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January 10, 2023

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 9th and January 16th 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 the Most Requested Guides of 2022 on ReadingGroupGuides.com. We pulled together the 30 guides that were accessed the most by you last year. Your top five picks are THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES by Elif Shafak, THE MAID by Nita Prose, OH WILLIAM! by Elizabeth Strout, and ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrik Backman. We always love seeing which guides appealed to you the most!

Elinor Lipman, author of Ms. Demeanor

Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm --- or was, until a prudish neighbor observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, life looks bleak. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn’t heard the end of that tattletale neighbor --- whose past isn’t as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane’s door again? Can her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?

James Grippando, author of Code 6

Aspiring playwright Kate Gamble is struggling to launch a script she’s been secretly researching her entire life. Her father is Christian Gamble, CEO of Buck Technologies, a private data integration company whose clients include the CIA and virtually every counter-terrorism organization in the Western World. Kate’s father adores her, and a play about the dark side of Big Data would be the ultimate betrayal in his eyes. But Kate is compelled to tell this story --- not only as an artist exploring the personal information catastrophe that affects us all, but as a daughter trying to understand her mother’s apparent loss of purpose. Then Patrick Battle comes back into her life, changing everything she has ever thought about her play, her father and her mother’s tragic death.

Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens

Five years ago, Geeta’s no-good husband walked out on her, and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. It turns out that being known as a “self-made” widow comes with some perks. No one messes with her, harasses her or tries to control (ahem, marry) her. It’s even been good for business; no one dares to not buy her jewelry. And now other women are asking for her “expertise,” making her an unwitting consultant for husband disposal. With Geeta’s dangerous reputation becoming a double-edged sword, she has to find a way to protect the life she’s built. But what happens next sets in motion a chain of events that will change everything --- not just for Geeta, but for all the women in their village.

Rachel Hawkins, author of The Villa

As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album --- and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.

Allegra Goodman, author of Sam

Sam is seven years old and living in Beverley, Massachusetts. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much, and her mother struggles to make ends meet. Sam doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. All she wants is to climb. Hanging from the highest limbs of the tallest trees, scaling the side of a building, Sam feels free. As a teenager, Sam begins to doubt herself. She yearns to be noticed, even as she wants to disappear. When her climbing coach takes an interest in her, his attention is more complicated than she anticipated. She resents her father’s erratic behavior, but she grieves after he’s gone. And she resists her mother’s attempts to plan for her future, even as that future draws closer.

January 6, 2023

We all had a great break. Christmas week is the week when time does not exist! What day is it? Why did I get out of bed on the 26th at 5:30pm? Why did I eat cheesecake for breakfast? Why am I snacking throughout the day?

We spent a lot of time with family and friends over the holiday, and we hosted five really fun dinners. We finally got time to spend with neighbors who we have not socialized with for the past two years. I read three books, which is much less than I typically would do. Usually I have read books not coming out for months, and now I am maybe a week ahead. It started over the summer when my mom was ill, and I just never caught up. There are even some books from last year that I still did not get to. And I felt a lot of guilt about that. I know, guilt about not reading. But this got me thinking.

Editorial Content for Three-Edged Sword

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Every time I think of Jeff Lindsay, I cannot help but fondly recall his outstanding Dexter Morgan thrillers --- which inspired the long-running Showtime series --- and hope that he will return one day. Even though DEXTER IS DEAD is the title of the last installment, one can still dream. Read More

Teaser

Super thief Riley Wolfe can do it all. He is a master of disguise, can scale a wall, and can vanish into thin air (thick air, too). He uses these unique talents to rob the richest. But this time, it’s the most powerful who have him in their grips. It’s not just that the high-up, rogue government agent has abducted the only two people Riley loves: it’s the fact that Riley has to do the man’s dirty work to set them free. It’s something Riley ordinarily would find a modest day’s work, infiltrating a madman’s Soviet missile silo in one of the world’s most remote places, all to find a secret on a tiny flash drive. But he’s never had to race the clock like this.

Promo

Super thief Riley Wolfe can do it all. He is a master of disguise, can scale a wall, and can vanish into thin air (thick air, too). He uses these unique talents to rob the richest. But this time, it’s the most powerful who have him in their grips. It’s not just that the high-up, rogue government agent has abducted the only two people Riley loves: it’s the fact that Riley has to do the man’s dirty work to set them free. It’s something Riley ordinarily would find a modest day’s work, infiltrating a madman’s Soviet missile silo in one of the world’s most remote places, all to find a secret on a tiny flash drive. But he’s never had to race the clock like this.

