538707593

A CHRISTMAS VANISHING by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
Mariah Ellison, Charlotte Pitt’s grandmother, accepts her longtime friend Sadie’s gracious invitation to spend Christmas with her and her husband, Barton, in their picturesque village. But upon arrival, Mariah discovers that Sadie has vanished without a trace, and Barton rudely rescinds the invitation. Once Mariah finds another acquaintance to stay with during the holiday season, she begins investigating Sadie’s disappearance. Mariah’s uncanny knack for solving mysteries serves her well during her search, which is driven by gossip as icy as the December weather. Did Sadie run off with another man? Was she kidnapped? Has someone harmed her? Frustratingly, Mariah’s questions reveal more about the villagers themselves than about her friend’s whereabouts.
Ballantine Books | 9780593359181

CLASS: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land (Memoir)
When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir, MAID, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called “an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor.” Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series “Maid.” MAID was a story about a housecleaner, but it also was a story about a woman with a dream. In CLASS, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn --- including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line --- Land finds a way to survive once again.
Atria/One Signal Publishers | 9781982151393

CLIVE CUSSLER THE CORSICAN SHADOW: A Dirk Pitt Novel by Dirk Cussler (Thriller/Adventure)
In May 1940, as the German army blitzes Europe and Parisians flee their city, the chief curator of the Musée de l’Armée is ordered to get a mysterious piece of cargo out of the country. When he arrives at the port of Le Havre and learns that his intended ship has been sunk, he places the object on a decrepit steamer that sails out under German fire. In the present day, National Underwater and Marine Agency Director Dirk Pitt is on a diving expedition in the English Channel when he discovers a cache of uncut diamonds on a shipwreck. When the diamonds are stolen, Pitt and the NUMA agency find themselves up against a murderous cabal that soon reveals far more destructive plans than mere theft. Vital water treatment facilities around the globe are being targeted --- placing the world’s population in grave peril.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593544174

THE CORE OF AN ONION: Peeling the Rarest Common Food — Featuring More Than 100 Historical Recipes by Mark Kurlansky (Cooking/History)
Flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews and sauces, but for medicines, metaphors and folklore. Now they're Mark Kurlansky's most flavorful infatuation yet as he sets out to explore how and why the crop reigns from Italy to India and everywhere in between. Featuring historical images and his own pen-and-ink drawings, Kurlansky begins with the science and history of the only sulfuric acid-spewing plant, then digs through its 20 varieties and the cultures built around them. Entering the kitchen, he celebrates the raw, roasted, creamed, marinated and pickled. THE CORE OF AN ONION also includes a recipe section featuring more than 100 dishes from around the world.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635575934

DEUS X: An August Snow Novel by Stephen Mack Jones (Mystery/Thriller)
Father Michael Grabowski, a Franciscan priest who has tended the spiritual needs of Detroit’s Mexicantown for 40 years, has suddenly retired. August Snow, who has known the priest his whole life, finds the circumstances troubling --- especially in light of the recent suspicious suicide of another local priest. What dark history is Father Grabowski hiding? The situation takes a turn for the deadly with the appearance at the Detroit diocese of a mysterious priest and combat vet calling himself Francis Dominioni Petra. The man comes from the Vatican, and as his armored guard circles closer and closer to Father Grabowski and his friends, August wants to know why. A terrible crime has been committed in the name of faith. But who is seeking justice, and who is trying to bury the truth and any of its witnesses?
Soho Crime | 9781641294959

DOLLS OF OUR LIVES: Why We Can't Quit American Girl by Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks (Popular Culture)
Which American Girl are you? Are you a Molly (a patriotic overachiever with a flair for drama)? Felicity (the original horse girl)? Kirsten (a cottagecore fan who seems immune to cholera), Samantha (a savior complex in a sailor suit), or Josefina (who dealt with grief by befriending a baby goat)? Have you ever wondered how Britney Spears or Michelle Kwan would answer that question? And why do we care so much which girl we are? Combining history, travelogue and memoir, DOLLS OF OUR LIVES follows Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks on an unforgettable journey to the past as they delve into the origins of this iconic brand. Continuing the conversations that began on their podcast, they set out to answer the lingering questions that keep them up at night.
Feiwel & Friends | 9781250792839

