February 4, 2025

February 4, 2025

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We recently have added a number of new subscribers, so we wanted to take a moment to welcome you to Bookreporter.com's “On Sale This Week” newsletter!

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of February 3rd and February 10th 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 Reader-Selected Best Books of 2024 on ReadingGroupGuides.com. Over the last couple of months, we asked you to tell us your favorite book that you read with your book group and your favorite book that you read outside your group in 2024. The results are in, and we’re happy to share them with you here! The #1 pick in both categories is THE WOMEN by Kristin Hannah, which was a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection when it released last February.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Reader-Selected Best Books of 2024
on ReadingGroupGuides.com

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, February 5th at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Victoria Christopher Murray about her first solo historical novel, HARLEM RHAPSODY, which tells the extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

Wednesday, February 5th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Walter Mosley will talk about his new mystery, BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT, in which a family member’s terminal illness leads P.I. Joe King Oliver to the investigation of his life: tracking down his long-lost father.

Thursday, February 6th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome Virginia Feito for a live virtual discussion of her new page-turning thriller, VICTORIAN PSYCHO, as part of their B&N Midday Mystery Virtual Event series. Virginia will be in conversation with the bestselling author of HORROR MOVIE, Paul Tremblay.

Monday, February 10th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome Walter Mosley for a live virtual discussion of the latest entry in his King Oliver series, BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT, as part of their B&N Midday Mystery Virtual Event series. Walter will be in conversation with the bestselling author of ALL THE SINNERS BLEED, S.A. Cosby.

Tuesday, February 11th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Steve Berry will talk about the latest installment in his wildly popular Cotton Malone series, THE MEDICI RETURN, an adventure that takes Cotton to Italy to solve a 500-year-old mystery.

Tuesday, February 11th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: Join the Killer Author Club --- Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda --- as they welcome back New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger to talk about her heart-pounding new thriller, CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10.

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. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant, and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue. 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. Three 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

On Sale the Week of February 10th in Hardcover

February 10th

PARANOIA: A Michael Bennett Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Psychological Thriller)
At every death scene, NYPD Detective Michael Bennett says a prayer over the victim. But recently, too many of the departed have been fellow cops. “I want you to look at these deaths on special assignment,” NYPD Inspector Celeste Cantor says. “Report only to me.” Bennett excels as a solo investigator. But he's chasing a killer who feeds on isolation...and paranoia.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316403689

February 11th

THE AMERICAN NO: Stories by Rupert Everett (Fiction/Short Stories)
In his first collection of stories, Rupert Everett takes us on exhilarating journeys with a cast of extraordinary characters. From Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris to the ferociously unforgiving world of a Los Angeles talent agency and beyond, these stories are evocative, moving and tender. Brilliantly witty, elegiac, and drawing from the wealth of film and TV ideas Everett has worked on over the course of his illustrious career, THE AMERICAN NO will delight and surprise his many fans.
Atria Books | 9781668076453

BEARTOOTH by Callan Wink (Fiction)
In an aging timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid, on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving off the wild after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration, or the medical bills they can’t afford from their father’s fatal illness, or the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is…different, more instinctual, and deeply in tune with the natural world. Desperate for money, they are approached by a shadowy out-of-towner with a dangerous proposition that will change both of their lives forever.
Spiegel & Grau | 9781954118027

BLOOD TIES written by Jo Nesbø, translated by Robert Ferguson (Noir Thriller)
By all accounts, Carl and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they’re doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area’s swanky and successful spa and hotel, while Roy runs a nearby gas station and harbors grand plans to build it out into an entire amusement park, complete with a roller coaster. But when news breaks about a new highway to be built nearby, bypassing Os and leaving the town cutoff and isolated, it’s clear that something has to be done…even if the methods are bound to be dirty. Fortunately, Carl and Roy have experience with just that kind of work. Meanwhile, the town sheriff has gotten his hands on new technology that will enable him to take a deeper look at a slate of unsolved murders from years past --- including that of his own father.
Knopf | 9780593803615

