March 12, 2024

March 12, 2024

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of March 11th and March 18th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks feature for March, which includes Indie Next, LibraryReads, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, Oprah's Book Club, the "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, Reese's Book Club, Simon & Schuster’s Book Club Favorites, and the Target Book Club.

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, March 13th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live" Book Preview: Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between March 12th and April 2nd, along with a few from the first half of May, that she would like to get on your radar.

Wednesday, March 13th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Patti Callahan Henry --- will talk to Chris Bohjalian about his new book, THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS, which is the F&F Pick of the Month.

Thursday, March 14th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Katherine Reay as she discusses her new book, THE BERLIN LETTERS, with Rachel McMillan. In this unforgettable tale of the Cold War, a CIA code breaker risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.

Monday, March 18th at 7pm ET: Murder By The Book: Simone St. James will talk to Mystery and Thriller Maven’s Sara DiVello about her terrifying new novel, MURDER ROAD, in which a young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road.
 

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks for March

On Sale the Week of March 11th in Hardcover

March 12th

2054 by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (Speculative Thriller)
It is 20 years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, and efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification.
Penguin Press | 9780593489864

BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY by Stephanie Dray (Historical Fiction)
Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century. When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love. But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. Neither knows it yet, but over the next 20 years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.
Berkley | 9780593437056

BLACK WOLF by Juan Gómez-Jurado (Mystery/Thriller)
Antonia Scott is the linchpin of the Red Queen project, created to work behind the scenes to solve the most devious and dangerous crimes. But she is unwilling to move past the last case, convinced it’s related to a personal tragedy, until a series of deadly events pulls her back in. In southern Spain, a key mafia figure is found brutally murdered in his villa. His pregnant wife, Lola Moreno, barely escapes an attempt to kill her in a shopping mall and is on the run. A shipping container from St. Petersburg arrives in port in Spain containing the corpses of nine women, all of whom suffocated. Now Antonia, with the help of her helper and protector, Jon Gutierrez, must track down Lola. But a dangerous contract killer, known as the Black Wolf, is also on her trail.
Minotaur Books | 9781250853691

BLESSED WATER: A Sister Holiday Mystery by Margot Douaihy (Mystery)
Tattooed from her neck to her toes and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she’s committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency --- both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers. When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the swollen Mississippi River. It’s significantly more gruesome than their original mission, but Sister Holiday feels called on by God to hunt down the murderer and keep her community safe.
Gillian Flynn Books | 9781638930266

DEVOUT: A Memoir of Doubt by Anna Gazmarian (Memoir)
In this revelatory memoir, Anna Gazmarian tells the story of how her evangelical upbringing in North Carolina failed to help her understand the mental health diagnosis she received, and the work she had to do to find proper medical treatment while also maintaining her faith. When Anna is diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011, she’s faced with a conundrum. While the diagnosis provides clarity about her manic and depressive episodes, she must confront the stigma that her evangelical community attaches to her condition. Over the course of 10 years, we follow Anna on her journey to reframe her understanding of mental health to expand the limits of what her religious practice can offer.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668004036

A GRAVE ROBBERY: A Veronica Speedwell Mystery by Deanna Raybourn (Historical Mystery)
Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why? Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain --- a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved.
Berkley | 9780593545959

HEADSHOT by Rita Bullwinkel (Fiction)
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in HEADSHOT has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination and force of will required to win.
Viking | 9780593654101

IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW: A Molly Murphy Mystery by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles (Historical Mystery)
New York, 1908: The days are getting longer --- and warmer --- in Manhattan. Molly Murphy Sullivan doesn’t want to leave her home in the city, but typhoid is back, and she’s expecting. So she heads north with the children to summer with her mother-in-law in Westchester County. Her great friends, Sid and Gus, are headed to the Catskills to visit Sid’s family. Though her mother-in-law is a surprisingly excellent host, Molly quickly grows bored. And when Sid and Gus invite her to visit, Molly jumps at the chance to stay with them at an artist’s community. But Sid isn’t so enthusiastic about having to visit her family in the nearby Jewish bungalow community. Deep in the Catskills, tensions are running high, and it’s not long before a body delays Molly’s return to Westchester.
Minotaur Books | 9781250890788

LITTLE UNDERWORLD by Chris Harding Thornton (Noir/Historical Mystery)
Omaha, 1930. When ex-cop-turned-PI Jim Beely murders the man who assaulted his 14-year-old daughter, the last person he wants to see is local crooked cop Frank Tvrdik. Frank has a proposition: he’ll make the dead man disappear if Jim helps take down Elmer Kobb, who is vying for city commissioner and willing to backstab anyone who gets in his way. Soon, Jim and Frank are sucked into a seedy world of crime and corruption, where no one is safe and nothing is what it seems. Then Jim is violently attacked and one of his operatives turns up dead within the span of 12 hours, and his search for the truth yields a web of lies and a mounting death toll. As he and Frank are pulled deeper into the city’s dark underbelly and its absurd political machinations, Jim begins to question everything he knows about Omaha and his place in it.
MCD | 9780374298333

THE MANICURIST'S DAUGHTER: A Memoir by Susan Lieu (Memoir)
Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan Lieu’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother set up two successful nail salons and orchestrated every success --- until Susan was 11. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. For the next 20 years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone: Why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself and the impossible ideal of beauty.
Celadon Books | 9781250835048

NOT YOUR CHINA DOLL: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury (Biography)
In her time, Anna May Wong was a legendary beauty, witty conversationalist and fashion icon. Plucked from her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles, she rose to stardom in Douglas Fairbanks’ blockbuster, The Thief of Bagdad. Fans and the press clamored to see more of this unlikely actress, but when Hollywood repeatedly cast her in stereotypical roles, she headed abroad in protest. Anna May starred in acclaimed films in Berlin, Paris and London. She dazzled royalty and heads of state across several nations, leaving trails of suitors in her wake. She returned to challenge Hollywood at its own game by speaking out about the industry’s blatant racism. She used her new stature to move away from her typecasting as the China doll or dragon lady, and worked to reshape Asian American representation in film.
Dutton | 9780593183984

