Skip to main content

Joyce Maynard Event

Links to https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DbiE089BS6SaM4FFaKUaBA.

September 27, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of September 26th and October 3rd 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 Carol Fitzgerald's two latest Bookreporter.com Bets On picks. DAISY DARKER is a delightfully twisty and atmospheric locked-room mystery from Alice Feeney in which a family reunion leads to murder. And in THE REAL MRS. TOBIAS, Sally Koslow writes about the deeply complicated relationships between mothers- and daughters-in-law, told through three women who marry into the same family.

Read More

Candice Carty-Williams, author of People Person

Dimple Pennington knows of her half siblings, but she doesn’t really know them. Five people who don’t have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad’s gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. Dimple has bigger things to think about. She’s 30, and her life isn’t really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple’s life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she’s never felt more alone in her life. That is, until a dramatic event brings her half siblings crashing back into her life. And when they’re all forced to reconnect with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things get even more complicated.

Read more »

Karen Robards, author of The Girl from Guernica

On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them. As war begins to rage across Europe, Sibi joins the underground resistance, secretly exchanging information with Griff. But as the scope of Germany’s ambitions becomes clear, maintaining the facade of a Nazi sympathizer becomes ever more difficult.

Read more »

Robert Harris, author of Act of Oblivion

1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law, Colonel William Goffe, board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I --- a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control. But now, 10 years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the 59 men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.

Read more »

Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Matchmaker's Gift

Even as a child in 1910, Sara Glikman knows her gift: she is a maker of matches and a seeker of soulmates. But among the pushcart-crowded streets of New York’s Lower East Side, Sara’s vocation is dominated by devout older men --- men who see a talented female matchmaker as a dangerous threat to their traditions and livelihood. After making matches in secret for more than a decade, Sara must fight to take her rightful place among her peers. Two generations later, Sara’s granddaughter, Abby, is a successful Manhattan divorce attorney. When her beloved Grandma Sara dies, Abby inherits her collection of handwritten journals recording the details of Sara’s matches. But among the faded volumes, Abby finds more questions than answers.

Read more »

J. D. Robb, author of Desperation in Death

New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a 13-year-old runaway, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Unfortunately, they didn’t get away fast enough. Now Dorian is injured, terrified and wandering the streets of New York, and Mina lies dead near the waterfront while Lt. Eve Dallas looks over the scene. Mina’s expensive, elegant clothes and beauty products convince Dallas that she was being groomed, literally and figuratively, for sex trafficking --- and that whoever is investing in this high-overhead operation expects windfall profits.

Read more »

Elizabeth Strout, author of Lucy by the Sea

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart --- the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

Read more »

September 23, 2022

Today is the first FULL day of fall, and here it’s been a textbook fall day with beautiful blue skies. Well, maybe it could have had a bit less wind. For all those who are ready to write, “Carol, fall started yesterday,” Victoria on our team told me today that since it started at 9pm last night, today is the first full day. Semantics!

After the brutal heat of the summer, the garden is looking better than ever. I have been cutting flowers to make small arrangements of dahlias and zinnias. The rudbeckias and zinnias have the pop of color that I love. This is the first year that I am resisting buying the plants that are labeled Fall, namely more rudbeckias and mums. I typically put mums in baskets on the front porch and then forget to water them. And they die. I am hoping that the frost holds off for at least a month. Fingers and clippers crossed. Of course, we could go the route we went last year, draping the plants at the first sign of frost. It looks really artistic. With the weather cooling, my pool days are numbered, so I am back to reading on my recumbent bike.

Read More

Editorial Content for Daphne

Book

Daphne

Contributors

Ray Palen

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

There are few horror authors working today who possess the imagination and intensity of Josh Malerman. For those who have yet to discover him, his latest release is a great place to start and will no doubt have you scrambling to read everything he has written. DAPHNE is an admitted love letter to both the game of basketball and classic horror stories --- Malerman’s two great loves --- and the resulting hybrid is a haunting novel that is impossible to put down or shake once you have turned the final page. Read More

Teaser

It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that she is still out there and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and she begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real…and fears that her own mind is conjuring the killer.

Promo

It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that she is still out there and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and she begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real…and fears that her own mind is conjuring the killer.

About the Book

Horror has a new name: Daphne. A brutal, enigmatic woman stalks a high school basketball team in a reimagining of the slasher genre by the New York Times bestselling author of BIRD BOX.

It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins.

But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that she is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her.

After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and she begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real...and fears that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears --- before the summer of her lifetime becomes the last summer of her life.

Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, DAPHNE is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it.

Audiobook available, read by Patricia Santomasso