June 27, 2023

June 27, 2023

Please note: There will be no "On Sale This Week" newsletter on Tuesday, July 4th as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, so we are covering releases for the next three weeks in this edition. Our next "On Sale This Week" newsletter will be sent on Tuesday, July 11th.

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of June 26th, July 3rd and July 10th 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 "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com. Three book groups will win 12 copies of FELLOWSHIP POINT by Alice Elliott Dark, a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection that recently released in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, July 12th at noon ET.

Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events

Here are a number of upcoming virtual book and author events that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links for more info and to register.

Wednesday, June 28th 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 Annabel Monaghan about her latest novel, SAME TIME NEXT SUMMER. Appearing on the Aftershow will be Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul, whose new book is PIECE OF CAKE.

Wednesday, June 28th at 8pm ET: A Special "Bookaccino Live" Evening Program: Carol Fitzgerald will present a number of titles releasing this summer that we think you will enjoy reading over the next few months. She will share a PowerPoint presentation similar to the book preview event that we do on the second Wednesday of each month for “Bookaccino Live.”

Wednesday, June 28th at 9pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams will talk about her latest novel, THE BEACH AT SUMMERLY, a ravishing summer read that takes readers back to a mid-century New England rich with secrets and Cold War intrigue.

Thursday, June 29th at 7pm ET: Books & Books at the Studios: Books & Books at the Studios is excited to welcome author Carolyn Mackler virtually to the store as she discusses her debut adult novel, THE WIFE APP, with store co-founder and author Judy Blume.

Wednesday, July 5th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors will talk to Marie Bostwick and Terah Shelton Harris about their new books: Marie's ESME CAHILL SPECTACULARLY FAILS and Terah's debut, ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH.

Monday, July 10th at 1pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore: Jake Tapper will talk about his heart-pounding new thriller, ALL THE DEMONS ARE HERE, which takes us back to the 1970s. Two unforgettable characters encounter many of the real-life figures and events that defined one of the wildest and most dangerous decades in American history.

Tuesday, July 11th at 3pm ET: Barnes & Noble Book Club: Join Barnes & Noble as they welcome Luis Alberto Urrea for a live book club event to discuss GOOD NIGHT, IRENE, June's B&N Book Club pick. He will be in conversation with Shannon DeVito, the Sr. Director of Book Strategy and Customer Experience at B&N, and Miwa Messer, the Executive Producer of B&N's “Poured Over” podcast.

Tuesday, July 11th at 9:30pm ET: San Mateo County Libraries: Join San Mateo County Libraries to virtually meet New York Times bestselling author Lisa See as she discusses her new historical novel, LADY TAN'S CIRCLE OF WOMEN, a triumphant reimagining of one woman physician's real life in 15th-century China.

This Week's Bonus News:
Our "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" Contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com
Enter to Win 12 Copies of FELLOWSHIP POINT
by Alice Elliott Dark for Your Group

On Sale the Week of June 26th in Hardcover

June 27th

THE 9th MAN: A Luke Daniels Thriller by Steve Berry with Grant Blackwood (Thriller/Adventure)
Luke Daniels receives a frantic call from an old friend. Jillian Stein made a mistake, and now her life may be in danger. A shadow team of highly trained operatives are on the hunt in Belgium. Intervening, Luke finds himself embroiled in a war between two determined sides --- one seeking the truth, the other trying to escape the past. Thomas Rowland is a Washington insider but also a man with a past. For him, everything turns with what happened on November 22, 1963. What history has recorded is wrong. There is much more to the story, and Rowland is at the center of that terrible reality. He will do anything to keep the world from learning what actually occurred on that fateful day --- including killing Luke, Jillian and anyone else who might be a threat.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538721070

THE ART THIEF: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel (True Crime)
For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly eight years --- in museums and cathedrals all over Europe --- Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In THE ART THIEF, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content.
Knopf | 9780525657323

BANYAN MOON by Thao Thai (Fiction)
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life, but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. Now she returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng. Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann’s childhood home. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who’s always held them together.
Mariner Books | 9780063267107

THE BEACH AT SUMMERLY by Beatriz Williams (Historical Fiction)
Beatriz Williams’ novels inhabit a category all their own: nuanced yet propulsive, innovative yet addictive, packed with human truth and told in an incomparable narrative voice that evokes a stunning sense of period while still feeling new and immediate. Now the beloved author returns with another remarkable summer novel. In these gorgeous sun-washed pages, Williams sets THE BEACH AT SUMMERLY in the exclusive New England summer enclave readers first discovered in THE SUMMER WIVES and fills it with new love, old rivalries and the Cold War intrigue of the 1960s.
William Morrow | 9780063020849

BEFORE SHE FINDS ME by Heather Chavez (Psychological Thriller)
Julia Bennett has worked hard to create a stable life for her daughter, Cora. So when Cora leaves for college, the worst thing Julia expects on move-in day is an argument with her ex-husband and his new wife. But a sudden attack leaves the campus stunned --- and only Julia’s quick actions save Cora’s life. Shaken in the aftermath and haunted by a dark secret, Julia starts to wonder: What if the attack wasn’t as random as everyone believes? Newly pregnant Ren Petrovic is a trained assassin. She wasn’t on campus that day but knows who was: her husband, Nolan. What she doesn’t know is why Nolan has broken their rules by not telling her about the job in advance. Who really hired Nolan? And why did one woman in the crowd respond so differently from all the rest?
Mulholland Books | 9780316531351

DIRECTIONS TO MYSELF: A Memoir of Four Years by Heidi Julavits (Memoir)
One summer, Heidi Julavits sees her son silhouetted by the sun and notices he is at the threshold of what she calls “the end times of childhood.” When did this happen?, she asks herself. Who is my son becoming --- and what qualifies me to be his guide? The next four years feel like uncharted waters. Rape allegations rock the university campus where Julavits teaches, unleashing questions of justice and accountability. She begins to wonder how to prepare her son to be the best possible citizen of the world he’s about to enter. Looking back to her childhood in Maine, Julavits takes us on an intellectual navigation of the self. Throughout, she intertwines her internal analysis with a wide-ranging exploration of what it means to raise a child in a time full of contradictions and moral complexity.
Hogarth | 9780451498519

THE FIRST LADIES by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (Historical Fiction)
The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist and an educator, and as her reputation grows, she becomes a celebrity. Eleanor Roosevelt is eager to make Mary's acquaintance. Initially drawn together because of their shared belief in women’s rights and the power of education, Mary and Eleanor become fast friends. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected president, the two women begin to collaborate more closely. Eleanor becomes a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights. And when she receives threats because of her strong ties to Mary, it only fuels the women’s desire to fight together for justice and equality.
Berkley | 9780593440285

THE FRUGAL WIZARD'S HANDBOOK FOR SURVIVING MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by Brandon Sanderson (Fantasy/Adventure)
A man awakes in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts. His only help from the “real world” should have been a guidebook entitled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, except his copy exploded during transit. The few fragments he managed to save provide clues to his situation. But can he figure them out in time to survive?
Tor Books | 9781250899675

HAVE YOU SEEN HER by Catherine McKenzie (Psychological Thriller)
Cassie Peters has left her hectic and secretive life in New York City for the refuge of her hometown of Mammoth Lakes, California. There, she begins working again with Yosemite Search and Rescue, where a case she worked a decade ago continues to haunt her. She joins a group of fellow seasonal workers and young adventurers who have made Yosemite their home during the summer. There, she meets Petal, a young woman living in a trailer with her much older wife, keeping a detailed diary of the goings-on of the park, and Jada, a recent college graduate on a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend, documenting their journey on Instagram. When these three women cross paths, Cassie’s past catches up with her, and the shocking consequences ripple out far beyond what any could have imagined.
Atria Books | 9781668011119

THE HISTORY OF A DIFFICULT CHILD by Mihret Sibhat (Fiction)
Even before she is born, Selam Asmelash has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. In the Small Town where they live, nosy women convene around coffee ceremonies multiple times a day. As Selam’s mother grows ill, she embraces a persecuted, Pentecostal God and insists her family convert alongside her. The Asmelashes stand solidly in opposition to the times, and Selam grows up seeking revenge on despotic comrades, neighborhood bullies and a ruthless God.
Viking | 9780593298619

THE IMPOSTERS by Tom Rachman (Fiction)
Dora Frenhofer, a once successful but now aging and embittered novelist, knows her mind is going. But she is determined to finish her final book and reverse her fortunes before time runs out. Alone in her London home during the pandemic, she creates, and is in turn created by, the fascinating real characters from her own life. Her chapters trot the globe, inhabiting the perspectives of her missing brother, her estranged daughter, her erstwhile lover and her last remaining friend, among others in her orbit. As her own life comes into ever sharper focus, so do the signal events that have made her who she is, leaving us in Dora’s thrall until, with an unforeseen twist, she snaps the final piece of the puzzle into place.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316552851

LAY YOUR BODY DOWN by Amy Suiter Clarke (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
After Del Walker fled her small hometown and its cult-like church, she vowed never to return. The man she loved, Lars, left her to marry the local golden girl Eve, and their romance is now the focus of Eve’s viral blog espousing the pastor’s conservative philosophy about women and marriage. But six years later, Lars is suddenly killed, and she’s convinced it couldn’t have been an accident. When Del returns to her hometown for the funeral, she discovers that the now mega-church --- and the insidious, patriarchal teachings of Pastor Rick Franklin --- has grown not only in size but in influence. She is determined to cut through the church’s lies and corruption to find out who killed Lars, even if it means confronting the religious trauma she’s spent years trying to bury.
William Morrow | 9780358418313

LITTLE MONSTERS by Adrienne Brodeur (Fiction)
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small. Their father, Adam, is a brilliant oceanographer who raised them mostly on his own. Ken is now a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family, and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works. As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his 70th birthday. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he is determined to make one last scientific breakthrough. So he has secretly stopped taking his pills. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family --- Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781982198107

