September 2, 2025

September 2, 2025

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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of September 1st and September 8th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our special contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com for award-winning author Suzanne Nelson’s debut novel for adults, THE LIBRARIANS OF LISBON. We are giving 25 readers the opportunity to win a copy of this captivating historical novel, which has received so much praise since its release in February. Be sure to submit your entries by Wednesday, September 24th at noon ET.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Special Contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com
Enter to Win One of 25 Copies of
THE LIBRARIANS OF LISBON by Suzanne Nelson

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

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

Wednesday, September 3rd at 7pm ET: “Friends & Fiction”: Join “Friends & Fiction” for a conversation with Sarah McCoy about her new book, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LORI LOVELY?, a spellbinding novel in which a beautiful young movie star of Hollywood’s Golden Age gives up her bright career to become a nun.

Thursday, September 4th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Randy Wayne White will talk about TOMLINSON'S WAKE, the latest thriller following Doc Ford and his perilous journey into Mesoamerica after a world-shattering earthquake threatens his squad's safety --- and all of their lives.

Monday, September 8th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble Book Club: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome David Levithan and Jens Lekman for a live virtual event to discuss their novel, SONGS FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S WEDDINGS, which is August's B&N Book Club pick. David and Jens will be in conversation with Mallory Rochester, Store Manager at Barnes & Noble in Calabasas, CA.

Tuesday, September 9th at 6pm ET: Barnes & Noble: Join Barnes & Noble - Union Square in New York City as they welcome New York Times bestselling author Dan Brown to celebrate and discuss THE SECRET OF SECRETS, which marks the long-awaited return of Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon.

Tuesday, September 9th at 9pm ET: Killer Author Club: Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda will talk to Elise Hart Kipness about CLOSE CALL, the third installment in her series starring Kate Green. The sports reporter and former Olympian courts danger once again when the famous subject of her next story is kidnapped during the US Open.

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

THE BORDER BETWEEN US by Rudy Ruiz (Fiction)
Ramón López was born along the US-Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream --- and he's not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad's dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón's mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York and succeeding as an artist. As dreams clash with reality and values conflict with desires, Ramón finds the American dream within his reach. But will it demand too big a sacrifice?
Blackstone Publishing | 9798212545730

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

On Sale the Week of September 8th in Hardcover

September 9th

ACQUIRED TASTE by Clay McLeod Chapman (Horror/Short Stories)
A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one. From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the COVID-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own.
Titan Books | 9781835410783 

ALL THE WAY TO THE RIVER: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (Memoir/Self-Help) 
In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?
Riverhead Books | 9780593540985

ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Psychological Thriller)
Debut sensation Tessa Calloway is on a whirlwind book tour for her instant bestseller, All This Could Be Yours. She receives standing ovations from adoring fans while her husband, Henry, and their two children cheer her on from their brand-new dream house. But there's a chilling problem with Tessa's triumphant book tour --- she soon discovers she is being stalked by someone who's obsessed not only with sabotaging her career, but also with destroying her perfect family back home. Tessa fears that the fallout from an impossible decision she once made appears to be coming due. And she’s realizing that every high-stakes bargain comes with a high-stakes price. If Tessa can't untangle who's threatening to expose her darkest secrets, she'll lose her career, her family --- and possibly her life.
Minotaur Books | 9781250349996 

AMERICAN KINGS: A Biography of the Quarterback by Seth Wickersham
(Sports/Biography)
The quarterback: the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country’s ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure and fame. Long known as the outsider’s guide into this elite world, Seth Wickersham’s fresh reporting goes deep into the quarterback journey, measuring the distance between what the men who have traveled it expected and what they found at the end of the road.
Hyperion Avenue | 9781368099189 

THE BOOK OF I by David Greig (Historical Fiction)
The year is 825 CE. In the aftermath of a vicious attack by raiders from the north, an unlikely trio finds themselves the lone survivors on a remote Scottish isle. Still breathing are young Brother Martin, the only resident of the local monastery to escape martyrdom; Una, a beekeeper and mead maker who has been relieved of her violent husband during the slaughter; and Grimur, an aging Norseman who claws his way out of the hasty grave his fellow raiders left him in, thinking him dead. As the seasons pass in this wild and lonely setting, their inherent distrust of each other melts into a complex meditation on the distances and bonds between them.
Europa Editions | 9798889661276 

