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Week of July 31, 2023

Paperback releases for the week of July 31st include NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC by Kevin Wilson, an exuberant, big-hearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever; THE HOUSE GUEST, a diabolical cat-and-mouse thriller from Hank Phillippi Ryan that will have readers asking which character is the cat and which is the mouse; WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL by Jillian Medoff, an electrifying, twisty and deeply emotional family drama, set on Manhattan’s glittering Upper East Side, that explores the dark side of love, the limits of loyalty and the high cost of truth; Melissa Bond's BLOOD ORANGE NIGHT, a visceral, propulsive memoir detailing a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence and the life-threatening impacts of the drugs’ long-term use; and the paperback original WINE PEOPLE by Michelle Wildgen, an intoxicating escape into the cutthroat world of wine and the complicated terrain of women’s friendship.

August 2023

August's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of "Harlan Coben’s Shelter" on Amazon Prime Video, "Painkiller" on Netflix, and "The Winter King" on MGM+; the resumption of season two of Netflix's "The Lincoln Lawyer"; the season seven midseason finale of "Outlander" on Starz; the continuation of AMC's "Dark Winds" and Hallmark Channel's "When Calls the Heart"; the films Red, White & Royal Blue on Amazon Prime Video and Landscape with Invisible Hand in theaters; and the DVD releases of The Flash, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and BlackBerry.

August 1, 2023

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of July 31st and August 7th 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 for THE RIVER WE REMEMBER, a new stand-alone novel from William Kent Krueger that releases on September 5th. We are awarding an advance copy to 25 readers who can read the book by Friday, September 8th and submit a question to Kent for an interview that will be going up shortly after the book’s publication. The deadline for your entries is THIS Friday, August 4th at noon ET.

Bookreporter.com's Summer Reading 2023 Wrap-up

THANK YOU to all who subscribed to this Summer Reading newsletter and entered our contests! We appreciate your enthusiasm and participation.

This Bookreporter.com SPECIAL Summer Reading Wrap-up newsletter brings you a look at ALL of the titles that were included in our Summer Reading feature. We shared 18 books with you this summer, and we thank our publisher sponsors who made this possible.

Below are all of this year's featured titles, and we've also created a list of these books in a PDF format that you can access here. We know that many of you enjoy checking off what you have read. A list of all the prize winners is here

Stay subscribed to this newsletter so you can participate in our 2024 Summer Reading contests, which will begin next May.

This year's Fall Preview Contests and Feature will kick off in late August. If you have not signed up for that newsletter yet, you can do that here.

Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

Reclusive Sally Diamond causes outrage by trying to incinerate her dead father. Now she’s the center of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she does not remember. As she begins to discover the horrors of her early childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, big decisions, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say. But who is the man observing Sally from the other side of the world, and why does he call her Mary? And why does her new neighbor seem to be obsessed with her? Sally’s trust issues are about to be severely challenged.

Laura Lippman, author of Prom Mom

Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will be forever known as “Prom Mom” --- the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance --- as long as she stays away from Joe, who is now married. The problem is, Amber can’t stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it’s increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they’ve been trying not to cross. And then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable.

Richard Russo, author of Somebody's Fool

Ten years after the death of the magnetic Donald “Sully” Sullivan, the town of North Bath is going through a major transition as it is annexed by its much wealthier neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Peter, Sully’s son, is still grappling with his father’s tremendous legacy as well as his relationship to his own son, Thomas, wondering if he has been all that different a father than Sully was to him. Meanwhile, the towns’ newly consolidated police department falls into the hands of Charice Bond, after the resignation of Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief and Charice’s ex-lover. When a decomposing body turns up in the abandoned hotel situated between the two towns, Charice and Raymer are drawn together again and forced to address their complicated attraction to one another.

Brad Thor, author of Dead Fall

In the war-ravaged borderlands of Ukraine, a Russian mercenary unit has gone rogue. Its members are the most criminally violent, psychologically dangerous combatants to ever set foot upon the modern battlefield. As they move from village to village, committing horrific war crimes, they meet little resistance as all able-bodied men are off fighting the war. Simultaneously, a team of Russian soldiers has been dispatched by the Kremlin to loot truckloads of art and priceless cultural treasures hidden away in a host of churches, museums and private homes. When multiple American aid workers are killed, America’s top spy is sent in to settle the score. But in a country so vast, will Scot Harvath be able to find the men in question and, more importantly, stop them before they can kill again?

Shari Lapena, author of Everyone Here Is Lying

William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery’s family declares her missing. Suddenly the neighborhood doesn’t feel so safe. And William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbors become increasingly unhinged. Who took Avery Wooler?

William Kent Krueger, author of The River We Remember

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota, gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who recently has returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also to put to rest the demons from his own past.