A MOST AGREEABLE MURDER by Julia Seales (Historical Mystery)
Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father and two younger sisters --- beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. Eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. However, when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer.
Random House | 9780593449981

PALAZZO by Danielle Steel (Fiction)
After her parents perish in a tragic accident, 23-year-old Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. She also must maintain the 400-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings. Then she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. Fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant. Now the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Cosima’s brother, Luca, loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Forced to bail him out, Cosima is given an impossible choice: list the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself.
Delacorte Press | 9781984821898

THE RACHEL INCIDENT by Caroline O'Donoghue (Fiction)
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate, and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife.
Knopf | 9780593535707

SAVE WHAT'S LEFT by Elizabeth Castellano (Fiction/Humor)
Kathleen Deane’s husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage. With Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thoughts lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year. It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie’s letters. Worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen’s absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in the fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairy tale, but it just might be exactly what she needs.
Anchor | 9780593469170

THE WIFE APP by Carolyn Mackler (Fiction/Humor)
Lauren, the mother of twins, stumbles on a dirty secret that explodes her marriage. When Madeline learns that she might lose her child to her ex in England, it stirs up a decades-old personal tragedy. Sophie obsesses over her ex-husband’s Family 2.0 --- all while keeping her true desires hidden, even from herself. It starts as a joke during a tipsy night out, as Lauren, Madeline and Sophie rail against everything wives do for free. Let’s build an app that monetizes the mental load. And maybe get revenge on our exes in the process? Soon the Wife App is born, and before long, it’s the fastest growing start-up in New York City. But then life intervenes. Love intervenes. Ex-husbands intervene. And the consequences are bigger than anything Lauren, Madeline or Sophie could have expected.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982158798

On Sale the Week of June 26th in Paperback

June 27th

ACTS OF VIOLET by Margarita Montimore (Fiction)
Nearly a decade ago, iconic magician Violet Volk performed her greatest trick yet: vanishing mid-act. Though she hasn’t been seen since, her hold on the public hasn’t wavered. Her sister, Sasha, took over their mother’s salon and built a quiet life for her daughter, Quinn. But Sasha can never seem to escape her sister’s orbit or her memories of their unresolved, tumultuous relationship. Then there’s Cameron Frank, determined to finally get his big break hosting a podcast devoted to all things Violet --- though keeping his job hinges on an exclusive interview with Sasha, the last person who wants to talk to him. Meanwhile, Sasha begins to experience an unsettling series of sleepwalking episodes and coincidences, which all lead back to Violet.
Flatiron Books | 9781250815088

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 | 9780593496817

THE ANGEL OF ROME: And Other Stories by Jess Walter (Fiction/Short Stories)
We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In Jess Walter’s collection of stories, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy 21-year-old studying Latin in Rome during “the year of my reinvention” finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams.
Harper Perennial | 9780062868121

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 | 9781250810205

THE BOYS FROM BILOXI by John Grisham (Legal Thriller)
For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by a small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the ’60s and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.
Vintage | 9780593469507

THE CRANE WIFE: A Memoir in Essays by CJ Hauser (Memoir/Essays)
Ten days after calling off their wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, they realized they'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Hauser releases themself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. They kiss Internet strangers and officiate at a wedding. They reread REBECCA in the house their boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. They think about Florence Nightingale at a robot convention and the difference between those stories we’re asked to hold versus those we choose to carry.
Anchor | 9780593312889

THE GIRL FROM GUERNICA by Karen Robards (Historical Fiction)
On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them. As war begins to rage across Europe, Sibi joins the underground resistance, secretly exchanging information with Griff. But as the scope of Germany’s ambitions becomes clear, maintaining the facade of a Nazi sympathizer becomes ever more difficult.
Mira | 9780778333449

THE GOLDEN ENCLAVES by Naomi Novik (Fantasy)
The one thing you never talk about while you’re in the Scholomance is what you’ll do when you get out. But now the impossible dream has come true. I’m out, we’re all out --- and I didn’t even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother’s prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn’t kill enclavers, I saved them. Me and Orion and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: We saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves everywhere. Ha, only joking! Actually, it’s gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war.
Del Rey | 9780593158371

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 Paperbacks | 9780062653376

HONEYCOMB written by Joanne M. Harris, illustrated by Charles Vess (Dark Fantasy/Short Stories)
The beauty of stories is that you never know where they will take you. Full of dreams and nightmares, HONEYCOMB is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from bestselling author Joanne M. Harris and legendary artist Charles Vess in a collaboration that’s been years in the making. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’ first collection of fairy tales.
Gallery/Saga Press | 9781534433069

THE LAST CROWN by Elzbieta Cherezinska, translated by Maya Zakrzewska-Pim (Historical Fiction)
The web of love and lies is thicker than ever as we reunite with players spread across the board of Europe in this sequel to THE WIDOW QUEEN. Our heroes and enemies alike are beholden to the hands of fate. While Olav Tryggvason reclaims the throne of Norway and baptizes the land by blood, King Sven in Denmark is filled with rage at his once comrade. Not only does Olav threaten Sven’s hold on Norway, but his hold on his own wife --- the woman with two crowns, three sons and a heart long spoken for: Swietoslawa, the Bold One. Meanwhile, those Swietoslawa trusts most --- Astrid, her sister; Sigvald, her brother-in-law and head of the Jomsvikings; and even her own son, Olaf --- take shocking, selfish action with consequences that will reverberate for years to come.
Forge Books | 9781250775764

LESS IS LOST by Andrew Sean Greer (Fiction/Humor)
Arthur Less is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,” through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo --- a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. We cannot, however, escape ourselves. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Less must eventually face his personal demons.
Back Bay Books | 9780316498913

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: A Memoir by Jann S. Wenner (Memoir)
Rolling Stone founder, co-editor and publisher Jann Wenner’s deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, full-throated backing. The people Wenner chose to be seen and heard in the pages of Rolling Stone tried to change American culture, values and morality.
Back Bay Books | 9780316415293

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.
Vintage | 9780593466889

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 | 9780451495211

THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH by Monique Roffey (Fiction/Magical Realism)
In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman. Now David must work to win Aycayia's trust while she relearns what it is to be human, navigating not only her new body but also her relationship with others on the island. As David and Aycayia grow to love each other, they juggle both the joys and the dangers of life on shore. But will the former mermaid be able to escape her curse?
Vintage | 9780593467350

OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield (Fiction)
Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
Flatiron Books | 9781250229908

THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty (Fiction)
An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents --- neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands --- all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives.
Vintage | 9780593467879

SANDS OF DUNE: Novellas from the Worlds of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (Science Fiction/Space Opera)
The world of Dune has shaped an entire generation of science fiction. From the sand-blasted world of Arrakis, to the splendor of the imperial homeworld of Kaitain, readers have lived in a universe of treachery and wonder. Now, these stories expand on the Dune universe, telling of the lost years of Gurney Halleck as he works with smugglers on Arrakis in a deadly gambit for revenge; inside the ranks of the Sardaukar as the child of a betrayed nobleman becomes one of the Emperor’s most ruthless fighters; and a young firebrand Fremen woman, a guerrilla fighter against the ruthless Harkonnens, who one day will become Shadout Mapes.
Tor Books | 9781250805683

THE SEAMSTRESS OF NEW ORLEANS by Diane C. McPhail (Historical Fiction)
Pregnant and abandoned by her husband, Alice Butterworth leaves Chicago’s bitter cold and travels to New Orleans, where she offers sewing lessons at an orphanage. Young widow Constance Halstead has thrown herself into charity work since her husband’s death. Seeing Alice’s skill, she offers lodging in exchange for help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all-female krewe of Mardi Gras. As the breathtaking gown takes shape piece by piece, it becomes a symbol of empowerment for them both. But overshadowing all is the Black Hand, the vicious New Orleans gang to whom Constance’s husband was deep in debt. As Mardi Gras draws near, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance, even as it threatens the new lives each is building.
A John Scognamiglio Book | 9781496738165

THE SEVEN YEAR SLIP by Ashley Poston (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone. But then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. He’s the kind of man who, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again. Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.
Berkley | 9780593336502

THE SWEET REMNANTS OF SUMMER: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (Mystery)
Isabel Dalhousie is invited to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. There she meets a woman named Laura, whose husband --- a prominent wine merchant from an illustrious family --- and son are at odds. Laura asks Isabel to arbitrate between them. Isabel is reluctant to intervene in a familial drama but feels obligated to help. Meanwhile, her husband Jamie is helping to select a new cellist for his ensemble but suspects that the conductor’s attention may be focused on something other than his favored candidate’s cello skills. Jamie feels it’s important that the most qualified applicant gets the job. But how to determine if the conductor has the right qualifications in mind?
Anchor | 9780593468326

THRUST by Lidia Yuknavitch (Dystopian Fiction/Alternative History)
Laisvė is a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries: a French sculptor, a woman of the American underworld, a dictator's daughter, an accused murderer, and a squad of laborers at work on a national monument. Through intricately braided storylines, Laisvė must dodge enforcement raids and find her way to the present day, and then, finally, to the early days of her imperfect country, to forge a connection that might save their lives --- and their shared dream of freedom.
Riverhead Books | 9780525534914

TRY NOT TO BREATHE by David Bell (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
A traumatic experience in the line of duty forces 30-year-old Avery Rogers to abandon both her relationship and her position as a Kentucky State Police officer. She retreats to a college town where she works an unfulfilling job as a security guard. But a frantic phone call turns Avery’s life upside down. Her father --- a retired cop who never fails to convey his disappointment in Avery --- says her half-sister is missing and in danger. Avery is sure Anna is just crashing with friends, but he strong-arms her into searching for the sister she barely knows. When Avery discovers Anna’s hiding place near a remote cave system, she risks everything to save her. Little do the sisters know that a secret is catching up to them --- a secret at the very heart of their family history.
Berkley | 9780593549964

