August 19, 2025

August 19, 2025

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Please note: There will be no "On Sale This Week" newsletter on Tuesday, August 26th as we take our annual summer break, so we are covering releases from now through the week of September 1st in this edition. Our next "On Sale This Week" newsletter will be sent on Tuesday, September 2nd.

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of August 18th, August 25th and September 1st 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 Fall Reading Contests and Feature, a series of 24-hour giveaways that are taking place on select days through October. Enter for your chance to win titles that we think will be great fall reading picks.

This Week's Bonus News:
Bookreporter.com's 15th Annual
Fall Reading Contests and Feature

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, August 20th at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Francesca Serritella about her new book, FULL BLOOM, a stunning novel about ambition and untapped desire in which a woman's life is forever changed by a mysterious perfume.

Thursday, August 21st at 9:30pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Eli Cranor will talk about his new thriller, MISSISSIPPI BLUE 42, a series debut starring a rookie FBI agent who finds herself caught in the tangled web of a college football empire --- and the bloody greed that fuels it.

Monday, August 25th at 6pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Darcie Wilde will talk about her latest novel, THE HEIR, the first installment in her new mystery series featuring a young Princess Victoria --- the future Queen of England --- as a rebellious amateur sleuth.

Tuesday, August 26th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda will talk to Sarah Pekkanen about her latest book, THE LOCKED WARD, a shocking psychological thriller about the complex bonds of sisterhood --- and what happens when they are stretched to the breaking point.

Wednesday, August 27th at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt about their new thriller, PLEASE DON'T LIE, in which a young woman heads to the Adirondacks with her new husband for a fresh start --- but the past won’t let her go.

Thursday, August 28th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's presents Sharon Kurtzman as she discusses her debut novel, THE LOST BAKER OF VIENNA, with Rachel McMillan. The book shines a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart.

On Sale the Week of August 18th in Hardcover

August 19th

ANONYMOUS MALE: A Life Among Spies by Christopher Whitcomb (Memoir)
In September 2001, Christopher Whitcomb was the most visible FBI agent in the world. His bestselling memoir, COLD ZERO, had led to novels, articles in GQ, and op-eds in The New York Times. Then one day in 2006, without warning, Whitcomb flew into Somalia and dropped off the face of the earth. For 15 years, he waged a mercenary war on himself, traveling the world with aliases, cash and guns. He built a private army in the jungles of Timor-Leste, working contracts for intelligence agencies, where he survived a coup d’état only to lose his friends, abandon his family, and give up on God. While surfing the wilds of Indonesia, Whitcomb found himself trapped beneath a giant wave, where he came to terms with the chaos of his own clandestine life. He survived the wave to find his way home and rebuild the world that he had abandoned.
Random House | 9780593597002

CHANGEOVER: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis by Giri Nathan (Sports)
For more than two decades, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer dominated men’s tennis so thoroughly that it became difficult to imagine how the game would keep its shine once they retired. Then came 2024 --- the first year since 2002 that none of them won a Grand Slam tournament --- and a technicolor future was revealed. The major titles were divided between a pair of prodigies in their early 20s: the effervescent showman Carlos Alcaraz and the relentlessly cool Jannik Sinner. Though other young contenders jostled for the spotlight, and Djokovic tried to hold his ground, the transcendentally gifted Alcaraz and Sinner just kept installing their new regime.
Gallery Books | 9781668076248

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand
edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene (Post-Apocalyptic Dark Fantasy/Short Stories)
Since its initial publication in 1978, THE STAND has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction. Generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters. Now for the first time, King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of THE STAND through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today’s greatest and most visionary writers, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of THE STAND.
Gallery Books | 9781668057551

HATCHET GIRLS: A Hap and Leonard Novel by Joe R. Lansdale (Mystery/Humor)
When Hap and Leonard are called in on a strange request (subduing a meth-hopped hog) by a desperate young lady, they quickly learn this woman is part of a fringe group: The Hatchet Girls, who have pledged their allegiance to a crazed and grudge-bearing leader bent on bloody societal revenge. The timing couldn't be worse to be caught in such a vile, sticky wicket of a case. Both boys are wrapped up in their domestic lives. Leonard is in the midst of wedding planning with his fiancée, Pookie. And meanwhile, Hap and Brett are hard at work on their new home. Homemaking bliss will have to wait as Hap and Leonard are driven to stop the danger in its tracks and better understand the group's mission and the plans they already have set in place for helter-skelter-esque mayhem.
Mulholland Books | 9780316514019

HEMLOCK & SILVER by T. Kingfisher (Fantasy/Adventure)
Healer Anja regularly drinks poison. Not to die, but to save --- seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on. But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her. Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick. Or it might be the thing that kills them all.
Tor Books | 9781250342034

JOY MOODY IS OUT OF TIME by Kerryn Mayne (Fiction)
Strange things are happening behind the bright pink facade of Bayside’s premier laundromat, Joyful Suds, home to Joy Moody and her twin daughters. For much of their lives, Joy has been lying to Cassie and Andie. What started as a colorful tale to explain how the twins came to live with her grew over the years and was always something she meant to set straight. The girls have long believed they are vital to the future and must stay hidden to stay safe. Joy has told them that their impending 21st birthday is significant; they will step into their roles as leaders of a revolution, and life as they know it will change. Everything will change, just not in the way they expected. On Andie and Cassie’s birthday, Joy Moody is found dead, and her girls face a world they are not prepared for without their mother.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250340504 

LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTER by Charlie Jane Anders (Fantasy) 
Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training. She has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch. Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. Jamie is busy digging into a 300-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago. Now it's up to her to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic before her mother ruins both of their lives.
Tor Books | 9781250867322

THE LOST BAKER OF VIENNA by Sharon Kurtzman (Historical Fiction)
In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war. Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe. Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?
Pamela Dorman Books | 9780593830864

POSITIVE OBSESSION: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris (Biography)
As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity --- our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project --- the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut (made possible by chattel slavery) to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. In POSITIVE OBSESSION, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social and historical context that shaped her life.
Amistad | 9780063212077

THE POSSESSION OF ALBA DÍAZ by Isabel Cañas (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But she begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong. Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which, of course, is why he can’t help but notice the growing tension between them every time she enters the room…and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood gets stronger. In the fight for her life, Alba and Elías become entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets and each other.
Berkley | 9780593641071

SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO: Fictions by Fannie Flagg (Fiction/Short Stories) 
Fannie Flagg once said that what the world needs now is a good laugh. And that is what she gives us in these warmhearted, always surprising stories about people who are finding clever ways to deal with the curveballs life sometimes throws at us. Velma in Kansas, a loving great-grandmother, struggles to bridge generational gaps with her family. We cheer for Helen, in Ithaca, New York, who takes an audacious course of action when her husband leaves her for a younger woman. In Bent Fork, Wyoming; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; in Tucson, Arizona; and in towns and cities all across America, people figure out inventive ways to overcome obstacles to happiness. And in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Special Agent Frawley is studying the mysteries of being human from an original perspective.
Random House | 9780593734414