CLIVE CUSSLER THE IRON STORM: An Isaac Bell Adventure by Jack Du Brul (Historical Thriller/Adventure)
Van Dorn agent Isaac Bell knows that when the President of the United States asks you to undertake a special mission, the only appropriate answer is “Right away, sir.” After battling in the trenches, Bell finds himself flying beside a group of Allied aviators, unwilling to let them fight alone, even when they are faced with capture. Bell and his compatriots are imprisoned in a medieval castle. Escape lies tantalizingly close, though freedom may be short-lived. Even in the middle of a world war, Bell finds there are forces worse than those arrayed against the Americans on the battlefield. Opponents who are so evil that they are willing to set aside whatever rules of war still exist to take the fight to where they think it belongs: the streets of the United States. And there’s only one man who can stop them: Isaac Bell.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593853566 

CLOWN TOWN by Mick Herron (Thriller)
David Cartwright has left his library to the Spooks’ College in Oxford, and now one of the books is missing. Or perhaps it never existed. River, once a “slow horse” of Slough House, MI5’s outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, starts investigating the secrets of his grandfather’s library. Over at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme. Jackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all make it home, there will be a reckoning.
Soho Crime | 9781641297264 

CONFRONTING EVIL: Assessing the Worst of the Worst by Bill O'Reilly and Josh Hammer (History)
The concept of evil is universal, ancient and ever present today. The biblical book of Genesis clearly defines it when Cain kills his brother, Abel, out of jealousy. Evil is a choice to make another suffer. As long as human beings have walked, evil has been close by. CONFRONTING EVIL by Bill O'Reilly and Josh Hammer recounts the deeds of the worst people in history: Genghis Khan. The Roman Emperor Caligula. Henry VIII. The collective evil of the 19th-century slave traders and the 20th-century robber barons. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Putin. The Mexican drug cartels. Collectively, these warlords, tyrants, businessmen and criminals are directly responsible for the death and misery of hundreds of millions of people.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250374042 

CROOKS: A Novel About Crime and Family by Lou Berney (Thriller)
For Buddy, a low-level mob wise guy, and Lillian, a charming pickpocket, the criminal underworld is the only life they’ve ever known. When they’re forced to flee the glittering Babylon of Las Vegas, they end up opening a club in Oklahoma City --- a town that quickly feels like a gold mine of fresh marks and easy new money. Along for the ride are their five children, all of them raised into the family business of crime --- until the day comes when they each have a chance to make their own way in the world, even if they can never completely escape the family’s long, dark shadow.
William Morrow | 9780063445574 

DARK RENAISSANCE: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt (Biography)
In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known --- and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. For Christopher Marlowe, it’s a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire and dangerous skepticism. What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language and culture. His astonishing literary success will nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare. DARK RENAISSANCE illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393882278 

THE DEEPEST CUT: A Monkeewrench Novel by P. J. Tracy (Thriller)
Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth arrest a sadistic pair of killers for the murder of several women with the help of Monkeewrench, their eccentric, cyber-sleuth friends and partners. One of the killers dies in custody, and the other, Wolfgang Mauer, is sent to a maximum-security mental hospital. There, Mauer plots his escape --- and his vengeance. With the help of his mother, a former militia leader and assassin, he schemes to get out of the mental hospital and hunt down the detectives and the Monkeewrench crew that got him a life sentence. When Mauer successfully escapes, an inexperienced county sheriff is thrown head-first into a massive manhunt for the murderer. When she finds three bodies and discovers that Mauer has kidnapped a young boy, she realizes that Mauer’s escape was just the beginning.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639108770 