THE OTHER FAB FOUR: The Remarkable True Story of the Liverbirds, Britain’s First Female Rock Band by Mary McGlory and Sylvia Saunders (Memoir)
The idea for Britain’s first female rock band, The Liverbirds, started one evening in 1962, when 16-year-old Mary McGlory saw The Beatles play live at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. Then and there, she decided she was going to be just like them --- and be the first girl to do it. Joining ranks in 1963 with three other working-class girls from Liverpool --- drummer Sylvia Saunders and guitarists Valerie Gell and Pamela Birch --- The Liverbirds went on to tour alongside the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and Chuck Berry, and were on track to hit international stardom. That is, until life intervened, and the group was forced to disband just five years after forming in 1968. Now, Mary and Sylvia, the band’s two surviving members, are ready to tell their stories.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538739969

PRIDE AND JOY by Louisa Onomé (Fiction)
Ever the dutiful Nigerian daughter, Joy Okafor has planned every aspect of her mother’s 70th birthday weekend on her own. As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids go to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition that Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. Desperate to believe that they’re about to witness a miracle, the family overhauls their birthday plans to welcome the Nigerian Canadian community, effectively spreading the word that Mama Mary is coming back. But skeptical Joy is struggling with the loss of her mother and not allowing herself to mourn just yet while going through the motions of planning a funeral that her aunt refuses to allow.
Atria Books | 9781668012819

STILL SEE YOU EVERYWHERE by Lisa Gardner (Mystery/Thriller)
The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning. Despite the media’s chronicling of her childhood spent with a violent father, no one could find sympathy for “the Beautiful Butcher” who had led 18 men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats. Twelve years ago, Pierson’s five-year-old sister, Leilani, went missing in Hawaii, and the main suspect was Pierson’s ex-boyfriend. Now, with only three weeks left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on her sister’s whereabouts. Frankie Elkin takes on Pierson’s request to find Leilani on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman’s life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538765067

THE SWAN'S NEST by Laura McNeal (Historical Fiction)
On a bleak January day in 1845, a poet who had been confined to her room for four years by recurrent illness received a letter from a writer she secretly idolized but had never seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” Robert Browning wrote, “and I love you too.” Elizabeth Barrett was ecstatic. She was famous for her poetry but completely cut off from the kind of international travel that Browning used to fuel his obscure, unsuccessful, innovative poems, one of which was written from a murderer’s point of view. They began an affectionate correspondence, but Elizabeth kept delaying a visit. What would happen when he saw her in person? What was Robert really like? What would happen if she gave in to Robert’s wild proposal that they go to Italy and see if the sun could cure her?
Algonquin Books | 9781643753201

THE UNDERGROUND LIBRARY by Jennifer Ryan (Historical Fiction)
When the new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she is expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she is only there until she heads off to university in the fall. Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. When a slew of bombs destroys the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city’s residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community.
Ballantine Books | 9780593500385

UNTIL AUGUST written by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Anne McLean (Fiction)
UNTIL AUGUST is the extraordinary rediscovered novel from Nobel Prize–winning author Gabriel García Márquez. Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for 27 years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night she takes a new lover. Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart.
Knopf | 9780593801994

A VERY PRIVATE SCHOOL: A Memoir by Charles Spencer (Memoir)
A VERY PRIVATE SCHOOL offers a clear-eyed, firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at age eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.
Gallery Books | 9781668046388

WATCH WHERE THEY HIDE: A Jordan Manning Novel by Tamron Hall
(Mystery/Thriller)
After dropping her child off at preschool, Marla Hancock disappears. She recently had left her verbally abusive husband and moved in with her sister, Shelly, who simply can’t believe that her sister would ever willingly vanish without her children. But with limited support from the town’s police department or media resources, Shelly fears that Marla’s disappearance won’t get the attention it deserves. So, several weeks after filing a missing person’s report, she reaches out to TV journalist Jordan Manning for help. Jordan has gained a reputation as a “fixer” with a vigilante edge, but she still feels pressure to prove herself as a young Black professional. Her search for Marla twists and turns in ways she never could have imagined, illuminating scandals and secrets that place her own life in grave danger.
William Morrow | 9780063037083

WILD HOUSES by Colin Barrett (Fiction)
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, introspective loner Dev answers his door on Friday night to find Doll English --- the younger brother of small-time local dealer Cillian English --- bruised and in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers and Dev’s cousins. Dev’s quiet homelife is upturned as he is quickly and unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' frenetic revenge plot against Cillian. Meanwhile, Doll’s girlfriend, 17-year-old Nicky --- reeling from a fractious Friday and plagued by ghosts and tragedy of her own --- sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.
Grove Press | 9780802160942

On Sale the Week of March 11th in Paperback

March 12th

COUNTDOWN by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois (Thriller)
Agent Amy Cornwall excels at working from the shadows --- until a botched field operation reveals dark dealings between her bosses and an informant. And a hidden plot by a terrorist genius that could kill thousands of Americans. Among them: her husband and daughter. She has to go dark. The Division wants to erase her. And they know every detail about her identity, her history and her family. Agent Cornwall’s countdown has begun.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538723982

CROW MARY by Kathleen Grissom (Historical Fiction)
In 1872, 16-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend; makes a lifelong enemy; and, despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters 40 Nakota. Mary sees the murderers take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, she takes two guns, creeps into the fort and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.
Atria Books | 9781476748481

THE CURATOR by Owen King (Historical Fantasy)
It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest.” It is distinguished by many things, from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, its essential unmappability. Dora has a secret desire --- to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. She is offered one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be.
Scribner | 9781982196813