THE UNSEEN by Ania Ahlborn (Domestic Thriller/Horror)
Isla Hansen, a mother reeling from a devastating loss, is beside herself when a mysteriously orphaned child appears on the outskirts of the Hansens’ secluded Colorado property. Although strange and unexplainable, the child’s presence breathes new life into Isla. But as the child settles in, Isla’s husband, Luke, and their five children notice peculiarities that hint at something far beyond the ordinary --- anomalies that challenge the very fabric of reality itself. The tension within the Hansen household grows, and with it, the sense that there is something very wrong with the new kid in the house.
Gallery Books | 9781668057667

On Sale the Week of August 18th in Paperback

August 19th

ARCHIPELAGO by Natalie Bakopoulos (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Along the way to a translation writing residency on the Dalmatian coast, ARCHIPELAGO’s unnamed narrator has an unsettling, aggressive encounter with a man on a ferry, which sets off a series of strange events. At the residency, she reunites with Luka, an old friend who seems to have included a version of her in his novel. They strike up a romantic relationship as she continues her translation work. The hazy summer stretches on until, after a sudden shift, she embarks upon an impulsive road trip back to Greece, crossing borders.
Tin House Books | 9781963108309

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKSHOPS by Poppy Alexander (Romance)
Paperback Original
Capelthorne’s Books may be a tad run-down these days, but to Jules Capelthorne, the wonky, dusty world of literary treasures is full of precious childhood memories. When her great-aunt Florence gets too frail to run it alone, Jules ditches her junior publishing job in London and comes home to make the bookshop’s 100th birthday a celebration to remember. But Jules quickly discovers that the bookshop is close to bankruptcy, and the lease on the building is up for renewal. To make matters worse, the owner of the property is the insufferable Roman Montbeau. The Montbeaus and Capelthornes have feuded for years. Jules may not be able to splash the cash on promotions and marketing like the Montbeaus, but she has some ideas of her own. Plus she has a tenacity that just may win the hardest of hearts and the most hopeless of conflicts.
Avon | 9780063340671

BUTCHER by Joyce Carol Oates (Historical Fiction)
In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state --- women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of 19th-century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only his primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.
Vintage | 9780593686003

BY ANY OTHER NAME by Jodi Picoult (Historical Fiction)
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor, Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym. In 1581, Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling. But she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theater productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage --- by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Ballantine Books | 9780593497234

EMMA ON FIRE by James Patterson and Emily Raymond (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Everyone at Ridgemont Academy knows what to expect from Emma Caroline Blake. Perfect grades. Perfect record. Perfect life. Then she stands up in class and commits an act so shocking her reputation will never recover. And that’s exactly what Emma wants. In a world where the path forward is uncertain, expectation is the enemy. EMMA ON FIRE is the unforgettable story of one brave young woman --- and her decision to live life as if everyone’s future depends on it. Because it does.
Little, Brown and Company | 9781538758700

FIVE FOUND DEAD by Sulari Gentill (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris. Meredith hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe's muse awake, and he'll be inspired to write again. After their first evening spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin next door has become a crime scene. They soon find themselves caught up in an Agatha Christie-esque murder investigation. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree that leaves five found dead --- and one still missing.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464219719

THE HAUNTING OF MOSCOW HOUSE by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
(Gothic Horror/Historical Mystery)
It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought. Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration. But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human?
Berkley | 9780593547014

THE IN CROWD by Charlotte Vassell (Mystery)
In the garden of a large Georgian villa in Southwest London, socialites and politicos swap gossip and sip Pimm's. Not far from this frivolity, though, a body has been discovered in the River Thames. At first, it appears to be an unfortunate accident, but the death is connected to this gathering of who's who in a way that may spell scandal. Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp, attempting to enjoy an evening at the theater, is shocked to discover another dead body just a few seats away. The death is linked to the decades-old disappearance of a 14-year-old girl at a boarding school in Cornwall. If Caius wants the resources to solve the tragic mystery of the girl's disappearance, he will have to take new orders from a shadowy government minister who contends that the accidental drowning in the Thames was anything but.
Vintage | 9780593685990

THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN by Lynda Cohen Loigman (Historical Fiction)
On the cusp of turning 80, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs, an active senior community in southern Florida, she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy --- and the man who broke her heart 60 years earlier. Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago, and how did her plan involving her Great Aunt Esther’s most potent elixir go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her, or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250819505

A MASK OF FLIES by Matthew Lyons (Horror/Thriller)
In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin --- a secluded shack in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death. Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics from her mother’s past and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin. Then Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. Anne and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, he comes back and knocks at the cabin door. Not a dream, not a hallucination, but not exactly Jessup, either. Something else. Something wearing her friend’s face. Something hungry.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250889843

ONE DARK NIGHT by Hannah Richell (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead. Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is trying to keep a handle on her increasingly distant teenage daughter, Ellie, while students and parents panic and mourn. Her ex-husband and detective Ben, dealing with a personal crisis of his own, has concerns about his daughter’s safety as he investigates the death. Meanwhile, Ellie is keeping secrets from both her parents, including one about where she was that night.
Atria Books | 9781668081334

OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst (Historical Fiction)
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is 13 years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates. OUR EVENINGS follows Dave from the 1960s on --- through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593243084

PARADISE BRONX: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier (History)
Ian Frazier, one of our best observers and describers, has been walking the Bronx for 15 years. PARADISE BRONX goes deep into the eventful and tumultuous history of this amazing New York City borough, a super-vibrant in-between place that attaches the rest of the city to North America. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Lenape tribes, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx, which gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration of this singular cityscape is a richly textured, raucous, moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is the United States today.
Picador | 9781250390592

SO THIRSTY: A Vampire Novel by Rachel Harrison (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder that she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday-weekend getaway --- not with him, but with her longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi. Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings, cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear that Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.
Berkley | 9780593642566

THE SURROGATE MOTHER by Freida McFadden (Psychological Thriller)
First Time Published by Poisoned Pen Press
Abby wants a baby more than anything. But after years of failed infertility treatments and adoptions that have fallen through, it seems like motherhood is not in her future. That is, until her personal assistant, Monica, makes a generous offer to serve as a surrogate. It's an offer that will make all of Abby's dreams come true. But soon, strange things start happening. And it turns out Monica isn't who she says she is. The woman now carrying Abby's child has an unspeakable secret. And she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464227301

