Amber Bryant and Tyler Hicks have been best friends since they were teenagers, trusting and depending on each other through some of the darkest periods of their young lives. And while Amber has always felt that their relationship is strictly platonic, Tyler has long harbored the secret desire that they might one day become more than friends. Returning home for the summer after her college graduation, Amber begins spending more time with Tyler than she has in years. Despite the fact that Amber is engaged to her college sweetheart, a flirtation begins to grow between them. One night, fueled by alcohol and concerns about whether she’s getting married too young, Amber kisses Tyler. What happens next will change them forever.
Having been abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as an infant, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony assumed all his life that his mother had simply given him up. But when he receives an anonymous note suggesting that foul play may have led to his mother’s disappearance, he sees only one option: to return to the rural Irish village where he was born and find out what really happened 26 years ago. Determined to uncover the truth, Mahony solicits the help of brash anarchist and retired theater actress Mrs. Cauley. This improbable duo concocts an ingenious plan to get the town talking about the day Mahony's mother disappeared and are aided and abetted by a cast of eccentric characters, both living and dead.
She was a forgotten girl, a runaway found murdered on the High Line train through the northern Rocky Mountains and, with little local interest, put into a dead file. But she was not alone. When Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint FBI-BCA violent crime force stumble upon the case, they discover a horror far greater than anyone expected --- a string of murders on the High Line, all of them young female drifters whom no one would notice. But someone has noticed now. Through the bleak midwinter and a frontier land of forbidding geography, Stevens and Windermere follow a frustratingly light trail of clues --- and where it ends, even they will be shocked.
A masked man with a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, and Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, where she cowers face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow. The minutes tick by inexorably, and Meredith lurches between comforting the sobbing Lisa and imagining her own impending death. Then the man orders Lisa to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith the girl left behind. After Lisa’s abduction, Meredith spends most days in her room. As the community stages vigils and searches, Claire, Meredith’s mother, is torn between relief that her daughter is alive, and helplessness over her inability to protect or even comfort her child. Her daughter is here, but not.
When Rina Decker stumbles upon human remains once buried deep beneath the forest grounds, she calls her husband, Peter, who works for the local Greenbury Police. As Decker and his partner, Tyler McAdams, further investigate, they realize that they’re most likely dealing with a missing student from the nearby Five Colleges of Upstate, which is where Rina works. Short-staffed and with no convenient entry into the colleges, Decker enlists Rina’s help to act as the eyes and ears of campus gossip. Winding their way through a dangerous labyrinth of steely suspects and untouchable academics, Decker, McAdams and Rina race to protect their community from a psychopathic killer still in the area --- and on the hunt for a fresh victim.
When radio personality Gail Gideon’s husband announced that he wanted a divorce, her ensuing on-air rant propelled her local radio show into the national spotlight. But fame comes at a price. After all, what does a woman who has staked her career on being single do when she finds herself falling in love? And is the person who is harassing her a misguided fan or a true danger to Gail and her daughter, Nic? Plagued by a fear of social situations, 14-year-old Nic is most comfortable at the stable where she spends her afternoons. But when a riding accident lands Nic in the hospital, she awakens from her coma changed. She suddenly has no fear at all, and her disconcerting behavior lands her in one risky situation after another.
To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than 20 years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the 20th century.
Leah Carroll's mother, a gifted amateur photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was four years old. Her father, a charming alcoholic who hurtled between depression and mania, was dead by the time she was 18. Why did her mother have to die? Why did the man who killed her receive such a light sentence? What darkness did Leah inherit from her parents? Leah was left to put together her own future. Now, in her memoir, she explores the mystery of her parents' lives, through interviews, photos and police records.
FBI Special Agents Nicholas Drummond and Michaela Caine are the government’s Covert Eyes --- leading a top-notch handpicked team of agents to tackle crimes and criminals both international and deadly. But their first case threatens their fledgling team when the Fox calls from Venice asking for help. Kitsune has stolen an incredible artifact from the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, and now the client wants her dead. She has a warning for Nick and Mike: she’s overheard talk that a devastating Gobi desert sandstorm that’s killed thousands in Beijing isn’t a natural phenomenon, but rather is produced by man. The Covert Eyes team heads to Venice, Italy, to find out the truth.
Students at Webster College begin the fall semester with an outdoor encampment around "The Stump" --- a traditional campus gathering place for generations of student activists --- to protest a popular professor's denial of tenure. A former student radical herself, Naomi Roth, the college’s first female president, admires the protestors' passion, especially when her own daughter, Hannah, joins their ranks. Then Omar Khayal, a charismatic Palestinian student with a devastating personal history, emerges as the group's leader, and the demonstration begins to consume Naomi's life. As the crisis slips beyond her control, Naomi must take increasingly desperate measures to protect her friends, colleagues and family from an unknowable adversary.
We have listed 12 of Carol’s Bookreporter.com Bets On picks that are now or soon to be in paperback. Which of these books have you read or do you plan to read? Please check all that apply.
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Coming Soon
Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.
August's Books on Screen roundup includes the films The Thursday Murder Club, My Oxford Year and Night Always Comes on Netflix, the Providence Falls trilogy on Hallmark, The Map That Leads to You on Prime Video, and She Rides Shotgun in theaters; the series premieres of "Outlander: Blood of My Blood" on STARZ and "The Terminal List: Dark Wolf" on Prime Video; the season premieres of "The Marlow Murder Club" on PBS "Masterpiece" and "My Life with the Walter Boys" on Netflix; the conclusion of MGM+'s "The Institute"; the season finales of HBO Max's "And Just Like That..." and AMC's "Nautilus"; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of The King of Kings and How to Train Your Dragon.