When Eva and Jonathan hook up on the sleeper train from Florence to Paris, they think they’ll never see each other again. Which is too bad, because neither has ever felt a spark like this for another person. But love isn’t on the agenda in their line of work. Six months later, they run into each other in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. This encounter is not by chance, because Eva has been hired to kill Jonathan. She’s a contract killer, but what she doesn’t know is that he is too. Their meeting kicks off a high-stakes adventure across Western Europe. There will be tourism. There will be bodies. Eva and Jonathan might even fall for each other. As the two get closer to completing their assignments, it becomes clear that they are also being hunted --- by something even more dangerous than love.
Cassidy Foster is heartbroken, stuck in life and getting a little too obsessed with plants. Then, when a well-connected friend becomes sick of Cassidy’s moping and gets her a gig with famous Hollywood couple Marisol and Nate Sterling, Cassidy jumps at the chance to move to sunny LA. All she has to do is be available a few hours a week for errands. In return, she has access to luxury. When Nate takes interest in her, asking her to read scripts he’s written, Cassidy thinks this could be the key to kickstarting her writing dreams. As their business relationship grows, so does their attraction. But Cassidy learns she was hired for a different purpose. The Sterlings aren’t the perfect couple. Marisol isn’t the perfect wife. And when one of them is found dead, Cassidy becomes the perfect suspect.
When a very public breakup becomes a PR nightmare for Ian Chase's hockey team, he hopes to focus on his game. With his career and the team’s image in jeopardy, Ian is surprised to find a solution through none other than Delilah Baker, his best friend and teammate's sister. Delilah is known as “the darling of baking” on her local cable show. But with her numbers dwindling, she offers up the half-baked idea to collaborate with her brother’s team to entice the hockey fans of Boston to tune in to her show. Delilah thinks it will be a piece of cake --- until the team sends Ian Chase, her brother’s best friend and the object of a decade-long crush that she’s never quite gotten over. With more than just their careers on thin ice, the line between what’s real and what’s for show begins to blur.
If she wasn’t dead already, Delphie would be dying of embarrassment. Not only did she just die by choking on a microwaveable burger, but now she’s standing in her ‘shine like a star’ nightie in front of the hottest man she’s ever seen. And he’s smiling at her. As they start to chat, everything else becomes background noise. That is until someone comes running out of a door, yelling something about a huge mistake, and sends the dreamy stranger back down to earth. And here Delphie was thinking her luck might be different in the afterlife. When Delphie is offered a deal in which she can return to earth and reconnect with the mysterious man, she jumps at the opportunity to find her possible soulmate and a fresh start. But in a city of millions, Delphie is going to have to listen to her heart, learn to ask for help, and perhaps even see the magic in the life she’s leaving behind.
Welcome to the Northwestern Hemisphere, 2529. An equally exciting and terrifying world born from the ashes of our own, where almost half of the people are born invisible, and thus relegated to second-class citizenship. Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life, from excelling in school to landing a highly sought-after apprenticeship with a mysterious, powerful inventor. But all she has fought so hard to earn comes crashing down when she learns that her missing brother, whom she had presumed dead, is not only alive and well but also the primary suspect of a high-profile political murder. Armed with nothing more than courage, intellect and unwavering love for her brother, Sweetmint sets off on the mission of a lifetime: to find her brother before it’s too late.
Leo Balanoff is a crusading attorney with unthinkable skeletons in his closet. He's also a diagnosed pathological liar. When a predatory gangster with a long list of victims is found dead and Leo’s fingerprints show up on the murder weapon, no one believes a word he says in his defense. But he might be the FBI’s only shot at taking down the gangster's even more lethal boss. Risk his life going undercover for the feds, or head straight to prison for murder? Leo accepts the FBI’s offer --- but it comes with a price, including a collision course with his ex, Andi Piotrowski, a former cop and "the one who got away." Anyone else forced to walk this tightrope between an ambitious FBI agent and a cruel, calculating crime boss would fail. But this isn't Leo's first balancing act, and he still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
When a desperate stranger in Zurich asks for Jason Bourne's help, she calls him by the name David Webb, which is the identity he left behind years ago to become Jason Bourne. This woman tells him an incredible story --- that her sister disappeared with David’s help after the deaths of four terrorists in the mountains. Now men from this same extremist group are trying to hunt her down. Bourne remembers none of it, but when the Swiss bistro erupts in violence, he finds himself on the run, chasing the ghosts of his very first Treadstone mission. Operating on pure instinct, Bourne plunges into a maelstrom unlike any he’s ever experienced, hoping to rescue a woman he once loved. He soon discovers that no one in this world of shadows can be trusted --- and everything he’s been told about his past is a lie.
In her debut short story collection, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye. The stories --- which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny --- will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’ characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health and innocence.
A violent storm washes a mysterious house onto a rural Pacific Northwest beach, stopping the heart of the only woman who knows what it means. Her grandson, Simon Culpepper, vanishes in the aftermath, leaving two of his childhood friends to comb the small, isolated island for answers. But decades have passed since Melissa and Leo were close, if they were ever close at all. Now they'll have to put aside old rivalries and grudges if they want to find or save the man who brought them together in the first place. And on the way they'll learn a great deal about the sinister house on the beach, the man who built it, and the evil he's bringing back to Marrowstone Island.
Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind. So when news arrives that her paternal grandmother has passed, she decides it's time to head South. What she finds is a family in turmoil, a long-standing grudge intact, a lost mac and cheese recipe causing grief, and a family barbecue on the brink of disaster. Not willing to let her dreams of family slip away, Mae steps up to throw a barbecue everyone will remember. For better or for worse.
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.
July's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of "Ballard" on Prime Video, "Dexter: Resurrection" on Paramount+ with Showtime, "The Institute" on MGM+, "Washington Black" on Hulu, and "The Hunting Wives" on Netflix; the season premieres of Apple TV+'s "Foundation" and Prime Video's "The Summer I Turned Pretty"; the season finales of "Nine Perfect Strangers" on Hulu and "Sullivan's Crossing" on The CW; the films Jurassic World Rebirth, Superman, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Juliet & Romeo, The Amateur and The Actor.