“The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.” – Joyce Carol Oates
FICTION
The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee ★
Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing–on Park Avenue, in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth–shook the city. Green was born to a poor farmer, yet without him there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. And Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death–alone, misunderstood–is set to break free.
As the detective assigned to Green’s case chases his ghost across the city, we meet a wealthy courtesan, a brokenhearted man in a bowler hat, and a lawyer turned politician whose decades-long friendship with Green is the source of both his troubles and his joys.
A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him–yet enlarged it.
Description from Goodreads.
“The Great Mistake is a great New York story… Green lived a life—and Lee does it appropriately epic justice.” – Entertainment Weekly
“The best American novel of the year is by a Brit… The Great Mistake is a book of extraordinary intelligence and style… It’s as if Lee has distilled more than a century of American letters into a single book. There’s Fitzgerald, of course—The Great Gatsby is echoed in more than just the novel’s title. There’s Hemingway in the muscular lyricism of the prose; Sherwood Anderson and Steinbeck in the beautifully drawn portraits of rural America; there’s the restraint of Henry James in the sinuous sentences.” – The Guardian
“Seriously entertaining… The detective work is ingenious… This may be historical fiction, but Jonathan Lee makes his own rules… I wish there were more novels like it.” – The Sunday Times
“Captivating… Lee takes the murder as a jumping off point, diving into Green’s interior life with tremendous skill, telling an unforgettable story about the parallel construction of an identity and a metropolis.” – CrimeReads
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Bath Haus by P.J. Vernon ★
Oliver Park, a young recovering addict from Indiana, finally has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving, wealthy partner in Nathan, a prominent DC trauma surgeon. Despite their difference in age and disparate backgrounds, they’ve made a perfect life together. With everything to lose, Oliver shouldn’t be visiting Haus, a gay bathhouse. But through the entrance he goes, and it’s a line crossed. Inside, he follows a man into a private room, and it’s the final line. Whatever happens next, Nathan can never know. But then, everything goes wrong, terribly wrong, and Oliver barely escapes with his life.
He races home in full-blown terror as the hand-shaped bruise grows dark on his neck. The truth will destroy Nathan and everything they have together, so Oliver does the thing he used to do so well: he lies.
What follows is a classic runaway-train narrative, full of exquisite escalations, edge-of-your-seat thrills, and oh-my-god twists. P. J. Vernon’s Bath Haus is a scintillating thriller with an emotional punch, perfect for readers curious for their next must-read novel.
Description from Goodreads.
“[An] adrenaline-spiked pulse-pounder.” – New York Times
“A nightmarish white-knuckler about the tenuous relationship between stability and control.”- O, the Oprah Magazine
“This is the perfect novel for those looking for the proverbial ‘beach read.’ Suspenseful, sensual, and exceedingly clever, this thriller is the literary equivalent of sipping a glass of white wine while listening to your neighbors have a lovers’ spat… before one of them picks up a knife. Vernon has an electric style that leaps off the page.” – Washington Post
“Bath Haus starts out as a cat-and-mouse thriller, but by the end you’ll realize that everyone is both cat and mouse. You’ll also be a breathless wreck, because this book is not fooling around… Things come to a head in a finale that initially feels like a collision between The Boys in the Band and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but quickly spirals into genuine nail-biting terror. Don’t miss Bath Haus. It’s intricate, speedy and scary.” – BookPage
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The Damage by Caitlin Wahrer ★
Tony has always looked out for his younger brother, Nick. So when he’s called to a hospital bed where Nick is lying battered and bruised after a violent sexual assault, his protective instincts flare, and a white-hot rage begins to build.
As a small-town New England lawyer, Tony’s wife, Julia, has cases involving kids all the time. When Detective Rice gets assigned to this one, Julia feels they’re in good hands. Especially because she senses that Rice, too, understands how things can quickly get complicated. Very complicated.
After all, one moment Nick was having a drink with a handsome stranger; the next, he was at the center of an investigation threatening to tear not only him, but his entire family, apart. And now his attacker, out on bail, is disputing Nick’s version of what happened.
