February 1, 2022

February 1, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 31st and February 7th 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 special contest for SHADOWS OF BERLIN. From the cafés of war-torn Germany to the frantic drumbeat of 1950s Manhattan, David R. Gillham's upcoming novel dramatically explores survival, redemption, and the way we learn to love and forgive across impossible divides. We are awarding 25 lucky readers an advance copy of the book, which will be in stores on April 19th. The deadline for your entries is Friday, February 11th at noon ET.

We also are featuring THE FAMILY CHAO, which is this month's Barnes & Noble Book Club pick. Brimming with heartbreak, comedy and suspense, Lan Samantha Chang's newly released novel offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.

We have THREE new "Bookreporter Talks To" interviews to share with you in this newsletter. First up is Heather Gudenkauf, whose latest thriller, THE OVERNIGHT GUEST, will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. The book has a chilling setting, literally and figuratively. Wylie Lark, a true crime writer, is snowed in while writing her new book in a house where, decades earlier, two people were murdered and a young girl disappeared. As a blizzard swirls outside, she finds a child in the snow --- and realizes that the story she is writing may not end up the way she thinks.

Heather shares the wild story of how the idea for the novel came to her and the challenges of writing dual timelines, especially when it is so key to the backstory to get it right. She also walks us through how she begins with handwritten copy and then works with her editor to hone the writing. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.

Next up is Katherine Faulkner, whose debut novel, GREENWICH PARK, also will be a Bets On pick. The plot came to Katherine when she was in a prenatal class. Since all the women were pregnant, there was a feeling that they all should be friends. In the book, Helen attends her first prenatal class and has a strange encounter with Rachel, who has latched on to her. At first, Helen appreciates the companionship. But as time goes on, Rachel becomes more erratic, and Helen begins feeling like she needs to find a way to escape this irrational creature.

Katherine talks to Carol about the friends we make early in our lives and the difficulty of making new ones later, which became the perfect start to a thriller. They swap some tales from their own prenatal classes --- ones that still make them laugh. They also discuss Katherine's work as an award-winning journalist and investigative reporter, and the inspiration that comes from interviewing people from all walks of life. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.

For our last interview, our producer, Austin Ruh, talks to Christopher Golden about his latest supernatural thriller, ROAD OF BONES. The book follows two National Geographic filmmakers, Teig and Prentiss, as they travel into the farthest reaches of Siberia. Known as the Road of Bones, the Kolyma Highway was the place where hundreds of thousands of people were sent to die as prisoners. Now Teig and Prentiss must survive the cold and uncover long-forgotten folklore in this unfamiliar land. Unfortunately for them, it may be more real than they expected.

Christopher talks to Austin about the values of horror as therapy for readers, how he wrote this novel with the intention that anyone could enjoy it, and why Siberia is the perfect setting for something so thrilling. He also announces something big that's coming up next. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.

For those of you who are doing online shopping, if you use the store links below, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases. We would appreciate your considering this!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Now Available: THE FAMILY CHAO
by Lan Samantha Chang
February's Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.

Wednesday, February 2nd at 7pm ET: The Center for Fiction: Presented in partnership with the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, The Center for Fiction will host a virtual event featuring Charmaine Wilkerson, who will discuss her debut novel, BLACK CAKE (this month's "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club pick), with Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Wednesday, February 2nd at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Patti Callahan Henry --- will talk to Alafair Burke (FIND ME) and Allison Pataki (THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST).

Wednesday, February 2nd at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Nina de Gramont as she discusses her new book, THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR (this month's Reese's Book Club pick), with Jason Mott.

Wednesday, February 2nd at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Charles Todd pays tribute to his late mother, Caroline, as he discusses their latest mystery starring Inspector Ian Rutledge, A GAME OF FEAR.

Wednesday, February 2nd at 9pm ET: Tattered Cover Book Store: Sourcebooks Landmark, in partnership with Boulder Bookstore, Old Firehouse and Tattered Cover, welcomes Marie Benedict in conversation with Nathalia Holt for a special virtual discussion of Marie's new book, HER HIDDEN GENIUS.

Thursday, February 3rd at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's will host Jillian Cantor as she discusses her new book, BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS, with Meredith Jaeger.

Thursday, February 3rd at 8pm ET: Murder By The Book: Eva Jurczyk will be in conversation with William Boyle about her debut novel, THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.

Thursday, February 3rd at 8pm ET: Skylark Bookshop: Skylark’s free-range bookseller-at-large Mary O’Malley and their bookselling friend, Pamela Klinger-Horn, will be in conversation with Marie Benedict about her new historical novel, HER HIDDEN GENIUS.

Friday, February 4th at 7pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Jillian Cantor will discuss her latest novel, BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS, with special guest host Heather Gudenkauf.

Monday, February 7th at 9pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Gregg Hurwitz will discuss his latest Orphan X thriller, DARK HORSE, in which Evan Smoak faces his most challenging mission ever.

Tuesday, February 8th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble Book Club: Barnes & Noble will host a virtual discussion for their January Book Club selection, ANTHEM, featuring Noah Hawley.

