Skip to main content

Week of April 2, 2018

New in Paperback

Week of April 2, 2018

Paperback releases for the week of April 2nd include THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE by Lisa See, a moving novel about tradition, tea farming, and the bonds between mothers and daughters; David Grann's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, a twisting, haunting, true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history; THE RULES DO NOT APPLY, a powerful memoir from Ariel Levy about the choices she makes in her search for adventure, meaning and love; I KNOW A SECRET by Tess Gerritsen, which finds Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles pursuing a shadowy psychopath who is keeping secrets and taking lives; and WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS, a rich and sweeping novel of courage, duty, sacrifice and love set during the French Revolution from Allison Pataki and her brother, Owen Pataki.

The Baker's Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan - Historical Fiction

April 3, 2018

On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on the Normandy coast of France, Emmanuelle is making the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Each day, Emma receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves --- contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope --- the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them.

Ballplayer by Chipper Jones with Carroll Rogers Walton - Sports/Memoir

April 3, 2018

Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame-worthy statistics during a 19-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small town Pierson, Florida. He grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad dreaming that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer. With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency.

Before I Let You Go by Kelly Rimmer - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Annie is a drug addict and a thief, and is in trouble again. Her sister Lexie has always helped her, but this time, she’s not just strung out --- she’s pregnant and in premature labor. If she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby and maybe even go to prison. But the alternative is unthinkable. As the weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancé only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters’ childhoods, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face.

Change Agent by Daniel Suarez - Science Fiction/Thriller

April 3, 2018

In 2045, Kenneth Durand leads Interpol’s most effective team against genetic crime, hunting down black market labs that perform "vanity edits" on human embryos for a price. These illegal procedures augment embryos in ways that are rapidly accelerating human evolution. Durand and his fellow Interpol agents discover that one figure looms behind it all: Marcus Demang Wyckes, leader of a powerful and sophisticated cartel known as the Huli jing. After being forcibly dosed with a radical new change agent, Durand wakes from a coma weeks later to find he’s been genetically transformed into someone else --- Wyckes. Now a fugitive, Durand is determined to restore his original DNA by locating the source of the mysterious change agent.

Chemistry by Weike Wang - Fiction

April 3, 2018

At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator of Weike Wang’s debut novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long, demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew.

The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse by Tom Verducci - Sports

April 3, 2018

It took 108 years, but it really happened: the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of THE YANKEE YEARS with Joe Torre, has full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball.

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka - Mystery/Thriller

April 3, 2018

When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched --- not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters --- Cameron, Jade and Russ --- must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth or both.

Golden Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel by John Sandford - Thriller

April 3, 2018

A Biloxi, Mississippi, drug-cartel counting house gets robbed, and suitcases full of cash disappear, leaving behind five bodies, including that of a six-year-old girl. Lucas Davenport --- who now works for the U.S. Marshals Service --- takes the case, which quickly spirals out of control, as cartel assassins, including a torturer known as the “Queen of home-improvement tools,” compete with Davenport to find the Dixie Hicks shooters who knocked over the counting house. Things get ugly really fast, and neither the cartel killers nor the holdup men give a damn about whose lives Davenport might have saved; to them, he’s just another large target.

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro - Memoir

April 3, 2018

HOURGLASS is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time --- abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning --- a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.

I Know a Secret: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen - Thriller

April 3, 2018

Two separate homicides, at different locations, with unrelated victims, have more in common than just being investigated by Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. In both cases, the bodies bear startling wounds, yet the actual cause of death is unknown. It’s a doubly challenging case for the cop and the coroner to be taking on. As Jane struggles to save her mother from the crumbling marriage that threatens to bury her, Maura grapples with the imminent death of her own mother --- infamous serial killer Amalthea Lank. While Jane tends to her mother, there’s nothing Maura can do for Amalthea, except endure one final battle of wills with the woman whose shadow has haunted her all her life.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann - True Crime/History

April 3, 2018

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. In KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, David Grann revisits these shocking crimes, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals.

