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May 17, 2022

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, May 18th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of BEACH HOUSE SUMMER by Sarah Morgan, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Ann Hood, author of Fly Girl: A Memoir

In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamour and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world, Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation. In the air, Hood found both the adventure she’d dreamt of and the unexpected realities of life on the job. As the airline industry changed around her, she began to write --- even drafting snatches of her first novel from the jump-seat. She reveals how the job empowered her, despite its roots in sexist standards.

Kirsten Miller, author of The Change

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment. After Nessa James’ husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead. On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. But her life is far from over --- in fact, she has undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis. Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent 30 long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw --- until she realizes she has the ability to channel them.

Sarah McCoy, author of Mustique Island

Tucked into the southernmost curve of the Caribbean, Mustique is a private island that has become a haven for the wealthy and privileged. Its owner is the eccentric British playboy Colin Tennant, who is determined to turn this speck of white sand into a luxurious neo-colonial retreat for his rich friends and into a royal court in exile for the Queen’s rebellious sister, Princess Margaret. Willy May Michael, a former beauty queen from Texas, seeks out Mustique for its peaceful isolation. Determined to rebuild her life and her relationships with her two daughters, she constructs a fanciful white beach house across the island from Princess Margaret. But when Willy May’s daughters arrive, they discover that beneath its veneer of decadence, Mustique has a dark side.

Chris Bohjalian, author of The Lioness

Tanzania, 1964. When A-list actress Katie Barstow and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision paradise. Their glamorous guests expect civilized adventure: fresh ice from the kerosene-powered ice maker, dinners of cooked gazelle meat, and plenty of stories to tell over lunch back on Rodeo Drive. What Katie and her glittering entourage do not expect is this: a kidnapping gone wrong, their guides bleeding out in the dirt, and a team of Russian mercenaries herding their hostages into Land Rovers, guns to their heads. As the powerful sun gives way to night, the gunmen shove them into abandoned huts, and Katie prays for a simple thing: to see the sun rise one more time.

Jennifer Weiner, author of The Summer Place

When her 22-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market. But when the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light. There are confrontations and revelations that will touch each member of the extended family, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same.

Editorial Content for 22 Seconds

Book

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Roz Shea

California already had the strictest gun laws in the country, but now they have been tightened further. There are broadened bans on more semi-automatic weapons, along with stricter registration and sales requirements. Suppressors or clips holding more than 10 rounds are now illegal. “Ghost guns” have been banned. And ALL firearms are required to have GPS so they can be tracked by law enforcement. If you possess any of these weapons, you could be arrested and jailed. A national resistance movement is mobilizing. Read More

Teaser

SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer has guns on her mind. There’s buzz of a last-ditch shipment of drugs and weapons crossing the Mexican border ahead of new restrictive gun laws. Before Lindsay can act, her top informant tips her to a case that hits disturbingly close to home. Former cops. Professional hits. All with the same warning scrawled on their bodies: You talk, you die. Now it’s Lindsay’s turn to choose.

Promo

SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer has guns on her mind. There’s buzz of a last-ditch shipment of drugs and weapons crossing the Mexican border ahead of new restrictive gun laws. Before Lindsay can act, her top informant tips her to a case that hits disturbingly close to home. Former cops. Professional hits. All with the same warning scrawled on their bodies: You talk, you die. Now it’s Lindsay’s turn to choose.

About the Book

Twenty-two seconds...until Lindsay Boxer loses her badge --- or her life.

SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer has guns on her mind.

There’s buzz of a last-ditch shipment of drugs and weapons crossing the Mexican border ahead of new restrictive gun laws. Before Lindsay can act, her top informant tips her to a case that hits disturbingly close to home.

Former cops. Professional hits. All with the same warning scrawled on their bodies:

You talk, you die.

Now it’s Lindsay’s turn to choose.

Audiobook available, read by January LaVoy

Editorial Content for I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

When I reviewed Jessi Klein’s previous essay collection, YOU’LL GROW OUT OF IT, I said that, for readers, her essays felt like “sitting down for a good gabfest with their funniest girlfriend.” If that’s the case, then I’LL SHOW MYSELF OUT feels like a reunion with the kind of friend who can comfortably pick up a conversation even if it’s been ages since you talked. Read More

Teaser

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies and possibilities of midlife. In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments and bittersweetness.

