Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect --- Jack. Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.
Cinnamon Haynes has fought hard for a life she never thought was possible. Her life’s mantra is to be good, quiet and grateful. Until something shifts, and Cinnamon is suddenly haunted by a terrifying question: “Is this all there is?” Daisy Dunlap has had her own share of problems in her 19 years on earth. Her hopes for her future are threatened when she gets unexpectedly pregnant. She hides this development from everyone close to her and then makes a drastic decision with devastating consequences. When Cinnamon finds an abandoned baby in a park and takes the newborn into her home, the ripple effects of this decision risk exposing the truth about Cinnamon’s own past, which she has gone to great pains to portray as idyllic to everyone…even herself.
Jess is a senior in college, ambitious but aimless, when she meets Josh. He’s a privileged preppy in chinos, ready to inherit the world. She’s not expecting to inherit anything. A year later, they’re both working at the same investment bank. And when Jess finds herself the sole Black woman on the floor, overlooked and underestimated, Josh shows up for her in surprising --- if imperfect --- ways. Before long, an unlikely friendship forms. It gradually, and then suddenly, turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both. Despite their differences, the force of their attraction propels the relationship forward. But as the cultural and political landscape shifts underneath them, Jess is forced to consider if their disagreements run deeper than she can bear, what she’s willing to compromise for love, and if, in fact, everything’s fine.
Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change. When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life --- her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves. When a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it. When the war finally ends, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble --- and Juliette nowhere to be found.
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine. Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom. But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife --- embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.
In 1872, 16-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend; makes a lifelong enemy; and, despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters 40 Nakota. Mary sees the murderers take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, she takes two guns, creeps into the fort and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.
People-pleasing Hope Robinson can’t seem to please anyone lately --- not her slogan-spewing boss, not her pink-haired teenage daughter, and especially not her mother, flamboyant soap star Olivia Grant. Olivia loves Elvis more than Jesus, and now that she’s on oxygen, she insists that Hope take her on a final trip to Graceland. Eighteen years earlier, pregnant and distraught, Hope fled Tennessee with a secret agreement: to never reveal her baby’s father and never return to Memphis. Olivia, though, has never learned the word no. After she wrangles Hope’s impulsive daughter, Dylan, to drive her from Boston to Memphis with the promise of meeting her mystery father, Hope has no choice but to chase after them. Along the road to Memphis, everyone’s long-held secrets begin to unravel.
In 1960, a young cop is murdered, shocking his close-knit community in Stamford, Connecticut. The killer remains at large, his identity still unknown. But on a beach not far away, a young Army doctor faces a chilling realization. He knows who the shooter is. In fact, the man --- a prisoner out on parole --- had called him only days before. By helping his former charge and trainee, the doctor may have inadvertently helped set the murder into motion. Alvin Tarlov, David Troy and Joseph DeSalvo were all born of the Great Depression, all with grandparents who had left different homelands for the same American Dream. How did one become a doctor, one a cop and one a convict? Journalist Lisa Belkin traces the paths of each of these three men --- one of them her stepfather.
When a years-long case against a powerful mobster finally cracks and an unimpeachable witness takes the stand, federal prosecutor Nora Carleton is looking forward to putting the defendant away for good. The mobster, though, has other plans. As the witness’s testimony concludes, a note is passed to the prosecution offering up information into the assassination of a disgraced former New York governor, murdered in his penthouse apartment just days before. It’s enough to blow the case wide open, and to send Nora into a high-stakes investigation of conspiracy, corruption and danger.
Denied a dog, a baby and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. In BLUE SKIES, T.C. Boyle transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family is struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.
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.