In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of April 6th and April 13th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.
This week, we are calling attention to our Sounding Off on Audio contest for April. This month's prizes are the audio versions of Julia Spencer-Fleming's HID FROM OUR EYES: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery, read by Suzanne Toren, and D.J. Palmer's THE NEW HUSBAND, read by January LaVoy and Rebecca Soler. Submit your comments about the audiobooks you've listened to by Friday, May 1st at noon ET, and you'll be in the running to win both these audio titles.
Also, we have updated our Books on Screen feature. Although all movies releasing in theaters this month have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, there are plenty of book-to-screen adaptations on television that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home. April's roundup includes the season one finale of Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere"; season six of "Bosch" on Amazon Prime; the conclusion of HBO's "The Plot Against America," along with the continuation of season two of "My Brilliant Friend"; and the series premieres of "Normal People" on Hulu, "Defending Jacob" on Apple TV+ and "Belgravia" on EPIX. Among this month's DVD releases are Little Women, Just Mercy, The Turning, The Rhythm Section and Escape from Pretoria.
More Ideas for Book Buying During the COVID-19 Crisis
We have some new ways for you to support booksellers in these dark times. Here’s a page of resources that is being updated constantly. There are many ideas there for shopping and donating. Here’s an idea: Pick a place you have wanted to travel to. Find a local bookseller in that area and buy a book. That page lists the stores that are still open and shipping. Every little bit helps! One book, or two, or three. YOU can make a real difference. Also, think about puzzles and board games.
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Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
This Week's Bonus News:
April's Sounding Off on Audio Contest
Tell us about the audiobooks you’ve finished listening to with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for both the performance and the content. During the contest period from April 1st to May 1st at noon ET, one lucky reader will be randomly chosen to win the audio versions of Julia Spencer-Fleming's HID FROM OUR EYES: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery, read by Suzanne Toren, and D.J. Palmer's THE NEW HUSBAND, read by January LaVoy and Rebecca Soler.
To make sure other readers will be able to find the audiobook, please include the full title and correct author names (your entry must include these to be eligible to win). For complete rules and guidelines, click here.
- To see reader comments from previous contest periods, click here.
Click here to enter the contest.
On Sale the Week of April 6th in Hardcover
April 7th
AFTERLIFE by Julia Alvarez (Fiction)
Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of AFTERLIFE, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves --- lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack --- but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750255
THE AGE OF WITCHES by Louisa Morgan (Historical Fiction/Magical Realism)
In 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. Two hundred years later, her legacy lives on in the scions of two very different lines: one dedicated to using their powers to heal and help women in need; the other, determined to grasp power for themselves by whatever means necessary. This clash will play out in the fate of Annis, a young woman in Gilded Age New York who finds herself a pawn in the family struggle for supremacy. She'll need to claim her own power to save herself --- and resist succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overcome them all.
Redhook | 9780316419512
THE ANCESTOR by Danielle Trussoni (Gothic Mystery/Thriller)
It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta ”Bert” Monte receives a letter addressed to “Countess Alberta Montebianco” at her Hudson Valley, New York, home that claims she’s inherited a noble title, money and a castle in Italy. While Bert is more than a little skeptical, the mystery of her aristocratic family’s past, and the chance to escape her stressful life for a luxury holiday in Italy, is too good to pass up. At first, her inheritance seems like a dream come true. But her ancestry has a dark side, and Bert soon learns that her family history is particularly complicated. As Bert begins to unravel the Montebianco secrets, she begins to realize her true inheritance lies not in a legacy of ancestral treasures, but in her very genes.
William Morrow | 9780062912756
THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF AUGUST MARCH by Aaron Jackson (Fiction)
Abandoned as an infant by his actress mother in her theater dressing room, August March was raised by an ancient laundress. Highly intelligent and a tad feral, August is a true child of the theater. But like all productions, August’s wondrous time inside the theater comes to a close, and he finds himself in the wilds of postwar New York City, where he quickly rises from pickpocket street urchin to star student at the stuffiest boarding school in the nation. To survive, August must rely upon the kindness of strangers, only some of whom have his best interests at heart. As he grows up, his heart begins to yearn for love --- which he may or may not finally find in Penny, a clever and gifted con artist.
Harper | 9780062939388
A BAD DAY FOR SUNSHINE by Darynda Jones (Mystery)
Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff, and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that the trouble at her daughter’s new school, and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and, well, the forecast looks anything but sunny. But even clouds have their silver linings. This one has Levi, Sunshine's sexy, almost-old-flame, and a fiery-hot US Marshal. With temperatures rising everywhere she turns, Del Sol's normally cool-minded sheriff is finding herself knee-deep in drama and danger.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250149442
BARKER HOUSE by David Moloney (Fiction)
David Moloney's debut novel follows the story of nine New Hampshire correctional officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies --- including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism --- two rookies, including the only female officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing “the system.” Tracking their subtly intertwined lives, BARKER HOUSE reveals the precarious world of the jailers, coming to a head when the unexpected death of one in their ranks brings them together.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635574166
THE BEAUTY OF YOUR FACE by Sahar Mustafah (Fiction)
Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter --- radicalized by the online alt-right --- attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324003380
THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS by Lisa Wingate (Historical Fiction)
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of BEFORE WE WERE YOURS comes a new historical novel: the dramatic story of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away.
Ballantine Books | 9781984819888
BROKEN by Don Winslow (Thriller)
In six intense short novels connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt and redemption, BROKEN is #1 international bestseller Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heart-stopping, heartbreaking best. Here, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life on and off the job, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters and fugitives, the lost souls driving without headlights through the dark night on the American criminal highway.
William Morrow | 9780062988904
CHOSEN ONES by Veronica Roth (Fantasy)
Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice --- catastrophic events known as Drains --- leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him. After the Dark One fell, the world went back to normal…for everyone but them. On the 10th anniversary of the Dark One’s defeat, something unthinkable happens: one of the Chosen Ones dies. When the others gather for the funeral, they discover that the Dark One’s ultimate goal was much bigger than they, the government or even prophecy could have foretold --- bigger than the world itself.
John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780358164081
CONJURE WOMEN by Afia Atakora (Historical Fiction)
CONJURE WOMEN is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter, Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter, Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
Random House | 9780525511489
DIVER'S PARADISE: A Roscoe Conklin Mystery by Davin Goodwin (Mystery)
After 25 years on the job, Detective Roscoe Conklin moves to Bonaire, a small island nestled in the southern Caribbean. But when his long-time police buddy and friend back home is murdered, Conklin calls his old department, trolling for information. It’s slow going. No surprise, there. After all, it’s an active investigation, and his compadres back home aren’t saying a word. When a suspicious mishap lands his significant other, Arabella, in the hospital, the island police conduct, at best, a sluggish investigation, stonewalling progress. Conklin questions the evidence and challenges the department’s methods. Something isn’t right. Arabella wasn’t the intended target. He was.
