September 3, 2024

September 3, 2024

Never Miss a Contest or a Promotion!
Follow and Like Us on Social Media

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of September 2nd and September 9th 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 SPIRIT CROSSING, which is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. It will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection, and we are happy to share our review now. A disappearance and a dead body put Cork O’Connor’s family in the crosshairs of a killer in this 20th installment of William Kent Krueger­'s bestselling mystery series.

Let us know by THIS Friday, September 6th at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win CREATION LAKE by Rachel Kushner and THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE by Matt Haig in our Word of Mouth contest.

CREATION LAKE, which is September's #1 Indie Next pick and is longlisted for this year's Booker Prize, is about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France. THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

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, September 4th 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 TJ Klune about his new fantasy novel, SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA, the hugely anticipated sequel to THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA.

Thursday, September 5th at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Alan Bradley will talk about WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST, the 11th installment in his historical mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce, whose latest case will lead her to a most surprising discovery.

Monday, September 9th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome USA Today bestselling author Rachel Harrison and acclaimed author Alexis Henderson for a live virtual discussion of their latest novels --- Rachel's SO THIRSTY and Alexis' AN ACADEMY FOR LIARS --- as part of their B&N Midday Mystery Virtual Event series.

Monday, September 9th at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Janice Hallett will talk about her latest book, THE EXAMINER. Told in emails, text messages and essays, this innovative page-turner follows a group of students in an art master’s program that goes dangerously awry.

Tuesday, September 10th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda will talk to Sandra Block about her new thriller, THE BACHELORETTE PARTY, in which a true crime devotee gets more than she bargained for at her killer bachelorette party.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our New Release Spotlight of
SPIRIT CROSSING by William Kent Krueger
An Upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On Title

On Sale the Week of September 2nd in Hardcover

September 3rd

AGNES SHARP AND THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME written by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang (Mystery/Humor)
Agnes, Charlie, Marshall and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. And to top it all off, another series of murders is rocking the hamlet of Duck End. So when Edwina manages to slip onto Marshall’s computer in an unobserved moment and promptly wins a stay in an exclusive coastal hotel in Cornwall, the Sunset Hall crew waste no time in joining her. But Agnes sees something unsettling from the terrace of the hotel: two figures in hoods walk away from the hotel along the cliffs, but only one returns. Worried she’s witnessed a murder, Agnes tells the others. At first nobody really believes her. But when the hotel ends up isolated from the outside world after a storm, it becomes clear that a murderer really is on the loose --- and they’re trapped, just like all of the other guests.
Soho Crime | 9781641295802

BECOMING ELIZABETH ARDEN: The Woman Behind the Global Beauty Empire by Stacy A. Cordery (Biography)
Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman owned or ran a national company. She developed the first luxury spa and insisted on a holistic understanding of health and beauty. In BECOMING ELIZABETH ARDEN, acclaimed biographer Stacy Cordery does full justice to one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs.
Viking | 9780525559764

BLUE SISTERS by Coco Mellors (Fiction)
The three Blue sisters are exceptional --- and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment in which they were raised. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.
Ballantine Books | 9780593723760

THE BOOK SWAP by Tessa Bickers (Romance)
Still reeling from a recent tragedy, Erin Connolly knows she needs to start living, but she has no idea how. When she accidentally donates her favorite book --- a heavily annotated copy of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD containing a memento she can’t be without --- to a local community library, she’s devastated. But then the book turns up a week later, back in the library with fresh notes in the margins, along with an invitation in a copy of GREAT EXPECTATIONS to meet her newfound pen pal. A life-changing conversation, written only in the margins of beloved classic books, begins between Erin and her Mystery Man. Following each other through the pages of their favorite novels as the book exchange continues, they both begin to open up, falling into a friendship…and maybe something more. But Erin and her pen pal have a shared history that neither of them has guessed.
Graydon House | 9781525836701

CAPTURE OR KILL: A Mitch Rapp Novel by Vince Flynn and Don Bentley (Political Thriller)
April 2011: On a remote mountaintop overlooking the remains of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Azad Ashani witnesses a Quds Force demonstration of a capability meant to upend America’s war in the Middle East. Ashani, director of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, recognizes the demonstration’s true significance and the nation-ending conflict it will provoke. Alone, Ashani stands no chance of preventing this rush to madness. But with the help of one man, he just might. In Washington, DC, CIA director Irene Kennedy briefs the president that the operational window to kill or capture Osama bin Laden at his recently discovered compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is rapidly closing. But before he’ll authorize a commando raid on Pakistani soil, the president demands irrefutable proof of bin Laden’s presence. Proof he trusts just one man to provide.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781668045831

CLIVE CUSSLER GHOST SOLDIER: A Novel of the Oregon Files by Mike Maden (Thriller/Adventure)
When African jihadis attack a Nigerian regiment using American weapons, Juan Cabrillo and the Oregon crew are on the case, investigating from Afghanistan to Kuala Lumpur to track a mysterious arms dealer known only as the Vendor. Cabrillo goes undercover to find the Vendor’s base, but his adversary isn’t just an arms smuggler. He’s an arms maker, and Cabrillo just walked into a lethal military game alongside the most dangerous mercenaries in the world, designed to test the Vendor’s cutting-edge AI arsenal. And yet, surviving an arena full of flame-throwing robots isn’t even his biggest problem. The Vendor has an army of high-speed drones headed for a pivotal military site, and if the Oregon crew can’t stop them from releasing a deadly neurotoxin, the entire globe will erupt in conflict.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593719244

COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna (Fiction/Humor)
Jane and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel --- a centuries-spanning epic that her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her “mulatto WAR AND PEACE.” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer,” and together they begin to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane --- until they go terribly wrong.
Riverhead Books | 9780593544372