THROUGH AN OPEN WINDOW by Pamela Terry (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In the small Southern town of Wesleyan, Georgia, Margaret Elliot has lived a seemingly charmed life --- until the recent loss of her beloved husband. Since then, she has been seeing visions of her aunt Edith, the indomitable woman who raised her after her parents died when she was a baby. As these mysterious and undeniable visitations continue, Margaret becomes convinced that Aunt Edith is trying to tell her something important. As she follows the clues that almost magically present themselves, it becomes clear there is a secret from Margaret’s past waiting to be uncovered. As Margaret grapples with each new revelation, she also worries about her three grown children. Despite the tensions among the siblings, the whole family is soon embroiled in uncovering the truth that the ghost of Aunt Edith is striving to expose.
Ballantine Books | 9780593724637

WHALE FALL by Elizabeth O’Connor (Historical Fiction)
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations. So the arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture feels like a boon to her. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.
Vintage | 9780593686010

WHEN THE CRANES FLY SOUTH written by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he has left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his home care team. Fortunately, he still has his beloved elkhound, Sixten, to keep him company…though now his son, with whom Bo has had a rocky relationship, insists upon taking the dog away, claiming that Bo has grown too old to properly care for him. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotion, leading Bo to take stock of his life, his relationships, and the imperfect way he’s expressed his love over the years.
Vintage | 9798217006731

THE WHITEWASHED TOMBS: An Emma Djan Investigation by Kwei Quartey (Mystery)
Marcelo Tetteh, a 27-year-old LGBTQ+ activist, is butchered one night after being lured on a dating app to a deserted building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer. So he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out. PI Emma Djan is assigned the case and goes undercover in the International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined.
Soho Crime | 9781641297103

On Sale the Week of August 25th in Hardcover

August 26th

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND by Kelly Sundberg (Memoir/Essays)
Kelly Sundberg’s abusive marriage nearly broke her, and finding the courage to leave and begin the difficult process of putting herself back together was only the beginning of her story. THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND deftly explores the trials and joys Sundberg encountered not only as a newly single parent but also as someone in full pursuit of life. She developed an appreciation for new spiritual practices, reclaimed her body through tattoos, and even became “the problem” rather than going along to get along in her professional life. From erasure poetry crafted from emails and a court-mandated apology letter from her ex-husband, to engaging with the research of some of the most prominent voices in 50 years of trauma psychiatry and psychology, this book is a profound meditation on trauma and its lasting effects.
Roxane Gay Books | 9780802164254 

BACKSTAGE: Stories of a Writing Life by Donna Leon (Memoir)
Donna Leon’s memoir, WANDERING THROUGH LIFE, gave her legions of fans a colorful tour through her life --- from her childhood in New Jersey to her adventures in China and Iran, to her love of Venice and opera. Nowhere, however, did she discuss her writing life. In BACKSTAGE, Donna reveals her admiration for, and inspiration from, the great crime novelists Ruth Rendell and Ross Macdonald, examining their approach to storytelling as she dissects her favorite books of theirs. She expresses her love for Charles Dickens’ GREAT EXPECTATIONS and her appreciation for Sir Walter Scott’s generosity of spirit. And she chronicles the amount of research she undertakes to be able to present authentically, through Guido Brunetti and his colleagues, places and characters far from her own experience.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802165374 

THE BOOK OF LOST HOURS by Hayley Gelfuso (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those who have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son. This is where 11-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
Atria Books | 9781668076347 

THE BREAK-IN by Katherine Faulkner (Domestic Thriller)
Alice, a professional mother of one, is hosting a playdate with friends at her upscale London home when a disturbed man breaks in. With her child in the next room, Alice panics and kills him --- an act later ruled to have been in self-defense. Everyone tries to encourage Alice to move on with her life. But with strange comments appearing online, a mysterious phone call telling her all is not as it seems, and her husband, nanny and friends behaving strangely, Alice finds herself drawn to the mystery of who her intruder really was. As she digs deeper, she discovers a trail of dark secrets that spiral closer to home than she ever could have imagined.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781668024812

CHILDREN OF THE BOOK: A Memoir of Reading Together by Ilana Kurshan (Memoir)
Ilana Kurshan, a mother of five living in Jerusalem, struggles to balance her passion for books with her responsibilities as a parent. Gradually she learns how to relate to reading not as a solitary pursuit and an escape from the messiness of life, but rather as a way of forging connection and teaching independence. Introducing her children to sacred and secular literature --- including the beloved classics of her childhood --- she becomes both a better mother and a more compassionate reader. Chief among the books Kurshan reads with her children is the Torah, whose ancient wisdom illuminates her family's path. Structured in five parts corresponding to the first five books of the Bible, CHILDREN OF THE BOOK traces the profound parallels between the biblical narrative and the daily rhythms of parenthood.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250288264 

FORGET ME NOT by Stacy Willingham (Psychological Thriller)
Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her 18th birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist. Until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew. Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina. There, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard's owners that describes details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire starts to obsess over the diary's contents, as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister's disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.
Minotaur Books | 9781250887979 

THE HEIR: A Young Queen Victoria Mystery by Darcie Wilde (Historical Mystery)
THE HEIR is the opening installment in a new mystery series set in 1830s London and starring a young Princess Victoria --- the future Queen of England --- as a rebellious amateur sleuth. Victoria remembers nothing but Kensington Palace. Raised with an incredibly strict regimen to follow, the bright 15-year-old is allowed no freedom at any time. But one fateful afternoon, Victoria slips away from her mother to ride out on her beloved gelding, Prince. What would normally be an uneventful trot around very familiar terrain presents the princess with a most bewildering sight --- a dead man, and on the grounds of the palace, no less. Determined to get to the bottom of the inscrutable puzzle, Victoria is met with shocking disrespect and any number of obstacles.
Kensington | 9781496750686 

ISABELLA'S NOT DEAD by Beth Morrey (Mystery/Humor) 
Isabella’s NOT dead. That’s what Gwen tells anyone who asks about the friend who ghosted them all 15 years ago. But if Isabella’s not dead, then where is she? And why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her most? Freshly 53, out of a job, and with children who are starting to fly the nest, Gwen decides to turn detective. Setting out to solve the mystery, Gwen embarks on an adventure across England --- then across Europe --- that will test her marriage and put her on a collision course with reluctant acquaintances, a mother-in-law best described as eccentric, and a rabbit hole full of clues. But Isabella’s not the only one who’s lost.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593540336 

KATABASIS by R. F. Kuang (Historical Fantasy)
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality so she can work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like. But there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
Harper Voyager | 9780063446243 

MONA'S EYES written by Thomas Schlesser, translated by Hildegarde Serle (Fiction)
While the doctors can find no explanation for Mona's brief episode of blindness, they agree that the threat of permanent vision loss cannot be ruled out. The girl's grandfather, Henry, may not be able to stop his granddaughter from losing her sight, but he can fill the encroaching darkness with beauty. Every Wednesday for a year, the pair abscond together and visit a single masterpiece in one of Paris's renowned museums. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona learns how each artist's work shaped the world around them. In turn, the young girl's world is changed forever by the power of their art. Under the kind and careful tutelage of her grandfather, Mona learns the true meaning of generosity, melancholy, love, loss and revolution.
Europa Editions | 9798889661115

