October 1, 2024

October 1, 2024

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of September 30th and October 7th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our special contest for THE GRAYS OF TRUTH by Sharon Virts, a gripping tale of murder and deceit. In anticipation of the book’s October 29th release, we are awarding an advance copy to 25 readers. The deadline for your entries is Friday, October 11th at noon ET.

Our latest Fall Reading prize book is LIBBY LOST AND FOUND, which releases on October 15th. Stephanie Booth's debut novel is about the stories we tell ourselves and the chapters of our lives we regret. Most importantly, it's about the endings we write for ourselves.

The 24-hour contest is now up, so be sure to enter for your chance to win one of five copies of the book. The deadline for your entries is TOMORROW, Wednesday, October 2nd at noon ET. 

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, October 2nd 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 Jean Hanff Korelitz about her new thriller, THE SEQUEL, which is the eagerly awaited follow-up to her 2021 novel, THE PLOT.

Thursday, October 3rd at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Ian Rankin will talk about his 25th Rebus novel, MIDNIGHT AND BLUE. John Rebus spent his life as a cop putting Edinburgh's most deadly criminals behind bars. Now having been convicted of a homicide, he's joined them.

Tuesday, October 8th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome #1 New York Times bestselling author Nita Prose for a live virtual discussion of her new novella featuring Molly the Maid, THE MISTLETOE MYSTERY, as part of their B&N Midday Mystery Virtual Event series. Nita will be in conversation with the co-author of THE NEXT MRS. PARRISH, Lynne Constantine.

Tuesday, October 8th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Lee Child will talk about his recently released book, SAFE ENOUGH. Meticulously plotted and packed with his trademark action and suspense, these 20 stories show Child's mastery of the short form. They’ve never been collected before now.

Tuesday, October 8th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda will talk to Robert Dugoni about his latest thriller, BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT. When Jenna Bernstein, the disgraced wunderkind CEO of a controversial biotech company, is accused of murdering her former partner and lover, she turns to Seattle attorney Keera Duggan to defend her.

This Week's Bonus News: Our Special Contest for
THE GRAYS OF TRUTH by Sharon Virts
Enter to Win One of 25 Advance Copies

On Sale the Week of September 30th in Hardcover

September 30th

LIES HE TOLD ME by James Patterson and David Ellis (Thriller)
Everyone in Hemingway Grove, Illinois, knows David and Marcie Bowers. David owns the local pub. Marcie is a former big-city lawyer who practices family law. When David jumps into Cotton River to save a drowning stranger, he’s celebrated as a hero. His muscled physique, shaved head and piercing blue eyes are broadcast on every news outlet. For most people, newfound fame is a lifeline. For David Bowers, it’s a death sentence. For Marcie Bowers, it’s a test. A wife knows the difference between a loving husband and father and a cold-blooded assassin. Right?
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316403894

October 1st

BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS: A Memoir by Ina Garten (Memoir)
Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
Crown | 9780593799895

BETRAYAL AT BLACKTHORN PARK: An Evelyne Redfern Mystery by Julia Kelly (Historical Mystery)
Freshly graduated from a rigorous training program in all things spy craft, former typist Evelyne Redfern is eager for her first assignment as a field agent helping Britain win the war. However, when she learns her first task is performing a simple security test at Blackthorn Park, a requisitioned manor house in the sleepy Sussex countryside, she can’t help her initial disappointment. Making matters worse, her handler is to be David Poole, a fellow agent who manages to be both strait-laced and dashing in annoyingly equal measure. However, Evelyne soon realizes that Blackthorn Park is more than meets the eye, and an upcoming visit from Winston Churchill means that security at the secret weapons research and development facility is of the utmost importance. When Evelyne discovers Blackthorn Park’s chief engineer dead in his office, her simple assignment becomes more complicated.
Minotaur Books | 9781250865519

THE BOG WIFE by Kay Chronister (Gothic Horror)
Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a "bog-wife." Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails --- or refuses --- to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future. As youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.
Counterpoint | 9781640096622

THE CITY IN GLASS by Nghi Vo (Dark Fantasy/Romance)
The demon Vitrine loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost --- and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever. Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide if they will let the city fall again.
Tordotcom | 9781250348272

THE DROWNED by John Banville (Historical Mystery)
1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea. Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally --- the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke --- a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways. But as the case unfolds, events from the past resurface that may have life-altering ramifications for all involved.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335000590

EXPOSURE by Ramona Emerson (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
In Gallup, New Mexico, a serial killer is operating unchecked, his targets indigent Native people whose murders are easily disguised as death by exposure on the frigid winter streets. He slips unnoticed through town, while the voices in his head guide him toward a terrifying vision of glory. As the Gallup detectives struggle to put the pieces together, they consider calling in a controversial specialist to help. Rita Todacheene, Albuquerque PD forensic photographer, is at a crisis point in her career. Her colleagues are watching her with suspicion after the recent revelation that she can see the ghosts of murder victims. Her unmanageable caseload is further complicated by the fact that half the department has blacklisted her for ratting out a corrupt fellow cop. Maybe it’s time for her to leave police work behind entirely --- if only the ghosts will let her.
Soho Crime | 9781641294768

THE FABLED EARTH by Kimberly Brock (Historical Fiction)
Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.
Harper Muse | 9781400234226

THE GREAT WHEN: A Long London Novel by Alan Moore (Historical Fantasy)
London, 1949. Amidst the smog of the capital stumbles Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless 18-year-old employed by a secondhand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How? Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret. If Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse). Soon he finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635578843

I'LL BE WAITING by Kelley Armstrong (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Nicola Laughton was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Medical advances let her live into her 30s, and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future…together. Months after they married, Anton died in a horrible car crash, but he lived long enough to utter five words to her: “I’ll be waiting for you.” That final private moment became public when someone from the crash scene took it to the press --- the terminally ill woman holding her dying husband as he promised to wait for her on the other side. Worse, that person claimed it wasn’t Anton who said the words but his ghost, hovering over his body. A reputable medium is brought in to conduct a séance, but throughout it all Nicola is haunted by nightmares of her past. Because this isn’t her first time contacting the dead. And Nicola isn’t her real name. That’s when she finds the first body.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250284211

THE MESSAGE by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Social Science/Essays)
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city --- a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
One World | 9780593230381

THE MIGHTY RED by Louise Erdrich (Fiction)
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He is determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker. Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, she tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future --- her daughter’s and her own. Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009.
Harper | 9780063277052

THE MISTLETOE MYSTERY: A Maid Novella by Nita Prose (Mystery)
Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly’s most joyful yet. But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential --- and personal --- mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: Has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince?
Ballantine Books | 9780593875445

MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things --- the strange and the unexplainable --- began to happen in their house. Whatever it was, the Maxwells stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents. But was it supernatural?
MCD | 9780374607135

THE POSITION OF SPOONS: And Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy (Essays)
Deborah Levy’s vital literary voice speaks about many things. On footwear: “It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers.” On public parks: “A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles.” On Elizabeth Hardwick: “She understands what is at stake in literature.” On the conclusion of a marriage: “It doesn’t take an alien to tell us that when love dies we have to find another way of being alive.” Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations. THE POSITION OF SPOONS is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374614973

REVENGE OF THE TIPPING POINT: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell (Psychology/Social Science)
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In REVENGE OF THE TIPPING POINT, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in 25 years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena. Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316575805

ROUGH PAGES by Lev AC Rosen (Historical Mystery)
Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger. A search of Howard’s bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk?
Forge Books | 9781250322449

THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Psychological Thriller)
Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity. But for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. When Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly...Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do?
Celadon Books | 9781250875471

THE SEVENTH FLOOR by David McCloskey (Political Thriller)
A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, operational chief Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat for the disaster and run out of the service. Months later, Sam appears at Procter’s doorstep with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole burrowed deep within the highest ranks of the CIA. As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt requires Procter to dredge up her checkered past in the service of the CIA, placing the pair in the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324086680

SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner (Fiction)
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life. As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place --- first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships --- every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.
Grove Press | 9780802163707

SOCIETY OF LIES by Lauren Ling Brown (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion. This visit is special because Maya also will be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi. But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya’s worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on. As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister’s death, she begins to realize how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya’s warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus --- the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it. The more Maya uncovers, the more terrified she becomes that Naomi’s decision to follow in her footsteps might have been what got her killed.
Bantam | 9780593723357

A SONG TO DROWN RIVERS by Ann Liang (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
Xishi’s beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue. When she draws the attention of the famous young military advisor Fanli, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to use her beauty as a weapon. One that could topple the rival neighboring kingdom of Wu, improve the lives of her people and avenge her sister’s murder. All she has to do is infiltrate the enemy palace as a spy, seduce their immoral king and weaken them from within. But she knows that Fanli can see through every deception she masters, the attraction between them burning away any falsehoods. Once inside the enemy palace, Xishi finds herself under the hungry gaze of the king’s advisors while the king himself shows her great affection. But the higher Xishi climbs in the Wu court, the farther she and Fanli have to fall.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250289469

THE THIRD REALM written by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken (Fiction)
For several days, a strange and bright new star in the sky above Norway has sown an unyielding sense of foreboding, agitation and fear. Tove, a painter on holiday with her family, has spiraled into a psychosis that stirs her into a flurry of unbridled creativity. Geir, a policeman who has been investigating a grisly triple murder, comes to a sinister revelation he must keep to himself. Nineteen-year-old Line falls in love with the lead singer of a metal band and is lured into a secret and frightening world. But most bewildering, and disquieting, is the discovery made by Syvert, an undertaker. Since the star has appeared, no one has died. In THE THIRD REALM, Karl Ove Knausgaard returns to the spellbinding world of THE MORNING STAR and THE WOLVES OF ETERNITY, as a cast of new and familiar characters continue to reckon with the meaning of this star. What is haunting them, and why?
Penguin Press | 9780593655214

TRIANGLE by Danielle Steel (Romantic Suspense)
As she approaches the milestone birthday of 40, delicate blond beauty Amanda Delanoe finds joy in running a chic contemporary art gallery in the City of Light, but so far the love of her life has eluded her. Then she meets Olivier Saint Albin, a dashing publisher. At the same time, she reconnects with Tom Quinlan, an old boyfriend from her days at NYU 20 years ago, now a lawyer on sabbatical who has come to Paris to devote himself to writing a thriller. Charming Olivier is a master at the art of flirtation, but as Amanda feels herself falling for him, she learns he is married. Providing counsel and support is her friend and co-owner of the gallery, fun-loving bachelor Pascal Leblanc. When Amanda begins to receive threatening phone calls late at night, it is Pascal she turns to. Then someone breaks into her apartment on the Left Bank, and it’s all too clear she's in real danger. But from whom?
Delacorte Press | 9780593498552

On Sale the Week of September 30th in Paperback

October 1st

AMERICA FANTASTICA by Tim O’Brien (Fiction/Satire)
Boyd Halverson --- star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager --- robs a bank and takes the teller, Angie Bing, as a hostage and for a ride. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday, Boyd and Angie reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.
Mariner Books | 9780063318519

THE ANTIQUE HUNTER’S GUIDE TO MURDER by C. L. Miller
(Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, an antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last 20 years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate --- sent just days before his death --- Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind. Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But it’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate, and how was Arthur involved? Can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?
Atria Books | 9781668032015

BE MINE: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford (Fiction)
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost 40 years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative and often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives --- sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent --- Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank, in typical Bascombe fashion, faces down the mortality that is assured each of us. In doing so, he confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.
Ecco | 9780061692093

BLOOD SISTERS by Vanessa Lillie (Mystery/Thriller)
As an archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown 15 years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling. When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored --- as so often happens in cases of missing Native women. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades.
Berkley | 9780593550137

THE BOYFRIEND by Freida McFadden (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Sydney Shaw has terrible luck with dating. She's seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot. Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming and handsome, and he works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet. Then the brutal murder of a young woman --- the latest in a string of deaths across the coast --- confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them. Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can't shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn't get to the truth, she'll be the killer's next victim.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728296227

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CHRISTMAS by Mary Kay Andrews (Romance)
When fall rolls around, it’s time for Kerry Tolliver to leave her family’s Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina for the wilds of New York City to help her gruff older brother and his dog, Queenie, sell the trees at the family stand on a corner in Greenwich Village. In the weeks leading into Christmas, Kerry quickly becomes close with the charming neighbors who live near their stand. When an elderly neighbor goes missing, Kerry will need to combine her country know-how with her newly acquired New York knowledge to protect the new friends she’s come to think of as family. And complicating everything is Patrick, a single dad raising his son, Austin, on this quirky block. Kerry and Patrick’s chemistry is undeniable, but what chance does this holiday romance really have?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250878380

THE CRESCENT MOON TEAROOM by Stacy Sivinski (Historical Fantasy)
Paperback Original
Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves and cardamon that lie at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune. That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus --- and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet --- it seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.
Atria Books | 9781668058398