UPGRADE by Blake Crouch (Science Fiction/Thriller)
At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything's different. He just feels a little…sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep. But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him --- even those he loves most --- in whole new ways. The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy. Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large --- at a terrifying cost.
Ballantine Books | 9780593157527

A WORLD OF CURIOSITIES by Louise Penny (Mystery)
As the villagers of Three Pines prepare for a special celebration, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged and shattered. Now they’ve arrived in Three Pines. But to what end? Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?
Minotaur Books | 9781250145307

July 1st

THE BETTER HALF by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
With an ex-husband relocated across the country, her father bouncing back after the loss of his beloved wife, and her daughter, Xandra, thriving at boarding school, Nina Morgan Clarke is stepping into her dream job as a trifecta: a first-generation, Black female head of the storied Royal-Hawkins School. To mark the moment, Nina and her best friend, Marisol, take a long-overdue girls’ trip to celebrate the second half of Nina’s life --- which is shaping up to be the best part of her life. As Nina’s school year gets underway, all seems to be progressing as planned. Before long, wunder-hire Jared Jones relentlessly pushes Nina to her ethical limits. Soon after, dutiful Xandra accuses one of her teachers of misconduct. And most alarming, the repercussions of her trip with Marisol force Nina into a life-altering choice.
Mindy's Book Studio | 9781542034166

THE LIFE SHE WANTED by Anita Abriel (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
1926, Hyde Park, New York. Born to modest means but befriended by the wealthy, aspiring dress designer Pandora Carmichael has been surrounded by privilege yet never at home in it. That hasn’t stopped her from dreaming --- of a romance in a rarified world that could also give her the status and resources to start a business of her own. When she’s introduced to a charismatic Princeton student, Pandora’s future begins to fall into place. Marriage provides Pandora with a devoted husband, comfortable love, and the prominence and affluence to open a boutique. It’s a fantasy realized, until scandal and tragedy upend Pandora’s life and she flees Hyde Park with a heart-wrenching secret. As the Depression looms, Pandora must rethink everything she’s ever wanted.
Lake Union Publishing | 9781662509827

TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD by Aaron Jacobs (Literary Thriller)
Paperback Original
On the second to last day of summer school in 1984, Calvin and Jason Schott hijack a school bus carrying 19 students, an unthinkable act of violence that devastates the community of Brookwood. Thirty years later, Brenda and Emily Mashburn --- twin sisters and survivors of the ordeal --- are forced to relive the kidnapping as they film a documentary about the event in an attempt to thwart Calvin's looming parole hearing. Meanwhile, Jason fights for his brother's release, hoping that a reunited family can finally bring peace to their elderly mother and ease the guilt he feels over his role in the kidnapping. The result is a feud between the two families, with neither side willing to back down.
Run Amok Crime | 9798986993027

On Sale the Week of July 3rd in Hardcover

July 3rd

GOODBYE EARL: A Revenge Novel by Leesa Cross-Smith (Fiction)
In 2004, Rosemarie, Ada, Caroline and Kasey are in their final days of high school and on the precipice of all the things teenagers look forward to when anything in life seems possible. In 2019, Kasey has returned to her small Southern hometown of Goldie for the first time since high school --- and she still hasn’t told even her closest friends the truth of what really happened that summer after graduation, or what made her leave so abruptly. Now reunited with her friends in Goldie for a wedding, she’s determined to focus on the simple joy of being together again. But when she notices troubling signs that one of them might be in danger, she is catapulted back to that fateful summer. This time, Kasey refuses to let the worst moments of her past define her.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538707654

July 4th

THE DOOR-TO-DOOR BOOKSTORE by Carsten Henn (Fiction)
Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff delivers his books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world. When Kollhoff unexpectedly loses his job, it takes the power of books and a nine-year-old girl to make them all find the courage to rebuild their bonds with each other.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335490858

THE EXHIBITIONIST by Charlotte Mendelson (Fiction)
The Hanrahan family is gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art --- the first in many decades --- and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: eldest daughter Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; son Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and daughter Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make. And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist, too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. What will happen if she decides to change? For Lucia is hiding secrets of her own, and as the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice about which desires to follow.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250286932

FLOP DEAD GORGEOUS: An Andy Carpenter Mystery by David Rosenfelt (Mystery)
Retired lawyer Andy Carpenter remembers every dog that’s come through the Tara Foundation’s doors, but the most well-known alum of the dog rescue organization that Andy founded in Paterson, New Jersey, may be Mamie. Adopted by famous actress Jenny Nichols, Andy’s high school girlfriend, the miniature French poodle is now practically a starlet in her own right. Andy doesn’t hold it against his friend. In fact, he and his wife, Laurie, have dinner with Jenny while she’s in town filming her next big hit. But after an eventful meal, there’s a plot twist the next morning that none of them see coming: Jenny’s costar is found dead. It’s not long before Jenny is arrested for the murder and finds herself in need of Andy’s legal services.
Minotaur Books | 9781250828903

A GOOD HOUSE FOR CHILDREN by Kate Collins (Gothic Mystery)
Orla and her husband, Nick, move into an antiquated Georgian house on the Dorset cliffs. But as they settle into the mansion --- Nick absent all week, commuting to the city for work --- Orla finds herself unsettled. She hears voices when no one is around; doors open and close on their own; and her son Sam, who has not spoken in six months, seems to have made an imaginary friend whose motives Orla does not trust. Four decades earlier, Lydia moves into the same house as a live-in nanny to a grieving family. She, too, becomes aware of intangible presences in the large house and becomes increasingly fearful for the safety of the children in her care. Are both families careening towards tragedy? Are Orla and Lydia seeing things that aren’t there? What secrets is the house hiding?
Mariner Books | 9780063291027

THE HOUSEKEEPERS by Alex Hay (Historical Fiction)
Mrs. King is no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she’s made herself respectable, running the grandest home in Mayfair. The place is packed with treasures, a glittering symbol of wealth and power, but dark secrets lurk in the shadows. When Mrs. King is suddenly dismissed from her position, she recruits an eclectic group of women to join her in revenge. Their plan? On the night of the house’s highly anticipated costume ball --- set to be the most illustrious of the year --- they will rob it of its every possession, right under the noses of the distinguished guests and their elusive heiress host. But there’s one thing Mrs. King wants even more than money: the truth. And she’ll run any risk to get it.
Graydon House | 9781525805004

THE LAST DANCE: The First Detective Miller Novel by Mark Billingham (Mystery/Thriller)
Maverick sleuth Declan Miller is back at work following the murder of his wife (and amateur ballroom dancing partner), Alex. Working with new partner and heavy metal enthusiast DS Sara Xiu, he is tasked with investigating the double killing of gangland family scion Adrian Cutler and IT consultant Barry Shepherd at the Sands Hotel. Initial evidence suggests a hired gun and a botched job. The search for the hitman begins, and Miller starts reconnecting with his old network --- his ballroom dancing friends, homeless informant Finn, and even the ghost of his wife who keeps showing up in his kitchen. The fact that Alex had been investigating the Cutler family prior to her death complicates things, and as Miller gets closer to the truth, he realizes the danger is walking right up to his doorstep.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802161949

THE LIBRARIANIST by Patrick deWitt (Fiction)
Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts. One morning, he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob’s straight-man façade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.
Ecco | 9780063085121

THE LONG AGO by Michael McGarrity (Mystery)
Growing up in Montana, siblings Raymond and Barbara Lansdale held their chaotic world together through their shared childhood fantasy of The Long Ago: a distant place where happiness and tranquility reigned. To escape his painful past, Ray joins the army and finds a career that gives him a sense of purpose and the promise of adventure. Recent news of his kid sister’s disappearance brings Ray home on leave before beginning a stateside assignment almost certain to send him back into the jungles of Vietnam. Determined to find Barbara despite a police investigation that has led nowhere, Ray embarks on a relentless search that takes him from the majestic Montana ranchlands and glitter of Hollywood to the mean streets of L.A. and beyond. As time dwindles, he must confront his worst nightmare.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393541656

OWNER OF A LONELY HEART: A Memoir by Beth Nguyen (Memoir)
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed --- or was left --- behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was 19. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than 24 hours together. OWNER OF A LONELY HEART is a memoir about parenthood, absence and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years --- sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister --- Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself.
Scribner | 9781982196349

THE SUNSET CROWD by Karin Tanabe (Historical Fiction)
By day, Evra Scott is at the helm of Sunset on Sunset, the store beloved by Hollywood’s young and beautiful. By night, she’s on the arm of Kai de la Faire, Hawaii’s hottest export and the screenwriter of the moment. Enter Theodora Leigh. The twenty-something Paramount assistant looks like a big screen star, but her sights are firmly set behind the scenes, as she fights to become a movie producer in a town where sex and sexism sell. Observing it all is Bea Dupont, a photographer for Rolling Stone and Vogue, who holds Evra’s Sunset crowd together. She’s also Kai’s oldest friend, and she’s harbored a not-so-secret flame for him since they met at an elite Swiss boarding school. It’s not long before Theodora’s unrelenting ambition sets in motion a dramatic quest for power.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250280466

SUNSHINE NAILS by Mai Nguyen (Fiction/Humor)
Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have built a comfortable life for themselves in Toronto with their family nail salon. But when an ultra-glam chain salon opens across the street, their world is rocked. Complicating matters further, their landlord has jacked up the rent, and it seems only a matter of time before they lose their business and everything they’ve built. They enlist the help of their daughter, Jessica, who has just returned home after a messy breakup and a messier firing. Together with their son, Dustin, and niece, Thuy, they devise some good old-fashioned sabotage. Relationships are put to the test as the line between right and wrong gets blurred. Debbie and Phil must choose: Do they keep their family intact or fight for their salon?
Atria Books | 9781668010495