FACE OF GREED by James L'Etoile (Mystery/Thriller)
When a prominent Sacramento businessman is killed and his wife injured in a brutal home invasion, Detective Emily Hunter and her partner, Javier Medina, are called to investigate. At first glance, it seems like a crime of opportunity gone horribly wrong, but Emily soon finds there might be more to both the crime and the dead man. The high-stakes investigation also comes at a time when Emily is caring for her mother, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Emily struggles to balance her job with her personal life. The city’s political elite seem to want the case solved quickly, but darker forces want it buried. Could there have been a motive behind the attack, making it more than a random home invasion? Emily uncovers clues that cause her to reconsider her understanding of the crime.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608095872

THE FAVORITES by Rosemary Hennigan (Psychological Thriller)
From the moment she discovered her sister’s secret relationship with charismatic professor Jay Crane, Jessie Mooney has been convinced that he’s to blame for the events leading to her death. Haunted by their last email exchange --- You know what you did --- she enrolls in graduate school and competes her way into Crane’s famous “Law and Literature” class, setting into motion a plan to get close to him so she can expose who he really is. Jessie will cross any line to hold Crane accountable. But when she finally earns his trust and the coveted position as one of his “favorites,” attracting the other students’ envy and suspicion, the truth becomes darkly twisted. Is it justice Jessie craves, or revenge? And what does she stand to lose if she gets her way?
Graydon House | 9781525805097

FOUNDING PARTISANS: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics by H. W. Brands (History)
To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In FOUNDING PARTISANS, master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.
Doubleday | 9780385549240

THE FUTURE by Naomi Alderman (Science Fiction/Thriller)
When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. If the apocalyptic warnings in her father’s fox and rabbit sermon are starting to come true, how much future is actually left? Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, an internet-famous survivalist named Lai Zhen flees from an assassin. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future? Martha and Zhen’s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668025680

THE GIRL IN THE VAULT by Michael Ledwidge (Thriller)
Not only has Faye Walker scored one of the most highly coveted internships in all of Wall Street, she also has just met the head-over-heels love of her life. With her natural-born gift for numbers and a work ethic that knows no bounds, Faye is a shoo-in for a full-time position at the illustrious merchant bank Greene Brothers Hale. Then, just as she awaits her offer and her signing bonus, a treacherous betrayal arrives to shatter Faye’s plans and her young life. But what her high finance masters-of-the-universe bosses don’t know is that Faye isn’t like any of the other interns. She now has a new plan --- one that involves Swiss watch timing, nerves of steel and $10 million in cold hard Wall Street cash.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335455086

A GRANDMOTHER BEGINS THE STORY by Michelle Porter (Fiction)
Carter is a young mother who is recently separated. She is curious, angry and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means. Allie, Carter's mother, is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without. Meanwhile, Mamé, in the Afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her. She must find a way to cut herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.
Algonquin Books | 9781643755182

THE HAPPY COUPLE by Naoise Dolan (Fiction)
Meet Celine and Luke. For all intents and purposes, the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more interested in piano than domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. And Vivian (a wedding guest) is the only one with any emotional distance and observes her friends like ants in a colony. As the wedding approaches and their five lives intersect, these characters will each look for a path to the happily ever after. But does it lie at the end of an aisle?
Ecco | 9780063330467

HOT SPRINGS DRIVE by Lindsay Hunter (Fiction)
Jackie Stinson’s best friend is dead, and everyone knows who killed her. Jackie is an ex–emotional eater and mother of four who finally has lost the weight she long yearned to be free of. In her new, sharp-edged body, she goes by Jacqueline. But leaving her old self behind proves harder than she ever imagined. And while she believes she should be happier, misery still chases her, and motherhood threatens to subsume what little is left of her. Jacqueline’s only salve is her best friend Theresa, whose seemingly perfect life she desperately covets. Since they met in the maternity ward 15 years earlier, the two have survived the trials of motherhood side by side. Their bond is tight, but it is not enough to keep Jacqueline from stealing a bit of Theresa’s perfect life.
Roxane Gay Books | 9780802161451