DEVIL MAKES THREE by Ben Fountain (Fiction)
Haiti, 1991. When a violent coup d’état leads to the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, American expat Matt Amaker is forced to abandon his idyllic, beachfront scuba business. With the rise of a brutal military dictatorship and an international embargo threatening to destroy even the country’s most powerful players, some are looking to gain an advantage in the chaos --- and others are just looking to make it through another day. Desperate for money --- and survival --- Matt teams up with his best friend and business partner, Alix Variel. They set their sights on legendary shipwrecks that have been rumored to contain priceless treasures off a remote section of Haiti’s southern coast. However, their ambition and exploration of these disastrous wrecks come with a cascade of ill-fated incidents.
Flatiron Books | 9781250776532

EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT: A Memoir by Curtis Chin (Memoir)
1980s Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone --- from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples --- could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family and to himself.
Little, Brown and Company ‎| 9780316507752

EVERYTHING IS NOT ENOUGH by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström (Fiction)
Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she's the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Former model-turned-flight attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin gave up her career and came with nothing into Jonny’s kingdom. Having had a child with him, her greatest fear for Maya includes being cut off from the resources to which she has become accustomed. After fleeing her home through a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin finds love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik. But someone from her past forces her to become a caretaker before she’s ready. EVERYTHING IS NOT ENOUGH follows the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice and patriarchy in Europe.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063316980

THE FLITTING: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies by Ben Masters (Memoir)
Paperback Original
With his dying father unable to leave the house and follow the butterfly cycle for the first time since he was a child, Ben Masters endeavors to become his connection to the outdoors and his treasured butterflies, reporting back with stories of beloved species and with stories of the woods and meadows that are their habitats and once were his. Structured around a series of exchanges and remembrances, butterflies become a way of talking about masculinity, memory, generational differences, and ultimately loss and continuation. Masters takes readers on an unlikely journey where Luther Vandross and The Sopranos rub shoulders with the likes of Angela Carter and Virginia Woolf on butterflies and gender; the metamorphoses of Prince; Zadie Smith on Joni Mitchell and how sensibilities evolve; and the lives and works of Vladimir Nabokov and other literary lepidopterists.
Tin House Books | 9781959030812

GERMANY 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler's Putsch, and Democracy in Crisis written by Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase (History)
1923 was a “year of lunacy” in Germany, defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Most observers found it miraculous that the Weimar Republic --- the first German democracy --- was able to survive, though some of the more astute realized that the feral undercurrents unleashed that year could lead to much worse. Now, a century later, Volker Ullrich draws on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles and other sources to present a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced --- one with haunting parallels to our own political moment.
Liveright | 9781324095651

A HAUNTING ON THE HILL by Elizabeth Hand (Gothic Horror)
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she finally may be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play. Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself.
Mulholland Books ‎| 9780316527477

THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng (Historical Fiction)
Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Having long hidden his homosexuality, Maugham’s unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings --- and the freedom to travel with Gerald. He arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper.
Bloomsbury Publishing ‎| 9781639734672

THE HOUSE OF LOVE AND DEATH: A Cameron Winter Mystery by Andrew Klavan (Hard-boiled Mystery)
Three members of a wealthy family, along with their live-in nanny, are pulled from their burning mansion, already dead from gunshot wounds. The only survivor is a young boy whose memory of the event raises more questions than answers. The police seem happy to settle on a simple explanation and arrest the most obvious suspect, but Cameron Winter knows that obvious solutions are seldom the correct ones, and all too often they hide a darker truth. While Winter’s investigation is welcomed by many who knew the victims, the lead detective makes it clear he wants Winter not only to stop looking for answers, but to stay out of his town altogether. Winter begins to understand why as he slowly uncovers crimes and unsavory behavior that had been ignored long before the killings.
Mysterious Press ‎| 9781613165911

HOW TO HELP A HUNGRY WEREWOLF by Charlotte Stein (Paranormal Romance)
Paperback Original
When Cassandra Camberwell returns to her hometown of Hollow Brook to clear out her late grandmother’s ramshackle old house, the last thing she expects is Seth Brubaker on her doorstep. Her former best friend was responsible for the worst moment of her high school life, and she can’t imagine he wants to do anything but torment her all over again. Until she unearths the real reason this annoyingly gorgeous beast of a man keeps hanging around: he’s an actual werewolf who’s certain she’s the witch that will ease his suffering. But Cassie just isn’t sure if she can trust him again. So Seth offers a pact: he’ll teach her all about her undiscovered magic, and she will brew the potions he needs. No feelings, no funny business, just a witch and a werewolf striking a deal. Totally doable. Until they get hit with a do-or-die mating bond.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250352330

IN LIGHT OF ALL DARKNESS: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America's Child by Kim Cross (True Crime)
On October 1, 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, during a sleepover with two friends, while her mother slept soundly in the room next door. This rarest of all kidnappings --- a stranger abduction from the home --- triggered one of the largest manhunts in FBI history. New York Times bestselling author Kim Cross has written the first comprehensive account of what happened on that fateful night in October, as well as how the case forever transformed the Bureau’s approach to solving crimes. With unprecedented access to case files, crime scene photos, a videotaped murder confession and inside sources, IN LIGHT OF ALL DARKNESS follows the investigators who pieced together the evidence that led to the arrest and conviction of the kidnapper.
Grand Central Publishing ‎| 9781538725078

KENNEDY 35: A BOX 88 Thriller by Charles Cumming (Thriller)
1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices that will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha. 2023: Eric Appiah, an old friend from Kite’s days at school and an off-the-record BOX 88 asset, makes contact with explosive information about what happened all those years ago in West Africa. When tragedy strikes, Kite must use all the resources at his disposal to protect Martha from a criminal network with links to international terror.
Mysterious Press ‎| 9781613165928

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ROSE DOUCETTE by Harry Hunsicker (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Dallas private investigator Dylan Fisher hasn’t seen his ex-wife, Rose, in three years --- which is why he’s surprised when she asks him to meet her at a hotel. Rose Doucette is a homicide detective, and she wants Dylan’s help with a murder investigation that she’s been asked to step back from but can’t seem to let go. They review the details of the case and part ways --- but as Rose is leaving the parking lot, Dylan sees a suspicious car begin to follow her. He tails the car and tries to warn Rose, but he’s too late --- the driver of the car shoots her, killing her instantly. The police are determined to pin the murder on Dylan, so he’s left with no choice but to find the killer himself. Teaming up with Rose’s widower, the pair dive into Rose’s past to figure out who could’ve wanted to kill the woman they both loved --- and what they were trying to hide.
Oceanview Publishing ‎| 9781608096121