TRINITY by Zelda Lockhart (Historical Fiction)
Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by a Black nurse who declares, “Lord Jesus, if that ain’t the blackest little baby born this side of heaven.” Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors’ promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi’s red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior, his son and Lottie Rebecca’s father, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the post-Korean War GI Bill promises prosperity. These two generations of men are haunted by the Mother-Spirit, who did not survive enslavement’s post-traumatic stress violence.
Amistad | 9780063160958

On Sale the Week of July 3rd in Paperback

July 3rd

CIRCLE OF DEATH: The Shadow Thriller by James Patterson and Brian Sitts (Thriller)
Paperback Original
Doomsday is coming as an evil mastermind plots to destroy all of humankind. Not even The Shadow knows the enemy’s true identity. But the clock is ticking with people all over the world dropping dead each and every day. As The Shadow gathers a small band of allies, he knows this is one fight he cannot lose. Because anything else means the end of all life.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538711101

THE POET’S HOUSE by Jean Thompson (Fiction)
In her 20s and working for a landscaper, Carla has been told by everyone that she’s on the wrong path. Then she is hired for a job at the home of Viridian, a lauded and lovely aging poet who introduces Carla to an eccentric circle of writers. At first she is perplexed by their predilection for reciting lines in conversation, the stories of their many liaisons, their endless wine-soaked nights. Soon, though, she becomes enamored with this entire world: with Viridian, whose reputation has been defined by her infamous affair with a male poet, Mathias; with Viridian’s circle; and especially with the power of words. When a fight emerges over a vital cache of poems that Mathias wrote about Viridian, Carla gets drawn in. But how much will she sacrifice for a group that may or may not see her as one of their own?
Algonquin Books | 9781643753928

RAISING LAZARUS: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy (Business & Economics/Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology)
Nearly a decade into the second wave of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies have yet to answer for the harms they created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, there is scant consensus between law enforcement and medical leaders, nor an understanding of how to truly scale the programs that are out there, working at the ragged edge of capacity and actually saving lives. In RAISING LAZARUS, Beth Macy takes us into the country’s hardest hit places to witness the devastating personal costs that one-third of America's families are now being forced to shoulder.
Back Bay Books | 9780316430210

ROVERS by Richard Lange (Supernatural Thriller)
Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For 70 years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts and prostitutes they feed on. This hard-boiled supernatural hell ride kicks off when the brothers encounter a young woman who disrupts their grim routine, forcing Jesse to confront his past and plunging his present into deadly chaos as he finds himself scrambling to save her life. The story plays out through the eyes of the brothers, a grieving father searching for his son’s murderer, and a violent gang of rover bikers.
Mulholland Books | 9780316542005

July 4th

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 Paperbacks | 9780063204607

DARK OBJECTS by Simon Toyne (Psychological Thriller)
A glamorous woman is murdered in her ultra-luxurious London mansion, and her husband goes missing. But according to public records, neither of them exists. The only leads police have are several objects arranged around the woman’s body, including a set of keys and a book called How to Process a Murder by Laughton Rees --- a book that appears to have helped the killer forensically cleanse the crime scene. Laughton Rees is an academic who doesn’t usually work live cases after the brutal murder of her mother as a teen left her traumatized and emotionally scarred. But the presence of her book at this scene draws her unwillingly into the high-profile investigation and media circus that springs up around it.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063297685

THE DISPLACEMENTS by Bruce Holsinger (Fiction)
To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna --- the world’s first category 6 hurricane --- upends everything they have taken for granted. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?
Riverhead Books | 9780593189726

FIRST VICTIM by Debbie Babitt (Legal Thriller)
From the bench at Manhattan Supreme, the Honorable Alice D. McKerrity has seen the most hardened killers pass through her courtroom. But there’s something about this trial --- a defendant charged with the murder of a pregnant woman --- that affects her as no other case ever has. She’s also harboring a secret that if exposed could have far-reaching ramifications both personally and professionally. And now, unbeknownst to Alice, her daughter has begun a search for her biological father. As the trial progresses, Alice’s life starts to unravel. Almost at the breaking point, she begins to doubt her own sanity. Then she makes a shocking discovery that sends her on a collision course with her past and a terror-filled night in the woods in Upstate New York.
Scarlet | 9781613164266

FREEDOM by Sebastian Junger (Political Science/Memoir)
Sebastian Junger examines the tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. For much of a year, Junger and three friends --- a conflict photographer and two Afghan War vets --- walked the railroad lines of the East Coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires, and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another. In FREEDOM, Junger weaves his account of this journey together with primatology and boxing strategy, the history of labor strikes and Apache raiders, the role of women in resistance movements, and the brutal reality of life on the Pennsylvania frontier.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982153427

HER, TOO by Bonnie Kistler (Psychological/Legal Thriller)
Paperback Original
Kelly McCann is a high-powered lawyer whose specialty is defending men accused of sex crimes. Her detractors call her a traitor to her gender, but she doesn't care. As the story opens, she has secured an acquittal for a renowned scientist accused of sexually assaulting his female employees. But the thrill of her victory is short-lived. That very night, she, too, falls victim to a brutal sexual assault. And almost as horrific as the attack is the fact that she can't tell anyone it happened --- not without destroying her career in the process. Joining forces with her rapist's other victims, the shrewd lawyer plans to turn the tables on him. It’s not only about justice --- these wronged women are out for revenge. But someone, it seems, is out for them. And one by one, they find themselves facing even greater danger.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780063089204

HOLY CHOW: An Andy Carpenter Mystery by David Rosenfelt (Mystery)
About a year ago, Rachel Morehouse came to retired lawyer Andy Carpenter’s Tara Foundation looking for a companion. In her 60s and recently widowed, she wanted a senior dog that also needed someone. Andy took a liking to her, Rachel took a liking to Lion, an older Chow Chow, and the rest is history. That is, until Rachel calls Andy begging for a favor: If Rachel dies, will Andy take care of Lion if her stepson cannot? Andy agrees, no questions asked, and promptly forgets about it...until he receives a call from Rachel’s estate to attend her will reading. Which is where he meets Rachel’s stepson, Tony, who is promptly arrested for his stepmother’s murder. And he wants Andy to prove his innocence.
Minotaur Books | 9781250828897

AN HONEST LIVING by Dwyer Murphy (Noir Mystery)
After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with $10,000 in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true-crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick --- a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy --- lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions.
Penguin Books | 9780593489260

HONEY AND SPICE by Bolu Babalola (Romantic Comedy)
As an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show “Brown Sugar,” Kiki Banjo has made it her mission to make sure the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of “situationships,” players and heartbreak. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell,” in front of every Blackwellian on campus, she finds her show on the brink. They’re soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures. But surprisingly entertaining study sessions and intimate late-night talks force Kiki to look beyond her own presumptions. Is she ready to open herself up to something deeper?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063141513

HURRICANE GIRL by Marcy Dermansky (Fiction)
Allison Brody is 32 and newly arrived on the East Coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, so she buys a small house on the beach. But then a Category 3 hurricane makes landfall and scatters her home up and down the shore, leaving Allison adrift. Should she go home from the bar with the strange cameraman and stay in his guest room? Is that a glass vase he smashed on her skull? Can she wipe the blood from her eyes, get in her car and drive to her mother’s? Does she really love the brain surgeon who saved her, or is she just using him for his swimming pool? And is it possible to ever truly heal without seeking some measure of revenge?
Vintage | 9780593315354

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 | 9781250774613

THE MURDER BOOK: A Tom Thorne Novel by Mark Billingham (Mystery/Thriller)
Tom Thorne finally has it all. In Nicola Tanner and Phil Hendricks, Thorne has good friends by his side. His love life is newly reformed by a promising relationship, and he is happy in the job to which he has devoted his life. As he sets off hunting the woman responsible for a series of grisly murders, Thorne has no way of knowing that he will be plunged into a nightmare from which he may never wake. A nightmare that has a name. Thorne’s past threatens to catch up with him, and a ruinous secret is about to be revealed. If he wants to save himself and his friends, he will have to do the unthinkable. Tom Thorne finally has a lot to lose.
Atlantic Monthly Press ‎| 9780802161772

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 | 9798200988273

ON ROTATION by Shirlene Obuobi (Fiction)
Ghanaian-American Angela Appiah has checked off all the boxes for the “Perfect Immigrant Daughter”: Enroll in an elite medical school. Snag a suitable
lawyer/doctor/engineer boyfriend. Surround self with a gaggle of successful and/or loyal friends. But then it quickly all falls apart: her boyfriend dumps her, she bombs the most important exam of her medical career, and her best friend pulls away. And her parents, whose approval seems to hinge on how closely she follows the path they chose, are a lot less proud of their daughter. Suddenly, Angie begins to question everything. And just when things couldn’t get more complicated, enter Ricky Gutierrez, who seems to see Angie for who she is instead of what she can represent.
Avon | 9780063209152

ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH by Terah Shelton Harris (Fiction)
Paperback Original
It's been eight years since Sara Lancaster’s daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds that Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara's father falls ill, she's forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past. While caring for her father and running his bookstore, Sara is desperate to protect her daughter from the Wylers, the family of the man who assaulted her. She thinks she can succeed --- her attacker is in prison, his identical twin brother, Jacob, left town years ago, and both are unaware that Alana exists. But she soon learns that Jacob has also just returned to Savannah to piece together the fragments of his once-great family. And when their two worlds collide, they are drawn together in unexpected ways.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728265742

THE OTHER SIDE OF NIGHT by Adam Hamdy (Psychological Thriller)
THE OTHER SIDE OF NIGHT begins with a man named David Asha writing about his biggest regret: his sudden separation from his son, Elliot. In his grief, David tells a story. Next, we step into the life of Harriet Kealty, a police officer trying to clear her name after a lapse of judgment. She discovers a curious inscription in a secondhand book: Help me, he’s trying to kill me. Who wrote this note? Who is “he”? This note leads Harri to David Asha, who was last seen stepping off a cliff. Police suspect he couldn’t cope after his wife’s sudden death. Still, why would this man jump and leave behind his young son? Quickly, Harri’s attention zeroes in on a person she knows all too well: Ben Elmys, who was once the love of her life and may also be a murderer.
Atria Books | 9781982196196