Oceanview Publishing | 9781608093830
THE ENGINEER'S WIFE by Tracey Enerson Wood (Historical Fiction)
Emily Warren Roebling refuses to live conventionally --- she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's determined to make change. But then her husband, Wash, asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible. Emily's fight for women's suffrage is put on hold and her life transformed when Wash, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. Lines blur as Wash's vision becomes her own, and when he is unable to return to the job, Emily is consumed by it. But as the project takes shape under Emily's direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building --- hers or her husband's. As the monument rises, Emily's marriage, principles and identity threaten to collapse.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781492698135
FAKE TRUTH by Lee Goldberg (Thriller)
Author Ian Ludlow writes great adventures…but after helping Chinese movie star Wang Mei defect to the United States, he becomes the accidental hero of a real-life espionage thriller. Now he’s stuck with the actress --- and suffering a nasty case of writer’s block --- when he stumbles into a secret Russian plot using “fake news” to outrage Americans into believing a terrifying lie. It’s up to Ian and Margo French, his researcher-turned-spy, to discover the connection between a barbaric drug lord in Mexico, a homicidal maniac in California, a rogue citizen army in Texas, a raging TV pundit in New York, and two dead tourists in Portugal…before the president of the United States makes a catastrophic mistake that could resurrect the Soviet Union.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542014694
HID FROM OUR EYES: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Mystery)
1952. Millers Kill Police Chief Harry McNeil is called to a crime scene where a woman in a party dress has been murdered with no obvious cause of death. 1972. Millers Kill Police Chief Jack Liddle is called to a murder scene of a woman that's very similar to one he worked as a trooper in the ’50s. The only difference is that they have a suspect this time. Young Vietnam War veteran Russ van Alstyne found the body while riding his motorcycle and is quickly pegged as the prime focus of the investigation. Present-day. Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne gets a 911 call that a young woman has been found dead in a party dress, the same MO as the crime he was accused of in the ’70s. The pressure is on for Russ to solve the murder before he's removed from the case.
Minotaur Books | 9780312606855
HIDDEN SALEM: A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel by Kay Hooper (Supernatural Thriller)
Nellie Cavendish has very good reasons to seek out her roots, and not only because she has no memory of her mother and hardly knew her father. In the eight years since her 21st birthday, very odd things have begun to happen. Crows gather near her wherever she goes, electronics short out when she touches them, and when she’s upset, really upset, it storms. At first, she chalked up the unusual happenings to coincidence, but that explanation doesn't begin to cover the vivid nightmares that torment her. She has to find out the truth. And the only starting point she has is a mysterious letter from her father delivered 10 years after his death, insisting she go to a town called Salem and risk her life to stop some unnamed evil. Before her 30th birthday.
Berkley | 9781984802897
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Science/Biography)
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins --- aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony --- and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Doubleday | 9780385543767
HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD by C Pam Zhang (Historical Fiction)
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints and the specters of a ravaged landscape, as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry and glimpses of a different kind of future.
Riverhead Books | 9780525537205
THE IMMORTALS OF TEHRAN by Ali Araghi (Fiction/Magical Realism)
As a child living in his family's apple orchard, Ahmad Torkash-Vand treasures his great-great-great-great grandfather's every mesmerizing word. On the day of his father's death, Ahmad listens closely as the seemingly immortal elder tells him the tale of a centuries-old family curse…and the boy's own fated role in the story. Ahmad grows up to suspect that something must be interfering with his family, as he struggles to hold them together through decades of famine, loss and political turmoil in Iran. As the world transforms around him, each turn of Ahmad's life is a surprise. These lives, and the many unforgettable stories alongside his, converge and catch fire at the center of the Revolution.
Melville House | 9781612198187
THE KIDNAP YEARS: The Astonishing True History of the Forgotten Kidnapping Epidemic That Shook Depression-Era America by David Stout (True Crime/History)
The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America --- parents struggled to feed their children, and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with submachine guns and corrupt law enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. Jump into this forgotten history with Edgar Award-winning author David Stout as he explores the reports of missing people that inundated newspapers at the time. Learn the horrifying details of these abduction cases, from the methods used and the investigative processes to the personal histories of the culprits and victims.
Sourcebooks | 9781492694793
LINCOLN ON THE VERGE: Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer (History)
On the eve of his 52nd birthday, the President-Elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, walked onto a train, the first step of his journey to the White House. But it was far from certain what he would find there. Bankrupt and rudderless, the government was on the verge of collapse. To make matters worse, reliable intelligence confirmed a conspiracy to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Republic hung in the balance. How did Lincoln survive this grueling odyssey, to become the president we know from the history books? LINCOLN ON THE VERGE tells the story of a leader discovering his own strength, improvising brilliantly, and seeing his country up close during these pivotal 13 days.
Simon & Schuster | 9781476739434
THE LOVE STORY OF MISSY CARMICHAEL by Beth Morrey (Fiction)
Seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael (aka Missy) once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife's native Australia, taking Missy's beloved only grandchild half-a-world away. She spends her days sipping sherry, avoiding people, and rattling around in her oversized, under-decorated house waiting for...what exactly? The last thing Missy expects is for two perfect strangers and one spirited dog named Bob to break through her prickly exterior and show her just how much love she still has to give.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525542445
ME & PATSY KICKIN' UP DUST: My Friendship with Patsy Cline by Loretta Lynn (Memoir)
Loretta Lynn and the late Patsy Cline are legends --- country icons and sisters of the heart. For the first time ever, Loretta tells their story: a celebration of their music and their relationship up until Patsy's tragic and untimely death. Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who'd be damned if they'd let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538701669
MISS AUSTEN by Gill Hornby (Historical Fiction)
England, 1840. For the two decades following the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen has lived alone, spending her days visiting friends and relations and quietly, purposefully working to preserve her sister’s reputation. Now in her 60s and increasingly frail, Cassandra goes to stay with the Fowles of Kintbury, family of her long-dead fiancé, in search of a trove of Jane’s letters. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?
