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Jane Smiley, author of Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Christmas, 1857. America's future is precarious; civil war looms on the horizon. After her abolitionist husband is murdered in the lawless Kansas Territory, Lidie Newton returns, in mourning, to her hometown of Quincy, Illinois. But her sisters have little comfort to offer, and Lidie is haunted by the memories of her failures --- until she takes an interest in her niece, Annie. Annie becomes an actress at the local theater, and when she is offered the opportunity to perform abroad, she decides to run away. But travel is dangerous for a young unmarried woman, so Lidie, armed with her pistol and her wit, goes with her. The two women embark on a perilous journey across the Atlantic. Once they arrive in Liverpool, they vanish into new roles in the household of Annie's benefactor, Mr. Mallory Cunningham. But will either of them be content with her new lot in life?

Kim Michele Richardson, author of The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman's Legacy

In this stand-alone and companion novel to the Book Woman of Troublesome Creek series, our heroine for the ages, legendary book woman Cussy Lovett, returns home. A powerful testament of strength, survival and the magic of the printed word, THE MOUNTAINS WE CALL HOME is wrapped into a vivid portrait of Kentucky life: examining incarceration and criminalization, exploring the effects on the poor and powerless, and tracing the societal consequences of fractured family bonds, along with nostalgic glimpses of a bustling, multifaceted Louisville, and heartwarming portraits of reading efforts in every facet of life.

Sally Hepworth, author of Mad Mabel

Meet Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: 81 years old, gloriously grumpy, fiercely independent, and never without a hot cup of tea --- or a cutting remark. She minds her own business in her quiet Melbourne suburb, until a neighbor turns up dead and the whispers start flying. Because Elsie hasn’t always been Elsie. Once upon a headline, she was Mad Mabel Waller --- Australia’s youngest convicted murderer. But was she really mad, or just misunderstood? Either way, she’s kept her secret buried for decades. Enter seven-year-old Persephone, a relentless little chatterbox who has just moved in across the road; Joan, who appears to have it in for Elsie; and a healthy dose of public interest. So Mabel does what she’s always done best --- she takes matters into her own hands.

Editorial Content for Paradox

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Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

I have seen PARADOX listed as a technothriller, but I feel this classification is quite limiting. In fact, there are so many genres coursing through the pages here that the novel may be impossible to label or define. Read More

Teaser

When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in EXTINCTION, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society. And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.

Promo

When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in EXTINCTION, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society. And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.

About the Book

The new powerhouse team of Douglas Preston and Aletheia Preston are joining together to "enter the world" of the New York Times bestselling EXTINCTION.

One of the holiest relics in Christendom, inexplicably defaced.

A paranoid old prospector, ritualistically murdered.

A controversial exobiologist, tortured and dismembered.

When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in the New York Times bestseller EXTINCTION, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society.

And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.

Audiobook available, read by Stephanie Németh-Parker

Editorial Content for Cherry Baby

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Reviewer (text)

Rebecca Munro

Rainbow Rowell, the bestselling author of works for both adults and young adults, follows the release of SLOW DANCE with CHERRY BABY, which features a plus-size protagonist whose life --- and thick, curvy body --- are about to hit the big screen. Read More

Teaser

Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie. Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home. Tom is the creator of Thursday, a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon. There's a character in this movie based on Cherry: “Baby.” Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby. Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page --- let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles, Cherry is stuck in Omaha wondering who she's supposed to be without him. One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album…and someone recognizes her from across the room.

Promo

Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie. Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home. Tom is the creator of Thursday, a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon. There's a character in this movie based on Cherry: “Baby.” Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby. Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page --- let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles, Cherry is stuck in Omaha wondering who she's supposed to be without him. One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album…and someone recognizes her from across the room.

About the Book

#1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell returns with a breathtakingly honest novel about a woman who lost everything --- and isn't sure she wants it back.

Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie...

Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home.

Tom is the creator of Thursday --- a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon.

Semi-autobiographical. That means there's a character in this movie based on Cherry: "Baby."

Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby.

Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page --- let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store.

While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the internet's latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wanted and the house they were going to raise a family in...and wondering who she's supposed to be without him.

Cherry had promised to love Tom through thick and thin.

She'd meant it.

One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems, including Tom's overgrown puppy, at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album...and someone recognizes her from across the room.

Russ Sutton knew Cherry when she was a young art student with a fondness for pin-up dresses and patent leather heels. Before Tom.

Russ knows Cherry. He likes Cherry.

And best of all...he's never heard of Thursday.

Tender, funny and utterly human, CHERRY BABY is Rainbow Rowell's richest, most surprising --- sexiest --- novel yet.

Audiobook available, read by Rebecca Lowman

Editorial Content for No Way Home

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Reviewer (text)

Jana Siciliano

Terrence Tully is a third-year medical resident in a gritty downtown Los Angeles hospital. As he tries to save an emergency room patient from a suspected heart attack, he receives a call from an unknown source giving him the horrible news that his mother has died. This necessitates a road trip down I-15 to the deadbeat town in Nevada where she retired.  Read More

Teaser

Terrence Tully is at work when he receives news that his mother has died. A third-year medical resident in a gritty community hospital in downtown Los Angeles, he sees death daily, but the news that his mother has passed away jolts him like no other. Turn the page, and he’s heading north on I-15 through a lifeless desert to the small Nevada town where his mother had retired. Overwhelmed with grief and the burden of having to sort out the remnants of his mother’s life, he stops at a café and has a chance encounter with a pretty young local girl in a turquoise minidress. What seems to him a chance meeting like so many we all experience daily will come to upend his life and morph into a fatal obsession.

