August 2, 2022

August 2, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of August 1st and August 8th 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 review of Megan Miranda's new novel, THE LAST TO VANISH, which is a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. This gripping and propulsive thriller opens with the disappearance of a journalist who is investigating a string of vanishings in the resort town of Cutter’s Pass. Will its dark secrets finally be revealed?

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

As many book and author events are still 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.

Thursday, August 4th at 5pm ET: Blue Cypress Books: Blue Cypress Books is thrilled to welcome internationally bestselling author Karen Rose to "Book Banter." She will talk about her latest thriller, QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT, a brand-new series set in the sultry city of New Orleans.

Friday, August 5th at 4pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Rhys Bowen will discuss her new novel, WHERE THE SKY BEGINS, a gripping WWII novel about danger, triumph and second chances.

Saturday, August 6th at 7pm ET: Warwick's: Warwick's, in partnership with Books & Books and Miami Book Fair, presents Mohsin Hamid as he discusses his new book, THE LAST WHITE MAN, with Danzy Senna.

Monday, August 8th at 7pm ET: East City Bookshop: East City Bookshop welcomes Amanda Jayatissa for a virtual discussion of her new thriller, YOU'RE INVITED. What could be worse than your ex-boyfriend marrying your childhood best friend? Getting accused of her murder.

Tuesday, August 9th at 7pm ET: Literati Bookstore: Literati Bookstore is pleased to welcome Jillian Medoff to their "At Home with Literati" series in support of WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL. She will be joined in conversation by Lacy Crawford.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our Review of THE LAST TO VANISH by Megan Miranda
A Bookreporter.com Bets On Title

On Sale the Week of August 1st in Hardcover

August 1st

HOUSE GODS: Sustainable Buildings and Renegade Builders by Jim Kristofic (Environment/Architecture)
Our buildings are making us sick. Our homes, offices, factories and dormitories are, in some sense, fresh parasites on the sacred Earth, Nahasdzáán. In search of a better way, Jim Kristofic journeys across the Southwest to apprentice with architects and builders who know how to make buildings that will take care of us. This is where he meets the House Gods, who are building to the sun so that we can live on Earth. Forever. In HOUSE GODS, Kristofic pursues the techniques of sustainable building and the philosophies of its practitioners. What emerges is a strange and haunting quest through adobe mud and mayhem, encounters with shamans and stray dogs, solar panels, tragedy and true believers. It is a story about doing something meaningful, and about the kinds of things that grow out of deep pain.
University of New Mexico Press | 9780826363657

KISMET by Amina Akhtar (Thriller/Humor)
Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person --- until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst. Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona. Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses... Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour? When the glam gurus around town start turning up gruesomely murdered, Ronnie has her answer: all is not well in wellness town. As Marley’s blind ambition veers into madness, Ronnie fears for her life.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542034265

August 2nd

ALIAS EMMA by Ava Glass (Thriller)
A newly minted secret agent, Emma Makepeace has barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. She must covertly travel across one of the world’s most watched cities to bring the reluctant --- and handsome --- son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don’t find him first. With London’s famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city’s streets, alleys and gutters. This will take all of Emma’s skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when her handler goes dark, there’s no one left to trust. And just one wrong move will get them both killed.
Bantam | 9780593496794

ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT by Sarah Thankam Mathews (Fiction)
Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that is the key that unlocks every door. She begins dating women --- soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads, jobs go off the rails, and evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that her friend, Tig, begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.
Viking | 9780593489123

BLACK DOG: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods (Thriller/Adventure)
After returning home from a treacherous adventure, Stone Barrington is all too happy to settle back down in his New York City abode. But when he's introduced to a glamorous socialite with a staggering inheritance, Stone realizes his days are about to be anything but quiet. As it turns out, his intriguing new companion has some surprisingly familiar ties and other far more sinister ones --- including a nefarious enemy who gets too close for comfort. When it becomes clear that this miscreant will stop at nothing to get what he wants and will endanger all whom Stone holds dear, Stone must step in to protect his friends and prevent a dangerous madman from wreaking havoc across the city.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593540008

THE BOOK EATERS by Sunyi Dean (Gothic Horror/Fantasy)
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries. Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon --- like all other book eater women --- is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger --- not for books, but for human minds.
Tor Books | 9781250810182

DANGEROUS RHYTHMS: Jazz and the Underworld by T. J. English (True Crime/History)
DANGEROUS RHYTHMS tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th-century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century, mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob --- including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano --- provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed. Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men.
William Morrow | 9780063031418

THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME by Gabino Iglesias (Noir Thriller)
Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness and his marriage on the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, he agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation.
Mulholland Books | 9780316426916

DIRT CREEK by Hayley Scrivenor (Mystery)
When 12-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home. When school friend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?
Flatiron Books | 9781250834751

DRAGONS OF DECEIT: Dragonlance Destinies, Volume 1 by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (Fantasy/Adventure)
Destina Rosethorn believes herself to be a favored child of destiny. But when her father dies in the War of the Lance, she watches her carefully constructed world come crashing down. She loses not only her beloved father but also the legacy he has left her: the family lands and castle. To save her father, she hatches a bold plan --- to go back in time and prevent his death. First, she has to secure the Device of Time Journeying. But to change time, she’ll need another magical artifact --- the most powerful and dangerous artifact ever created. Destina’s quest sets in motion a chain of disastrous events that threaten to divert the course of the River of Time, alter the past and forever change the future.
Random House Worlds | 9781984819321