As Julia tries to help her brother-in-law, she sees Tony’s desire for revenge, to fix things for Nick, getting out of control. Tony is starting to scare her. And before long, she finds herself asking: does she really know what her husband is capable of? Or of what she herself is?
Exploring elements of doubt, tragedy, suspense, and justice, The Damage is an all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Description from Goodreads.
“[One of the] buzziest new books arriving this season… [a] rollercoaster of terror, marked by whip-fast twists and turns.” – New York Times
“Readers can expect thought-provoking, well-plotted psychological suspense from a bracingly fresh voice.” – Publishers Weekly
“Compelling, relatable conflict and well-crafted twists create depth in this thoughtful blend of family drama and mystery.” – Booklist
“Throughout, the author deftly employs alternating points of view to expose the psychological and emotional consequences of violence while sustaining a chilling atmosphere of suspense… A deeply humane and affecting psychological thriller by a debut author.” – Kirkus Reviews
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The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton
Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She’s also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it’s a pleasant existence. Until the men show up.
Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is smitten with Cecilia from the moment they meet. Unfortunately, that happens to be while he’s under direct orders to kill her. His employer, Captain Morvath, who possesses a gothic abbey bristling with cannons and an unbridled hate for the world, intends to rid England of all its presumptuous women, starting with the Wisteria Society. Ned has plans of his own. But both men have made one grave mistake. Never underestimate a woman.
When Morvath imperils the Wisteria Society, Cecilia is forced to team up with her handsome would-be assassin to save the women who raised her–hopefully proving, once and for all, that she’s as much of a scoundrel as the rest of them.
Description from Goodreads.
“Holton is having as much fun as the English language will permit — the prose shifts constantly from silly to sublime and back, sometimes in the course of a single sentence. And somehow in all the melodrama and jokes and hilariously mangled literary references, there are moments of emotion that cut to the quick — the way a profound traumatic experience can overcome you years later… The kind of book for which the word ‘rollicking’ was invented.” – New York Times Book Review
“This melds the Victorian wit of Sherlock Holmes with the brash adventuring of Indiana Jones… A sprightly feminist tale that offers everything from an atmospheric Gothic abbey to secret societies.” – Entertainment Weekly
“In this joyride of a debut, Holton draws us into a madcap world of courtly corsairs, murderous matrons, and pity-inspiring henchmen… As if The Parasol Protectorate series met The Princess Bride and a corseted Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” – Kirkus Reviews
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Night, Neon: Tales of Mystery and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates
From literary icon Joyce Carol Oates comes a brand new collection of haunting and, at times, darkly humorous mystery suspense stories. These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life—from a woman who gets lost on her drive home to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger’s house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America’s ideals of beauty and womanhood.
Taken as a whole, the collection forms a poignant tapestry of regular people searching for their place in a social hierarchy, often with devastating and disastrous results. Rendered with stylish, fresh writing from an author who continues to push the envelope, the stories deftly weave in and out of a stream-of-consciousness to reflect the ways we process traumatic experiences and impart that uncertainty and uneasiness to the reader.
Originally appearing in publications as disparate as Harper’s, Vice, and Conjunctions, the stories comprising Night, Neon showcase Oates’ mastery of the suspense story—and her relentless use of the form to conduct unapologetically honest explorations of American identity.
Description from Goodreads.
“A perfect recipe for nine sleepless nights.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Abuse, madness, confinement, and flight are prominent themes in this strong collection of nine varied, dark, and disquieting stories from Oates. Masterly executed stream-of-consciousness prose bolsters unpredictable, haunting tales… the erudite, inventive Oates is always worth reading.” – Publishers Weekly
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The Confession of Copeland Cane by Keenan Norris
Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive…
He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates—the highly-rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.
