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—Anita Shreve, author of STELLA BAIN

February 2, 2016

Like death, taxes and Nicholas Sparks movies with a mid-February release date, you can count on the same thing happening this time every year. You see the signs long before it actually happens: in convenience stores suddenly filled with red and pink cards, in restaurants rolling out their prix fixe menus for two, in the streets strewn with pastel conversation hearts. The world turns into a wasteland of love --- like something straight out of George Miller’s nightmares. Even Tom Hardy can’t save us from this. You probably know it as Valentine’s Day.

February 2, 2016

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that releases this winter. Read more about it, and enter our Winter Reading Contest by Wednesday, February 3rd at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THE FLOOD GIRLS by Richard Fifield, which releases today. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Editorial Content for The Evening Spider

Teaser

A gripping blend of psychological suspense and historical true crime, this riveting novel --- inspired by a sensational real-life murder from the 1800s --- by critically acclaimed author Emily Arsenault delivers a heart-stopping mystery linking two young mothers from different centuries.

Promo

A gripping blend of psychological suspense and historical true crime, this riveting novel --- inspired by a sensational real-life murder from the 1800s --- by critically acclaimed author Emily Arsenault delivers a heart-stopping mystery linking two young mothers from different centuries.

About the Book

Frances Barnett and Abby Bernacki are two haunted young mothers living in the same house in two different centuries.

1885: Frances Barnett is in the Northampton Lunatic Hospital, telling her story to a visitor. She has come to distrust her own memories, and believes that her pregnancy, birth and early days of motherhood may have impaired her sanity.

During the earliest months of her baby’s life, Frances eagerly followed the famous murder trial of Mary Stannard --- which captivated New Englanders with its salacious details and expert forensic testimony. Following --- and even attending --- this trial, Frances found an escape from the monotony of new motherhood. But as her story unfolds, Frances must admit that her obsession with the details of the murder were not entirely innocent.

Present day: Abby has been adjusting to motherhood smoothly --- until recently, when odd sensations and dreams have begun to unsettle her while home alone with her baby. When she starts to question the house’s history, she is given the diary of Frances Barnett, who lived in the house 125 years earlier. Abby finds the diary disturbing, and researches the Barnett family’s history. The more Abby learns, the more she wonders about a negative --- possibly supernatural --- influence in her house. She becomes convinced that when she sleeps, she leaves her daughter vulnerable --- and then vows not to sleep until she can determine the cause of her eerie experiences.

Frances Barnett might not be the only new mother to lose her mind in this house. And like Frances, Abby discovers that by trying to uncover another’s secrets, she risks awakening some of her own.

Editorial Content for The Heart

Book

Teaser

An international bestseller --- THE HEART takes place over the 24 hours surrounding a fatal accident and a resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. 

Promo

An international bestseller --- THE HEART takes place over the 24 hours surrounding a fatal accident and a resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. 

About the Book

Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. Returning home, exhausted, the driver lets the car drift off the road into a tree. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one is sent through the windshield. He is declared brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. His heart is still beating.

THE HEART takes place over the 24 hours surrounding a fatal accident and a resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved --- grieving parents, hardworking doctors and nurses --- as they navigate decisions of life and death. As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, Maylis de Kerangal's THE HEART has mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star.

Editorial Content for Jump Cut: An Ellie Foreman Mystery

Teaser

Chicago video producer, Ellie Foreman, is back…and soon entangled in a web of espionage, murder and suspicion that threatens to destroy what she holds most dear.

Promo

Chicago video producer, Ellie Foreman, is back…and soon entangled in a web of espionage, murder and suspicion that threatens to destroy what she holds most dear.

About the Book

Chicago video producer, Ellie Foreman, has been absent from thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann’s repertoire for almost a decade. Now she’s back…and soon entangled in a web of espionage, murder and suspicion that threatens to destroy what she holds most dear.

Hired to produce a candyfloss profile of Chicago-based aviation giant, Delcroft, Ellie is dismayed when company VP Charlotte Hollander, the architect of a new anti-drone system for Delcroft, trashes the production and cancels the project. Ellie believes Hollander was spooked by shots of a specific man in the video footage. But when Ellie arranges to meet the man to find out why, he’s killed by a subway train before they can talk. In the confusion, she finds a seemingly abandoned pack of cigarettes with a flash drive inside that belonged to the now dead man.

Ellie has the drive’s contents decrypted, but before long she discovers she’s under surveillance. Suspecting Delcroft and the ambitious Hollander are behind it, she’s unconvinced when Hollander tells her the dead man was a Chinese spy. Ellie and her boyfriend Luke try to find answers, but they don’t realize how far they ventured into the dangerous echelons of hidden power where more lives are on the line, including theirs.

Editorial Content for The Swans of Fifth Avenue

Teaser

The New York Times bestselling author of THE AVIATOR’S WIFE returns with a triumphant new novel about New York’s “Swans” of the 1950s --- and the scandalous, headline-making and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.

Promo

The New York Times bestselling author of THE AVIATOR’S WIFE returns with a triumphant new novel about New York’s “Swans” of the 1950s --- and the scandalous, headline-making and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.

About the Book

The New York Times bestselling author of THE AVIATOR’S WIFE returns with a triumphant new novel about New York’s “Swans” of the 1950s --- and the scandalous, headline-making and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.

Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends --- the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a prestigious husband and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman --- a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.

Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan’s elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe’s powerful circle. Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls “True Heart,” Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller --- even when the stories aren’t his to tell.

Truman’s fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he’ll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years. THE SWANS OF FIFTH AVENUE will seduce and startle readers as it opens the door onto one of America’s most sumptuous eras.

Editorial Content for An Undisturbed Peace

Teaser

A trio of outsiders linked by unrequited and rekindled love find themselves surrounded by the escalating horrors of President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.

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A trio of outsiders linked by unrequited and rekindled love find themselves surrounded by the escalating horrors of President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.

About the Book

Mary Glickman’s sweeping historical novel is the story of a trio of outsiders who will each be profoundly affected by the Indian Removal Act. There is Abrahan, a young Jewish immigrant who must live in indentured servitude to his uncle until his debts have been fulfilled. In his peddler’s travels, Abe falls madly for Dark Water, the daughter of a powerful Cherokee chief, now in exile. Then there’s Dark Water’s estranged lover Jacob, a black slave, accused of the murder of a white man.

Linked by love and friendship, Abe, Dark Water and Jacob face the horrors of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act as the tribes of the South make the grueling journey across the Mississippi River and into Oklahoma.

Editorial Content for The Widow

Book

Teaser

A loving husband or a heartless killer…she’d know, wouldn’t she? For fans of GONE GIRL and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, an engrossing and thrilling debut novel of psychological suspense from a major new talent.

Promo

A loving husband or a heartless killer…she’d know, wouldn’t she? For fans of GONE GIRL and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, an engrossing and thrilling debut novel of psychological suspense from a major new talent.

About the Book

A loving husband or a heartless killer…she’d know, wouldn’t she? 

For fans of GONE GIRL and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, an engrossing and thrilling debut novel of psychological suspense from a major new talent.

There's a lot Jean hasn't said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. 

Now her husband is dead, and there's no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. 

The truth --- that's all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything...

Bill Murray

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.

Attribution

Billy Murray as Phil Connors, Groundhog Day