AN ECHO OF CHILDREN by Ramsey Campbell (Supernatural Horror/Psychological Thriller)
Coral and Allan Clarendon have just moved to the seaside town of Barnwall with their young son, Dean. If an uncommon number of children have died unnaturally in Barnwall throughout history, surely Dean must be safe with his parents. Could their house be a source of peril? Allan and Coral seem to think so, since they call for an exorcism. Allan’s father, Thom, believes his wife is wrong to think the ceremony has left Dean in worse danger. But if she’s alone in seeing the terrors that are gathering around him, how desperate will her solution have to be?
Flame Tree Press | 9781787589780 

THE ELEMENTS by John Boyne (Fiction)
In THE ELEMENTS, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on crime: the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator and the victim. The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250410368 

HOT WAX by M.L. Rio (Thriller)
Summer, 1989: Ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning --- one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come. The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next 29 years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband, Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers.
Simon & Schuster | 9781668070024

LIFE, AND DEATH, AND GIANTS by Ron Rindo (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing 18 pounds and measuring 27 inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world. But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At 17, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250375339 

MAKE ME COMMISSIONER: I Know What's Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It by Jane Leavy (Sports)
As a pioneering female sportswriter, Jane Leavy eventually turned her talent to books, penning three of the all-time best baseball biographies about three of the all-time best players: Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth. But when she went searching for a fourth biographical subject, she realized that baseball had faltered. The Moneyball era of the last two decades obsessed over data and slowed the game down to a crawl. Major League Baseball has begun to address issues too long ignored, yet the questions linger: How much have these efforts helped to improve the game and reassert its place in American culture? Leavy takes a whirlwind tour of the country seeking answers to these questions. What she uncovers is not only what’s wrong with baseball --- and how to fix it --- but also what’s right with baseball.
Grand Central Publishing | 9780306834660 

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING CRIME WRITER by Ragnar Jónasson (Mystery)
One winter evening, bestselling crime author Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing. There are no clues to her disappearance, and it is up to young detective Helgi to crack the case before its leaked to the press. As Helgi interviews the people closest to her --- a publisher, an accountant, a retired judge --- he realizes that Elín’s life wasn’t what it seemed. In fact, her past is even stranger than the fiction she wrote. As the case of the missing crime writer becomes more mysterious by the hour, Helgi must uncover the secrets of the writer's very unexpected life.
Minotaur Books | 9781250408266 

ONE OF THEM by Kitty Zeldis (Historical Fiction)
Anne Bishop seems like a typical Vassar sophomore --- one of a popular group of privileged WASP friends. None of the girls in her circle has any idea that she’s Jewish, or that her real first name is Miriam. Pretending to be a Gentile has made life easier. As Anne, she no longer suffers the snubs, snide remarks and daily restrictions Jews face. But her secret life is threatened when she becomes fascinated by a girl not in her crowd. Delia Goldhush is sophisticated, stylish, brilliant and unashamedly Jewish. Knowing that her growing closeness with Delia would be social suicide if it were discovered, Anne keeps their friendship quiet. Delia seems to understand --- until a cruelty on Anne’s part drives them apart and sends them scattering to other corners of the world, alone and together.
Harper | 9780063352841 

PLAY NICE by Rachel Harrison (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parents' messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house. After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house-flipping content. But as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims.
Berkley | 9780593642573 

REACHER: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child (Memoir/Essays)
After making his debut in 1997’s THE KILLING FLOOR, Jack Reacher has quickly become one of the most popular --- and most enduring --- fictional heroes to emerge in the past half-century. Now, his creator tells the stories behind the stories. These are the origin tales of all of the Reacher novels written solely by Lee Child, chock full of colorful anecdotes and intriguing inspirations. An afterword by crime fiction expert and bookseller Otto Penzler considers the importance of the character and novels in the canon of contemporary crime fiction. In addition to the essays, this collection includes an original Reacher short story --- the first new Reacher appearance entirely written by Lee Child since 2019.
Mysterious Press | 9781613167069 