MAKE THE SEASON BRIGHT by Ashley Herring Blake (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
It's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée. She now has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true. As the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister, Adele, also brought a friend home --- and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton. Brighton just wanted to try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers --- which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. After a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together. And it all feels painfully familiar.
Berkley | 9780593550595

THE MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut (Fiction)
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programmable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues and rivals, Benjamín Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake. THE MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces. It ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo.
Penguin Books ‎| 9780593654491

MENEWOOD by Nicola Griffith (Historical Fiction)
Making a much-anticipated return to the world of HILD, MENEWOOD transports readers back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change. Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking’s court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is 18, honed and tested, the formidable lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood. But old alliances are fraying. Younger rivals are snapping at Edwin’s heels. And war is brewing. Not knowing whom to trust, Edwin becomes volatile and recalls his young advisor to court. There Hild begins to understand the true extent of the chaos ahead --- and realizes she must find a way to navigate the turbulence and fight to protect both the kingdom and her own people.
Picador ‎| 9781250338198

THE MERRY MATCHMAKER by Sheila Roberts (Romance)
Paperback Original
Frankie Lane knows what’s best for just about everyone but herself. She’s confident she could help all the people in her life if they’d just let her --- and if all of her help didn’t end in utter disaster. Mitch Howard is the owner of the local hardware store. They’ve been friends ever since Frankie opened her shop, Holiday Happiness, nine years earlier. He got her through the nightmare when she lost her husband in a freak accident, and he’s her favorite shoulder to cry on. He’s been divorced for years, and it’s such a waste of man! Mitch is the fittest, finest man Frankie knows. He’s easygoing, wise and kindhearted. Mitch needs someone. And she’s determined to help him find that someone --- whether he likes it or not.
Mira | 9780778369608

MOSCOW X by David McCloskey (Political Thriller)
CIA officers Sia and Max enter Russia under commercial cover to recruit Vladimir Putin’s moneyman. Sia works for a London law firm that conceals the wealth of the superrich. Max’s family business in Mexico, a CIA front since the 1960s, is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple to target Vadim, Putin’s private banker, and his wife, Anna, who --- unbeknownst to the CIA --- is a Russian intelligence officer under deep cover at the bank. As they descend further into a Russian world dripping with luxury and rife with gangland violence, Sia and Max’s only hope may be Anna, who is playing a game of her own.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324086468

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLF DIESEL: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I by Douglas Brunt (History)
September 29, 1913. The steamship Dresden is halfway between Belgium and England. On board is one of the most famous men in the world, Rudolf Diesel, whose new internal combustion engine is on the verge of revolutionizing global industry forever. But Diesel never arrives at his destination. He vanishes during the night, and headlines around the world wonder if it was an accident, suicide or murder. In THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLF DIESEL, New York Times bestselling author Douglas Brunt reopens the case and provides an astonishing new conclusion about Diesel’s fate.
Atria Books | 9781982169916

NIGHT SIDE OF THE RIVER: Ghost Stories by Jeanette Winterson (Supernatural Fiction/Short Stories)
In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own encounters with the supernatural alongside hair-raising fictions. Lifting the veil between the living and the dead, Winterson spirits us away to a haunted estate that ensnares a nomadic young couple in its own dark past, a staged immersive ghost tour gone awry, a West Village séance that threatens the bounds between AI and reality, and a vacation home in the metaverse where a widow visits an improved version of her deceased husband. Gloriously gothic and unnervingly contemporary, Winterson examines grief, revenge, and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802163608

NO ONE WILL KNOW by Rose Carlyle (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Julia and Christopher Hygate have the picture-perfect life: gobs of money thanks to their lucrative shipping enterprise and an estate on a secluded island. When they meet Eve Sylvester, they know she is the exact person they should hire to be their child's nanny. Eve doesn’t have any living relatives, she’s lost touch with her friends, and her partner is out of the picture. Best of all, she’s expecting a baby. Eve thinks she’s landed the greatest gig. But the job seems too good to be true. Why would the Hygates hire Eve if she has no prior nannying experience? Why must Eve stay out of sight? And what’s with the mysterious yachts coming in and out of the Hygates' private marina? It's too late to ask questions, though. Eve is already in far too deep.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063379930

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason (Historical Fiction)
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave --- only to discover that the earth refuses to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593597040

THE OLYMPIAN AFFAIR: The Cinder Spires #2 by Jim Butcher (Fantasy/Adventure)
The Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity for centuries. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defense and trade. Now, the Spires hover on the brink of open war. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora's Armada and its new secret weapon --- one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires. A trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war. It will take daring, skill and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion --- assuming that it is not already too late.
Ace | 9780451466839

ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY by Susan Mallery (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Julie Parker’s kids are her greatest gift. Still, she’s not exactly heartbroken when they ask to skip a big Christmas. Her son, Nick, is taking a belated honeymoon with his bride, Blair, while her daughter, Dana, will purge every reminder of the guy who dumped her. Again. Julie feels practically giddy for one-on-one holiday time with Heath, the (much) younger man she’s secretly dating. But her plans go from cozy to chaotic when Nick and Dana plead for Christmas at the family cabin in memory of their late father, Julie’s ex. She can’t refuse, even though she dreads their reactions to her new man when they realize she’s been hiding him for months. As the guest list grows in surprising ways, from Blair’s estranged mom to Heath’s precocious children, Julie’s secret is one of many to be unwrapped.
Canary Street Press ‎| 9781335006301

A POWER UNBOUND by Freya Marske (Historical Fantasy)
After the death of his twin sister, Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world. Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross, who is only in this for the money. When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall --- Jack’s ancestral family estate --- Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets and bloody sacrifice.
Tor Books ‎| 9781250831903

THE PREMONITION written by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda (Fiction)
Yayoi, a 19-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, lately has been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day. As if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino. For as long as Yayoi can remember, Yukino has lived alone in an old gloomy single-family home. When she is not working, she spends all day in her pajamas, clipping her nails and trimming her split ends. She sometimes wakes Yayoi at 2am to be her drinking companion and watches Friday the 13th over and over to comfort herself. A child study desk, old stuffed animals --- things Yukino wants to forget --- are piled up in her backyard like a graveyard of her memories.
Counterpoint | 9781640096646

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING: A Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen (Historical Mystery)
Back home at her estate in Eynsleigh, Lady Georgiana Rannoch impatiently awaits the birth of her baby. But she has plenty to occupy her: her new chef, Pierre, has arrived from Paris, and Sir Hubert, who owns Eynsleigh, is back from his latest expedition. It's time for Georgie to throw her first house party to celebrate his return and show off her new chef. One of the guests is Sir Mortimer Mordred, the author of creepy Gothic horror novels who recently purchased a nearby Elizabethan manor because it has a famous poison garden. He asks Georgie to borrow her new chef for his upcoming party. Shockingly, just after the banquet, several guests become sick. And one dies, apparently poisoned by berries from the garden. But how could this be when they all ate the same meal and the same delectable dessert?
Berkley ‎| 9780593437902