GANGLAND by Chuck Hogan (Thriller)
In the late 1970s, The Outfit has the entire city of Chicago in its hands. Tony Accardo is its fearless leader. Nicky Passero is his loyal soldier, though no one knows he has a direct line in to the boss of bosses. When the Christmas gift Accardo got for his wife, an inscribed bracelet with gold and diamond inlay, is stolen along with other items in a jewelry heist, Nicky is charged with tracking down and returning all of the items --- by whatever means necessary. Forced into an impossible situation, Nicky must find a way to carry out Accardo's increasingly unhinged instructions and survive the battle for control of Chicago. What Accardo doesn't know: Nicky has a secret that has made his life impossible and has put him in the pocket of the FBI.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538751756

IN PLAIN VIEW: The Daily Lives of Amish Women by Judy Stavisky (Memoir)
What does the life of an Amish woman really look like? Over the course of a decade, author Judy Stavisky, a curious outsider, spent hundreds of hours getting to know the women of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County Amish community to find out the answer to this question. She joined mothers and grandmothers, unmarried women and teens, on their shopping excursions for household items, fabric and groceries. They drove miles between undulating fields and shared hundreds of hours of conversation on everyday topics. As relationships evolved into enduring friendships, she grew to understand firsthand how Amish women bind their families and communities together.
Herald Press | 9781513809816

THE LAST WHITE MAN by Mohsin Hamid (Fiction)
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’ skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Reports of similar events soon begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’ father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading.
Riverhead Books | 9780593538814

LISTENING WELL: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life by Heather Morris (Memoir)
In LISTENING WELL, Heather Morris explores her extraordinary talents as a listener --- a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, and the bestselling follow-up, CILKA’S JOURNEY. Now Heather shares the story behind her inspirational writing journey and the defining experiences of her life, including her profound friendship with Lale, and explores how she learned to really listen to the stories people told her --- skills she believes we all can learn.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250276919

THE LOST KINGS by Tyrell Johnson (Psychological Thriller)
Twins Jeanie and Jamie King are inseparable. Stuck in a cabin in rural Washington with their alcoholic father, they cling to one another for safety and companionship. Until one night, when their father comes home covered in blood. The next day, he’s gone…and so is Jamie. Jeanie’s whole world is turned upside down. Not only has she lost her beloved brother, but with no family left in Washington, she is ripped from everything she knows, including Maddox, the boy she could be learning to love. Twenty years later, Jeanie is in England. She keeps her demons at bay by drinking too much, sleeping with a married man, and speaking to a therapist she doesn’t respect. But her old life catches up to her when Maddox reappears, claiming to have tracked down her dad.
Anchor | 9780593466865

THE MANY DAUGHTERS OF AFONG MOY by Jamie Ford (Historical Fiction)
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family. As painful recollections affect her present life, she discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period. A stranger who has loved her through all of her genetic memories.
Atria Books | 9781982158217

MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS by Anthony Marra (Historical Fiction)
Born in Rome, Maria Lagana immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest. Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across LA, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate --- and her own.
Hogarth | 9780451495204

MIKA IN REAL LIFE by Emiko Jean (Fiction)
At 35, Mika Suzuki is at the lowest point of her life when she receives a phone call from Penny, the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother; in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully fledged fake life. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny’s adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all --- love, her daughter, the life she’s always wanted --- or will her deceptions ultimately catch up to her?
William Morrow | 9780063215689

ON JAVA ROAD by Lawrence Osborne (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
After two decades as a journalist in Hong Kong, ex-pat Englishman Adrian Gyle has very little to show for it. Evenings are whiled away with soup dumplings and tea at Fung Shing, the restaurant downstairs from his home on Java Road, watching the city erupt in violence as pro-democracy demonstrations hit ever closer to home. Watching from the skyrises is Adrian’s old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. Just as Gyle prepares to turn his back on Hong Kong, he finds one last intrigue: the mysterious Rebecca, a student involved in the protests, and the latest of Jimmy’s reckless dalliances. But when Rebecca goes missing and Jimmy hides, Gyle feels that old familiar urge to investigate.
Hogarth | 9780593242322

PROPERTIES OF THIRST by Marianne Wiggins (Historical Fiction)
Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife, Lou, raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy. But when the government decides to build a Japanese-American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years.
Simon & Schuster | 9781416571261

THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty (Fiction)
The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind as well. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors an extraordinary fear. But C4 is of particular interest. Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by the structures, people and places that not only failed her but actively harmed her. Now all Blandine wants is an escape, a true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads.
Knopf | 9780593534663

RECKONING: An FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter (Thriller)
When she was 12 years old, Kirra Mandarian’s parents were murdered. Fourteen years later, Kirra is a commonwealth attorney, and her goal is to find out who killed her parents and why. She quickly learns that big-time criminals are very dangerous indeed and realizes she needs Dillon Savich’s help. Emma Hunt, a piano prodigy and the granddaughter of powerful crime boss Mason Lord, was only six years old when she was abducted. She was saved by her adoptive father, San Francisco federal judge Ramsey Hunt. Now a 12-year-old with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, she narrowly saves herself from a would-be kidnapper. Lacey Sherlock and officers from METRO are assigned to protect her, but things don’t turn out as planned.
William Morrow | 9780063004139

SHUTTER by Ramona Emerson (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. She’s been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. When she is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim --- who insists she was murdered --- latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers. Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels.
Soho Crime | 9781641293334