THE RIGHTEOUS by Ronald H. Balson (Historical Fiction)
By the end of 1943, nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population had fled, been deported, captured or killed by Hitler. Only Hungary, and its almost 900,000 Jews, remained free from Hitler’s subjugation. They lived under government edicts and restrictions but without fear of harm. That changed in March 1944, after the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, as an avaricious Hitler conquered Hungary and declared his plan for mass extermination of the Jewish people. In THE RIGHTEOUS, Theresa Weissbach, a professor, hasn’t heard from her parents in Budapest for over a year. Her best friend, Julia Powers, who recently was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal for her OSS service in occupied Holland, joins her to locate and rescue Theresa’s family. While there, they become involved in a much larger cause, trying to save as many people as they can.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250373083

RIPENESS by Sarah Moss (Fiction)
Just out of school, Edith has been sent from her quiet English life to rural Italy. It is the 1960s, and her mother has issued strict instructions: tend to her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, in the final weeks of her scandalous pregnancy; help at the birth; and make a phone call that will summon the nuns who will spirit the child away to a new home. Decades later, a happily divorced Edith has made a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. Then her best friend, Maebh, receives a shocking phone call from an American man. He claims to be a brother she never knew existed: a child her mother gave up and never spoke of again. As Edith helps her friend reckon with this new idea of family and how it might change her life, her thoughts turn back to Lydia and her own fractured history.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374609016 

THE SECRET OF SECRETS by Dan Brown (Thriller)
Robert Langdon, esteemed professor of symbology, travels to Prague to attend a groundbreaking lecture by Katherine Solomon --- a prominent noetic scientist with whom he recently has begun a relationship. Katherine is on the verge of publishing an explosive book that contains startling discoveries about the nature of human consciousness and threatens to disrupt centuries of established belief. But a brutal murder catapults the trip into chaos, and Katherine suddenly disappears along with her manuscript. Langdon finds himself targeted by a powerful organization and hunted by a chilling assailant sprung from Prague’s most ancient mythology. In a thrilling race through the dual worlds of futuristic science and mystical lore, Langdon uncovers a shocking truth about a secret project that will forever change the way we think about the human mind.
Doubleday | 9780385546898 

YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO BE HUMAN by Andrew Joseph White
(Science Fiction/Horror)
Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse. Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant --- and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost --- Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.
S&S/Saga Press | 9781668038079

On Sale the Week of September 8th in Paperback

September 9th

AND THEN? AND THEN? WHAT ELSE? by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (Memoir)
Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler has led several generations of young readers into that special and curious space of being hopelessly lost, and joyfully finding yourself, in the essential strangeness of literature. The wondrous and perilous journey of the Baudelaire orphans sprung from the author’s own path, from his childhood discovery of Baudelaire’s poetry through the countless peculiarities of his pursuit of a literary life --- abject failure and startling success, breakthrough and breakdown, concordance and controversy --- lit along the way by the books and culture he loved best. AND THEN? AND THEN? WHAT ELSE? is a book not just for anyone curious about the creator of Lemony Snicket, but for anyone who loved books when they were a child and still loves them now.
Liveright | 9781324097068

BELLEVUE by Robin Cook (Medical Thriller/Horror)
Twenty-three-year-old Michael “Mitt” Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the iconic Bellevue Hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. To his advantage he’s always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical. But quickly one patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes. As he tries to juggle these inexplicable deaths with the demands of being a first-year resident, things rapidly spiral out of control. Visions begin to plague Mitt --- visions of a little girl in a bloodstained dress, bloodcurdling screams in the distance, and worse. As bodies mount, he finds himself drawn to the abandoned Bellevue Psychopathic Hospital building and discovers that he’s more closely tied to the sins of the past than he ever thought possible.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593718841

BONE OF THE BONE: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class by Sarah Smarsh (Essays)
In BONE OF THE BONE, National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times --- class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than 30 of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013–2024) --- ranging from personal narratives to news commentary --- demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future.
Scribner | 9781668061848

THE BURIAL TIDE by Neil Sharpson (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Paperback Original
On an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. But not everyone welcomes the return of Mara Fitch. Inishbannock. Where strange misshapen figures watch from the trees and the roads are covered in teeth. Where two brothers gamble for nothing, the doctor only treats one patient, and the pub owner speaks in riddles. Where a poet loses and finds his soul. And a man without a heart claims he's the key to unlocking Mara's secrets. As Mara returns to her life on this upside-down island, her memories begin to leech their way back to the surface. The more she remembers, the more the village will do anything to stop her.
Zando | 9781638932024

THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS written by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel (Fiction/Magical Realism)
When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he is heartbroken --- and determined to find the imaginary town where he suspects she has taken up residence. Thus begins a lifelong search that takes the man into middle age, to a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own, and on a journey between the real world and this otherworld: a shadowless city where unicorns roam and willow trees grow. There he finds his beloved working in a different library --- a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together. And as the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he must decide what he is willing to lose.
Vintage | 9780593687840

DEVILS KILL DEVILS by Johnny Compton (Gothic Thriller/Horror)
Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever. When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250861658

A FIRE IN THE SKY by Sophie Jordan (Fantasy/Romance)
Dragon fire no longer blisters the skies over Penterra, but inside the lavish palace, life is still perilous, especially for Tamsyn. Raised in the glittering court alongside the princesses, it's her duty to be punished for their misdeeds. Treated as part of the royal family but also as the lowliest servant, Tamsyn fits nowhere. Her only friend is Stig, Captain of the Guard, though sometimes she thinks he wants more than friendship. When Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands, descends on her home, Tamsyn’s world becomes even more dangerous. To save the pampered princesses from a fate worse than death, she is commanded to don a veil and marry the brutal warrior. She agrees to the deception even though it means leaving Stig, and the only life she’s ever known, behind. The wedding night begins with unexpected passion --- and ends in near violence when her trickery is exposed.
Avon | 9780063391536

FIRST DO NO HARM by Joe Kenda (Mystery)
A string of overdoses in Colorado Springs has Detectives Joe Kenda and Lee Wilson on the lookout for a bad batch of heroin that has been cut with a drug they've never seen before. Meanwhile, at Springs General Hospital, Dr. Blair Moreland --- the notoriously unpleasant head anesthesiologist --- has found a way to feed his deepening addiction to the very same powerful new drug: Fentanyl. But when Dr. Moreland starts supplying the dangerous painkiller to dealer Lula Lopez --- planning to manufacture the drug himself --- he angers a Mexican crime syndicate and sets into motion a cycle of death and violence that threatens to engulf the entire city. Detectives Kenda and Wilson must track down the source of this killer heroin before anyone else can overdose --- and stop Moreland before he can escape the long arm of the law.
Blackstone Publishing | 9798228396234

THE GRAVE ARTIST by Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado (Thriller)
Paperback Original
A wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of one of the newlyweds. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude something far more sinister is at play. The two uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level. Dubbed the Honeymoon Killer, this man isn’t interested in his victims but in creating his own macabre masterpiece from their graves --- focused on the survivors and reveling in their grief. And now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake. Time is running out as a deadly game between predator and prey begins.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781662518737

THE GREAT HIPPOPOTAMUS HOTEL: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (25) by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
In the rolling hills just outside Gaborone, surrounded by a grove of acacia trees, lies The Great Hippopotamus Hotel. With spacious rooms overlooking the Botswanan countryside and a fine and loyal staff, the hotel has served as a refuge to weary travelers for many years. But a sudden string of misfortunes threatens to ruin the hotel’s reputation. Food poisoning befalls an unlucky diner, laundry mysteriously disappears from the drying line, and a scorpion stings one of the guests. It appears that something foul is afoot. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are on the case to find out who could be responsible for these unfortunate events. The answer at first seems clear, especially when they find out that Violet Sephotho is involved. But as they dig deeper, they realize that the solution is not as simple as it initially seems.
Vintage | 9780593688762

I MIGHT BE IN TROUBLE by Daniel Aleman (Fiction/Dark Humor)
A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book --- a total flop --- all the more devastating. Now, David is single and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript. When David connects with a sexy stranger on a dating app, he figures a wild night out in New York City may be just what he needs to find inspiration. Lucky for him, his date turns out to be handsome, confident and wealthy. After one of the best nights of his life, David wakes up hungover but giddy --- only to find prince charming dead next to him in bed. He and his literary agent, Stacey, must untangle the events of the previous night, cover their tracks and spin the entire misadventure into David’s career-defining novel.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538766354