TOUCH by Olaf Olafsson (Fiction)
When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue --- a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he had known in the ’60s when they were students in London --- both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko’s sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.
Ecco | 9780063226999

WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN by David Joy (Thriller)
When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time. Frustrated by the slow pace and limitations of the law, Raymond decides to take matters into his own hands. After a workplace accident left him out of a job and in pain, Denny Rattler has spent years chasing his next high. He supports his habit through careful theft, following strict rules that keep him under the radar and out of jail. But when faced with opportunities too easy to resist, Denny makes two choices that change everything. For months, the DEA has been chasing the drug supply in the mountains to no avail, when a lead sets one agent on a path to crack the case wide open. But he'll need help from the most unexpected quarter.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780525536901

On Sale the Week of July 10th in Hardcover

July 10th

OBSESSED: A Michael Bennett Psychological Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Psychological Thriller)
A killer is obsessed with Detective Michael Bennett’s oldest daughter. Michael Bennett is obsessed with keeping his family safe. New York City is obsessed with cracking the killer’s code. You will be obsessed with James Patterson and James O. Born’s startling psychological thriller. Obsessed.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316499576

July 11th

62: Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees, and the Pursuit of Greatness by Bryan Hoch (Sports)
Aaron Judge, the hulking superman who carried an easy aw-shucks demeanor from small-town California to stardom in the Big Apple, had long established his place as one of baseball’s most intimidating power hitters. Baseballs frequently rocketed off his bat like cannon fire, dispatching heat-seeking missiles toward the “Judge’s Chambers” seating area in right field, sending delirious fans scattering for souvenirs. But even in a high-tech universe where computers measure each swing to the nth degree, Roger Maris’ American League mark of 61 home runs seemed largely out of reach. In 62, veteran Yankees beat reporter Bryan Hoch unravels the remarkable journey of Judge’s run to shatter Maris’ beloved 61-year-old record.
Atria Books | 9781668027950

THE ABSOLUTES by Molly Dektar (Gothic Psychological Thriller)
When Nora, a withdrawn American teenager, is sent to live with relatives in Turin, she meets Nicola, the enigmatic son of the most powerful aristocratic family in Italy. Years later, the two reconnect in New York and begin a heated affair. Propelled by disorienting desire, Nora quickly becomes entangled in Nicola’s insular, menacing world of old-world luxury and family secrets. When she suspects she’s being used in a secret plot to overthrow his corrupt father, Nora willfully turns submissive to Nicola, pushing against the boundaries of her own moral limits until she finds herself spiraling on a path of self-destruction.
Mariner Books | 9780063282704

AFTER THE FUNERAL AND OTHER STORIES by Tessa Hadley (Fiction/Short Stories)
In each of these 12 stories, small events have huge consequences. Heloise’s father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her 40s, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Two estranged sisters cross paths at a posh hotel and pretend not to recognize each other. Janie’s bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janie’s own age, but everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party. A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend’s death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend’s wife. Cecilia, a teenager, wakes one morning in Florence on vacation with her parents and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes.
Knopf | 9780593536193

THE AIR RAID BOOK CLUB by Annie Lyons (Historical Fiction)
London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn’t feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband, Harry. Meanwhile, Hitler is on the rise in Germany, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from the growing turmoil. After a nudge from her dear friend Charles, Gertie decides to take in one of these refugees, a headstrong teenage girl named Hedy. When the Blitz begins and bombs whistle overhead, Gertie and Hedy come up with the idea to start an air raid book club. Together with neighbors and bookstore customers, they hold lively discussions. But even the best book can only provide a temporary escape. As the tragic reality of the war hits home, the book club faces unimaginable losses.
William Morrow | 9780063296190

ALL THE DEMONS ARE HERE by Jake Tapper (Political Thriller)
It’s 1977. Ike and Lucy, the kids of Senator Charlie and Margaret Marder, are grown up --- and in trouble. US Marine Ike has gone AWOL after a military operation gone horribly wrong. Now he's off the grid, working on the pit crew of the moody stunt master Evel Knievel. His sister, Lucy, has become the star reporter of a brand-new Washington, DC tabloid and has fallen in with the wealthy, shady British family that owns the newspaper. As they deal with the weirdness and menace of the time, Ike and Lucy soon realize that their worlds are full of not only compromises and bad choices, but danger as well. As their lives begin to spiral out of control, they also spiral towards one another. And the decisions they make could mean life and death not only for them --- but also for their beloved parents.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316424387

ALL-NIGHT PHARMACY by Ruth Madievsky (Fiction)
On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister, Debbie, to a bar. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions. Our unnamed narrator has always been under Debbie’s spell. Despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who claims to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism and ambiguous power dynamics.
Catapult | 9781646221509

THE BEAST YOU ARE: Stories by Paul Tremblay (Supernatural Thriller & Horror/Short Stories)
The 15 pieces in THE BEAST YOU ARE are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart. In “The Dead Thing,” a middle-schooler struggles to deal with the aftermath of her parents’ substance addictions and split. One day, her little brother claims he found a shoebox with “the dead thing” inside, but he won’t show it to her. In “The Last Conversation,” a person wakes in a sterile, white room and begins to receive instructions via intercom from a woman named Anne. When they are finally allowed to leave the room to complete a task, what they find is as shocking as it is heartbreaking. The title novella is a mini epic in which the destinies and secrets of a village, a dog and a cat are intertwined with a giant monster that returns to wreak havoc every 30 years.
William Morrow | 9780063069961

BOGIE & BACALL: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair by William J. Mann (Biography)
In BOGIE & BACALL, William J. Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years --- Bogart’s effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall’s rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and 12-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie’s illness and Bacall’s steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall’s life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced. Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities’ personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles.
Harper | 9780063026391

THE CARNIVALE OF CURIOSITIES by Amiee Gibbs (Historical Fantasy)
In Victorian London, there is no more coveted ticket than Ashe and Pretorius' Carnivale of Curiosities. However, rumors abound that the show’s proprietor, Aurelius Ashe, is more than an average magician. It's said that for the right price, he can make any wish come true. No one knows the truth of this claim better than Lucien the Lucifer, the Carnivale's star attraction. When Odilon Rose comes calling with a proposition regarding his young and beautiful charge, Charlotte, Ashe is tempted to refuse. But after revealing that Rose holds a secret that threatens the security of the troupe's most vulnerable members, Ashe has no choice but to sign an insidious contract. The stakes grow higher as Lucien finds himself drawn to Charlotte and her to him, an attraction that spurs a perilous course of events.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538723937

THE CLEARING by Simon Toyne (Psychological Thriller)
Adele Friar knows better than most that something dangerous lurks in the forest. So when her sister Maddie goes missing, she fears that the woods may hold the answers. Locals put the unusually high number of missing persons in the area down to inexperienced hikers getting lost in the forest’s depths, or girls abandoning their sleepy rural town for the excitement of city life. Some even blame the Cinderman, a legend who haunts the woods looking for unsuspecting victims. With help from Adele and DCI Tannahill Khan back in London, forensic specialist Laughton Rees is determined to find Maddie and dispel the dangerous ghost stories once and for all. But what if the monster in the woods isn’t a myth after all, and a cold-blooded killer is stalking his victims from the shadowy safety of the trees?
William Morrow | 9780062329820

DO TELL by Lindsay Lynch (Historical Fiction)
As character actress Edie O'Dare finishes the final year of her contract with FWM Studios, the clock is ticking for her to find a new gig after an undistinguished stint in the pictures. She's long supplemented her income moonlighting for Hollywood's reigning gossip columnist, providing her with the salacious details of every party and premiere. When an up-and-coming starlet hands her a letter alleging an assault from an A-list actor at a party with Edie and the rest of the industry’s biggest names in attendance, Edie helps get the story into print and sets off a chain of events that will alter the trajectories of everyone involved. And when she finds herself in the middle of the trial of the decade, Edie is forced to make an impossible choice with the potential to ruin more than one life.
Doubleday | 9780385549370

ELSEWHERE: Stories by Yan Ge (Fiction/Short Stories)
A young woman bonds with an encampment of poets after a devastating earthquake. Against her better judgment, a college student begins to fall for an acquaintance who might be dead. And a Confucian disciple returns to the Master bearing a jar full of grisly remains. Weaving between reality and dreamy surreality, these nine stories wend toward elsewhere, a comforting, frustrating, just-out-of-reach place familiar to anyone who has ever experienced longing. Through it all, Yan Ge’s protagonists peer thoughtfully at their own feelings of displacement --- physical or emotional, the result of travel, emigration or exile. ELSEWHERE explores the utility (or not) of art in the face of lonesomeness, quotidian and spectacular.
Scribner | 9781982198480

EVENTIDE, WATER CITY by Chris McKinney (Noir Science Fiction/Thriller)
2150: Eight years after the murder of Akira Kimura, Water City’s renowned scientist and anointed “God,” the nameless antihero who tracked down Akira’s killer is no longer a detective. While his wife climbs the corporate ladder of the city’s police department, he raises their now nine-year-old daughter and occasionally takes the odd job as a bounty hunter. His domestic bliss is threatened when Ascalon’s Scar --- the mark left by Akira’s destruction of Sessho-seki, the asteroid that nearly wiped out life on Earth --- vanishes from the sky and a familiar face thought dead returns from the ocean depths to exact revenge on humanity. On a journey to the moon and back, Water City’s antihero will risk everything, including his family, to save the last of the human race.
Soho Crime | 9781641294317

