January 28, 2025

January 28, 2025

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 27th and February 3rd 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 review of GOOD DIRT, which is now available and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from Charmaine Wilkerson, the New York Times bestselling author of BLACK CAKE, a “Read with Jenna” Book Club pick and a Bets On title.

Join Us Tomorrow Night!

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Review of GOOD DIRT by Charmaine Wilkerson
An Upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On Title

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, January 29th at 6pm ET: The Mysterious Bookshop: Join Andrew Welsh-Huggins in conversation with fellow thriller writer James Byrne as they discuss their new thrillers, THE MAILMAN and CHAIN REACTION: A Dez Limerick Thriller. The event will be streamed live on the bookstore's Facebook and YouTube pages.

Wednesday, January 29th at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Lisa Genova about MORE OR LESS MADDY, a breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal” life for a career in stand-up comedy.

Wednesday, January 29th at 7pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Fiona Davis will talk about her latest work of historical fiction, THE STOLEN QUEEN, an utterly addictive novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Wednesday, January 29th at 8pm ET: "Bookaccino Live" Book Group: Carol Fitzgerald will talk to Ashley Elston about her #1 New York Times bestseller, FIRST LIE WINS, a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick that is now available in paperback. Ashley also will answer questions from guests who will be "on stage," as well as from other members of the audience.

Thursday, January 30th at 7pm ET: Byrd's Books: Join Byrd's Books for a very special event with Kira Jane Buxton as they celebrate and discuss her new book, TARTUFO, a fantastically funny story featuring a cast of colorful characters in a dying Italian village --- and a giant truffle that changes their fate forever. Kira will be in conversation with Book Riot senior contributing editor Liberty Hardy.

Tuesday, February 4th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble Book Club: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome Emma Knight for a live virtual event to discuss her debut novel, THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE COMMON OCTOPUS, which is January's B&N Book Club pick. Emma will be in conversation with Lexie Smyth, B&N's Fiction Category Manager.

Tuesday, February 4th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's presents Maggie Su as she discusses her book, BLOB: A Love Story, with Renée Branum. This humorous and deeply moving debut novel in the vein of BUNNY and CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN is about a young woman who tries to shape a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend.

Tuesday, February 4th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Jonathan Kellerman will talk about his latest novel, OPEN SEASON, a riveting thriller that finds psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide detective Milo Sturgis racing against time to track down a twisted killer.

Tuesday, February 4th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: It’s a great day in the club house when the killers --- Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda --- get to talk to New York Times bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz about NEMESIS, the 10th installment in his wildly popular Orphan X series.

On Sale the Week of January 27th in Hardcover

January 28th

BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT: A King Oliver Novel by Walter Mosley (Mystery)
Joe King Oliver’s beloved Grandma B has found a tumor, and at her age, treatment is high-risk. She has only a single, dying wish: to see her long-lost son. King has been estranged from his father, Chief Odin Oliver, since he was a young boy. But Grandma B’s pure ask has opened King’s heart, and he gains a deeper understanding of his father. Although Chief was released from prison years ago, he’s been living underground ever since. Now, King not only must find Chief, he has to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, Marigold Hart, the wife of a powerful California billionaire, has gone missing, along with their seven-year-old daughter. Orr is brutish and dangerous, and King realizes after locating her that it’s in her best interest to stay hidden. But are his motives pure?
Mulholland Books | 9780316573269

BRONSHTEIN IN THE BRONX by Robert Littell (Historical Fiction)
January 12, 1917: An ocean liner docks in New York Harbor. Among the disembarking emigrants is Lev Davidovich Bronshtein --- better known by his nom de guerre, Leon Trotsky. Bronshtein has been on the run for a decade, driven from his beloved Russia after escaping political exile in Siberia. He lives for --- and is ready to sacrifice his life for --- a workers’ revolution, at any cost. But is he ready to become an American? In the weeks leading up to the February Revolution that eventually will see Lenin’s Bolsheviks seize power, Bronshtein haunts the streets, newspaper offices and socialist watering holes of New York City, wrestling with the difficult questions of his personal revolutionary ideology, his place in his own family, his relationship to Lenin, and, above all, his conscience.
Soho Press | 9781641296861

GOOD DIRT by Charmaine Wilkerson (Fiction)
When 10-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved, and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England, the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. When Ebby's high-profile romance falls apart without any explanation, she flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day 18 years ago --- the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor.
Ballantine Books | 9780593358368

THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU: A Memoir by Neko Case (Memoir)
Neko Case has long been revered as one of music’s most influential artists, whose authenticity, lyrical storytelling and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians and lifelong fans. In THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU, Case brings her trademark candor and precision to a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisible girl “raised by two dogs and a space heater” in rural Washington state to her improbable emergence as an internationally acclaimed talent. In luminous, sharp-edged prose, Case shows readers what it’s like to be left alone for hours and hours as a child, to take refuge in the woods around her home, and to channel the monotony, loneliness and joy that comes from music, camaraderie and shared experience into art.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538710500

HEAD CASES by John McMahon (Mystery/Thriller)
FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He also has a blind spot on the human side of investigations, a blindness that sometimes even includes people in his own life, like his beloved seven-year-old daughter, Camila. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI’s hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve. When DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead, the team springs into action. A second victim establishes a pattern, and the murderer begins leaving a trail of clues and riddles especially for Gardner. And while the PAR team is usually relegated to working cold cases from behind a desk, the investigation puts them on the road and into the public eye, following in the footsteps of a killer.
Minotaur Books | 9781250348296

THE KILLING FIELDS OF EAST NEW YORK: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood by Stacy Horn (True Crime)
On a warm summer evening in 1991, 17-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, THE KILLING FIELDS OF EAST NEW YORK reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots.
Zando – Gillian Flynn Books | 9781638931225

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE: A Sex Memoir by Edmund White (Memoir)
In THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, legendary author Edmund White recounts the 60-plus years of sexual escapades that have inspired his many masterpieces. He explores the sex he had with other closeted boys of the ’50s Midwest, with women as a young man trying to be straight, the sex he has paid for and been paid for, sex during the Stonewall and HIV eras, and in the age of the apps. Through tales of transactional sex, mutual admiration, open relationships, domination, submission, love and loss, he paints an indelible portrait of queer history in America and abroad in a way only someone who has lived through it can.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639733729