SMELLS LIKE TWEEN SPIRIT by Laurie Gelman (Fiction/Humor)
As a new Mat Mom of the Pioneer Middle School (PMS) Wrestling team, Jen Dixon faces the somewhat terrifying new social dynamics of the wrestling moms with her trademark combination of reluctance and exceptional delivery. These parents seem perfectly unassuming, until their kids start to wrestle, and they become raging pubescent monsters. Learning to navigate this new world while fielding calls from the principal because of Max’s newfound misogynistic behavior, Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle-school life --- with her loyal spin class attendees and her bossy four-year-old granddaughter giving her the strength she needs to press on.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250777591

WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL by Jillian Medoff (Fiction)
Cassie Quinn knows a few things. One: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother, Billy, is not a rapist. When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie joins forces with her big brother, Nate, and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile --- white, athletic and privileged --- that makes headlines and sways juries. As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, Cassie vows she’ll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?
Harper | 9780063142022

WHERE THE SKY BEGINS by Rhys Bowen (Historical Fiction)
London, 1940. Bombs fall, and Josie Banks’ world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home is a ruin of rubble and ash. Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Josie convinces Miss Harcourt to let her open a humble tea shop, seeing it as a chance for everyone to begin again. When Josie meets Mike Johnson, a handsome Canadian pilot stationed at a neighboring bomber base, a growing intimacy brings her an inner peace she’s never felt before. Then Stan returns from the war. Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781542028868

WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME by Gillian McAllister (Psychological Thriller)
Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your 17-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered. That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake...and it is yesterday. And then you wake again...and it is the day before yesterday. Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime --- and you don’t have a choice but to find it.
William Morrow | 9780063252349

On Sale the Week of August 1st in Paperback

August 2nd

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE by Mike Gayle (Fiction)
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he learns that his daughter is coming for a visit. Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Along the way, Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all. Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538720172

ALL’S WELL by Mona Awad (Fiction)
The accident that ended Miranda Fitch’s burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well,” she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging “Macbeth” instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers. That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of her past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.
Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781982169671

ANOTHER KIND OF EDEN by James Lee Burke (Historical Thriller)
The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard finds work on a farm in Denver and meets Joanne McDuffy, a fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne’s involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult. When a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power --- and evil.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982151720

THE APOLLO MURDERS by Chris Hadfield (Thriller)
NASA is about to launch Apollo 18. While the mission has been billed as a scientific one, flight controller Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis knows there is a darker objective. Intelligence has discovered a secret Soviet space station spying on America, and Apollo 18 may be the only chance to stop it. But even as Kaz races to keep the NASA crew one step ahead of their Russian rivals, a deadly accident reveals that not everyone involved is quite who they were thought to be. With political stakes stretched to the breaking point, the White House and the Kremlin can only watch as their astronauts collide on the lunar surface, far beyond the reach of law or rescue.
Mulholland Books | 9780316264631

THE ARSONISTS’ CITY by Hala Alyan (Fiction)
The Nasr family is spread across the globe. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father and three American children all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.
Harper Perennial | 9780358695233

AS THE WICKED WATCH: The First Jordan Manning Novel by Tamron Hall (Mystery/Thriller)
When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. She is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women --- many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized and all of them quickly forgotten. All until Masey James, a 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot. Putting the rest of her work and her (fraying) personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that Black children rarely receive.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063037045

BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King (Thriller)
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
Gallery Books | 9781982173623

THE CAPE DOCTOR by E. J. Levy (Historical Fiction)
Beginning in Cork, Ireland, THE CAPE DOCTOR recounts Jonathan Mirandus Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the new-found freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived. When he befriended the aristocratic Cape Governor, the doctor rose to the pinnacle of society, before the two were publicly accused of a homosexual affair that scandalized the colonies and nearly cost them their lives.
Back Bay Books | 9780316536592

CHOUETTE by Claire Oshetsky (Fiction)
Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,” she warns him. “This baby is an owl-baby.” When Chouette is born small and broken-winged, Tiny works around the clock to meet her daughter’s needs. Left on her own to care for a child who seems more predatory bird than baby, Tiny vows to raise Chouette to be her authentic self. Even in those times when Chouette’s behaviors grow violent and strange, Tiny’s loving commitment to her daughter is unwavering. When she discovers that her husband is on an obsessive and increasingly dangerous quest to find a “cure” for their daughter, Tiny must decide if Chouette should be raised to fit in or to be herself --- and learn what it truly means to be a mother.
Ecco | 9780063066687

THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
1943. As war in the Pacific rages on, Isabel Cooper and her codebreaker colleagues huddle in “the dungeon” at Station HYPO in Pearl Harbor, deciphering secrets plucked from the airwaves in a race to bring down the enemy. Isabel, who only wishes to avenge her brother’s death, meets his best friend, a hotshot pilot with secrets of his own. 1965. Fledgling journalist Lu Freitas comes home to Hawai'i to cover the grand opening of the glamorous Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. When a high-profile guest goes missing, Lu forms an unlikely alliance with an intimidating veteran photographer to unravel the mystery. The two make a shocking discovery that stirs up memories and uncovers an explosive secret from the war days. A secret that only a codebreaker can crack.
Mira | 9780778386452

THE COUPLE AT NUMBER 9 by Claire Douglas (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations, the last thing she expects is builders uncovering human remains. Forensics indicate that the two bodies have been buried at least 30 years. Saffy has nothing to worry about --- until the police launch a murder inquiry and ask to speak to the cottage’s former owner: her grandmother, Rose. Rose is in a nursing home, and Alzheimer’s means her memory is increasingly confused. She can’t help the police, but it's clear she remembers something. As Rose’s fragmented memories resurface, and the police dig ever deeper, Saffy fears that she and the cottage are being watched. What happened 30 years ago? Why did no one miss the victims? What part did her grandmother play? And is Saffy now in danger?
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063138148