Recruited by the nearby private school even as he and his folks face eviction, Copeland is doing his damnedest to do right by himself, for himself. And yet the forces at play entrap him in a reality that chews up his past and obscures his future. Copeland’s wry awareness of the absurd keeps life passable, as do his friends and their surprising array of survival skills. And yet in the aftermath of a protest rally against police violence, everything changes, and Copeland finds himself caught in the flood of history.
Set in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America becomes a startling reflection of our present moment.
Description from Goodreads.
“A significant new voice in fiction, Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.” – BuzzFeed
“Norris has created a voice that cannot be ignored.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Readers will appreciate the provocative story and Norris’ trenchant insights into the corruption of the press and government and the many ways African Americans and other minorities bear the brunt of racial injustice in America.” – Booklist
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No Hiding in Boise by Kim Hooper
When Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department, she thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be possible when her husband is sleeping right next to her? Except when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there.
Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived.
Joyce wakes up to a knock at her front door, a knock she assumes is her wayward son, Jed, who must have lost his keys. It’s not Jed, though. Two police officers tell her that Jed is dead, shot at the bar. Then they deliver even worse news: “We have reason to believe your son was the shooter.”
So begins the story of three women tied together by tragic fate―a wife trying to understand why her now-comatose husband was frequenting a bar in the middle of the night, the young woman who her husband was apparently pursuing, and a mother who is forced to confront the reality of who her son was and who she is.
Description from Goodreads.
“Nuanced portraits of those impacted by mass shootings, particularly surviving family members as they process loss and guilt, make this a standout. Hooper’s unflinching, insightful account of the emotional fallout from tragedy is notable for its focus on hope in a time of immense sorrow.” – Publishers Weekly
“In every chapter and in every [point of view], I was there. Hooper gives the grand tour of Boise and dares you to think life can’t happen to you.” – Shelf Unbound
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Sirens of Memory by Puja Guha
Mariam is pregnant and fleeing an abusive marriage as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait begins. Leaving her husband Tareq for dead, she crosses the border and is evacuated with the help of Raj, using the identity of his dead wife so that she can be issued Indian papers.
Twenty-five years later, Mariam is still living under the identity of Raj’s Indian wife in the US. In an attempt to put her past to rest, she attends an event commemorating the anniversary of the invasion at the Kuwaiti embassy, where she is spotted by a miraculously still alive Tareq, who had believed her to have been killed in the invasion. Angry and obsessed, he begins planning his revenge. The confrontation that follows allows Mariam to make peace with her old identity and her past as a victim once and for all.
Description from Hoopla.
“Guha’s Sirens of Memory is a gripping and complex story that spans borders and eras.” – CrimeReads
“An absorbing, well-crafted choice for fans of global thrillers, Mariam’s story is a dangerous journey to empowerment that shifts between harrowing flashbacks of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and her struggle to reclaim herself, even as Tareq’s obsession looms.” – Booklist
“In its many discussions about trauma, this book offers a necessary discussion about the personal, social, and cultural attitudes regarding escape and recovery with which readers of all backgrounds can engage. Possessing the awareness of novels such as Speak and the boldness of Not Without My Daughter, this book becomes an exciting read that reminds readers that although the past is a significant contributor to identity, it is not one’s all-defining component.” – US Review of Books
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SUSPENSE
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides ★
Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.
Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.
Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?
When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life.
Description from Goodreads.
“Fans of The Secret History will fall hard for The Maidens, Michaelides’ dazzling chaser to 2019’s bestselling The Silent Patient, a challenging act to follow… Layered in dreamlike references to Greek mythology and ancient ritualized murders, this clever literary page-turner firmly establishes Michaelides as an unstoppable force in the thriller space.” – Esquire
“The author of the critically acclaimed The Silent Patient permanently cements himself as a top modern author with this new work, a masterful, slow burn blend of Greek mythology and a knife-edged plot… destined for the bestseller list.” – Newsweek
“Combining Greek mythology with propulsive suspense, this gripping, twisty tale is the perfect way to start off your summer reading with a bang.” – Book Riot
“Stunning… The intelligent, cerebral plot finds contemporary parallels in Euripides’s tragedies, Jacobean dramas such as The Duchess of Malfi, and Tennyson’s poetry. The devastating ending shows just how little the troubled Mariana knows about the human psyche or herself. Michaelides is on a roll.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
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Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams
Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge sixty miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version.