CREATION LAKE by Rachel Kushner (Fiction)
CREATION LAKE is about a secret agent --- a 34-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty --- who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump” --- making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.
Scribner | 9781982116521

DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK: A Jackson Brodie Book by Kate Atkinson (Mystery)
In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre --- from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and "Only Murders in the Building."
Doubleday | 9780385547994

THE GODS BELOW by Andrea Stewart (Fantasy/Adventure)
A divine war shattered the world, leaving humanity in ruins. Desperate for hope, they struck a deal with the devious god Kluehnn: He would restore the world to its former glory, but at a price so steep it would keep the mortals indebted to him for eternity. And, as each land was transformed, so too were its people changed into strange new forms --- if they survived at all. Desperate to protect herself and her sister, Rasha, Hakara flees her homeland for the safety of a neighboring kingdom. But when tragedy separates them, Hakara is forced to abandon her beloved sister to an unknown fate. She discovers she can channel the magic from the mysterious gems they are forced to mine for Kluehnn. With that discovery comes another: Rasha is alive, and only the rebels plotting to destroy the God Pact can help rescue her. But only if Hakara goes to war against a god.
Orbit | 9780316564892

GUIDE ME HOME: A Highway 59 Novel by Attica Locke (Mystery)
Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves when he is visited by someone who always has been bent on tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if he can trust that his mother is telling the truth --- and what her ulterior motive may be. He gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again --- his mother.
Mulholland Books | 9780316494618

THE HAUNTING OF MOSCOW HOUSE by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
(Gothic Horror/Historical Mystery)
It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought. Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration. But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human?
Berkley | 9780593547007

THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE by Matt Haig (Fiction)
When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she ever could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Viking | 9780593489277

MADWOMAN by Chelsea Bieker (Fiction)
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon, and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316573290

THE NIGHT GUEST written by Hildur Knútsdóttir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something is not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause. When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same: Have you tried eating better? Exercising more? Establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps. Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on and wakes up to find she has walked over 40,000 steps in the night. What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?
Tor Nightfire | 9781250322043

ON THE HUNT by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Kira Drake has come to Paris with her highly trained Golden Retriever, Mack, to investigate the horrific bombing of a museum in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. What she doesn’t know is that one powerful man has a special reason to find the person responsible. Jack Harlan has all the money in the world, but it can’t bring his brother back. His sibling was murdered during the theft of a scientific discovery that could have made the world a better place. Now, after a four-year search, Harlan learns that this bombing was the work of the same twisted man. Kira and her dog are in demand from law enforcement agencies all over the world, but Harlan convinces her to continue the investigation for his own purposes, wherever it may lead. So against her better judgment, Kira finds herself on the hunt, placing her trust in Harlan.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538726419

PASSIONS IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée --- two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii. Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. Eve knows that the level of violence and the apparent premeditation involved suggest a volatile mix of hidden, heated passion and ice-cold calculation. This is a crime that can be countered only by hard detective work and relentless dedication. Eve will not stop until she finds the killer who destroyed this couple’s dreams before the honeymoon even began.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250289568

SAFE ENOUGH: And Other Stories by Lee Child (Thriller/Short Stories)
For the past 20 years, Lee Child has been one of the best-selling authors in the world, thanks to the popularity of his iconic and instantly recognizable hero, Jack Reacher. But even at the height of Reacher’s fame, Child’s short story writing was not confined to the series. Throughout the course of his career, he published tales about a range of characters on both sides of the law, including assassins, a bodyguard, CIA and FBI agents, gangsters and more. Meticulously plotted and packed with Child’s trademark action and suspense, the stories show his mastery of the short form. They’ve never been collected before now.
Mysterious Press | 9781613165669

SMALL RAIN by Garth Greenwell (Fiction)
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American health care system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value --- art, memory, poetry, music, care --- are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. SMALL RAIN surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374279547

WE'RE ALONE: Essays by Edwidge Danticat (Essays)
Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in WE’RE ALONE include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood and the complexities of resilience. From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.
Graywolf Press | 9781644453025

WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley (Historical Mystery)
Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family’s longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn’t it she who’d picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death? But Flavia knows she is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet’s good name. Little does she know that following the case’s twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery --- one with the power to upend her entire life.
Bantam | 9780593724514

THE WHITEWASHED TOMBS: An Emma Djan Investigation by Kwei Quartey (Mystery)
Marcelo Tetteh, a 27-year-old LGBTQ+ activist, is butchered one night after being lured on a dating app to a deserted building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer. So he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out. PI Emma Djan is assigned the case and goes undercover in the International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined.
Soho Crime | 9781641295888

On Sale the Week of September 2nd in Paperback

September 1st

DIVORCE TOWERS by Ellen Meister (Romance)
Paperback Original
Addison Torres has no job, no fiancé, no parents to lean on. So when Uncle Arnie offers her a concierge gig in sunny California, she hops on a plane without looking back. Before it all came crashing down, Addison had a matchmaking career and handsome partner. Then she got a little too cozy with a client. Digging her way out of the wreckage, she’s taken a strict vow of celibacy. Unfortunately, Addison’s new home is where such promises go to die. As concierge at the luxurious Beekman Towers --- nicknamed “Divorce Towers” due to the constant influx of the newly single --- she’s in constant demand by Beverly Hills’ most eligible and entitled bachelors. Addison thinks she’s ready for anything except love. But in Divorce Towers, the world’s toughest concierge may have finally met her match.
Montlake | 9781662520891