Tuesday, February 8th at 9pm ET: Vroman's Bookstore: "Vroman's Live!" presents Lisa Lutz, in conversation with Chris Pavone about her latest novel, THE ACCOMPLICE.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Special Contest for SHADOWS OF BERLIN
by David R. Gillham, Releasing April 19th
Enter to Win One of 25 Advance Copies

On Sale the Week of January 31st in Hardcover

February 1st

BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson (Fiction)
Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
Ballantine Books | 9780593358337

THE BOOKS OF JACOB written by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft (Historical Fiction)
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas --- and a new unrest --- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.
Riverhead Books | 9780593087480

CATCH THE SPARROW: A Search for a Sister and the Truth of Her Murder by Rachel Rear (True Crime/Memoir)
Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry. But then, one morning, she was gone. Around Rochester --- a region that has spawned such serial killers as Arthur Shawcross and the “Double Initial” killer --- Stephanie's disappearance was just a familiar sort of news item. But Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story of a missing woman: Rachel's mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635577235

THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR by Nina de Gramont (Historical Fiction)
London, 1925: In a world of townhomes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie. The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those 11 mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250274618

CIRCUS OF WONDERS by Elizabeth Macneal (Historical Fiction)
In 1860s England, circus mania is sweeping the nation. When Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders pitches its tent in a poor coastal town, the life of one young girl changes forever. Sold to the ringmaster as a “leopard girl” because of the birthmarks that cover her body, Nell is utterly devastated. But as she grows close to the other performers, she finds herself enchanted by the glittering freedom of the circus, and by her own role as the Queen of the Moon and Stars. Before long, Nell’s fame spreads across the world --- and with it, a chance for Jasper Jupiter to grow his own name and fortune. But what happens when her fame begins to eclipse his own, when even Jasper’s loyal brother, Toby, becomes captivated by Nell?
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982106799

DON'T CRY FOR ME by Daniel Black (Fiction)
As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay. But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335425737

THE FAMILY CHAO by Lan Samantha Chang (Literary Mystery)
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for 35 years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last. Before long, brash, charismatic and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead --- presumed murdered --- and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393868074

FINLAY DONOVAN KNOCKS 'EM DEAD by Elle Cosimano (Mystery/Humor)
Finlay Donovan is once again struggling to finish her next novel and keep her head above water as a single mother of two. On the bright side, she has her live-in nanny and confidant Vero to rely on, and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish. On the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like. Meanwhile, Vero is keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life.
Minotaur Books | 9781250242181

FREE LOVE by Tessa Hadley (Historical Fiction)
1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability. Pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit and kisses Phyllis, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.
Harper | 9780063137776

A GAME OF FEAR: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd (Historical Mystery)
Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past. The lady of the house claims she saw a violent murder --- but there is no body, no blood. She also insists she recognized the killer: Captain Nelson. Only it could not have been Nelson because he died during the war. Everyone in the village believes that Lady Benton’s losses have turned her mind --- she is, after all, a grieving widow and mother --- but the woman Rutledge interviews is rational and self-possessed. And then there is Captain Nelson: what really happened to him in the war? The more Rutledge delves into this baffling case, the more suspicious tragedies he uncovers.
William Morrow | 9780062905598

THE GOODBYE COAST: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Joe Ide (Hard-boiled Mystery)
In THE GOODBYE COAST, Philip Marlowe is a quiet, lonely and remarkably capable and confident private detective. However, he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective who has given in to drink after the death of Marlowe’s mother. Marlowe, against his better judgment, accepts two missing person cases --- the first, a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet; the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the center of the novel is Marlowe’s troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who’s unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy.
Mulholland Books | 9780316459273

HEARTBREAK: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams (Memoir)
When her 25-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn’t expect is that she’ll end up in the hospital, examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, Williams tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks in a laboratory while looking at pictures of her ex, and ventures to the wilderness in search of awe as an antidote to loneliness.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324003489

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (Memoir)
A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado privately was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But there were also moments of peace, joy and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250776747

MARION LANE AND THE DEADLY ROSE by T.A. Willberg (Historical Mystery)
It’s 1959, and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him The Florist because of the rose he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the Inquirers at Miss Brickett’s for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane is assigned the case. But she’s already dealing with a mystery of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of the three new recruits should not be trusted. She dismisses the letter at first, focusing on The Florist case, but her informer seems to be one step ahead, predicting what will happen before it does. But when a fellow second-year Inquirer is murdered, Marion takes matters into her own hands.
Park Row | 9780778311942

MERCY STREET by Jennifer Haigh (Fiction)
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia’s days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy’s, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11 --- the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.
Ecco | 9780061763304

OTHER PEOPLE'S CLOTHES by Calla Henkel (Thriller/Humor)
Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in Berlin. She relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star. When Hailey stumbles on a posting for a high-ceilinged, prewar sublet by well-known thriller writer Beatrice Becks, the girls snap it up. Convinced that Beatrice intends to use their lives as inspiration for her next novel, Hailey vows to craft main-character-worthy personas. As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living --- and how it will end.
Doubleday | 9780385547352

READER, I BURIED THEM & OTHER STORIES by Peter Lovesey (Mystery/Short Stories)
More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his 100th short story, Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection --- 18 yarns of mystery, melancholy and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery and the book publishing industry. The collection includes that first story that launched his story-writing career, as well as three exclusive new stories. In addition, Lovesey fans will delight in a personal essay by the author about the historical inspirations --- and in an appearance by the irascible Bath detective Peter Diamond.
Soho Crime | 9781641293617

RECITATIF: A Story by Toni Morrison (Fiction)
In this 1983 short story --- the only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote --- we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
Knopf | 9780593315033

THANK YOU, MR. NIXON: Stories by Gish Jen (Fiction/Short Stories)
Beginning with a cheery letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to “poor Mr. Nixon” in hell, Gish Jen embarks on a fictional journey through U.S.-China relations, capturing the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change. Opal Chen reunites with her Chinese sisters after 40 years; newly cosmopolitan Lulu Koo wonders why Americans “like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes”; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their “number-one daughter” in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on “no politics, just make money,” finds she must reassess her mother’s philosophy.
Knopf | 9780593319895

THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by Brendan Slocumb (Mystery/Thriller)
Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream --- he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition, the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad before it’s too late.
Anchor | 9780593315415

VLADIMIR by Julia May Jonas (Fiction)
“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982187637

WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW by Kai Harris (Fiction)
WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down. Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets.
Tiny Reparations Books | 9780593185346