Promo

Terrence Tully is at work when he receives news that his mother has died. A third-year medical resident in a gritty community hospital in downtown Los Angeles, he sees death daily, but the news that his mother has passed away jolts him like no other. Turn the page, and he’s heading north on I-15 through a lifeless desert to the small Nevada town where his mother had retired. Overwhelmed with grief and the burden of having to sort out the remnants of his mother’s life, he stops at a café and has a chance encounter with a pretty young local girl in a turquoise minidress. What seems to him a chance meeting like so many we all experience daily will come to upend his life and morph into a fatal obsession.

About the Book

David Lynch meets Fight Club in T.C. Boyle’s NO WAY HOME, an obsessive psychological study that illuminates the darkness that lurks inside all of us.

Terrence Tully, work-obsessed and a naif in the arenas of sex and love, is at work when he receives news that his mother has died. A third-year medical resident in a gritty community hospital in downtown Los Angeles, he sees death daily, but the news that his mother has passed away, delivered to his cell phone by the voice of a stranger, jolts him like no other, even as he is in the act of trying to save the life of a patient undergoing cardiac arrest.

Turn the page, and he’s heading north on I-15 through a lifeless desert to the small Nevada town where his mother has retired. Overwhelmed with grief and the burden of having to sort out the remnants of his mother’s life, including the house and car she has left him, he stops at a café and has a chance encounter with a pretty young local girl in a turquoise minidress. What seems to him a chance meeting like so many we all experience daily will come to upend his life and morph into a fatal obsession.

For Bethany, a receptionist at the local hospital, who, like many twenty-somethings, is trying to sort out her options in life while haunting the local bars and clubs, this chance encounter is anything but trivial. Down on her luck after breaking up with her boyfriend and surreptitiously living out of her storage unit, she finds Terrence attractive on a number of counts, not least of which is his status as a doctor and, by default, a homeowner.

What follows becomes the heart of NO WAY HOME, a propulsive narrative with cinematic overtones in the tradition of Mulholland Drive and the cold hard lyricism of Cormac McCarthy and Robert Stone, as Terrence is drawn into a toxic love triangle with Bethany and her former beau, Jesse. No longer in control of his ordered and once-predictable life, Terrence becomes hostage to a world where shots of tequila and violent brawls puncture the daily grind of nowhere jobs, aimless sex and recreational highs --- a rootless existence from which there appears to be no escape and no fixed refuge.

Stylistically shimmering and unraveling under a harsh desert sky crenellated by the peaks of the Nevada mountains, T.C. Boyle’s narrative explores what it is, on an animal level, to fight over a woman and what retribution really looks like. Can sexual jealousy breed a thirst for vengeance that becomes desperately pathological? In the hands of “one of America’s greatest living novelists” (Los Angeles Review of Books), NO WAY HOME is a chilling tour de force by an American master at his very best.

Audiobook available; read by Jonathan Todd Ross, Samara Naeymi and Eddie Lopez 

Editorial Content for Death Times Seven: A Daniel Pitt Novel

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

When an author passes away, we lose not only their enormous talents but also the lives of the great characters they have created. In the case of Anne Perry, who left us in 2023, we have the legacy of her various series that have entertained us for decades. Among them are William Monk, Elena Standish, Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, and Daniel Pitt. Read More

Teaser

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead, and his father is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, who is on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise. But despite Miriam’s involvement, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby. And when the evidence points to Toby’s father as the killer of Toby’s mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge.

Promo

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead, and his father is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, who is on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise. But despite Miriam’s involvement, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby. And when the evidence points to Toby’s father as the killer of Toby’s mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge.

About the Book

Two violent crimes challenge the investigative skills of young Daniel Pitt and his wife, Miriam, in the final novel of iconic mystery writer Anne Perry's beloved Daniel Pitt series.

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead, and his father is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich,  struggling with grief and disbelief, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, who is on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman.

Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise and exposes a community of fellow pathologists who may have purposefully omitted information from their autopsy reports. Despite Miriam’s involvement in the case, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby, who is too distraught to investigate the attack on his parents. And when the evidence points to Toby’s father as the killer of Toby’s mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge. One mistake in London and a blameless man will hang. One mistake in Ipswich and Toby’s father will go to prison for life.

DEATH TIMES SEVEN, the seventh and final novel in Anne Perry’s Daniel Pitt series, was completed by Victoria Zackheim, an author and editor as well as Perry’s close friend. Rich in intrigue and courtroom drama, this engrossing novel marks a fitting finale to the career of an author widely praised as the queen of historical crime fiction.