DARK DIVE by Andrew Mayne (Thriller/Adventure)
Paperback Original
After the Underwater Investigation Unit’s disbandment, public outcry ushers Sloan McPherson and her partner, former navy diver Scott Hughes, back into the depths of crime solving. But Sloan’s return comes with a personal case. Longtime family friend Fred Stafford has disappeared. Left behind: his abandoned truck in the vicinity of an unmarked sinkhole and new findings that have Sloan second-guessing everything she thought she knew about the man. There are his gambling debts, his association with a treasure-hunting band of underwater cavern junkies called the Dive Rats, and a discovery in Stafford’s storage shed that raises the stakes even higher and plunges Sloan into an unfathomable mystery. As Sloan’s investigation unfolds, a tragic Florida cold case, local superstitions and a shocking conspiracy collide.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662506451

DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai (Hard-boiled Crime Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
Since debuting 20 years ago, Hard Case Crime has won acclaim for publishing the best in hard-boiled crime fiction --- not least of all the work of founding editor Charles Ardai. Collected here for the first time anywhere are the author’s 20 finest stories, including his Edgar-winning “The Home Front,” about death and repentance during World War II; the Shamus Award finalist “Nobody Wins,” about a brutal gangland enforcer searching for the woman he loves; and year’s-best selections such as “A Bar Called Charley’s,” about a traveling salesman’s most grueling night on the road. From Brazil at Carnival to Times Square at midnight, from Tijuana, Mexico, to history’s first gunshot in 11th-century China, Ardai will take you to some of the most dangerous places in the world --- and the darkest corners of the human heart.
Hard Case Crime | 9781803366265

DIRTY LAUNDRY by Disha Bose (Fiction)
Ciara Dunphy seemingly has it all. But behind the filters, reality is less polished. Enter Ciara’s best friend, Mishti Guha. Discontent in a marriage arranged for her by her parents, she wants what Ciara has --- the ease with which she moves through the world. And there’s earth mother Lauren Doyle. With her disheveled partner and children who run naked in the yard, they’re mostly a happy lot, though ostracized for being the singular dysfunction in Ciara’s immaculate world. But then Ciara is found murdered in her own pristine home, and the house of cards she’d worked so hard to build comes crumbling down. Everyone seems to have something to gain from Ciara’s death. So if they don’t want the blame, it may be the perfect time to air their enemies’ dirty laundry.
Ballantine Books | 9780593497401

THE DOG OF THE NORTH by Elizabeth McKenzie (Fiction/Humor)
Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over, and she has quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; and her grandmother, Dr. Pincer, keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is “the scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?
Penguin Books | 9780593300718

FOR THE FIRST TIME, AGAIN: A Take Them to the Stars Novel by Sylvain Neuvel (Science Fiction/Historical Thriller)
After a traumatic incident, Aster's blood work comes back with some unusual readings. Unsurprising, as she’s the last of an alien race called the Kibsu, though she doesn’t know it. She becomes the focus of a hunt, with her mortal enemies, the Trackers, on one side and the American government on the other. But help has come from a most unexpected quarter. Whoever finds her first, it won’t be good news for Aster. Or for the world!
Tordotcom | 9781250262592

GOOD DOG, BAD COP: A K Team Novel by David Rosenfelt (Mystery)
Corey Douglas’ former mentor, Jimmy Dietrich, had his whole identity wrapped up in being a cop. When Jimmy retired three years ago, his marriage quickly deteriorated, and he tried --- and failed --- to get back on the force. Jimmy was left to try to adjust to life as a civilian. Not long after, two bodies were pulled from the Passaic River: a local woman, Susan Avery, and Jimmy Dietrich. With no true evidence available, the deaths went unsolved and the case declared cold. This didn’t stop the whispers: an affair gone wrong...a murder-suicide committed by Jimmy. Corey never believed it. With this case, the K Team has the opportunity to find the real murderer and clear Jimmy’s name.
Minotaur Books | 9781250828989

GREEN FROG: Stories by Gina Chung (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
Equal parts fantastical --- a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy, a fox demon contemplates avenging her sister's death --- and true to life --- a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father's legacy after his death --- the stories in GREEN FROG are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy.
Vintage | 9780593469361

HARD RAIN by Samantha Jayne Allen (Mystery)
In shock and found clinging to a tree branch, Bethany Richter is pulled from thrashing floodwaters that have decimated the town of Garnett, Texas, and killed a dozen others. Six months after solving the murder of a local waitress, Annie McIntyre is working as an apprentice P.I. when she's handed her first solo case: uncover the identity of the man who rescued Bethany before he was swept downriver. When Annie's search turns up a different victim --- shot dead, not drowned --- Annie questions if the hero they seek is actually a killer. Flexing her new skills while relying on the wisdom of her eccentric ex-cop grandfather, the case leads Annie into a web of drug dealers, preachers and wayward drifters trying to make sense of life after a disaster.
Minotaur Books | 9781250322777

IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS by TJ Klune (Fantasy)
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots --- fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labeled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio --- a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission…or worse, reprogramming.
Tor Books | 9781250217431

THE INHERITANCE by Joanna Goodman (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband’s high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063319394

KÜNSTLERS IN PARADISE by Cathleen Schine (Fiction)
For years Mamie Künstler has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California, with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight. Mamie was only 11 when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way to sunny, surreal Los Angeles where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her early years in Los Angeles. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250892492

THE LAST REMAINS: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths (Mystery)
When builders discover a human skeleton during a renovation of a café, they call in archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, who is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with DCI Nelson. The bones turn out to be the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in 2002. Suspicion soon falls on Emily’s Cambridge tutor and on another archaeology enthusiast who was part of the group gathered the weekend before she disappeared --- Ruth’s friend, Cathbad. As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the archaeology group and look for a link between them and the café where Emily’s bones were found. Then, just when the team seems to be making progress, Cathbad disappears.
Mariner Books | 9780063292901

