Tag Archives: New Releases

July New Releases

JULY NEW RELEASES

I want to share a few upcoming July releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

cover77957-mediumTITLE: The Choices We Make

AUTHOR: Karma Brown

PUBLISHER: Harlequin (US & Canada)

RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | !NDIGO | INDIEBOUND | KOBO |

Following her critically acclaimed debut novel Come Away with Me, Karma Brown returns with an unforgettable story that explores the intricate dynamics between friends and mothers

Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate’s skirt with a mirror. While they’ve been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can’t help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created—complete with two perfect little girls.

She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah’s heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it’s Kate’s turn to do the rescuing. Not only does she offer to be Hannah’s surrogate, but Kate is willing to use her own eggs to do so.

Full of renewed hope, excitement and gratitude, these two families embark on an incredible journey toward parenthood…until a devastating tragedy puts everything these women have worked toward at risk of falling apart. Poignant and refreshingly honest, The Choices We Make is a powerful tale of two mothers, one incredible friendship and the risks we take to make our dreams come true. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover82445-mediumTITLE: The Last One

AUTHOR: Alexandra Oliva

PUBLISHER: Random House Publishing Group

RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2016

GENRE: Mystery & Thrillers, General Fiction (Adult)

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | BAM! | GOOGLEPLAY | INDIEBOUND | POWELL’S 

For readers of Station Eleven and The Passage comes a dazzling and unsettling novel of psychological suspense. In Alexandra Oliva’s thrilling fiction debut, survival is the name of the game, as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself—and one woman’s mind and body are pushed to the limit.

She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show.

Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.

Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all of her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes.

But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will either be her triumph or her undoing.

Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover88495-mediumTITLE: Valley of the Moon

AUTHOR: Melanie Gideon

PUBLISHER: Random House Publishing Group

RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | BAM! | INDIEBOUND

In this captivating novel from the author of Wife 22, a woman who feels lost in her own time stumbles across a California community that has, impossibly, been marooned in the early twentieth century—perfect for readers of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Time and Again, and Sarah Addison Allen.

Lux is a single mom struggling to make her way when she discovers an idyllic community in the Sonoma Valley. It seems like a place from another time—until she realizes it actually is. Lux must keep one foot in her world, raising her son as well as she can with the odds stacked against her, but every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she feels with a man born decades before her. Soon she finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world—her adored son—and the first place she has ever felt truly at home. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

 

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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June New Releases

JUNE NEW RELEASES

I want to share a few June releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

cover80342-mediumTITLE: Ink And Bone

AUTHOR: Lisa Unger

PUBLISHER: Touchstone

RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2016

GENRE: Mystery & Thrillers, General Fiction (Adult)

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

In this explosive psychological thriller by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger, a young woman’s mysterious gift forces her into the middle of a dangerous investigation of a little girl’s disappearance.

For as long as she can remember, twenty-year-old Finley Montgomery has been able to see into the future. She dreams about events before they occur and sees beyond the physical world, unconsciously using her power to make supernatural things happen.

But Finley can’t control these powers—and there’s only one person who can help. So Finley moves to The Hollows, a small town in upstate New York where her grandmother lives, a renowned seer who can finally teach Finley how to use her gift.

A gift that is proving to be both a blessing and a curse, as Finley lands in the middle of a dangerous investigation involving a young girl who has been missing for ten months and the police have all but given up hope.

With time running out there’s only so much Finley can do as The Hollows begins to reveal its true colors. As she digs deeper into the town and its endless layers, nothing is what it seems. But one thing is clear: The Hollows gets what it wants, no matter what. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover80631-medium

TITLE: All The Missing Girls

AUTHOR: Megan Miranda

PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster

RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2016

GENRE: Mystery & Thrillers, General Fiction (Adult)

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N

Like the spellbinding psychological suspense in The Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, Megan Miranda’s novel is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women—a decade apart—told in reverse.

It’s been ten years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared from Cooley Ridge without a trace. Back again to tie up loose ends and care for her ailing father, Nic is soon plunged into a shocking drama that reawakens Corinne’s case and breaks open old wounds long since stitched.