GIRL, 11 by Amy Suiter Clarke (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Elle Castillo hosts a popular true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases of missing and abducted children. After four seasons of successfully solving these cases in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK was terrorizing the community, kidnapping and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. Then, after he took his 11-year-old victim, the pattern --- and the murders --- abruptly stopped. When Elle follows up on a listener tip only to discover the man’s dead body, she feels at fault. Then, within days, a child is abducted --- a young girl who seems to fit suspiciously into the TCK sequence halted decades before.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780358697411

HER HONOR: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It by LaDoris Hazzard Cordell (Memoir)
Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. HER HONOR is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys, and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures.
Celadon Books | 9781250269591

HOLDOUT by Jeffrey Kluger (Thriller)
Walli Beckwith is a model astronaut. She graduated at the top of her class from the Naval Academy, had a successful career flying fighter jets, and has spent more than 300 days in space. So when she refuses to leave her post aboard the International Space Station following an accident that forces her fellow astronauts to evacuate, her American and Russian colleagues are mystified. For Walli, the matter at hand feels all too clear and terrifying for her to be worried about ruining her career. She is stuck in a race against time to save a part of the world that seems to have been forgotten, and also the life of the person she loves the most. She will go to any length necessary, using the only tool she has, to accomplish what she knows is right.
Dutton | 9780593184714

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK by Derek B. Miller (Historical Fiction)
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Sheldon, along with his teenage cousins and his best friend, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hitmen and angry accordion players, all while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills.
Mariner Books | 9780358697466

THE INVISIBLE by Michelle Dunne (Thriller)
Paperback Original
People have become one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Trafficked on the promise of a new life only to be hidden away as modern-day slaves. When Lena, a raped and badly beaten Syrian woman, literally falls into Lindsey Ryan’s life, she’s left with no choice but to find her part in this new war and play it as best she can. But before she can work out a safe plan to get Lena away from her very own hell at the hands of Patrick Adebayo, Lindsey hears of an unconscious child being smuggled into Patrick’s building just two doors up. Despite having Patrick’s unwanted attention, she has to help the child and get Lena to safety regardless of the cost. In doing so, she finds herself face to face with the worst of humanity.
Polis Books | 9781951709822

THE JOY AND LIGHT BUS COMPANY: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (22) by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni attends a course hosted by the local chamber of commerce entitled “Where Is Your Business Going?” But rather than feeling energized, he comes back in low spirits, unsure how to grow the already venerable and successful Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Then an old friend from school approaches him about a new business venture that could be just the ticket. When it turns out he will need to mortgage his property in order to pursue this endeavor, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi wonder what this will mean for his current business --- as well as their own. Meanwhile, when a concerned son learns that his aging father’s nurse now stands to inherit the family home, he begins to doubt her intentions and takes his case to Botswana’s premier detective agency.
Anchor | 9780593310946

THE LIES I TOLD by Mary Burton (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Twin sisters Marisa and Clare Stockton were 16 when Clare’s body was found in Virginia’s James River. No arrests were made. Fourteen years later, Marisa’s friends and dedicated career as a photographer help her to cope with the open wound of the past. But she still feels the hurt. A recent car crash has erased 10 days of Marisa’s memories --- a black hole leading up to the accident that’s left her disoriented. Every text and phone call from that crucial missing time has vanished, along with her phone. And there’s the growing fear that her near-fatal accident was no accident at all. As dreams of Clare and nightmares of the crash begin to converge, so do two disturbing puzzles 14 years apart.
Montlake | 9781542032636

THE LIGHT OF DAYS: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion (History)
Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. These “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. THE LIGHT OF DAYS at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062874221

MADE IN CHINA: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu (Memoir)
As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.
Catapult | 9781646221523

MALEFACTOR by Robert Repino (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction/Thriller)
Over a decade has passed since the ant queen began her apocalyptic war with the humans. In the aftermath, she leaves behind a strange legacy: a race of uplifted animals now trying to make their way in the world they destroyed. While the conflict has left deep scars, it also has allowed both sides to demonstrate feats of courage and compassion that were never possible before. And now the survivors have a fleeting chance to build a lasting peace. But the holy city of Hosanna --- where animals and humans form a joint government --- finds itself surrounded by wolves who are determined to retake the land. A powerful matriarch has united the rival wolf packs, and the looming violence soon pulls in those who sought to escape.
Soho Press | 9781641293747

RADIANT FUGITIVES by Nawaaz Ahmed (Fiction)
Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’ attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera. But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding and complicated layers of love.
Counterpoint | 9781640095533

SAVAGE TONGUES by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Fiction)
It’s summer when Arezu, an Iranian-American teenager, goes to Spain to meet her estranged father at an apartment he owns there. He never shows up, instead sending her a weekly allowance, care of his step-nephew, Omar, a 40-year-old Lebanese man. As the weeks progress, Arezu is drawn into a mercurial, charged and ultimately catastrophic affair with Omar, a relationship that shatters her just at the cusp of adulthood. Two decades later, Arezu inherits the apartment. She returns with her best friend, Ellie, an Israeli-American scholar devoted to the Palestinian cause, to excavate the place and finally put to words a trauma she’s long held in silence.
Mariner Books | 9780358695301

