JANUARY NEW RELEASES

First I want to say Happy New Year! I can’t wait to see what the year 2016 brings. Now I want to share a few upcoming January releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

TITLE: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

AUTHOR: Katarina Bivald

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: January 1, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction, General Fiction

Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen…
Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy’s funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don’t understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that’s almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend’s memory. All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town. Reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this is a warm, witty book about friendship, stories, and love. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

TITLE: No Baggage, A Minimalist Tale of Love & Wandering

AUTHOR: Clara Bensen

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: January 5, 2016

GENRE: Biographies & Memoirs

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike—it’s at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright modern take on the age-old questions: how do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? And can you love someone without the need for commitment, or any expectations for the future?

When Clara Bensen arranged to meet Jeff Wilson on the steps of the Texas State Capitol, after just a few email exchanges on OKCupid, it felt like something big was going to happen. Clara, a sensitive and reclusive personality, is immediately drawn to Jeff’s freewheeling, push-the-envelope nature. Within a few days of knowing one another, they embark on a 21-day travel adventure—from Istanbul to London, with zero luggage, zero reservations, and zero plans. They want to test a simple question: what happens when you welcome the unknown instead of attempting to control it?

Donning a single green dress and a small purse with her toothbrush and credit card, Clara travels through eight countries in three weeks. Along the way, Clara ruminates on the challenges of traveling unencumbered, while realizing when it comes to falling in love, you can never really leave your baggage behind. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

TITLE: Eleanor

AUTHOR: Jason Gurley

PUBLISHER: Crown Publishing

RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction

Eleanor and Esmerelda are identical twins with a secret language all their own, inseparable until a terrible accident claims Esme’s life. Eleanor’s family is left in tatters: her mother retreats inward, seeking comfort in bottles; her father reluctantly abandons ship. Eleanor is forced to grow up more quickly than a child should, and becomes the target of her mother’s growing rage.

Years pass, and Eleanor’s painful reality begins to unravel in strange ways. The first time it happens, she walks through a school doorway, and finds herself in a cornfield, beneath wide blue skies. When she stumbles back into her own world, time has flown by without her. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her world and into other, stranger ones, leaving behind empty rooms and worried loved ones.

One fateful day, Eleanor leaps from a cliff and is torn from her world altogether. She meets a mysterious stranger, Mea, who reveals to Eleanor the weight of her family’s loss. To save her broken parents, and rescue herself, Eleanor must learn how deep the well of her mother’s grief and her father’s heartbreak truly goes. Esmerelda’s death was not the only tragic loss in her family’s fragmented history, and unless Eleanor can master her strange new abilities, it may not be the last. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

TITLE: The Things We Keep

AUTHOR: Sally Hepworth

PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press

RELEASE DATE: January 19, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

Anna Forster, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease at only thirty-eight years old, knows that her family is doing what they believe to be best when they take her to Rosalind House, an assisted living facility. She also knows there’s just one another resident her age, Luke. What she does not expect is the love that blossoms between her and Luke even as she resists her new life at Rosalind House. As her disease steals more and more of her memory, Anna fights to hold on to what she knows, including her relationship with Luke.

When Eve Bennett is suddenly thrust into the role of single mother she finds herself putting her culinary training to use at Rosalind house. When she meets Anna and Luke she is moved by the bond the pair has forged. But when a tragic incident leads Anna’s and Luke’s families to separate them, Eve finds herself questioning what she is willing to risk to help them. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

TITLE: The Winter Girl

AUTHOR: Matt Marinovich

PUBLISHER: Doubleday Books

RELEASE DATE: January 19, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction (Adult)

A scathing and exhilarating thriller that begins with a husband’s obsession with the seemingly vacant house next door.

It’s wintertime in the Hamptons, where Scott and his wife, Elise, have come to be with her terminally ill father, Victor, to await the inevitable. As weeks turn to months, their daily routine—Elise at the hospital with her father, Scott pretending to work and drinking Victor’s booze—only highlights their growing resentment and dissatisfaction with the usual litany of unhappy marriages: work, love, passion, each other. But then Scott notices something simple, even innocuous.

Every night at precisely eleven, the lights in the neighbor’s bedroom turn off. It’s clearly a timer . . .but in the dead of winter with no one else around, there’s something about that light he can’t let go of. So one day while Elise is at the hospital, he breaks in. And he feels a jolt of excitement he hasn’t felt in a long time. Soon, it’s not hard to enlist his wife as a partner in crime and see if they can’t restart the passion.

Their one simple transgression quickly sends husband and wife down a deliriously wicked spiral of bad decisions, infidelities, escalating violence, and absolutely shocking revelations.

Matt Marinovich makes a strong statement with this novel. The Winter Girl is the psychological thriller done to absolute perfection. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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Tagged: Clara Bensen, December New Releases, Eleanor, Jason Gurley, Katarina Bivald, Matt Marinovich, New Releases, No Baggage, Sally Hepworth, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, The Things We Keep, The Winter Girl