The decade-old investigation focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, and Corinne’s boyfriend Jackson. Since then, only Nic has left Cooley Ridge. Daniel and his wife, Laura, are expecting a baby; Jackson works at the town bar; and Tyler is dating Annaleise Carter, Nic’s younger neighbor and the group’s alibi the night Corinne disappeared. Then, within days of Nic’s return, Annaleise goes missing.

Told backwards—Day 15 to Day 1—from the time Annaleise goes missing, Nic works to unravel the truth about her younger neighbor’s disappearance, revealing shocking truths about her friends, her family, and what really happened to Corinne that night ten years ago.

Like nothing you’ve ever read before, All the Missing Girls delivers in all the right ways. With twists and turns that lead down dark alleys and dead ends, you may think you’re walking a familiar path, but then Megan Miranda turns it all upside down and inside out and leaves us wondering just how far we would be willing to go to protect those we love. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover79412-mediumTITLE: Since She Went Away

AUTHOR: David Bell

PUBLISHER: Berkley Publishing Group

RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2016

GENRE: Mystery & Thrillers, General Fiction (Adult)

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

From David Bell—bestselling author of Somebody I Used to Know and The Forgotten Girl—comes a chilling novel of guilt, regret, and a past which refuses to die…

Three months earlier, Jenna Springer was supposed to meet her lifelong best friend Celia. But when Jenna arrived late, she found that Celia had disappeared—and hasn’t been seen again. Jenna has blamed herself for her friend’s disappearance every single day since then.

The only piece of evidence is a lone diamond earring found where Celia and Jenna were planning to meet, leading the national media to dub Celia “The Diamond Mom.” And even though Jenna has obsessively surfed message boards devoted to missing persons cases, she is no closer to finding any answers—or easing her guilt.

But when her son’s new girlfriend—who suddenly arrived in town without a past—disappears, a stricken Jenna begins to unwind the tangled truth behind Celia’s tragedy. And as long-buried secrets finally come to light, she discovers how completely lives can be shattered by a few simple lies. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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May New Releases

MAY NEW RELEASES

I want to share a few May releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

cover78443-mediumTITLE: A Drop in the Ocean

AUTHOR: Jenni Ogden

PUBLISHER: She Writes Press

RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction, Literary Fiction

BUY LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

On her 49th birthday, Anna Fergusson, Boston neuroscientist and dedicated introvert, arrives at an unwanted crossroads when the funding for her research lab is cut. With her confidence shattered and her future uncertain, on impulse she rents a cabin for a year on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. However Turtle Island, alive with sea birds and nesting Green turtles, is not the retreat she expected. Here she finds love—for the eccentric islanders who become her family; for Tom, the laid-back turtle whisperer; and for the turtles whose ancient mothering instincts move her to tears. But Anna finds that even on her idyllic drop in the ocean there is pain, and as the months fly past her dream for a new life is threatened by a darkness that challenges everything she has come to believe about the power of love. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover81387-mediumTITLE: People Who Knew Me

AUTHOR: Kim Hooper

PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press

RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction (Adult)

BUY LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loves passionately, she is building the life she always wanted. But when her mother-in-law becomes chronically ill, enormous stress threatens her marriage. Emily watches helplessly as the devotion Drew once showed her is transferred to his ailing mother. When she’s thrust into an enforced caretaker role, it’s too much to bear. Emily starts spending more and more time at work. That’s when she falls in love with her boss. That’s when she gets pregnant.

Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily’s plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open. It’s 9/11 and her lover is just one of the thousands of people who have been killed in the towers. It’s amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, as she leaves New York City to start a new life. It’s not easy, but Emily–now Connie–forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends Connie’s life, she is forced to confront her past for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter.

