Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware meets actress Zelda Chase when called upon to evaluate her five-year-old son, Ovid. Years later, he is unexpectedly reunited with Zelda when she is involuntarily committed after a bizarre psychotic episode. Shortly after her release, she is discovered dead on the grounds of a palatial Bel Air estate. Alex turns to his friend, LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, for help in finding out who ended Zelda’s broken life. At the same time, he is caught up in another quest: the search for her missing son. And when other victims vanish from the same upscale neighborhood, worry turns to terror.
Rebecca Wright has found her way out of grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the Internet dating site where she first met her husband. However, she has a persistent, strange sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter. Her husband Philip's decade-long dedication to the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you do not call a "time machine") has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or imagines.
He was once the kingpin's fixer, but after betraying him, Ulf is now the one his former boss wants fixed. Hiding out at the end of the line in northern Norway, Ulf lives among the locals. A mother and son befriend him, and their companionship stirs something deep in him that he thought was long dead. As he awaits the inevitable arrival of his murderous pursuers, he questions if redemption is at all possible or if, as he's always believed, “hope is a real bastard.”
In INTERIOR DARKNESS, Peter Straub explores the deepest, shadow-filled corners of his imagination. His world is made up of damaged people --- from the righteous to the depraved, from the working class to the wealthy. No one and no place is safe from the darkness that he reveals. In “Blue Rose,” an adolescent sociopath inflicts secret violence on his younger brother; in “Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff,” a stern estate lawyer hires a pair of "Private Detectives Extraordinaire" to investigate and seek revenge on his unfaithful wife; and in “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine,” a man and his much younger lover explore their decadent and increasingly sinister fantasies aboard a luxurious yacht on the remotest stretch of the Amazon River.
In Cold War England, Professor Henry Lytten, having renounced a career in espionage, is writing a fantasy novel that dares to imagine a world less fraught than his own. He finds an unlikely confidante in Rosie, an inquisitive young neighbor who stumbles through a doorway in his cellar and into a stunning and unfamiliar bucolic landscape. There she meets a young boy named Jay, who is about to embark on a journey that will change both their lives. Elsewhere, in a distopian society where progress is controlled by a corrupt ruling elite, the brilliant scientist Angela Meerson has discovered the potential of a powerful new machine. When the authorities come knocking, she will make an important decision --- one that will reverberate through all these different lives and worlds.
On a post-college visit to Florence, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri fell in love with the Italian language. Twenty years later, seeking total immersion, she and her family relocated to Rome, where she began to read and write solely in her adopted tongue. A startling act of self-reflection, IN OTHER WORDS is Lahiri’s meditation on the process of learning to express herself in another language --- and the stunning journey of a writer seeking a new voice.
It is Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s. Abraham Lincoln is a circuit-riding lawyer, a member of the state legislature, a man of almost ungovernable ambition. To his friends he is also a beloved figure, by turns charmingly awkward and mesmerizingly self-possessed. Among his friends and political colleagues are Joshua Speed, William Herndon, Stephen Douglas and many others who have come to the exploding frontier town of Springfield to find their futures. It is through another friend, fictional poet Cage Weatherby, that we will come to know Lincoln in his 20s and 30s, as a series of formative, surprising incidents unfolds.
In 1938, 28-year-old Pauli Murray wrote a letter to the President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, protesting racial segregation in the South. Eleanor wrote back. So began a friendship that would last for a quarter of a century, as Pauli became a lawyer, principal strategist in the fight to protect Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a co-founder of the National Organization of Women, and Eleanor became a diplomat and first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Elsie has a tumultuous relationship with an abusive boyfriend, a dead-end job at a newspaper, and a sharp intelligence that’s constantly at odds with her many bad decisions. When her initial attempts to improve her life go awry, Elsie decides that a dramatic change is the only solution. So she travels to Paris and Sri Lanka, hoping to accumulate experiences, create connections, and discover a new way to live. Along the way, she meets men and women who challenge and provoke her towards the change she genuinely hopes to find. But in the end, she must still come face-to-face with herself.
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams --- invasive images of blood and brutality --- torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her.
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
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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.