On Sale the Week of January 31st in Paperback

February 1st

AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins (Fiction)
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250209788

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS by Jillian Cantor (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby. Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire. Their stories unfold in the years leading up to that fateful summer of 1922, when all three of their lives are on the brink of unraveling. Each woman is pulled deeper into Gatsby’s romantic obsession, with devastating consequences for all of them.
Harper Perennial | 9780063051263

BENEATH THE KEEP: A Novel of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (Fantasy/Adventure)
The Tearling, founded as a utopia, has collapsed and reverted to feudalism. As the gap between rich and poor widens and famine threatens the land, rumors of a prophecy begin to spread: a great hope, a True Queen who will ascend and save the kingdom. But rumors will not help Lazarus, a boy on the verge of manhood, trapped in the clandestine underworld known as the Creche. Enlisted from his earliest days to kill without mercy, he has never seen sun or sky, not until a quest for vengeance propels him above ground. There he finds a calling amid a royal court rife with intrigue and danger, where he meets Niya, Princess Elyssa’s handmaid, who is not what she appears to be and whose true identity will spell death if revealed.
Dutton | 9781524742744

BLACK GIRLS MUST BE MAGIC by Jayne Allen (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Discovering she’s pregnant, Tabitha Walker throws herself headfirst into the world of “single mothers by choice.” Between her job, doctor’s appointments and preparing for the baby, she’s worn out. And that’s before her boss at the local news station starts getting complaints from viewers about Tabitha’s natural hair. When an unexpected turn of events draws Marc --- her on- and off-again ex-boyfriend --- back into her world with surprising demands, and the situation at work begins to threaten her livelihood and her identity, Tabitha must make some tough decisions about her and her baby’s future. It takes a village to raise a child, and Tabitha turns to the women who have always been there for her.
Harper Perennial | 9780063137929

THE BLADE BETWEEN by Sam J. Miller (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill, and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge. Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become --- overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.
Ecco | 9780062969835

BLOOD GROVE: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley (Mystery)
Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. He and his lover were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences. Meanwhile, Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.
Mulholland Books | 9780316491167

COUNT YOUR LUCKY STARS by Alexandria Bellefleur (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot Cooper comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant --- her childhood friend, her first love, her first everything. In the decade since she last saw Margot, Olivia’s life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. When a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers up her spare room. As they spend time in close quarters, Margot starts to question her no-strings stance. Olivia is everything she’s ever wanted, but Margot let her in once and it ended in disaster. Will history repeat itself, or should she count her lucky stars that she gets a second chance with her first love?
Avon | 9780063000889

THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED: Stories written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Fiction/Short Stories)
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken --- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history --- with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Hogarth | 9780593134092

ETERNAL by Lisa Scottoline (Historical Fiction)
Elisabetta, Marco and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics prodigy, kindhearted and thoughtful, the son of a lawyer and a doctor. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear --- their families, their homes and their connection to one another --- is tested in ways they never could have imagined.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525539797

GIRL A by Abigail Dean (Psychological Thriller)
Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents --- her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the home into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings --- and with the childhood they shared.
Penguin Books | 9780593295861

HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE by Imbolo Mbue (Fiction)
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made --- and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593132449

THE KINDEST LIE by Nancy Johnson (Fiction)
Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but she's uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to --- and was forced to leave behind --- when she was a teenager. Returning home, Ruth discovers that the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063005648

LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21st CENTURY: Stories by Kim Fu (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
In these 12 tales, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
Tin House Books | 9781951142995

LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY by Zak Salih (Fiction)
It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of belonging Sebastian craves. While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession.
Algonquin Books | 9781643752075

THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH: The Life of James Beard by John Birdsall (Biography)
In the first portrait of James Beard in 25 years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard’s life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the 20th century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine. THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH is informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324020240

MY BRILLIANT LIFE written by Ae-ran Kim, translated by Chi-Young Kim (Fiction)
Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang --- his 60-year-old neighbor and best friend --- and through the books he reads to visit the places he otherwise would never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing together his parents’ often embellished stories about his family and childhood. He hopes to present it on his birthday, as a final gift to his mom and dad --- their own falling-in-love story. Through it all, Areum and his family will have you laughing and crying, for all the right reasons.
Forge Books | 9781250750563

MY YEAR ABROAD by Chang-rae Lee (Fiction)
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong and of himself. The narrative alternates between Tiller’s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future.
Riverhead Books | 9781594634581

RAMSES THE DAMNED: THE REIGN OF OSIRIS by Anne Rice and Christopher Rice (Supernatural Thriller/Romance)
Paperback Original
A pharaoh made immortal by a mysterious and powerful elixir, Ramses the Great became counselor and lover to some of Egypt's greatest and most powerful rulers before he was awakened from centuries of slumber to the mystifying and dazzling world of Edwardian England. Having vanquished foes both human and supernatural, he's found love with the beautiful heiress Julie Stratford, daughter of Lawrence Stratford, the slain archaeologist who discovered his tomb. Now, with the outbreak of a world war looming, Ramses and those immortals brought forth from the mists of history by his resurrection will face their greatest test yet.
Anchor | 9781101970331

THE ROPE: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP by Alex Tresniowski (True Crime/History)
In Asbury Park, New Jersey, 10-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured for the first time. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces --- religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics and America’s Jim Crow racial violence.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982114039

THE SIREN by Katherine St. John (Thriller)
In the midst of a sizzling hot summer, some of Hollywood's most notorious faces are assembled on the idyllic Caribbean island of St. Genesius to film The Siren. Three very different women arrive on set, each with her own motive. Stella, an infamously unstable actress, is struggling to reclaim the career she lost in the wake of multiple, very public breakdowns. Taylor, a fledgling producer, is anxious to work on a film she hopes will turn her career around after her last job ended in scandal. And Felicity, Stella's mysterious new assistant, harbors designs of her own that threaten to upend everyone's plans. With a hurricane brewing offshore, each woman finds herself trapped on the island, united against a common enemy. But as deceptions come to light, misplaced trust may prove more perilous than the storm itself.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538733677