A riveting debut in which a woman must confront her own past in order to secure the future of her daughter, People Who Knew Me asks readers-what would you do? (Description found on NetGalley.com)


cover84146-mediumTITLE: The Memory of Us

AUTHOR: Camille Di Maio

PUBLISHER: Lake Union Publishing

RELEASE DATE: May 31, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction, General Fiction (Adult)

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

Julianne Westcott was living the kind of life that other Protestant girls in prewar Liverpool could only dream about: old money, silk ball gowns, and prominent young men lining up to escort her. But when she learns of a blind-and-deaf brother, institutionalized since birth, the illusion of her perfect life and family shatters around her.

While visiting her brother in secret, Julianne meets and befriends Kyle McCarthy, an Irish Catholic groundskeeper studying to become a priest. Caught between her family’s expectations, Kyle’s devotion to the Church, and the intense new feelings that the forbidden courtship has awakened in her, Julianne must make a choice: uphold the life she’s always known or follow the difficult path toward love.

But as war ripples through the world and the Blitz decimates England, a tragic accident forces Julianne to leave everything behind and forge a new life built on lies she’s told to protect the ones she loves. Now, after twenty years of hiding from her past, the truth finds her—will she be brave enough to face it? (Description found on NetGalley.com)

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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April New Releases

APRIL NEW RELEASES

I want to share a few April new releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

cover76927-mediumTITLE: Lilac Girls

AUTHOR: Martha Hall Kelly

PUBLISHER: Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books

RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction, General Fiction

Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.

On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


 

cover71228-mediumTITLE: Dodgers

AUTHOR: Bill Beverly

PUBLISHER: Crown Publishing

RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger. It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East’s hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he’s never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become.

Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction (Description found on NetGalley.com)

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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March New Releases

MARCH NEW RELEASES

I want to share a few upcoming March releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list. Congrats to the authors on the release of your new books.

cover74034-mediumTITLE: Work Like Any Other

AUTHOR: Virginia Reeves

PUBLISHER: Scribner

RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction (Adult)

In this astonishingly accomplished, morally complicated, “exceptional and starkly beautiful debut” (Kevin Powers, National Book Award–nominated author of The Yellow Birds), a prideful electrician in 1920s rural Alabama struggles to overcome past sins and find peace after being sent to prison for manslaughter.

Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life’s work. But when his wife, Marie, inherits her father’s failing farm, Roscoe has to give up his livelihood, with great cost to his sense of self, his marriage, and his family. Realizing he might lose them all if he doesn’t do something, he begins to use his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness. Even the love of Marie and their child seem back within Roscoe’s grasp.

Then a young man working for the state power company stumbles on Roscoe’s illegal lines and is electrocuted, and everything changes: Roscoe is arrested; the farm once more starts to deteriorate; and Marie abandons her husband, leaving him to face his twenty-year sentence alone. Now an unmoored Roscoe must carve out a place at Kilby Prison. Climbing the ranks of the incarcerated from dairy hand to librarian to “dog boy,” an inmate who helps the guards track down escapees, he is ultimately forced to ask himself once more if his work is just that, or if the price of his crimes—for him and his family—is greater than he ever let himself believe. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


 

cover77816-mediumTITLE: At The Edge Of The Orchard

AUTHOR: Tracy Chevalier

PUBLISHER: Penguin Group Viking

RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction

From internationally bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, a riveting drama of a pioneer family on the American frontier

1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck – in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.

1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert’s past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.

Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet. (Description found on NetGalley.com)


 

cover74959-mediumTITLE: The Charm Bracelet

AUTHOR: Viola Shipman

PUBLISHER: Thomas Dunne Books

RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

Through an heirloom charm bracelet three women will rediscover the importance of family, love, faith, friends, fun and a passion for living as the magic of each charm changes their lives.

Lolly, still lives in the family cabin on Lost Land Lake where her mother gave her the charm bracelet that would become Lolly’s talisman and connection to family past and Lolly hopes the present, but her daughter, Arden, and granddaughter, Lauren, haven’t visited in years and time is running out for Lolly.