IN THE PINES: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning by Grace Elizabeth Hale (True Crime/History)
Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in jail on suspicion of raping a white woman --- only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. Years later, Hale revisited this story. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy and this haunted strip of the South --- because
Johnson's death was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316564748

IRON FLAME by Rebecca Yarros (Fantasy)
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College, including Violet herself. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet already is wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who has made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is --- unless she betrays the man she loves.
Entangled: Red Tower Books | 9781649374172

KENNEDY 35: A BOX 88 Thriller by Charles Cumming (Thriller)
1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices that will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha. 2023: Eric Appiah, an old friend from Kite’s days at school and an off-the-record BOX 88 asset, makes contact with explosive information about what happened all those years ago in West Africa. When tragedy strikes, Kite must use all the resources at his disposal to protect Martha from a criminal network with links to international terror.
Mysterious Press | 9781613164556

THE LAST OUTLAWS: The Desperate Final Days of the Dalton Gang by Tom Clavin (History)
The dreaded Dalton Gang consisted of three brothers and their rotating cast of colorful accomplices who saw themselves as descended from the legendary James brothers. They soon became legends themselves, beginning their career as common horse thieves before graduating to robbing banks and trains. On October 5, 1892, the Dalton Gang attempted their boldest and bloodiest raid yet: robbing two banks in broad daylight in Coffeyville, Kansas, simultaneously. For the first time ever, the full story of the Dalton Gang's life of crime, culminating in one of the Wild West’s most violent events, are chronicled in detail --- a last gruesome gasp of the age of gunfights.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250282385

THE LIBERATORS by E. J. Koh (Fiction)
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come. From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol ferry accident, E. J. Koh’s exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war.
Tin House Books | 9781959030157

THE MADSTONE by Elizabeth Crook (Western)
Texas hill country, 1868. As 19-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to business in his workshop, he witnesses a stagecoach strand a passenger. The man, a treasure hunter, persuades Benjamin to help track down the vanished coach and a mysterious fortune left aboard. Its passengers include Nell, a pregnant young woman, and her four-year-old son, Tot, who are fleeing Nell’s brutal husband and his murderous brothers. Having told the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of her husband’s gang --- a sadistic group wanted for countless acts of harassment and violence against Black citizens --- Nell is in grave danger. Learning of their plight, Benjamin offers to deliver Nell and Tot to a distant port on the Gulf of Mexico, where they can board a ship to safety.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316564342

THE MANOR HOUSE by Gilly Macmillan (Psychological Thriller)
Nicole and Tom are a normal, loving couple --- until a massive lottery win changes their lives overnight. Soon they’ve moved into a custom-built state-of-the-art Glass Barn on the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in Gloucestershire. They have fancy cars, expensive hobbies and an exclusive lifestyle they never could have imagined. But this dream world quickly turns into a nightmare when Tom is found dead in the swimming pool. Was Tom’s death a tragic accident, or was it something worse? There’s a nice young couple who live in the Manor itself along with their middle-aged housekeeper who has the Coach House. And an old friend of Tom’s from school has turned up to help Nicole get through her grief. But big money can bring big problems and big threats. Is Nicole's life in danger as well?
William Morrow | 9780063074385

MY NAME IS BARBRA by Barbra Streisand (Memoir)
In a career spanning six decades, Barbra Streisand has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major motion picture. In MY NAME IS BARBRA, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career --- from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. Then came a long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed.
Viking | 9780525429524

THE NIGHT PARADE: A Speculative Memoir by Jami Nakamura Lin (Memoir)
As a young woman with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, much of Jami Nakamura Lin’s adolescence was marked by periods of extreme rage and an array of psychiatric treatments. Her relationships suffered as a result, especially as her father’s cancer grasped hold of their family. As she grew older and learned to better manage her episodes, Lin became frustrated with the familiar pattern she found in mental illness and grief narratives, and their focus on recovery. She sought comfort in the stories she’d loved as a child --- tales of ghostly creatures known to terrify in the night. Through the lens of the yokai and other figures from Japanese, Taiwanese and Okinawan legend, she set out to interrogate the very notion of recovery and the myriad ways that fear of difference shapes who we are as a people.
Mariner Books | 9780063213234

