A village hall, a primary school play, a beautiful Lake District town in England. Into this idyllic scene steps a lone gunman whose actions set off a train of events that will have devastating consequences for the close-knit community of Stonesmere. In the weeks following the cataclysm, conspiracy theorists start questioning what happened. Two young people find themselves at the epicenter of the uproar: Marty, the town’s golden girl and daughter of a teacher killed that day, and Trent, whose memories of his brief time trying to fit into Stonesmere fuel his attachment to the conspiracies. But what really happened at the Day One assembly? What secrets is Marty keeping, and what blindspots does Trent miss? In this world where news travels fast, and videos and gossip travel faster, how does a community move forward together?
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in HEADSHOT has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination and force of will required to win.
Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, plan a trip to Atlantic City. But odds are it won’t be all fun and games --- seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark; save Vero’s childhood crush, Javi, from a kidnapper, Marco; and hunt down a stolen car. When they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for: Marco is already dead. They don’t know who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive. Will Finlay fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, was especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA. But now the phenomenally huge hit true-crime podcast "Listen for the Lie" and its too-good-looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it.
Marshall Miller would’ve remembered her face even if he hadn’t seen it on a MISSING poster. When a young woman goes missing in his small town, the investigation hinges on Marshall’s haunted sighting of her, crying in the back seat of a police car driven by a cop named Maddox. There’s only one problem: no local cop named Maddox exists. But the speeding ticket he handed to Marshall certainly does. Dealing with police and media is heady stuff for a teenager, the son of a single mother, but Marshall is sure he can handle it, until the shocking day when his reliability as a witness implodes. Now scorned and shamed, he finds unlikely allies as he confronts the ancient secrets behind his small town’s peaceful façade --- and learns the truth about his own family.
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect plan: If you kill for me, I’ll kill for you. In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?
Deep beneath the ground outside of Geneva, where CERN’s Large Hadron Collider smashes subatomic particles at breathtaking speeds, a shocking discovery is made when the tunnel is down for maintenance: the body of Howard Anderby, a brilliant and recently arrived young physicist. But security shows no evidence of him entering the tunnel. Eager to keep the death under wraps until more is known, CERN brings in private investigator Sabine Leroux, who has her own ties to the lab’s administration --- and more than a passing interest in particle physics. Meanwhile, Howard’s colleague and budding love interest Eve, shattered by his death, determines to reconcile what she knew of Howard with his gruesome fate.
When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister, he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself.
It's the 1960s, and Lorraine Delford has it all --- an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend and a white picket fence home in North Carolina. Yet every time she looks through her father's telescope, she dreams of the stars. It's ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional. But when this darling girl-next-door gets pregnant, she's forced to learn firsthand the realities that keep women grounded. To hide their daughter's secret shame, the Delfords send Lorraine to a maternity home for wayward girls. But this is no safe haven --- it's a house with dark secrets and suffocating rules. And as Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she can fight against the powers that aim to take her child or submit to the rules of a society she once admired.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc doesn’t know that her life is about to be upended. Her ex, Melac, has been hounding her to move their daughter, Chloé, to Brittany. Aimée has stopped answering his calls, which is why she doesn’t know he’s waiting for her by the Bassin de la Villette as she leaves a client’s office late one night. When she finds him, he has just been stabbed by an assailant, who knocks Aimée unconscious and plants the bloody knife in her hands. Now Aimée is in police custody, debilitated by a concussion, with overwhelming evidence pointing to her as Melac’s killer. In an attempt to figure out who the real culprit is, she goes deep into the underbelly of Paris’s 19th arrondissement, where she rubs shoulders with biker gangs, paranoid journalists, grieving parents and frustratingly tight-lipped ex-cops on her hunt for justice.
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 conclusion of "And Just Like That..." on HBO Max and "The Institute" on MGM+; 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; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of The King of Kings and How to Train Your Dragon.