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Sneak Peek: An Early Look at an Upcoming Book

At Bookreporter.com, we have the opportunity to read many great books well in advance of their release dates. Now, with our Sneak Peek Feature/Contest, we are offering our readers the chance to preview select early picks --- and share feedback on them. We know that readers champion books that they love, and we want you to be part of the excitement of upcoming releases as early as possible.

The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict

Hedy Kiesler is lucky. Her beauty leads to a starring role in a controversial film and marriage to a powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. But Hedy is also intelligent. At lavish Vienna dinner parties, she overhears the Third Reich's plans. One night in 1937, desperate to escape her controlling husband and the rise of the Nazis, she disguises herself and flees her husband's castle. She lands in Hollywood, where she becomes Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But Hedy is keeping a secret even more shocking than her Jewish heritage: she is a scientist. She has an idea that might help the country and that might ease her guilt for escaping alone --- if anyone will listen to her.

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Make Me Even and I'll Never Gamble Again by Jerrold Fine

Rogers Stout has the gambler’s gifts --- a titanic brain, an uncanny ability to read people, and a risk-taker’s daring. As an apathetic high school student who loves baseball but lacks a 90-mph fastball, he knows that the game does not begin until the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. But his life needs direction. Everything changes the summer he is invited into the boisterous environment of an investment bank’s trading room, and to a gambling hall dive where he immediately wins big at poker, capturing the attention of his co-workers with his card-playing skills.

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The Devil's Reward by Emmanuelle de Villepin

Christiane, 86 years old with a vibrant sense of humor, lives alone in a large apartment in the heart of Paris. Her daughter, Catherine, is her total opposite: sullen and uptight, filled with resentment toward her unfaithful Milanese husband. After discovering yet another affair, Catherine takes refuge in Paris at her mother’s home, accompanied by her own daughter, Luna. Christiane --- who, in spite of occasional dalliances on both sides, lived a beautiful love story with her late husband --- uses all of her freethinking charm in an effort to change Catherine’s rigid, self-pitying attitude.

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Secrets of the Tulip Sisters by Susan Mallery

Kelly Murphy's life as a tulip farmer is pretty routine, but everything changes one sun-washed summer with two dramatic homecomings: Griffith Burnett --- Tulpen Crossing's prodigal son, who has set his sights on Kelly --- and Olivia, her beautiful, wayward and unwelcome sister. Tempted by Griffith, annoyed by Olivia, Kelly is overwhelmed by the secrets that were so easy to keep when she was alone. But Olivia's return isn't as triumphant as she pretends, and she feels cut off from her past. She's determined to reclaim her man and her place in the family…whether her sister likes it or not. While Kelly and Olivia butt heads, their secrets tumble out in a big hot mess, revealing some truths that will change everything they thought they knew.

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The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive --- until they begin to fall mysteriously ill. But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come.

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I Found You by Lisa Jewell

In a British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside. Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, 21-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed. Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. Their annual trip to the quaint seaside town is passing by uneventfully, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable --- and it’s not just that he’s playing the role of protective older brother.

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The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

In 1896, the extraordinarily gifted Mileva “Mitza” Maric is the only woman studying physics at an elite school in Zürich. For her, math seems like an easier path than marriage, until she falls in love with fellow student Albert Einstein. Charismatic and brilliant, Albert promises to treat her as an equal in both love and science. But as Albert’s fame grows, is there room for more than one genius in a marriage? This is the untold story of Albert’s first wife, a brilliant scientist in her own right, whose contributions to the special theory of relativity have been hotly debated.

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The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick

Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. But on the one-year anniversary of his wife Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met --- a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.

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The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian

When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother’s bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night. In the aftermath, Kristin and Richard’s life rapidly spirals into nightmare.

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House of Thieves by Charles Belfoure

John Cross only cares about two things: becoming the most prominent society architect in New York and upholding his family’s spotless reputation. His entire life changes the day he discovers that his oldest son, George, has racked up an unfathomable gambling debt to Kent, the city’s most notorious criminal mastermind. Desperate to save his son’s life and uphold his family’s good name, he uses his architectural knowledge to help Kent and his gang of thieves pillage the homes of his friends and clients until the debt is paid in full.

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