Flatiron Books | 9781250252203
ONE FATAL FLAW: A Daniel Pitt Novel by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
When a desperate woman comes to Daniel Pitt seeking a lawyer for her boyfriend, Rob Adwell, Daniel is convinced of the young man’s innocence. Adwell has been accused of murder and of setting a fire to conceal the body, but Daniel is sure that science can absolve him --- and Miriam fford Croft is the best scientist he knows. Miriam connects Daniel with her former teacher, Sir Barnabas Saltram, an expert in arson. Together, they reveal Adwell’s innocence by proving that an accidental fire caused the victim’s death. But it’s not long before Adwell is killed in the same fiery fashion. If these deaths are, in fact, murders, what essential clue could Daniel and Miriam have missed?
Ballantine Books | 9780593129524
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD by Anne Tyler (Fiction)
Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late 30s a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.
Knopf | 9780525658412
THE ROXY LETTERS by Mary Pauline Lowry (Fiction/Humor)
Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically, she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend --- and current roommate --- Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she’s decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer. As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she’s ready to be the heroine of her own story.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982121433
A SHORT GUIDE TO A HAPPY LIFE by Anna Quindlen (Self-Help/Personal Growth)
In this treasure of a book, Anna Quindlen, the bestselling novelist and columnist, reflects on what it takes to “get a life” --- to live deeply every day and from your own unique self, rather than merely to exist through your days. Her mother died when Quindlen was 19: “It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason.... I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted.” But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? In A SHORT GUIDE TO A HAPPY LIFE, Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living.
Random House | 9780593230473
THE SILENT TREATMENT by Abbie Greaves (Fiction)
By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Maggie isn’t sure what provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas. Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that for Maggie has become deafening. Then Frank finds Maggie collapsed in the kitchen and an empty package of sleeping pills on the table. She is placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors assess the damage. If she regains consciousness, Maggie may never be the same. Though he is overwhelmed at the thought of losing his wife, will Frank be able to find his voice once again --- and explain his withdrawal --- or is it too late?
William Morrow | 9780062933843
SIN EATER by Megan Campisi (Historical Fiction)
For the crime of stealing bread, 14-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater --- a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.
Atria Books | 9781982124106
THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB'S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES by Grady Hendrix (Horror/Thriller)
The only thing keeping Patricia Campbell sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe that James is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind --- and Patricia already has invited him in. Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted --- including the book club --- but she won’t surrender without a fight.
Quirk Books | 9781683691433
THE STOLEN GOLD AFFAIR: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery by Bill Pronzini (Historical Mystery)
In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, John Quincannon goes undercover as a newly hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible. Meanwhile, Sabina Carpenter finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon’s wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate scam and an abusive young man's villainous secret.
Forge Books | 9781250216489
STRIKE ME DOWN by Mindy Mejia (Psychological Thriller)
An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. They’re about to host a major kickboxing tournament with $20 million in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind --- a young trainer named Aaden. Days before the tournament begins, it’s discovered that the prize money is missing. Gregg hires Nora Trier’s accounting firm to find both the thief and the money, but Nora has a secret connection to Strike that threatens her independence. Her partner hints he has information about Strike that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982133238
A TENDER THING by Emily Neuberger (Historical Fiction)
In love with musical theater from a young age, Eleanor O'Hanlon memorized every show album she could get her hands on. So when she discovers an open call for one of her favorite productions, she runs off to New York City and auditions. Raw and untrained, she catches the eye of famed composer Don Mannheim, who catapults her into the leading role of his new work, "A Tender Thing," a provocative love story between a white woman and black man. As word of the production gets out, an outpouring of protest whips into a fury. When explosive secrets threaten to shatter the delicate balance of the company, and the possibility of the show itself, Eleanor must face a new reality and ultimately decide what it is she truly wants.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593084878
THE THIRD SISTER by Sara Blaedel (Thriller)
Ilka Jensen's life is in chaos following the tumultuous events of HER FATHER’S SECRET. The funeral home she inherited after her estranged father's death is bankrupt. Her new business partner, Artie, lies unconscious in the hospital after a savage attack by mysterious assailants, and her father's second wife is in prison. Then, just as Ilka learns a shocking revelation about her father, two menacing strangers turn up at the funeral home. In order to protect herself and those around her, Ilka sets off on a twisting journey to confront the truth about the man who abandoned her as a child. But the long-buried secrets of her father's past are more tangled and perilous than Ilka ever could imagine.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538763292
THREE HOURS IN PARIS by Cara Black (Historical Thriller)
Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When she misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life --- all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a setup.
Soho Crime | 9781641290418
On Sale the Week of April 6th in Paperback
April 6th
THE 45th by D.W. Buffa (Political Thriller)
What if a political party in disarray turned to a man to lead them with no political background? What if a country torn apart by ideology turned to a man whose charisma belied a complete lack of governing experience? What if a country elected a President based not on qualifications, but on hope? Would this man lead the country into a new era of fortune and prosperity? Or would he lead them into total and complete chaos?
Polis Books | 9781951709051
April 7th
AFTER SHE WROTE HIM by Sulari Gentill (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Madeleine d'Leon doesn't know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about --- his charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel. Edward McGinnity can't get Madeleine out of his mind --- softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book. But who is the author, and who is the creation? And as the lines start to blur, who is affected when a killer finally takes flesh?
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728209159
AFTERNOON OF A FAUN by James Lasdun (Fiction)
When an old flame accuses him of sexual assault, expat English journalist Marco Rosedale is brought rapidly to the brink of ruin. Marco confides in a close friend, the unnamed narrator, who finds himself caught between the obligations of friendship and an increasingly urgent desire to uncover the truth --- until the question of his own complicity becomes impossible to avoid.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393357882
THE ASH FAMILY by Molly Dektar (Fiction)
At 19, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins an intentional community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie --- now renamed Harmony --- renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501144875
BEFORE WE WERE WICKED by Eric Jerome Dickey (Romance)
They say that the love of money is the root of all evil, but for Ken Swift, it's the love of a woman. Ken is 21, hurting people for cash to try to pay his way through college, when he lays eyes on Jimi Lee, the woman who will change the course of his entire life. What's meant to be a one-night stand with the Harvard-bound beauty turns into an explosion of sexual chemistry that neither can quit. And when Jimi Lee becomes pregnant, their two very different worlds collide in ways they never could have anticipated.