CASUALTIES OF TRUTH by Lauren Francis-Sharma (Fiction)
Prudence Wright and her husband, Davis, head out for dinner with one of Davis’ new colleagues. When that colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past, she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state. Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802163783

THE DOLLHOUSE ACADEMY by Margarita Montimore (Thriller)
For the past 18 years, Ivy Gordon has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But in secret diary entries, she begins to reveal the truth of her life at the Dollhouse: strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that has left her terrified and feeling like a prisoner. Ramona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolizing Ivy. Neither has made much headway in showbiz until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. When Ramona begins to receive threatening anonymous messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success. But as the messages grow more unsettling, so does life at the Dollhouse.
Flatiron Books | 9781250320650

EVERY TOM, DICK & HARRY by Elinor Lipman (Romantic Comedy)
Taking over her parents’ estate-sale business is not the life’s work that Emma Lewis bargained for. Yes, she grew up helping them empty people’s nests, but nothing prepared her for her biggest and stickiest “get” --- the grand, beautiful house of ill repute masquerading as a decidedly beddable B&B. Should Emma turn down potential clients in need of decluttering just because they are shady, escort-y and proud of it? No. A girl must make a living.
Harper | 9780063322257

A GIRL LIKE US by Anna Sophia McLoughlin (Thriller)
It's 2004, and former reality TV star and party girl Maya Miller has just married the most eligible bachelor on the planet: Colin Sterling, of the globally famous Sterling family, whose history of aristocratic titles and land holdings rival a British royal and whose media empire is comparable to the Murdochs. But when Colin's cousin Arianna, the heiress to the family's immense fortune, is found murdered, Maya is thrust into the spotlight: first as she is revealed to be the next heiress to the fortune, and then as the prime suspect. Swiftly, the entire Sterling family goes into lockdown at Silver House, the family's ancestral estate in the English countryside. They're told it's for their own safety --- but Maya becomes convinced that it's not to keep threats out, but to keep secrets in.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728296135

IDLE GROUNDS by Krystelle Bamford (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves --- to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from and what they deserve.
Scribner | 9781668070451

THE MEDICI RETURN: A Cotton Malone Novel by Steve Berry (Thriller)
Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th-century Pledge of Christ --- a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries --- now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers on what happened to the famed Medici of Florence --- a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538770566

NEMESIS: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz (Thriller)
Evan Smoak is a highly trained former government assassin who has survived for years by keeping his circle to a few trusted confidants and a strict code he calls “The Ten Commandments.” Tommy Stojack might be Evan's best friend in the world. He is a gifted gunsmith who has created much of Evan's own weapons and combat gear. But now he apparently has crossed one of Evan's hardest lines, and their argument explodes into open warfare. Now Evan has no choice but to track and face down his only friend. In the meantime, Tommy has left town in order to honor his own promise to help a dead friend's son. While Tommy is fighting to save the son with everything he’s got, Evan arrives with vengeance in mind. But as deadly as the former Orphan X is, there is an even more dangerous threat about to arrive on the scene. Will any of them get out alive?
Minotaur Books | 9781250871749

PEOPLE OF MEANS by Nancy Johnson (Historical Fiction)
In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. Freda finds herself caught between two worlds, and two loves, and must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the advancement of her people. In 1992 Chicago, Freda’s daughter, Tulip, is an ambitious PR professional on track for an exciting career, if workplace politics and racial microaggressions don’t get in her way. But with the ruling in the Rodney King trial weighing heavily on her, Tulip feels called to action. When she makes an irreversible professional misstep as she seeks to uplift her community, she must decide, just like her mother had three decades prior, what she’s willing to risk in the name of justice and equality.
William Morrow | 9780063157514

THE QUEENS OF CRIME by Marie Benedict (Historical Mystery)
London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment. As they embark on their own investigation, the Queens of Crime discover that they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250280756