Promo

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies and possibilities of midlife. In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments and bittersweetness.

About the Book

An instant New York Times bestseller, I'LL SHOW MYSELF OUT is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT.

“Sometimes I think about how much bad news there is to tell my kid, the endlessly long, looping CVS receipt scroll of truly terrible things that have happened, and I want to get under the bed and never come out. How do we tell them about all this? Can we just play Billy Joel’s "We Didn’t Start the Fire" and then brace for questions? The first of which should be, how is this a song that played on the radio?”

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies and possibilities of midlife. 

In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet,” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments and bittersweetness.

Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I'LL SHOW MYSELF OUT is an incisive, moving and often uproarious collection.

Audiobook available, read by Jessi Klein

Editorial Content for The Ravaged

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Norman Reedus may have gained cult status as an actor in films like The Boondock Saints, but he has elevated himself to global supernova status for playing Daryl Dixon in the long-running series “The Walking Dead.” Read More

Teaser

Jack spent his life amassing wealth, but after losing his family, he has no one to share it with. Alone with his demons and a backpack, he heads to South America, where people with nothing teach him what matters. After thrashing his dog-abusing boss, Hunter learns of his father's death in a mysterious fire. Biker buddies Nugget and Itch ride with him from North Carolina to California. Stories from his father's life help ease the struggles of small-town Americans. Hunter discovers a secret past. Seventeen-year-old Anne flees Tennessee after her older brother attacks her. She whacks him with a skillet and hops a freight to Alabama with her best friend. Living hand to mouth, they build friendships, uncovering something they never had: family.

Promo

Jack spent his life amassing wealth, but after losing his family, he has no one to share it with. Alone with his demons and a backpack, he heads to South America, where people with nothing teach him what matters. After thrashing his dog-abusing boss, Hunter learns of his father's death in a mysterious fire. Biker buddies Nugget and Itch ride with him from North Carolina to California. Stories from his father's life help ease the struggles of small-town Americans. Hunter discovers a secret past. Seventeen-year-old Anne flees Tennessee after her older brother attacks her. She whacks him with a skillet and hops a freight to Alabama with her best friend. Living hand to mouth, they build friendships, uncovering something they never had: family.

About the Book

The highly anticipated debut novel from Norman Reedus, acclaimed star of "The Walking Dead."

Jack's dying mother told him, "Run and never look back." He spent his life amassing wealth, but after losing his family, he has no one to share it with. Alone with his demons and a backpack, he heads to South America, where people with nothing teach him what matters.

After thrashing his dog-abusing boss, Hunter learns of his father's death in a mysterious fire. Biker buddies Nugget and Itch ride with him from North Carolina to California. Stories from his father's life help ease the struggles of small-town Americans. Hunter discovers a secret past.

Seventeen-year-old Anne flees Tennessee after her older brother attacks her. She whacks him with a skillet and hops a freight to Alabama with her best friend. Living hand to mouth, they build friendships, uncovering something they never had: family.

THE RAVAGED is a fast-paced, up-in-your-face novel of gritty realism, exploring three different personal quests with eerily parallel outcomes.

Audiobook available, read by Norman Reedus

Editorial Content for The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

Just about the only thing more marvelous than spending time in the great outdoors is reading Sy Montgomery’s writing about the natural world. In dozens of books for adults and children, Montgomery effectively channels her curiosity, knowledge, and deep affection and respect for animals of all kinds. In her latest book, THE HAWK’S WAY, she turns her attention to some of the most mysterious creatures of all: hawks and other raptors. Read More

Teaser

When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone, yet she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on her leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell. Over the next few years, she spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts.

Promo

When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone, yet she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on her leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell. Over the next few years, she spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts.

About the Book

A splendid and luminous celebration of one of nature’s most perfect and mysterious creatures --- the hawk --- from the New York Times bestselling author of the “astoundingly beautiful” (NPR) THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS.

When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone, yet she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell. 

Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. In this mesmerizing account, featuring 16 pages of gorgeous color photographs, Sy passionately and vividly reveals the wonderous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life and love.

Audiobook available, read by Sy Montgomery