THE PUREST BOND: Understanding the Human–Canine Connection by Jen Golbeck and Stacey Colino (Self-Help/Personal Growth)
Dogs have been considered people’s best friend for thousands of years, but never has the relationship between humans and their canine companions been as vitally important as it is today. With all of the seismic shifts in today’s world, rates of anxiety and depression have been skyrocketing, and people have been turning to their dogs for solace and stability. In the United States alone, dog adoptions doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people have brought furry friends into their lives for the first time or seized this opportunity to deepen the connections they already have, they are looking to understand how owning a dog can change their lives. Now, THE PUREST BOND explores the benefits our dogs can have on our physical, emotional, cognitive and social well-being, often without our realizing it.
Atria Books | 9781668007853

STARLING HOUSE by Alix E. Harrow (Gothic Fantasy)
Opal is determined to find a better life for her younger brother, Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive 19th-century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway. Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House, she can't resist. But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she finally might have found a reason to stick around.
Tor Books | 9781250799067

STARTER VILLAIN by John Scalzi (Science Fiction/Humor)
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital. It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains.
Tor Books | 9781250879394

THE USUAL SILENCE: An Arles Shepherd Thriller by Jenny Milchman (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a 10-year-old boy who has never spoken a word --- or so his mother, Louise, believes. Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His 12-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help. Arles, Louise and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662518423

THE VASTER WILDS by Lauren Groff (Historical Fiction)
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her. THE VASTER WILDS is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how --- and if --- we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
Riverhead Books | 9780593418406

WITCHCRAFT: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson (History)
WITCHCRAFT travels through 13 witch trials across history, some famous --- like the Salem witch trials --- and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized and then reimagined as gendered persecution, WITCHCRAFT takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance.
Scribner | 9781668002438

YUMI AND THE NIGHTMARE PAINTER: A Cosmere Novel by Brandon Sanderson (Fantasy/Adventure)
Yumi has spent her entire life in strict obedience, granting her the power to summon the spirits that bestow vital aid upon her society. But she longs for even a single day as a normal person. Painter patrols the dark streets dreaming of being a hero --- a goal that has led to nothing but heartache and isolation, leaving him always on the outside looking in. In their own ways, both of them face the world alone. Suddenly flung together, Yumi and Painter must strive to right the wrongs in both their lives, reconciling their past and present while maintaining the precarious balance of each of their worlds. If they cannot unravel the mystery of what brought them together before it’s too late, they risk forever losing not only the bond growing between them, but the very worlds they’ve always struggled to protect.
Tor Books | 9781250899705

On Sale the Week of October 7th in Hardcover

October 8th

DARK SPACE by Rob Hart and Alex Segura (Science Fiction/Thriller)
Jose Carriles is the pilot of the Mosaic, a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union's first-ever mission to outside our solar system. His former friend, Corin Timony, should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony's international intelligence arm. Instead, she's been demoted to admin duties. But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions, and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren't exactly on the up and up. At the same time, Timony's old instincts kick in as she realizes the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace. As people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy.
Blackstone Publishing | 9798212218795

FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough (Memoir)
In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring and complicated woman whom Riley Keough loved and now grieved. Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story. She knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world. To make her mother known. FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating --- from this world to the one beyond --- as they try to heal each other.
Random House | 9780593733875

GATHERING MIST: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
Deputy Mattie Wray, formerly Mattie Cobb, is summoned to Washington’s Olympic peninsula for an urgent search-and-rescue mission to find a celebrity’s missing child. With only a week left before her wedding, Mattie is hesitant to leave Timber Creek, but her K-9 partner Robo’s tracking skills are needed. Dense forest, chilling rain and unfriendly locals hamper their efforts, and soon Mattie suspects something more sinister than a lost child is at play. When one of the SAR dogs becomes ill, her fiancé, Cole Walker, suspects poison. Fearing for Mattie’s and Robo’s safety, Cole joins the search-and-rescue team as veterinary support. Secrets that have lain hidden within the rugged terrain come to light, and when it is uncovered that the missing child was kidnapped, the search becomes a full-blown crime scene investigation.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639108947

IDENTITY UNKNOWN: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell (Mystery/Thriller)
Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Sal Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find that her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue. As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538770382

JOHN LEWIS: A Life by David Greenberg (Biography)
Born into poverty in rural Alabama, John Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations. He may be best remembered as the victim of a vicious beating by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he nearly died. David Greenberg’s biography traces Lewis’ life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982142995

KILLING TIME: An Agatha Raisin Mystery by M. C. Beaton with R.W. Green (Mystery)
Agatha Raisin’s private detective agency has their work cut out for them when a series of shop burglaries disturbs their quiet Cotswolds village. When the break-ins take a violent turn and a murder occurs, it's all hands on deck to find the killer. As if that weren't keeping Agatha busy enough, Sir Charles Fraith has called on her to help stage a glamorous promotional extravaganza on the grounds of his ancestral home, Barfield House. When Agatha begins to receive death threats and narrowly avoids being kidnapped, she takes advantage of a previously arranged trip to Mallorca with her recent paramour, former police officer John Glass, to lie low for a while. Can Agatha track down whoever wants her dead, nail the murderer and keep her romance alive too?
Minotaur Books | 9781250898708

THE LAST ONE AT THE WEDDING by Jason Rekulak (Domestic Thriller)
Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic and determined to finally make things right. He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose her forever.
Flatiron Books | 9781250895783

THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN by Lynda Cohen Loigman (Historical Fiction)
On the cusp of turning 80, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs, an active senior community in southern Florida, she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy --- and the man who broke her heart 60 years earlier. Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago, and how did her plan involving her Great Aunt Esther’s most potent elixir go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her, or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250278104

MELANIA by Melania Trump (Memoir)
In her memoir, Melania Trump reflects on her Slovenian childhood, the pivotal moments that led her to the world of high fashion in Europe and New York, and the serendipitous meeting with Donald Trump, a chance encounter that forever changed the course of her life. Melania opens up about their courtship, life in the spotlight and experiencing the joy of motherhood. She shares behind-the-scenes stories from her time in the White House, shedding light on her advocacy work and the causes close to her heart. MELANIA offers an unprecedented look into her time as a First Lady who was born outside the United States --- a role she embraced with honor and dedication. It brings readers into her world and presents an in-depth account of a woman who has led a remarkable life on her own terms.
Skyhorse | 9781510782693