But Lena isn’t buying it.
Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body.
Corporal Raymond Raycevic has agreed to meet Lena at the scene. He is sympathetic, forthright, and professional. But his story doesn’t seem to add up. For one thing, he stopped Cambry for speeding a full hour before she supposedly leapt to her death. Then there are the sixteen attempted 911 calls from her cell phone, made in what was unfortunately a dead zone.
But perhaps most troubling of all, the state trooper is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. I couldn’t live with it. Hopefully you can, Officer Raycevic.
Lena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing, tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival—one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself…
Description from Goodreads.
“Hairpin Bridge reads like a Stephen King novel and is especially reminiscent of Misery in how the characters shape-shift as the narrative progresses, leaving the reader wondering who is more dangerous—and more importantly, which one will prevail.” – BookPage
“Adams follows his debut, 2019’s No Exit, with another dazzling thriller… Adams is a writer to watch.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Taylor Adams creates a heart-pounding masterpiece in Hairpin Bridge. From the first page to the last, this book will grab a reader’s complete attention.” – Mystery & Suspense
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MYSTERY
The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt
Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren’t getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can’t handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer’s increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.
The Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal–sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers–and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.
Description from Goodreads.
“The novel has all the elements of a wonderfully haunting hillbilly noir… The Killing Hills is one of [Offutt’s] best.” – Augusta Chronicle
“The lean prose elicits more than a hard-boiled style, and while the brisk yet gnarled atmosphere is reminiscent of Winter’s Bone, the dime-store crime novels of Jim Thompson, or even William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Offutt brilliantly evokes the body and soul of his wounded hero. It adds up to a mesmerizing and nightmarish view of what lurks just over the hills. This is sure to be Offutt’s breakout.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Acclaimed Kentucky writer Offutt [delivers] another fine example of what might be called holler noir… In place of plot convolutions, Offutt offers those of Appalachian folkways. The result is a fast-paced, satisfying read. Rural crime fiction that kicks like a mule.” – Kirkus Reviews
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Widespread Panic by James Ellroy
Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ’50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp–and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine.
Confidential presaged the idiot internet–and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson–Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.
“I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.”
In Freddy’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It’s a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between.
Here is James Ellroy in savage quintessence. Freddy Otash confesses–and you are here to read and succumb.
Description from Goodreads.
“This devious and delicious side trip into the life and exploits of real-life Hollywood fixer Fred Otash from MWA Grand Master Ellroy (The Storm) has a cool conceit: Otash dies of a massive coronary in 1992, but has spent the last three decades stuck in purgatory, and his only way out is a full confession of his lifetime of misdeeds; and confess Otash does… Ellroy’s total command of the jazzy, alliterative argot of the era never fails to astonish. This is a must for L.A. noir fans.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Purgatory is rarely this much fun.” – Financial Times
“[T]here is here, as in Ellroy’s other novels, so fully researched and plausible an evocation of the world about which he writes, so deft an intermingling of the real and fictional characters that the novelist asks the reader to believe that these events could have happened, and that some of them (Jack Kennedy’s exhaustive and exhausting philandering, for example) probably did.” – Harper’s
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HISTORICAL FICTION
The Godmothers by Camille Aubray
Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family’s favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls’ home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family’s only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.
All four women become godmothers to one another’s children, finding hope and shelter in this prosperous family and their sumptuous Greenwich Village home, and enjoying New York life with its fine dining, opulent department stores and sophisticated nightclubs.
But the women’s secret pasts lead to unforeseen consequences and betrayals that threaten to unravel all their carefully laid plans. And when their husbands are forced to leave them during the second World War, the Godmothers must unexpectedly contend with notorious gangsters like Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano who run the streets of New York City.
