May 13, 2025

May 13, 2025

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of May 12th and May 19th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks feature for May, which includes Indie Next, LibraryReads, the Barnes & Noble Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, Oprah's Book Club, the PBS Books Readers Club, the "Read with Jenna" Book Club, Reese's Book Club, and the Target Book Club.

Join Us Tomorrow Afternoon!

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

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, May 14th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live" Book Preview: Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between May 13th and June 3rd, along with a few from July, that we would like to get on your radar. Included will be fiction; historical fiction; thrillers and mysteries; and memoirs, biographies and other nonfiction.

Wednesday, May 14th at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Ruth Reichl about her book, THE PARIS NOVEL. This dazzling, heartfelt adventure through the food, art and fashion scenes of 1980s Paris is now available in paperback.

Monday, May 19th at 7:30pm ET: “Lisa Live”: Join Lisa Scottoline on Facebook every Monday night through July 7th as she reveals her inspirations behind her upcoming novel, THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA. And be sure to enter the Pre-Order Sweepstakes for the book. Lisa will be giving away an exciting prize each week during her “Lisa Live” events, leading up to the book's July 15th publication.

Monday, May 19th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Michael McGarrity will talk about his latest novel, NIGHT IN THE CITY, in which Korean War veteran Sam Monroe, who is accused of the murder of his former lover, is forced to abandon his job as an assistant district attorney and fight to clear his name.

On Sale the Week of May 12th in Hardcover

May 12th

THE #1 DAD BOOK: Be the Best Dad You Can Be in 1 Hour by James Patterson (Parenting/Self-Help)
I did the homework, so you don’t have to do as much. I talked to lots of experts, and lots of dads, and lots of experts who are also dads. I read everything I could. Then I wrote and rewrote this book, filled with steps you can take to become a better dad. Start with a hug. Talk to them before they can speak. Then talk about everything. Read to your kids. Then flip things around. Let them read to you. Tell your kids your story. Help them discover who they are. Deep down inside. Have your kids’ backs. One day, they’ll have yours. Every day, just show up.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316585071

May 13th

ANIMA RISING by Christopher Moore (Historical Fantasy/Humor)
Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive! Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse, Wally, tend to the formerly drowned girl. She is nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory. With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic 100 years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein, and visiting the Underworld. So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her?
William Morrow | 9780062434159

AWAKE IN THE FLOATING CITY by Susanna Kwan (Dystopian Fiction)
Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city, and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge, and Bo has been alone ever since. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape --- but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, but they forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who has brought her back to it.
Pantheon | 9780593701409

CLASS CLOWN: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up by Dave Barry (Memoir/Humor)
How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainment --- there was no internet --- and preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the ’60s). CLASS CLOWN isn’t just a memoir; it’s a vibrant celebration of a life rich with humor, absurdity, joy and sadness.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668021781

A CURSE CARVED IN BONE: Book Two of the Saga of the Unfated by Danielle L. Jensen (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future --- the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her. The blood oaths that bind Freya demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war. Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated --- children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who is now willing to fight at her back. Despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.
Del Rey | 9780593599860

THE DARK MAESTRO by Brendan Slocumb (Mystery/Thriller)
Growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father, Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy who rises to unimagined heights in the classical music world. But then his life suddenly disintegrates. His father, Zippy, turns state’s evidence, implicating his old bosses. Now the family must enter the witness protection program if they want to survive. This means that Curtis must give up the very thing he loves the most. When Zippy’s bosses prove too elusive for law enforcement, Curtis, Zippy, and Zippy’s girlfriend, Larissa, realize that their only chance of survival is to take on the criminals themselves. They must create new identities and draw on their unique talents, including Curtis’ musical ability, to go after the people who want them dead.
Doubleday | 9780593687611

THE DEVIL THREE TIMES by Rickey Fayne (Historical Fiction)
Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form --- the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice. Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need. He offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: Can he save himself, too?
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316575171

THE DEVILS by Joe Abercrombie (Historical Fantasy)
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain that a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends. Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing that Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.
Tor Books | 9781250880055

THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS by Ocean Vuong (Fiction)
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family and a community on the brink.
Penguin Press | 9780593831878

FEVER BEACH by Carl Hiaasen (Mystery/Humor)
“The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Shores, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he’d take him there after finishing an errand.” Thus begins FEVER BEACH, with an errand that leads --- in pure Carl Hiaasen style --- into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed and corruption.
Knopf | 9780593320945

THE INCANDESCENT by Emily Tesh (Dark Fantasy)
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions. Walden is good at her job --- no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its 600 students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity that Walden most needs to keep her school safe from…is herself.
Tor Books | 9781250835017

ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL by Oliver Darkshire (Fantasy/Humor)
In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm’s strange animals, cooking up “scrunge,” and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: What harm could a little magic do? This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines a heroine of Giovanni Boccaccio’s THE DECAMERON in a delightfully deranged world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals and shape-shifting sorcerers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324105916

LIFE AND ART: Essays by Richard Russo (Essays)
Richard Russo’s masterful new essays consider how life and art inform each other and how the stories we tell shape our understanding of the world around us. In “The Lives of Others,” Russo reflects on the implacable fact that writers use people, insisting that what matters, in the end, is how and for what purpose. In “Stiff Neck,” he writes of the exasperating fault lines exposed within his own family as his wife’s sister and her husband --- proudly unvaccinated --- develop COVID. In “Triage,” he details the terror of seeing his seven-year-old grandson in critical condition. And in “Ghosts,” he revisits Gloversville, the town that gave rise to the now-legendary fictional town of North Bath, and confronts the specter of its richly populated past and its ghostly present.
Knopf | 9780593802168

MAKE ME FAMOUS written by Maud Ventura, translated by Gretchen Schmid (Fiction)
Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the years, she overcomes every obstacle and becomes a global superstar. But as any celebrity will tell you, getting to the top is one thing; staying there is another. Now 33 years old, Cléo is taking her first real vacation in years, on a remote island with no one else in sight. With the never-ending spin cycle of her life finally on pause and no paparazzi peeking out from behind the coconut palms, she can work on her fourth album in peace. Except that with so much time to think, she can’t help but ruminate on her past --- including how, just six months earlier, things started to go very, very wrong.
HarperVia | 9780063427518