SMALLTIME: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto (Memoir)
SMALLTIME is a riveting American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, Russell Shorto’s great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life --- and wife --- in a Pennsylvania mining town. It’s a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him. The book draws an intimate portrait of a mobster and his wife, sudden riches, and the toll a lawless life takes on one family. But SMALLTIME is something more. The author enlists his ailing father --- Tony, the mobster’s son --- as his partner in the search for their troubled patriarch.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324020172

THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM: Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (Fiction/Short Stories)
In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half-brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. Elizabeth McCracken traces how our closely held desires --- for intimacy, atonement, comfort --- bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time.
Ecco | 9780062971258

STEPMOTHERLAND: Poems by Darrel Alejandro Holnes (Poetry)
Paperback Original
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’ first full-length collection is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes’ work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life.
University of Notre Dame Press | 9780268202163

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE DUTCH PAINTER by Timothy Miller (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
When Sherlock Holmes finds himself chasing an art dealer through the streets of Paris, he’s certain he’s smoked out one of the principals of a cunning forgery ring responsible for the theft of some of the Louvre’s greatest masterpieces. But he doesn’t know that the dealer, Theo Van Gogh, is rushing to the side of his brother, who lies dying of a gunshot wound in Auvers. He doesn’t know that the dealer’s brother is a penniless misfit artist named Vincent, known to few and mourned by even fewer. Officialdom pronounces the death a suicide, but a few minutes at the scene convinces Holmes it was murder. And he’s bulldog-determined to discover why a penniless painter who harmed no one had to be killed --- and who killed him.
Seventh Street Books | 9781645060420

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE by Carola Lovering (Psychological Thriller)
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips, she’s also battled crippling OCD, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result. But now Burke says he wants her. Forever. But Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends. In a third perspective, set 30 years earlier, a scrappy 17-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past --- or will he find his way into her future?
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250759900

TRULY LIKE LIGHTNING by David Duchovny (Fiction)
For the past 20 years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and 10 children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence --- controversial, difficult but Edenic --- is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.
Picador | 9781250829603

THE URSULINA by Brian Freeman (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
The mythical beast goes by many names. Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti. In Black Wolf County, he's called the Ursulina. But to Deputy Rebecca Colder, the beast is no myth. A serial killer has taken on the identity of the monster --- and with each body left behind, there's a chilling message written in blood: I am the Ursulina. In this follow-up to THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW, Brian Freeman takes us on Rebecca's dark journey to reveal the truth about the Ursulina --- a journey that ultimately leads to an excruciating choice that will change her life forever.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781665109697

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett (Fiction)
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Riverhead Books | 9780525536963

WEDDING STATION by David Downing (Historical Thriller)
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin is set ablaze. It’s just a month after Hitler’s inauguration as Chancellor of Germany, and the Nazis use the torching to justify a campaign of terror against their political opponents. John Russell’s recent separation from his wife threatens his right to reside in Germany and any meaningful relationship with his six-year-old son, Paul. He has just secured work as a crime reporter for a Berlin newspaper, and the crimes that he has to report --- the gruesome murder of a rent boy, the hit-and-run death of a professional genealogist, the suspicious disappearance of a Nazi-supporting celebrity fortune teller --- are increasingly entangled in the wider nightmare engulfing Germany.
Soho Crime | 9781641293471

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller (Memoir)
Tessa Miller was an ambitious twentysomething writer in New York City when, on a random fall day, her stomach began to seize up. At first, she toughed it out through searing pain, taking sick days from work, unable to leave the bathroom or her bed. But when it became undeniable that something was seriously wrong, Miller gave in to family pressure and went to the hospital --- beginning a yearslong nightmare of procedures, misdiagnoses and life-threatening infections. Once she was finally correctly diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Miller faced another battle: accepting that she will never get better.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250751478

WHEN HARRY MET MINNIE: A True Story of Love and Friendship by Martha Teichner (Memoir)
There’s a special camaraderie among early-morning dog walkers. Gathering at dog runs in the park, or strolling through the farmer's market at Union Square before the bustling crowd appears, fellow pet owners become familiar --- as do the personalities of their beloved animals. In this special space and time, a chance encounter with an old acquaintance changed Martha Teichner’s world. As fate would have it, her friend knew someone who was dying of cancer, from exposure to toxins after 9/11, and desperate to find a home for her dog, Harry. He was a Bull Terrier --- the same breed as Martha’s dear Minnie. What begins as a transaction involving a dog becomes a deep and meaningful friendship between two women with complicated lives and a love of Bull Terriers in common.
Celadon Books | 9781250212528

On Sale the Week of February 7th in Hardcover

February 8th

ABANDONED IN DEATH by J. D. Robb (Mystery/Thriller)
The woman’s body was found in the early morning, on a bench in a New York City playground. The fatal wound was hidden beneath a ribbon around her neck. And the note: Bad Mommy, written in crayon as if by a child. Eve Dallas turns to the department’s top profiler, who confirms what seems obvious to Eve: They’re dealing with a killer whose childhood involved some sort of trauma --- a situation Eve is all too familiar with herself. Yet the clues suggest a perpetrator who’d be roughly 60 years old, and there are no records of old crimes with a similar MO. When Eve discovers that other young women --- who physically resemble the first victim --- have vanished, the clock starts ticking louder.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250278210