About the Book

Wickedly funny. Wildly twisty. The new book from the master of the heist novel.

Super thief Riley Wolfe can do it all. He is a master of disguise, can scale a wall, and can vanish into thin air (thick air, too). He uses these unique talents to rob the richest. But this time, it’s the most powerful who have him in their grips.

One madman. Two hostages.

It’s not just that the high-up, rogue government agent has abducted the only two people Riley loves: it’s the fact that Riley has to do the man’s dirty work to set them free. It’s something Riley ordinarily would find a modest day’s work, infiltrating a madman’s Soviet missile silo in one of the world’s most remote places, all to find a secret on a tiny flash drive. But he’s never had to race the clock like this.

Sometimes truth can be a three-edged sword.

From its vivid, remote locales to its John Wick-meets-Deadpool dialogue, this gripping heist novel from Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter series, is everything: an utterly escapist, must-read novel of espionage, thievery, love and betrayal. It twists, turns and keeps everything on the line until the very end. Even for Riley, it looks like this time, the only way out is through.

Audiobook available, read by Jeff Lindsay

Editorial Content for Hollywood: The Oral History

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ron Kaplan

What better way to learn about history than from the people who lived it?

In HOLLYWOOD, Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson have painstakingly put together a collection of interviews with these men and women, starting with the first adventurers who traveled across the country to set up shop in the wilds of California. It’s a fascinating look at the creative processes that went into bringing this medium to the public. Read More

Teaser

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly 3,000 interviews, involving 400 voices from the industry, HOLLYWOOD lets a reader “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera (Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd) to the biggest behind it (Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele), as well as the lesser known individuals who shaped what was heard and seen on screen. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story.

Promo

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly 3,000 interviews, involving 400 voices from the industry, HOLLYWOOD lets a reader “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera (Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd) to the biggest behind it (Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele), as well as the lesser known individuals who shaped what was heard and seen on screen. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story.

About the Book

The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd and nearly 400 others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. 

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly 3,000 interviews, involving 400 voices from the industry, HOLLYWOOD lets a reader “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera (Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd) to the biggest behind it (Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele), as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story. 

Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.

Audiobook available, read by Timothy Andrés Pabon and Marni Penning

Editorial Content for A Death in Tokyo

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

A DEATH IN TOKYO is a stunning mystery that helps to secure Keigo Higashino’s status as a modern Master of International Mystery. We are privileged to spend time once again with Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, who is tasked with unraveling a case that makes little sense and has no known witnesses.

"What raises A DEATH IN TOKYO above other mysteries is Higashino’s writing. Through the unique work of Kaga, the reader is able to marvel at a detective with a mental acuity that seems to rival that of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot."

Teaser

In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo, an unusual statue of a Japanese mythic beast --- a kirin --- stands guard over the district from the classic Nihonbashi Bridge. In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the bridge and collapses right under the statue of the winged beast. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man is dead and was stabbed in the chest. The key to solving the crime is to find out where he was attacked and why he made such a superhuman effort to carry himself to the Nihonbashi Bridge. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.

Promo

In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo, an unusual statue of a Japanese mythic beast --- a kirin --- stands guard over the district from the classic Nihonbashi Bridge. In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the bridge and collapses right under the statue of the winged beast. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man is dead and was stabbed in the chest. The key to solving the crime is to find out where he was attacked and why he made such a superhuman effort to carry himself to the Nihonbashi Bridge. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.

About the Book

In the latest from international bestselling author Keigo Higashino, Tokyo Police Detective Kaga is faced with a very public murder that doesn't quite add up, a prime suspect unable to defend himself, and pressure from the highest levels for a quick solution.

In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo an unusual statue of a Japanese mythic beast --- a kirin --- stands guard over the district from the classic Nihonbashi Bridge. In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the bridge and collapses right under the statue of the winged beast. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold, goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man was not passed out, he was dead; that he was not drunk, he was stabbed in the chest. However, where he died was not where the crime was committed --- the key to solving the crime is to find out where he was attacked and why he made such a superhuman effort to carry himself to the Nihonbashi Bridge. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.

Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder --- and must bring his skills to bear to uncover what actually happened that night on the Nihonbashi Bridge. What, if any, connection is there between the murdered man and Yashima, the young man caught with his wallet? Kaga's investigation takes him down dark roads and into the unknown past to uncover what really happened and why.

A DEATH IN TOKYO is another mind-bending mystery from the modern master of classic crime, finalist for both an Edgar Award and a CWA Dagger, the internationally bestselling Keigo Higashino.

Audiobook available, read by P.J. Ochlan