FATAL INTRUSION by Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Carmen Sanchez is a tough Homeland Security agent who plays by the rules. But when her sister is attacked, revealing a connection to a series of murders across Southern California, she realizes that a conventional investigation will not be enough to stop the ruthless perpetrator. With nowhere else to turn, Sanchez enlists the aid of Professor Jake Heron, a brilliant and quirky private security expert who believes rules are merely suggestions. The two have a troubled past, but he owes her a favor. They team up to catch the assailant, who has no discernible motive and fits no classic criminal profile. All they have to go on is a distinctive tattoo and a singular obsession that gives this chillingly efficient tactician his nickname: Spider. Over the next 72 hours, Sanchez and Heron find themselves in the midst of a lethal chess match with the killer as they race to stop the carnage.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662518720

September 3rd

ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A LORD by Celeste Connally (Historical Mystery)
After losing her beloved fiancé in an accident three years earlier, Lady Petra Forsyth announces in front of London’s loosest lips that she will never marry. A woman of independent means, Petra sees no reason to cede her wealth and freedom to any man now that the love of her life is gone. Instead, she plans to continue enjoying the best of society without any expectations. But when ballroom gossip suggests that a longtime friend has died of a fit due to her “melancholia” while in the care of a questionable physician, Petra vows to use her status to dig deeper --- uncovering a private asylum where men pay to have their wives and daughters locked away, or worse. Just as Petra has reason to believe her friend is alive, a shocking murder proves that more danger is afoot than she thought.
Minotaur Books | 9781250867575

ALL HALLOWS by Christopher Golden (Thriller/Horror)
It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, secrets are being revealed. And all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them...and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250322005

AMAZING GRACE ADAMS by Fran Littlewood (Fiction)
Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is 45, perimenopausal and stalled --- the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her 16th birthday. Today is the day she’ll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them...and, most important, remind herself.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250857002

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray (Fiction)
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under --- but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for 12-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away. If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda’s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at 10 years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?
Picador | 9781250338259

CREEP: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba (Sociology/Essays)
A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does --- it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it. CREEP is Myriam Gurba’s informal sociology of creeps, a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions that plague the United States and create the abusers who haunt our books, schools and homes. Gurba studies the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly distribute suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. She also examines how we as individuals, communities and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982186487

DARK RIDE by Lou Berney (Thriller)
Twenty-one-year-old Hardy “Hardly” Reed, a minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, notices two children sitting all alone on a bench. He checks if they’re okay and sees injuries on both of them, so he reports the incident to Child Protective Services. But the more research he does, the less he trusts that they will do anything about it. Gradually, Hardly develops investigative skills and discovers he’s smarter and more capable than he ever imagined. But he also discovers that the situation is more dangerous than he ever expected. The abusive father who has been hurting these children isn’t just a lawyer --- he also runs a violent drug-dealing operation. The mother claims she wants to escape with the kids, but Hardly isn't sure he can trust her.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062663887

DEVILS ISLAND by Midge Raymond and John Yunker (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Devils Island is home to abundant wildlife, making it the ideal place to reintroduce endangered Tasmanian devils. Working to rescue, rehabilitate and release devils has been Kerry’s job and passion for years, but a new opportunity to work as a naturalist guide for a tour company offers her a respite from the emotionally grueling task of trying to save an endangered species. When one of the guests disappears on the first night, the group assumes she has wandered too far in the stormy weather. Yet it turns out she has a secret connection to one of the other guests. When another hiker is found dead in camp, the group finds itself isolated by the worsening storm and wondering who among them might be responsible.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608096145

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith (Historical Fiction)
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper --- and cousin by marriage --- of a once-famous novelist, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for 30 years. Mrs. Touchet suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. The “Tichborne Trial” --- wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title --- captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud?
Penguin Books | 9780525558989

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?
Vintage | 9780593468395

GOOD BAD GIRL by Alice Feeney (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth. Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning messes and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything. Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door…and their intentions aren’t good. With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders and one victim. If they do, they just might find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her and the connections that bind them.
Flatiron Books | 9781250843982

HOLLY by Stephen King (Thriller/Horror)
When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly Gibney is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has COVID. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability, but they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.
Scribner | 9781668014943

LET US DESCEND by Jesmyn Ward (Historical Fiction)
LET US DESCEND is a reimagining of American slavery --- a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.
Scribner | 9781982104504

THE LOCK-UP by John Banville (Historical Mystery)
In 1950s Dublin, young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case --- and everyone involved --- in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335009180

THE LOST CAUSE by Cory Doctorow (Science Fiction)
It’s 30 years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go? For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.
Tor Books | 9781250865946

MISINTERPRETATION by Ledia Xhoga (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan. As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardizing the nameless narrator’s marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not.
Tin House Books | 9781959030805

MOTHER-DAUGHTER MURDER NIGHT by Nina Simon (Mystery)
High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana hopes that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does. Then Jack happens upon a dead body while kayaking and quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family and prove she still has power. With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063315051

MURDER, SHE WROTE: FIT FOR MURDER by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran (Mystery)
Evelyn Phillips, the former editor of the Cabot Cove Gazette, is back in Cabot Cove. Evelyn tells Jessica and Seth that she got a couple of really weird notes from Bertha Mae Cormier, so she’s come back to town to check on her old friend. Jessica does become somewhat concerned when Bertha Mae starts to talk about her new neighbor, Martin Terranova, who teaches yoga and meditation in his pool house. Jessica attends one of his classes and notices that Terranova is flirtatious with several elderly clients, especially Bertha Mae. Evelyn is becoming convinced that Terranova is after Bertha Mae’s money. A short while later, Martin turns up dead in his weight room. What at first blush seems to be an accident soon proves to be murder, and Evelyn becomes the prime suspect.
Berkley | 9780593640708

