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July 23, 2024

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, July 24th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN by Marjan Kamali, which is now available and is a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Jamie Day, author of One Big Happy Family

The Precipice is a legendary, family-owned hotel on the rocky coast of Maine. With the recent passing of their father, the Bishop sisters --- Iris, Vicki and Faith --- have come for the weekend to claim it. But with a hurricane looming and each of the Bishop sisters harboring dangerous secrets, there's murder in the air --- and not everyone who checks into the Precipice will be checking out. Each sister wants what is rightfully hers, and in the mix is the Precipe’s 19-year-old chambermaid, Charley Kelley, who is smart, resilient, older than her years and in desperate straits. The arrival of the Bishop sisters could spell disaster for Charley. Will they close the hotel? Fire her? Discover her habit of pilfering from guests? Or, even worse, learn that she's using a guest room to hide a woman on the run?

Claire Lombardo, author of Same As It Ever Was

After a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, Julia Ames has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, at age 57 she finally feels that she has a firm handle on things. Julia is unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenage daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that previously had kept her on a razor’s edge.

Beatriz Williams, author of Husbands & Lovers

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne’s 10-year-old son, Sam, suffered acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom. Now, searching for a donor kidney, Mallory is forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption and her romance with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams, which was cut short by a devastating betrayal. Cairo, 1951. Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has married a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men --- and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Emily Giffin, author of The Summer Pact

Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and an aspiring lawyer from Washington, D.C.; Summer, an ambitious, recruited athlete from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner. Soon after arriving on campus, they strike up a conversation in their shared dorm. As their college years fly by, the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. They make a pact, promising to always be there for one another. Ten years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are all facing their own crossroads.

Daniel Silva, author of A Death in Cornwall

Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary. The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study.

July 19, 2024

I think I figured out why I read more during the summer. I am outside where there is less to pick up, organize, clean up or otherwise move around. Yes, I will shift flowers around or come up with ideas on how to better enjoy entertaining. But for the most part, I am happy to just float or stand in the pool with a book, or hibernate in the “Cleopatra” tent. Life is just a tad easier.

Editorial Content for I Was A Teenage Slasher

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones indicates in his Acknowledgements for I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER that he finished the book right between Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly” and Ratt’s “Lay It Down.” He listened to a lot of music from the late ’80s as the story is set in 1989. Read More

Teaser

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton --- and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for 17-year-old Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, who is about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

Promo

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton --- and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for 17-year-old Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, who is about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

About the Book

From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist --- perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton --- and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for 17-year-old Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, who is about to be cursed to kill for revenge.

Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

Audiobook available; read by Michael Crouch, with acknowledgments read by Stephen Graham Jones

Editorial Content for Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

I admit to being just as shocked as probably everyone else when I learned that Lisa Jewell was penning the first story in a new line of Marvel Crime novels. BREAKING THE DARK features Jessica Jones, whom many Marvel fans fondly recall Krysten Ritter portraying in the Netflix series “Jessica Jones” and “The Defenders.” Read More

Teaser

Jessica Jones is a retired superhero turned private investigator. One morning, a distraught Amber Randall comes into her office. She is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins’ new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

Promo

Jessica Jones is a retired superhero turned private investigator. One morning, a distraught Amber Randall comes into her office. She is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins’ new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

About the Book

In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell (NONE OF THIS IS TRUE) launches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring private detective Jessica Jones.

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired superhero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.”

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins’ new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect --- not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

BREAKING THE DARK, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura. Marvel Crime novels build on one another but do not require in-depth familiarity with Marvel or the other books in the series.

Audiobook available, read by Helen Laser

Editorial Content for Confessions of the Dead

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

As I was reading CONFESSIONS OF THE DEAD, I felt like I was taken back in time --- to the 1970s and ’80s --- and it allowed me to experience true small-town horror that had no connection to the modern world or any pandemic. The best comparison I can think of is Dean Koontz’s 1983 novel, PHANTOMS.

The brilliant minds behind this book are James Patterson and J. D. Barker. Their combined efforts have brought us a classic work of horror that harks back to the days when names like Koontz, King and Straub were at their best and most chilling. Read More

Teaser

Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate --- zero --- is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett. The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can’t --- or won’t --- answer any questions. She won’t even tell them her name. While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town that doesn’t appear on any map.

Promo

Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate --- zero --- is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett. The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can’t --- or won’t --- answer any questions. She won’t even tell them her name. While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town that doesn’t appear on any map.

About the Book

In this chilling mystery from a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a small New England town is hit with a wave of crimes after the arrival of a mysterious stranger who brings more questions than answers.

Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate --- zero --- is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett.

The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can’t --- or won’t --- answer any questions. She won’t even tell them her name.

While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town that doesn’t appear on any map.

Audiobook available, read by a full cast