THE ARC by Tory Henwood Hoen (Romantic Comedy)
Ursula Byrne, VP of Strategic Audacity at a branding agency in Manhattan, is successful, witty, whip-smart and single. She’s tried all the dating apps, and she’s underwhelmed by her options. You’d think that by now someone would have come up with a way for users to be more tailored about who and what they want in a life partner. Enter The Arc: a highly secretive, super-sophisticated matchmaking service that uses a complex series of emotional, psychological and physiological assessments to architect partnerships that will go the distance. Ursula is paired with 42-year-old lawyer Rafael Banks. But as their relationship unfolds in unanticipated ways, the two begin to realize that true love is never a sure thing.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250276773

CHERISH FARRAH by Bethany C. Morrow (Psychological Thriller/Social Horror)
Farrah Turner is one of two Black girls in her country club community, and the only one with Black parents. Her best friend, Cherish Whitman, was adopted by a white, wealthy family. With Brianne and Jerry Whitman as parents, Cherish is given the kind of adoration and coddling that even upper-class Black parents can’t seem to afford --- and it creates a dissonance in her best friend that Farrah can exploit. When her own family is unexpectedly confronted with foreclosure, the calculating Farrah is determined to reassert the control she’s convinced she’s always had over her life by staying with Cherish. As troubled Farrah manipulates her way further into the Whitman family, the longer she stays, the more her own parents suggest that something is wrong in the Whitman house.
Dutton | 9780593185384

CITY OF THE DEAD: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman (Psychological Thriller)
Early one morning, Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home. Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case.
Ballantine Books | 9780525618584

CLEAN AIR by Sarah Blake (Dystopian Mystery)
The climate apocalypse has come and gone, and in the end it wasn’t the temperature climbing or the waters rising. It was the trees. The world became overgrown, creating enough pollen to render the air unbreathable. In the decade since the event known as the Turning, humanity has rebuilt, and Izabel has gotten used to the airtight domes that now contain her life. She raises her young daughter, Cami, and attempts to make peace with her mother’s death. Then someone starts slashing through the domes at night, exposing people to the deadly pollen --- a serial killer. Almost simultaneously, Cami begins sleep-talking, having whole conversations about the murders that she doesn’t remember after she wakes.
Algonquin Books | 9781643751061

CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN by Coco Mellors (Fiction)
Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635576818

DARK HORSE: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz (Thriller)
Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He's also the patron of the local area --- supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, rough justice to the downtrodden and a future to a people normally with little hope. However, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent 18-year-old daughter, spiriting her away into the armored complex that is their headquarters in Mexico. So he turns to Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man. Not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, he must decide if he should help a very bad man --- no matter how just the cause.
Minotaur Books | 9781250252302

ECHO by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Dark Fantasy/Horror)
Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying, and he claims amnesia --- but he remembers everything. He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps. He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how they got the ominous sense that they were not alone. But it isn’t just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him.
Tor Nightfire | 9781250759559

HOME/LAND: A Memoir of Departure and Return by Rebecca Mead (Memoir)
When New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead relocated to her birth city of London with her family in the summer of 2018, she was both fleeing the political situation in America and seeking to expose her son to a wider world. With a keen sense of what she’d given up as she left New York, her home of 30 years, she tried to knit herself into the fabric of a changed London. The move raised poignant questions about place: What does it mean to leave the place you have adopted as home and country? And what is the value and cost of uprooting yourself? In HOME/LAND, Mead artfully explores themes of identity, nationality and inheritance.
Knopf | 9780525658719

JANE THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER: Being a Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron (Historical Mystery)
Jane Austen is not feeling well. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of the curative waters at Cheltenham Spa, in Gloucestershire. Jane decides to use some of the profits earned from her last novel, EMMA, and treat herself to a period of rest and reflection at the spa, in the company of her sister, Cassandra. Cheltenham Spa hardly turns out to be the relaxing sojourn Jane and Cassandra envisaged, however. It is immediately obvious that other boarders at the guest house where the Misses Austen are staying have come to Cheltenham with stresses of their own --- some of them deadly.
Soho Crime | 9781641292474

L.A. BURNING by D. C. Taylor (Thriller)
When Cody Bonner is released from prison after six years, she returns to L.A. with a purpose: to learn the truth about her twin sister Julie, who washed up on a Malibu beach a year earlier. Her search leads her to the darker alleys behind the dazzle of the film business, and into the world of high-powered agents, high-priced call girls, and men with a taste for sexual violence. As she homes in on her mother’s powerful agent, Harry Groban, a man with ugly accusations of abuse in his past, Cody becomes more deeply enmeshed in the life she left behind as a teenager: her mother’s star power, her former classmates-turned-producers, glitzy parties, and a handsome former love who knows all the players. Is Groban at the center? Could there be others who had a hand in Julie’s murder?
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643857787

THE LADY'S MINE by Francine Rivers (Historical Romance)
When Kathryn Walsh arrives in tiny Calvada, a mining town nestled in the Sierra Nevadas, falling in love is the farthest thing from her mind. Banished from Boston by her wealthy stepfather, she has come to claim an inheritance from the uncle she never knew: a defunct newspaper office on a main street overflowing with brothels and saloons, and a seemingly worthless mine. Moved by the oppression of the local miners and their families, Kathryn decides to relaunch her uncle’s newspaper --- and then finds herself in the middle of a maelstrom, pitted against Calvada’s most powerful men. Matthias Beck, owner of a local saloon and hotel, has a special interest in the new lady in town.
Tyndale House Publishers | 9781496447579

LOVE & SAFFRON: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love by Kim Fay (Historical Fiction)
When 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter --- as well as a gift of saffron --- to 59-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine. While she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic --- exotic fare in the Northwest of the ’60s. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy and the unexpected in their own lives.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593419335

THE NINETIES: A Book by Chuck Klosterman (Social Science/Popular Culture)
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.
Penguin Press | 9780735217959