Dutton | 9781524744052
BLUFF by Jane Stanton Hitchcock (Thriller)
One-time socialite Maud Warner polishes up the rags of her once-glittering existence and bluffs her way into a signature New York restaurant on a sunny October day. When she walks out again, a man will have been shot. Maud has grown accustomed to being underestimated and invisible, and she uses her ability to fly under the radar as she pursues celebrity accountant Burt Sklar, the man she believes stole her mother's fortune and left her family in ruins. Her fervent passion for poker has taught Maud that she can turn weakness into strength to take advantage of people who think they are taking advantage of her, and now she has dealt the first card in her high-stakes plan for revenge. One unexpected twist after another follows as Maud plays the most important poker hand of her life.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464210693
BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE by Trent Dalton (Fiction)
Eli Bell’s life is complicated. His father is lost, his mother is in jail and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli’s life is Slim --- a notorious felon and national record-holder for successful prison escapes --- who watches over Eli and August, his silent genius of an older brother. Exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, a seedy suburb populated by Polish and Vietnamese refugees, this 12-year-old boy with an old soul and an adult mind is just trying to follow his heart, learn what it takes to be a good man, and train for a glamorous career in journalism. Life, however, insists on throwing obstacles in Eli’s path --- most notably Tytus Broz, Brisbane’s legendary drug dealer. But the real trouble lies ahead.
Harper Perennial | 9780062898111
THE BRITISH ARE COMING: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson (History)
Rick Atkinson has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy, he recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250231321
CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME by Deb Spera (Historical Fiction)
It’s 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina, and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude’s aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home. These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together.
Park Row | 9780778309796
THE CAPITAL written by Robert Menasse, translated by Jamie Bulloch (Fiction)
THE CAPITAL transports readers to the cobblestoned streets of 21st-century Brussels. Fenia Xenopoulou is a Greek Cypriot who was recently “promoted” to the Directorate-General for Culture. When tasked with revamping the boring image of the European Commission with the Big Jubilee Project, she endorses her Austrian assistant Martin Sussman’s idea to proclaim Auschwitz as its birthplace. Meanwhile, Inspector Émile Brunfaut attempts to solve a gritty murder being suppressed at the highest level; Matek, a Polish hitman who regrets having never become a priest, scrambles after taking out the wrong man; and outraged pig farmers protest trade restrictions as a brave escapee squeals through the streets.
Liveright | 9781631497865
CITY OF GIRLS by Elizabeth Gilbert (Fiction)
In 1940, 19-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters. But when she makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Now 89 years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life --- and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it.
Riverhead Books | 9781594634741
DISAPPEARING EARTH by Julia Phillips (Literary Thriller)
One August afternoon, two sisters --- Sophia and Alyona --- go missing from a beach on the far-flung Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. Taking us through the year that follows, DISAPPEARING EARTH enters the lives of women and girls in this tightly knit community who are connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty --- open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, dense forests, the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska --- and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
Vintage | 9780525436225
DRAWING HOME by Jamie Brenner (Fiction)
Summer has started in idyllic Sag Harbor, and for Emma Mapson that means greeting guests at the front desk of The American Hotel. But when artist Henry Wyatt dies suddenly, Emma learns he has mysteriously left his waterfront home to her teenage daughter, Penny. Legendary art patron Bea Winstead, Henry’s lifelong friend and former business partner, is determined to reclaim the house and preserve Henry's legacy. While Emma fights to defend her daughter's inheritance, Bea discovers that Henry left a treasure trove of sketches scattered around town. With Penny's reluctant help, Bea pieces them together to find a story hidden in plain sight: an illustration of their shared history with an unexpected twist that will change all of their lives.
Back Bay Books | 9780316476829
THE EAST END by Jason Allen (Literary Thriller)
Corey Halpern, a local high schooler with a troubled home life, is desperate to leave the Hamptons and start anew somewhere else. His last summer before college, he settles for the escapism he finds in sneaking into neighboring mansions. One night, just before Memorial Day weekend, he breaks into the wrong home at the wrong time: the Sheffield estate, where he and his mother, Gina, work. Under the cover of darkness, Leo Sheffield --- a billionaire CEO, patriarch and the owner of the vast lakeside manor --- arrives unexpectedly with a companion. After a shocking poolside accident, everything depends on Leo burying the truth before his family and friends arrive for the holiday weekend.
Park Row | 9780778309772
THE GERMAN HEIRESS by Anika Scott (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended, and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. Clara decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa. Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062937728
THE GIRLS AT 17 SWANN STREET by Yara Zgheib (Fiction)
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears --- imperfection, failure, loneliness --- she spirals down anorexia and depression until she weighs a mere 88 pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day. Every bite causes anxiety. Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250202451
GIRLS LIKE US by Cristina Alger (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
FBI agent Nell Flynn hasn't been home in 10 years. Nell and her father, Homicide Detective Martin Flynn, have never had much of a relationship. And Suffolk County will always be awash in memories of her mother, Marisol, who was murdered when Nell was just seven. When Martin dies in a motorcycle accident, Nell returns to the house she grew up in so that she can spread her father's ashes and close his estate. At the behest of her father's partner, Detective Lee Davis, Nell becomes involved in an investigation into the murders of two young women in Suffolk County. The further Nell digs, the more likely it seems to her that her father should be the prime suspect --- and that his friends on the police force are covering his tracks.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525535829
HENRY, HIMSELF by Stewart O'Nan (Fiction)
Soldier, son, lover, husband, breadwinner and churchgoer, Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honor. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he's always believed in logic, sacrifice and hard work. Now, 75 and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It's 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple anymore. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife Emily and dog Rufus stand by him. Once so confident, as Henry's strength and memory desert him, he weighs his dreams against his regrets and is left with questions he can't answer: Is he a good man? Has he done right by the people he loves? And with time running out, what, realistically, can he hope for?
Penguin Books | 9780735223059
I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott (Memoir/Essays)
Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies --- check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart.
Atria Books | 9781982102814
ISLAND OF SECRETS: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery by Jeffrey Siger (Mystery)
The case begins for Athens's Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis with a literal bang when a corrupt former police colonel who runs a protection racket on Mykonos is gunned down. Suddenly, Kaldis is face-to-face with Greece's top crime bosses on an island whose natural beauty and reputation as an international playground belies the corruption lurking just beneath the surface. While Kaldis and his Special Crimes unit wrestle for answers, his wife, Lila, meets an American expat named Toni, a finder of stolen goods and a piano player in a gender-bending bar. As Lila and Toni bond over a common desire to mentor young island girls trapped in an exploitative and patriarchal culture, they soon find that their efforts intersect with Kaldis' investigation in ways that prove to be dangerous for all involved.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464211492
THE LAST SUMMER OF ADA BLOOM by Martine Murray (Fiction)
Paperback Original
In a small country town during one long, hot summer, the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is straining against the confines of her life, lost in regret for what might have been, when an old flame shows up. In turn, her husband Mike becomes frustrated with his increasingly distant wife. Marital secrets, new and long-hidden, start to surface --- with devastating effect. And while teenagers Tilly and Ben are about to step out into the world, nine-year-old Ada is holding onto a childhood that might soon be lost to her. When Ada discovers an abandoned well beneath a rusting windmill, she is drawn to its darkness and danger. And when she witnesses a shocking and confusing event, the well’s foreboding looms large in her mind --- a driving force, pushing the family to the brink of tragedy.