Refusing to merely imitate the world of men, the four Godmothers learn to put aside their differences and grudges so that they can work together to protect their loved ones, and to find their own unique paths to success, love, forgiveness, and the futures they’ve always dreamed of.
Description from Goodreads.
“Historical fiction at its best, bringing along thrilling scenes, passionate love affairs, and a bounty of secrets.” – Booklist
“A family saga set in Greenwich Village around World War II follows a group of deeply complex and beautifully written women who marry into a well-to-do Italian family, each of whom are godmothers to each other’s children. Aubray marries history, suspense and womanhood in a story perfect for devouring.” – Newsweek
“A fast-paced, drama-filled portrait of a family dynasty.” – Kirkus Reviews
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SCI-FI & FANTASY
The Tangleroot Palace: Stories by Marjorie Liu
New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel, Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut story collection of dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.
Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.
Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.
Description from Goodreads.
“Beautifully written, deeply engaging, and full of wonder and strong female characters.” – Grimdark
“A collection of short stories exploring the emotional complexity, diverse physicality, and layered sexuality of resourceful women… The only drawback to these seven stories is that readers will want far more time in each world.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Liu charms with this spellbinding collection of six short stories and one novella… Liu’s mastery of so many different subgenres astounds, and her ear for language carries each story forward on gorgeously crafted sentences. This is a must-read.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
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YOUNG ADULT
The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson
Amateur sleuth Stevie Bell needs a good murder. After catching a killer at her high school, she’s back at home for a normal (that means boring) summer.
But then she gets a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls—the site of the notorious unsolved case, the Box in the Woods Murders. Back in 1978, four camp counselors were killed in the woods outside of the town of Barlow Corners, their bodies left in a gruesome display. The new owner offers Stevie an invitation: Come to the camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the case.
Stevie agrees, as long as she can bring along her friends from Ellingham Academy. Nothing sounds better than a summer spent together, investigating old murders.
But something evil still lurks in Barlow Corners. When Stevie opens the lid on this long-dormant case, she gets much more than she bargained for. The Box in the Woods will make room for more victims. This time, Stevie may not make it out alive.
Description from Goodreads.
“Johnson’s hallmark charming humor and lovable characters provide a robust foundation for another cracking mystery, this time ingeniously working with summer camp and locked room mystery tropes. Stevie’s relationship with her lifelong anxiety is particularly well portrayed. A fantastic stand-alone mystery companion revisits a much-loved sleuth.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Johnson gleefully takes a stab at the slasher movie trope by sending her teen detective on a cold case at a summer camp. This satisfying standalone mystery will delight fans of teen horror flicks and true-crime documentaries, as well as those who prefer their mysteries wrapped up after one volume. Here’s hoping this highly entertaining volume isn’t the last we hear from Stevie Bell.” – Horn Book
“While fans of Johnson’s Truly Devious trilogy (and there are many) will undoubtedly be eager for this spinoff, Stevie’s summertime exploit both stands alone and adds compelling layers to the established characters—an impressive feat… perfectly timed for summertime campfires.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
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NONFICTION
The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood by Krys Malcolm Belc ★
As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. Giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity and allowed him to project a more masculine self. And yet, when his partner Anna adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.”
By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. The Natural Mother of the Child is a visual memoir-in-lyric-essays, an archive of Belc’s queerness. By engaging directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—Belc creates a new kind of life record, one that addresses his own ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own.
The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.
Description from Goodreads.
“Belc develops a candid, gritty, tender story that should garner empathy and understanding regardless of a reader’s background. In this multilayered narrative, augmented with black-and-white photos, the author successfully holds readers’ attention all the way through the last poignant line. With vivid rawness, Belc paints an impressionist mural of what it means to be a parent while also birthing his true self.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“In this candid and captivating memoir-in-essays, Krys Malcolm Belc shares his experience of gestational parenthood as a nonbinary, transmasculine person. Funny, gritty and brave, this is a story of self-affirmation unlike any other, but one in which many will see themselves.” – Ms.