Arden, couldn’t wait to leave her small town life behind for Chicago, but now divorced and burned out at work, she’s simply trying to make it from day to day. In the rush of life she’s let the years and all the things she once enjoyed slip away. When she receives an unexpected phone call about her mother she must decide if she can face going home.

Lauren, a talented young painter buries her passion to study business in the hopes of helping her mother after she discovers that her father left Arden struggling to make ends meet, but Lauren is slowly dying inside and doesn’t know how to tell her mother the truth. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

 

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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February New Releases

FEBRUARY NEW RELEASES

cover64898-mediumTITLE: One More Day

AUTHOR: Kelly Simmons

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: February 1, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

Don’t look away

No one wants to be the mother whose child disappears. It’s unthinkable, the stuff of nightmares. But when she turns her back to pay a parking meter, Carrie Morgan becomes that mother. Ben is gone, and more than a year later, it’s clear that he is never coming back.

Until he does…for just twenty-four hours, before once again vanishing from his crib without a trace. Rumors start to circulate through Carrie’s small town. Whispers that she’s seeing things. That her alibi doesn’t quite add up.

Her husband and friends start to think she’s crazy. The police start to think she’s guilty. As the investigation heats up, Carrie must decide what to share, and why. Because the crime is about to be solved… and her secret revealed. (Description by Netgelly.com)

cover65672-mediumTITLE: In Another Life

AUTHOR: Julie Christine Johnson

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: February 1, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

She has fallen for a man who shouldn’t exist

Historian Lia Carrer has finally returned to southern France, determined to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. But instead of finding solace in the region’s quiet hills and medieval ruins, she falls in love with Raoul, a man whose very existence challenges everything she knows about life—and about her husband’s death. As Raoul reveals the story of his past to Lia, she becomes entangled in the echoes of an ancient murder, resulting in a haunting and suspenseful journey that reminds Lia that the dead may not be as far from us as we think.

Steeped in the rich history and romantic landscape of rural France, In Another Life is a story of love that conquers time, and the lost loves that haunt us all. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

cover74250-mediumTITLE: The Flood Girls

AUTHOR: Richard Fifield

PUBLISHER: Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books

RELEASE DATE: February 1, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction (Adult)

This snappy, sassy redemption story set in small-town Montana is “a wild and crazy debut novel by a talented young writer” (Jackie Collins), filled with an uproarious and unforgettable cast of characters you won’t want to leave behind.

Welcome to Quinn, Montana, population: 956. A town where nearly all of the volunteer firemen are named Jim, where The Dirty Shame—the only bar in town—refuses to serve mixed drinks (too much work), where the locals hate the newcomers (then again, they hate the locals, too), and where the town softball team has never even come close to having a winning season. Until now.

Rachel Flood has snuck back into town after leaving behind a trail of chaos nine years prior. She’s here to make amends, but nobody wants to hear it, especially her mother, Laverna. But with the help of a local boy named Jake and a little soul-searching, she just might make things right.

In the spirit of Empire Falls and A League of Their Own, with the caustic wit of Where’d You Go, Bernadette thrown in for good measure, Richard Fifield’s hilarious and heartwarming debut will have you laughing through tears. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

cover75550-mediumTITLE: I’ll See You in Paris

AUTHOR: Michelle Gable

PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press, Thomas Dunne Books

RELEASE DATE: February 9, 2016

GENRE: General Fiction (Adult)

Michelle Gable’s I’ll See You in Paris winds together the lives of three women born generations apart, but who face similar struggles of love and heartbreak.

After losing her fiancé in the Vietnam War, nineteen-year-old Laurel Haley takes a job in England, hoping the distance will mend her shattered heart. Laurel expects the pain might lessen but does not foresee the beguiling man she meets or that they’ll go to Paris, where the city’s magic will take over and alter everything Laurel believes about love.

Thirty years later, Laurel’s daughter Annie is newly engaged and an old question resurfaces: who is Annie’s father and what happened to him? Laurel has always been vague about the details and Annie’s told herself it doesn’t matter. But with her impending marriage, Annie has to know everything. Why won’t Laurel tell her the truth?