LILIANA’S INVINCIBLE SUMMER: A Sister's Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza (Memoir)
October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been 29 years. Twenty-nine years, three months and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. LILIANA'S INVINCIBLE SUMMER is the account --- and the outcome --- of that quest.
Hogarth | 9780593244111

THE MYSTERY AT DUNVEGAN CASTLE by T. L. Huchu (Supernatural Thriller/Fantasy)
Ropa Moyo is no stranger to magic or mysteries. But she’s still stuck in an irksomely unpaid internship. So she’s thrilled to attend a magical convention at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye, where she’ll rub elbows with eminent magicians. For Ropa, it’s the perfect opportunity to finally prove her worth. Then a librarian is murdered and a precious scroll stolen. Suddenly, every magician is a suspect, and Ropa and her allies investigate. Trapped in a castle, with suspicions mounting, Ropa must contend with corruption, skulduggery and power plays. Time to ask for a raise?
Tor Books | 9781250883087

ONCE WE WERE HOME by Jennifer Rosner (Historical Fiction)
Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France. When a relative seeks to retrieve him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem. Renata is a post-graduate student in archaeology. After her mother’s death, her grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered. As their stories unexpectedly converge in Israel two decades later, they each must ask where and to whom they truly belong.
Flatiron Books | 9781250855565

THE ONLY SURVIVORS by Megan Miranda (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine, which claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a pact: to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night. But by the 10th anniversary, Cassidy has worked to distance herself from the tragedy. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven, and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief --- and suspicion.
S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781668010426

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson (Fiction)
PINEAPPLE STREET follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan. Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process. Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider. And Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.
Penguin Books | 9780593490716

SO SHALL YOU REAP: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon (Mystery)
On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni and Signora Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle --- random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships --- that appear to have little in common. Until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.
Grove Press | 9780802162762

SUCH A LOVELY FAMILY by Aggie Blum Thompson (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
The cherry blossoms are in full bloom in Washington, D.C., and the Calhouns are in the midst of hosting their annual party to celebrate the best of the spring season. With a house full of friends, neighbors and their beloved three adult children, the Calhouns are expecting another picture-perfect event. But a brutal murder in the middle of the celebration transforms the yearly gathering into a homicide scene and all the guests into suspects. Behind their façade of perfection, the Calhoun family has been keeping some very dark secrets. As the investigation heats up, family tensions build, and alliances shift. Long-buried resentments surface, forcing the Calhouns to face their darkest secrets before it’s too late.
Forge Books | 9781250891990

SUNBRINGER: A Fallen Gods Novel by Hannah Kaner (Fantasy/Adventure)
Paperback Original
Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren --- but now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth, who murdered her family and endangered her friends. But gods cannot be destroyed so easily, and Hseth’s power threatens to reform with even greater strength and a thirst for vengeance. As tensions rise throughout the land, the kingdom needs its Godkiller more than ever. Still reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, have set out to discover more about the true nature of their bond. As the divide between gods and humans widens, Inara and Skedi will uncover secrets that could determine the fate of the war to come.
Harper Voyager | 9780063350106

WATCH IT BURN by Kristen Bird (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
It’s early morning in the small Texas town of Edenberg when the body of 65-year-old Beverly Hoffman is discovered in the Guadalupe River. After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin, who knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth. Beverly had been beloved in the tight-knit community, having cofounded the wildly popular personal-development company Genetive, Inc., alongside her influential husband. But something sinister has been smoldering beneath the surface of their picturesque hometown. And Genetive is at the center of it all.
Mira | 9780778369691

WHEN IN ROME by Liam Callanan (Fiction)
After decades as a real estate broker specializing in old religious properties, 52-year-old Claire is looking for something new. And then, on the eve of her 30th college reunion, a call comes from Rome. It’s from a struggling convent facing a precipitous end, and Claire isn’t so sure she can help out. But once in Rome, she finds a group of funny, fearless nuns in a gorgeous, if crumbling, villa. It leads her unexpectedly to wonder: maybe she should stay in Rome. In the convent. Forever. Her college roommate and business partner has thoughts. So does Claire’s daughter. And so does Marcus, a once-buzzy actor, who’s still as devastatingly handsome as he was when he first fell for Claire at 18. He’s come and gone from Claire’s life since college but reappears in Rome just as she’s about to decide what’s next.
Dutton | 9780593184080

THE WHITE LADY by Jacqueline Winspear (Historical Mystery)
A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor White finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in post-WWII London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. “Miss White," as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. It will take Susie, the child of a young farmworker, Jim Mackie and his wife, Rose, to break through Miss White's icy demeanor. When the powerful Mackie crime family demands a return of their prodigal son for an important job, Elinor assumes the task of protecting her neighbors. Yet in her quest to uncover the truth behind the family’s pursuit of Jim, Elinor unwittingly sets out on a treacherous path.
Harper Perennial | 9780062867995

On Sale the Week of March 18th in Hardcover

March 18th

THE #1 LAWYER by James Patterson and Nancy Allen (Legal Thriller)
Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. In his sharp suits and polished Oxford shoes, Penney is Biloxi, Mississippi’s #1 Lawyer and top local celebrity. Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. That’s when Penney makes a bold decision. He stops trading on his power-lawyer identity and creates a new one: lawyer lifeguard. Moonlighting at the beach, showing up to court in flip-flops, and mentoring a law student, the new Penney is at first unrecognizable. It’s said that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. But when Penney is accused of murder, the #1 Lawyer will find a way to triumph.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316499675