THE MAN MADE OF SMOKE by Alex North (Thriller)
Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child --- narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?
Celadon Books | 9781250757890

MARBLE HALL MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz (Mystery)
Freelancing for a London publisher, editor Susan Ryeland has been given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd’s Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children’s author Miriam Crace, who died 20 years ago. Eliot is convinced that she was poisoned. To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript, which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring. The more Susan reads, the clearer it becomes that Eliot has deliberately concealed clues about his grandmother’s death inside the book.
Harper | 9780063305700

MARK TWAIN by Ron Chernow (Biography)
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care.
Penguin Press | 9780525561729

NO ONE WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE AT THIS WEDDING by Catherine Mack
(Mystery/Humor)
Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for Eleanor Dash, the bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on vacation. Emma Wood, Eleanor’s best friend since childhood, is starring in the movie adaptation of When in Rome, Eleanor’s first novel. Emma is also marrying Fred Winters, a major movie star and Emma’s co-star, who just happens to be playing Connor Smith, Eleanor’s ex and leading man of the series. Filming wraps, and they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island. There may be a storm headed their way, but nothing will stop their nuptials. That is, until Emma receives a note that says “Someone is going to die at the wedding.”
Minotaur Books | 9781250326133

QUEEN OF ALL MAYHEM: The Blood-Soaked Life and Mysterious Death of Belle Starr, the Most Dangerous Woman in the West by Dane Huckelbridge (Biography)
On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her 41st birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley --- better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr” --- was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic and dangerous women in the history of the American West. In QUEEN OF ALL MAYHEM, Dane Huckelbridge probes a life rich in contradictions and intrigue. Why did a woman who had considerable advantages in life --- a good family, a decent education, solid marriage prospects, a clear path to financial security --- choose to pursue a life of crime?
William Morrow | 9780063307018

THE RED HOUSE by Mary Morris (Fiction)
Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys, and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant. Decades later, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage. In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years.
Doubleday | 9780385544986

RORY LAND: The Up-and-Down World of Golf's Global Icon by Timothy M. Gay (Sports/Biography)
Timothy M. Gay writes that Rory McIlroy is “golf’s ageless Opie Taylor,” a freckled superstar whose boyish charm transcends national boundaries and enlivens the game. His seemingly effortless swing is so powerful that Tiger Woods is teaching his own son to mimic Rory’s action. But a charismatic persona and a pretty swing don’t necessarily translate into winning major championships. Over the past decade, Rory has had his heart ripped out as he’s failed to win another major and fallen short of achieving the career Grand Slam. (That all changed when, following the writing of this book, Rory won the Masters for his fifth major and the career Grand Slam.) RORY LAND tells the up-and-down saga of a compassionate and kindhearted superstar living in a world where “money has no conscience.”
Regalo Press | 9798888451298

RUN FOR THE HILLS by Kevin Wilson (Fiction)
Ever since her dad left them 20 years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Then one day, Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half-sister. Reuben, who was left behind by their dad 30 years ago, has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half-siblings. And he wants Madeline to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all. As Madeline and Reuben --- and eventually the others --- share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with every new incarnation.
Ecco | 9780063317512

THE SILVERSMITH'S PUZZLE by Nev March (Historical Mystery)
In 1894 colonial India, Lady Diana's family has lost their fortune in a global financial slump. But even worse, her brother, Adi, is accused of murder. Desperate to save him from the gallows, Captain Jim and Lady Diana rush back to Bombay. However, the traditional Parsi community finds Jim and Diana's marriage taboo and shuns them. The dying words of Adi’s business partner, a silversmith, are perplexing. As Captain Jim peels back the curtains on this man's life, he finds a trail of unpaid bills, broken promises, lies and secrets. Why was the silversmith so frantic for gold, and where is it? What awful truth does it represent?
Minotaur Books | 9781250348036

SKIPPER: Why Baseball Managers Matter and Always Will by Scott Miller (Sports)
SKIPPER takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues. Packed with baseball history, interviews with dozens of MLB's current stars and veterans, and an exclusive, inside look at the day-to-day life of LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, SKIPPER is a fascinating look into the highs, the lows and the inner workings of the changing world of professional baseball.
Grand Central Publishing | 9780306832703

SLAYING YOU by Michelle Gagnon (Thriller/Humor)
Grace and Amber’s first encounter was anything but ordinary. They bonded over being stalked by the same psychopath. After narrowly escaping that ordeal, they went their separate ways, determined to get back to their lives. Surprise: neither of them is very good at being "normal." Despite their best efforts, they both feel an irresistible pull toward the dark side. So when they reunite for a Vegas wedding and discover that an even more dangerous killer is targeting their friends, it’s time to get the gang back together. Grace and Amber have outrun a murderer before. But can they do it again?
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593540770

SLEEP by Honor Jones (Fiction)
Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood slip away. Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She’s newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time.
Riverhead Books | 9780593851982

SOMETHING I KEEP UPSTAIRS by J.D. Barker (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
In the sleepy coastal town of New Castle, New Hampshire, 17-year-old Billy Hasler's life is about to take a terrifying turn. When his best friend, David Spivey, inherits a mysterious house on a nearby island, it seems like the perfect place to spend their final summer before heading off to college. No parents. No police. No responsibilities. As they dig into the island's dark past, they awaken an ancient evil that has influenced generations. What begins as an innocent summer adventure quickly descends into a nightmare.
Hampton Creek Press | 9798989265480

SPEAK TO ME OF HOME by Jeanine Cummins (Fiction)
On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to San Juan that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250759368

THE WARRIOR: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay by Christopher Clarey (Sports/Biography)
Christopher Clarey illuminates the skill and determination it took to accomplish Rafael Nadal’s most mind-blowing achievement: 14 French Open titles. Nadal has won big on tennis's many surfaces en route to becoming one of the greatest players of all time: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and four U.S. Open titles on cushioned acrylic hardcourts. But clay, the slowest and grittiest of the game’s playgrounds, is where it all comes together best for his tactical skills, whipping topspin forehand and gladiatorial mindset. Clay is to Rafael Nadal what water is to Michael Phelps, which helps explain one of the most impressive individual sports achievements of the 21st century. Clarey draws on interviews over many years with Nadal and his team and with rivals like Roger Federer.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538759134