The key to unlocking Laurel’s secrets starts with a mysterious book about an infamous woman known as the Duchess of Marlborough. Annie’s quest to understand the Duchess, and therefore her own history, takes her from a charming hamlet in the English countryside, to a decaying estate kept behind barbed wire, and ultimately to Paris where answers will be found at last. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

What new releases are you excited about this month?

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January New Releases

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.

cover63587-mediumTITLE: 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)

cover63990-mediumTITLE: 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)

cover68418-mediumTITLE: 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)

cover73201-mediumTITLE: 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)

cover65729-mediumTITLE: 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)

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December New Releases

DECEMBER NEW RELEASES

Here are the upcoming December releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list.

cover73778-mediumTITLE: With Every Breath

AUTHOR: Lia Riley

PUBLISHER: Forever (Grand Central Publishing)

RELEASE DATE: December 29, 2015

GENRE: New Adult, Romance

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | iBOOKS | KOBO

BREATHE DEEP . . . AND JUMP IN

At the ends of the earth, Patagonia is a land where ambition trumps reason and the savage summit of La Aguja lures the most determined climbers. It’s also the last spot a “play-it-safe girl” like Auden Woods expects to find herself. But she’ll lace up her brand-new hiking boots and do whatever it takes to secure a dream job at an adventure magazine . . . even if it kills her. And it just might. When disaster strikes, her only chance at survival comes in the form of the surliest, sexiest mountaineer ever to come out of Scotland.

After a climbing accident cost him his brother, professional mountaineer Rhys MacAskill is at the end of his rope. Redemption is not in his future. That is, until a terrifying storm blows a budding journalist into his tent and it’s up to him to make sure they both survive until morning. Despite the demons weighing on him, Rhys can’t resist the temptation of the charming American and one wild night just isn’t enough.

Auden and Rhys soon learn there are no shortcuts as they navigate their way between life, death, and atonement, and discover something they never expected-love. (Description by Netgelly.com)

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November New Releases

NOVEMBER NEW RELEASES

Here are the upcoming November releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list.

cover73735-mediumTITLE: Concussion

AUTHOR: Jeanne Marie Laskas

PUBLISHER: Random House Publishing Group

RELEASE DATE: November 24, 2015

GENRE: Biographies & Memoirs, Sports

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | BAM! | HUDSON | INDIEBOUND | POWELL’S | TARGET | WALMART

In September of 2002, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, a young forensic neuropathologist named Bennet Omalu picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he never intended. Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria. The body on the slab in front of him belonged to a fifty-year-old named Mike Webster—aka “Iron Mike”—a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the greatest to ever play the game. After retiring in 1990, Webster had suffered a dizzyingly steep decline. Toward the end of his life, he was living out of his van, Tasering himself to relieve his chronic pain, and fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue. How did this happen? Omalu asked himself. How did a young man like Mike Webster end up like this? The search for answers would change Omalu’s life forever and put him in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful corporations in America: the National Football League. What Omalu discovered in Mike Webster’s brain—proof that his mental deterioration was no accident, but a disease, caused by relentless blows to the head, that could affect everyone playing the game—was the one truth the NFL would do anything to keep secret.

Taut, gripping, and gorgeously told, Concussion is the stirring true story of one unlikely man’s courageous decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar colossus bent on silencing him, and to tell the world the truth. (Description from Netgalley.com)

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October New Releases

OCTOBER NEW RELEASES

Here are the upcoming October releases I’m excited about and have added to my TBR list.

201510-see-meTITLE: See Me

AUTHOR: Nicholas Sparks

PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing

RELEASE DATE: October 13, 2015

GENRE: Romance, Women’s Fiction, Fiction

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | BAM! | INDIEBOUND | iBOOKS | WALMART

Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot.  With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, he’s determined to walk a straight line.  To Colin, that means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life.  Reminding himself daily of his hard-earned lessons, the last thing he is looking for is a serious relationship.