THE MAILMAN by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Thriller)
Mercury Carter is a deliveryman who takes his job very seriously. When a parcel is under his care, he will stop at nothing to deliver it directly to its intended recipient. Not even, as in the current case, when he finds a crew of violent men at the indicated address who threaten his life and take the woman who lives there hostage. That’s because Carter has special skills from his former life as a federal agent with the postal inspection service. After Carter dispatches the goons sent to kill him, he enters a home besieged by criminals --- but the leader of the gang escapes with attorney Rachel Stanfield before the mailman can complete his assignment. With Rachel’s husband, Glenn, in tow, Carter takes off in pursuit of the kidnapper and his quarry. Along the way, he slowly picks off members of the crew and uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy and a powerful crime syndicate.
Mysterious Press | 9781613166109

THE OLIGARCH'S DAUGHTER by Joseph Finder (Thriller)
Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who seemingly can predict his every move. Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyana --- unaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several U.S. intelligence agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government.
Harper | 9780063396012

ORDER OF SWANS by Jude Deveraux (Fantasy/Romance)
To Kaley Arens, a PhD student and an expert in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment. It’s only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend, Jobi, on a visit to his home that she realizes how much she still has to learn. Bellis is another world --- a stunningly beautiful and seductive one, with its own royalty, its own rules, and inhabitants who breathe life into the tales she was taught were fiction. Kaley has a mysterious connection with Jobi and with Bellis, and abilities that may help determine this world’s fate. Tasked with locating a lost prince, Kaley and her companions journey through a land both thrilling and terrifying, where the uncanny and the familiar go hand in hand. But in fairy tales, heroes and villains are easy to discern. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.
Mira | 9780778368427

OUR WINTER MONSTER by Dennis Mahoney (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what’s happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car --- and then of themselves. Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble --- along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings and mangled bodies in the snow. To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present and themselves in a monstrous new light.
Hell's Hundred | 9781641296335

REALM OF ICE AND SKY: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue by Buddy Levy (History)
Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and transatlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole --- which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship. REALM OF ICE AND SKY is the riveting tale of the men who first flew the most advanced technological airships of their time to the top of the world, risking and even giving their lives for science, country and polar immortality.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250289186

SCARY DIAGNOSIS: Navigating Fear, Finding Strength, and Securing the Health Care You Deserve by Edward G. Rogoff (Memoir/Self-Help)
Sixty percent of Americans live with at least one chronic health condition, and over a lifetime, many people will face multiple surgeries or life-changing diagnoses. A scary diagnosis can be overwhelming, launching patients and their loved ones into a world of fear, uncertainty and complexity. SCARY DIAGNOSIS is a uniquely compassionate and empowering book that helps patients, families and caregivers navigate the emotional and practical challenges that follow a serious medical diagnosis. Author Edward Rogoff draws on his own experience with chronic illness and shares compelling stories from others who have faced similar journeys. Through these narratives, he reveals how individuals can move from fear to strength, advocate for themselves, and navigate the health care system, while maintaining their sense of control and dignity.
Prospecta Press | 9781632261519

TARTUFO by Kira Jane Buxton (Fiction)
After nearly losing the election to a geriatric donkey, newly installed Mayor Delizia Miccuci can’t help but feel like the sun has finally set on the rural Italian village of Lazzarini Boscarino. All that’s left is Bar Celebrità, a rustic establishment where weary locals gather to quibble over decades-long disputes, submit their poor stomachs to bartender Giuseppina’s volcanic espresso, and wonder what will become of the place where together they’ve spent their entire lives. Little do the villagers know that local truffle hunter Giovanni Scarpazza has just happened upon something that could change everything. A truffle --- un tartufo, that is --- sits beneath the soil with the power to either be the greatest gift or the foulest curse the village has ever seen.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538770818

TOO SOON by Betty Shamieh (Fiction)
Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theater director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic --- which might garner international attention --- in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theater designer, seem destined for disaster. Upon learning that one of them is living on borrowed time, the three women fight to live, make art and love on their own terms.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668046548

TRUST ISSUES by Elizabeth McCullough Keenan and Greg Wands (Thriller)
Siblings Hazel and Kagan Bailey haven’t been close for a long time. But when their mother passes under mysterious circumstances, an investigation quickly follows, and the siblings are high on the list of possible suspects. As they deal with the emotional tragedy of losing their only living parent, brother and sister are forced to team up against a master con man --- someone they once called “family.” After the silver-tongued trickster disappears with the family fortune, Hazel and Kagan must put aside their differences to track him down. Along the way, they encounter a host of secrets, lies and double-crosses as they dive into the murky waters of their family’s past. With an unlikely ally by their side, the siblings race against time, unraveling a web of deceit that is more tangled than they ever imagined.
Dutton | 9780593474204

THE VANISHING POINT: Stories by Paul Theroux (Fiction/Short Stories)
The stories in Paul Theroux’s fascinating collection are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points --- a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing and the passing of time, once again reclaiming his status as a master of the form.
Mariner Books | 9780358722250

WE ARE WATCHING by Alison Gaylin (Psychological Thriller)
Meg Russo and her husband, Justin, were driving their daughter, Lily, to Ithaca College. Then a car swerved up beside them, and Meg lost control of her vehicle. Justin didn’t survive the accident. Four months later, Meg works to distract herself from her grief and guilt, reopening her small local bookstore. But soon after she returns to work, bizarre messages and visitors begin to arrive, with strangers threatening Meg and Lily. They are obsessed with a young adult novel titled The Prophesy. An online group of believers are convinced that it heralds the apocalypse, and social media posts link the book --- and Meg’s reclusive musician father --- to Satanism. These conspiracy theorists vow to seek revenge on The Prophesy’s author: Meg. As the threats turn violent, Meg begins to suspect that Justin’s death may not have been an accident.
William Morrow | 9780063275188

WE COULD BE RATS by Emily Austin (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal. But having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend, Greta. Her older sister, Margit, is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society. But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past --- from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.
Atria Books | 9781668058145

WE RIP THE WORLD APART by Charlene Carr (Fiction)
When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black and half-white --- yet feels neither --- is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion. Years later, in the aftermath of her son's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she had never fully known. In the present day, Kareela must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728270449