A NEW NEW ME by Helen Oyeyemi (Fiction)
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day. On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath. Kingas A–G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life. Between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer, and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic. It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges and half-truths. But when Kinga-A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
Riverhead Books | 9780593718773 

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE REAL THING: A Case History Recorded by John H. Watson, M.D. by Nicholas Meyer (Historical Mystery)
London, 189–: While the great city is brought to a standstill by a series of blizzards, a landlady complains that her artist tenant is behind on rent. The next thing you know, there are several corpses, and Sherlock Holmes and his biographer, John H. Watson, MD, find themselves drawn into one of the most bizarre cases of the great detective’s career. And into the cutthroat big business of Art, where chicanery and mendacity (and cut throats) proliferate. What makes a work of art worth killing for? Is it the artist, his mistress, his dealer or his blackmailer? The cast of characters is large. But are they perpetrators, accomplices or victims? And just who is Juliet Packwood, with whom Watson has become infatuated?
Mysterious Press | 9781613166567 

TOMLINSON'S WAKE: A Doc Ford Novel by Randy Wayne White (Thriller/Adventure)
In the wake of a killer hurricane, Doc Ford’s best friend, Tomlinson, insists that he died when his beloved sailboat hit a reef off the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. He now lives to tell the tale, but only because he was brought back to life --- temporarily --- by a runaway orphan who is the direct descendant of the last king of the ancient Mayan people. Corrupt politicians want the child out of the picture before he catalyzes a revolution among the Indigenous population. But the boy, a charismatic 12-year-old, has gone underground with the help of Tomlinson and a network of street urchins. They're all on the run and in the crosshairs when Ford arrives and picks up his friend’s trail. What no one is prepared for, however, is a cataclysmic earthquake that hits the area with the impact of a meteor that nearly destroyed all life on earth more than 60 million years ago.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335014290 

A TRUCE THAT IS NOT PEACE by Miriam Toews (Memoir)
“Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews --- all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer --- surfaces new layers of grief, guilt and futility connected to her sister's suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy. Marking the first time that Toews has written her own life in nonfiction, A TRUCE THAT IS NOT PEACE explores the uneasy pact a writer makes with memory.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781639734740 

UNBREAKABLE: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power by Vonda Wright, MD (Self-Help/Health)
Strong skeletal muscle drives healthy longevity, yet too often women in particular neglect this important measure of fitness. Indeed, more than 70% of women experience musculoskeletal symptoms like joint pain, muscle loss and reduced bone density as they enter perimenopause and menopause. These symptoms --- what Dr. Vonda Wright refers to as the "musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause" --- can often set us up for osteoporosis, osteopenia, broken bones, increasingly limited mobility, and reduced independence later in life. That trend stops now. UNBREAKABLE outlines a new and direct path to protecting ourselves against this too-common fate.
Rodale Books | 9780593736586

On Sale the Week of August 25th in Paperback

August 26th

BEYOND MIDNIGHT: An Ashe Cayne Novel by Ian K. Smith (Mystery)
Paperback Original
The death of immigrant Juaquin Escobar has been ruled an accidental drowning in Lake Michigan. The only problem is he never drinks and never swims. When the CPD informs his nephew, Ivan Ramirez, and closes the case, he refuses to believe it’s true. Convinced of foul play, Ivan is referred to Ashe Cayne by his friend and socialite, Penny Packer. After agreeing to take the case on pro bono, he quickly discovers that things are not always what they seem. As Ashe investigates, he learns that Juaquin was last seen getting into a white van belonging to a heating and cooling company before he disappeared. Retracing Juaquin’s steps leads Ashe straight into a web of secrets and lies that anyone would do anything to escape --- even murder.
Amistad | 9780063459229

DAYS YOU WERE MINE by Clare Leslie Hall (Fiction)
Previously published as MINE under Clare Empson
Luke and Hannah live a happy and stable life in London as they prepare for the arrival of their first child, Samuel. All his life, Luke has known he was adopted, but he’s never felt the need to seek out his birth mother --- until he becomes a father himself. His first encounter with Alice is surreal, a sharp prick that barely scratches the surface of a painful past that neither of them has fully confronted. Alice sinks into memories of her life as a young artist in 1970s London, and of her tragic whirlwind romance with an enigmatic musician who would become Luke’s father. Meanwhile, Luke spirals as he comes face to face with his feelings of abandonment that he worked so hard to bury. But at least Alice seems keen to make up for lost time by looking after Samuel --- until her doting grandmother act takes a sinister turn for the worse.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668210499

FRAMED: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey (True Crime)
John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it’s his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty, there is very little room to prove doubt. These 10 true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free.
Vintage | 9780593687239

GATHERING MIST: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
Deputy Mattie Wray, formerly Mattie Cobb, is summoned to Washington’s Olympic peninsula for an urgent search-and-rescue mission to find a celebrity’s missing child. With only a week left before her wedding, Mattie is hesitant to leave Timber Creek, but her K-9 partner Robo’s tracking skills are needed. Dense forest, chilling rain and unfriendly locals hamper their efforts, and soon Mattie suspects something more sinister than a lost child is at play. When one of the SAR dogs becomes ill, her fiancé, Cole Walker, suspects poison. Fearing for Mattie’s and Robo’s safety, Cole joins the search-and-rescue team as veterinary support. Secrets that have lain hidden within the rugged terrain come to light, and when it is uncovered that the missing child was kidnapped, the search becomes a full-blown crime scene investigation.
Crooked Lane Books | 9798892423717

A GREAT MARRIAGE by Frances Mayes (Fiction)
Dara Willcox, in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke at an art gallery. If love at first sight can happen, it happens to them. These two vivid, ambitious people are on different courses, but they will make their lives together happen. At their April engagement dinner at Dara’s family home, her mother, Lee, sets a beautiful table, and the family and close friends gather to celebrate. Rich, Dara’s father, raises a toast. Suddenly, Lee spills the wine, a brilliant red stain splashing onto the tablecloth and onto Austin. Days later, Austin hears unsettling news from London that wrecks their plans. Dara abruptly cancels the wedding and refuses to reveal the reason. Austin faces a major tragedy, the consequences of which are life-altering. But it’s Lee’s impulsive visit to London that alters their fate.
Ballantine Books | 9780593499009

THE GREY WOLF by Louise Penny (Mystery)
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you," a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list --- and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.
Minotaur Books | 9781250328151