AN EVIL HEART by Linda Castillo (Mystery/Thriller)
On a crisp autumn day in Painters Mill, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder responds to a call only to discover an Amish man who has been violently killed with a crossbow, his body abandoned on a dirt road. Aden Karn was just 20 years old, well liked and from an upstanding Amish family. Who would commit such a heinous crime against a young man whose life was just beginning? The more Kate gets to know his devastated family and the people --- both English and Amish --- who loved him, the more determined she becomes to solve the case. But as she delves into Karn’s past, Kate begins to hear whispers about a dark side. What if Aden Karn wasn’t the wholesome young man everyone admired? Is it possible that the rumors are a cruel campaign to blame the victim?
Minotaur Books | 9781250781086

FLAGS ON THE BAYOU by James Lee Burke (Historical Fiction)
In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed --- and did --- as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802161697

THE GHOST SHIP by Kate Mosse (Historical Thriller)
The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It is known only as the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate those enslaved by corsairs, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands. But the bravest men on board are not who they seem. And the stakes could not be higher. If arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?
Minotaur Books | 9781250202208

HALF-LIFE OF A STOLEN SISTER: A Novel of the Brontës by Rachel Cantor (Fiction)
How did sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne write literary landmarks JANE EYRE, WUTHERING HEIGHTS and AGNES GREY? What in their lives and circumstances, in the choices they made, and in their close but complex relationships with one another made such greatness possible? In her new novel, Rachel Cantor melds biographical fact with unruly invention to illuminate the siblings’ genius, their bonds of love and duty, periods of furious creativity, and the ongoing tolls of illness, isolation and loss. As it tells the story of the Brontës, HALF-LIFE OF A STOLEN SISTER itself perpetually transforms and renews its own style and methods, sometimes hewing close to the facts of the Brontë lives as we know them (or think we know them), and at others radically reimagining the siblings.
Soho Press | 9781641294645

HELLO STRANGER by Katherine Center (Romantic Comedy)
One minute Sadie Montgomery is celebrating the biggest achievement of her life --- placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition --- the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. But as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls in love --- or is it lust, or a temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life? --- with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse. If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250283788

INSIDE THE WOLF by Amy Rowland (Fiction)
Rachel Ruskin never intended to return to her family’s tobacco farm in Shiloh, North Carolina. But when her academic career studying Southern folklore in New York City flames out, she has no choice. Back in her hometown in the wake of family loss, she is alone, haunted by memories, by ghosts, and by Shiloh’s buried history of racism and violence. When another child is accidentally shot and killed, however, Rachel can no longer avoid confronting her own past wrongs, nor can she continue to hold herself apart from her community. How can the people of Shiloh reconcile their love of hunting and their belief in tradition with the loss of more children? How can she find a way back to those she grew up loving?
Algonquin Books | 9781643752716

A LIKEABLE WOMAN by May Cobb (Psychological Thriller)
After her troublemaker mother’s mysterious death, Kira fled her wealthy Texas town and never looked back. Now, decades later, Kira is invited to an old frenemy’s vow renewal celebration. Though she is reluctant to go, there are things pulling her home --- but none more important are the urgent texts from her grandmother, who says she has something for Kira. Something related to her mother’s death, something that makes it look an awful lot like murder. When her grandmother gives Kira a memoir that her mother had been working on before she died, Kira is drawn into the past and all the sizzling secrets that come along with it. As she gets closer to discovering what --- and who --- might have brought about her mother’s end, it becomes clear that someone wants the past to stay buried.
Berkley | 9780593546796

THE MADWOMEN OF PARIS by Jennifer Cody Epstein (Historical Fiction)
When Josephine arrives at the Salpêtrière asylum, she is covered in blood, badly bruised and suffering from amnesia. She is quickly diagnosed with what the Paris papers are calling “the epidemic of the age”: hysteria, a disease so baffling and widespread that Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, the asylum’s famous director, devotes many of his popular public lectures to the malady. But as Josephine’s fame grows, her memory starts to return --- and, with it, images of a terrible crime she’s convinced she’s committed. Haunted by these visions, she starts spiraling into seeming insanity. Laure, a ward assistant, begins to plot their escape from the Salpêtrière and its doctors. First, though, she must confirm whether Josephine is truly a madwoman, doomed to die in the asylum --- or a murderer, destined for the guillotine.
Ballantine Books | 9780593158005

THE MILITIA HOUSE by John Milas (Gothic Horror)
It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward --- loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters --- and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it. It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow, they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly…not right.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250857064

THE MISTRESS OF BHATIA HOUSE: A Mystery of 1920s India by Sujata Massey (Historical Mystery)
India, 1922: Perveen Mistry is the only female lawyer in Bombay, where child mortality is high, birth control is unavailable and very few women have ever seen a doctor. Perveen is attending a lavish fundraiser for a new women’s hospital specializing in maternal health issues when she witnesses an accident. The grandson of an influential Gujarati businessman catches fire --- but a servant, Sunanda, rushes to save him, selflessly putting herself in harm’s way. Later, Perveen learns that Sunanda has been arrested on trumped-up charges made by a man who doesn’t seem to exist. When the hospital’s chief donor dies suddenly, Miriam Penkar, a Jewish-Indian obstetrician, and Sunanda become suspects. Then a second fire erupts, and Perveen realizes how much is at stake.
Soho Crime | 9781641293297

THE MURDER WHEEL: A Joseph Spector Locked-Room Mystery by Tom Mead (Historical Mystery)
When a sensational killing rocks 1938 London, local newspaper ads offer a hefty sum to the person who can say whodunnit. A man has been shot dead at the top of a Ferris wheel, and his wife --- the only other person in their carriage --- insists on her innocence. But who else could have fired the deadly bullet and escaped unseen? The sheer implausibility of the claim is enough to whip the press into a frenzy. For young and idealistic Edmund Ibbs, the lawyer representing the accused, that frenzy may be his only hope at discovering the truth of the mysterious murder. As he digs into the case, Ibbs unwittingly enters a shadowy web of conspiracy and murder, soon finding himself implicated in not one but two seemingly impossible crimes.
Mysterious Press | 9781613164099

MUST LOVE FLOWERS by Debbie Macomber (Fiction)
Now a widow and an empty-nester, Joan Sample has become something of a recluse. But now she has gathered the courage to take some long-awaited steps: hiring someone to tame her overgrown garden, joining a grief support group, and even renting out a room to a local college student. Across town, Maggie Herbert works mornings as a barista before rushing to afternoon nursing classes. She lives with her alcoholic father and struggles to pay the household bills. Her circumstances brighten when she finds a room for rent in Joan’s home. But will Maggie’s budding attraction to one of her favorite customers ruin the harmony she’s only recently found with Joan? Meanwhile, what is Joan to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden --- a man who seems to harbor a past loss of his own?
Ballantine Books | 9780593600559

PROMISE by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Historical Fiction)
The Kindred sisters, Ezra and Cinthy, have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village. But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way. And as the news from distant parts of the country fills with calls for freedom, equality and justice for Black Americans, the white villagers of Salt Point begin to view the Kindreds and the Junketts as threats to their way of life. Amid escalating violence, prejudice and fear, Ezra and Cinthy must reach deep inside the wells of love they’ve built to commit great acts of heroism and grace on the path to survival.
Random House | 9780593241929

QUEEN OF EXILES by Vanessa Riley (Historical Fiction)
In 1810, Marie-Louise Christophe is crowned queen as her husband, Henry I, begins his reign over the first and only free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. But despite their newfound freedom, Haitians still struggle under mountains of debt to France and indifference from former allies in Britain and the new United States. Louise desperately tries to steer the country’s political course as King Henry descends into a mire of mental illness. In 1820, King Henry is overthrown and dies by his own hand. Louise and her daughters manage to flee to Europe with their smuggled jewels. In exile, the resilient Louise redefines her role, recovering the fortune that Henry had lost and establishing herself as an equal to the kings of European nations.
William Morrow | 9780063270992

RIPE by Sarah Rose Etter (Fiction/Magical Realism)
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking in relation to her distress. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels. When she ends up unexpectedly pregnant at the same time that her CEO’s demands cross into illegal territory, Cassie must decide if the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it.
Scribner | 9781668011638

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera (Urban Fantasy)
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. He walked among invisible powers: devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen. Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.
Tordotcom | 9781250847386

SLEEPLESS CITY: A Nick Ryan Novel by Reed Farrel Coleman (Thriller)
Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud. In fact, they don't talk about him at all. He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York. Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or he can make a key witness disappear. He has cars, safe houses, money and weapons hidden all over the city. He's the mayor's private cop, the fixer, the first call when the men and women who protect and serve are in trouble and need protection themselves. With conflicted loyalties and a divided soul, he's a veteran cop still fighting his own private war. He's a soldier of the streets with his own personal code. But what happens when the man who knows all the city's secrets becomes a threat to both sides of the law?
Blackstone Publishing | 9781982627478

THE ST. AMBROSE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS by Jessica Ward (Psychological Thriller)
When Sarah Taylor arrives at the exclusive St. Ambrose School, she’s carrying more baggage than just what fits in her suitcase. St. Ambrose’s queen bee, Greta Stanhope, picks Sarah as a target from day one. Thankfully, Sarah makes an ally out of her roommate, Ellen “Strots” Strotsberry, a cigarette-huffing, devil-may-care athlete. Also down the hall is Nick Hollis, the devastatingly handsome RA, and the object of more than one St. Ambrose student’s fantasies. Between Strots and Nick, Sarah hopes she can make it through the semester, dealing with not only her schoolwork and a recent bipolar diagnosis, but Greta’s increasingly malicious pranks. But when scandal unfolds, and someone ends up dead, her world threatens to unravel in ways she never could have imagined.
Gallery Books | 9781982194864