NOBODY'S MAGIC by Destiny O. Birdsong (Fiction)
Suzette, Maple and Agnes --- three Black women with albinism --- call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, they find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. Told in three parts, NOBODY’S MAGIC is a searing meditation on grief, female strength and self-discovery set against a backdrop of complicated social and racial histories. The book is a testament to the power of family --- the ones you're born in and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538721391

SHADOWS OF PECAN HOLLOW by Caroline Frost (Fiction)
It was 1970 when 13-year-old runaway Kit Walker was abducted by Manny Romero, a smooth-talking, low-level criminal, who first coddled her and then groomed her into his partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny were infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome. Twenty years after they meet, Kit has scraped together a life for herself and her daughter amongst the pecan trees and muddy creeks of the town of Pecan Hollow, far from Manny. But when he shows up at her doorstep a new man, fresh out of prison, Kit is forced to reckon with the shadows of her past, and her community is sent into a tailspin.
William Morrow | 9780063065345

STAN LEE'S THE DEVIL'S QUINTET: THE ARMAGEDDON CODE by Jay Bonansinga (Science Fiction/Thriller)
A five-person special ops unit, composed of a diverse assortment of former Navy SEALS from all walks of life, are responding to a terrorist threat deep in the Caucasus Mountains when their mission goes south in a big way. Facing certain death and torture, they’re unexpectedly offered a Faustian bargain by the Devil himself, who grants them unearthly powers in order to send evildoers to Hell on his fiendish behalf. But “The Devil’s Quintet” do things their own way, fighting to protect America and the world, while trying their best not to let their hellish new abilities corrupt them beyond redemption.
Tor Books | 9781250776815

STEAL by James Patterson and Howard Roughan (Thriller)
Imagine everyone’s surprise when Carter von Oehson, a sophomore in Dr. Dylan Reinhart’s Abnormal Psychology class, posts on Instagram that he plans to kill himself. Twenty-four hours later, and still no one has seen him. A massive search ensues. But when Carter’s sailboat rolls in with the tide without him or anyone else on it, the worst seems to be confirmed. He really did it. Or did he? The one person convinced he’s still alive is his father, Mathias von Oehson, founder and CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund. But what Mathias knows and how he knows it ultimately would reveal a secret so damaging that it would be as if he were committing suicide himself.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538703540

VERY COLD PEOPLE by Sarah Manguso (Fiction)
For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families by the tail end of the 20th century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. As she grows older, she slowly learns how the town’s prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm --- from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.
Hogarth | 9780593241226

WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS by Heather O'Neill (Historical Fiction)
Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.
Riverhead Books | 9780593422908

THE WRONG WOMAN by Leanne Kale Sparks (Mystery/Thriller)
The only survivor of Denver’s notorious “Reaper” serial murders, FBI Special Agent Kendall Beck grapples with the ghosts of her past by seeking justice for victims of abuse. She’s neck deep in a particularly ugly case involving the disappearance of five-year-old Emily Williams. But her investigation is derailed when her best friend and roommate, Gwen Tavich, turns up dead floating in a nearby lake. Devastated by the news of Gwen’s death, Kendall teams up with Denver detective Adam Taylor to find the killer. With every new clue, Kendall questions how well she really knew her friend. And when Gwen’s dark secrets begin spilling out one by one, she begins to understand the devastating magnitude of her murder.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643859415

On Sale the Week of February 7th in Paperback

February 8th

THE ABSOLUTE BOOK by Elizabeth Knox (Fantasy)
Taryn Cornick believes that the past --- her sister's violent death and her own ill-conceived revenge --- is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring…but not all of the attention it brings her is good. A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally, a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.
Penguin Books | 9780593296752

ARE WE THERE YET? by Kathleen West (Fiction)
On the same day Alice Sullivan learns that her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin. When it comes to light that the incident is part of a new behavior pattern for her son, one complete with fake social media profiles with a lot of questionable content, Alice’s social standing is quickly eroded to one of “those moms” who can’t control her kids. Soon she’s facing the very judgment she was all too happy to dole out when she thought no one was looking (or when she thought her house wasn’t made of glass). Then her mother unloads a family secret she’s kept for more than 30 years, and Alice’s entire perception of herself is shattered.
Berkley | 9780593098448

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEAR: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear (Historical Mystery)
While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a message runner for a government office, witnesses an argument that ends in murder. When he arrives at the delivery address, he’s shocked to come face to face with the killer. Dismissed by the police when he attempts to report the crime, Freddie goes in search of a woman he once met when delivering a message: Maisie Dobbs. While Maisie wants to help the boy, she must maintain extreme caution: she’s working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots the killer in a place she least expects. She soon realizes she’s been pulled into the orbit of a man who has his own reasons to kill --- reasons that go back to the last war.
Harper Perennial | 9780062868015

EDUCATED: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Memoir)
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she had traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780399590528

FAKE ACCOUNTS by Lauren Oyler (Fiction)
On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony and outrage, she is not exactly shocked by the revelation and plots to end their floundering relationship while on a trip to the Women's March in DC. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world in which truths are shaped by online lies. Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York and increasingly alienated from her friends and colleagues, our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life.
Catapult | 9781646221240

FIERCE LITTLE THING by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (Psychological Thriller)
Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was immediately taken with Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends. Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate, estranged from the others. Her carefully walled life is torn open by threatening letters. Unless she and her former friends return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers --- their last-ditch attempt to save Home --- will be revealed. From vastly different lives, the five return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?
Flatiron Books | 9781250779441

GEORGE WASHINGTON: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father by David O. Stewart (Biography)
George Washington's rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinventions in history. In his mid-20s, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career thanks to an outrageous ego. But by his mid-40s, that headstrong, unwise young man had evolved into an unassailable leader chosen as the commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Army. By his mid-50s, he was unanimously elected the nation's first president. How did Washington emerge from the wilderness to become the central founder of the United States of America? Award-winning historian David O. Stewart unveils the political education that made Washington a master politician --- and America's most essential leader.
Dutton | 9780451489005