Tin House Books | 9781947793613
THE LAST YEAR OF THE WAR by Susan Meissner (Historical Fiction)
Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa 14-year-old in 1943 --- aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her.
Berkley | 9780451492166
THE LOST ORPHAN by Stacey Halls (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate newborn at the Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the daughter she has never known. Dreading the worst, that she has died in care, she is astonished to discover that someone pretending to be Bess has already claimed her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl --- and why. Less than a mile from Bess’ poor lodgings, in a quiet Georgian townhouse, lives Alexandra, a reclusive young widow. When a close friend persuades her to hire a nursemaid to help care for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.
Mira | 9780778309321
THE MATRIARCH: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty by Susan Page (Biography)
Barbara Pierce Bush was one of the country's most popular and powerful figures, yet her full story has never been told. THE MATRIARCH tells the riveting tale of a woman who helped define two American presidencies and an entire political era. Written by USA Today's Washington Bureau chief Susan Page, this biography is informed by more than 100 interviews with Bush friends and family members, hours of conversation with Mrs. Bush herself in the final six months of her life, and access to her diaries that spanned decades. The book examines not only her public persona but also less well-known aspects of her remarkable life.
Twelve | 9781538713631
MIDDLEGAME by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)
Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math. Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realize it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet. Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own. Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.
Tor.com | 9781250234209
MIRACLE CREEK by Angie Kim (Legal Thriller/Mystery)
In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?
Picador | 9781250251305
A MOTHER’S LIE by Sarah Zettel (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Beth Fraser finally has her life together. She has built a successful career in the tech sector, has a bright 15-year-old daughter, and has completely erased all evidence of her troubled past. At least that's what she thought. Dana Fraser always wondered why she's the only kid with two backup phones, emergency drills and a non-negotiable check-in time every single day. When a stranger approaches her on the street claiming to be her grandmother, Dana starts to question what else her mother has been hiding. Soon Beth's worst nightmare is coming true: Dana is in grave danger, and unless Beth is willing to pull one last con job for her parents, she may never see her daughter again.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538760925
MRS. EVERYTHING by Jennifer Weiner (Fiction)
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, Jo and Bethie Kaufman live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for them to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
Washington Square Press | 9781501133497
MY CONEY ISLAND BABY by Billy O’Callaghan (Fiction)
On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven. These precious, hidden hours are their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink --- with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other. And so, after half a lifetime spent in secret, certain long-avoided facts need to be faced, consequences examined, decisions made, and --- perhaps --- chances finally taken.
Harper Perennial | 9780062856579
THE PARTING GLASS by Gina Marie Guadagnino (Historical Fiction)
By day, Mary Ballard is dutiful lady’s maid to Charlotte Walden, a wealthy and accomplished belle of New York City high society. But on her nights off, Mary sheds this persona to reveal her true self: Irish exile Maire O’Farren. She finds release from her frustration in New York’s gritty underworld --- in the arms of a prostitute and as drinking companion to a decidedly motley crew consisting of a barkeeper and members of a dangerous secret society. Meanwhile, Charlotte has a secret of her own --- she’s having an affair with a stable groom, unaware that her lover is actually Mary’s own brother. When the truth of both women’s double lives begins to unravel, Mary is left to face the consequences.
Washington Square Press | 9781501198427
REVENGE by James Patterson and Andrew Holmes (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Former SAS soldier David Shelley was part of the most covert operations team in the special forces. Now settling down to civilian life in London, he has plans for a safer and more stable existence. But the shocking death of a young woman Shelley once helped protect puts those plans on hold. The police rule the death a suicide, but the grieving parents can't accept that their beloved Emma would take her own life. They need to find out what really happened, and they turn to their former bodyguard, Shelley, for help. When they discover that Emma had fallen into a dark and seedy world of drugs and online pornography, the father demands retribution. But his desire for revenge will make enemies of people from whom even Shelley may not be able to protect them.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538715413
ROBERT B. PARKER’S BUCKSKIN by Robert Knott (Historical Mystery/Western)
When gold is discovered in the foothills just outside of Appaloosa, it sets off a fight between two shrewd local business operations as their hired gun hands square off over the claim. First a young miner disappears, then another. And then one of the businessmen himself is killed, right on his front doorstep. Meanwhile, as Cole and Hitch try to put a stop to the escalating violence, another killer is making his way toward town in pursuit of a long-lost dream, and a mission of vengeance. Cole and Hitch will have their work cut out for them to keep the peace, especially when all these ruffians converge at the huge Appaloosa Days festival, where hundreds of innocent souls might get caught in the crossfire.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780735218291
SOMETHING SHE’S NOT TELLING US by Darcey Bell (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Charlotte has everything in life that she ever could have hoped for: a doting, artistic husband, a small-but-thriving flower shop, and her sweet, smart five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Her relationship with her mother might be strained, but the distance between them helps. And her younger brother Rocco may have horrible taste in women, but when he introduces his new girlfriend to Charlotte and her family, they are cautiously optimistic that she could be The One. But as Rocco and Ruth’s relationship becomes more serious, Ruth’s apparent obsession with Daisy grows more obvious. Then Daisy is kidnapped, and Charlotte is convinced there’s only one person who could have taken her.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062953933
SPRING by Ali Smith (Fiction)
What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time and riffing on "Pericles," one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown, Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.
Anchor | 9781101969960
STONY THE ROAD: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (History)
The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: If emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In STONY THE ROAD, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.
Penguin Books | 9780525559559
TOM CLANCY ENEMY CONTACT: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel by Mike Maden (Thriller/Adventure)
The CIA's deepest secrets are being given away for a larger agenda that will undermine the entire Western intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley wants it stopped but doesn't know who, how or why. Jack Ryan, Jr., is dispatched to Poland on a different mission. The clues are thin, and the sketchy trail dead ends in a harrowing fight from which he barely escapes with his life. If that's not bad enough, Jack gets more tragic news. An old friend, who's dying from cancer, has one final request for Jack. It seems simple enough, but before it's done, Jack will find himself alone, his life hanging by a thread.
Berkley | 9780525541707
THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF THE SHERGILL SISTERS by Balli Kaur Jaswal (Fiction)
The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters were never close and barely got along growing up. Rajni, a school principal, is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a 30-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister, married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother and their lives --- and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their mother long ago, a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062645159
A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK by Ann Beattie (Fiction)
At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic and brilliant, yet perverse, teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere's covert and overt instruction lingers in his students' lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. While relationships with his stepmother and sister improve, and a move to upstate New York offers respite from his anxiety about love and work, LaVerdere's reappearance in his life disturbs his equilibrium. Everything he once thought he knew about his teacher --- and himself --- is called into question.