“Poignant… Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts, Belc’s memoir is both personal and philosophical, resisting mainstream notions of gender and family while exploring the interplay between the body and the self.” – BuzzFeed
“This is a beautiful memoir of parenthood and selfhood that promises to expand the canon of literary writing on caregiving and identity. Belc is a nonbinary, transmasculine parent whose family story is here interwoven with revelations of the bureaucratic processes that are inharmoniously bound up with people’s real lives.” – The Millions
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Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood by Cheryl Diamond
The incredible true story of a family built on lies.
What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you don’t know who you are, either? Cheryl Diamond’s memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir, India, hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryl’s name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine, Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents, fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father, a master financial criminal, or so she believes, uproots the family at the slightest sign of suspicion.
Despite the strange circumstances, Diamond’s life as a young child is mostly joyful and exciting, her family of five a tiny, happy circle unto themselves. Even as she learns how to forge identity papers and fix a car with chicken wire, she somehow becomes a near-Olympic-level athlete and then an international teenage model. She even publishes a book about it. As she grows older, though, things get darker. Her identity is burned again and again, leaving her with no past, no proof even that she exists, and her family—the only people she has in the world—begins to unravel. Love and trust turn to fear and violence. Secrets are revealed, and she is betrayed by those on whom she relies most.
Slowly, Diamond begins to realize that her life itself might be a big con. Surviving would require her to escape, and we root for this determined woman as she unlearns all the rules of her family. Cinematic and witty, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.
Description from Goodreads.
“This memoir is proof that truth really is stranger than fiction.” – CrimeReads
“A beyond-harrowing memoir… Diamond’s tale might just be the most mind-blowing of them all.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Former teen model Diamond reveals a childhood both wacky and cliff-hanging in Nowhere Girl; on the run with an outlaw family, she lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities, by age nine.” – Library Journal
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook | Hoopla eAudiobook
Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer
Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides.
In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy.
In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression.
In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.
Description from Goodreads.
“…sharp and concise… A thought-provoking study in civics, history, and the decline and fall of self-government.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Packer presents sharp, insightful critiques of all sides… eloquent…” – Publishers Weekly
“…incisive… Packer extends an evaluative eye towards every corner of the United States and offers a path for recovery and renewal. A thought-provoking work recommended for history, sociology, and politics readers everywhere.” – Library Journal
Available Formats:
Print Book | Audiobook | eBook | eAudiobook
How to Cook That: Crazy Sweet Creations by Ann Reardon
Offering a fun-filled step-by-step dessert cookbook, Ann Reardon teaches you how to create delicious and impressive pastries, cakes and sweet creations.
Join food scientist Ann Reardon, host of the award-winning YouTube series How to Cook That, as she explores Crazy Sweet Creations. An accomplished pastry chef, Reardon draws millions of baking fans together each week, eager to learn the secrets of her extravagant cakes, chocolates, and eye-popping desserts. Her warmth and sense of fun in the kitchen shines through on every page as she reveals the science behind recreating your own culinary masterpieces.
For home cooks and fans who love their desserts, cakes, and ice creams to look amazing and taste even better. Take your culinary creations to influencer status, you’ll also:
1. Learn to make treats that get the whole family cooking
2. Create baked goods that tap into beloved pop culture trends
3. Impress guests with beautiful desserts
Readers of dessert cookbooks like Mary Berry’s Baking Bible by Mary Berry, Cake Confidence by Mandy Merriman, or Pastry Love by Joanne Chang will love How to Cook That: Crazy Sweet Creations.
Description from Goodreads.
“Edible engineering meets wow-factor whimsy in this debut dessert guide from Aussie Youtube baker Reardon. Her food science background brings depth to just about every recipe, noting things such as how different fats affect a cake’s flavor and what the addition of gelatin does for its structure… Handily, the multipart recipes that look the most challenging are accompanied by links to the author’s online video tutorials. The lessons and engaging spirit of this work are as much a treat as their results.” – Publishers Weekly
“Wow family and friends with elaborately decorative desserts that taste phenomenal using this baking primer.” – The Spruce