IF I WERE YOU by Cesca Major (Romantic Comedy)
Amy and Flynn have been dating for two years. And they love each other. Don’t they? Only Amy can’t read Flynn’s mind, and Flynn can’t read Amy’s. Little do they know this weekend is make or break. Amy’s nervous older sister is getting married at the world’s swankiest wedding venue in rural Devon and is relying on her younger sister to be the perfect Chief Bridesmaid. Frustrations on the way to the wedding escalate until both Amy and Flynn are shouting at each other in a country lane during a thunderstorm. Why can’t they see things from the other’s point of view? When lightning strikes, Flynn and Amy are thrown to the ground. And they soon realize that they’ve switched bodies. But when they each discover big secrets in the other’s past, can their relationship survive?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063240025

LAURYN HARPER FALLS APART by Shauna Robinson (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Lauryn Harper had a plan. A high-achieving, perfectly constructed, eight-year plan. But after a (totally blown out of proportion) mishap at work, that plan is put to the test. As punishment for her mistake, she is transferred to the Ryser charity department, a branch that just so happens to be located in the hometown she abandoned long ago --- and that her powerful corporate employer is responsible for running into the ground. Horrified at the thought of returning and facing those she left behind, Lauryn quickly comes up with a new plan: impress her boss enough that she's briskly whisked back to her big city life. However, it soon becomes clear that sticking to plans isn't that simple, especially when her ex-best friend enters the charity department demanding they help revitalize the town.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728268712

THE MEDICI RETURN: A Cotton Malone Novel by Steve Berry (Thriller)
Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th-century Pledge of Christ --- a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries --- now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers on what happened to the famed Medici of Florence --- a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538770580

PITCHER PERFECT by Tessa Bailey (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Boston Bearcats rookie Robbie Corrigan has made it to the NHL. Life is sweet. That is, until he meets Skylar Paige --- a division 1 softball pitcher, the girl least likely to take anyone’s bull…and the one member of the opposite sex immune to his charms. When he discovers she’s carrying a serious torch for her brother’s best friend, Robbie knows he should just go back to clubbing and whipped cream bikini parties, but he can’t seem to leave Skylar to flounder on her romantic quest to land another man. Nor can he miss out on the opportunity to spend time with her and hopefully redeem himself. Before Robbie knows it, he’s agreed to be Skylar’s fake boyfriend/love coach at an upcoming family wilderness competition where her crush will be in attendance. What could go wrong?
Avon | 9780063380837

SCAR THE SKY by J. Todd Scott (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Everything changed for Andi Ellis when she was struck by lightning and her heart stopped. Andi was resuscitated, but she was never the same as electronics strangely malfunction in her presence. And while many lightning strike victims are left with temporary "lightning tree" markings, on her they are permanent scars. Years later, Andi, her eight-year-old daughter, and a fellow lightning strike survivor have fled Texas and Andi’s dangerous ex to go off the grid in a strange and secluded desert community. Meanwhile, two private investigators pursue a US senator's missing daughter who they find too late. When searching for information on the strange lightning scars on the girl's body, they find themselves pulled into an FBI investigation as people who have been struck by lightning are being murdered.
Crooked Lane Books | 9798892423168

A SUNNY PLACE FOR SHADY PEOPLE: Stories written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Literary Horror/Short Stories)
Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In 12 spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women --- these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.
Hogarth | 9780593733271

TWO-STEP DEVIL by Jamie Quatro (Fiction)
In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet --- a 70-year-old man who paints his visions --- lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past --- and perhaps change her future.
‎Grove Press | 9780802165428

THE WOMEN BEHIND THE DOOR by Roddy Doyle (Fiction)
At 66, Paula Spencer --- mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor --- has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. But then, her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day. Nicola is everything Paula wasn’t --- independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a “success” --- but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. She has left her family and come to stay. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma and revelations to confront what they mean to each other --- and who they want to be.
Penguin Books | 9780593831700

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