Penguin Books | 9780525557364
On Sale the Week of April 13th in Hardcover
April 13th
THE HOUSE OF KENNEDY by James Patterson and Cynthia Fagen (Biography)
The Kennedys have always been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel, living by the dual family mottos: "To whom much is given, much is expected" and "Win at all costs." And they do --- but at a price. Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have occupied a unique place in the American imagination: charmed, cursed, at once familiar and unknowable. THE HOUSE OF KENNEDY is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most storied family, as told by America's most trusted storyteller.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316454483
April 14th
THE BIG FINISH by Brooke Fossey (Fiction)
For Duffy Sinclair, life boils down to one simple thing: maintaining his residence at the idyllic Centennial Assisted Living. Without it, he’s destined for the roach-infested nursing home down the road --- and after wasting the first 88 years of his life, he refuses to waste away for the rest. So he keeps his shenanigans to the bare minimum with the help of his straight-laced best friend and roommate, Carl Upton. But when Carl’s granddaughter, Josie, climbs through their bedroom window with booze on her breath and a black eye, Duffy is faced with trouble that’s sticking around and hard to hide --- from Centennial’s management and Josie’s toxic boyfriend. Before he knows it, he’s running a covert operation that includes hitchhiking and barhopping.
Berkley | 9781984804938
BRAISED PORK by An Yu (Fiction)
One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead. One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange watery figure, an image that swims into her mind and won’t leave. The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing as her path crosses some of the people who call the city home. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her.
Grove Press | 9780802148711
BUBBLEGUM by Adam Levin (Fiction)
BUBBLEGUM is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology --- a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio --- has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in.
Doubleday | 9780385544962
THE COYOTES OF CARTHAGE by Steven Wright (Political Thriller)
Despite being a successful political consultant, Dre Ross’ aggressive tactics have put him on thin ice with his boss, Mrs. Fitz. She exiles him to the backwoods of South Carolina with $250,000 of dark money to introduce a ballot initiative on behalf of a mining company. The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting to sell their pristine public land to the highest bidder. Dre, an African-American outsider, can’t be the one to collect the signatures needed to get on the ballot. So he hires a blue-collar couple, Tyler Lee and his pious wife, Chalene, to act as the initiative’s public face. As lines are crossed and lives ruined, Dre’s increasingly cutthroat campaign threatens the very soul of Carthage County and perhaps the last remnants of his own humanity.
Ecco | 9780062951663
DEATH OF AN AMERICAN BEAUTY by Mariah Fredericks (Historical Mystery)
Jane Prescott attends the hottest and most scandalous show in town: the opening of an art exhibition, showcasing the cubists, that is shocking New York City. 1913 is also the 50th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation speech, and the city's great and good are determined to celebrate in style. Dolly Rutherford, heiress to the glamorous Rutherford’s department store empire, has gathered her coterie of society ladies to put on a play --- with Jane’s employer, Louise Tyler, in the starring role as Lincoln himself. But then a woman is found murdered outside Jane’s childhood home --- a refuge for women run by her uncle. Deeply troubled as her uncle falls under suspicion, Jane is determined to discover who is making death into their own twisted art form.
Minotaur Books | 9781250210883
FUTURE VALUE: The Battle for Baseball's Soul and How Teams Will Find the Next Superstar by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel (Sports)
For the modern major league team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment --- as Michael Lewis' MONEYBALL once forecast --- the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. FUTURE VALUE is a thorough dive into the world of the contemporary scout --- a world with its own language, methods, metrics and madness.
Triumph Books | 9781629377674
HELL AND OTHER DESTINATIONS: A 21st-Century Memoir by Madeleine Albright (Memoir)
In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female Secretary of State, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.” In that time of transition, the former Secretary considered the possibilities: she could write, teach, travel, give speeches, start a business, fight for democracy, help to empower women, campaign for favored political candidates, spend more time with her grandchildren. Instead of choosing one or two, she decided to do it all.
Harper | 9780062802255
MAN OF MY TIME by Dalia Sofer (Fiction)
Set in Iran and New York City, MAN OF MY TIME tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. As he reconnects with his brother and others living in exile, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past, with the insidious nature of violence, and with his entrenchment in a system that for decades ensnared him.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374110062
MASKED PREY: A Lucas Davenport Novel by John Sandford (Mystery/Thriller)
The daughter of a U.S. Senator is monitoring her social media presence when she finds a picture of herself on a strange blog. And there are other pictures…of the children of other influential Washington politicians, walking or standing outside their schools, each identified by name. Surrounding the photos are texts of vicious political rants from a motley variety of radical groups. It's obviously alarming. Is there an unstable extremist tracking the loved ones of powerful politicians with deadly intent? But when the FBI is called in, there isn't much the feds can do. With nowhere else to turn, influential Senators decide to call in someone who can operate outside the FBI's constraints: Lucas Davenport.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525539520
THE NEW HUSBAND by D.J. Palmer (Psychological Thriller)
Nina Garrity never got to confront her husband, Glen, about his affair or any of his other misdeeds, as he presumably drowned while fishing on his boat. A year and a half after the accident, Nina considers herself a widow, even though the police never found a body. Following a chance encounter with Simon Fitch, a teacher from her daughter Maggie's middle school, Nina finds love again. Simon, a widower still grieving the suicide of his first wife, has found his dream girl in Nina. Nina's teenage son, Connor, embraces Simon as the father he wishes his dad could have been, but Maggie sees a far darker side to this new man in their lives. Even Nina’s good friends wonder if Simon is supremely devoted --- or dangerously possessive.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250107497
PERFECT TUNES by Emily Gould (Fiction)
Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived, but will reverberate for the rest of Laura’s life. Fifteen years later, Laura’s teenage daughter is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura’s songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781501197499
SAVAGE SON by Jack Carr (Political Thriller)
Deep in the wilds of Siberia, a woman is on the run, pursued by a man harboring secrets --- a man intent on killing her. A traitorous CIA officer has found refuge with the Russian mafia with designs on ensuring that a certain former Navy SEAL sniper is put in the ground. Half a world away, James Reece is recovering from brain surgery in the Montana wilderness, slowly putting his life back together with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and his longtime friend and SEAL teammate Raife Hastings. Unbeknownst to them, the Russian mafia has set their sights on Reece in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982123703
SIMON THE FIDDLER by Paulette Jiles (Historical Fiction)
In March 1865, the long and bitter War Between the States is winding down. Until now, 23-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, he finds himself conscripted into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position in a regimental band. Weeks later, Simon and his bandmates are called to play for officers and their families from both sides of the conflict. There the quick-thinking, audacious fiddler can’t help but notice Doris Mary Dillon, an indentured girl from Ireland, who is governess to a Union colonel’s daughter. After the Confederate surrender, they go their separate ways. But Simon cannot forget the fair Irish maiden, and vows that someday he will find her again.