March 19th

ANNIE BOT by Sierra Greer (Science Fiction/Speculative Thriller)
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner, Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard. She’s learning, too. Doug says he loves that Annie’s AI makes her seem more like a real woman, so Annie explores human traits such as curiosity, secrecy and longing. But becoming more human also means becoming less perfect, and as Annie’s relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder: Does Doug really desire what he says he wants? And in such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?
Mariner Books | 9780063312692

BAD ANIMALS by Sarah Braunstein (Fiction)
Now that her brilliant botanist daughter is off at college, Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at a quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. Stuck at home in a tailspin, Maeve cares for the mysterious plants in her daughter’s greenhouse while obsessing over the clearly troubled girl at the source of the rumor. She hopes to have a powerful ally in her attempts to clear her name: her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, who has finally responded to her adoring letters and accepted an invitation to speak at the library. Riddles, meanwhile, announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, Sudanese refugee Willie, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324051046

THE BLACK BOX: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
(Literary Criticism/History)
Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, THE BLACK BOX is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison --- these writers used words to create a livable world (a "home") for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society. It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community, formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the word into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies.
Penguin Press | 9780593299784

THE BLUES BROTHERS: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Visé (Biography/Performing Arts)
“They’re not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We’re on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft-drugged-out stars, the film opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, THE BLUES BROTHERS illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802160980

THE DAY TRIPPER by James Goodhand (Fiction)
It’s 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year and the love of an amazing woman. But a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames. He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older --- much older --- and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions. He snatches a newspaper and finds it’s 2010 --- 15 years since the fight. After finally drifting off to sleep, Alex wakes the following morning to find it’s now 2019. But the next day, it’s 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river. But what exactly is going on?
Mira | 9780778369646

THE DIVORCÉES by Rowan Beaird (Historical Fiction)
Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce --- except in Reno, Nevada. At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno’s famous “divorce ranches,” Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcées, all in Reno for the six weeks’ residency that is the state’s only divorce requirement. But it isn’t until Greer Lang arrives that Lois’ world truly cracks open. Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met --- and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. How far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?
Flatiron Books | 9781250896582

EXPIRATION DATES by Rebecca Serle (Romance)
Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it: the exact amount of time they will be together. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over 20 years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, on the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake. But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t --- information that would break his heart if he found out.
Atria Books | 9781982166823

FINDING MARGARET FULLER by Allison Pataki (Historical Fiction)
After Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends, she becomes “the radiant genius and fiery heart” of the Transcendentalists. However, Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and her restless soul needs new challenges and adventures. When legendary editor Horace Greeley offers her an assignment in Europe, Margaret makes history as the first female foreign news correspondent. But it is in Rome that she finds a world of passion, romance and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover --- and sparking an international scandal. Evolving yet again into the roles of mother and countess, Margaret enters the fight for Italy’s unification.
Ballantine Books | 9780593600238

JAMES by Percival Everett (Historical Fiction)
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, who recently has returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Doubleday | 9780385550369

KILL FOR ME, KILL FOR YOU by Steve Cavanagh (Psychological Thriller)
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect plan: If you kill for me, I’ll kill for you. In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?
Atria Books | 9781668049341

KINGDOM OF PLAY: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself by David Toomey (Nature)
In KINGDOM OF PLAY, critically acclaimed science writer David Toomey takes us on a fast-paced and entertaining tour of playful animals and the scientists who study them. From octopuses on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to meerkats in the Kalahari Desert to brown bears on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, we follow adventurous researchers as they design and conduct experiments seeking answers to new, intriguing questions: When did play first appear in animals? How does play develop the brain, and how did it evolve? Are the songs and aerial acrobatics of birds the beginning of avian culture? Is fairness in dog play the foundation of canine ethics? And does play direct and possibly accelerate evolution? Through a close examination of both natural selection and play, Toomey argues that life itself is fundamentally playful.
Scribner | 9781982154462

THE MARS HOUSE by Natasha Pulley (Science Fiction/Romance)
In the wake of an environmental catastrophe, January has become a refugee in Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. There, his life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger --- a person whose body is not adjusted to lower gravity. A xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale wants all Earthstrongers to naturalize, a process that is always disabling and sometimes deadly. When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January's life is thrown into chaos, but Gale's political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five-year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January's future without naturalization and ensure Gale's political success. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639732333

MEMORY PIECE by Lisa Ko (Fiction)
In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong and Ellen Ng are teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. They envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighborhood. Over time, their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves.
Riverhead Books | 9780593542101

A MIDNIGHT PUZZLE: A Secret Staircase Novel by Gigi Pandian (Mystery)
Secret Staircase Construction is under attack, and Tempest Raj feels helpless. After former client Julian Rhodes tried to kill his wife, he blamed her "accident" on the home renovation company’s craftsmanship. Now the family business --- known for bringing magic into homes through hidden doors, floating staircases and architectural puzzle walls --- is at a breaking point. No amount of Scottish and Indian meals from her grandfather can distract Tempest from the truth: they’re being framed. When Tempest receives an urgent midnight phone call from Julian, she decides to meet him at the historic Whispering Creek Theater --- only to find his dead body, a sword through his chest. After a blade appears from thin air to claim another victim, Tempest is certain they’re dealing with a booby trap...something Secret Staircase Construction easily could build.
Minotaur Books | 9781250880208

THE MORNINGSIDE by Téa Obreht (Fiction)
After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena, Silvia finds a person willing to give glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland. Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with Bezi Duras, the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.
Random House | 9781984855503

MOTHER ISLAND: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico by Jamie Figueroa (Memoir)
Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who was abandoned by her family, Jamie Figueroa and her sisters were estranged from their culture, consumed by the whiteness that surrounded them. In MOTHER ISLAND, Figueroa traces her search for identity as shaped by and against a mother who settled into the safety of assimilation. She recalls a childhood in Ohio in which she was relegated to the background of her mother’s string of failed marriages; her own marriage in her early 20s to a man twice her age; how her work as a licensed massage therapist helped her heal her body trauma; and how becoming a mother has reshaped her relationship to her family and herself. Only as an adult in New Mexico was Figueroa able to forge her own path, using writing to recast her origin story.
Pantheon | 9780553387681