WILD WEST VILLAGE: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) by Lola Kirke (Memoir/Essays)
The youngest daughter of a rock star father and clothing designer mother, Lola Kirke and her siblings (including actress Jemima and celebrity doula Domino) spent their childhoods freshly plucked from their English heritage in an eclectic West Village brownstone, hosting everyone from Cuban exiles to Courtney Love. But behind the enviable exterior of worldly coolness was a home in disarray. In WILD WEST VILLAGE, Kirke chronicles a search for self amidst the chaos of the affairs, addictions and afflictions surrounding her, detailing misadventures in everything from masturbation to marijuana, Cadbury’s to country music, and a dream of salvation on the silver screen.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668035573

On Sale the Week of January 27th in Paperback

January 28th

THE ATLAS COMPLEX by Olivie Blake (Dark Fantasy)
An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment. Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage. And still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power --- and who will be destroyed along the way.
Tor Books | 9781250855145

COLTON GENTRY’S THIRD ACT by Jeff Zentner (Fiction)
Colton Gentry’s first hit in nearly a decade has caught fire, he’s opening for country megastar Brant Lucas, and he’s married to one of the hottest acts in the country. But he’s hurting. Only a few weeks earlier, his best friend, Duane, was murdered onstage by a mass shooter at a country music festival. One night, Colton stands before a sold-out arena crowd of country music fans and offers his unfiltered opinion on guns. It goes over poorly. Immediately, his career and marriage implode. Left with few choices or funds, he retreats to his rural Kentucky hometown. He’s resigned himself to has-been-dom, until a chance encounter at his town’s new farm-to-table restaurant gives him a second shot at life: a job working in the kitchen with Luann, his first love, who has undergone her own reinvention.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538756669

THE CRASH by Freida McFadden (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn't realize she's heading straight into a blizzard. She never arrives at her destination. Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she's made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears. But something isn't right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn't what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet. And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself --- and her unborn child.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464227325

THE CURSE OF PIETRO HOUDINI by Derek B. Miller (Historical Fiction)
August 1943. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving the American bombing raid that killed his parents, 14-year-old Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbey’s shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed “Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican,” rescues Massimo and brings him up the mountain to serve as his assistant in preserving the treasures that lay within the monastery walls. But can Massimo believe what Pietro is saying, particularly when Massimo has secrets too? When it becomes evident that Montecassino will soon become the front line in the war, Pietro Houdini and Massimo execute a plan to smuggle three priceless Titian paintings to safety down the mountain.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668020890

DEAR SISTER: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds by Michelle Horton (Memoir)
In September 2017, a knock on the door upends Michelle Horton’s life: she learns that her sister has just shot her partner and is now in jail. Stunned, Michelle rearranges her life to raise Nikki's two young children alongside her own son. During the investigation that follows, Michelle is shocked to learn that Nikki had been hiding horrific abuse for years. Michelle launches a fight to bring Nikki home, squaring off against a criminal justice system designed to punish the entire family. Since DEAR SISTER’s original publication, Michelle’s fight --- alongside a tireless network of supporters --- has resulted in Nikki’s release from prison. With a new chapter, an update from Nikki, and never-before-seen photographs documenting the homecoming, this edition provides a touching new conclusion to a profound, intimate story of resilience and the unbreakable bond of family.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538757161

EXORDIA by Seth Dickinson (Science Fiction/Thriller)
Anna Sinjari --- refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker --- has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. Enter Ssrin, a many-headed serpent alien who is on the run from her own past. Ssrin and Anna are inexorably, dangerously drawn to each other, and their contact reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.
Tor Books | 9781250233028

FINLAY DONOVAN ROLLS THE DICE by Elle Cosimano (Mystery/Humor)
Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, plan a trip to Atlantic City. But odds are it won’t be all fun and games --- seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark; save Vero’s childhood crush, Javi, from a kidnapper, Marco; and hunt down a stolen car. When they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for: Marco is already dead. They don’t know who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive. Will Finlay fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
Minotaur Books | 9781250846044

FIRST LIE WINS by Ashley Elston (Psychological Thriller)
The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn't like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes --- especially after what happened last time. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there's still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher --- but then, Evie has always liked a challenge.
Penguin Books | 9780593492932

THE GIRLS OF THE GLIMMER FACTORY by Jennifer Coburn (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Hannah longs for the days when she used to be free. Now she is a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt, a model ghetto where the Nazis plan to make a propaganda film to convince the world that the Jewish people are living well in the camps. But Hannah will do anything to show the world the truth. Along with other young resistance members, they vow to disrupt the filming and derail the increasingly frequent deportations to death camps in the east. Hilde is a true believer in the Nazi cause, working in the Reich Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda. Though they're losing the war, Hilde hasn't lost faith. She can't stop the Allied bombings, but she can help the party create a documentary that will renew confidence in Hitler's plans for Jewish containment.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728277318

GOOD MATERIAL by Dolly Alderton (Fiction)
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, and wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.
Vintage | 9780593686959

HOLD STRONG by Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white --- for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of 1,800 starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful. Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781662516306

LOST BIRDS: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel by Anne Hillerman (Mystery)
Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp. His experience will be essential to solve a compelling new case: finding the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagáana family but believes she is Diné based on an old photograph with a classic Navajo child’s blanket. Leaphorn discovers that his client’s adoption was questionable, and her adoptive family was not what they seem. His quest for answers takes him to an old trading post and leads him to a deadly cache of long-buried family secrets. Meanwhile, Leaphorn receives an unexpected call from a person he met decades earlier. Cecil Bowleg’s desperation is clear in his voice, but the call is cut off by an explosion and Cecil disappears. Leaphorn is determined to find the truth even as the situation grows dangerous.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063344792

THE LOST TOMB: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder by Douglas Preston (True Crime/History)
What’s it like to be the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that’s been sealed for thousands of years? What horrifying secret was found among the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest? Who really was the infamous Monster of Florence? From the jungles of Honduras to macabre archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Douglas Preston's explorations have taken him across the globe. THE LOST TOMB brings together a compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, bizarre crimes, and other fascinating tales of the past and present.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538741238

PRIMA FACIE by Suzie Miller (Legal Thriller)
Tessa Ensler has worked her way up to being a top criminal defense barrister against all the odds. Her quick-witted cross-examinations and intelligence in the courtroom see her clocking up win after win --- including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocence until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of a civilized society. But when Tessa is raped by a coworker, she struggles to find the strength to bring him to justice in the face of the barriers and opposition within that same system. Determined to have her day in court, Tessa is forced to confront the stark reality that the law was not written for victims and that she is the one on trial. She fights on, even as her evidence is manipulated to make her look like a liar, even while she is retraumatized on the stand.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250292193