THE LEGACY OF ARNISTON HOUSE by T. L. Huchu (Supernatural Thriller/Fantasy)
Ropa Moyo is a wannabe magician, can speak to the dead, and officially has given up being an intern. Leaving Scottish magic behind, she now works for the English Sorcerer Royal. But just as she adjusts to working for the English, an old enemy reveals a devastating secret about her Gran, and Ropa’s world falls apart. Outraged, she rushes home but finds her grandmother dead --- murdered --- with no killer in sight. What’s more, she’s the prime suspect. In her quest to find the true murderer, Ropa becomes caught in the dark tendrils of a cult, hell-bent on resurrecting an ancient power. She must use her wits and magic, and call in all favors, to stop the ritual and clear her name.
Tor Books | 9781250883117

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 | 9780593598955

QUESTION 7 by Richard Flanagan (Memoir/History)
By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Richard Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
Vintage | 9780593688410

THE SECRET BOOK SOCIETY by Madeline Martin (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
London, 1895: Trapped by oppressive marriages and societal expectations, three women receive a mysterious invitation to an afternoon tea at the home of the reclusive Lady Duxbury. Beneath the genteel facade of the gathering lies a secret book club --- a sanctuary where they can discover freedom, sisterhood and the courage to rewrite their stories. All are drawn to the enigmatic Lady Duxbury, a thrice-widowed countess whose husbands’ untimely deaths have sparked whispers of murder. As the women form deep, heartwarming friendships, they uncover secrets about their marriages, their pasts and the risks they face. Their courage is their only weapon in the oppressive world that has kept them silent. But when secrets are deadly, one misstep could cost them everything.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335016287

SERVANT OF EARTH: The Shards of Magic by Sarah Hawley (Fantasy/Romance)
Trapped as a servant in the faeries’ underground kingdom of Mistei, Kenna Heron must help her new mistress undertake six deadly trials, one for each branch of magic: Fire, Earth, Light, Void, Illusion and Blood. If she succeeds, her mistress will gain immortality and become the heir to Earth House. If she doesn’t, the punishment is death --- for both mistress and servant. With no ally but a sentient dagger of mysterious origins, Kenna must face monsters, magic and grueling physical tests. But worse dangers wait underground, and soon Kenna gets caught up in a secret rebellion against the inventively sadistic faerie king. When her feelings for the rebellion’s leader turn passionate, Kenna must decide if she’s willing to risk her life for a better world and a chance at happiness.
Ace | 9780593818367

TRIAL BY FIRE by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
Dahlia de Beaumont has been the sole owner and CEO of the venerable family perfume business based in Paris since her early 20s, following the death of her parents. For 25 years, after losing her young skier husband in an avalanche, her life has centered on running Lambert Perfumes and being a devoted single mother to her four now-adult children. Now 56, she has an “arrangement” with a married French man but has been questioning that relationship. Dahlia comes to San Francisco on a routine business trip to check on her stores in the States. But shortly after her arrival, brush fires ignite in Napa Valley. Dahlia is moved to help, but doing so will bring unforeseen consequences. Forced to remain in San Francisco in the aftermath, she will make unexpected connections while also fighting to protect all she has worked for.
Dell | 9780593498606

UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN by Keigo Higashino (Mystery)
In Osaka in 1973, the body of a murdered man is found in an abandoned building. Investigating the crime, Detective Sasagaki is unable to find the killer. Over the next 20 years, through the lens of a succession of characters, Keigo Higashino tells the story of two teens, Ryo and Yukiho, whose lives are most affected by the crime, and the obsessed detective who continues to investigate the murder, looking for the elusive truth.
Minotaur Books | 9781250379825

WE RIP THE WORLD APART by Charlene Carr (Fiction)
When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black and half-white --- yet feels neither --- is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion. Years later, in the aftermath of her son's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she had never fully known. In the present day, Kareela must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781464231087

On Sale the Week of September 1st in Hardcover

September 1st

BILLION-DOLLAR RANSOM by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski (Thriller)
Five members of a billionaire’s family. In different locations. All kidnapped at the same moment. Two children taken from a private-school bus. A film producer and a movie star grabbed at a hideaway resort. A beautiful wife whisked off the streets of Beverly Hills. A patriarch wants his family back. The cash, gold, jewels and crypto are all ready. There’s only one problem: a brilliant, very stubborn FBI agent. Special Agent Nicky Gordon doesn’t want to pay the kidnappers. Not a dime.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316570039 

September 2nd

AMITY by Nathan Harris (Historical Fiction)
The Civil War might be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they’ve been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr. Harper, took June away to Mexico. Coleman stayed behind in Louisiana, clinging to the hope that one day June would return. When an unexpected letter from Mr. Harper arrives, summoning Coleman to Mexico, Coleman thinks that finally his prayers have been answered. What Coleman cannot know is the tangled truth of June’s tribulations under Mr. Harper out on the frontier. And when disaster strikes Coleman’s journey, he is forced on the run with Mr. Harper's daughter, Florence. Together, they venture into the Mexican desert to find June, all the while evading two crooked brothers who will stop at nothing to capture Coleman and Florence and collect the money they're owed. 
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316456241 

APOSTLE'S COVE by William Kent Krueger (Mystery)
A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O’Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that decades ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit. Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case, but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.
Atria Books | 9781982179304 

AT LAST by Marisa Silver (Historical Fiction)
Helene Simonauer and Evelyn Turner are two formidable women whose paths cross when their children marry. Both women are sharp, cunning and unwavering in their conflicting beliefs about marriage, responsibility and family and, most pressingly, their efforts to vie for the love of their shared granddaughter. AT LAST paints a vivid portrait of the American Midwest, capturing the essence of a time and place where societal norms and personal aspirations often clashed. Marisa Silver’s narrative weaves together the lives of Helene and Evelyn, from their vastly different childhoods through the pivotal events that define them.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668078969 

BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan (Historical Fiction)
In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way --- until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened. Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie --- but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
Random House | 9780593595039 

FRAMED IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
Manhattan is filled with galleries and deep-pocketed collectors who can make an artist's career with a wave of a hand. But one man toils in obscurity, his brilliance unrecognized while lesser talents bask in the glory he believes should be his. Come tomorrow, he vows, the city will be buzzing about his work. Indeed, before dawn, Lt. Eve Dallas is speeding toward the home of the two gallery owners whose doorway has been turned into a horrifying crime scene overnight. A lifeless young woman has been elaborately costumed and precisely posed to resemble the model of a long-ago Dutch master, and Dallas plunges into her investigation.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250370822 

THE GIRL IN THE GREEN DRESS: A Mystery Featuring Zelda Fitzgerald by Mariah Fredericks (Historical Mystery)
New York, 1920. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America, Zelda Fitzgerald is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel, THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED. Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Recently returned from the war and without connections, he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story. When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot through the head, the fortunes of the two southerners collide when they realize they were both among the last to see him alive. Zelda encountered Elwell at the scandalous Midnight Frolic revue on the night of his death, and Markey saw him just hours before with a ravishing mystery woman dressed in green. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure. 
Minotaur Books | 9781250367518