GOLDEN GIRL by Elin Hilderbrand (Fiction)
Vivian Howe, author of 13 beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging near her home on Nantucket. She ascends to the Beyond where she's assigned to a Person named Martha, who allows Vivi to watch what happens below for one last summer. Vivi also is granted three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on earth. From the Beyond, she watches “The Chief” Ed Kapenash investigate her death, but her greatest worry is her final book, which contains a secret from her own youth that could be disastrous for her reputation. But when hidden truths come to light, Vivi’s family will have to sort out their past and present mistakes --- with or without a nudge of help from above --- while Vivi finally lets them grow without her.
Back Bay Books | 9780316420075

I CAME AS A SHADOW: An Autobiography by John Thompson, with Jesse Washington (Autobiography)
After three decades at the center of race and sports in America, the first Black head coach to win an NCAA championship makes the private public at last. Chockful of stories and moving beyond mere stats, John Thompson’s book drives us through his childhood under Jim Crow segregation to our current moment of racial reckoning. We experience riding shotgun with Celtics icon Red Auerbach, and coaching NBA Hall of Famers like Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson. And thawing his historically glacial stare, Thompson brings us into his negotiation with a DC drug kingpin in his players’ orbit in the 1980s, as well as behind the scenes of his years on the Nike board.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250619365

KANT’S LITTLE PRUSSIAN HEAD AND OTHER REASONS WHY I WRITE: An Autobiography Through Essays by Claire Messud (Autobiography/Essays)
In 26 intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Claire Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and THE STRANGER; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.”
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393882483

THE LAST GRAND DUCHESS: A Novel of Olga Romanov, Imperial Russia, and Revolution by Bryn Turnbull (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters. Her only escape comes from the grand tea parties her aunt hosts amid the shadow court of Saint Petersburg. But as war approaches, the palaces of Russia are transformed. Olga and her sisters trade their gowns for nursing habits, assisting in surgeries and tending to the wounded bodies and minds of Russia’s military officers. When tensions run high and supplies run low, calls for revolution threaten to end 300 years of Romanov rule.
Mira | 9780778311706

LET’S NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN: A Memoir by Sara Faith Alterman (Memoir)
Twelve-year-old Sara enjoyed a G-rated existence in suburban New England, filled with over-the-top birthday cakes, Revolutionary War reenactments, and nerdy word games invented by her prudish father, Ira. But Sara's world changed for the icky when she discovered that Ira had been shielding her from the truth: that he was a campy sex writer who’d sold millions of books in multiple languages. For decades, these books remained an unspoken family secret, until Ira developed early onset Alzheimer's disease…and announced he'd be reviving his writing career. With Sara's help. In her memoir, Sara shares the profound experience of discovering new facets of her father --- once as a child, and again as an adult.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538748664

MEET ME IN BOMBAY by Jenny Ashcroft (Historical Romance)
It's New Year's Eve in Bombay, 1913, and Madeline Bright is yearning for all she has left behind in England. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Maddy meets Luke Devereaux --- and as the year changes, so do both their lives. Bold and charismatic, Luke opens her eyes to the wonders of Bombay, while Maddy's beauty and vivacity capture his heart. Only her mother disapproves, preferring the devoted Guy Bowen as a match for her daughter. But while Maddy and Luke are falling in love, the world is falling apart. World War I is on the horizon, and Luke will be given no choice but to fight. They will be continents apart, separated by danger and devastating loss, but bound by Luke's promise that they will meet again in Bombay.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250621078

MILK BLOOD HEAT: Stories by Dantiel W. Moniz (Fiction/Short Stories)
MILK BLOOD HEAT depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance and the elemental darkness in us all. A 13-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter --- whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.
Grove Press | 9780802159441

THE NEXT SHIP HOME: A Novel of Ellis Island by Heather Webb (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
A young Italian woman arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life. That same day, a young American woman reports to her first day of work at the immigration center. But Ellis Island isn't a refuge for Francesca or Alma, not when ships depart every day with those who are refused entry to the country and when corruption ripples through every corridor. While Francesca resorts to desperate measures to ensure she will make it off the island, Alma fights for her dreams of becoming a translator. As the two women face the misdeeds of a system known to manipulate and abuse immigrants searching for new hope in America, they form an unlikely friendship --- and share a terrible secret.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728243146

THE NIGHT SHE WENT MISSING by Kristen Bird (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Emily, a popular but bookish prep school senior, goes missing after a night out with friends. She was last seen leaving a party with Alex, a football player with a dubious reputation. But no one is talking. Now three mothers, friends turned frenemies, have their lives turned upside down as they are forced to look to their own children --- and each other’s --- for answers to questions they don’t want to ask. Each mother is sure she knows who is responsible, but they all have their own secrets to keep and reputations to protect. And the lies they tell themselves and each other may just have the potential to be lethal.
Mira | 9780778332107

NOT THE WITCH YOU WED by April Asher (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Magic-less witch Violet Maxwell wants nothing to do with alpha wolf shifter Lincoln Thorne --- the man who broke her fragile, teenage heart. But when the two of them are forced by arcane Supernatural Laws to find mates, Violet and Lincoln agree to fake-date their way to a fake-mating in order to conjure themselves some time. The joke’s on them. When old feelings make a reappearance --- along with Violet’s magic --- they both realize there’s nothing fake about their feelings. But there are old secrets and looming threats that could snatch away their happily ever after again.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250807991