THE RESISTANCE LILY by Dana Levy Elgrod (Historical Romance)
Paperback Original
Paris, 1941. At the height of World War II, young and headstrong Josephine Portier is the protégé of a wealthy family in the highest echelons of Paris society. When she meets the arrogant but handsome Gabriel, she wants nothing to do with him --- until he reveals a shocking secret about her adoptive family that puts her in grave danger. With her life turned upside down and the Nazi forces ever advancing, Josephine finds a new calling when she joins the underground French Resistance. Her dislike for Gabriel soon flourishes into love, but their romance is short-lived as she sacrifices her own freedom to allow his escape. Alone, she must brave the secret missions and Gestapo interrogations of a 1940s Parisian resistance girl. In a city ravaged by war, Josephine is drawn into a dangerous game of survival, in which losing is simply not an option.
Seventh Street Books | 9781645061052

TELL ME WHAT YOU DID by Carter Wilson (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Poe Webb, the host of a popular true crime podcast, invites people to anonymously confess crimes they've committed to her audience. She can't guarantee the police won't come after her "guests," but her show grants simultaneous anonymity and instant fame --- a potent combination that's proven difficult to resist. After an episode recording, Poe usually erases both criminal and crime from her mind. But when a strange and oddly familiar man appears on her show, Poe is forced to take a second look. Not only because he claims to be her mother's murderer from years ago, but because Poe knows something no one else does. Her mother's murderer is dead. Poe killed him.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464226229

TRUE NORTH by Andrew J. Graff (Fiction)
As the summer of 1993 begins, Sam and Swami Brecht roll into town with a 26-foot Winnebago camper van, their three kids, and the deed to Woodchuck Rafting Company. The town of Thunderwater, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, could be the fresh start their marriage needs. But Woodchuck, once the property of Sam’s eccentric uncle, has seen better days and will need a serious overhaul. Soon Sam and Swami learn they are not the only ones looking for change and profit on the river. A competing rafting outfit, clashing raft guides, stubborn townsfolk and an exploratory mining company begin to threaten their tenuous livelihood. Then nature intervenes, in the form of historic floods throughout the Midwest. Amid tumultuous currents both on and off the river, Sam and Swami struggle to maintain the new life they’ve built.
Ecco | 9780063161436

THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS by Katherine Arden (Historical Fantasy)
January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, Laura receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, she returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something --- or someone --- else? November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier. Against all odds, the two form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. They take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.
Del Rey | 9780593128275

WATCH WHERE THEY HIDE: A Jordan Manning Novel by Tamron Hall
(Mystery/Thriller)
After dropping her child off at preschool, Marla Hancock disappears. She recently had left her verbally abusive husband and moved in with her sister, Shelly, who simply can’t believe that her sister would ever willingly vanish without her children. But with limited support from the town’s police department or media resources, Shelly fears that Marla’s disappearance won’t get the attention it deserves. So, several weeks after filing a missing person’s report, she reaches out to TV journalist Jordan Manning for help. Jordan has gained a reputation as a “fixer” with a vigilante edge, but she still feels pressure to prove herself as a young Black professional. Her search for Marla twists and turns in ways she never could have imagined, illuminating scandals and secrets that place her own life in grave danger.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063037090

On Sale the Week of February 3rd in Hardcover

February 4th

BIBLIOPHOBIA: A Memoir by Sarah Chihaya (Memoir/Literary Criticism)
Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners.” Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?
Random House | 9780593594728

BLACK WOODS, BLUE SKY written by Eowyn Ivey, illustrated by Ruth Hulbert (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Although Birdie gets a little hungover sometimes and has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature. Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she ever could have imagined.
Random House | 9780593231029

BONDED IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes. The Rossi case is frustrating to Lieutenant Eve Dallas. But when she finds a connection to the Urban Wars of the 2020s, she thinks that Summerset --- the man who had rescued her husband from the Dublin streets --- may know something from his stint as a medic in Europe back then. As Summerset eventually reveals, he himself was one of The Twelve. It’s not a part of his past he likes to revisit. But now he must --- not only to assist Eve’s investigation, but because a cryptic message from the killer has boasted that others of The Twelve have also died.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250370792

CLEAVAGE: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Memoir/Gender Studies)
SHE’S NOT THERE was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication 20 years ago, Jennifer Finney Boylan has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives. But CLEAVAGE is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it’s also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000 --- when many people reacted to Boylan’s transition with love --- and the present era of blowback and fear. How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose --- and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent and spouse.
Celadon Books | 9781250261885

DEAD IN THE FRAME: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery by Stephen Spotswood (Historical Mystery)
New York City, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime Jessup Quincannon is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she’s guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it. With Lillian locked away in the House of D --- New York City’s infamous women’s prison --- Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hitman who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?
Doubleday | 9780385550468

A FORTY YEAR KISS by Nickolas Butler (Fiction)
Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin 40 years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing --- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But 40 years is a long time. It's 40 years of other relationships, 40 years of building new lives, and 40 years of long-held regrets, mistakes and painful secrets.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781464221248

THE GHOSTS OF ROME by Joseph O'Connor (Historical Thriller)
In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir successfully smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls wounded from the sky, The Choir is plunged into danger, and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened. The Escape Line’s collapse would leave thousands stranded. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, its architect and the acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, paralyzed by the perils of keeping his Roman underground railroad functioning. Meanwhile, SS Commander Paul Hauptmann has been tasked with destroying the entire operation, and the price of failure is high --- his wife and children are under Gestapo lock-and-key in Berlin.
Europa Editions | 9798889660620

GLIFF by Ali Smith (Metaphysical Fiction)
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, GLIFF explores how and why we endeavor to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data --- something easily categorizable and predictable --- Ali Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
Pantheon | 9780593701560

HARLEM RHAPSODY by Victoria Christopher Murray (Historical Fiction)
In 1919, high school teacher Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all. W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife nor their 14-year age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor. Under her leadership, The Crisis thrives. When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater and the arts. But as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.
Berkley | 9780593638484

ISOLA by Allegra Goodman (Historical Fiction)
Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian --- an enigmatic and volatile man --- spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.
The Dial Press | 9780593730089