THE POLE by J. M. Coetzee (Fiction)
Wittold Walccyzkiecz is a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold, she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world. As the journeyman performer sends her countless letters, extends invitations to travel, and even visits her husband’s summer home in Mallorca, their unlikely relationship blossoms, though only on Beatriz’s terms. The power struggle between them intensifies, eventually escalating into a full-fledged battle of the sexes. But is it Beatriz who limits their passion by paralyzing her emotions? Or is it Wittold trying to force into life his dream of love?
Liveright | 9781324095668

PRIME TIME ROMANCE by Kate Robb (Paranormal Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
A newly divorced Brynn thought she had found her happy ending. But now she’s living with a roommate, Josh, to afford her mortgage, and she’s trying to adjust to her new single life. At least she has “Carson’s Cove,” her beloved 2000s teenage soap, to binge. The show ended on a cliffhanger after five seasons, and the two main characters, Sloan and Spencer, never got to declare their love for each other. When a birthday cake surprisingly shows up on her and Josh’s doorstep, Brynn makes a wish for the one thing she’s always wanted: a happily ever after. The next morning, she doesn’t wake up in her apartment. She’s in Carson’s Cove, and Josh is there too. Everyone seems to know them, except they’re not Brynn and Josh. They’re Sloan, the sweetheart of Carson’s Cove, and Fletch, the town’s bad boy.
Dial Press Trade Paperback | 9780593596555

THE REAPING: A Steinbeck and Reed Thriller by Jess Lourey (Thriller)
Paperback Original
In 1998, an Alku, Minnesota, family of five was brutally murdered in their sleep. The event shook the insulated community but, without any solid leads, was relegated to the cold case files, where it moldered for 25 years. Until today. Agent Harry Steinbeck hoped never to return to the northland, a place that holds terrible memories of his sister’s abduction. But when a recent homicide is connected to Alku’s unsolved mass murder, he and cold case agent Evangeline Reed have no choice but to investigate. The case grows impossibly darker as, one by one, the children of Alku begin disappearing. Harry and Van can’t shake the sensation that someone is watching every move they make --- and the elusive killer’s trail leads to a truth more sinister than either imagined.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662513985

THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE by Carissa Orlando (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
When Margaret and her husband, Hal, bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street, they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine --- who knows nothing about the hauntings --- arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.
Berkley | 9780593548622

TOO MANY BULLETS by Max Allan Collins (Historical Thriller/Mystery)
It began with John F. Kennedy in 1963. Then Malcolm X in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. And then, in June of the same year, President Kennedy’s brother, Robert, fell before an assassin’s bullets at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. But how many shooters were there, really? And who sent them? In TOO MANY BULLETS, Max Allan Collins takes Nathan Heller, “Private Eye to the Stars,” from the scene of the crime to Hollywood’s seediest haunts, from strip joints to Washington, D.C.’s corridors of power to a deadly desert showdown outside Las Vegas, all in pursuit of the truth about a conspiracy that may have put the wrong man in jail, let the real killers go free, and snuffed out the life of a man poised to become the next president of the United States.
Hard Case Crime | 9781789099485

THE TRAP by Ava Glass (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Emma Makepeace is headed to Edinburgh for the global G7 Summit when her team is tipped off about a high-profile assassination the Russians are planning. But they have no idea who the target is. Surrounded by the world’s most powerful political leaders in a gridlocked city, Emma must set a trap and use herself as bait. With time running short, Emma faces the most perilous mission of her career. How far will she go to catch the killer?
Bantam | 9780593972212

VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE by Isabel Cañas (Supernatural Western/Horror)
As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters. Her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago. Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind. When the United States invades Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war. But the shock of their reunion is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.
Berkley | 9780593436738

WEST HEART KILL by Dann McDorman (Mystery)
When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead.
Vintage | 9780593685839

WHERE THEY LAST SAW HER by Marcie R. Rendon (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. All she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring. When she hears that a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it. As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends and family?
Bantam | 9780593974872

WHILE YOU WERE OUT: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger (Memoir)
Growing up in the 1960s, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding --- a heavily medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule: never talk about it. WHILE YOU WERE OUT begins as the personal story of one family’s struggles and then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country’s flawed mental health care.
Celadon Books | 9781250877031

On Sale the Week of September 9th in Hardcover

September 10th

BONE OF THE BONE: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class by Sarah Smarsh (Essays)
In BONE OF THE BONE, National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times --- class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than 30 of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013–2024) --- ranging from personal narratives to news commentary --- demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future.
Scribner | 9781668055601

BREAK EVERY RULE by Brian Freeman (Thriller)
Tommy Miller is a man with deadly skills, hiding in Florida under a false identity. After being set up on an overseas mission, he's on the run from terrorists --- and from the government that betrayed him. So when his wife and daughter are violently abducted, it seems his ghosts are finally catching up with him. But Tommy isn't the only one with secrets. His wife has been concealing her own dangerous past. With a hotshot police detective, Lindy Jax, close on his trail, Tommy follows a twisted path that brings him face to face with ruthless enemies. His search for answers soon puts him on the wrong side of the law --- hunted by the police and pursued by men who want him dead. Worst of all, if he hopes to save his wife and daughter, he must become the man he once was --- a killer operating from the deepest shadows.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781665109703

BRIGHT I BURN by Molly Aitken (Historical Fiction)
Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities --- and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money and takes her father's flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband --- the three earlier are dead --- a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation.
Knopf | 9780525658399

DEATH AT THE SANATORIUM by Ragnar Jónasson (Mystery/Thriller)
1983: At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland that is now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five suspects. Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir rules his death a suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed. 2012: Almost 30 years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before.
Minotaur Books | 9781250770769