THE SHADOW LILY by Johanna Mo (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Small-town police detective Hanna Duncker has a past. Her deceased father was convicted of murder and arson long ago, and she has taken up residence and resumed her police career in her hometown after his death. She and her partner, Erik Lindgren, are called to investigate the disappearance of a father and his infant son from their home while his wife was away on a weekend trip. As the investigation unfolds, Hanna makes a breakthrough in her ongoing private investigation of her father’s crimes: a discovery that could change everything she thought she'd learned so far.
Penguin Books | 9780143136699

SHADOWS REEL: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered. At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why? When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls? Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for the man who stole his falcons and attacked his wife.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593331286

SONGS FOR THE FLAMES: Stories by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Fiction/Short Stories)
The characters in SONGS FOR THE FLAMES are men and women touched by violence --- sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing --- but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale. And the search for a book leads a writer to the fascinating story of why a woman is buried next to a graveyard, rather than in it --- and the remarkable account of her journey from France to Colombia as a child orphan.
Riverhead Books | 9780593190142

THE SPECKLED BEAUTY: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg (Memoir)
Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the FedEx man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, 76 pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon.
Vintage | 9780593081419

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING by Julia Whelan (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
When audiobook narrator Sewanee Chester arrives in Las Vegas last-minute for a book convention, she unexpectedly spends a whirlwind night with a charming stranger. On her return home, she discovers that one of the world’s most beloved romance novelists wanted her to perform her last book --- with Brock McNight, the industry’s hottest, most secretive voice. As Sewanee begins working on the project, resurrecting her old romance pseudonym, she and Brock forge a real connection, hidden behind the comfort of anonymity. Soon, she is dreaming again. But secrets are revealed, and the realities of life come crashing down around her once more.
Avon | 9780063095564

THE THERAPIST by B. A. Paris (Psychological Thriller)
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive. As Alice is getting to know her neighbors, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets, and things are not as perfect as they se
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250784056

WE ARE NOT LIKE THEM by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza (Fiction)
Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young and is finally pregnant after years of trying. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty.
Atria Books | 9781982181048

WHISPER ROOM: A Geneva Chase Crime Reporter Mystery by Thomas Kies (Mystery)
Paperback Original
Geneva Chase encounters a deceptive cast of suspects who pull her into a high-speed chase into the Whisper Room, a dating app for only the most elite members of society --- where affairs, blackmail and murder are all on the menu. When wealthy men crave no-strings-attached encounters, the Whisper Room promises to deliver. Escorts are turning up dead, and Geneva is ready to dive into the exclusive dating ring and catch the killer. But then one of the Whisper Room's escorts turns up murdered --- and she looks a lot like the blond in the blackmail video. The more Geneva digs, the more blackmail victims and potential suspects she finds --- and the more people she angers. Dangerous people, with links to organized crime and human trafficking. Will this story of a lifetime put a premature end to her own?
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781728254579

THE WILD HUNT by Emma Seckel (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Leigh Welles has not set foot on the island in years. But when she finds herself called home from life on the Scottish mainland by her father’s unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. But this October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, birdlike creatures of Celtic legend --- whispered to carry the souls of the dead --- have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war’s wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a young man disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island’s dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own.
Tin House Books | 9781953534224

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie (Historical Fantasy)
Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds. With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies…while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.
Orbit | 9780316187220

THE WISH by Nicholas Sparks (Romance)
1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind…until she met Bryce Trickett, a teenager who introduced her to photography. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him and tells him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier --- and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538728604

WISH YOU WERE GONE by Kieran Scott (Domestic Thriller)
Emma Walsh has finally worked up the courage to confront her husband, James, about his drinking. But he never shows up to meet her as planned. His body lies crumpled amidst the wreckage of his flashy car, which has been smashed to its final resting place halfway through the back wall of their suburban house’s garage. In the aftermath of the fatal crash, Emma and her teenage children begin to embrace life without James’ looming, volcanic presence. It turns out that her husband’s legacy as an upstanding business owner and family man shines only because so many people, for so long, were so willing to keep his secrets --- secrets that twist into new and unexpected shapes as the mysterious details of his last day of life begin to come to light.
Gallery Books | 9781982153991

A WOMAN OF INTELLIGENCE by Karin Tanabe (Historical Thriller)
A former translator for the United Nations, Katharina Edgeworth --- now the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon and heir to a shipping fortune --- is desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job. Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret soon threatens to ruin her.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250231512

On Sale the Week of August 8th in Hardcover

August 9th

AFTER THE HURRICANE by Leah Franqui (Fiction)
From the outside, Elena Vega’s life appears to be an easy one. But her 20s are aimless and lacking in connection. Something has always been amiss in her life: her father, the brilliant but deeply troubled Santiago Vega. Santiago is the shining star of his migrant family --- the one who made it out and struck it rich --- but he is a haunted man, plagued by trauma, bipolar disorder and alcoholism. He’s lost contact with Elena over the years and returned to San Juan to wrestle his demons alone. Then Hurricane Maria strikes, and Santiago vanishes. Elena crisscrosses the storm-swept island of San Juan and reaches deep into his family tree to find relatives she’s never met, each of whom seems to possess a clue about Santiago’s fate.
William Morrow | 9780063204591

BARK TO THE FUTURE: A Chet & Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn (Mystery)
When Chet the dog and his human partner, PI Bernie Little, are approached by a down-and-out older man with a cardboard sign at an exit ramp, Bernie is shocked to discover the man is a former teammate from his high school baseball team. Chet and Bernie take Rocket out for a good meal, and later, Bernie investigates Rocket’s past, trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. Then, Rocket goes suspiciously missing. Bernie goes back to his old high school for answers, where much that he remembers turns out not to be true --- and there are powerful and dangerous people not happy with the questions Bernie is asking. Now, Chet and Bernie are plunged into a dangerous case where the past isn’t dead and the future could be fatal.
Forge Books | 9781250843272