The Lemonade Year by Amy Willoughby-Burle - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Nina's once-sweet life has unexpectedly turned sour. Her marriage is over, her job is in jeopardy, and her teenage daughter is slipping away from her. Then her father dies, and issues with Nina's mother come to a head; her estranged brother, Ray, comes home; and her sister, Lola, is tempted to blow a big family secret out of the water. All Nina has left is her final photography assignment: shooting images for the book 32 Ways to Make Lemonade. Well, that and the attention of a younger man, but Oliver's on-again-off-again romantic interest in her ebbs and flows so much she is seasick. And then Jack, her ex-husband, shows up, wanting to get back together.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney - Fiction

April 3, 2018

She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat, and Manhattan is grittier now, but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed --- and has not.

Marathon by Brian Freeman - Mystery/Thriller

April 3, 2018

Tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city's biggest annual event: the Duluth Marathon. But in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy. One spectator remembers being jostled by a young man with a backpack not far from the bomb site. He spots a Muslim man in a tourist's photo of the event and is convinced that this was the individual who bumped into him in the crowd. But are the answers behind the bombing more complex than anyone realizes?

Marlena by Julie Buntin - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Everything about 15-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor: the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly drawn into Marlena’s orbit, and as she catalogues a litany of firsts --- first drink, first cigarette, first kiss, first pill --- Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within a year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.

Miss You by Kate Eberlen - Romantic Comedy

April 3, 2018

Tess is in Florence on an idyllic vacation before starting university in London. Gus is also visiting Florence, on a holiday with his parents seven months after tragedy shattered their lives. He is headed to medical school in London, but longs to escape and discover who he really is. A chance meeting brings these 18-year-olds together for a brief moment --- the first of many times their paths will crisscross as their lives diverge from those they’d envisioned. Over the course of the next 16 years, Tess and Gus will face very different challenges and choices. Separated by distance and circumstance, the possibility of these two connecting once more seems slight. But while fate can separate two people, it can also bring them back together again.

Murder on the Serpentine: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry - Historical Mystery

April 3, 2018

The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen’s confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. At Her Majesty’s request, Sir John had been surreptitiously investigating Alan Kendrick, a horse-racing enthusiast who seems to have had an undue amount of influence on her son, the Prince of Wales. Now Thomas Pitt must navigate the corridors of power with the utmost discretion and stealth, for it seems certain that Sir John’s killer is a member of the upper classes. Aided by his wife, Charlotte, and her social contacts, Pitt seeks out the hidden motives behind the polite façade of those to the manner born --- and uncovers a threat to the throne that could topple the monarchy.

Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared 25 years ago. In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, immerses herself in long-buried memories and prepares to learn her father’s fate.

My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie - Historical Fiction

April 3, 2018

Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence. And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all --- including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal. When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy.

Necessary Ends: A Tai Randolph Mystery by Tina Whittle - Mystery

April 3, 2018

It was the crime that rocked Atlanta --- actress Jessica Talbot shot dead in her mansion and her husband, movie producer Nick Talbot, accused of the murder. The case seemed open and shut...until a dirty cop's secret forced prosecutors to set Talbot free. Now, four years later, someone wants Talbot dead, and the evidence points to the man most convinced of Talbot's guilt --- Tai Randolph’s lover, Trey Seaver. Talbot offers an irresistible deal: he'll keep Trey's name off the suspect list if Trey agrees to a one-on-one interview. Caught between his drive for justice and his need for security, Trey does the unexpected --- he asks Tai to help him investigate.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge - Historical Fiction

April 3, 2018

Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life. In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends --- or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.

The One-Eyed Man by Ron Currie - Fiction

April 3, 2018

K. is possessed of a hyper-articulate exasperation with the world, a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K. loses his metaphorical capacity, becoming so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates everyone, friends and strangers alike. When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.

Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman - Fiction/Humor

April 3, 2018

As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors’ private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, and Bill Horton’s wife is mysteriously missing. After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, though, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that’s a notion easier said than done when Anne’s husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families --- and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.

The Right Time by Danielle Steel - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow takes solace in the mysteries she reads with her devoted father --- and soon she is writing them herself. Midway through college, she has finished a novel and manages to find a seasoned agent, then a publisher. But as she climbs the ladder of publishing success, she resolutely adheres to her father’s admonition: Men read crime thrillers by men only --- and so Alexandra Winslow publishes under the pseudonym Alexander Green. Her secret life as the mysterious and brilliantly successful Alexander Green --- and her own life as a talented young woman --- expose her to the envious, the arrogant, and Hollywood players who have no idea who she really is.

The Romance Reader's Guide to Life by Sharon Pywell - Fiction

April 3, 2018

As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that didn’t know what to do with her. As her mother not unkindly told her, she was never going to grow up to be a great beauty. Her glamorous sister, Lilly, moved easily through the world. Her brother didn’t want a girl joining his group of friends. And their small town of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world. But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and discovers a world of passion, love and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grown-up she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much.

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy - Memoir

April 3, 2018

When Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true. Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules --- about work, about love, and about womanhood.

The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen written by Hendrik Groen, translated by Hester Velmans - Fiction

April 3, 2018

Technically speaking, Hendrik Groen is...elderly. But at age 83 1/4, this feisty, indomitable curmudgeon has no plans to go out quietly. He begins writing an exposé: secretly recording the antics of day-to-day life in his retirement home, where he refuses to take himself, or his fellow "inmates," too seriously. With an eccentric group of friends, he founds the wickedly anarchic Old-But-Not-Dead Club, and he and his best friend, Evert, gleefully stir up trouble. And when a sweet and sassy widow moves in next door, he polishes his shoes, grooms what's left of his hair, and determines to savor every ounce of joy in the time he has left, with hilarious and tender consequences.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See - Fiction

April 3, 2018

In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, life goes on as it has for generations --- until a stranger appears at the village gate. Slowly, Li-yan begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock, she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her near an orphanage. Despite being raised by loving adoptive parents, Li-yan’s daughter, Haley, wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.

Tom Clancy Point of Contact: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel by Mike Maden - Thriller/Adventure

April 3, 2018

A former U.S. senator and defense contractor needs someone to look over the books of Dalfan Technologies, a Singapore company. He turns to Jack Ryan, Jr. and Paul Brown, two employees of one of the best financial analysis firms in the country, which also happens to be the cover for The Campus, a top-secret American intelligence agency. Brown has no idea that Jack works for The Campus. Jack has no idea that the awkward accountant has been tasked with uploading a cyberwarfare program into the highly secure Dalfan Technologies mainframe on behalf of the CIA. On the verge of mission success, Brown discovers a game within the game, and the people who now want to kill him are as deadly as the cyclone bearing down on the island nation.

Trajectory: Stories by Richard Russo - Fiction/Short Stories

April 3, 2018

The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels, and all are bound together by parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts. In “Horseman,” a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist --- as well as her own regrets. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. “Voice” gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And “Milton and Marcus” takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career --- a career that depends wholly on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead).

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky: Stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah - Magical Realism/Short Stories

April 3, 2018

In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In “Wild,” a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In "The Future Looks Good," three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in "Light," a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to "fix the equation of a person" --- with rippling, unforeseen repercussions. This debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.

Where the Light Falls: A Novel of the French Revolution by Allison Pataki and Owen Pataki - Historical Fiction

April 3, 2018

Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with revolution. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife and their infant son from a comfortable life in Marseille to Paris, in the hopes of joining the cause. André, the son of a denounced nobleman, has evaded execution by joining the new French army. Sophie, a young aristocratic widow, embarks on her own fight for independence against her powerful, vindictive uncle. As chaos threatens to undo the progress of the Revolution and the demand for justice breeds instability and paranoia, the lives of these compatriots become inextricably linked.