Maria Sanchez, the hardworking daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the picture of conventional success: with a degree from Duke Law School and a job at a prestigious firm in Wilmington, she is a dark-haired beauty with a seemingly flawless professional track record.  And yet Maria has a traumatic history of her own, one that compelled her to return to her home town and left her questioning so much of what she once believed.

A chance encounter on a rainswept road will alter the course of both Colin and Maria’s lives, challenging deeply held assumptions about each other and ultimately, themselves.  As love unexpectedly takes hold between them, they dare to envision what a future together could possibly look like . . . until menacing reminders of events in Maria’s past begin to surface.

As a series of threatening incidents wreaks chaos in Maria’s life, Maria and Colin will be tested in increasingly terrifying ways.  Will demons from their past destroy the tenuous relationship they’ve begun to build, or will their love protect them, even in the darkest hour?

Rich in emotion and fueled with suspense, See Me reminds us that love is sometimes forged in the crises that threaten to shatter us . . . and that those who see us for who we truly are may not always be the ones easiest to recognize. (Description and photo from NicholasSparks.com)

cover66625-mediumTITLE: Chasing Ghosts

AUTHOR: Louise DeSalvo

PUBLISHER: Fordham University Press

RELEASE DATE: October 12, 2015

GENRE: Biographies & Memoirs

PRE-ORDER LINKS: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn’t realize her quest would take ten years or that it would yield more revelations about the man–and herself–and the effect of his military service upon their family than she’d ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn’t merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and reviled because of his mistreatment of her. Although she at first believes she wants to uncover his story, the story of a man who was no hero and who was adversely affected by his military service, she learns that what she really wants is to recover the man he was before he went away.

As DeSalvo and her father uncover his past piece by piece, bit by bit, she learns about the dreams of a working-class man who entered the military in the late 1930s during peacetime to better himself, a man who wanted to become a pilot. She learns about what it was like for him to participate in war games in the Pacific prior to the war, and the war’s devastating toll. She learns about what it was like for her parents to fall in love, set up house, marry, and have children during this cataclysmic time. And as the pieces of her father’s life fall into place as DeSalvo works to piece together the puzzle of everything she’s learned about this time, she finds herself finally able to understand him. (Description and photo from NetGalley.com)

cover71688-mediumTITLE: Things Unsaid

AUTHOR: Diana Y. Paul

PUBLISHER: She Writes Press

RELEASE DATE: October 13, 2015

GENRE: Fiction

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND

Jules, her sister Joanne, and her brother Andrew all grew up in the same household—but their varying views of and reactions to their experiences growing up have made them all very different people. Now, as adults with children of their own, they are all faced with the question of what to do to help their parents, who insist on maintaining the upscale lifestyle they’re accustomed to despite their mounting debts. A deft exploration of the ever-shifting covenants between parents and children, Things Unsaid is a ferocious tale of family love, dysfunction, and sense of duty over forty years. (Description and photo from NetGalley.com)

cover64802-mediumTITLE: We Were Brothers

AUTHOR: Barry Moser

PUBLISHER: Algonquin Books

RELEASE DATE: October 20, 2015

GENRE: Memoir

PRE-ORDER LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | INDIEBOUND | POWELL’S 

Preeminent illustrator Barry Moser and his brother, Tommy, were born of the same parents, were raised in the same small Tennessee community, and were poisoned by their family’s deep racism and anti-Semitism. But as they grew older, their perspectives and their paths grew further and further apart. From attitudes about race, to food, politics, and money, the brothers began to think so differently that they could no longer find common ground, no longer knew how to talk to each other, and for years there was more strife between them than affection.

When Barry was in his late fifties and Tommy in his early sixties, their fragile brotherhood reached a tipping point and blew apart. From that day forward they did not speak. But fortunately, their story does not end there. With the raw emotions that so often surface when we talk of our siblings, Barry recalls why and how they were finally able to traverse that great divide and reconcile their kinship before it was too late.  

Including fifteen of Moser’s stunning drawings, this powerful true story captures the essence of sibling relationships–their complexities, contradictions, and mixed blessings. (Description and photo from NetGalley.com)

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