DEN OF INIQUITY: A J. P. Beaumont Novel by J. A. Jance (Mystery/Thriller)
Former Seattle homicide cop J. P. Beaumont faces trouble in the small town of Ashland, as both his personal and professional lives are thrown into turmoil. Beau’s daughter and son-in-law are having marital troubles, and his grandson, a senior in high school, shows up on his doorstep, wanting to live with Beau and his wife, Mel, as he finishes out the school year. Meanwhile, a friend from his past asks for Beau’s help in looking into what appears to be an accidental death. A young man died of a fentanyl overdose, but those closest to him are convinced that he would never have used the drug and that something much more sinister has happened. Beau agrees to unofficially reopen the case, and his investigation leads him to uncover similar mysterious deaths that all point to a most unlikely suspect.
William Morrow | 9780063252585

THE EXAMINER by Janice Hallett (Mystery)
University professor Gela Nathaniel must make her new master’s program in multimedia art succeed. If it doesn’t, then Royal Hastings University will cut her funding and she’ll be out of the job she loves. The six students in this inaugural course will be key to that success. But how well has she selected the team? At the end of the academic year, when the examiner arrives to grade the students’ final project, he finds himself asking what happened. Because if someone in that course isn’t in mortal danger, then they are already dead. But who, and why? He wants us to read through the students’ coursework, texts, message boards and final essays to see if we can find the answers. Only one thing is certain: nothing about this course has been left to chance, and each of these students has their own very different agenda.
Atria Books | 9781668023426

EXPOSURE by Ava Dellaira (Fiction)
In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and go home together after a night out. Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend, Annie, is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade and makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.
Zibby Books | 9781958506677

FATAL GAMBIT written by David Lagercrantz, translated by Ian Giles (Thriller)
Dead women should not show up in photos 14 years beyond the grave. But if anyone is likely to recognize Claire Lidman, it's her husband, Samuel. He brings the photo to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas. Their initial skepticism gives way to cautious belief. But where will this case lead them? Meanwhile, Rekke's daughter, Julia, has a new boyfriend she's determined to keep secret. When word gets out, Micaela's world collapses around her, and Rekke is forced to confront a nemesis from his youth. Plunging us back into the political upheaval and financial crisis of the 1990s, as the Iron Curtain is finally lifted, the second Rekke and Vargas investigation sees our heroes grapple with a fiendish case that affects them both in profoundly personal ways.
Knopf | 9780593319239

FATHERS AND FUGITIVES written by S.J. Naudé, translated by Michiel Heyns (Fiction)
A worldly and urbane journalist living in London, Daniel is a young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, he nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father’s death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man’s will: he will only inherit his half of his father’s considerable estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn’t seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel’s inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel with the boy to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever.
Europa Editions | 9798889660392

FIRST DO NO HARM by Joe Kenda (Mystery)
A string of overdoses in Colorado Springs has Detectives Joe Kenda and Lee Wilson on the lookout for a bad batch of heroin that has been cut with a drug they've never seen before. Meanwhile, at Springs General Hospital, Dr. Blair Moreland --- the notoriously unpleasant head anesthesiologist --- has found a way to feed his deepening addiction to the very same powerful new drug: Fentanyl. But when Dr. Moreland starts supplying the dangerous painkiller to dealer Lula Lopez --- planning to manufacture the drug himself --- he angers a Mexican crime syndicate and sets into motion a cycle of death and violence that threatens to engulf the entire city. Detectives Kenda and Wilson must track down the source of this killer heroin before anyone else can overdose --- and stop Moreland before he can escape the long arm of the law.
Blackstone Publishing | 9798200924363

FIRST IN THE FAMILY: A Story of Revival, Recovery, and the American Dream by Jessica Hoppe (Memoir)
During the first year of quarantine, drug overdoses spiked, the highest ever recorded. And Jessica Hoppe’s cousin was one of them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” Hoppe writes. “People just disappeared.” At the time of her cousin’s death, she’d been in recovery for nearly four years, but she hadn’t told anyone. In FIRST IN THE FAMILY, Hoppe shares her journey, the first in her family to do so, and takes the reader on a remarkable investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery institutions and narratives, leaving the reader with an urgent message of hope.
Flatiron Books | 9781250865229

HERE ONE MOMENT by Liane Moriarty (Fiction)
Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future --- age 103! --- and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
Crown | 9780593798607

KATHARINE, THE WRIGHT SISTER by Tracey Enerson Wood (Historical Fiction)
Engineers across the world were puzzling over how to build a powered flying machine --- and Wilbur and Orville Wright wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister, Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a pact: the three of them would solve the problem of human flight. As her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind. But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart…and forced Katharine to make an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728257877

LUCY UNDYING: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White (Gothic Fantasy/Romance)
Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims. But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula’s clutches --- and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants. Her undead life takes an unexpected turn in 21st-century London, when she meets another woman, Iris, who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’ family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power. Lucy has long believed she would never love again. Yet she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris, while Iris is equally mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by outside forces.
Del Rey | 9780593724408

ONCE MORE FROM THE TOP by Emily Layden (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Since releasing her debut album her senior year of high school, Dylan Read has spent 15 years growing up in the public eye. In the circles of fame and celebrity in which she now travels, the careful maintenance of Dylan Read, the pop star, is often more important than the songs themselves. And so lots of people think they understand everything about her. But what no one knows is the part of her origin story she successfully has kept hidden: her childhood best friend, Kelsey, vanished the year before Dylan became famous. Now, as Dylan is at the height of her career, Kelsey’s body is found at the bottom of their hometown lake --- forcing Dylan to reckon with their shared past, her friend’s influence on her music, and if there’s more to their story than meets the eye.
Mariner Books | 9780063315099