NO JUDGMENT: Essays by Lauren Oyler (Essays)
Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment? How do we understand ourselves, and each other, as space between the individual and the world seems to get smaller and smaller, and our opinions on books and movies seem to represent something essential about our souls? And, to put it bluntly, why should you care what she --- or anyone --- thinks? In her first collection of essays, Oyler writes about topics like the role of gossip in our exponentially communicative society, the rise and proliferation of autofiction, why we’re all so “vulnerable” these days, and her own anxiety.
HarperOne | 9780063235359

THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS by Chris Bohjalian (Thriller)
Crissy Dowling passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap. On top of that, Crissy’s daily diet of Adderall and Valium leaves her more than a little tipsy, her Senator boyfriend has gone back to his wife, and her entire career rests on resembling a dead woman. Yet her fans see her for the gifted chameleon she is. But when Crissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, and when Richie Morley, the owner of the Buckingham Palace Casino, is savagely murdered, Crissy’s carefully constructed kingdom comes crashing down all around her.
Doubleday | 9780385547581

THE STARS TURNED INSIDE OUT by Nova Jacobs (Literary Mystery)
Deep beneath the ground outside of Geneva, where CERN’s Large Hadron Collider smashes subatomic particles at breathtaking speeds, a startling discovery is made when the tunnel is down for maintenance: the body of Howard Anderby, a brilliant and recently arrived young physicist, who appears to have been irradiated by the collider. But security shows no evidence of him entering the tunnel, and the lab’s video surveillance is sorely lacking. Eager to keep the death under wraps until more is known, CERN brings in private investigator Sabine Leroux, who has her own ties to the lab’s administration --- and more than a passing interest in particle physics. Meanwhile, Howard’s colleague and budding love interest, Eve, determines to reconcile what she knew of Howard with his gruesome fate, wondering if she could have done something to stop it.
Atria Books | 9781668018545

WOLF AT THE TABLE by Adam Rapp (Historical Fiction)
As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, 13-year-old Myra Larkin meets a young man she believes to be Mickey Mantle. He chats her up at a local diner and gives her a ride home. The matter consumes her until later that night, when a triple homicide occurs just down the street. As the siblings leave home and fan across the country, each pursues a shard of the American dream. Myra serves as a prison nurse while raising her son, Ronan. Her middle sisters, Lexy and Fiona, find themselves on opposite sides of class and power. Alec, once an altar boy, is banished from the house and drifts into oblivion. As he becomes an increasingly alienated loner, his mother begins to receive postcards full of ominous portent. What they reveal, and what they require, will shatter a family and lead to a devastating reckoning.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316434164

On Sale the Week of March 18th in Paperback

March 19th

48 CLUES INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY SISTER by Joyce Carol Oates (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
What has become of Marguerite Fulmer? On an otherwise average day in upstate New York, the young woman left her family home, never to return. No note was left, no explanation --- just a messy bedroom and her sister Gigi, driven to dig through the meager clues and discover the truth behind her disappearance. As the investigation unfolds, every subtle bit of evidence becomes a potential clue. The silk Dior slip dress, left in a heap on the floor; the impression of Ferragamo boots outside in the dirt, a trail of footsteps that abruptly ends before it leaves the yard. And as Gigi trails the detectives, she finds previously unknown troubles in the life of her perfect, gorgeous, much-loved sister --- troubles that at times seem to reflect her own.
Mysterious Press | 9781613165102

62: Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees, and the Pursuit of Greatness by Bryan Hoch (Sports)
Aaron Judge, the hulking superman who carried an easy aw-shucks demeanor from small-town California to stardom in the Big Apple, had long established his place as one of baseball’s most intimidating power hitters. Baseballs frequently rocketed off his bat like cannon fire, dispatching heat-seeking missiles toward the “Judge’s Chambers” seating area in right field, sending delirious fans scattering for souvenirs. But even in a high-tech universe where computers measure each swing to the nth degree, Roger Maris’ American League mark of 61 home runs seemed largely out of reach. In 62, veteran Yankees beat reporter Bryan Hoch unravels the remarkable journey of Judge’s run to shatter Maris’ beloved 61-year-old record.
Atria Books | 9781668027967

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey (Fiction)
When X --- an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter --- falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born. In her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.
Picador | 9781250321688

CURSED BREAD by Sophie Mackintosh (Historical Mystery)
Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population. In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse. But who was the predator and on whom did they prey?
Vintage | 9780593466803

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW: A Hayley Chill Thriller by Chris Hauty (Political Thriller)
When a justice of the Supreme Court is killed by the police officer assigned to protect him, the country is shocked. Hayley Chill’s superiors suspect the assassination is part of a major conspiracy. In Maui, where one member of the Supreme Court owns a vacation home, a busload of children is taken hostage with the justice’s death as ransom. Together with a deputy US marshal, Hayley embarks on the monumental task of rescuing the children while also protecting the justice. But with danger around every corner and no one to trust, has Hayley finally bitten off more than she can chew?
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781668022139

THE FAKE by Zoe Whittall (Fiction)
After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. In a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives her permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She’s also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities. Shelby puts all her energy into helping Cammie thrive --- until her intuition tells her that something isn’t right. Gibson is fresh from divorce and deeply depressed. Then he falls in love with Cammie. But his friends are wary of her. When Gibson and Shelby meet, they realize Cammie’s stories don’t always add up. In fact, they’re far from the truth. But what kind of a person would lie about having cancer? And what does it say about Shelby and Gibson that they fell for it?
Ballantine Books | 9781524799465