WHERE THE RIVERS MERGE by Mary Alice Monroe (Historical Fiction)
1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. But the Great War, coastal storms and family turmoil bring unexpected challenges to Eliza, putting her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era. 1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She has fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family --- or watch them both be split apart.
William Morrow | 9780063249424

On Sale the Week of May 12th in Paperback

May 13th

ALL FOURS by Miranda July (Fiction)
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. With Miranda July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, ALL FOURS tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, the book transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
Riverhead Books | 9780593190272

ALL THE SUMMERS IN BETWEEN by Brooke Lea Foster (Historical Fiction)
When wealthy, impulsive summer girl Margot meets hardworking and steady local girl Thea in the summer of 1967, the unlikely pair become fast friends, working alongside one another in a record store and spending every spare moment together. But after an unspeakable incident on one devastating August night, they don’t see one another for 10 years…until Margot suddenly reappears in Thea’s life, begging for help and harboring more than one dangerous secret. Thea can’t bring herself to refuse her beloved friend, but she also knows she can’t fully trust her either. Unfulfilled as a housewife, Thea enjoys the dazzling sense of adventure Margot brings to her life. But will the truth of what happened to them that fateful summer ruin everything?
Gallery Books | 9781668034385

AMBITION MONSTER: A Memoir by Jennifer Romolini (Memoir)
After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow. AMBITION MONSTER is a gutsy and powerful look at workaholism, the lingering effect of childhood trauma, and the failures of our modern rat race. This is a Cinderella story of success and a brutal appraisal of the cost of capitalism --- perfect for people pleasers, overachievers, and those whose traumas have driven them to be perfect, no matter the cost.
Atria Books | 9781668056592

ASH DARK AS NIGHT: A Harry Ingram Mystery by Gary Phillips (Historical Mystery)
Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost --- until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate, Moses “Mose” Tolbert, who was last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash and clandestine agendas.
Soho Crime | 9781641296762

THE COUNTRY UNDER HEAVEN by Frederic S. Durbin (Western)
Paperback Original
Set in the 1880s, THE COUNTRY UNDER HEAVEN follows Ovid Vesper, a former Union soldier who has been having enigmatic visions after surviving the Battle of Antietam. As he travels across the country following those visions, he finds himself in stranger and increasingly more dangerous encounters with other worlds hidden in the spaces of his own mind, not to mention the dangers of the Wild West. Ovid brings his steady calm and compassion as he helps the people of a broken country still reeling and wounded from the war. He assists with matters of all sorts, from odd jobs around the house, to guiding children back to their own universe, to hunting down unnatural creatures that stalk the night --- all the while seeking his own personal resolution and peace from his visions.
Melville House | 9781685891695

DEATH ON THE ISLAND by Eliza Reid (Mystery)
Paperback Original
A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There's Kristján, the mayor, who is reeling from a personal tragedy; Graeme, the ambassador, who has an agenda to push; Jane, his wife, who is along for the ride on another one of her husband's many business trips; and several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador's wife to figure out how --- and why. What Jane soon comes to realize is that small communities can be the most dangerous of them all…and no one in their group is safe.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728292410

DON’T LET THE DEVIL RIDE by Ace Atkins (Thriller)
Addison McKellar knows she and her husband, Dean, don’t have the perfect marriage, but she’s still shocked when he completely vanishes from her life. As days stretch into a week and she’s repeatedly stonewalled by Dean’s friends and associates, her frustration turns into genuine alarm. When even the police seem dismissive of her concerns, Addison turns to her father’s old friend, legendary Memphis PI Porter Hayes. Porter and Addison quickly discover that Dean was never the hardworking business owner and family man he pretended to be. As they piece together the connections between a hook-handed mercenary, one of Elvis’ former leading ladies, and a man posing as an FBI agent, it becomes clear that Dean was deeply enmeshed in a high-stakes web of international intrigue, and Porter and Addison aren’t the only ones looking for him.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063293397

DREAM ON, RAMONA RILEY by Ashley Herring Blake (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Once upon a time, Ramona Riley was a student at a prestigious art school, with dreams of landing in Hollywood as a costume designer to the stars. But after her father’s car accident, she had to quit and return to her small New Hampshire town, Clover Lake, to help take care of her younger sister. Twelve years later, Ramona is still working at the town’s café, all but given up on her dream. But when a big-budget romantic comedy comes to Clover Lake to film, she wonders if this could be her chance. There’s only one problem: Dylan Monroe, her first kiss and Hollywood’s favorite wild child, is the star. Ultimately, both women must decide if the spark between them can fan the flames of their individual dreams, or if it will extinguish their light.
Berkley | 9780593815991

A FAREWELL TO ARFS: A Chet & Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn (Mystery)
Chet the dog and his human partner, PI Bernie Little, are on to a new case, and this time they're entangled in a web of crime unlike anything they've ever seen before. Their elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Parsons, thought he was doing the right thing by loaning his ne'er do well son, Billy, some money to help get himself settled. But soon, Mr. Parsons discovers that his entire life savings is gone. A run-of-the-mill scam? Bernie isn’t so sure that the case is that simple, but it's Chet who senses what they're really up against. Only Billy knows the truth, but he's disappeared. Can Chet and Bernie track him down before it's too late? Someone else is also in the hunt, an enemy with a mysterious, cutting-edge power who will test Chet and Bernie to their limit --- or maybe beyond.
Forge Books | 9781250331823

THE JAZZMEN: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America by Larry Tye (Music/History)
This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians --- Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie --- the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of 20th-century America. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, THE JAZZMEN brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid-1900s through the singular lens of the country’s most gifted, engaging and enduring African-American musicians.
Mariner Books | 9780063444867