William Morrow | 9780062966742
THIS IS BIG: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World --- and Me by Marisa Meltzer (Memoir)
Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand. Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with Marisa's own journey through Weight Watchers, she chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316414005
WHY FISH DON'T EXIST: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (Science/Biography & Memoir)
David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered. He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool. But what she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality and the world beneath her feet.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501160271
WHY WE SWIM by Bonnie Tsui (Sports & Recreation/Social Science)
We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now, in the 21st century, swimming is one of the most popular activities in the world. WHY WE SWIM is propelled by stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein’s palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck. Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer herself, investigates what about water --- despite its dangers --- seduces us and why we come back to it again and again.
Algonquin Books | 9781616207861
YOGI: A Life Behind the Mask by Jon Pessah (Sports/Biography)
Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too --- right to his face. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game --- at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than 100 interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success --- on and off the playing field --- as well as his failures.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316310994
On Sale the Week of April 13th in Paperback
April 14th
THE AMERICAN DUCHESS: The Real Wallis Simpson by Anna Pasternak (Biography)
When Prince Edward fell in love with Wallis Simpson, no one thought the affair would last. But when the prince became king, he announced that he wanted to marry the American divorcee, and Wallis was accused of entrapping the prince in a seductive web in order to achieve her audacious ambition to be queen. After declaring that he could not rule without the woman he loved at his side, the king gave up his throne, and his family banished him and his new wife from England. The couple spent the rest of their days in exile, but happy in their devoted love for each other. Now, Anna Pasternak’s THE AMERICAN DUCHESS tells a different story: that Wallis was the victim of the abdication, not the villain.
Atria Books | 9781501198458
AMERICAN MOONSHOT: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley (History)
On May 25, 1961, JFK made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In AMERICAN MOONSHOT, Douglas Brinkley returns to the 1960s to recreate one of the most exciting and ambitious achievements in the history of humankind. The book brings together the extraordinary political, cultural and scientific factors that fueled the birth and development of NASA and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, which shot the United States to victory in the space race against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Drawing on new primary source material and major interviews with many of the surviving figures who were key to America’s success, Brinkley brings this fascinating history to life as never before.
Harper Perennial | 9780062655073
THE BEST FRIEND by Adam Mitzner (Legal Thriller)
Paperback Original
Back in 1986, Clint Broden was a novice New York defense attorney building a family with his wife, Anne. That’s when his defense of his closest friend, Nick Zamora, made headlines. In spite of his lingering suspicions that his soul mate since childhood had a secret, Clint was dedicated to believing Nick hadn’t murdered his new bride. Three decades later, Clint is now the celebrated go-to attorney for the rich and famous. Nick is a lauded literary superstar living his dreams in Los Angeles. After all these years, the last thing Clint expects is to be pulled back into Nick’s disruptive life. But this time, his motives for getting involved might be different from proving his old friend’s innocence. It could be Clint’s last chance to force a reckoning with the sins of the past.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542005753
"CAT PERSON" AND OTHER STORIES by Kristen Roupenian (Fiction/Short Stories)
Previously published as YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS, “CAT PERSON” AND OTHER STORIES explores the ways in which women are horrifying as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Among its pages are a couple who becomes obsessed with their friend hearing them have sex, then seeing them have sex…until they can’t have sex without him; a 10-year-old whose birthday party takes a sinister turn when she wishes for “something mean”; a woman who finds a book of spells half hidden at the library and summons her heart’s desire --- a nameless, naked man; and a self-proclaimed “biter” who dreams of sneaking up behind and sinking her teeth into a green-eyed, long-haired, pink-cheeked coworker.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982101640
CIRCE by Madeline Miller (Mythological Fantasy)
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child who possesses the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians.
Back Bay Books | 9780316556323
CONVICTION by Denise Mina (Mystery/Thriller)
The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life explodes starts off like all the days before: packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true-crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling and desperate for distraction, she returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she's taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened. Then an unexpected visitor arrives on her front stoop, a meddling neighbor intervenes, and life as Anna knows it is well and truly over.
Mulholland Books | 9780316528498
FIFTY THINGS THAT AREN’T MY FAULT: Essays from the Grown-up Years by Cathy Guisewite (Humor/Essays)
As the creator of "Cathy," Cathy Guisewite found her way into the hearts of readers more than 40 years ago, and has been there ever since. Her hilarious and deeply relatable look at the challenges of womanhood in a changing world became a cultural touchstone for women everywhere. Now Guisewite returns with her signature wit and warmth in this debut essay collection about another time of big transition, when everything starts changing and disappearing without permission: aging parents, aging children, aging self stuck in the middle.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780735218437
GREEK TO ME: Adventures of the Comma Queen by Mary Norris (Travel Memoir/Writing)
Mary Norris, The New Yorker’s Comma Queen and bestselling author of BETWEEN YOU & ME, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In GREEK TO ME, she delivers a delightful paean to the art of self-expression through accounts of her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways in which Greek helped form English. GREEK TO ME is filled with Norris’ memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine --- and more than a few Greek men.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393357868
THE HIDDEN KEY: A Steve Stilwell Thriller by David E. Grogan (Legal Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Kevin Jones smuggles an ancient clay tablet out of Iraq, he pays with his life. A wealthy Indian businessman seeks it next until he cries out in anguish that he has sold his soul. It is up to attorney Steve Stilwell to uncover why before the tablet's secrets consume him too.
Epicenter Press | 9781603815802
KILL THE ANGEL by Sandrone Dazieri (Thriller)
In Rome, a passenger train speeds into the city’s main station, its first-class car full of dead bodies, the macabre discovery of which falls to Deputy Police Commissioner Colomba Caselli. The police then receive a claim of responsibility and the threat of more murders to come. But neither Caselli nor her eccentrically brilliant ally, Dante Torre, are ready to buy the terrorist link. Dante’s bizarre and traumatic past enables him to see what others miss, and in this case, to connect with a kindred spirit of sorts, a woman named Giltine who also experienced an intense trauma --- one from which she emerged damaged and full of murderous intent.