IT MUST BE BEAUTIFUL TO BE FINISHED: A Memoir of My Body by Kate Gies (Memoir)
When Kate Gies was four years old, a plastic surgeon pressed a synthetic ear to the right side of her head and pulled out a mirror. He told her he could make her “whole” --- could make her “right” --- and she believed him. From the ages of 4 to 13, she underwent 14 surgeries, including skin and bone grafts, to craft the appearance of an outer ear. Many of the surgeries failed, leaving permanent damage to her body. In short, lyrical vignettes, Kate writes about how her “disfigured” body was scrutinized, pathologized and even weaponized. She describes the physical and psychic trauma of medical intervention and its effects on her sense of self, first as a child needing to be fixed and, later, as a teenager and adult navigating the complex expectations and dangers of being a woman.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668051054

JUNIE by Erin Crosby Eckstine (Historical Fiction)
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act --- one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that no longer can be ignored.
Ballantine Books | 9780593725115

A KILLING COLD by Kate Alice Marshall (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
When Theodora Scott met Connor, a member of the powerful Dalton family, she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood. Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger.
Flatiron Books | 9781250343055

KINGDOM OF CLAW: The Ashen Series, Book Two by Demi Winters (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
In the aftermath of a harrowing journey, Silla Nordvig’s dreams of a simple life have been shattered. Beaten, betrayed and reeling from the revelation of her true name, she flees Kopa with Reynir Galtung, the ruthless leader of the Bloodaxe Crew. But when they're forced into hiding together, Silla soon discovers that Rey has been keeping secrets of his own. Stuck in a shield-home with the murderous man she thought she knew, Silla forms a new plan: master the magic flowing through her veins to save her sister. But before she can do that, Silla must face her most formidable opponent yet --- her own inner demons. Saga Volsik has nothing to lose. They’ve murdered her family. Stolen her throne. And now they expect her to marry their son, but not if she can dismantle Queen Signe’s plans first. The only problem? The handsome Zagadkian dignitary who knows far too many of her secrets.
Delacorte Press | 9780593975633

THE LAMB by Lucy Rose (Gothic Horror)
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine and keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies. But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes. And when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her bid for freedom.
Harper | 9780063374607

LAST TWILIGHT IN PARIS by Pam Jenoff (Historical Fiction)
London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe --- and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend, Franny, during the war. Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss, Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. She races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever.
Park Row | 9780778307983

A LONG TIME GONE by Joshua Moehling (Mystery/Thriller)
Ben Packard was just a boy when his older brother disappeared. Decades later, Deputy Packard finds himself with too much time on his hands. A shooting has him on leave and under investigation. For the first time in years, new information about his brother has surfaced that may lead them to the location of a body. The midwinter ground is frozen solid. Worse, Packard is cut off from department resources. As he strikes out to finally uncover the truth behind his brother's disappearance, he stumbles on a separate, suspicious death. A tenuous connection exists between the two cases, and as Packard starts to dig, he meets fierce resistance from friends and foes alike who want him to stand down. The winter is long and cold. By the end of it, Packard will risk everything to catch a killer and reveal the shocking truth about his brother.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728279008

MEMORIAL DAYS: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks (Memoir)
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz, collapsed and died on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk. After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. But their happy life ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. Nearly four years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.
Viking | 9780593653982

THE MOTHER NEXT DOOR: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy by Andrea Dunlop and Mike Weber (True Crime)
No one is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the cause of the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? Munchausen by proxy (MBP) has fascinated and horrified both professionals and the general public since this disturbing form of child abuse was first identified. But even as the public has been captivated by these tales of abuse and deception, there remains widespread misinformation and confusion about MBP. Are these mothers unfeeling psychopaths, or sick women who need help? And how can we protect the children whose lives are at stake? THE MOTHER NEXT DOOR offers a groundbreaking look at MBP from an unlikely duo: a Seattle novelist whose own family was torn apart by it, and the Texas detective who has worked on more medical child abuse cases than anyone in the nation.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250284273

MUTUAL INTEREST by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith (Historical Fiction)
When Vivian Lesperance meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, at the turn of the 20th century, she finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants --- not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women. But Vivian's plans require capital, so the two pair up with Squire Clancey, scion of an old American fortune. Together they found Clancey & Schmidt, a preeminent manufacturer of soap, perfume and candles. When Oscar and Squire fall in love, the trio form a new kind of partnership. Vivian reaches the pinnacle of her power, building Clancey & Schmidt into an empire of personal care products while operating behind the image of both men. But exposure threatens, and all three partners are made aware of how much they have to lose.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639733323

OPEN SEASON: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman (Psychological Thriller)
The body of an aspiring actress is found dumped near a hospital emergency room. She’s been drugged and murdered, and the motive for the callous crime remains maddeningly out of reach. Until a prime suspect materializes. Another Hollywood hopeful. Only to be shot dead by a sniper using a weapon that turns out to have been catalogued in a previous murder. And another before that. It’s not long before more bodies begin piling up. What makes the murderous spree baffling is the apparent lack of connection among the victims. Is this the work of a random thrill killer, the toughest of all cases to unravel? But as psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide detective Milo Sturgis dig deeper, they’re faced with an even knottier scenario: a highly complex killer with deep-seated motivation that will require all of their highly honed skills to decipher.
Ballantine Books | 9780593497692

PARIS UNDERCOVER: A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship, and Betrayal by Matthew Goodman (History)
During the Nazi occupation, Etta Shiber and Kate Bonnefous --- an American widow and an English divorcée --- find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the whirlwind of history. With the help of a French country priest and others, they set out to rescue British and French soldiers trapped behind enemy lines --- some of whom they daringly smuggle through Nazi checkpoints hidden inside the trunk of their car. Ultimately the Gestapo captures them both. After 18 months in prison, Etta is returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange. Back home, hoping to bring attention to her friend’s bravery, she publishes a memoir about their work, which becomes a publishing sensation. Meanwhile, Kate spends the rest of the war in a Nazi prison, entirely unaware of the book that has been written about her --- and the deeds that have been claimed in her name.
Ballantine Books | 9780593358924

READING THE WAVES: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Memoir)
Drawing on her background --- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women --- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Lidia Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul. By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, READING THE WAVES reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Riverhead Books | 9780593713051