SMOKE ON THE WATER: An Amos Walker Mystery by Loren D. Estleman (Historical Mystery)
As the smoke from Canadian wildfires chokes Detroit, PI Amos Walker is tasked with investigating a fatal hit-and-run. The victim is Spencer Bennett, a junior law associate with the Waterford Group, and he supposedly had a file of confidential documents on him when he died. But those documents have now gone missing, and the firm is dead set on Walker finding them. As Walker digs deeper into the events leading to Bennett's death, all signs are pointing towards the crash being anything but accidental. Summer in Detroit was hot enough before the smoke descended, but as the temperature rises and more bodies crop up in connection to the missing file, Walker will have to track down those documents --- and unearth why they were worth killing over --- before it's too late.
Forge Books | 9781250892553

STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood (Fiction)
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.
Riverhead Books | 9798217047352

THREE DAYS IN JUNE by Anne Tyler (Fiction)
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job --- or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
Knopf | 9780593803486

WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON: Stories by Amanda Peters (Fiction/Short Stories)
In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he no longer can communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. And a nervous child dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award-winning and title story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon.” At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, these stories will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.
Catapult | 9781646222599

WE ALL LIVE HERE by Jojo Moyes (Fiction)
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall, and her love life is…complicated. So when Lila’s real dad --- a man she barely has seen since he ran off to Hollywood 35 years ago --- suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.
Pamela Dorman Books | 9781984879325

WE WOULD NEVER by Tova Mirvis (Fiction)
No one appears more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband, Jonah. The months leading up to Jonah’s death have been fraught, including a bitter separation and a messy custody battle over their young daughter, Maya. When Hailey files a motion to relocate to Florida, Jonah retaliates, and the divorce begins to spiral dangerously out of control. Sherry, Hailey’s mother, will stop at almost nothing to keep Jonah from getting what he wants. Nate, Hailey’s impetuous and protective older brother, can’t stand to see his little sister suffer. And Solomon, the patriarch, is keeping a secret that threatens the stability and security Sherry has worked so hard to maintain. Soon, they are forced to reckon with who they are as individuals and as a family, and just how far they will go for each other.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668061626

THE WOLF TREE by Laura McCluskey (Gothic Mystery)
Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of that same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate. Georgina “George” Lennox is happy to be back from leave after a devastating accident. That is, until she meets the hostile islanders and their enigmatic priest, who seem determined to thwart their investigation. George’s partner, Richie, just wants to close the case and head home to his family. But he hasn’t heard the wolves howling or seen the dark figures at their window at night. He’s too busy watching George as if waiting for her to break. With the dark secrets of the island swirling around them, George and Richie must decide who to trust and what to believe as they spin closer to the terrible truth.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593852545

YOU ARE FATALLY INVITED by Ande Pliego (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance --- particularly since she has an axe to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection and mayhem. Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two --- the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead --- and it’s not the murder she planned --- Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether. With a storm isolating the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.
Bantam | 9780593871577

On Sale the Week of February 10th in Paperback

February 11th

THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE by Stephen Graham Jones
(Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE is the final installment in Stephen Graham Jones’ trilogy that kicked off with MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW and continued in DON’T FEAR THE REAPER. It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend, Letha, and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation and the town have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
S&S/Saga Press | 9781668011676

A BETTER WORLD by Sarah Langan (Dystopian/Psychological Thriller)
You’ll be safe here. That’s what the tour guide promises Dr. Linda Farmer and her family when they relocate to Plymouth Valley. With the outside world in shambles, this move is her family’s last chance. Linda, her husband and their teen twins do their best to fit in. It works at first, but then Linda encounters Gal Parker, a hot mess of a woman, whose wife has abandoned her and whose kids are sick. One terrible night, Gal commits an unthinkable act. All of Plymouth Valley turns on Gal, refusing to speak her name. But Linda can’t stop wondering: What would drive a woman to do something so awful? The more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. A clock is ticking, too. Before the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, Linda has to figure out: Should she and her family be fighting to stay, or fighting their way out?
Washington Square Press | 9781982191078

THE BOOK OF LOVE by Kelly Link (Paranormal Urban Fantasy)
Late one night, Laura, Daniel and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are. With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance --- and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks. While they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812986501