THE GIRL WITH ICE IN HER VEINS: A Lisbeth Salander Novel by Karin Smirnoff (Thriller)
Sweden’s far north is growing colder; even in springtime, the town of Gasskas is buried under a relentless snow. As temperatures drop, tensions rise between a global corporation shamelessly exploiting the area's natural resources and wary locals who have scores to settle. A bomb blasts apart a crucial bridge. Soon after, a young journalist is found murdered. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander is at home in Stockholm, looking to fill the void her last lover left behind. When she discovers that fellow hacker Plague has been kidnapped and taken up north, and finds her niece, Svala, on her doorstep, she has no choice but to return to Gasskas --- with Mikael Blomkvist at her side. Blomkvist takes the helm at Gasskas' newspaper, and Lisbeth tries to locate Plague. But then Svala goes missing, and Lisbeth's worst fears come to haunt her.
Knopf | 9780593536711 

THE HALLMARKED MAN: A Cormoran Strike Novel by Robert Galbraith (Mystery)
A dismembered corpse is discovered in the vault of a silver shop. The police initially believe it to be that of a convicted armed robber --- but not everyone agrees with that theory. One of them is Decima Mullins, who calls on the help of private detective Cormoran Strike as she's certain the body in the silver vault was that of her boyfriend --- the father of her newborn baby --- who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The more Strike and his business partner, Robin Ellacott, delve into the case, the more labyrinthine it gets. The silver shop is no ordinary one: it's located beside Freemasons' Hall and specializes in Masonic silverware. And in addition to the armed robber and Decima's boyfriend, it becomes clear that there are other missing men who could fit the profile of the body in the vault.
Mulholland Books | 9780316586009 

HAPPINESS AND LOVE by Zoe Dubno (Fiction/Dark Humor)
Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world --- a group of self-important, depraved and unscrupulous artists, curators and hangers-on --- our narrator is back in town. She’s wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgment, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca’s funeral, it's not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress. When the guest of honor finally arrives, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts’ empty little lives.
Scribner | 9781668062951

HOT DESK by Laura Dickerman (Romantic Comedy)
In the post-pandemic publishing industry, two rival editors are forced to share a “hot desk” on different days of the week, much to their chagrin. Having never set eyes on each other, Rebecca Blume and Ben Heath begin leaving passive-aggressive Post-it notes on the pot of their shared cactus. But when revered literary legend Edward David Adams (known as “the Lion”) dies, leaving his estate up for grabs, their banter escalates as both work feverishly to land this career-making opportunity. As their battle for the estate gets more heated, Rebecca learns of a connection between her mother, Jane, and the Lion. The story travels back four decades earlier to when Jane arrives in Manhattan and meets Rose, soon her best friend. But one fateful day during the April blizzard of 1982 will change the course of Jane’s life, and their friendship, forever.
Gallery Books | 9781668081099 

THE IMPROBABLE VICTORIA WOODHULL: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President by Eden Collinsworth (Biography)
Born dirt-poor in an obscure Ohio settlement, Victoria Woodhull was the daughter of an illiterate mother entranced by the fad of Mesmerism --- a therapeutic pseudoscience --- and a swindler father whose cons exploited his two daughters. It was through her mother, though, that Woodhull familiarized herself with the supernatural realm, earning a degree of fame as a clairvoyant and her first taste of financial success. Despite a deeply troubled first marriage at the age of 14, countless attempts by the press to discredit her, and a wrongful jail sentence, Woodhull thrived through sheer determination and the strength of her bond with her sister, Tennie. She co-founded a successful stock brokerage on Wall Street, launched a newspaper, and became the first woman to run for president.
Doubleday | 9780385549578 

MERCY by Joan Silber (Historical Fiction)
In the gritty East Village of 1970s New York, Ivan and his best friend, Eddie, a popular local bartender, are dabbling in drugs following a short tour of Europe. One night, as Ivan and Eddie experiment with heroin, things go horribly wrong. In a panic, Ivan rushes Eddie to a crowded local ER and, believing his friend is about to die, makes the awful choice to leave him there. This one act of abandonment haunts Ivan his entire life. He keeps this secret from his friends and later his family, forever searching for mercy from "a remorse that never dies." Ivan's decision also ripples across time through an extended community, affecting a host of other people unknowingly connected to that night.
Counterpoint | 9781640097070 

MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME by Arundhati Roy (Memoir)
MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME is a soaring account of how Arundhati Roy became the person and the writer she is. “Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age 18, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prize-winning novels and essays, through today. 
Scribner | 9781668094716 

TO THE MOON AND BACK by Eliana Ramage (Fiction)
Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother fled an abusive husband --- with Steph and her younger sister in tow --- to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon. Spanning three decades and several continents, TO THE MOON AND BACK encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668065853 

TOM CLANCY TERMINAL VELOCITY: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel by M. P. Woodward (Thriller/Adventure)
A string of savage murders in the United States seems unrelated until the FBI makes a shocking discovery. A decade ago, all of the murder victims were involved in a raid to eliminate the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, a vicious terror group that --- were it not for John Clark and the Campus --- would have perpetrated the most devastating attack against critical American infrastructure in history. Now it appears they’re back, with a next-generation leader hell-bent on revenge. Clark taps ex-Delta commando Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski to lead a kill team deep into the mountains to snuff out the charismatic terror leader. But when the hunters become the hunted, it’s up to Jack Ryan Jr. to avert disaster amid a deadly power game of nations vying for control of the disputed region. 
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593718032 

THE TRUE TRUE STORY OF RAJA THE GULLIBLE (AND HIS MOTHER) by Rabih Alameddine (Fiction)
In a tiny Beirut apartment, 63-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned. When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems to be a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
Grove Press | 9780802166470

TURN TO STONE: A Memoir by Emily Meg Weinstein (Memoir)
Broken by an abusive relationship, Emily Meg Weinstein impulsively tries rock climbing on a California road trip, following strangers into the vertical world. Soon, she is consumed by her addiction to the freedom she feels when she’s up on the wall. Holding on to the rocks, she is free from societal constraints and expectations, free from her own sorrows and longings. Raw and dark, but also funny, Weinstein describes the steep learning curve of becoming a climber, spending weeks at a time sleeping in the back of her Subaru, and a long, dark night stuck on top of a mountain. As she ascends, Weinstein faces her demons, finding power and grace in risk and adventure.
S&S/Simon Element | 9781668047859 