ROBERT B. PARKER'S BURIED SECRETS: A Jesse Stone Novel by Christopher Farnsworth (Mystery)
Chief of Police Jesse Stone is on his way home from a long shift when a call comes in for a welfare check on an elderly resident of the wealthy seaside town of Paradise, Massachusetts. Inside a house packed with junk and trash is a man’s dead body. It’s a sad, lonely end, but nothing criminal…until Jesse finds the photos of murder victims strewn around the corpse, on top of a treasure trove of $2 million in cash. Jesse takes on the case and finds a trail leading to an aging mobster who will do whatever it takes to keep the past from coming to light. Before long, Jesse has a price on his head as hit men converge on Paradise to take back the cash and destroy any remaining evidence. But the real danger might be coming from inside his own department.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593544761

SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET by William Boyle (Crime Fiction)
Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot. The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, they call upon Sav's childhood friend, Christopher "Chooch" Gardini, to help them. Over the vast expanse of the next 18 years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night.
Soho Crime | 9781641296403

A SEASON OF LIGHT by Julie Iromuanya (Fiction)
When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, Fidelis Ewerike, a former POW of the Nigerian Civil War, begins to go mad. He is consumed by memories of his younger sister, Ugochi, who went missing during that conflict. Fearful that the same fate awaits Amara, his 16-year-old daughter who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ugochi, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, offering no words of explanation. Amid that singular action, the Ewerike family spirals into chaos. Amara is hungry for her life to be hers, so the moment she is able to escape her imprisonment, she falls in love --- not with the Aba-born engineer-in-training her mother envisages, but with Maksym Kostyk, the son of the town drunk. Before long, the two have concocted a plan to run away from the trappings of their familial traumas.
Algonquin Books | 9781643755519

SEEKING SHELTER: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America by Jeff Hobbs (Biography/Social Science)
In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories and college aspirations for her children, even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both.
Scribner | 9781668034828

THE SNOWBIRDS by Christina Clancy (Fiction)
A couple for 30 years, Kim and Grant’s "separate but together" partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face. When they arrive at Le Desert, a quirky condo community, Kim immediately embraces the opportunity to make new friends and explore a more adventurous side of her personality. Meanwhile, Grant struggles to find his footing in this unfamiliar landscape. When Grant goes missing on a hike in the Palm Springs mountains, Kim is forced to consider two terrifying outcomes: either Grant is truly lost, or this time, he has really left her.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250284952

SOURCE CODE: My Beginnings by Bill Gates (Memoir)
SOURCE CODE is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
Knopf | 9780593801581

SWEET NOTHINGS: Confessions of a Candy Lover by Sarah Perry (Humor/Essays)
A taxonomy of sweetness, a rhapsody of artificial flavors, and a multi-faceted theory of pleasure, SWEET NOTHINGS is made up of 100 illustrated micro essays organized by candy color, from the red of Pop Rocks to the purple Jelly Bonbon in the Whitman’s Sampler. Each entry is a meditation on taste and texture, a memory unlocked. Everyone’s favorites --- and least favorites --- are carefully considered, including Snickers and Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Cups, as well as the beloved Good n’ Plenty and Werther’s Originals. An expert guide and exquisite writer, Sarah Perry asks such pressing questions as: Twizzlers or Red Vines? Why are Mentos eaters so maniacally happy? And in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, how could Edmund sell out his siblings for, of all things, Turkish delight?
Mariner Books | 9780063319929

THIS IS A LOVE STORY by Jessica Soffer (Fiction)
For 50 years, Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now. Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew --- their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives --- and the parts they didn’t always want to know --- the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs.
Dutton | 9780593851265

A TIME FOR REFLECTION: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovey and Billy Williams by Jason Cannon (Sports/Biography)
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities as deeply as Willie McCovey and Billy Williams. Born just a handful of miles apart in 1938, they grew up in and around one of the sport’s true cradles, Mobile, Alabama, on their way to producing two iconic careers in Major League Baseball. In A TIME FOR REFLECTION, Jason Cannon examines these two legends of the game. Overcoming the heinous racism of the Jim Crow South as part of the second generation of African American major leaguers who followed in the footsteps of Jackie Robinson, they became two of baseball’s all-time greatest players. Off the field, they took impactful stands for racial progress that continue to resonate today.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers | 9781538184578

VICTORIAN PSYCHO by Virginia Feito (Gothic Horror/Dark Humor)
Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family. Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House.
Liveright | 9781631498633

WHO I ALWAYS WAS: A Memoir by Theresa Okokon (Memoir/Essays)
When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother’s funeral…and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family’s world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to explore the ripple effects of that profound loss and the way heartache shapes our sense of self and of the world --- for the rest of our lives. Using her grief and her father’s death as a backdrop, Okokon delves deeply into intrinsic themes of Blackness, African spirituality, family, abandonment, belonging, and the seemingly endless, unrequited romantic pursuits of a Black woman who came of age as a Black girl in the Wisconsin suburbs where she was --- in many ways --- always an anomaly.
Atria Books | 9781668008959

On Sale the Week of February 3rd in Paperback

February 1st

GLAMOROUS NOTIONS by Megan Chance (Historical Thriller)
Paperback Original
Hollywood, 1955. As head costume designer for Lux Pictures, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from the biggest movie stars. Lena was once Elsie Gruner, the daughter of an Ohio dressmaker. Her gift for fashion design helped her win a coveted spot at an art academy in Rome. While in Italy, she became enthralled by the charismatic Julia, who drew her into a shadowy world of jazz clubs, code words and mysterious deliveries. When one of Julia’s intrigues ended in murder, Elsie found herself in the middle of a bewildering sinister international plot. So she ran. After fleeing to LA, Elsie became Lena --- but she’s never stopped looking over her shoulder. Now, as her engagement to a screenwriter throws her into the spotlight, she’s terrified her façade won’t hold up. Will she figure out the truth about her past before everything falls apart?
Lake Union Publishing | 9781662515774

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MIRA by Sonali Dev (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Mira Salvi has the perfect life --- a job she loves, a fiancé everyone adores, and the secure future she’s always imagined for herself. She hasn’t a thing to complain about, not even when she has to go on her engagement trip to New York alone. While playing tourist in the city, Mira chances upon a lost ring, and her social media post to locate its owner goes viral. With everyone trying to claim the ring, only one person seems to want to find its owner as badly as Mira does: journalist Krish Hale. Brooding and arrogant, he will do anything to get to write this story. As Krish and Mira reluctantly join forces and jump into the adventure of tracing the ring back to where it belongs, Mira begins to wonder if she is in the right place in her own life. Maybe, like the owner of the lost ring, her happy ending hasn’t been written yet.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781662524264