A CALAMITY OF SOULS by David Baldacci (Historical Thriller)
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538765043

A FATE INKED IN BLOOD: Book One of the Saga of the Unfated by Danielle L. Jensen (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
Bound in an unwanted marriage, Freya dreams of becoming a warrior. When her husband betrays her to the region’s jarl, she is involved in a fight to the death against his son, Bjorn. To survive, Freya is forced to reveal her deepest secret: She possesses a drop of a goddess’s blood, which makes her a shield maiden with magic capable of repelling any attack. And it’s been foretold that such magic will unite the fractured nation of Skaland beneath the one who controls the shield maiden’s fate. Believing he’s destined to rule Skaland as king, the fanatical jarl binds Freya with a blood oath and orders Bjorn to protect her from their enemies. Desperate to prove her strength, Freya must train to fight and learn to control her magic, all while facing perilous tests set by the gods. The greatest test of all, however, may be resisting her forbidden attraction to Bjorn.
Del Rey | 9780593599853

FIRST-TIME CALLER by B.K. Borison (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Aiden Valentine has a secret: he’s fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore’s romance hotline, that’s a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and "Heartstrings" into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life --- or lack thereof --- she begins to question if she’s as happy as she believed. Maybe a little more romance wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending…even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final decision between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.
Berkley | 9780593641194

THE FOX WIFE by Yangsze Choo (Historical Fiction)
Manchuria, 1908. In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until, perhaps, now. Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can’t escape the curse that afflicts them --- their eldest sons die before their 24th birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family’s luck seems to change. Or does it?
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250266033

A GRAVE ROBBERY: A Veronica Speedwell Mystery by Deanna Raybourn (Historical Mystery)
Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why? Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain --- a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved.
Berkley | 9780593545966

THE LACE WIDOW: An Eliza Hamilton Mystery by Mollie Ann Cox (Historical Mystery)
New York, 1804. Alexander Hamilton lies dead after a duel with Aaron Burr. Eliza Hamilton’s 18-year-old son, Alexander Jr., was seen fighting with a man in a tavern the night before his father’s duel and quickly comes under suspicion for murder when the man turns up dead. Eliza searches for ways to clear her son’s name, but as she combs through her late husband’s papers, she finds evidence of a plot to steal money from the government during his tenure as secretary of state. Deep in debt and despair, with eight children to support, Eliza turns to selling her handmade lace --- and is drawn into a mysterious network of widow lacemakers who are intimately connected to New York’s high-society families. They know their dead husbands’ secrets --- and Eliza soon begins to piece together the truth.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639109258

THE LANTERN’S DANCE: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes by Laurie R. King (Historical Mystery)
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes’ son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they learn that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat. Holmes rushes after Damian, while Russell stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ grand-uncle, the artist Horace Vernet. There’s also an old journal written in a nearly impenetrable code. She slowly realizes that each entry is built around an image --- the first of which is a child, bundled into a carriage by an abductor, watching her mother recede from view. Who is the young Indian woman who created this elaborate puzzle? What does she have to do with Damian, or the Vernets --- or the threat hovering over the house?
Bantam | 9780593496619

LOOKING FOR YOU: A Perfect Passion Company Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Romance/Humor)
Paperback Original
After facilitating a handful of successful romances, Katie Donald is eager to continue helping the lovelorn citizens of Edinburgh find connection. Word of her expertise spreads quickly, and more people than ever are flocking to the Perfect Passion Company seeking Katie's advice. With each client's distinctive quirks and unique personalities, Katie finds herself seeking new and creative solutions to locate their perfect match.
Vintage | 9798217006786

MURDER ROAD by Simone St. James (Supernatural Thriller)
April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them. When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years, and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work.
Berkley | 9780593200391

NIGHT WATCH by Jayne Anne Phillips (Historical Fiction)
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. They get swept up in the life of the facility --- the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; and the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
Vintage | 9781101972793