THE OLYMPIAN AFFAIR: The Cinder Spires #2 by Jim Butcher (Fantasy/Adventure)
The Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity for centuries. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defense and trade. Now, the Spires hover on the brink of open war. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora's Armada and its new secret weapon --- one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires. A trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war. It will take daring, skill and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion --- assuming that it is not already too late.
Ace | 9780451466822

A POWER UNBOUND by Freya Marske (Historical Fantasy)
After the death of his twin sister, Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world. Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross, who is only in this for the money. When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall --- Jack’s ancestral family estate --- Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets and bloody sacrifice.
Tordotcom | 9781250788955

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING: A Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen (Historical Mystery)
Back home at her estate in Eynsleigh, Lady Georgiana Rannoch impatiently awaits the birth of her baby. But she has plenty to occupy her: her new chef, Pierre, has arrived from Paris, and Sir Hubert, who owns Eynsleigh, is back from his latest expedition. It's time for Georgie to throw her first house party to celebrate his return and show off her new chef. One of the guests is Sir Mortimer Mordred, the author of creepy Gothic horror novels who recently purchased a nearby Elizabethan manor because it has a famous poison garden. He asks Georgie to borrow her new chef for his upcoming party. Shockingly, just after the banquet, several guests become sick. And one dies, apparently poisoned by berries from the garden. But how could this be when they all ate the same meal and the same delectable dessert?
Berkley | 9780593437889

RESURRECTION WALK: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel by Michael Connelly (Legal Thriller)
After getting a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, defense attorney Mickey Haller is inundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence. He enlists his half-brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false. Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, but who still maintains her innocence. Bosch reviews the case and sees elements that don’t add up, and a sheriff’s department intent on bringing quick justice in the killing of one of its own. The path for both lawyer and investigator is fraught with danger from those who don’t want the case reopened and will stop at nothing to keep the Haller-Bosch dream team from finding the truth.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316563765

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park (Fiction)
In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed --- now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture and our tech-fraught lives come together in acclaimed author Ed Park’s novel.
Random House | 9780812998979

SWEET THING by David Swinson (Mystery/Thriller)
In a red brick house on a tree-lined street, DC homicide detective Alex Blum stares at the bullet-pocked body of Chris Doyle. As he roots around for evidence, he finds an old Polaroid: the decedent, arm in arm with Arthur Holland, Blum's informant from years ago when he worked at the Narcotics branch. But Arthur has been missing for days. Blum’s only source: Arthur’s girl, Celeste, whom he can’t get out of his head. Blum is drawn to her and feels compelled to save her from Arthur’s underworld. As the investigation ticks on and dead bodies domino, Blum unearths clues with damning implications for Celeste. Swallowed by desire, Blum’s single misstep sends him tunnelling down a rabbit hole of transgression. He may soon find that the only way out is down below.
Mulholland Books | 9780316528610

THE VULNERABLES by Sigrid Nunez (Fiction)
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. THE VULNERABLES offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. This book reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress.
Riverhead Books | 9780593715512

On Sale the Week of November 6th in Paperback

November 7th

AN AMERICAN MARTYR IN PERSIA: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan (Biography)
Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a 22-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament. The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324065920

BLACKWATER FALLS by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Mystery/Thriller)
Girls from immigrant communities have been disappearing for months in the Colorado town of Blackwater Falls, but the local sheriff is slow to act and the fates of the missing girls are largely ignored. At last, the calls for justice become too loud to ignore when the body of a star student and refugee --- the Syrian teenager Razan Elkader --- is positioned deliberately in a mosque. Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif of the Denver Police are recruited to solve Razan’s murder and quickly uncover a link to other missing and murdered girls. But as Inaya gets closer to the truth, Seif finds ways to obstruct the investigation. Inaya may be drawn to him, but she is wary of his motives: he may be covering up the crimes of their boss, whose connections in Blackwater run deep.
Minotaur Books | 9781250906410

THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS by Aanchal Malhotra (Historical Fiction)
On a January morning in 1938, Samir Vij first locks eyes with Firdaus Khan through the rows of perfume bottles in his family’s ittar shop in Lahore. Over the years that follow, the perfumer’s apprentice and calligrapher’s apprentice fall in love with their ancient crafts and with each other, dreaming of the life they will one day share. But as the struggle for Indian independence gathers force, their beloved city is ravaged by Partition. Suddenly, they find themselves on opposite sides: Samir, a Hindu, becomes Indian, and Firdaus, a Muslim, becomes Pakistani, their love now forbidden. Severed from one another, Samir and Firdaus make a series of fateful decisions that will change the course of their lives forever.
Flatiron Books | 9781250802033

BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST by Travis Baldree (Fantasy/Humor)
Paperback Original
Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk --- so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it. What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do? Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine. Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv ever could have expected.
Tor Books | 9781250886101

THE COLONY: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land by Sally Denton (True Crime)
On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities --- fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late 19th century. In THE COLONY, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan.
Liveright | 9781324094081

A DANGEROUS BUSINESS by Jane Smiley (Historical Mystery)
Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can't resist confronting. Side by side with her friend, Jean, and inspired by her reading --- especially by Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, Dupin --- Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.
Vintage | 9780525436089

DAUGHTERS OF THE NEW YEAR by E.M. Tran (Fiction)
In present-day New Orleans, Xuan Trung, a former beauty queen turned refugee after the Fall of Saigon, is obsessed with divining her daughters' fates through their Vietnamese zodiac signs. But Trac, Nhi and Trieu diverge completely from their immigrant parents' expectations. Successful lawyer Trac hides her sexuality from her family; Nhi competes as the only woman of color on a "Bachelor"-esque reality TV show; and Trieu, a budding writer, is determined to learn more about her familial and cultural past. As the sisters each begin to encounter long-buried secrets from their ancestors, the story of the Trung women unfurls to reveal the dramatic events that brought them to America.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335016010

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley (Dystopian Fiction)
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters --- a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982123109

THE DEVIL’S RANSOM: A Pike Logan Novel by Brad Taylor (Thriller/Adventure)
Conducting a routine cover development trip to Tajikistan, Pike Logan and Jennifer learn that Afghanistan has fallen. A man is on the run --- one who has done more for the United States in Afghanistan than anyone else. Pulled in to extract him, Pike collides headlong into a broader mystery: His covert company, along with every other entity in the Taskforce, has been hit with a ransomware attack, and there’s some connection between the Taliban and the hack. Given the order to track down the perpetrators, he has no idea that the problem set is much, much larger and more dangerous than a simple attack on his organization. That hack was just a test-run, and the real one is coming soon, engendered by a former NSA specialist in the U.S. government.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063358614

DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald (Memoir/Essays)
Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives --- or so he was told. In DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS, Fitzgerald recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639731640

DOOMED LEGACY: A Rick Cahill Novel by Matt Coyle (Hard-boiled Mystery/Thriller)
Private investigator Rick Cahill has been running from his past and chasing the truth his whole life. But his past is relentless --- and so is his CTE, a disease caused by repeated head traumas that has attacked his body and his mind. As Rick struggles to keep his family together, he does a favor for Sara Bhandari, a business contact. Then Sara is murdered, and the police believe her to be yet another victim of a serial rapist who has been terrorizing greater San Diego. But Rick has reason to question their theory. Determined to find the truth at any cost, and against his wife’s warnings, he investigates on his own. Along the way, he bumps up against a sinister private investigative agency and a shady shell corporation that may be hiding more than company secrets.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608095834