VIANNE by Joanne Harris (Fiction)
On the evening of July 4th, a young woman scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and follows the call of the changing winds to the French coastal city of Marseille. For the first time in her life, Vianne feels in control of her future. Charming her way into a job as a waitress, she tries to fit in, make friends, and come to terms with her pregnancy, knowing that by the time her child is born, the turning wind will have changed once again. As she discovers the joy of cooking for the very first time, making local recipes her own with the addition of bittersweet chocolate spices, she learns that this humble magic has the power to unlock secrets. And yet her gift comes at a price. And Vianne has a secret of her own --- a secret that threatens everything.
Pegasus Books | 9781639369591 

WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES by Ken Jaworowski (Thriller)
Carla, a single mom poised to finally break free from her cycle of poverty, must risk it all, including her morality, to help her son hide a terrible secret. Reed, an autistic young man, sets out on a journey to keep a deathbed promise to the mother he just lost. Along the way, he’ll encounter both kindhearted residents and a cold-blooded nemesis. And Liz, an aspiring musician on the cusp of a breakthrough, needs to quickly come up with the cash she owes a brutal ex-con. If she can’t pay him, both her dream and her life will be in grave danger. As these three compelling characters intersect, the novel ignites into a story filled with explosive twists, hair-raising chills and boundless love.
Atlantic Crime | 9780802165473

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LORI LOVELY? by Sarah McCoy (Historical Fiction)
In 1969, 23-year-old starlet Lori Lovely shocks the world by ditching a promising film career to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as a Benedictine nun. Gossip columnists and scandal sheets can’t get enough of the story. Why would such a beautiful girl take the veil? Did it have anything to do with the tragic death of her costar, heartthrob singer Lucas Wesley? In 1990, Lu Tibbott is under the gun to complete her senior thesis in modern American history. She decides to dig into a true 20th-century mystery and write about her aunt Lori, now the Mother Abbess at a cloistered convent in rural New England. Mother Lori has refused all requests for interviews --- until Lu arrives at the abbey with a tape recorder in hand. To her delight, Mother Lori announces she’s finally ready to talk...but only if Lu is truly ready to listen.
William Morrow | 9780063338746

On Sale the Week of September 1st in Paperback

September 1st

PLEASE DON’T LIE by Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Two years ago, Hayley Stone lost everything. First, her parents died in a devastating fire. Then, her sister overdosed, leaving Hayley alone and hounded by a media circus that turned her family’s tragedy into tabloid fodder. When her new husband suggests a fresh start in the Adirondacks, the promise of anonymity in an isolated mountain town feels like salvation. But the mountains hold darker secrets than she ever imagined. Her once-loving husband grows distant and volatile. The widow down the road keeps spewing vague accusations. Not even their new friends can help her shake the creeping sense that something is off. As winter edges closer, Hayley discovers that her sanctuary is anything but safe. In trying to escape her past, she may have run straight into something far more dangerous.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662524400

September 2nd

AGNES SHARP AND THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME written by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang (Mystery/Humor)
Agnes, Charlie, Marshall and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. And to top it all off, another series of murders is rocking the hamlet of Duck End. So when Edwina manages to slip onto Marshall’s computer in an unobserved moment and promptly wins a stay in an exclusive coastal hotel in Cornwall, the Sunset Hall crew waste no time in joining her. But Agnes sees something unsettling from the terrace of the hotel: two figures in hoods walk away from the hotel along the cliffs, but only one returns. Worried she’s witnessed a murder, Agnes tells the others. At first nobody really believes her. But when the hotel ends up isolated from the outside world after a storm, it becomes clear that a murderer really is on the loose --- and they’re trapped, just like all of the other guests.
Soho Crime | 9781641297349

THE ALASKA SANDERS AFFAIR written by Joël Dicker, translated by Robert Bononno (Mystery)
April 1999. The body of Alaska Sanders is found on the shore of a lake near the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, New Hampshire. The young woman’s death rocks the small community, but the murder is quickly solved. Within days, a suspect is identified and soon convicted. Case closed. Or so it seemed. Eleven years later, Marcus Goldman, celebrity author and amateur sleuth, picks up a thread that will unravel not only the “open and shut” case of Alaska Sanders, but the very fabric of his best friend’s life. Sergeant Perry Gahalowood, who led the original Alaska Sanders investigation, is hell-bent on finding the truth and setting the record straight. Teaming up with Marcus, he hopes to find redemption by solving the most intricate and trying case of his career.
HarperVia | 9780063324817

BATTLE MOUNTAIN: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow to prepare for vengeance. When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law, who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany. As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge…at Battle Mountain.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593851074

BREATHE IN, BLEED OUT by Brian McAuley (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
Hannah has been running from her demons ever since she emerged from a harrowing wilderness trip without her fiancé. No one knows exactly what happened the day Ben died, and Hannah would like to keep it that way...even if his ghost still haunts her with vivid waking nightmares that are ruining her life. So when her friend group gets an exclusive invitation to a restorative spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree, Hannah reluctantly agrees in search of a fresh start. Despite her skepticism of the strange Guru Pax and his belief in the supernatural world, Hannah soon finds healing through all the yoga, sound baths and hot springs offered at the tech-free haven. But this peaceful journey of self-discovery quickly descends into a violent fight for self-preservation when a mysterious killer starts picking off retreat attendees in increasingly gruesome ways.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464238208

CLIVE CUSSLER DESOLATION CODE: A Novel from the NUMA Files by Graham Brown (Thriller/Adventure)
When Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala investigate a mass stranding of aquatic life in the Indian Ocean, they accidentally uncover a much deeper mystery. A strange figure soon steals NUMA’s findings, forcing a high-speed chase. Someone really didn’t want them examining those dead whales. A cryptic text through the NUMA satellite network makes things still stranger. These odd phrases and numbers look like NUMA codes. But who could be tantalizing the crew with such specific knowledge of their tech? Are they being helped by an old friend, or lured into a trap by a traitor who knows a little too much about NUMA’s inner workings? Kurt, Joe and even Max, the agency’s supercomputer, will have to investigate like never before as they decrypt data, infiltrate a cult of cloned men, and prepare for a battle on two very different planes: one physical, one digital.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593719220

CRAZY SPOOKY LOVE: A Melody Bittersweet Novel by Josie Silver (Paranormal Mystery/Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits. On her 27th birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business. Right away, the freshly minted Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency takes on its first case: a grand old house that won’t sell because a trio of incumbent ghost brothers raise merry hell whenever prospective owners arrive to view it. Leo Dark, Melody’s rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the TV crew that trails him. To make matters worse, the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn has his nose in the story as well.
Dell | 9780593983003

DEATH AT THE SANATORIUM by Ragnar Jónasson (Mystery/Thriller)
1983: At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland that is now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five suspects. Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir rules his death a suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed. 2012: Almost 30 years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before.
Minotaur Books | 9781250770783

EVERY STEP SHE TAKES by Alison Cochrun (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells is desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all. After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The problem: the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her 200-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.
Atria Books | 9781668021255