THE DEAL GOES DOWN by Larry Beinhart (Noir Mystery/Thriller)
Ex-private eye Tony Cassella lives in the Catskill mountains, a lonely old tough guy whose body can no longer do what it once did. But a chance encounter with a rich young woman on a train changes everything. He is hired to take care of her superrich, sexual predator husband. That job leads to others, and he joins a small start-up whose mission is to save women from abusive marriages. Provided their spouses are in the top 0.01%. It's a luxury service destined to make great profits. But an old, angry associate is determined to get his cut of Tony’s earnings, murky government agents start to tail him, and when he is sent to the Austrian alps to kill a Russian oligarch and rescue his American wife, all hell breaks loose.
Melville House | 9781612199900

DO NO HARM: A Lucas Page Novel by Robert Pobi (Thriller)
Severely wounded after being caught in an explosion, Lucas Page left the FBI behind and put his focus on rebuilding the rest of his life. But he is uniquely gifted in being able to recognize patterns that elude others, a skill that brings the FBI knocking at his door again and again. Lucas' wife, Erin, loses a friend --- a gifted plastic surgeon --- to suicide, and Lucas begins to realize how many people Erin knew who have died in the past year, in freak accidents and now suicide. Intrigued despite himself, he begins digging through obituaries and realizes that there's a pattern --- a bad one. These deaths don't make sense unless the doctors are being murdered, the target of a particularly clever killer.
Minotaur Books | 9781250793645

THE FAMILY REMAINS by Lisa Jewell (Psychological Thriller)
DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery and learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead 30 years ago. Rachel Rimmer’s husband, Michael, has been found dead in his cellar. The French police need Rachel to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer. After fleeing London 30 years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first-ever house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present. As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they never could have imagined.
Atria Books | 9781982178895

THE FIFTH ACT: America's End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman (Memoir)
Elliot Ackerman left the American military 10 years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and later as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities for years now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families. With former colleagues and friends protecting the airport in Kabul, Ackerman joined an impromptu effort by a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds.
Penguin Press | 9780593492048

HEAT 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner (Thriller)
Described by Michael Mann as both a prequel and sequel to the renowned, critically acclaimed movie of the same name, HEAT 2 covers the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and elite criminals Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) and Nate (Jon Voight). Ranging from the streets of L.A. to the inner sancta of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in Paraguay to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, this new story illuminates the dangerous workings of international crime organizations and the agents who pursue them as it provides a full-blooded portrait of the men and women who inhabit both worlds.
William Morrow | 9780062653314

I REMEMBER YOU by Brian Freeman (Psychological Thriller)
On the Fourth of July, Hallie Evers dies at a rooftop party in Las Vegas. Hours later, she wakes up in the hospital, disoriented but alive. Why can’t she find the doctor who revived her? Why do her memories feel both foreign and familiar? Her self-doubt spirals into crippling paranoia. Hallie knows that mental illness runs in her family. But now even Hallie’s dreams are fraught with details that seem like more than imagination --- vivid images of a city she remembers but has never visited in her life. As she embarks on a cross-country search for answers, Hallie catches glimpses of what feel like another person’s memories. It’s a dark, horrifying, tragic vision…of someone else’s murder. But is any of it real?
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542035088

KOSHERSOUL: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty (Cooking/History)
In KOSHERSOUL, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. The book also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.
Amistad | 9780062891754

THE LAST KARANKAWAS by Kimberly Garza (Fiction)
A popular tourist destination and major shipping port, Galveston attracts millions of visitors each year. Yet of those who come to drink by the beach, few stray from the boulevards to Fish Village, the neighborhood home to individuals who for generations have powered the island. Carly Castillo has only ever known Fish Village. Her grandmother claims that they descend from the Karankawas, an extinct indigenous Texan tribe, thereby tethering them to Galveston. But as Carly ages, she begins to imagine a life elsewhere. When word spreads of a storm gathering strength offshore, building into Hurricane Ike, each Galveston resident must make a difficult decision: board up the windows and hunker down, or flee inland and abandon their hard-won homes.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250819857

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck (Memoir/History)
Rinker Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, he steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501106378

LONG GONE: A Detective Annalisa Vega Novel by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery)
Chicago detective Annalisa Vega shattered her life, personally and professionally, when she turned in her ex-cop father for his role in a murder. Her family can’t forgive her. Her fellow officers no longer trust her. So when detective Leo Hammond turns up dead in a bizarre murder, Annalisa thinks she has nothing to lose by investigating whatever secrets he hid behind the thin blue line. Annalisa quickly zeroes in on someone who had good reason to want Hammond dead: a wealthy, fast-talking car salesman who’d gotten away with murder once and wasn’t about to let Hammond take a second shot. Moe Bocks remains the number one suspect in his girlfriend’s brutal unsolved death, and now he has a new woman in his sights --- Annalisa’s best friend.
Minotaur Books | ‎9781250264633

A MAP FOR THE MISSING by Belinda Huijuan Tang (Fiction)
Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home. When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother’s evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to help: Tian Hanwen. Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian’s father, all the while grappling with the past --- who Yitian’s father really was, and what might have been.
Penguin Press | 9780593300664