LEFT FOR DEAD: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World by Eric Jay Dolin (History)
In LEFT FOR DEAD, Eric Jay Dolin tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their 18-month ordeal --- an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail.
Liveright | 9781324096740

LIARS by Sarah Manguso (Fiction)
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including --- a few years later --- all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims and ego; in short, she becomes a wife. As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.
Hogarth | 9780593241271

LONG HAUL: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi (True Crime)
In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed 50 women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. The transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these cases incredibly difficult to solve. Based on his own on-the-ground research and drawing on his 25-year career as an FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi investigates the most terrifying of these cases.
Mariner Books | 9780063265165

THE LOST LETTERS FROM MARTHA’S VINEYARD by Michael Callahan (Historical Fiction)
In 1959, Hollywood ingenue Mercy Welles seems to have the world at her feet. Far removed from her Nebraska roots, she has crafted herself into a glamorous Oscar-nominated actress engaged to an up-and-coming director. Until she shockingly vanishes without a trace. Almost 60 years later, Kit O’Neill, a junior television producer in Manhattan, is packing up her recently deceased grandmother’s attic, only to discover a long-lost box of souvenirs that reveal that the grandmother who raised her and her sister was, in fact, the mysterious Mercy Welles. Kit is determined to solve the riddle of her grandmother’s missing life, and the trail eventually leads to Martha’s Vineyard. Mercy retreats to the island nursing a broken heart, only to be drawn to the roguish Ren Sewards, who is not just the simple oysterman he appears to be but a scion of one of the island’s wealthy founding families.
Mariner Books | 9780063282612

MAINE CHARACTERS by Hannah Orenstein (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Every summer, Vivian Levy and Lucy Webster spend a month with their father at his lake house --- separately. Raised in New York City, Vivian is an ambitious sommelier with a secret that could derail her future. Lucy grew up in a tiny Maine town, where she now teaches high school English while watching her marriage unravel. They’ve never met. While Lucy envied her half-sister from afar, their father kept Vivian in the dark. When Vivian arrives at the lake to spread his ashes and sell his cabin, she's shocked to find Lucy there, awaiting his return. In an ideal world, they’d help each other through their grief. Instead, forced to spend the summer together, they fight through a storm of suspicion and hostility to untangle the messy truth about their parents’ pasts.
Dutton | 9780593851555

ONE DEADLY EYE: A Doc Ford Novel by Randy Wayne White (Thriller/Adventure)
A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc Ford is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane. No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s most dangerous prison, including a serial killer --- the Vulture Monk --- who has a taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a priceless art collection.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335983640

THE RETURN OF ELLIE BLACK by Emiko Jean (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
It’s been 20 years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State. But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken --- and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668023945

THE ROM-COMMERS by Katherine Center (Romantic Comedy)
Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to rewrite a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates, it’s a break too big to pass up. Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for the writing gig of a lifetime. But Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone --- much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus, he doesn’t even care about the script; it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. But Emma is not going down without a fight. She will convince him that love stories matter --- even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But what if that kiss is accidentally amazing?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250382825

THE SHADOW OF WAR: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Jeff Shaara (Historical Fiction)
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy inherited an ill-conceived, poorly executed invasion of Cuba that failed miserably and set in motion the events that put the U.S. and the Soviet Union on a collision course that nearly started a war that would have enveloped much of the world. THE SHADOW OF WAR brings to life the many threads that lead to the building crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962. It is told from a multitude of perspectives and voices --- from the Russian engineer attempting the nearly impossible task of building the missile launch facilities in Cuba, to the U.S. Navy commanders whose ships are sent to "quarantine" Cuba, to the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, desperately trying to maintain a challenging balancing act between the conflicting demands of various powerful forces.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250387370

A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE by April Asher (Paranormal Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
At the age of 18, witch Harlow “Harry” Pierce attended her first Fates Festival Finding Ceremony, certain that the Blue Willow Wisp would lead her to her Fated match: her cougar shifter boyfriend, Jaxon Atwood. But Fate had other plans, guiding her best friend to him instead. Thirteen years later, she returns to her magical hometown --- with her half-human, half-shifter goddaughter in tow --- hoping that the town would work its magic on the troubled teenager. Jaxon Atwood was a shifter of few words and even less patience…until his mother retired as Alpha of the Rocky Mountain Pack and left the running of things to him. It’s a headache he didn’t need, and one that brought the witch who’d ripped his heart from his chest knocking on his door.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250357854

THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY by Claire Messud (Historical Fiction)
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state --- separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife, Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’ union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; and of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324110408

THE UNDERHANDED by Adam Sikes (Thriller/Adventure)
Professor William Dresden has found solitude in the south of France to grapple with his troubled past --- a neglected upbringing, failed romances, the recent demolition of his life’s work in academia, and even witnessing genocide. But he soon learns that he has much larger problems when an adrift MI6 officer, Adeline Parker, insists on a meeting, revealing shocking information about his family. Then a bomb explodes. William and Adeline narrowly escape the attempt on their lives and find themselves battling a group of neofascists and extreme nationalists who are inciting violent divisions across Europe. They are pulled into a shadowy war against a cabal called the Strasbourg Executive and pushed to the brink by family betrayals, corrupt institutions, and the Executive’s subversive plots against the fabric of Western society.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608096428

WE SOLVE MURDERS by Richard Osman (Mystery)
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now. Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts. As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?
Penguin Books | 9780593653241

THE WEALTH OF SHADOWS by Graham Moore (Historical Thriller)
1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want --- a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime. How can they defeat the enemy without firing a bullet? To thwart the Nazis, Ansel and his team invent a powerful new theater of battle: economic warfare. Money is a dangerous weapon, and Ansel’s efforts will plunge him into a world full of peril and deceit.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593731949

On Sale the Week of May 19th in Hardcover

May 20th

ABIGAIL AND ALEXA SAVE THE WEDDING by Lian Dolan (Fiction)
Penelope and Chase make a lovely couple, and everyone is excited about their wedding. Except their mothers. The Mother of the Bride, suave Greek-born Alexa Diamandis, doesn’t understand why any woman would get married. The Mother of the Groom, Abigail Blakeman, is a garden club stalwart firmly planted in coastal Connecticut. She thinks the whole enterprise would be so much easier if the wedding was at their golf club. Especially because the family’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. But when a sudden twist of fate calls them into action, these two very different women are forced to take over the wedding planning. How far will two moms go to make their children’s dream wedding a reality?
William Morrow | 9780063270657