FOREVER BOY: A Mother's Memoir of Autism and Finding Joy by Kate Swenson (Memoir)
Kate Swenson's oldest son, Cooper, was diagnosed with nonverbal autism when he was three years old. Kate had always dreamed of having the perfect family and wasn't prepared for raising a child with a disability. Over the years, she felt the frustration and exhaustion from having to fight for your child in a world stacked against them. But through hard work, resilience and personal growth, she learned that Cooper wasn't the one who needed to change. She was. It was this transformation that led Kate to acceptance --- and, ultimately, joy. Because of Cooper, Kate became the person and the mother she was truly meant to be. Now she offers support and connection to others on this path. In FOREVER BOY, she shares her inspiring journey with honesty and compassion, illuminating the strength and perseverance of mothers.
Park Row | 9780778387145

GOOD HALF GONE by Tarryn Fisher (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Iris narrowly escaped her pretty, popular twin sister’s fate as a teen: kidnapped, trafficked and long gone before the cops agreed to investigate. With no evidence to go on but a few scattered memories, the case quickly goes cold. Now an adult, Iris wants one thing: proof. And if the police still won’t help, she’ll just have to find it her own way --- by interning at the isolated Shoal Island Hospital for the criminally insane, where secrets lurk in the shadows and are kept under lock and key. But Iris soon realizes that something even more sinister is simmering beneath the surface of the Shoal, and the patients aren’t the only ones being observed.
Graydon House | 9781525804885

THE HALF LIFE OF VALERY K by Natasha Pulley (Historical Thriller)
In 1963, in a Siberian prison, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive. But one day, Valery's university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the frozen camp to a mysterious unnamed city. It houses a set of nuclear reactors, and surrounding it is a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within. In City 40, Valery is expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises. Why is there so much radiation in this area? What, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639733033

HAS ANYONE SEEN CHARLOTTE SALTER? by Nicci French (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
On the day of Alec Salter’s 50th birthday party, his wife, Charlotte, vanishes. While Alec brushes off her disappearance, their four children --- especially 15-year-old Etty --- grow increasingly anxious. Then Etty and her friend, Morgan, find the body of Morgan’s father, Duncan Ackerley, floating in the river. The police conclude that Duncan and Charlotte were having an affair before he killed her and committed suicide. Thirty years later, Morgan Ackerley returns to the small English village of Glensted with his older brother to make a podcast based on their shared tragedy with the Salters. Stricken with dementia, Alec is entering an elder care facility. But when the Ackerleys ask to interview the Salters, the entire town gets caught up in the unresolved cases. Allegations fly, secrets come to light, and a suspicious fire leads to a murder.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063298354

I PROMISE IT WON’T ALWAYS HURT LIKE THIS: 18 Assurances on Grief by Clare Mackintosh (Memoir)
Paperback Original
When Clare Mackintosh lost her five-week-old son, she soon discovered there are no neat, labeled stages of grief like so many books insist. The shape of each loss is different; when a parent, relative or friend passes, we grieve the person in all their beauty, humanity and imperfections. For Clare, there was no preparing for the anger and excruciating ache of knowing her child's life would remain unlived. This is the book she needed then. Inspired by a viral Twitter thread Clare wrote on the anniversary of her son's death, this deeply honest, compassionate memoir will bring solace and encouragement to anyone who finds themselves walking with grief, whether for a season or for several years.
Sourcebooks | 9781728281193

IN MEMORIAM by Alice Winn (Historical Fiction)
It’s 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle --- an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, Ellwood --- without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.
Vintage | 9780593467848

IT’S ONE OF US by J.T. Ellison (Psychological Thriller)
Olivia Bender desperately wants to be a mother. Fertility treatments and IVF keep failing. And just when she feels she’s at her lowest point, the police deliver shocking news to Olivia and her husband, Park. DNA results show that the prime suspect in a murder investigation is Park’s son. Olivia is relieved, knowing this is a mistake. Despite their desire, the Benders don’t have any children. Then comes the confession. Many years ago, Park donated sperm to a clinic. He has no idea how many times it was sold --- or how many children he has sired. As the murder investigation goes deeper, more terrible truths come to light. With every revelation, Olivia must face the unthinkable. The man she married has fathered a killer. But can she hold that against him when she keeps such dark secrets of her own?
Mira | 9780778310952

KORESH: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco by Stephan Talty (True Crime)
No other event in the last 50 years is shrouded in myth like the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Today, we remember this moment for the 76 people, including 20 children, who died in the fire; for its inspiration of the Oklahoma City bombing; and for the wave of anti-government militarism that followed. What we understand far less is what motivated the Davidians’ enigmatic leader, David Koresh. Drawing on first-time, exclusive interviews with Koresh’s family and survivors of the siege, bestselling author Stephan Talty paints a psychological portrait of this infamous icon of the 1990s. He reveals how Koresh’s fixation on holy war, which would deliver the Davidians to their reward and confirm himself as Christ, collided with his paranoid obsession with firearms to destructive effect.
Mariner Books | 9780063340473

A MOST INTRIGUING LADY: A Novel of the Victorian Era by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (Historical Mystery/Romance)
Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets. But in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves and con men preyed on the rich and titled. Wealthy victims would never go to the police. What they needed was a society insider, a person of discretion and finely tuned powers of observation, adept at navigating intrigue. That person was Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, the youngest child of Queen Victoria’s close friends the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. While at a house party, Lady Mary meets Colonel Walter Trefusis, a war veteran who has a desk job in Whitehall providing a front for his role in the British Intelligence Service. The two form an unlikely alliance to solve a series of audacious crimes --- and indulge in a highly charged on-off romance.
Avon | 9780063216839

THE MYSTERY WRITER by Sulari Gentill (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister, he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728285184