MURDER, SHE WROTE: A KILLER CHRISTMAS by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran (Mystery)
Christmas is not an easy time to sell a house, but in Boston tycoon John Bragdon, Cabot Cove Realtor Eve Simpson has found a buyer for the old Jarvis homestead. Unfortunately, Eve gets a lump of coal in her stocking in the form of Kenny Jarvis, who has been missing for years and presumed dead but has now come back to stop his sister from selling their childhood home. Eve presses on, organizing a welcome dinner for Bragdon and his wife, Rose Marie, to meet the leading citizens of the town, including Jessica Fletcher. Dinner is interrupted by an uninvited guest --- not Santa but Kenny, who threateningly promises Rose Marie she will never live in his house. When Rose Marie is found dead a few days later, Kenny is the natural suspect. But Jessica isn′t so sure he′s on the naughty list.
Berkley | 9780593640722

THE NIGHT WOODS: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier (Mystery)
Record snow, sleet and rain are pummeling Vermont, and a wild boar has escaped from an exclusive hunting club nearby. But that won’t stop a very pregnant Mercy Carr from hiking her beloved woods with her loyal dog, Elvis. She’s supposed to be decorating the nursery and helping her mother plan the baby shower, but she’d much rather be playing Scrabble with Homer Grant, a word-loving, shotgun-toting hermit living deep in the forest. But when she and Elvis drop by Homer’s cabin for their weekly game, they arrive to find an unknown dead man --- and no sign of Homer. As they search the woods, Mercy discovers a patch of devastation that could only be left behind by wild boar. She’s relieved when Elvis tracks Homer, injured but alive. But Homer’s troubles are far from over, as he’s still the number one suspect and he remembers nothing of the attack.
Minotaur Books | 9781250887917

OPERATION BITING: The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar by Max Hastings (History)
In February 1942, RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. British intelligence proposed an assault to capture key components. Incredibly brave agents of the French Resistance risked their lives to probe the German defenses on the Normandy coast. Then a company of Airborne forces were dropped into France in the dead of night amid heavy snow. Launching their attack, the allied soldiers dismantled the German’s radar, and after three nail-biting hours and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, they escaped in the nick of time using landing-craft that carried them back across the stormy seas to Portsmouth. OPERATION BITING retells this dramatic operation through a gallery of amazing characters.
Harper | 9780063341081

OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst (Historical Fiction)
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is 13 years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates. OUR EVENINGS follows Dave from the 1960s on --- through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
Random House | 9780593243060

PAPER BOAT: New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023 by Margaret Atwood (Poetry)
Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood --- a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes --- PAPER BOAT assembles her most vital poems in one essential volume. In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voice to remarkably drawn characters --- mythological figures, animals and everyday people --- all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. “How can one live with such a heart?” Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Atwood, in her journey through poetry, illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.
Knopf | 9780593802649

THE PUZZLE BOX by Danielle Trussoni (Supernatural/Literary Thriller)
It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box. The box was constructed during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods, when the samurai class was disbanded and the shogun lost power. In this moment of crisis, Emperor Meiji locked a priceless Imperial secret in the Dragon Box. Only two people knew how to open the box --- Meiji and the box’s sadistic constructor --- and both died without telling a soul what was inside or how to open it. Every 12 years since then, in the Year of the Dragon, the Imperial family holds a clandestine contest to open the box. Every puzzle master who has attempted to open it has died in the process. But Brink is not just any puzzle master. He may be the only person alive who can crack it.
Random House | 9780593595329

THE RESTAURANT OF LOST RECIPES written by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Mystery)
Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouth-watering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they revive lost recipes and rekindle forgotten memories. From the Olympic swimmer who misses his estranged father’s bento lunchbox to the one-hit-wonder pop star who remembers the tempura she ate to celebrate her only successful record, each customer leaves the diner forever changed --- though not always in the ways they expect. The Kamogawa Diner doesn’t just serve meals. It’s a door to the past through the miracle of delicious food.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593717790

THE RESTLESS WAVE: A Novel of the United States Navy by Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. (Historical Fiction)
Scott Bradley James arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, as a plebe in the class of 1941 without a terribly good idea why he wants to be a naval officer, other than that his father was a sailor, and he wants to see the world, whatever that means. Scott and his roommate become fast friends, and, after surviving scrapes of their own making, the two fetch up at Pearl Harbor. War is brewing, and their class has graduated early. They have been sent to battle stations. Admiral James Stavridis is an acclaimed novelist, a decorated military leader and a great student of military history. He draws on it all to capture the experience of being storm-tossed by the bloody first years of the Second World War. Scott Bradley James is a talented young officer, but he has a lot to learn. And war will have a lot to teach him.
Penguin Press | 9780593494073

SHOCK INDUCTION by Chuck Palahniuk (Fiction/Satire)
The best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal. Doesn’t it? In SHOCK INDUCTION, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668021446

SLAVEROAD by John Edgar Wideman (Fiction/History/Memoir)
John Edgar Wideman’s “slaveroad” is a palimpsest of physical, social and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds and persists. An impassioned, searching work, SLAVEROAD is one man’s reckoning with a uniquely American lineage and the ways that the past haunts the present: “It’s here. Now. Where we are. What we are. A story compounded of stories told, retold, untold, not told.”
Scribner | 9781668057216

THE UNDERCURRENT by Sarah Sawyer (Domestic Thriller/Mystery)
It’s 2011, and Deecie Jeffries’ missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin --- and those memories --- far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’ best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past. Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another --- Gus, Leo and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.
Zibby Books | 9781958506448

WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? by Sophie Kinsella (Fiction)
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain. As Eve learns to walk, talk and write again --- and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children --- she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it. Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief.
The Dial Press | 9780593977569

On Sale the Week of October 7th in Paperback

October 8th

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres (Fiction)
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book --- Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns --- and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early 20th century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes.
Picador | 9781250338068

BLOOD LINES by Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille (Thriller)
Army Criminal Investigation Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor are tasked with investigating the murder of one of their own: CID Special Agent Harry Vance, an accomplished counterterrorism agent whose body was discovered in a city park in the heart of Berlin’s Arab refugee community. The authorities suspect this is an act of Islamic terrorism, but Brodie and Taylor soon believe there is more to this case. As they work to discover what the murder victim was doing in the days and weeks preceding his death, they become immersed in the many conflicts and contradictions of modern Germany. Ultimately, Brodie and Taylor realize that the murder of Harry Vance was merely the prelude to a much more sinister future event --- unless they can unravel the mystery in time to stop it.
Scribner | 9781668037751

THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS: Essays by Ross Gay (Essays)
The author of the New York Times bestseller THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS is back with a new record of small wonders --- and it is exactly the book we need right now. In this second intimate collection of short, lyrical, genre-defying essays, again written daily over a year, one of America’s most original and observant voices celebrates the ordinary, helping us see our extraordinary world anew. For Ross Gay, practicing delight is an act of defiance in an often unjust world, as necessary as breathing. Even as he acknowledges racism, consumerism, ecological devastation and our individual sorrows, he shows us that the un-delights make the delights even more so. As always, Gay revels in the natural world and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.
Algonquin Books ‎| 9781643756356

THE BOOK OF WITCHING by C. J. Cooke (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her 19-year-old daughter, Erin, is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name but insists she is someone named Nyx. Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind or the effects of an ancient curse.
Berkley ‎| 9780593816967

THE CHRISTMAS JIGSAW MURDERS by Alexandra Benedict (Mystery)
Paperback Original
On December 1st, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas curmudgeon Edie O'Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene --- blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” It's signed, Rest In Pieces. Edie contacts her nephew, DI Sean Brand-O'Sullivan, and together they work to solve the clues. But when a man is found near death with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean fears that Edie might be in danger and shuts her out of the investigation. As the body count rises, however, Edie knows that only she has the knowledge to put together the killer's murderous puzzle.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728284446

DEUS X: An August Snow Novel by Stephen Mack Jones (Mystery/Thriller)
Father Michael Grabowski, a Franciscan priest who has tended the spiritual needs of Detroit’s Mexicantown for 40 years, has suddenly retired. August Snow, who has known the priest his whole life, finds the circumstances troubling --- especially in light of the recent suspicious suicide of another local priest. What dark history is Father Grabowski hiding? The situation takes a turn for the deadly with the appearance at the Detroit diocese of a mysterious priest and combat vet calling himself Francis Dominioni Petra. The man comes from the Vatican, and as his armored guard circles closer and closer to Father Grabowski and his friends, August wants to know why. A terrible crime has been committed in the name of faith. But who is seeking justice, and who is trying to bury the truth and any of its witnesses?
Soho Crime | 9781641296182

ECHOES OF US by Joy Jordan-Lake (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student and a German POW forge a connection that endures --- against all odds. But now everything that Will Dobbins, Dov Silverberg and Hans Hessler fought for is at risk as their descendants clash for control of the corporation they founded together. In an attempt to remake its tattered corporate image, the firm hires event planner Hadley Jacks and her sister, Kitzie, to organize a reunion for the families on St. Simons Island, Georgia, the place that changed all three men’s lives forever. As Hadley and her sister delve into the friends’ past, they uncover the life of the courageous young woman who links them all together...and the old wounds that could tear everything apart.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781662514753

THE ENCHANTERS by James Ellroy (Historical Mystery)
Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker is looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle.
Vintage | 9780593314777

FAMILY MEAL by Bryan Washington (Fiction)
The ghost of Kai, the love of Cam's life, won't leave Cam alone. He follows Cam from LA back home to Houston, his visits wild, tender and unpredictable. But Cam has changed, and when he reenters the orbit of his childhood best friend, TJ, and his family's bakery, neither Cam nor TJ is sure how to navigate their charged estrangement. Searching for a way past all the wounds and secrets --- a way to be okay together, maybe for the first time --- the pair find hope and sustenance from the most unlikely source.
Riverhead Books | 9780593421109

HERCULE POIROT’S SILENT NIGHT: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah (Historical Mystery)
Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to Christmas when they are called upon to investigate the murder of a man in a Norfolk hospital ward. Cynthia Catchpool, Edward’s mother, insists that Poirot stay with her in a crumbling mansion by the coast so they all can be together for the festive period while he solves the case. The local constabulary’s investigation failed to uncover how someone could have entered a hospital room and killed him under the noses of the staff. Cynthia’s friend, Arnold, is soon to be admitted to that same hospital, and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why. Meanwhile, an utterly ruthless individual has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062991645

THE HIVE AND THE HONEY: Stories by Paul Yoon (Fiction/Short Stories)
A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family. THE HIVE AND THE HONEY is a bold and indelible collection that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia?
S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781668020807

HOLD MY GIRL by Charlene Carr (Fiction)
Katherine has spent her entire life striving for perfection, and her hard work has finally paid off. After seven difficult years of trying (and failing) to conceive, Katherine gives birth to Rose, her IVF miracle child. But one thing isn't quite perfect. Rose's pale skin doesn't match Katherine's complexion, and an irritating doubt begins to grow in Katherine's mind. Tess underwent IVF at the same clinic as Katherine, but after finally conceiving, Tess' daughter was stillborn. Now, nearly one year later, she's approaching rock bottom. But shortly before Rose's first birthday, Katherine and Tess get a call from the fertility clinic: Their eggs were switched. As Katherine's carefully planned life begins to crumble around her, Tess finally sees the glimmer of hope she needed to get her life back on track.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781464216770

INCENTIVE FOR DEATH by James Spoonhour (Mystery/Thriller)
A high-profile D.C. attorney is found dead in his office. McDermott “Mac” Burke and Oliver Shaw, homicide investigators for the Metropolitan Police Department, are called to investigate. There appear to be no signs of foul play, but there is also no obvious sign of a natural cause of death. The detectives are perplexed until the medical examiner notices a tiny pin prick on the lawyer’s neck and theorizes that he was injected with succinylcholine, which is a common horse tranquilizer that dissipates quickly in the body. As Mac and Oliver begin to look further, they discover that the lawyer had sold his life insurance policy to a large viatical company. Then they realize that more deaths under mysterious circumstances have occurred among those who have sold their policies to the same company.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608096282

INCITING JOY: Essays by Ross Gay (Essays)
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout INCITING JOY, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection and also, crucially, how we can expand it. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, INCITING JOY offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?
Algonquin Books ‎| 9781643753959

THE JOLLIEST BUNCH: Unhinged Holiday Stories by Danny Pellegrino
(Humor/Essays)
For many families, the holiday season is --- quite frankly --- unhinged. Whether that involves inappropriately improvised monologues at the children's Christmas pageant, gifts that land someone in the emergency room, or just sitting through the emotional rollercoaster of a Hallmark movie marathon, the holidays are a chaotic and magical time. And nobody knows this better than Danny Pellegrino. For Danny, the holidays are always accompanied by both merriment and mayhem. And like the gay Ghost of Christmas Past, he's here to take you on a nostalgic trip through his most festive memories in a collection of stories that are heartfelt, hilarious and (unfortunately) true.
Sourcebooks | 9781728278247