OCEAN PREY: A Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers Novel by John Sandford (Mystery/Thriller)
An off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family when he calls in some suspicious behavior from a nearby boat. It’s a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and it’s zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver…a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean. None of it makes sense unless there's something hinky going on, and his hunch is proved right when all three Guardsmen who come out to investigate are shot and killed. When the FBI's investigation stalls out, they call in Lucas Davenport. And when his case turns lethal, Davenport will need to bring in every asset he can claim, including a detective with a fundamentally criminal mind: Virgil Flowers.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593419700

THE OTHER FAMILY by Wendy Corsi Staub (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
As California transplants making a fresh start in Brooklyn, the Howells are expected to live in a shoebox, but the brownstone has a huge kitchen, lots of light and a backyard. The catch: its previous residents were victims of a grisly triple homicide that remains unsolved. Soon, peculiar things begin happening. Nora unearths a long-hidden rusty box in the flowerbed. Oldest daughter Stacey, obsessed with the family murdered in their house, pokes into the bloody past and becomes convinced that a stranger is watching the house. She’s right. But one of the Howells will recognize his face. Because one of them has a secret that will blindside the others with a truth that lies shockingly close to home --- and to this one’s terrifying history.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063084605

THE POWER COUPLE by Alex Berenson (Thriller)
Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all: a nice house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, two well-behaved, healthy teenage children, and important government jobs. However, their marriage isn’t as perfect as it seems. After two decades together, they’ve drifted apart, talking little and having sex even less. Seeking to revive their strained relationship, they decide for their 20th wedding anniversary to take their two kids, Kira and Tony, on a European getaway. They have a blast…until one night in Barcelona when Kira doesn’t come home from a dance club. She’s gone. Abducted. Over the course of a single weekend, the Unsworths will do everything possible to find her --- as Kira herself discovers just how far she’ll go to break free of the trap that’s been set for her.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982103705

THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones, Jr. (Historical Fiction)
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man --- a fellow slave --- seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593085691

RED THREAD OF FATE by Lyn Liao Butler (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin, Mia, are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn’t seen since the child was an infant. Overwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam also must decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened.
Berkley | 9780593198742

SECRETS OF OUR HOUSE by Rea Frey (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Desi is the mastermind behind her dream getaway house, which is full of secrets. Secrets about the man she longs for, a man who is not her husband. Secrets about the roots of her family that must never see the light of day. When Desi and her family arrive from Chicago to spend the summer in the mountains, the seeds for the tumultuous months to follow are planted --- her marriage on the rocks, not knowing which way they’ll go. Her daughter Jules, falling in love for the first time with a local boy --- and forging a new path that will take her to uncharted places. And Carter --- a man Desi knew long ago, before she expunged him from her life for good. All hurtling toward events none of them can undo.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250241603

THE SOULMATE EQUATION by Christina Lauren (Romantic Comedy)
Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. But then she hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that is predicted to change dating forever. Her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Peña. This stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. However, she slowly begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist --- and the science behind a soulmate --- than she thought.
Gallery Books | 9781982171117

SPARKS LIKE STARS by Nadia Hashimi (Fiction)
Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. But her world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name --- Aryana Shepherd --- and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. New York, 2008: Forty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063008298

SURVIVING THE WHITE GAZE: A Memoir by Rebecca Carroll (Memoir)
Rebecca Carroll grew up the only Black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic --- and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her Blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982116279

THOSE WHO ARE SAVED by Alexis Landau (Historical Fiction)
Vera's wealth cannot protect her or her four-year-old-daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy France. Ordered to report to an internment camp, Russian Jewish Vera must make an impossible choice: bring Lucie with her, or put her into hiding. Believing the war will end soon, Vera chooses to leave Lucie in safety. She cannot know that she and her husband will have an opportunity to escape, to flee to America. She cannot know that Lucie will be too far to reach in time. And so begins a heartbreaking separation and journey, a war and a continent apart. Vera's marriage will falter under the surreal sun of California. But her determination to return to France and find Lucie will only grow. Then she meets Sasha, a man on his own search for meaning. Together, they will travel to France in search of Lucie.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593190555

WHEN I RAN AWAY by Ilona Bannister (Fiction)
As the Twin Towers collapse, Gigi Stanislawski flees her office building and escapes lower Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. She finds someone she recognizes --- Harry Harrison, a regular at her favorite coffee shop --- and brings him to her parents' house as she waits for the phone call that will never come: the call from Frankie, her younger brother. Ten years later, Gigi, now a single mother, meets Harry (again by chance), and they fall deeply in love. But their move to London and their new baby leave her feeling isolated, raw and alone with her grief. As Gigi comes face-to-face with the anguish of her brother's death and her rage at the unspoken pain of motherhood, she must somehow find the light amid all the darkness.
Anchor | 9780593081761

WILDLAND by Rebecca Hodge (Fiction)
When Kat Jamison retreats to the Blue Ridge Mountains, she's counting on peace and solitude to help her make a difficult decision. Her breast cancer has returned, but after the death of her husband, her will to fight is dampened. Now she has a choice to make: face yet another round of chemotherapy or surrender gracefully. Self-reflection quickly proves impossible as her getaway is complicated by a pair of abandoned dogs and two friendly children staying nearby, Lily and Nirav. But when lightning ignites a deadly wildfire, Kat's cabin is cut off from the rest of the camp, separating Lily and Nirav from their parents. Left with no choice, Kat, the children and the dogs must flee on foot through the drought-stricken forest, away from the ravenous flames.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643859699

THE WINDSOR KNOT by SJ Bennett (Mystery)
It is the early spring of 2016, and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals --- until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction. Unhappy at the mishandling of the case and concerned for her staff’s morale, the monarch decides to discreetly take matters into her own hands. The resolute Elizabeth will use her keen eye, quick mind and steady nerve to bring a murderer to justice.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063050013

THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN by Ava Reid (Historical Fantasy)
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline --- her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered. But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman --- he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power.
Harper Voyager | 9780062973139

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