PASSIONTIDE by Monique Roffey (Fiction)
Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player lying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s dead --- brutally murdered and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last. In PASSIONTIDE, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a "revolution" some are calling it. The event draws together four women who have never before seen each other as allies: a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workers’ collective, a local activist, and the prime minister’s wife.
Knopf | 9780593802472

ROBERT B. PARKER'S BUZZ KILL: A Sunny Randall Novel by Alison Gaylin (Mystery)
After a near-death experience, Sunny Randall is ready to lighten her load as a PI --- that is until she is called upon by billionaire media magnate Bill Welch to investigate the disappearance of his son, Dylan, the cofounder of the Gonzo Energy Drink company. Lazy, unscrupulous and a notorious partier, Dylan isn’t exactly reliable. But Dylan’s mother, Lydia, believes he’s in serious danger. Unable to turn down the Welches’ life-changing offer, Sunny takes on the case, starting off by befriending Dylan's smart young business partner, Sky, who seems like his polar opposite. As Sunny traces the marks left behind by Dylan’s past, she needs to unearth all the skeletons in his closet. When bodies start to pile up, Sunny must find answers quickly before she and those she cares about get caught in the crossfire.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593715642

THE SIEGE: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World by Ben Macintyre (History)
As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunmen barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking 26 hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath. A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, THE SIEGE takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Ben Macintyre reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.
Crown | 9780593728093

THE SING SING FILES: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice by Dan Slepian (Memoir)
In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s “Dateline,” received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving 25 years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit. Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched him on a two-decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying --- or even acknowledging --- its mistakes and their consequences. THE SING SING FILES is Slepian’s account of challenging that system.
Celadon Books | 9781250897701

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS by Cebo Campbell (Fiction/Magical Realism)
One day, all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from his 19-year-old daughter, Sidney, who was left behind by her white mother and stepfamily. Traumatized by the event and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668034927

SO THIRSTY: A Vampire Novel by Rachel Harrison (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway --- not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings, cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear that Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.
Berkley | 9780593642542

SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA by TJ Klune (Urban Fantasy)
Arthur Parnassus is the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six magical and so-called dangerous children who live there. He works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve. And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home --- one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from --- Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.
Tor Books | 9781250881205

SYNDICATE: A Dick Francis Novel by Felix Francis (Thriller)
Chester Newton has built his fortune organizing racehorse syndicates, where top horses are co-owned and managed by several parties. These joint enterprises are high risk and high reward --- and for Chester, it’s almost always been reward. The stakes only get higher as the syndicates grow larger, and every race means the possibility of complete failure --- or ecstatic success. After an anxious morning waiting for the results of the Epsom Derby, the premier flat race in the UK, Chester has an afternoon of explosive triumph --- and an evening of total terror. Someone tries to take over one of his syndicates by force --- and by threats of serious harm to him and his family. For the first time in Chester’s life, it’s not just a horse race or money at stake --- it’s his life and the lives of his loved ones.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639108596

TELL ME EVERYTHING by Elizabeth Strout (Fiction)
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He also has fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known --- “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them --- reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Random House | 9780593446096

TWO-STEP DEVIL by Jamie Quatro (Fiction)
In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet --- a 70-year-old man who paints his visions --- lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past --- and perhaps change her future.
Grove Press | 9780802163134

VILEST THINGS by Chloe Gong (Fantasy/Adventure)
Despite the odds, Calla Tuoleimi has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne. Only Calla knows it isn’t really August. Anton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a years-long coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts. As tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set aside their conflicts and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy...even if their empire might be better off burning.
S&S/Saga Press | 9781668000267

WILLIAM by Mason Coile (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career. He’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily. When Lily’s coworkers show up, wanting to finally meet Henry and see the new house --- the smartest of smart homes --- Henry decides to introduce them to William, and things go from strange to much worse. Soon Henry and Lily discover that the security upgrades intended to keep danger out of the house are even better at locking it in.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593719602

THE WOMEN BEHIND THE DOOR by Roddy Doyle (Fiction)
At 66, Paula Spencer --- mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor --- has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. But then, her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day. Nicola is everything Paula wasn’t --- independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a “success” --- but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. She has left her family and come to stay. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma and revelations to confront what they mean to each other --- and who they want to be.
Viking | 9780593831687

On Sale the Week of September 9th in Paperback

September 10th

THE ASCENT by Adam Plantinga (Thriller)
Kurt Argento is an ex-Detroit street cop who can’t let injustice go. If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he's going to rescue her and cause some damage. When he does just that in a small corrupt Missouri town, he’s brutally beaten and thrown into a maximum-security prison. Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor's daughter, is about to take a tour of the prison. But when a malfunction in the security system releases a horde of prisoners, a fierce struggle for survival ensues. Argento must help a small band of staff and civilians, including Julie and her two state trooper handlers, make their way from the bottom floor to the roof to safety. All that stands in their way are six floors of the most dangerous convicts in Missouri.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538739884

THE BOOKLOVER’S LIBRARY by Madeline Martin (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
In Nottingham, England, Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. But with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her with a job. When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Emma’s daughter, Olivia, must be evacuated to the countryside. Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335000392

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 | 9781982151409

DEAD WEST by Linda L. Richards (Thriller)
Taking lives has taken its toll. Her moral justifications have faltered. Do any of the people she has killed --- some of them heinous, but all of them human --- deserve to die? Her next target is Cameron Walker, a rancher in Arizona. When she arrives at his remote desert estate to carry out her orders, she discovers that he is a kind and beautiful man. After a lengthy tour of the ranch, not only has she not killed him --- she’s wondering who might want him dead. She procrastinates, instead growing closer to Cameron. She learns that he is passionate about wild horses and has been fighting a losing political battle to save mustangs that live on protected land near his ranch --- he’s even received death threats from his opponents. Suddenly, she’s faced with protecting the man she was sent to kill.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608096268