NOW YOU SEE US by Balli Kaur Jaswal (Mystery/Humor)
Corazon, Donita and Angel are Filipina domestic workers --- part of the wave of women sent to Singapore to be cleaners, maids and caregivers. But an explosive news story shatters Singapore’s famous tranquility, sending a chill down the spine of every domestic worker. Flordeliza Martinez, a Filipina maid, has been arrested for murdering her female employer. The three women don’t know the accused well, but she could be any of them. Every worker knows stories of women who were scapegoated or even executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Shocked into action, Donita, Corazon and Angel will use their considerable moxie and insight to piece together the mystery of what really happened on the day Flordeliza’s employer was murdered.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063161610

OLD GOD’S TIME by Sebastian Barry (Fiction)
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family --- his beloved wife, June, and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one that Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.
Penguin Books | 9780593296127

OUR BEST INTENTIONS by Vibhuti Jain (Fiction)
During summer break one day, Angie, the teenage daughter of Indian immigrant Babur Singh, is walking home after swimming at the high school pool when she finds Henry McCleary, a white classmate from a wealthy family, stabbed and bleeding on the football field. The police immediately focus their investigation on Chiara Thompkins, a runaway Black girl who disappears after the stabbing and --- it’s later discovered --- wasn’t properly enrolled in the public high school. The incident sends shock waves through the community and reveals jarring truths about the lengths to which families will go to protect themselves.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063278769

OUT OF NOWHERE by Sandra Brown (Romantic Suspense)
At a Texas county fair, children’s book author Elle Portman is enjoying a rare night out with her two-year-old son, Charlie. Just as they’re about to head home, a shooter opens fire into the crowd. Also caught in the melee is corporate consultant Calder Hudson. He’s frustrated and confused when he wakes up in the hospital after undergoing emergency surgery on his arm. The doctor tells him that he was lucky, but others weren’t, which instills in Calder a furious determination to get justice…a goal shared by Elle. Their chance encounter at the police station leads to a surprising and inexplicable gravitation to one another. But Elle and Calder can’t help but wonder if the unimaginable tragedy that brought them together is too painful and too complicated to sustain --- especially while the shooter remains at large.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538742969

PICTURE IN THE SAND by Peter Blauner (Thriller)
When Alex Hassan gets accepted to an Ivy League university, his middle-class Egyptian-American family is filled with pride and excitement. But that joy turns to shock when they discover that he has run off to the Middle East to join a holy war instead. When he refuses to communicate with everyone else, his loving grandfather Ali emails him one last plea. If Alex will stay in touch, he will share with Alex --- and only Alex --- a manuscript containing the secret story of his own life that he has kept hidden from his family, until now. It's the tale of his romantic and heartbreaking past rooted in Hollywood and the post-revolutionary Egypt of the 1950s --- which he is now forced to unearth to save his grandson, who is about to make the same tragic mistakes he made so long ago.
Minotaur Books | 9781250904133

THE PUZZLE MASTER by Danielle Trussoni (Supernatural/Literary Thriller)
Once a promising Midwestern football star, Mike Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare medical condition: acquired savant syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower --- he can solve puzzles in ways ordinary people can’t. But it also left him deeply isolated. Everything changes after Brink meets Jess Price, a woman serving 30 years in prison for murder who hasn’t spoken a word since her arrest five years before. When Price draws a perplexing puzzle, her psychiatrist believes it will explain her crime and calls Brink to solve it. What begins as a desire to crack an alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with Price herself. She soon reveals that there is something more urgent and dangerous, behind her silence, thrusting Brink into a hunt for the truth.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593595312

RAINBOW BLACK by Maggie Thrash (Legal Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
Lacey Bond is a 13-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center. Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades. As an adult, Lacey mimes a normal life as the law clerk of an illustrious judge. She has a beautiful girlfriend, a measure of security, and the world has mostly forgotten about her. But after a tiny misstep spirals into an uncontrolled legal disaster, the hysteria threatens to begin all over again.
Harper Perennial | 9780063286870

SISTERS OF THE LOST NATION by Nick Medina (Mystery & Thriller/Horror)
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step --- an ancient tribal myth come to life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole. With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past. When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation are strong, and sometimes it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
Berkley | 9780593546864

STANDING DEAD: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
Deputy Mattie Cobb and her sister, Julia, travel to Mexico to visit their mother. But when they arrive, they discover that she and her husband have vanished without a trace. Back in Timber Creek, Mattie finds a chilling note on her front door telling her to look for “him” among the standing dead up in the high country. The sheriff’s department springs into action and sends a team to the mountains, where Mattie’s K-9 partner, Robo, makes a grisly discovery --- a body tied to a dead pine tree. Mattie is shocked when she realizes she knows the dead man. And then another note arrives, warning that Mattie’s mother is in desperate straits. In a last-ditch gambit, Mattie must go deep undercover into a killer’s lair to save her mother --- or die trying.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639106424

TWO WARS AND A WEDDING by Lauren Willig (Historical Fiction)
September 1896: An aspiring archaeologist, Smith College graduate Betsy Hayes travels to Athens, desperate to break into the male-dominated field of excavation. But when a simmering conflict between Greece and Turkey erupts into open warfare, Betsy throws herself into the conflict as a nurse, not knowing that the decision will change her life forever --- and cause a deep and painful rift with her oldest friend, Ava. June 1898: Betsy has sworn off war nursing --- but when she gets word that her estranged friend Ava is headed to Cuba with Clara Barton and the Red Cross to patch up the wounded in the Spanish-American War, Betsy determines to stop her the only way she knows how: by joining in her place.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062986191

WE SHOULD NOT BE FRIENDS: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe (Memoir)
By the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he already had met everyone he cared to know. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. The jocks wore baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to be another species entirely. All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL. Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other’s lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation.
Vintage | 9780525564058

ZERO DAYS by Ruth Ware (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect --- Jack. Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982155308

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