FANCY MEETING YOU HERE by Julie Tieu (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Every single one of Elise Ngo’s close girlfriends is getting married within the same few months, and every single one of them has asked her to be both bridesmaid and florist. The stakes are high at Rebecca’s high-profile wedding, where the guests are mostly political connections of Rebecca’s parents. Desperate for the event to go off without a hitch, Elise enlists the help of an outside caterer who turns out to be Ben Yu, Rebecca’s elusive younger brother. Though Ben is prickly and aloof, he offers Elise much-needed business designing flowers for his mom’s campaign fundraisers, and Elise begins to see there’s more to Ben than his gruff and handsome exterior. But their romance takes off as the political campaign ramps up, complicating their relationship with unforeseen consequences.
Avon | 9780063245198

THE FIRST DAY WITHOUT YOU by Melissa Hill (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Leonie has left behind everything and everyone she loves for a fresh start in California. Desperate to outrun the mess she's come from, she hopes the change of scenery can mend her broken heart and bury her secrets forever. But when she discovers a bundle of unread love letters hidden in the back of a wardrobe in her new apartment, she is intrigued by the mystery behind them...and can't help but notice the similarities between them and her own story. With the help of her new friend Alex, a news reporter toting around baggage of her own, Leonie embarks on a quest down the West Coast to find the ill-fated lovers from the letters and reunite them, whatever it takes. Even if it means confronting the hurt she's buried deep within herself.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728267548

THE GOOD PART by Sophie Cousens (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Lucy Young is 26 and tired. Tired of fetching coffees for senior TV producers, sick of going on disastrous dates, and done with living in a damp flat with roommates who never buy toilet paper. After another disappointing date, Lucy stumbles upon a wishing machine. Pushing a coin into the slot, she closes her eyes and wishes with all her might: Please, let me skip to the good part of my life. When she wakes the next morning to a handsome man, a ring on her finger, a high-powered job and two storybook-perfect children, Lucy can’t believe this is real. As she begins to embrace new relationships and the perks of maturity, Lucy will have to ask herself: Can she go back to her previous life? If so, can she stand to leave the good part behind?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593539897

HUNT ON DARK WATERS by Katee Robert (Fantasy/Romance)
Paperback Original
Evelyn is a witch with a perfect storm of impulses: terrible taste in bed partners, sticky fingers and a lust for danger. After she steals from her vampire ex and falls through a portal to another realm, she’s fished out of the waters by a band of seafarers and their telekinetic captain. She’s immediately given a choice --- join their ship’s crew or die. Bowen has no memory of his life before he became one of the Cŵn Annwn. He and his band of pirates are bound by vow to patrol through Threshold, the magical sea in between realms, keeping the portals to other worlds safe. When he rescues Evelyn, he doesn’t expect to be attracted to the unflappably brassy pickpocket. The longer he spends in her presence, the more he begins to question if his heart is the next thing she’ll steal.
Berkley | 9780593639085

THE LAST KING OF AMERICA: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts (Biography)
The best-known modern interpretation of George III is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting and pompous take in “Hamilton.” But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of 18th-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers and disastrous luck.
Penguin Books | 9781984879288

LAST NIGHT AT THE HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN by Sarah James (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made. But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes that any one of the Canteen's luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime. To catch the killer, Annie falls in with Fiona's friends, a bitter and cynical group --- each as uniquely unhappy in their life and career as Annie is in hers --- that call themselves the Ambassador's Club.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728252254

NEVER WAGER WITH A WALLFLOWER by Virginia Heath (Historical Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Miss Venus Merriwell has been waiting for her prince to come since the tender age of 14. The only one true love of her life is the bursting-at-the-seams orphanage in Covent Garden for which she works tirelessly. Galahad Sinclair has spent five years making a success out of his gaming hall in the sleazy docks of the East End. Enough that he can finally afford to buy the pleasure palace of his dreams --- and where better than in the capital’s sinful heart, Covent Garden? The only fly in his ointment is that the perfect building he’s just bought to put it in also happens to be right next door to the orphanage run by his cousin’s wife’s youngest sister. While Venus and Galahad lock horns over practically everything, can either of them take the ultimate gamble --- and learn to love thy neighbor?
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250787804