DOPPELGANGER: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein (Memoir)
Not long ago, celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo? In DOPPELGANGER, Klein turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical and political crises.
Picador | 9781250338143

DOUBLE EXPOSURE by Elissa R. Sloan (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Maiko Fox and Adrian Hightower were young, beautiful, in love…and famous. The latest model to grace the Valentina Posh runway show and the hottest new superhero actor were Hollywood’s breakout couple. No one could get enough of Madrian. But then their relationship crumbled. Years later, with Adrian topping the Hollywood A-list as a writer and director, dating the country’s biggest pop star, and Maiko starring in movies for her celebrated producer-director husband, they live totally different lives. But they can never be too far apart. Madrian is still a box office draw, and the studios keep throwing them together. As the two grow more and more entangled again professionally, Maiko and Adrian have to reckon with themselves: Are they happy with their current lives? Or have they grown to be better people when with each other?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063315198

THE EDGE: A 6:20 Man Thriller by David Baldacci (Thriller)
When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine spent his time in the military preparing to take on any scenario, so his analytical mind makes him particularly well-suited for complex, high-stakes tasks. Taking down the world’s largest financial conspiracy proved his value, and in comparison, this case looks straightforward. Except small towns hold secrets, and Devine finds himself an outsider again. As Devine gets to know the residents of Putnam, Maine, answers seem to appear and then transform into more questions.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538719893

HEMLOCK ISLAND by Kelley Armstrong (Horror)
Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and terrified renters who have fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet. When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenage niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who’s now a cop. There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods and, before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it. But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250353443

JANE AND THE FINAL MYSTERY: Being a Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron (Historical Mystery)
March 1817: As winter turns to spring, Jane Austen’s health is in slow decline and threatens to cease progress on her latest manuscript. But when her nephew, Edward, brings chilling news of a death at his former school, Winchester College, not even her debilitating ailment can keep Jane from seeking out the truth. Arthur Prendergast, a senior pupil at the prestigious all-boys’ boarding school, has been found dead in a culvert near the schoolgrounds --- and in the pocket of his drenched waistcoat is an incriminating note penned by the young William Heathcote, the son of Jane’s dear friend, Elizabeth. Winchester College is a world unto itself, with its own language and rites of passage, cruel hazing and dangerous pranks. Can Jane clear William’s name before her illness gets the better of her?
Soho Crime | 9781641296175

THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke (Fiction)
Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life in one month’s time. Young, beautiful and successful, she and her fiancé, Michael, are considered the “couple goals” of their social network and seem to have it all. That is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: “Oh my god, have you seen The List?” It began as a crowdsourced collection of names and somehow morphed into an anonymous account posting allegations on social media. Ola usually would be the first to support such a list --- she’d retweet it, call for the men to be fired, write article after article. Except this time, Michael’s name is on it.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063274884

MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN written by Anne Eekhout, translated by Laura Watkinson (Historical Fiction)
Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelops the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this “year without a summer,” 18-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion, John Polidori. One famous evening, Byron issues a challenge to write the best ghost story. Contemplating what to write, Mary recalls another summer, when she was 14. Scotland, 1812. A guest of the Baxter family, Mary arrives in Dundee, befriending young Isabella Baxter. As their bond deepens, Mary and Isabella’s feelings for each other intensify. But someone has been watching them --- the charismatic and vaguely sinister Mr. Booth, Isabella's older brother-in-law, who may not be as benevolent as he purports to be.
HarperVia | 9780063256750

THE MURDER OF ANDREW JOHNSON by Burt Solomon (Historical Thriller)
Andrew Johnson was called The Great Commoner, appealing to the masses, loathing the establishment and anyone he deemed elitist. Once Johnson made an enemy, you became his enemy for life. He saw insults where none were intended, and personal loyalty meant everything. He also was the first U.S. president to be impeached. Time, however, waits for no man, and even the Famous (or Infamous) must leave this world eventually. But when a man has as many enemies as the Devil, what death could really be a natural one? From political opponents to most of his own family, the suspects are endless, and the truth not really wanted. John Hay --- lawyer, sometimes governmental bureaucrat, and now journeyman investigative reporter --- is set on finding that truth. And it may wind up killing him.
Forge Books | 9780765392732

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES by Thrity Umrigar (Fiction)
When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from her. Years later, he returns to Bombay, planning to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl --- and to see his elderly mother again before it is too late. She is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life. Struck with guilt for not realizing just how ill she had become, Remy devotes himself to helping her recover and return home. But one day in her apartment, he comes upon an old photograph that demands explanation. As shocking family secrets surface, Remy finds himself reevaluating his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself.
Algonquin Books | 9781643755434

NOT FOREVER, BUT FOR NOW by Chuck Palahniuk (Horror/Satire)
Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers growing up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoy watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather...and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. “Downton Abbey,” this is not. However, it’s not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow. With Grandfather putting pressure on Otto to step up, it becomes clear that this will all end in only two ways: a nuclear apocalypse or just another day among the creeping thistle and tree peonies. And in a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, either is equally possible.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668021422

PAST LYING: A Karen Pirie Novel by Val McDermid (Mystery/Thriller)
It’s April 2020, and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot --- the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed --- but a mere pandemic doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists facing off over a chessboard. But it quickly emerges that their real-life competition is drawing blood. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, and as Karen and her team attempt to disentangle fact from fiction, it becomes clear that their investigation is more complicated than they ever imagined.
Grove Press | 9780802163653