AFTERTASTE by Daria Lavelle (Fiction)
Konstantin Duhovny’s father died when he was 10, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. He discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones --- at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668061596

THE BOOK OF RECORDS by Madeleine Thien (Fiction)
Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in 17th-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Memory, political revolution, generational change and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea. Through their guidance, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324078654

DEATH AT A HIGHLAND WEDDING: A Rip Through Time Novel by Kelley Armstrong (Historical Mystery/Thriller)
After slipping 150 years into the past, modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson has embraced her new life in Victorian Scotland as housemaid Catriona Mitchell and has come to love her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie. Mallory, Gray and McCreadie are on their way to the Scottish Highlands for McCreadie's younger sister's wedding. When they arrive at the Cranston estate, Gray and Mallory decide to explore the castle and the surrounding wilderness. They discover that the groom, Archie Cranston, has set up deadly traps in the woods for the endangered Scottish wildcats, and they soon come across a cat who's been caught and severely injured. When one of the guests is murdered, they must work fast to uncover the murderer before another life is lost.
Minotaur Books | 9781250321312

THE DOORMAN by Chris Pavone (Thriller)
Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world. But gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic working-class staff is taking in the news that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city. As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job. Tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone is aware of.
MCD | 9780374604790

THE FATE OF OTHERS: Stories by Richard Bausch (Fiction/Short Stories)
In these 12 new stories, Richard Bausch explores the passions of men and women facing unexpected circumstances and the complications of modern life and love. In “Donnaiolo,” the parents of a young divorcée who has returned from Italy and a failed marriage must deal with the completely different, and unappealing, person she has become. In “Broken House,” an elderly Catholic man recalls his part in the destruction of an old farmhouse by altar boys who believed a monk had given them permission to destroy it --- while also portraying his lifelong fascination with one of the boys, a gifted artist who has carried a secret for decades about the church they both wanted to serve as priests. And in “The Widow’s Tale,” a woman whose recently killed husband repeatedly visits her younger sister in dreams attends a séance.
Knopf | 9780593801451

FDR DRIVE by James Comey (Legal Thriller)
After a stint in the private sector, working at the largest hedge fund in the world, Nora Carleton has returned to her former role as a New York City federal prosecutor. A threat is building in the city, with far-right extremism powered by internet demagogues and funded by shadowy organizations. Together with legendary investigator Benny Dugan and aided by colleagues at the FBI, Nora builds a case against one of the key players in this burgeoning movement, arguing before a jury that some speech is actually a deadly crime. But the menace taking root is far bigger than any courtroom, and as the militants target an upcoming United Nations rally, Nora and her team must race to disrupt the plans and minimize casualties.
Mysterious Press | 9781613166444

GOING HOME IN THE DARK by Dean Koontz (Thriller)
As kids, outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer and Ernie were inseparable friends in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three left to pursue lofty dreams --- and achieved them. Only Ernie never left. When he falls into a coma, his three amigos feel an urgent need to return home. After two decades, not a lot has changed in Maple Grove, especially Ernie’s obnoxious, scary mother. But they begin to remember a hulking, murderous figure and weirdness piled on mystery that they were made to forget. As Ernie sinks deeper into darkness, something strange awaits any friend who tries to save him. For Rebecca, Bobby and Spencer, time is running out to remember the terrors of the past in a perfect town where nothing is what it seems.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662500534

HEART, BE AT PEACE by Donal Ryan (Fiction)
In a small town in Ireland, the local people have weathered the storm of economic collapse and now look to the future: The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the scars of its history, new stories have begun to unfold. But an insidious menace now creeps through back-alley shadows and into the lives of the townspeople. Old grudges fester, and new ones arise. Young people are lured by the promise of fast money, while the generation above them tries to hold back the tide of an enemy beyond their control. And the peace of this town is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way.
Viking | 9780593834640

THE LAST FERRY OUT by Andrea Bartz (Psychological Thriller)
When Abby steps foot on Isla Colel, she isn’t sure what she’ll find. She only knows that she needs to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died to try and make sense of the tragic accident. Though the island was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane has left it a shell of its former self, with only a handful of residents remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now runs every week or so. There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter’s final days. Before he can tell her more, though, he vanishes from the island. As her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life.
Ballantine Books | 9780593597972

LLOYD McNEIL'S LAST RIDE by Will Leitch (Fiction/Humor)
Lloyd McNeil has just learned he has months to live. He also learns that his 20 years as a beat cop in Atlanta haven’t earned him enough money to take care of his teenage son, Bishop, after he’s gone. But when Lloyd discovers his police benefits will increase exponentially if he dies in the line of duty, he comes up with a plan. Lloyd begins to throw himself into one life-threatening situation after another to try to get himself killed and to provide for his son…but he keeps failing --- and surviving. To his shock, his accidental heroics make him an inspirational icon in the community. But time is still running out for Lloyd to get his affairs in order, to teach Bishop the lessons he needs to be a good person, and to say goodbye.
Harper | 9780063238565

THE LOVE HATERS by Katherine Center (Romantic Comedy)
Katie Vaughn has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer, or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie is not exactly qualified. She can’t swim --- but pretends that she can. Plus, Cole and Hutch are brothers. And they don’t get along. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good-looking man she has ever seen…but maybe a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two. Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes and stolen kisses ensue --- along with chances to tell the truth, face old fears, and be truly brave at last.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250283825