LAST TO LEAVE THE ROOM by Caitlin Starling (Supernatural Thriller/Speculative Horror)
The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before --- and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, lose track of time and grow terrified of the outside world. With her employer growing increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250353436

A MAN OF TWO FACES: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Memoir)
With insight, humor, formal invention and lyricism, Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. A MAN OF TWO FACES explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.
Grove Press ‎| 9780802163769

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME by Jayne Allen (Romance)
Paperback Original
With Christmas around the corner, Ramona Tucker is desperate to get away. She has been lying to her family about her engagement to Malik, her (ex) fiancé. But Ramona is convinced that she can make her pretend wedding real again --- but only if she can avoid everyone discovering her secret at her mother’s Christmas Eve party. In sunny Malibu, Chelsea Flint is an artist who needs money to hold on to the beloved beachside cottage she shared with her late parents. The two women swap homes, thanks to some careful planning by Ramona’s best friend and a sturdy nudge from Chelsea’s gallerist godmother. Ramona’s Malibu dreams of sun and surf are interrupted as her first night brings an unwelcome stranger to her door, making her question who she can trust --- the meddling neighbor Joan, or Jay, the handsome beachside fitness instructor with a secret of his own.
Harper Perennial ‎| 9780063137967

MURDER ISLAND: A Doc Savage Thriller by James Patterson and Brian Sitts (Thriller)
Paperback Original
When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "Doc" Savage and his girlfriend, Kira Sunlight, land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth. Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger than he ever could have imagined.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538721896

THE MURDERESS by Laurie Notaro (Historical Thriller)
Paperback Original
It’s October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they’re pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd. The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction. The one question on everyone’s lips: How could a 26-year-old reverend’s daughter and doctor’s wife commit such a heinous act on two people she’d called “my dearest friends in the world”? Everyone has their theories and judgments, but no one knows the whole truth.
Little A | 9781662512216

THE OTHER MOTHERS by Katherine Faulkner (Domestic Thriller)
When a young nanny is found dead under mysterious circumstances, new mom Tash is intrigued. She has been searching for a story to launch her career as a freelance journalist. But she also has been searching for new friends to help her navigate motherhood. She sees them at her son’s new playgroup. The other mothers. A group of sleek, sophisticated women. When the mothers welcome her into their circle, Tash discovers the kind of life she has always dreamt of and is quickly swept up into their wealthy world. But when another young woman is found dead, it’s clear there’s much more to the community than meets the eye. Are these women really her friends? Or is there another, more dangerous reason that she has been so quickly accepted into their exclusive world?
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781668024799

PROPHET SONG by Paul Lynch (Dystopian Fiction)
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother of four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what --- or who --- is she willing to leave behind?
Grove Press | 9780802163523

THE PROSPECTORS by Ariel Djanikian (Historical Fiction)
The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister’s husband strikes a vein of gold in the Yukon Territory, Alice finally seizes control of her destiny by joining a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike. By luck and circumstance, she becomes tightly intertwined in her sister and brother-in-law’s newfound fortune, as well as the beginning of a generations-long family quest for wealth. One hundred years later, in 2015, Alice’s great-great-granddaughter, Anna, must grapple with moral conflict and questions of justice as she travels to the Klondike to bequeath her would-be inheritance to the First Nations peoples who paid the price for its creation.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063289741

THE REST OF YOU by Maame Blue (Fiction)
Paperback Original
On the cusp of 30, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she, too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana, during the 1990s. Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, sisters Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, THE REST OF YOU explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.
Amistad | 9780063375963

THE SCANDALOUS CONFESSIONS OF LYDIA BENNET, WITCH by Melinda Taub (Historical Fantasy)
In this exuberant retelling of Jane Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Lydia Bennet puts pen to paper to relate the real events and aftermath of the classic story. Some facts are well known: Mrs. Bennet suffers from her nerves, Mr. Bennet suffers from Mrs. Bennet, and all five daughters suffer from an estate that is entailed only to male heirs. But Lydia also suffers from entirely different concerns. Her best-loved sister, Kitty, is really a barn cat. Wickham is every bit as wicked as the world believes him to be, but what else would one expect from a demon? And if Mr. Darcy is uptight about etiquette, that’s nothing compared to his feelings about magic. Most of all, Lydia has yet to learn that for a witch, promises have power.
Grand Central Publishing ‎| 9781538739211

STRAW DOGS OF THE UNIVERSE by Ye Chun (Historical Fiction)
After her village is devastated by famine, 10-year-old Sixiang is sold to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and six silver coins. Her mother is reluctant to let her go, but the promise of a better life for her beloved daughter ultimately sways her. Arriving in America with the profits from her sale and a single photograph of Guifeng, her absent father, Sixiang journeys across an unfamiliar American landscape in the hopes of reuniting her family. As she makes her way through an unforgiving new world, her father, a railroad worker in California, finds his attempts to build a life for himself both upended and defined by a long-lost love and the seemingly inescapable violence of the American West.
Catapult ‎| 9781646222377

TOUCHED by Walter Mosley (Science Fiction/Dystopian Fantasy)
Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And he is the Cure. Martin begins slipping into an alternate consciousness, with new physical strengths, to violently defend his family --- the only Black family in their neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles --- against pure evil. Think Octavia Butler meets Jeff VanderMeer meets Jordan Peele.
Grove Press | 9780802163752

THE TWELVE DOGS OF CHRISTMAS by Susan Wiggs (Fiction)
A year after breaking up with her husband, Brenda Malloy has put her life back together. She has found purpose and healing as a volunteer with a dog rescue organization in Houston, Texas. The rescue partners with a program in Avalon, New York, a small, snowy town deep in the Catskills. Now Brenda is arranging the transport of rescued dogs from Houston to Avalon. Brenda’s friends worry about her driving a van 2,000 miles with 12 dogs in crates, but she shrugs off their concern. However, a blinding snowstorm, an escaped mutt, and a life-saving encounter with Adam Bellamy --- a single dad and paramedic --- means that Brenda has to stay in Avalon longer than she planned. As she drops off each precious pup at their new homes, some of the comfort and joy of the season begins to creep up on Brenda.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063253520

THE TWELVE TOPSY-TURVY, VERY MESSY DAYS OF CHRISTMAS by James Patterson and Tad Safran (Fiction)
Listening to the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a beloved holiday tradition. Now comes a new one: Reading James Patterson’s instant classic, THE TWELVE TOPSY-TURVY, VERY MESSY DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. At Christmastime, a family of three are missing someone dear to them. Until unexpected guests begin to arrive at their empty house, filling it with Christmas memories in the making.
Grand Central Publishing ‎| 9781538710845

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