THE NIGHT TRAVELER by Armando Lucas Correa (Historical Fiction)
Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, she sets in motion a dangerous plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety. Havana, 1958: Now an adult, Lilith has few memories of her mother or her childhood in Germany. But as the flames of revolution ignite, Lilith and her newborn daughter, Nadine, find themselves at a terrifying crossroads. Berlin, 1988: Nadine’s daughter, Luna, encourages her to uncover the truth about the choices her mother and grandmother made to ensure the survival of their children. And it will fall to Luna to come to terms with a shocking betrayal that changes everything she thought she knew about her family’s past.
Washington Square Press | 9781501187995

NOVELIST AS A VOCATION written by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (Literary Criticism/Essays)
Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally bestselling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists and musicians. Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career; and more.
Vintage | 9781101974537

UNCULTURED: A Memoir by Daniella Mestyanek Young (Memoir)
Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional and sexual abuse --- masked as godly discipline and divine love --- and is forbidden from getting a traditional education. At 15 years old, Daniella escapes and bravely enrolls herself in high school. After graduating as valedictorian of her college class, she elects to join the military to begin a career as an intelligence officer. But she soon learns that her new world --- surrounded by men on the sands of Afghanistan --- looks remarkably similar to the one she desperately tried to leave behind.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250835475

THE VILLA by Rachel Hawkins (Gothic Thriller)
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album --- and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250834591

WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS by Catherine Newman (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Edith and Ashley have been best friends for over 42 years. They’ve shared the mundane and the momentous together: trick or treating and binge drinking; "Gilligan’s Island" reruns and REM concerts; hickeys and heartbreak; surprise Scottish wakes; marriages, infertility and children. But now Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and spending her last days at a hospice near Ash, who stumbles into heartbreak surrounded by her daughters, ex(ish) husband, dear friends, a poorly chosen lover (or two), and a rotating cast of beautifully, fleetingly human hospice characters. As the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack blasts all day long from the room next door, Edi and Ash reminisce, hold on and try to let go. Meanwhile, Ash struggles with being an imperfect friend, wife and parent.
Harper Perennial | 9780063230927

WE ARE THE LIGHT by Matthew Quick (Fiction)
Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero --- everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an 18-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’ backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668005439

WINTERLAND by Rae Meadows (Historical Mystery)
Soviet Union, 1973: There is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen for the famed USSR gymnastics program. When eight-year-old Anya is selected, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago, her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving Anya’s father devastated and their lives dark and quiet in the bitter cold of Siberia. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her 10 years imprisoned in a Gulag camp --- and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance. As Anya rises through the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls fall from grace, she soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone and so much to lose.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250834515

THE WISHING BRIDGE by Viola Shipman (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Once the hottest mergers and acquisitions executive in the company, Henrietta Wegner can see the young up-and-comers gunning for her job. When Henri’s boss makes it clear she’ll be starting the New Year unemployed unless she can close a big deal before the holidays, Henri impulsively tells him that she can convince her aging parents to sell Wegner’s --- their iconic Christmas store --- to a massive, soulless corporation. Home for the holidays has typically meant a perfunctory 24-hour visit for Henri before driving back to Detroit. So turning up at the Wegner’s offices in early December raises some eyebrows. But as Henri fields impatient texts from her boss while reconnecting with the magic of the store and warmth of her hometown, what sounded great in the boardroom begins to lose its luster in real life.
Graydon House | 9781525804861

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS by Kat Rosenfield (Psychological Thriller/Gothic Mystery)
On Christmas Eve, 85-year-old Miriam Caravasios steps onto the ice that surrounds her seaside estate on Maine's Mount Desert Island. As a younger woman, she used to steal out on winter nights to meet her lover, walking across the frozen reach to their secret meeting place. She knows the way --- but not the year. Miriam, her mind clouded by dementia, doesn’t hear the snap of thin ice until it’s too late. Was it an accident? Suicide? Or worse: did someone lure the old woman onto the frozen reach, to her death? There are plenty of suspects; Miriam’s fractured and complicated family has gathered in their Bar Harbor mansion to celebrate what everyone believed would likely be the matriarch’s last Christmas.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063207400

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