THE STOLEN COAST by Dwyer Murphy (Noir Thriller)
Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving people on the run from powerful enemies. The family business --- co-managed with his father, a retired spy --- is smooth sailing, as they fill up Onset’s holiday homes during the town’s long, drowsy off-season and help clients shed their identities in preparation for fresh starts. But when Elena, Jack’s former flame --- a dedicated hustler who's no stranger to the fugitive life --- makes an unexpected return to town, her arrival upends Jack’s routine existence. It isn’t long before Jack finds himself enmeshed in her latest project: intercepting millions of dollars’ worth of raw diamonds before they’re shipped overseas.
Viking | 9780593653678

THE SUMMER OF SONGBIRDS by Kristy Woodson Harvey (Fiction)
Nearly 30 years ago, in the wake of a personal tragedy, June Moore bought Camp Holly Springs and turned it into a thriving summer haven for girls. But now, June is in danger of losing the place she has sacrificed everything for, and she begins to realize how much she has used the camp to avoid facing difficulties in her life. June’s niece, Daphne, met her two best friends, Lanier and Mary Stuart, during a fateful summer at camp. They’ve all helped each other through hard things, from heartbreak and loss to substance abuse and unplanned pregnancy, and the three are inseparable even in their 30s. But when attorney Daphne is confronted with a relationship from her past --- and a confidential issue at work becomes personal --- she is faced with an impossible choice.
Gallery Books | 9781668010822

THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game by Tim Brown, with Erik Kratz (Sports)
In baseball, there are superstars, stars and everyday players...and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players, specialists and journeymen...and then there are the backup catchers. THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster, the end of the bench, and between the numbers in a sport --- and a society --- increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics. It is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders.
Twelve | 9781538726556

THICKER THAN WATER by Megan Collins (Psychological Thriller)
Julia and Sienna Larkin are sisters-in-law, connected by Julia’s husband and Sienna’s brother, Jason. More than that, the two are devoted best friends and business partners. Recently, Jason has been putting in long hours to secure a promotion at work, so when his boss is found brutally murdered --- his lips sewn shut --- the Larkins are shocked and unsettled, especially as local gossip swirls. A few days later, Julia and Sienna’s lives are upended when Jason gets into a car accident and is placed in a medically induced coma. Worse, the police arrive with news that he’s the prime suspect in the murder investigation. With Jason unable to respond --- and with Julia and Sienna working to clear his name --- the two women find their friendship threatened for the first time.
Atria Books | 9781982196240

On Sale the Week of July 10th in Paperback

July 11th

AGENT JOSEPHINE: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis (Biography)
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. In AGENT JOSEPHINE, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers --- a cover for her spying work --- Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served --- the US, France and Britain.
PublicAffairs | 9781541700673

THE BONES OF THE STORY by Carol Goodman (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Paperback Original
It’s been 25 years since the shocking disappearance of a female student and the distinguished Creative Writing professor who died while searching for her. Now, the president of Briarwood College is bringing together faculty, donors and alumni to honor the victims from all those years ago. Guests gather on the vacant campus for the commemorative event. But as a storm descends, people begin to depart, leaving a group of alumni who were the last ones taught by the esteemed professor. Recriminations and old rivalries flare as they recall the writing projects they shared as classmates. When an alumna dies in a shockingly similar way to the story she wrote, and then another succumbs to a similar fate, they realize that someone has decided at long last to avenge the crimes of the past.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063265240

THE CATCH by Alison Fairbrother (Fiction)
Two years out of college, Ellie Adler has a job in journalism, an older lover and a circle of smart friends. Her beloved father, James, who has children from three marriages, unites the family with his gentle humor and charisma, but Ellie has always believed she is her father's favorite. When he suddenly dies, she finds herself devastated by the unexpected loss. Then, at the reading of his will, she learns that instead of leaving her his prized possession --- a baseball that holds emotional resonance for them both --- he has left her a seemingly ridiculous, even insulting gift. Worse, he’s given the baseball to someone no one in the family has ever heard of. Setting out to track this person down, Ellie learns startling information about who her father really was and who she herself is becoming.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780593134313

CLIVE CUSSLER’S THE SEA WOLVES: An Isaac Bell Adventure by Jack Du Brul (Thriller/Adventure)
Detective Isaac Bell is asked to investigate a cache of missing rifles --- only to discover something much more sinister. Whoever broke into this Winchester Factory wasn’t looking to take weapons. They wanted to leave something in the shipping crates: a radio transmitter, set to summon a fleet of dreaded German U-boats. Someone is trying to keep American supplies from reaching British shores, and if Bell doesn’t crack the conspiracy in time, the Atlantic Ocean will run red with blood. Bell must hunt down a new piece of technology that is allowing the Germans to rule the seas from New York to England. With the outcome of the war at stake and Franklin Roosevelt’s orders on the line, Bell will risk everything to stop the U-boats before they strike again.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593714935

THE CLOISTERS by Katy Hays (Literary Thriller)
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
Atria Books | 9781668004418

CONFIDENCE by Denise Mina (Mystery/Thriller)
Anna McDonald has forced her blended family to vacation together. The weather is bad, her daughters are bored, and her ex-husband is still insufferable. So when news of a shocking kidnapping breaks, Anna and Fin Cohen take off to solve the case. Lisa Lee, a young YouTube star, has vanished after answering the door to what she thought was a pizza delivery. Police suspect her dad or the delivery guy, but in Lisa’s last known video she ventured into an abandoned chateau in France, where she uncovered a priceless artifact. Anna knows they must find this young woman before it’s too late. To do so, they need to track down that treasure, a casket that could hold answers to the greatest questions ever asked. But Anna and Fin might have misunderstood the stakes of the game.
Mulholland Books | 9780316242813

CRADLES OF THE REICH by Jennifer Coburn (Historical Fiction)
CRADLES OF THE REICH uncovers a topic rarely explored in fiction: the Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race. At the Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, three women's lives converge as they find themselves there under very different circumstances. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she's secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only 18, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. And Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. Despite their opposing beliefs, all three have everything to lose as they begin to realize they are trapped within Hitler's terrifying scheme to build a Nazi-Aryan nation.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728269832

CRYING IN THE BATHROOM: A Memoir by Erika L. Sánchez (Memoir)
Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the ’90s, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit and disappointment --- a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, but she still has an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit and singular powers of perception about the world around her. In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness and perception.
Penguin Books | 9780593296950

DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS by Terry Brooks (Fantasy)
It’s been two years since Auris escaped from the sinister Goblin prison and learned of her heritage as one of the Fae. She is now happily partnered with her Fae lover, Harrow, and deeply bonded with her new family. All seems to be going perfectly --- until, surprisingly, the Goblin attacks begin again. Someone, it seems, has not forgotten that Auris exists and seems determined to retrieve her. But who? And why? As Auris begins to dig deeper into the mystery, old friends and new enemies appear, and she starts to realize that her still-shrouded past must contain the answers she needs. But even Auris does not suspect how far down the rabbit hole she is about to go, until Harrow is taken and an impossible ransom demand is issued.
Del Rey | 9780593357439

DIANA, WILLIAM, AND HARRY: The Heartbreaking Story of a Princess and Mother by James Patterson and Chris Mooney (Biography)
From the moments William and Harry are born into the House of Windsor, they become their young mother’s whole world. Diana is faced with a seemingly impossible challenge: one son destined to be King of England and another determined to find his own way. She teaches them to honor royal tradition, even while daring to break it. “Sometimes I’d like a time machine…” Diana says as William and Harry grow up, never imagining they’d have less than a lifetime together. Even after she’s gone, her sons follow their mother’s lead --- and her heart. As the years pass and William and Harry grow into adulthood and form families of their own, they carry on Diana’s name, her likeness and her incomparable spirit.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538721292

ELSEWHERE by Alexis Schaitkin (Dystopian Fiction)
Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning. Vera, a young girl when her own mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear?
Celadon Books | 9781250219626

FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke (Fiction)
Paperback Original
When their newly engaged kids ask all four divorced parents to meet each other over brunch, everyone RSVPs yes --- secretly hoping that someone at the table will get to the bottom of the bottomless mimosas fast enough to say what they’re all thinking: that this engagement, coming after a whirlwind romance between two people barely out of college, is too much too soon. But at that brunch it’s not the impulsive couple's decisions that end up under the microscope, as it turns out that June, mother of the bride, and Amy, mother of the groom, certainly do know each other. Reeling from their unwanted reunion and eager to shift the spotlight off their past as decades-old secrets and rivalries come to light, the two moms battle it out for the prize of Most Enthusiastic About This Wedding.
Alcove Press | 9781639103522

FORGET ME NOT by Julie Soto (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Ama Torres is an optimistic wedding planner who doesn’t believe in marriage. Elliot Bloom is a brooding florist who hates owning a flower shop…until a certain bright-eyed, donut-loving workaholic shows up at his door. Once upon a time, they collaborated on events by day, and by night, Ama traced the intricate flower tattoos etched along his body. Then Ama shattered Elliot's heart and never spoke to him again. Now they’re working on an event that could make or break both of their careers --- except neither of them has gotten over what happened two years ago. Things are not helped by the two brides, who see the obvious chemistry between Ama and Elliot and are determined to set them up. But as the wedding takes on a life of its own, Ama and Elliot are about to discover that some things can survive a complete catastrophe.
Forever | 9781538740880

FRANCE: An Adventure History by Graham Robb (History)
Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, FRANCE takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Robb’s own adventures and discoveries while living, working and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French Revolution.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324064695

GOING ROGUE: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich (Mystery)
Stephanie Plum turns up for work at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli hasn’t shown up. Her worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail. Unfortunately, this coin, which should be in the office, is nowhere to be found. The quest to discover the coin, learn its value and save Connie will require the help of Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur, her best pal Lula, her boyfriend Morelli, and hunky security expert Ranger. As they get closer to unraveling the reasons behind the kidnapping, Connie’s captor grows more threatening.
Atria Books | 9781668003077