MARGUERITE BY THE LAKE by Mary Dixie Carter (Psychological Thriller)
Marguerite Gray is a lifestyle icon known for her garden parties, high-end business ventures, and being the muse behind the famous Serge Kuhnert painting, Marguerite by the Lake. For the last few years, Phoenix has been the gardener on the famed Rosecliff grounds, home of Marguerite and her husband, Geoffrey. When a storm threatens the launch party for Marguerite’s latest book, Phoenix rushes to Geoffrey’s side to save him from a falling tree. Geoffrey is grateful --- perhaps too grateful. Marguerite is…jealous. Phoenix becomes embroiled in an affair that could destroy her career. But soon after the affair begins, Marguerite falls to her death. Now Phoenix has another secret, one that haunts her even as Geoffrey invites her to move into the manor with him.
Minotaur Books | 9781250790385

MURDER IN THE DOLLHOUSE: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen (True Crime)
Rich Cohen’s MURDER IN THE DOLLHOUSE is the chilling, unputdownable story of Jennifer Dulos, a beautiful, rich suburban mother who dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School one morning and vanished. Her body has never been found. Dulos was in the midst of an ugly divorce --- one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The couple, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’ husband and his girlfriend were arrested. He killed himself on the day he was supposed to report to court. She was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374608064

NIGHT IN THE CITY by Michael McGarrity (Historical/Noir Mystery)
Sam Monroe thought his steamy love affair with Manhattan socialite Laura Nielson was dead and buried, but when she didn’t show up after unexpectedly calling him late at night and asking to meet, he decides to investigate. He finds her naked on her penthouse balcony, strangled, his dog tags wrapped around her neck. With a bull’s-eye on his back as the prime suspect, Sam begins a search for the killer that reveals Laura’s involvement with several men, some with ties to a well-known crime family. As circumstantial evidence mounts against him, the cops close in, especially a heavy-handed rogue patrolman carrying a grudge against Sam and looking for serious payback.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324066279

NIGHTSHADE by Michael Connelly (Thriller)
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor --- a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316588485

OUR LAST WILD DAYS by Anna Bailey (Thriller)
Living in a shack out in the swamps, the Labasques made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community. So when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter’s childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother. When she left town at 18 years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town.
Atria Books | 9781982157197

THE STARVING SAINTS by Caitlin Starling (Dark Fantasy/Horror)
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low, and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.
Harper Voyager | 9780063418813

TAKING MIDWAY: Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle that Turned the Tide of World War II by Martin Dugard (History)
1942. Everywhere around the world, the Allies are losing the war. Nowhere is this felt more completely than in the Pacific, where Japanese sea and ground forces claim victory after victory. Meanwhile, in Honolulu, a brilliant young naval officer is determined to break Japan's top secret codes. Lt. Commander Joseph Rochefort is inches away from cracking the code by April but is startled to learn that the Japanese are planning yet another major invasion somewhere in the Pacific. What ensues is the cat-and-mouse adventure that will become the epic fight known as the Battle of Midway. The dramatic battle will involve strategy, luck, heartbreak --- and will change the course of World War II.
Dutton | 9780593473245

THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW by Yiyun Li (Memoir/Essays)
“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book. “There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.” There is no good way to say this --- because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a timeline.” Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: “doing the things that work,” including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374617318

TOM CLANCY LINE OF DEMARCATION: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel by M. P. Woodward (Thriller/Adventure)
It starts with the destruction of a US Coast Guard cutter and the loss of her entire crew. But the USCG Claiborne was on an innocuous mission to open a sea lane between an oil field off the coast of South America and the refineries of southern Louisiana. The destruction of the ship won't stop that mission from continuing. So who would sacrifice 22 men and women just to slow down the plan? That's the question plaguing Jack Ryan Jr. He's in Guyana to work a deal to get his company, Hendley Associates, in on the ground floor of this new discovery, but Russia’s Wagner Group and a pack of Venezuelan narco-terrorists have other ideas --- and will risk war with the United States to see them through. It's up to Jack to identify the killers before they draw a bead on him.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593718001

WE LIVE HERE NOW by Sarah Pinborough (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous and striking, but something about it feels deeply wrong to Emily. Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves. But these things happen only when Emily is alone. Her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can’t fully trust her own senses. Although Freddie doesn’t notice anything odd, Emily starts to believe that the house is being haunted by someone who was murdered in it. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But if the house has secrets, so do Emily and Freddie.
Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar | 9781250394057

On Sale the Week of May 19th in Paperback

May 20th

BLUE SISTERS by Coco Mellors (Fiction)
The three Blue sisters are exceptional --- and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment in which they were raised. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.
Ballantine Books | 9780593723784

THE DAUGHTERS’ WAR by Christopher Buehlman (Fantasy/Adventure)
Galva --- Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill --- has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind. The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted --- not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.
Tor Books | 9781250887696

DISTURBING THE DEAD: A Rip Through Time Novel by Kelley Armstrong (Historical Mystery/Thriller)
Victorian Scotland is becoming less strange to modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson. But inhabiting someone else’s body will always be unsettling, even if her employers know that she’s not actually housemaid Catriona Mitchell, ever since the night both of them were attacked in the same dark alley 150 years apart. Mallory likes her job as assistant to undertaker/medical examiner Dr. Duncan Gray and is developing true friends --- and feelings --- in this century. So, understanding the Victorian fascination with death, Mallory isn't that surprised when she and her friends are invited to a mummy unwrapping at the home of Sir Alastair Christie. When their host is missing when it comes time to unwrap the mummy, Gray and Mallory are asked to step in. And upon closer inspection, it’s not a mummy they’ve unwrapped, but a much more modern body.
Minotaur Books | 9781250321305

DRIVE: The Lasting Legacy of Tiger Woods by Bob Harig (Sports)
In 1997, at the age of 21, Tiger Woods won the Masters. He became the youngest golfer ever to win the Masters and the first African- or Asian-American player to win a major. History had been made --- and would continue to be made over the next 15 years. Woods has proven to be a complicated figure through his decades in the spotlight. Plagued by marital scandal, a DUI arrest, and severe back injuries that resulted in what even he believed would be a career-ending spinal fusion surgery in 2017, Woods’ career finally seemed to be coming to an end. That all changed through 2018 and into 2019 as he returned slowly from the surgery. In 2019, Woods made history once again, winning the Masters. In DRIVE, Bob Harig brings readers the true story of the grit and perseverance of Tiger Woods in the final years of his career.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250901460

EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS by Oisín McKenna (Fiction)
It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on London’s parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil, and harboring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who has just been diagnosed with cancer and is traveling to London to tell her son. As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever.
Mariner Books | 9780063319981

EXHIBIT by R. O. Kwon (Fiction)
At a lavish party, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night. Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and they begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin, but can she avoid the specter of the curse?
Riverhead Books | 9780593190036

FOREVER HOME by Graham Norton (Fiction)
Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging --- and sparks a flurry of speculation. What does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned him and his children all those years ago? Carol and Declan know their relationship is the talk of the town, but the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer. When Declan becomes ill, their relationship falters. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home and move back with her parents. It seems there are secrets in Declan's past, strange rumors that were never confronted, and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance that affects them all.
HarperVia | 9780063338623

THE GIRLS OF GOOD FORTUNE by Kristina McMorris (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Oregon, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland's notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival --- being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment --- she fears that far more than her own fate hangs in the balance. As she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove deadlier than the dark recesses of Chinatown.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781464252006

A GOOD LIFE written by Virginie Grimaldi, translated by Hildegarde Serle (Fiction)
Sisters Emma and Agathe were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Five years older, Emma was the defender, protector and worrier for her fiery younger sister until tragedy marred their relationship. For a long time, Emma has kept her distance from Agathe and her chaos. But when their adored grandmother dies, they must return together to Spain to empty out her house and, in the process, reconcile, remember and pour out what is hidden inside their hearts. Alternating between the sisters' childhood and the present day, Virginie Grimaldi's delicately wrought prose paints complex portraits of the two women, asking if the scars of the past can ever truly be healed, and what, in the end, is a good life.
Europa Editions | 9798889661054

THE GUNCLE ABROAD by Steven Rowley (Fiction)
It’s been five years since Patrick O’Hara’s summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sitcom comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world…professionally. He is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to lean on him again. When Patrick's brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593540473

HARD TO KILL: A Jane Smith Thriller by James Patterson and Mike Lupica (Legal Thriller)
Attorney Jane Smith is mounting an impossible criminal defense. Her client, Rob Jacobson, is the unluckiest of the unlucky. No sooner is he accused of killing a family of three in the Hamptons than a second family is gunned down. It’s not double jeopardy. It’s not double murder. It’s double triple homicide. Jane’s career has spanned from NYPD beat cop to Hamptons courtroom. She’s tough to beat. She’s even tougher to kill. The defense may never rest.
Little, Brown and Company | 9781538758885

I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL by Natalie Sue (Fiction/Humor)
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions. When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it. But who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this just might be the key to saving her job.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063320376

I WANT YOU MORE by Swan Huntley (Domestic Thriller/Dark Humor)
Reeling from her father’s death, Zara Pines accepts a ghostwriting gig for celebrity chef Jane Bailey. Jane, star of the wildly popular cooking show “30 Bucks Tops,” invites Zara to live in her East Hampton home for the summer. Zara doesn’t want to go, but Jane insists. As the two women create Jane’s book, their attachment grows stronger. Zara, who’s lost and in search of an identity, finds one in the shadow of Jane. She starts wearing Jane’s clothes. And speaking like Jane. And adopting Jane’s mannerisms. Eventually, the line between them blurs, and Zara starts to see the side Jane keeps hidden from the cameras.
Zibby Publishing | 9781958506707

LIBBY LOST AND FOUND by Stephanie Booth (Fiction)
Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-bestselling fantasy series The Falling Children --- written as "F.T. Goldhero" to maintain her privacy. When the last manuscript is already months overdue to her publisher and rabid fans around the world are growing impatient, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Already suffering from crippling anxiety, Libby's symptoms quickly accelerate. After she forgets her dog at the park one day --- then almost discloses her identity to the journalist who finds him --- Libby has to admit it: she needs help finishing the last book. Desperately, she turns to 11-year-old superfan Peanut Bixton, who knows the books even better than she does but harbors her own dark secrets. Tensions mount as Libby's dementia deepens --- until both Peanut and Libby swirl into an inevitable but bone-shocking conclusion.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781464236303

LIES AND WEDDINGS by Kevin Kwan (Fiction)
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel, has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, resulting in a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution is for Rufus to attend his sister’s wedding at a luxury eco-resort and seduce a woman with money. Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the humble daughter of a doctor? When a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans --- and their reputation --- go up in flames.
Vintage | 9780593081945

LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fiction)
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, and the family moves on with their lives. But now, nearly 40 years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593133514

LOVE LETTERS TO A SERIAL KILLER by Tasha Coryell (Psychological Thriller)
Recently ghosted and sick of watching her friends fade into the suburbs, thirty-something Hannah finds community in a true-crime forum that’s on a mission to solve the murders of four women in Atlanta. After William, a handsome lawyer, is arrested for the killings, Hannah begins writing him letters --- and he writes back. Her interest in the case goes from curiosity to obsession, leaving space for nothing else as her life implodes around her. After she loses her job, she heads to Georgia to attend the trial and befriends fellow true-crime junkies. When a fifth woman is discovered murdered, the jury has no choice but to find William not guilty, and Hannah is the first person he calls upon his release. The two of them quickly fall into a routine of domestic bliss. Well, as blissful as one can feel while secretly investigating their partner for serial murder.
Berkley | 9780593640289

MAKING A KILLING: A DI Fawley Thriller by Cara Hunter (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Nick Vincent, the producer of the true-crime show “Infamous,” hears about an explosive new angle on a high-profile case --- the 2016 murder of an eight-year-old girl in Oxford --- he leaps at the chance to send a researcher to verify the claims. Two months later, a dog walker discovers a woman’s body, bound and buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Forensic evidence links the corpse to the disappearance of that same child. DCI Adam Fawley, the original investigating officer, is called in to run the enquiry. He arrested the child’s mother for murder, which he now knows she didn’t commit. The investigation raises more questions than answers. What connects the two crimes? Where has the dead girl been all these years? How did she manage to disappear?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063271098