ORIGINAL SINS by Erin Young (Thriller)
It’s a brutal winter in Des Moines, Iowa, and the city is gripped by fear. A serial attacker known as the Sin Eater is stalking women and has just struck again. It’s a tough time and a tough place for Riley Fisher, a former small-town sergeant, to be reporting for duty as an FBI agent on her first assignment. Teamed with a man she’s not sure she can trust and struggling to prove herself --- while fighting the pull of her old life and family dramas --- Riley is tasked with investigating a vicious death threat against the newly elected female state governor. Gradually, she traces a disturbing connection between this case and the hunt for the Sin Eater. Through snow, ice, violence and lies, Riley Fisher is drawn towards a terrifying revelation.
Flatiron Books | 9781250799432

THE SECRET LIVES OF BOOKSELLERS AND LIBRARIANS: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann (Biography)
To be a bookseller or librarian, you have to play detective. Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary. A person who creates “book joy” by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, “You’ve got to read this. You’re going to love it.” Step inside THE SECRET LIVES OF BOOKSELLERS AND LIBRARIANS and enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, and find whatever you want or require. This place has the magic of rainbows and unicorns, but it's also a business. The book business.  Meet the smart and talented people who live between the pages --- and who can’t wait to help you find your next favorite book.
Little, Brown and Company | 9781538758984

SLOW NOODLES: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon with Kim Green (Memoir)
In SLOW NOODLES, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone --- her home, her family, her country --- all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse and weaving silk.
Algonquin Books | 9781643756035

SMOKE AND ASHES: Opium's Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (History/Memoir)
When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels, the Ibis Trilogy, 10 years ago, he was startled to learn how the lives of the 19th-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story. SMOKE AND ASHES is at once a travelogue, a memoir and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India and China, as well as the world at large.
Picador | 9781250371874

SPLINTERS: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison (Memoir)
Leslie Jamison is among our most beloved contemporary voices, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling and electric prose. In SPLINTERS, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of her most intimate relationships: new motherhood, a ruptured marriage, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once, Jamison juxtaposes the magical and the mundane in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, a deep reckoning that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.
Back Bay Books | 9780316374989

THE STARS TURNED INSIDE OUT by Nova Jacobs (Literary Mystery)
Deep beneath the ground outside of Geneva, where CERN’s Large Hadron Collider smashes subatomic particles at breathtaking speeds, a shocking discovery is made when the tunnel is down for maintenance: the body of Howard Anderby, a brilliant and recently arrived young physicist. But security shows no evidence of him entering the tunnel. Eager to keep the death under wraps until more is known, CERN brings in private investigator Sabine Leroux, who has her own ties to the lab’s administration --- and more than a passing interest in particle physics. Meanwhile, Howard’s colleague and budding love interest Eve, shattered by his death, determines to reconcile what she knew of Howard with his gruesome fate.
Atria Books | 9781668018552

THE STORM WE MADE by Vanessa Chan (Historical Fiction)
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s 15-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.” Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later, as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction --- and she will do anything to save them.
S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781668015155

THE WATERMARK by Sam Mills (Dystopian Science Fiction)
Paperback Original
Rachel and Jaime: their story isn’t simple. It might not even be their story. Augustus Fate, a once-lauded novelist and now renowned recluse, is struggling with his latest creation. But when Jaime and Rachel stumble into his remote cottage, he spies opportunity, imprisoning them inside his novel-in-progress. Now, the fledgling couple must try to find their way back home through a labyrinthine network of novels. And as they move from Victorian Oxford to a utopian Manchester, a harsh Russian winter to an AI-dominated near-future, so too does the narrative of their relationship change time and again. Together, they must figure out if this relationship of so many presents can have any future at all.
Melville House | 9781685891916

February 15th

DON’T THINK, DEAR: On Loving and Leaving Ballet by Alice Robb (Memoir)
Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age 15, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet --- only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an extreme --- stoicism, silence, submission --- are valued in girls and women everywhere. Profound, nuanced and passionately researched, DON’T THINK, DEAR is Robb’s excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come.
Mariner Books | 9780063352452

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