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.
Vintage | 9780593081242

KALEIDOSCOPE by Cecily Wong (Fiction)
Morgan and Riley Brighton are joint heirs to Kaleidoscope: a glittering, "global bohemian" shopping empire --- created in sleepy Oregon and catapulted into haute New York --- sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Morgan, a statuesque beauty and Kaleidoscope’s talented designer, is adored by all, especially by the Brighton parents. Yet no one loves her more than Riley, whose shy and adventurous spirit is exalted by her sister. When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons’ world, Riley must stand in the spotlight for the first time in her life, with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity and loyalty. Restless and heartbroken, she sets off across the globe with the person she least expects, to seek truths about those she thought she knew best --- herself included.
Dutton | 9780593184462

A LADY’S GUIDE TO SCANDAL by Sophie Irwin (Historical Romance)
Paperback Original
When shy Miss Eliza Balfour married the austere Earl of Somerset, 20 years her senior, it was the match of the season. Now, 10 years later, Eliza is widowed. Suddenly, she is left titled, rich and, for the first time in her life, utterly in control of her own future. She’s always lived by society’s conventions, but now, Eliza has resolved to do as she wants. And what she wants is to head to Bath with her cousin Margaret, pursue painting, learn to drive, and flirt with Bath’s most alluring new resident, the infamous Lord Melville. But when the ripples of Eliza’s behavior reach her late husband’s nephew --- who broke Eliza’s heart years ago --- Eliza will learn that freedom does not come without consequences. The only way to ensure she can keep her fortune is to avoid all scandal. But where’s the fun in that?
Penguin Books | 9780593492000

THE LAST PARTY by Clare Mackintosh (Psychological Thriller)
On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he's generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors. But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake. On New Year's Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family --- and Ffion has her own secrets to protect. With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn't who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him.
Sourcebooks Landmark | 9781728269849

LOWDOWN ROAD by Scott Von Doviak (Thriller)
Paperback Original
It’s the summer of ’74. Richard Nixon has resigned from office, CB radios are the hot new thing, and in the great state of Texas two cousins hatch a plan to drive $1 million worth of stolen weed to Idaho, where some lunatic is gearing up to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle. But with a vengeful sheriff on their tail and the revered and feared marijuana kingpin of Central Texas out to get his stash back, Chuck and Dean are in for the ride of their lives --- if they can make it out alive.
Hard Case Crime | 9781803364131

THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS: A Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Memoir)
Ingrid Rojas Contreras' maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. While living in the U.S. in her 20s, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before. Decades ago, Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”
Anchor | 9780593311165

THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O'Farrell (Historical Fiction)
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
Vintage | 9780593315088

MEREDITH, ALONE by Claire Alexander (Fiction)
She has a full-time remote job and her rescue cat, Fred. Her best friend, Sadie, visits with her two children. There's her online support group, her jigsaw puzzles and favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson poems. Also keeping her company are treacherous memories of an unstable childhood and a traumatic event that had sent her reeling. But something is about to change. First, two new friends burst into her life. Then her long-estranged sister gets in touch. Suddenly her carefully curated home is no longer a space to hide. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538709955

ORDINARY MONSTERS by J. M. Miro (Historical Fantasy)
Despite surviving a brutal childhood in Mississippi, Charlie Ovid doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When Alice Quicke, a jaded detective with her own troubled past, is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous. What follows is a story of wonder and betrayal, from the gaslit streets of London and the wooden theaters of Meiji-era Tokyo, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh where other children with gifts are forced to combat the forces that threaten their safety. There, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide.
Flatiron Books | 9781250833679

THE PARIS AGENT by Kelly Rimmer (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory --- in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong. Moved by her father’s frustration, Noah’s daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the stories of Chloe and Fleur, the code names for two otherwise ordinary women whose lives intersect in 1943 when they’re called up by the SOE for deployment in France. They have no idea they’re at the mercy of a double agent among them who's causing chaos within the French circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives…and the war.
Graydon House | 9781525826689

THE POISON MACHINE: A Hunt & Hooke Novel by Robert J. Lloyd (Historical Thriller/Mystery)
London, 1679. A year has passed since the sensational attempt to murder King Charles II, but London is still a viper’s nest of rumored Catholic conspiracies, and of plots against them in turn. When Harry Hunt --- estranged from his mentor, Robert Hooke --- is summoned to the remote and windswept marshes of Norfolk, he is at first relieved to get away from the place. But in Norfolk, he finds that some Royal workers shoring up a riverbank have made a grim discovery --- the skeleton of a dwarf. Harry is able to confirm that the skeleton is that of Captain Jeffrey Hudson, a prominent member of the court once famously given to the Queen in a pie. Except no one knew Hudson was dead, because another man had been impersonating him.
Melville House | 9781685890407

RUN TIME by Catherine Ryan Howard (Psychological Thriller)
Feeling her stardom fading, struggling soap actress Adele Rafferty is ready to give up on her dreams when she gets a last-minute offer to play the lead in an upcoming horror film, Final Draft. Could this be her big break? Will she have redemption for what happened the last time she was on a film set? Adele doesn’t think twice before signing on the dotted line. Adele quickly makes her way to the set, deep into the isolated and wintry woods of West Cork, Ireland, miles away from civilization and cell service. When real life on the set starts to somehow mirror the sinister events portrayed in the script, Adele fears the real horror lies off the page. Isolated and unsure who in the crew she can trust, is there anywhere or any time left to run?
Blackstone Publishing | 9798212173407

SMELLS LIKE TWEEN SPIRIT by Laurie Gelman (Fiction/Humor)
Even with the cutthroat days of being Class Mom behind her, as a freshly minted mat mom of the Pioneer Middle School (PMS) wrestling team, Jen Dixon cannot catch a break. This year, as her son joins the ranks of the PMS wrestlers, Jen faces mystifying new social dynamics with her trademark combination of reluctance and resigned acceptance. The sights and smells of her son’s wrestling matches are more than enough for her to deal with, but Jen also finds herself fully immersed in sports-mom competitiveness. These parents all seem perfectly unassuming until their kids start to wrestle, and then some become raging momsters. Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle school life, but she cannot quite fathom the extents to which some kids (and moms) will go for the sweet taste of victory.
Holt Paperbacks | 9781250871510

SNOWSTORM IN AUGUST by Marshall Karp (Thriller)
They call him el Carnicero --- the Butcher. He is the most powerful drug lord on the planet, and when the city of New York incurs his wrath, he utters a single word: “¡Venganza!” With military precision, he strafes Central Park with 4,000 pounds of cocaine, killing hundreds of innocent people enjoying a summer afternoon. The only NYPD unit trained to go up against this level of terrorism has been disbanded, but four anonymous billionaires retaliate by recruiting a task force of highly decorated retired cops. Armed with cutting-edge technology, former NYPD captain Danny Corcoran leads his team in a pulse-pounding thriller in their battle to stop the enraged head of a Mexican cartel from raining more death on the city.
Blackstone Publishing | 9798212184786

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 Griffin | 9781250842244

THE SUMMER SKIES by Jenny Colgan (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Morag MacIntyre is a Scottish lass from the remote islands that make up the northernmost reaches of the UK. She’s also a third-generation pilot, the heir apparent to an island plane service she runs with her grandfather. The islands rely on their one hardworking prop plane to deliver mail, packages, tourists, medicine and the occasional sheep. As the keeper of this vital lifeline, Morag is used to landing on pale golden beaches and tiny grass airstrips. Down on the ground is a different matter, though. Morag wonders if she truly wants to spend the rest of her life in the islands. Her boyfriend, Hayden, wants her to move to Dubai with him, where they’ll fly A380s. Morag is on the verge of making a huge life change when an unusually bumpy landing during a storm finds her marooned on Inchborn island.
Avon | 9780063260429

THE SWELL by Allie Reynolds (Thriller)
Three years ago, passionate surfer Kenna Ward lost her two great loves. After her boyfriend drowned, she hung up her surfboard and swore off the water for good. But she is drawn back to the beach when her best friend, Mikki, announces her sudden engagement to a man Kenna has never met --- a member of a tight-knit group of surfers. Kenna travels to a remote Australian beach, entering a dangerous world far from civilization. She is tempted back into the surf, and drawn into the dazzling group and the beach they call their own. But this coastal paradise has a dark side, and members of the group begin to go missing. Kenna realizes that in order to protect Mikki and learn more about the surfers, she must become one of them…without becoming one of their victims.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons | 9780593187869

WEDNESDAYS AT ONE by Sandra A. Miller (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
Dr. Gregory Weber, a renowned clinical psychologist, feels increasingly disconnected. His marriage is strained, his children are distant, and he can’t stop fixating on an unforgivable mistake he made when he was 17. So when an unscheduled client named Mira starts to appear in his office every Wednesday at 1 p.m. with knowledge about his past, Gregory quickly grows obsessed with her. Is she a new patient? A secret referral from a colleague? Someone connected to his teenage transgression? As his attraction for Mira grows more intense with each session, so does her probing scrutiny of him. Soon Gregory’s professional boundaries begin to dissolve, and he becomes the patient, desperate to uncover his connection to this mysterious woman and find out what she wants from him.
Zibby Books | 9781958506035

WINDFALL by Wendy Corsi Staub (Psychological Thriller)
Paperback Original
When three former roommates reunite for a birthday weekend in Las Vegas, the lottery ticket they buy on a whim has the winning numbers --- giving them a billion-dollar windfall. They turn to Shea Daniels, a “sudden wealth manager,” who promises to guide them through the pitfalls of having more money than they’d ever imagined. The trio travels to a secluded California mansion, where Shea and her staff cater to their every whim. The house is purportedly cursed, the last place a missing movie star was seen alive. Their weekend turns to terror when they discover they are trapped. And when history repeats itself and one of them disappears --- the one who’s holding the billion-dollar ticket --- the others must face the fact that either their friend has betrayed them…or a predator is lurking.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780063235311

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