MIDNIGHT ON THE MARNE by Sarah Adlakha (Historical Fiction)
France, 1918. Nurse Marcelle Marchand has important secrets to keep. Her role as a spy has put her in extreme danger from the approaching German army. American soldier George Mountcastle feels an instant connection to the young nurse. But in times of war, love must wait. Soon, George and his best friend, Philip, are fighting for their lives during the Second Battle of the Marne, where George prevents Philip from a daring act that might have won the battle at the cost of his own life. On the run from a victorious Germany, George and Marcelle begin a new life with Philip and Marcelle’s twin sister, Rosalie, in a brutally occupied France. Years pass, and tragedy strikes, sending George on a course that could change the past and rewrite history.
Forge Books | 9781250774590

THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Matthew Betley (Thriller)
Welcome to Hidden Refuge, a normal American subdivision full of normal American suburbanites. At least that's what the citizens thought before men impersonating police officers show up on their doorsteps in the middle of the night. Once the entire community is under siege, so begins a long, dark night that will prove to be anything but ordinary. But Zack Chambers, suburban family man and programmer by trade, has his own secret. One he had dearly hoped that he’d never need to use again. The deadly ex–CIA agent and trained operative plots to take back the night, doing whatever it takes to protect his neighborhood. In the face of a small army of trained killers, he has his wits, his babysitter, his equally lethal brother and a ragtag group of neighbors willing to help.
Blackstone Publishing | 9781665064620

NEVER GO HOME by Christopher Swann (Thriller)
Orphaned at age 10 by a violent home invasion, Susannah Faulkner grew up wild but is determined to wring something decent from the world before she leaves it. Then she gets word that her brother, Ethan, needs her help and returns home to Atlanta. But in the airport, she finds her Uncle Gavin suffering a heart attack. Before he is rushed to the hospital, Gavin whispers a single word to Suzie: Peaches. She’s determined to uncover the meaning behind the cryptic message, but Ethan is also deep in trouble. An ex-soldier and ex-con named Finn appeared on his doorstep with a disturbing story: 15 years earlier, Finn served with their father in Iraq, where they stole millions in cash. Now the money is missing, and Finn wants his share --- or else.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639100828

PATH LIT BY LIGHTNING: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss (Sports/Biography)
Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind. But despite his colossal skills, Thorpe’s life was a struggle against the odds. For all his travails, though, Thorpe did not succumb. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth.
Simon & Schuster | 9781476748412

THE RULE OF THREE by E. G. Scott (Domestic Thriller)
Once a week, three women get together for book club in Kingsland, a private, gated community full of neighbors looking to do their business away from prying eyes. On the same night, their husbands meet up to play poker, where much more is being planned than anyone could guess. But on this particular night, something goes terribly wrong. When all three men end up dead or hospitalized, and the entire town is being questioned, no one seems to be able to answer the only question that really needs asking: What the hell happened?
Dutton | 9780593185445

SISTER FRIENDS FOREVER by Kimberla Lawson Roby (Fiction)
Serena, Michelle, Kenya and Lynette have been best friends since they were small children. And as sister friends forever, they have always been there for one another, through good times and bad. This year is a crucial turning point for each woman. Serena, still single, is questioning why love hasn’t found her yet. Michelle is engaged and ready to walk down the aisle --- until an old flame strolls back into her life. Kenya is happily married, but at the same time, her husband’s ex-wife won’t allow them or their family to live in peace. And Lynette’s divorce from her cheating husband has her nervously dating for the first time in well over a decade. During this difficult period, their friendship will be tested like never before.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538708958

STAY AWAKE by Megan Goldin (Psychological Thriller)
Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers --- a stranger who claims to live in her apartment. Her hands are covered in scribbled messages, like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE. Two years ago, Liv was thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. She’s horrified to see news reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, similar to the message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years?
St. Martin's Press | 9781250280664

THE WOMEN COULD FLY by Megan Giddings (Dystopian Fiction)
Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. The most worrying charge is that she was a witch. In a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions, and a woman --- especially a Black woman --- can find herself on trial for witchcraft. Fourteen years have passed, and Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30 --- or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. When she’s offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.
Amistad | 9780063116993

YOU'RE INVITED by Amanda Jayatissa (Psychological Thriller)
When Amaya is invited to Kaavi’s over-the-top wedding in Sri Lanka, she is surprised and a little hurt to hear from her former best friend after so many years of radio silence. But when Amaya learns that the groom is her very own ex-boyfriend, she is consumed by a single thought: She must stop the wedding from happening, no matter the cost. But as the week of wedding celebrations begin and rumors about Amaya’s past begin to swirl, she can’t help but feel like she also has a target on her back. When Kaavi goes missing and is presumed dead, all evidence points to Amaya. However, nothing is as it seems as Amanda Jayatissa expertly unravels that each wedding guest has their own dark secret and agenda, and Amaya may not be the only one with a plan to keep the bride from getting her happily ever after.
Berkley | 9780593335123

On Sale the Week of August 8th in Paperback

August 9th

THE ALMOST LEGENDARY MORRIS SISTERS: A True Story of Family Fiction by Julie Klam (Memoir)
Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the 20th century, the sisters’ parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage and promised to send for them when he settled in California --- a promise he never kept. The stories of these independent women intrigued Klam, but as she delved into them to learn more, she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue.
Riverhead Books | 9780735216433

THE ARCHER by Shruti Swamy (Fiction)
Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother. Longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she ultimately must confront the tensions between romantic love, her art and the legacy of her own imperfect mother.
Algonquin Books | 9781643752549