February 4th

ANTIQUITY written by Hanna Johansson, translated by Kira Josefsson (Fiction)
On a Greek island rich with ancient beauty, a lonely woman in her 30s upends the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Lust and admiration for Helena, a chic older artist, brings the book’s unnamed narrator to Ermoupoli, where Helena’s daughter, Olga, seems at first like an obstacle and a nuisance. But the unpredictable forces of ego and desire take over, leading our narrator down a more dangerous path, and causing the roles of lover and beloved, child and adult, stranger and intimate to become distorted. As the months go by, the fragile web connecting the three women nears rupture, and the ominous consequences of their entanglement loom just beyond a summer that must end.
Catapult | 9781646222650

BECOMING ELLA FITZGERALD: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by Judith Tick (Biography)
In this first major biography since Ella Fitzgerald’s death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist. BECOMING ELLA FITZGERALD clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer’s difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls’ reformatory school --- where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald’s tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324105220

THE BURNING OF THE WORLD: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City's Soul by Scott W. Berg (History)
In the fall of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the “big one” --- a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. It had been bone-dry for months, and a recent string of blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department’s already scant resources. Then, on October 8th, a minor fire broke out in the barn of Irishwoman Kate Leary. A series of unfortunate mishaps and misunderstandings, along with insufficient preparation and a high southwesterly wind, combined to set the stage for an unmitigated catastrophe. The conflagration that spread from the Learys' property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before long the floating embers had been cast to the far reaches of the city. Families took to the streets with every possession they could carry. Over the next 48 hours, Chicago fell victim to the largest and most destructive natural disaster the United States had yet endured.
Vintage | 9780804171519

THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear (Historical Mystery)
London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion --- the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group. Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.
Soho Crime | 9781641296786

DEEP END by Ali Hazelwood (Romance)
Paperback Original
Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. Swim captain, world champion and all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes. So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water.
Berkley | 9780593550441

THE DEERFIELD MASSACRE: A Surprise Attack and the Fight for Survival in Early America by James L. Swanson (History)
In an obscure, 200-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts, there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704. This impregnable barricade, known to early Americans as “The Old Indian Door,” is the sole surviving artifact from one of the most dramatic moments in colonial American history. In the leap year of 1704, on the cold, snowy night of February 29th, hundreds of Indians and their French allies swept down on an isolated frontier outpost to slaughter or capture its inhabitants. The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of survival, sacrifice, family and faith ever told in North America.
Scribner | 9781501108174

THE DEPARTMENT by Jacqueline Faber (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Philosophy professor Neil Weber can't think of one good reason to get up in the morning. His wife has left him, his academic research has sputtered, and the prospect of tenure is more remote than ever. Until Lucia Vanotti disappears. A college student at Neil’s Southern university, Lucia has a secret of her own --- one that haunts her relationships and leads to reckless, destructive behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds new energy, purpose and relevance. But at what cost? Each clue pulls him deeper into Lucia' s dark past, but also into the hidden lives of his closest friends and colleagues. What has driven Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care so deeply about finding her?
Oceanview Publishing |  9781608096343

DIVA by Daisy Goodwin (Historical Fiction)
In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas was known simply as la divina: the divine one. But her fame was hard-won. Raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her golden voice, she learned early in life to protect herself from those who would use her for their own ends. When she met the fabulously rich Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, for the first time in her life, she believed she’d found someone who saw the woman within the legendary soprano. She fell desperately in love. And then suddenly, it was over. The international press announced that Aristotle Onassis would marry the most famous woman in the world, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, leaving Maria to pick up the pieces.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250833990

DREAM GIRL DRAMA by Tessa Bailey (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
When professional hockey player Sig Gauthier’s car breaks down and his phone dies, he treks into a posh private country club to call a tow truck. There, he encounters the alluring Chloe Clifford, the manic pixie dream girl who captivates him immediately with her sense of adventure and penchant for stealing champagne. Sparks fly during a moonlight kiss. But when Sig finally arrives to meet his dad’s new girlfriend over dinner, Chloe is confusingly also there. It turns out that the girlfriend is Chloe’s mother. Oh, and they’re engaged. Sig’s dream girl is his future stepsister. Chloe and Sig know there can never be more than friendship between them. But keeping their relationship platonic grows harder amid the developing family drama, especially knowing they were meant for so much more.
Avon | 9780063380783

THE EDGE OF WATER by Olufunke Grace Bankole (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she’d dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew, and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria.
Tin House Books | 9781963108057

EXPIRATION DATES by Rebecca Serle (Romance)
Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it: the exact amount of time they will be together. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over 20 years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, on the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake. But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t --- information that would break his heart if he found out.
Atria Books | 9781982166830

FOURTEEN DAYS: A Collaborative Novel edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston (Fiction)
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs, milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants --- some of whom have barely spoken to each other --- become real neighbors. In this DECAMERON-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, FOURTEEN DAYS reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.
Harper Perennial | 9780063280182

FRUIT OF THE DEAD by Rachel Lyon (Fiction)
Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother’s disappointment --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.
Scribner | 9781668020869

GRETA & VALDIN by Rebecca K Reilly (Fiction)
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore --- and the future he wants. Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop intruding.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668028056

HAPPY RELATIONSHIPS: 25 Buddhist Practices to Transform Your Connections with Your Partner, Family, and Friends by Kimberly Brown (Self-Help/Personal Growth)
Paperback Original
Happy relationships are possible --- for everyone. Even if you’ve been married for 20 years and your routine is boring and stressful; although your mom has always been a help-resistant complainer; and despite the fact that your dearest friend moved across the country --- all of us can create lasting and joyful connections with the people we care about the most. Using simple tools drawn from the Buddhist tradition, you can cultivate appreciation, set wise expectations, and create meaningful and intimate bonds of mutual support and kindness with your partner, family and friends. That’s because our happiness isn’t dependent on everything in our lives being perfect. In fact, we can experience conflict, disagreement, job loss, grief and boredom and still have appreciation, delight and gratitude for everyone in our life.
Prometheus | 9781493086603

HELP WANTED by Adelle Waldman (Fiction)
Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours --- most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324105176

IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE by Jane Costello (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Lisa Darling, a high-flying TV executive and twice-divorced mother of two, is navigating life with an opinionated teenager and a pet-obsessed grade-schooler, organizing PTA events, and supporting her best friend through breast cancer treatment, all while in the throes of perimenopause. It’s no wonder her to-do list is on overdrive, and she never has time for Pilates or that DIY interior design project she keeps setting aside. But when LA-based media hotshot Zach Russo swoops in as a temporary stand-in for her best friend’s job, Lisa starts feeling overheated and flustered. She chooses to believe her hormone replacement therapy needs some adjusting, until she finds herself in a sexy --- and seriously ill-advised --- cinch with him. As things snowball, Lisa has to confront these long-forgotten feelings and ask herself if she’s finally ready to choose herself.
Zibby Publishing | 9798990630451

THE LAST DAYS OF THE MIDNIGHT RAMBLERS by Sarah Tomlinson (Fiction)
A legendary model and style icon, Anke Berben reveled in headline-grabbing romances with three members of the hugely influential rock band the Midnight Ramblers. The band members were as famous for their backstage drama as for their music, and Anke is the only one who fully understands the tangled relationships, betrayals and suspicions that have added to the Ramblers’ enduring appeal and mystique. That is most evident in the mystery around Anke’s role in the death of Mal, the band’s founder and Anke’s husband, in 1969. When Mari Hawthorn accepts the job to work with Anke on her memoir, she is dead set on getting to the truth of Mal’s death. As she ingratiates herself into the world of the band, she grows enchanted, against her better judgment, by these legendary rock stars.
Flatiron Books | 9781250890504

THE LAST SONG OF PENELOPE by Claire North (Historical Fiction)
Many years ago, Odysseus sailed to war and never returned. For 20 years, his wife, Penelope, and the women of Ithaca have guarded the isle against suitors and rival kings. But peace cannot be kept forever, and the balance of power is about to break. A beggar has arrived at the Palace. Salt-crusted and ocean-battered, he is scorned by the suitors --- but Penelope recognizes in him something terrible: her husband, Odysseus, returned at last. Yet this Odysseus is no hero. By returning to the island in disguise, he is not merely plotting his revenge against the suitors --- vengeance that will spark a civil war --- he's testing the loyalty of his queen. Has she been faithful to him all these years? And how much blood is Odysseus willing to shed to be sure?
Redhook | 9780316668873

LOST MAN’S LANE by Scott Carson (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Marshall Miller would’ve remembered her face even if he hadn’t seen it on a MISSING poster. When a young woman goes missing in his small town, the investigation hinges on Marshall’s haunted sighting of her, crying in the back seat of a police car driven by a cop named Maddox. There’s only one problem: no local cop named Maddox exists. But the speeding ticket he handed to Marshall certainly does. Dealing with police and media is heady stuff for a teenager, the son of a single mother, but Marshall is sure he can handle it, until the shocking day when his reliability as a witness implodes. Now scorned and shamed, he finds unlikely allies as he confronts the ancient secrets behind his small town’s peaceful façade --- and learns the truth about his own family.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982191467

A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE by Tia Williams (Romance)
Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. In her bones, Ricki knows that a more exciting life awaits her somewhere. When regal nonagenarian Ms. Della invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers. One evening in February, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538726716

THE MANY LIVES OF MAMA LOVE: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin (Memoir)
No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Lara is convicted of 32 felonies. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and LORD OF THE FLIES. But Lara brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller.” When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982197674

MRS. QUINN’S RISE TO FAME by Olivia Ford (Fiction)
Nothing could be more out of character, but after 59 years of marriage, as her husband Bernard’s health declines, and her friends' lives become focused on their grandchildren --- which Jenny never had --- Jenny decides she wants a little something for herself. So she secretly applies to be a contestant on the primetime TV show “Britain Bakes.” But her new-found independence, and the stress of the competition, starts to unearth memories buried decades ago. Chocolate teacakes remind her of a furtive errand involving a wedding ring; sugared donuts call up a stranger’s kind act; a simple cottage loaf brings back the moment her life changed forever. With her baking star rising, Jenny struggles to keep a lid on that first secret --- a long-concealed deceit that threatens to shatter the very foundations of her marriage.
Penguin Books | 9780593656464

MURDER AT LA VILLETTE: An Aimée Leduc Investigation Set in Paris by Cara Black (Mystery)
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc doesn’t know that her life is about to be upended. Her ex, Melac, has been hounding her to move their daughter, Chloé, to Brittany. Aimée has stopped answering his calls, which is why she doesn’t know he’s waiting for her by the Bassin de la Villette as she leaves a client’s office late one night. When she finds him, he has just been stabbed by an assailant, who knocks Aimée unconscious and plants the bloody knife in her hands. Now Aimée is in police custody, debilitated by a concussion, with overwhelming evidence pointing to her as Melac’s killer. In an attempt to figure out who the real culprit is, she goes deep into the underbelly of Paris’s 19th arrondissement, where she rubs shoulders with biker gangs, paranoid journalists, grieving parents and frustratingly tight-lipped ex-cops on her hunt for justice.
Soho Crime | 9781641296724

A MURDER IN HOLLYWOOD: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman (True Crime)
Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all --- a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny --- with disastrous consequences. The details of what happened that fateful night remain foggy, but it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and Stompanato dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt to protect her mother.
Sourcebooks | 9781464221989

RIDDLE OF SPIRIT AND BONE by Carolyn Korsmeyer (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
In contemporary Buffalo, Dan's world is upended when he unearths a young woman's skeleton while replacing the gas main in a city neighborhood. Using the meager clues available, he and his archaeologist friends embark on a quest to piece together the mystery of her death. In 1851, the newly widowed Madeleine Talmadge and her orphaned nieces, Jane and Lydia, seek the aid of a cunning spiritualist, Alexander Dodge Lewis. Lewis leads them on a perilous journey from one séance to the next, attempting to summon the spirit of Madeleine’s late husband and promoting Lydia's latent abilities as a medium. Jane, suspicious of his motives and fearful of his influence, seeks to disentangle her aunt and cousin from Lewis’ beguiling sphere --- with dire consequences. As the past collides with the present, layers of time peel back to reveal long-buried secrets of loss, love and murder.
Regal House Publishing | 9781646035403

THE ROAD FROM BELHAVEN by Margot Livesey (Historical Fiction)
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective. She doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.
Vintage | 9780593471241

THIS IS WHY WE LIED by Karin Slaughter (Mystery/Thriller)
For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night. Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063336735

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