GABRIEL’S MOON by William Boyd (Historical Thriller)
Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother’s life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected president of the People’s Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthlessly efficient MI6 handler, he becomes “her spy,” unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, there also will be revelations closer to home that may change his own story and the fates of those around him.
Atlantic Crime | 9780802166043

GUIDE ME HOME: A Highway 59 Novel by Attica Locke (Mystery)
Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves when he is visited by someone who always has been bent on tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if he can trust that his mother is telling the truth --- and what her ulterior motive may be. He gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again --- his mother.
Mulholland Books | 9780316494595

KILLING THE SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (History)
As the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. KILLING THE SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled "Nazi hunters." Over decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250420961

THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE by Matt Haig (Fiction)
When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she ever could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Penguin Books | 9780593489291

THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES by Marissa Stapley (Fiction)
Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock ‘n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated --- and least understood --- woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart --- even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame. But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenage girl next door --- a Lightning Bottles superfan --- who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668015773

MY THREE DOGS by W. Bruce Cameron (Fiction)
When a tragic accident separates three dogs from their human, they find themselves up for adoption --- separately. But Riggs, a dedicated, loyal Australian Shepherd, refuses to see his family torn apart. After the exuberant and fun-loving doodle Archie and quick-witted Jack Russell Luna are taken to new homes, Riggs' powerful herding instincts send him on a journey to bring his pack back together again.
Forge Books | 9781250900227

THE PALE HOUSE DEVIL by Richard Kadrey (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Ford and Neuland are paranormal mercenaries --- one living, one undead; one of them kills the undead, the other kills the living. When a job goes bad in New York, they head west to wait for the heat to cool down. There, a young woman named Tilda Rosenbloom hires them on behalf of wealthy landowner Shepherd Mansfield to track and kill a demon haunting a mansion in remote northern California. As Ford and Neuland investigate the creature, they uncover a legacy of blood, sacrifice and slavery in the house. Forced to confront a powerful creature unlike anything they’ve faced before, they come to learn that the most frightening monster might not be the one they're hunting.
Titan Books | 9781835413623

A PLACE TO HIDE by Ronald H. Balson (Historical Fiction)
Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family who place him into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. In 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, Teddy is reassigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam to replace fleeing staff. Teddy’s job is to process visa applications, and by 1939, refugees from Nazi-conquered Poland, Austria and other countries are desperate to secure safe passage to America. When Teddy and his girlfriend, Sara, are introduced to an orphaned young girl named Katy, who has been abandoned on the grounds of a nursery school, they agree to adopt her. Teddy makes the dangerous and selfless decision to join with underground groups and use his position at the Consulate to rescue those with no other avenue of escape.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250397157

THE QUEEN by Nick Cutter (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity has been missing for over a month. Most people in town --- even the police --- think she’s dead. Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything and know the most intimate details about one another. Except for the destructive secret hidden from them both. A secret that will trigger a chain of events ending in tragedy, bloodshed and death. And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story --- the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly disquieting breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend --- a person she never truly knew at all.
Gallery Books | 9781668020982

THE REST IS MEMORY by Lily Tuck (Historical Fiction)
First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, 14-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in THE REST IS MEMORY, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation.
Liveright | 9781324097099

THE SHATTERED KING by Charlie N. Holmberg (Historical Fantasy/Romance)
Paperback Original
The kingdom of Cansere is on the brink of war. Young men are conscripted from their homes, and a royal decree from the queen has made healing the only legal form of craftlock. Nym, a healer and beekeeper, is the sole provider for her family of seven now that her younger brother has been sent to the war front. But when a letter comes from the queen, summoning her to the palace to heal Prince Renn, the kingdom’s ailing shut-in, Nym finds herself making the tumultuous journey from her family’s apiary to the capital city. Forced to become the prince’s official healer and a ward of the castle, and with her only hope of returning to her family hinging on the prince’s recovery, Nym must navigate the castle’s cruel and twisted court and uncover the haunting truth behind Prince Renn’s illness --- even as she finds herself irrevocably drawn to him.
47North | 9781662516832

SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner (Fiction)
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life. As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place --- first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships --- every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.
Grove Press | 9780802165466

SMALL RAIN by Garth Greenwell (Fiction)
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American health care system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value --- art, memory, poetry, music, care --- are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. SMALL RAIN surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.
Picador | 9781250397508

SWEET HEAT by Bolu Babalola (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Twenty-eight-year-old Kiki Banjo hosts the popular podcast “The HeartBeat,” solving romantic conundrums and dishing out life advice. Behind the scenes, though, career setbacks and a devastating breakup have left her hanging on by a thread. As she’s preparing to be the Maid of Honor in her best friend’s wedding, everything starts to unravel, and Kiki is left wondering if she ever had the answers. Then Kiki finds herself face-to-face with the Best Man, her ex-boyfriend, Malakai. While Kiki is approaching rock bottom, Malakai has been on the rise as a filmmaker. Both are hell-bent on ignoring the smoldering chemistry between them, but they can’t ignore the spark that’s only getting hotter. They just have to get through the summer. So why does it feel like they’re playing with fire?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063306967

TEHRANGELES by Porochista Khakpour (Fiction)
Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all --- a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll. Each of the Milanis --- even their aloof Persian cat, Pari --- has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever.
Vintage | 9780525564706

THIS MOTHERLESS LAND by Nikki May (Fiction)
Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather gray. Worse still, her mother’s family is cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin, Liv. Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends, but the choices their mothers made haunt them. And when a second tragedy occurs, their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding and ambition.
Mariner Books | 9780063084308

VILEST THINGS by Chloe Gong (Romantic Fantasy/Adventure)
Despite the odds, Calla Tuoleimi has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne. Only Calla knows it isn’t really August. Anton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a years-long coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts. As tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set aside their conflicts and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy...even if their empire might be better off burning.
S&S/Saga Press | 9781668000274

WE’RE ALONE: Essays by Edwidge Danticat (Essays)
Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in WE’RE ALONE include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood and the complexities of resilience. From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.
Graywolf Press | 9781644453537

WILLIAM by Mason Coile (Psychological Thriller/Horror)
Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career. He’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily. When Lily’s coworkers show up, wanting to finally meet Henry and see the new house --- the smartest of smart homes --- Henry decides to introduce them to William, and things go from strange to much worse. Soon Henry and Lily discover that the security upgrades intended to keep danger out of the house are even better at locking it in.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593719619

YOU LIKE IT DARKER: Stories by Stephen King (Supernatural Thriller/Stories)
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to his new collection of 12 stories (many never-before-published) that delve into the darker part of life --- both metaphorical and literal. For half a century, King has been a master of the form, and these stories --- about fate, mortality, luck and the folds in reality where anything can happen --- are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in YOU LIKE IT DARKER, readers also will feel that exhilaration, again and again.
Scribner | 9781668037720

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