BRONZE DRUM: A Novel of Sisters and War by Phong Nguyen (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
In 40 CE, in the Au Lac region of ancient Vietnam, two daughters of a Vietnamese Lord fill their days training, studying and trying to stay true to Vietnamese traditions. While Trung Trac is disciplined and wise, always excelling in her duty, Trung Nhi is fierce and free-spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers. But these sisters' lives --- and the lives of their people --- are shadowed by the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese. When Trung Trac and Trung Nhi's father is executed, their world comes crashing down around them. With no men to save them against the Han's encroaching regime, they must rise and unite the women of Vietnam into an army.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538753705

DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING STAR: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson (Mystery)
When Lolo Long's niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya "Longshot" Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl's plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.
Penguin Books | 9780593297278

EVERYBODY: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing (Biography & Memoir/Cultural Studies)
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism and the civil rights movement. Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century --- among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag and Malcolm X.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324022022

GONE FOR GOOD by Joanna Schaffhausen (Mystery)
The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and there hasn’t been a trace of him in 20 years. Grace Harper, who uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group, believes that the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods in which he hunted. If she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity. Detective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she's at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved.
Minotaur Books | 9781250847614

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead (Historical Fiction)
To his customers and neighbors on 125th Street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can he avoid getting killed; save his cousin, Freddie, who falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa (the “Waldorf of Harlem”); and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
Anchor | 9780525567271

THE HOUSE OF ASHES by Stuart Neville (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Sara Keane’s husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a “fresh start” in the wake of her nervous breakdown. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless and friendless. When a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover. As the two women form a bond over their shared traumas, Sara finds the strength to stand up to her abuser, and Mary --- silent for six decades --- is finally ready to tell her story.
Soho Crime | 9781641293723

MR. PERFECT ON PAPER by Jean Meltzer (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
As the creator and CEO of the popular Jewish dating app J-Mate, matchmaker Dara Rabinowitz knows the formula for lasting love --- at least, for everyone else. When it comes to her own love life, she’s been idling indefinitely. Until her beloved bubbe shares Dara’s checklist for “The Perfect Jewish Husband” on national television, and charming news anchor Chris Steadfast proposes they turn Dara’s search into must-see TV. As a non-Jewish single dad, Chris doesn’t check any of Dara’s boxes. But her hunt for Mr. Perfect is the ratings boost his show desperately needs. If only Chris could ignore his own pesky attraction to Dara --- a task much easier said than done when Dara starts questioning if “perfect on paper” can compete with how hard she’s falling for Chris.
Mira | 9780778386162

THE READING LIST by Sara Nisha Adams (Fiction)
Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life after losing his beloved wife. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063025295

ROBERT E. LEE: A Life by Allen C. Guelzo (Biography)
Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee betrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Lee was just six years old. Award-winning historian Allen Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity.
Vintage | 9781101912225

SIERRA SIX: A Gray Man Novel by Mark Greaney (Thriller)
Before he was the Gray Man, Court Gentry was Sierra Six, the junior member of a CIA action team. In their first mission they took out a terrorist leader, at a terrible price. Years have passed. The Gray Man is on a simple mission when he sees a ghost: the long-dead terrorist, but he's remarkably energetic for a dead man. A decade of time hasn't changed the Gray Man. He isn't one to leave a job unfinished or a blood debt unpaid.
Berkley | 9780593099018

SUMMER LIGHT, AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT written by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Fiction)
In a village of only 400 inhabitants, life could seem unremarkable. Yet in this remote town, a new road to the city has change on everyone’s minds. There is the beautiful, elusive Elisabet who cuts a surprisingly svelte path at The Knitting Company. Neighbors Kristin and Kjartan who seem…normal, but for their explosive passion that bewilders even themselves (and ignites the spectacular revenge of Kjartan’s wife). And then the most successful businessman in town decides to ditch his Range Rover and glamorous wife in exchange for Latin books and stargazing.
HarperVia | 9780063136489

THIS WILL ALL BE OVER SOON: A Memoir by Cecily Strong (Memoir)
Cecily Strong had a special bond with her cousin, Owen. And so she was devastated when, in early 2020, he passed away at age 30 from the brain cancer glioblastoma. Before Strong could attempt to process her grief, another tragedy struck: the coronavirus pandemic. Following a few harrowing weeks in the virus epicenter of New York City, Strong relocated to an isolated house in the woods upstate. Here, trying to make sense of Owen’s death and the upended world, she spent much of the ensuing months writing. The result is THIS WILL ALL BE OVER SOON --- a raw, unflinching memoir about loss, love, laughter and hope.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982168353

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS by Lisa Scottoline (Thriller)
Jason Bennett is driving his family home after his daughter’s field hockey game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them. Suddenly two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. A horrific flash of violence changes his life forever. Later that awful night, Jason and his family receive a visit from the FBI. The carjackers were members of a dangerous drug-trafficking organization, and now Jason and his family are in their crosshairs. The agents advise them to enter the witness protection program, and they have no choice but to agree. The Bennetts begin to fall apart at the seams. Then Jason learns a shocking truth and realizes that he has to take matters into his own hands.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525539759

WIDOWLAND by C. J. Carey (Alternate History/Dystopian Thriller)
Paperback Original
Thirteen years have passed since England surrendered to the Nazis and formed a Grand Alliance with Germany. It was forced to adopt many of its oppressive ideologies, one of which was the strict classification of women into hierarchical groups based on the perceived value they brought to society. Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class, works for the Ministry of Culture, rewriting the classics of English literature to ensure there are no subversive thoughts that will give women any ideas. Outbreaks of insurgency have been seen across the country, and suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slums where childless women over 50 have been banished. Rose is given the dangerous task of infiltrating Widowland to find the source of the rebellion.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728248448

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