Scribner | 9781501174667
THE NIGHT FIRE: A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel by Michael Connelly (Thriller)
Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before --- the unsolved killing of a troubled young man. Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. As she begins her inquiries, Ballard finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don't add up. They soon arrive at a disturbing question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538733721
NO GOING BACK by Sheena Kamal (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Nora Watts has a talent for seeing what lies beneath strangers’ surfaces, and for knowing what they’re working hard to keep hidden. Somehow, it’s the people closest to her she has trouble truly connecting with. In the case of Bonnie, the teenage daughter Nora gave up for adoption, she has to keep trying. Two years ago, Bonnie was kidnapped by the wealthy Zhang family. Though Nora rescued her, she made a powerful enemy in Dao, a mysterious triad enforcer and former head of the Zhangs’ private security. Now Dao is out for revenge, and she needs to track him down in order to keep herself --- and Bonnie --- safe.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062869760
QUANTUM: A Captain Chase Novel by Patricia Cornwell (Thriller)
On the eve of a top-secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide --- a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days. Desperate to halt the countdown to disaster and clear her sister’s name, Captain Chase digs deep into her vast cyber security knowledge and her painful past, probing for answers to her twin’s erratic conduct.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781503905092
QUEENIE MALONE’S PARADISE HOTEL by Ruth Hogan (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Tilly was a bright, outgoing little girl. When her beloved father suddenly disappeared, she and her mother moved into Queenie Malone’s magnificent Paradise Hotel in Brighton. But then Tilly was dealt another shattering blow when her mother sent her off to boarding school with little explanation and no warning. Now an adult, Tilda has grown into an independent woman still damaged by her mother’s unaccountable cruelty. When her estranged mother dies, Tilda returns to Brighton and the home she loved best. With the help of the still-dazzling Queenie, she sets about unraveling the mystery of her exile from The Paradise Hotel, only to discover that her mother was not the woman she thought she knew at all.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062935717
SHELL by Kristina Olsson (Historical Fiction)
Newspaper reporter Pearl Keogh has put her job in jeopardy to become involved in the anti-war movement. She is desperate to locate her two runaway brothers before they’re called to serve in the Vietnam War. Newly arrived from Sweden, Axel Lindquist is set to work as a sculptor on the besieged Sydney Opera House. He seeks to reinvent himself in this utterly foreign landscape, and finds artistic inspiration --- and salvation --- in the monument to modernity that is being constructed on Sydney’s Harbor. But as the nation hurtles towards yet another war, Jørn Utzon, the Opera House’s controversial architect, is nowhere to be found --- and Axel fears that the past he has tried to outrun may be catching up with him.
Washington Square Press | 9781501193149
THE SUMMER OF ELLEN written by Agnete Friis, translated by Sinéad Quirke Køngerskov (Psychological Thriller)
Jacob, a middle-aged architect living in Copenhagen, is in the alcohol-soaked throes of a bitter divorce when he receives an unexpected call from his great-uncle Anton. In his 90s and still living with his brother on their rural Jutland farm --- a place Jacob hasn’t visited since the summer of 1978 --- Anton remains haunted by a single question: What happened to Ellen? To find out, Jacob must return to the farm and confront what took place that summer --- one defined by his teenage obsession with Ellen, a beautiful young hippie from the local commune, and the unsolved disappearance of a local girl. In revisiting old friends and rivals, Jacob discovers the tragedies that have haunted him for over 40 years were not what they seemed.
Soho Crime | 9781641291323
SUNRISE ON HALF MOON BAY by Robyn Carr (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Born 20 years apart, Justine was already an adult when Addie was born. The sisters love each other, but they don’t really know each other. When Addie dropped out of university to care for their ailing parents, Justine, a successful lawyer, covered the expenses. It was the best arrangement at the time, but now that their parents are gone, the future has changed dramatically for both women. Addie had great plans for her life, but has been worn down by the pressures of being a caregiver and doesn’t know how to live for herself. And Justine’s success has come at a price. Her marriage is falling apart despite her best efforts. Neither woman knows how to start life over, but both realize they can and must support each other the way only sisters can.
Mira | 9780778309482
TEMPER by Layne Fargo (Psychological Thriller)
After years of struggling in the Chicago theater scene, ambitious actress Kira Rascher finally lands the role of a lifetime. The catch? Starring in Temper means working with Malcolm Mercer, a mercurial director who’s known for pushing his performers past their limits --- onstage and off. Kira is convinced she can handle Malcolm, but the theater’s cofounder Joanna Cuyler is another story. Joanna sees Kira as a threat --- to her own thwarted artistic aspirations, her twisted relationship with Malcolm, and the shocking secret she’s keeping about the upcoming production. But as opening night draws near, Kira and Joanna both start to realize that Malcolm’s dangerous extremes are nothing compared to what they're capable of themselves.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781982112509
THE TENTH MUSE by Catherine Chung (Fiction)
From the days of her childhood in the 1950s Midwest, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem. As she matures from a girl of rare intelligence into an exceptional mathematician, she must face the most human of problems. Who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition? These questions grow ever more entangled as Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and becomes involved with a brilliant and charismatic professor. When she embarks on a quest to conquer the Riemann hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that may hold both the lock and the key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II.
Ecco | 9780062574084
TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU by Kelly Rimmer (Fiction)
Paperback Original
With her father recently moved to a care facility, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it --- a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house. As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know.
Graydon House | 9781525804601
UNDER THE TABLE by Stephanie Evanovich (Romance/Humor)
Suffocating in a dead-end marriage, Midwesterner Zoey Sullivan fled to New York and moved in with her older sister Ruth, a carefree, vivacious beauty with a string of eligible bachelors at her beck and call. When Zoey meets reclusive millionaire Tristan Malloy, she’s blown away by his kitchen and charmed by his impeccable gentlemanly manners. But despite his firm body, handsome looks and piles of cash, Tristan is shy and more than a little socially awkward. Zoey is sure that Tristan has all the right raw ingredients --- and she’s the right person to spice them up and turn him into a delectable dish. But Zoey is unprepared for just how well her makeover works.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062415943
April 15th
LITTLE BOY by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Fiction)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti lets loose an exhilarating rush of language to craft what might be termed a closing statement about his highly significant and productive 99 years on this planet. The "Little Boy" of the title is Ferlinghetti himself as a child, shuffled from his overburdened mother to his French aunt to foster childhood with a rich Bronxville family. Service in World War II (including the D-Day landing), graduate work and a scholar gypsy's vagabond life in Paris followed. These biographical reminiscences are interweaved with Allen Ginsberg-esque high energy bursts of raw emotion, rumination, reflection, reminiscence and prognostication on what we may face as a species on Planet Earth in the future.
Anchor | 9780525565956
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