SAVING EMMA by Allen Eskens (Legal Thriller/Mystery)
When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home. Ben’s daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady’s wife, Dee, ever since that awful night. Now 14 years old, Emma has been growing distant and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents.
Mulholland Books | 9780316566391

SCATTERSHOT: Life, Music, Elton, and Me by Bernie Taupin (Memoir)
Half of one of the greatest creative partnerships in popular music, Bernie Taupin is the man who wrote the lyrics for Elton John, who conceived the ideas that spawned countless hits. Together they were a duo, a unit, an immovable object. Their extraordinary, half-century-and-counting creative relationship has been chronicled in biopics (like 2019's Rocketman) and even John's own autobiography, ME. But Taupin, a famously private person, has kept his own account of their adventures close to his chest, until now. SCATTERSHOT allows the reader to witness events unfolding from Taupin's singular perspective --- sometimes front and center, sometimes from the edge, yet always described vibrantly, with an infectious energy that only a vivid songwriter's prose could offer.
Hachette Books | 9780306828683

THE SHADOW KEY by Susan Stokes-Chapman (Historical/Gothic Mystery)
Paperback Original
Dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital, Dr. Henry Talbot has little choice but to accept a mysterious offer of employment as a private physician from an inscrutable lord in rural Wales, Lord Julian. Arriving at Plas Helyg, the isolated estate, Henry can’t speak the language and finds himself treated with hostile suspicion by superstitious villagers, whose beliefs in myths and magic he’s inclined to dismiss. But when he discovers that his predecessor died under peculiar, inexplicable circumstances, his determination to uncover the truth leads him down a path fraught with danger --- made all the more perilous by his headstrong, reluctant ally Linette, Lord Julian’s cousin.
Harper Perennial | 9780063392427

SICK TO DEATH: An Andy Hayes Mystery by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mystery)
Paperback Original
After years of personal and professional turmoil, things are finally looking up for Columbus, Ohio, private eye Andy Hayes. As SICK TO DEATH opens, Andy is relishing his new gig: a drama-free, family-friendly stint as a guard at the Columbus Museum of Art. However, Andy’s newfound equilibrium comes crashing down when he interrupts the theft of a painting by famed Ashcan school realist George Bellows --- and is promptly fired for breaking museum protocols. Helping him thwart the robbers is Alex Rutledge, the adult daughter he never knew he had, the result of a one-night stand during his misspent youth a quarter century earlier. Alex wants to hire her newly discovered father to find the driver who killed her mother five months earlier in a still unsolved hit-skip accident.
Swallow Press | 9780804012539

THE TRAITOR AMONG US: An Elena Standish Novel by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
Not far from the sprawling grounds of Wyndham Hall, the body of longtime MI6 agent John Repton is found, shot dead with a single bullet to the heart. Repton was killed while surveilling the members of a household with alleged ties to fascists who threaten the security of the country, as Hitler’s influence spreads across Europe. Elena Standish is assigned the case, thanks to her new connection to the Wyndham family: Her older sister, Margot, is being courted by Lady Wyndham’s brother. As Elena and her colleague, James Allenby, dig deeper into the Wyndham family’s nefarious connections, Margot grows suspicious. Can Elena reconcile her political and professional obligations with her loyalty and love for her sister? Will Elena and Allenby uncover their colleague’s killer?
Ballantine Books | 9780593359174

A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL: An Evelyne Redfern Mystery by Julia Kelly (Historical Mystery)
1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer. But doing so puts her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out that David’s real mission is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up.
Minotaur Books | 9781250865496

WE NEED NO WINGS by Ann Dávila Cardinal (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Paperback Original
When Tere Sanchez’s husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university where she works, Tere hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates. Suddenly, Tere's life is thrown into disarray, and the repeated incidents of levitation not only make her question her sanity, but also put her in danger. She decides she will do anything to stop them. So when she's reminded that her family is related to renowned levitating mystic Saint Teresa of Avila, she leaves the refuge of her home and travels to Spain, hoping to find answers. But Saints can be elusive, and not all answers are easily found.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728258508

WHALEFALL by Daniel Kraus (Science Fiction/Thriller)
Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand --- to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out --- one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.
MTV Books | 9781665918176

WORLD WALKERS by Neal Asher (Science Fiction/Space Opera)
Paperback Original
Ottanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But after its Inspectorate experiments on him, Ottanger realizes the mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror --- and he understands that he finally can flee his timeline. Then Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved human, visiting his Earth from the far future. He’d engineered the original world-walking mutation, so those altered could escape the Committee’s nightmarish regime. Yet this only worked for a few, and millions continued to suffer. And Ottanger sees that that Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed. However, the Fenris has drawn yet another threat to Ottanger’s Earth. With the power of its trillion linked minds, it craves world-walking biotech and will do anything to get it.
Pyr | 9781645060888

THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY, Volume 3 edited by Paula Guran (Fantasy/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
Award-winning fantasy editor Paula Guran invites you to join an array of accomplished authors on an extraordinary and enchanting expedition. Seventeen fantastical stories weave a wonderful web of magic, revelation and, of course, adventure. The third volume of The Year's Best Fantasy explores alternative realities that mirror a world much like our own, yet push the limits of one’s imagination. Buckle up and enjoy the ride! This is a collection of tales that fantasy fanatics won’t want to miss.
Pyr | 9781645060932

ZERO-SUM: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (Fiction/Short Stories)
A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered. Diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community. A woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover. A young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism and ever-shifting identities.
Vintage | 9780593469583

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

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