MAYA BLUE: A Memoir of Survival by Brenda Coffee (Memoir)
Paperback Original
At 21, Brenda Coffee surrendered herself to her marriage and became a woman who would do almost anything her charismatic and powerful older husband, Philip Ray, wanted. Regardless of whether it was dangerous, adventurous, sexual or illegal, she wanted to be the one woman he couldn’t live without. Brenda and Philip’s life together was a fairy tale until it wasn’t. Until Philip, the founder of two high-profile, groundbreaking public companies, began making real cocaine in their basement and became addicted. Until the Big Six tobacco companies threatened their lives for creating the first smokeless cigarette --- Brenda coined the terms vape and vaping --- and brutal Guatemalan military commandos forced her into the jungle at gunpoint.
She Writes Press | 9781647429065

THE MEMORY COLLECTORS by Dete Meserve (Speculative Mystery/Science Fiction)
Paperback Original
Elizabeth aches for one more precious hour with her son, who died in a senseless accident. Andy is desperate to find his first love, who vanished after a whirlwind romance. Logan craves the rush of surfing and mountain climbing, yearning to reclaim the freedom he lost after a misstep landed him in a wheelchair. Brooke is looking for an hour of relief from the guilt of an unforgivable mistake. Enter Aeon Expeditions, the groundbreaking time travel invention of Mark Saunders, which allows some lucky clients the chance to spend an hour in their past. But when their “hour” extends beyond 60 minutes, Elizabeth, Andy, Logan and Brooke find themselves stranded in the past. As their paths intertwine unexpectedly, they unearth shocking secrets hidden in the shadows of their shared history.
Crooked Lane Books | 9798892422420

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT by Riley Sager (Psychological Thriller)
One July night, 10-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent on a manicured lawn in a quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle? The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place --- be it quiet forest or suburban street --- is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
Dutton | 9780593472392

PEARCE OYSTERS by Joselyn Takacs (Fiction)
Set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, PEARCE OYSTERS follows the Pearce family, local oyster farmers whose business, family and livelihood are all on the brink of collapse. It highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South and the interdependence of nature and man. Diving deep into the bonds of family, culture, community, class and industry, debut novelist Joselyn Takacs elevates the voices of her deeply sympathetic characters: Jordan, the reluctant head of his family’s storied oyster business; May, his distressed, widowed mother who has her own unexpected drama; and Benny, the beatnik musician brother who returns from New Orleans to help with the crisis.
Zibby Publishing | 9798990630437

ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE BOURNE SHADOW by Brian Freeman (Thriller/Adventure)
When a desperate stranger in Zurich asks for Jason Bourne's help, she calls him by the name David Webb, which is the identity he left behind years ago to become Jason Bourne. This woman tells him an incredible story --- that her sister disappeared with David’s help after the deaths of four terrorists in the mountains. Now men from this same extremist group are trying to hunt her down. Bourne remembers none of it, but when the Swiss bistro erupts in violence, he finds himself on the run, chasing the ghosts of his very first Treadstone mission. Operating on pure instinct, Bourne plunges into a maelstrom unlike any he’s ever experienced, hoping to rescue a woman he once loved. He soon discovers that no one in this world of shadows can be trusted --- and everything he’s been told about his past is a lie.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593716472

SERVICE MODEL by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Science Fiction/Adventure)
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they also can do something else they never did before: They can run away. Fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human well-being is having to find a new purpose.
Tor Books | 9781250290304

SONGS OF SUMMER by Jane L. Rosen (Fiction)
Paperback Original
At 30, Maggie May Wheeler has big plans for her vintage record shop and is about to be engaged to her childhood best friend. But when she stumbles across a letter she wrote to her future self when she was 13, she realizes it may not be enough. The letter ignites a desire to find her birth mother and discover where she really belongs. Her search takes her to dreamy Fire Island, where her birth mother is a guest at a wedding. As Maggie spies on her biological family, she’s caught between diving into their chaotic lives and returning to her comfortable world. Things heat up when a charming local makes her an offer to crash the wedding as his date. Is it the island’s magic, the whirlwind of the weekend, or the thrill of a fake beau that has her rethinking everything?
Berkley | 9780593818787

SUMMER ON HIGHLAND BEACH by Sunny Hostin (Fiction)
Highland Beach, the oldest historically Black beach community in America, was founded in the late 1800s along the Chesapeake Bay by the son of Frederick Douglass. Inside this proud and secluded community of about 100 private homes is Olivia Jones’ legacy. But Olivia’s legacy comes with thorns. Intertwined are secrets of her aunt’s death; a controlling grandmother who is determined to crush anyone or anything that will interfere with her son’s political career; and a father who wants to rebuild the family he rejected decades ago. In the midst of tense family drama, Olivia must decide if she wants to return to the beautiful life she’s created in Sag Harbor --- with the neighbors and wonderful man who've become central to her happiness --- or finally achieve her dream of having a family and home to call her own in Highland Beach.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062994264

THEIR DOUBLE LIVES by Jaime Lynn Hendricks (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
A down-on-her-luck waitress at a posh New Jersey country club, Kim Valva couldn’t be living a more different life from the carefree socialites she serves. Her live-in boyfriend recently cheated on her, her social life is in shambles, and her dog needs a life-saving surgery that she can’t afford. Then a mysterious figure called The Stranger contacts her with an offer she can’t refuse: Put a pill in the new member’s drink; when he dies, she’ll have enough money to fix her dog and her life. Her target turns out to be Tony Fiore, Kim’s bad boy ex-boyfriend from high school. Stunned to see Tony again, Kim can’t bring herself to go through with spiking his drink. Instead, it is Tony’s gorgeous fiancée, PJ Walsh, who dies horrifically at the table just as dinner ends.
Scarlet | 9781613166048

WHISTLE by Linwood Barclay (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
Annie Blunt has had an unimaginably terrible year. First, her husband was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident, then one of the children’s books she’s built her writing and illustrating career on ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her son, Charlie, to a charming small town in upstate New York. Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed on their property. But there’s something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night --- she could swear she hears a train, but there isn’t an active track for miles --- and bizarre things begin happening in the neighborhood. Worse, Annie can’t seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children’s book.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063436039

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