Audiobook available, read by Samuel Roukin

Editorial Content for Dear Monica Lewinsky

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Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

It’s the spring of 2019, and forty-something Jean Dornan receives a most unexpected invitation. Her one-time history professor, David Harwell, is retiring from the prestigious French research institute where he’s been the director for the past 20 years. Jean has been invited to the celebration, which will include a Festschrift, a collection of writings in praise of the honoree. Read More

Teaser

Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jean’s long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint. To Jean’s shock, Saint Monica appears and guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998.

Promo

Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jean’s long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint. To Jean’s shock, Saint Monica appears and guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998.

About the Book

From the acclaimed author of AMERICAN MERMAID comes a wise, funny and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites.

Forty-year-old Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jean’s long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels.

In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint, a figure of both suffering and sympathy. To Jean’s shock, Saint Monica appears --- powerful, radiant, wise and witty --- and guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998. Had Jean merely been naive and stupid, as she has told herself for so long? Was it sheer weakness that led her into the affair? Or will Jean, with Saint Monica by her side, see past blame to the beauty of her younger self’s search for pleasure, connection and transcendence?

Told in flashbacks of those sunlit six weeks in France, replete with Saint Monica’s flinty, fiery insights, and interspersed with retellings of the lives of real historical martyrs, DEAR MONICA LEWINSKY is a tender, hilarious and wholly original examination of desire and its costs, of appetite and its denial, and of certain defeat and surprise renewal. It asks what grace and forgiveness might look like both in our own individual lives and as a society.

Audiobook available; read by Alex Sarrigeorgiou, Louisa Zhu and Patti Murin 

Editorial Content for Invasive Species

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Sarah Rachel Egelman

Many neighborhoods have the creepy house, the one kids dare each other to approach. Maybe it is empty, or perhaps it is inhabited by someone believed to be a danger. It may be run down or majestic, but it exudes a haunted feeling. Scary houses and their people are the stuff of urban legend and horror fiction alike. In INVASIVE SPECIES, Ellery Adams offers up a monster and her home, and the neighbors who want to destroy her.  Read More

Teaser

While the town of Cold Harbor has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality. Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale. She's eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign. Her two best friends are facing their own demons, and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone's problems. But Natalie's 12-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all.

Promo

While the town of Cold Harbor has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality. Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale. She's eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign. Her two best friends are facing their own demons, and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone's problems. But Natalie's 12-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all.

About the Book

The women in Cold Harbor all have something to prove, and they'll have to do it in a world full of monsters.

Something is not right in Cold Harbor --- more so than usual. While this sleepy small town has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality.

Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale --- the one that will take her from stay-at-home mom to working woman extraordinaire. She's eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign, where she's expected to keep a magazine-perfect home and raise beautiful children, all while sticking to her husband's budget. Natalie's two best friends are facing their own demons and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone's problems.

But Natalie's 12-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all. But as the rest of Cold Harbor sinks into anger, fear and jealousy, they’ll have to confront the question: What does it really mean to be a monster?

Audiobook available, read by Courtney Patterson

Editorial Content for A Room in Bombay: A Memoir

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Jane T. Krebs

Being an only child, an Indian son, homosexual, and the child of Hindu parents stuck in a loveless marriage, Manil Suri faced challenges. Read More

Teaser

Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai), which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. At age 20, Suri broke free from their single room and came to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room kept wrenching him back to Bombay. By now, real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room. Eventually it was only his mother, Prem, left, who had staked all her happiness on her son but was unable to escape the room’s hold on her. When a rash of mysterious incidents seemed to beset the room, Suri realized how little time he had left to convince Prem that a happier life might await beyond the four walls that both enthralled and imprisoned her.

Promo

Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai), which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. At age 20, Suri broke free from their single room and came to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room kept wrenching him back to Bombay. By now, real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room. Eventually it was only his mother, Prem, left, who had staked all her happiness on her son but was unable to escape the room’s hold on her. When a rash of mysterious incidents seemed to beset the room, Suri realized how little time he had left to convince Prem that a happier life might await beyond the four walls that both enthralled and imprisoned her.

About the Book

A bestselling novelist turns to memoir in this compelling story of a son’s love, a mother’s obsession, and the malevolent grip of the past.

Indian American author Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai) which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. Their single room, at times a refuge from the religious and territorial tensions pervading the apartment, was also a prison that held them captive --- his parents stuck in an unhappy marriage, the author unable to explore the dawning realization he might be gay. At age 20, Suri managed to break free and come to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room, which still held his parents hostage, kept wrenching him back to Bombay.

By now, real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room, causing Suri’s parents to dig in even more. Eventually it was only his mother, Prem, left, who had staked all her happiness on her son but was unable to escape the room’s hold on her. When a rash of mysterious incidents seemed to beset the room, Suri realized how little time he had left to convince Prem that a happier life might await beyond the four walls that both enthralled and imprisoned her.

This remarkable, gripping memoir explores how an abode can shape destiny, while delving into the difficult question of how much to prioritize our parents’ happiness over our own. Inspired by over 2,700 letters the author wrote home over three decades, it is ultimately a testament to the abiding, unbreakable bond tying a son to his mother.

Audiobook available, read by Neil Shah