Wow! Boy do I have a long list of new book releases for you! Today, March 14, 2023, is a good day for literary lovers. Historical fiction, romance, YA, science fiction, mystery, thriller, suspense…all of the genres have a new book release today. Your TBR list is about to grow again! Happy reading!
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Daughters of Nantucket
by Julie Gerstenblatt
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Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: MIRA
“Gerstenblatt’s distinctive tale, a triumph in storytelling, celebrates the courage and tenacity of women.” —Booklist, starred review
Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear…
Nantucket in 1846 is an island set apart not just by its geography but by its unique circumstances. With their menfolk away at sea, often for years at a time, women here know a rare independence—and the challenges that go with it.
Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street. Meanwhile, astronomer Maria Mitchell loves running Nantucket’s Atheneum and spending her nights observing the stars, yet she fears revealing the secret wishes of her heart.
On a sweltering July night, a massive fire breaks out in town, quickly kindled by the densely packed wooden buildings. With everything they possess now threatened, these three very different women are forced to reevaluate their priorities and decide what to save, what to let go and what kind of life to rebuild from the ashes of the past.
“A memorable story of friendship and courage.” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
Enter The Body
by Joy McCullough
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Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
“At once tender, poetic and ferocious, Enter The Body breathes new life into the Bard’s most tragic heroines. More than a tribute to Shakespeare, this kaleidoscopic, ambitious novel-in-verse gives Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and Lavinia the chance to tell their own stories full of passion, justice, sisterhood, and love. Simply spectacular.”—Michael L. Printz Award winner Laura Ruby, author of Bone Gap
In the room beneath a stage’s trapdoor, Shakespeare’s dead teenage girls compare their experiences and retell the stories of their lives, their loves, and their fates in their own words. Bestselling author Joy McCullough offers a brilliant testament to how young women can support each other and reclaim their stories in the aftermath of trauma.
Feed Them Silence
by Lee Mandelo
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Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Tordotcom
Lee Mandelo dives into the minds of wolves in Feed Them Silence, a novella of the near future.
What does it mean to “be-in-kind” with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness. To see the world through animal eyes; smell the forest, thick with olfactory messages; even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill. And, above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.
Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body. And the attention of her VC funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental world she’s invading.
Hello Beautiful
by Ann Napolitano
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Genre: Family Drama, Literary Fiction
Publisher: The Dial Press
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole? “Hello Beautiful is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It’s a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most? An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
I Love It When You Lie
by Kristen Bird
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Genre: Suspense
Publisher: MIRA
“Irresistible and compulsive, this book is packed full of surprises.”
—Samantha Downing, internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife
The Williams women don’t just keep secrets…
They bury them.
The three Williams girls are as close as sisters can be, and they also share one special trait in common: each of them have a man in their lives that they could do without.
Tara, the pastor’s wife, has been stealing money from the church and would prefer that her husband stay out of it. Then there’s June, who would do anything to have a baby of her own, even if her husband is dead set against it. Clementine, the youngest, is entangled in an affair with her professor, a man whose behavior she’s starting to seriously question. Their sister-in-law Stephanie, an outsider, knows all the family dirt and is watching the three of them—and the men in their lives—closely.
When the woman who raised them, their beloved Gran, dies on the eve of her eightieth birthday, the Williams sisters return home to the Appalachian foothills to bury her. But their grandmother won’t be the only one they’ll put in a grave this weekend…because now someone has gone missing in the dark Appalachian woods.
And if Gran has taught them anything, it’s how to get rid of a good-for-nothin’ man.
I Will Find You
by Harlan Coben
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Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Five years ago, an innocent man began a life sentence for murdering his own son. Today he found out his son is still alive.
David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love–until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall.
Half a decade later, David’s been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison—a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn’t have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a vacation shot of a bustling amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive.
David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?
Künstlers in Paradise
by Cathleen Schine
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Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed that fairy tale into a nightmare, and in 1939 the Künstlers found their way out of Vienna and into a new fairy tale: Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
For years Mamie Künstler, ninety-three-years-old, as clever and glamorous as ever, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City. Like many a twenty-something, he has come to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the global pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight.
Mamie was only eleven when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way, stunned and overwhelmed, to sunny, surreal Los Angeles where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, faced with months of lockdown and a willing listener, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her early years in Los Angeles: her escapades with eminent émigrés like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann. Oh, and Greta Garbo. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him. They reveal to him just how much the past holds of the future.
The Last Russian Doll
by Kristen Loesch
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Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Berkley
A haunting, epic novel about betrayal, revenge, and redemption that follows three generations of Russian women, from the 1917 revolution to the last days of the Soviet Union, and the enduring love story at the center.
In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land…
…a young girl lived happily in Moscow with her family: a sister, a father, and an eccentric mother who liked to tell fairy tales and collect porcelain dolls.
One summer night, everything changed, and all that remained of that family were the girl and her mother.
Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie has an English name, a loving fiancé, and a promising future, but all she wants is to understand–and bury–the past. After her mother dies, Rosie returns to Russia, armed with little more than her mother’s strange folklore–and a single key.
What she uncovers is a devastating family history that spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin’s purges, and beyond.
At the heart of this saga stands a young noblewoman, Tonya, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions—and love for an idealistic man—will set off a sweeping story that reverberates across the century….
Love and Other Flight Delays
by Denise Williams
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Genre: Romance
Publisher: Berkley
One of Amazon’s Best Romances of March!
Love takes flight in a collection of sexy, fun novellas all set at the airport from the acclaimed author of The Fastest Way to Fall.
The Love Connection
An airport pet groomer meets her frequent-flier crush and finds herself in a fake-dating situation with a professional risk assessor who moonlights as a romance author.
The Missed Connection
Two strangers share a romantic night only to discover months later that they’re professional rivals about to embark on an extended business trip together in this grumpy-meets-sunshine romance.
The Sweetest Connection
Two best friends have one week to return a lost love letter found in a candy store at the airport—and work up the courage to confess the deep feelings between them—before one of them leaves the country.
Love & Other Scams
by Philip Ellis
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Genre: Romance
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
She wants to steal the ring. He wants to steal her heart.
You are cordially invited as two con artists fake-date their way into the poshest wedding in town.
Single, broke, and about to be ejected from her London flat, Cat feels left behind by her friends, who are all either married or engaged. At least if she picked a few pockets when fellow wedding guests get handsy, no one’s the wiser. No one, that is, except her favorite bartender, Jake, who has his own less-than-legal side hustle.
When she’s unceremoniously fired and roped into bridesmaid duties for best frenemy Louisa, Cat can’t help but notice that Louisa’s priceless diamond engagement ring sure would solve a lot of problems. But Cat isn’t as skilled a thief as Jake is, so to pull off the scheme of their lives, they’ll have to pair up. From an engagement party on a boat to the bachelorette weekend in Palermo, Cat and Jake play cat and mouse with each other in a romantic charade. But who’s to say what’s real and what’s fake, when love and money are on the line?
The Love Wager
by Lynn Painter
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Genre: Romance
Publisher: Berkley
Two people make a wager on who can find love first, not realizing what they should be betting on is each other, in this new romantic comedy by Lynn Painter, New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Wrong Number.
Hallie Piper is turning over a new leaf. After belly-crawling out of a hotel room (hello, rock bottom), she decides it’s time to become a full-on adult. She gets a new apartment, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe, but when she logs onto the dating app that she has determined will find her new love, she sees none other than Jack, the guy whose room she snuck out of.
After agreeing they are absolutely not interested in each other, Jack and Hallie realize they’re each other’s perfect wing-person in their searches for The One. They text each other about their dates, often scheduling them at the same restaurant so that if things don’t go well, the two of them can get tacos afterward.
Spoiler: they get a lot of tacos together.
Discouraged by the lack of prospects, Jack and Hallie make a wager to see who can find true love first, but when they agree to be fake dates for a weekend wedding, all bets are off. As they pretend to be a couple, lines become blurred and they both struggle to remember why the other was a bad idea to begin with.
Lucky in Lace
by Melissa Brayden
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Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Juliette Jennings lives her life like a tightly laced corset—not that she’d ever wear one. As a business owner of a stationery store, structure is her favorite. But when her best friend and her ex fall head over heels for each other, everything unravels and leaves her exposed. Even worse, a scandalous lingerie shop has moved in next door, and its tantalizing window displays will drive away her conservative customers. If only the owner would turn off the charm, Juliette is sure she could stop imagining her in nothing but the shop’s lacy best sellers.
Peyton Lane loves a clean slate. In fact, she desperately needs one after a series of bad choices. She also likes sexy things, and uptight Juliette next door would be a fun bow to untie. But when Peyton’s feelings enter new territory, she realizes the world might be scarier than she’d planned. Juliette has Peyton longing for forever on one hand and lacing up her running shoes with the other.
What’re a structured stationery store owner and a sexy lingerie peddler to do?
Midnight Strikes
by Zeba Shahnaz
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Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Delacorte Press
In this explosive fantasy debut, a provincial girl must work with an infuriatingly handsome prince to escape a nightmarish curse that forces them to relive the same night over and over.
“The time-loop fantasy you never knew you needed, where the fairytale ball is bloody and Cinderella is the Final Girl.”—Gina Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Violet Made of Thorns
Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.
The last thing Anaïs sees is fire, smoke, chaos . . . and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.
Not even when it happens again. And again. And again.
If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, Anaïs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court’s gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It’s up to Anaïs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight.
Off the Menu
by Alaina Erdell
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Genre: Romance
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
In less than 48 hours, reality TV sensation Restaurant Redo and its gorgeous host will arrive to film in chef Taylor Mobley’s kitchen…and she just found out.
Fixer Erin Rasmussen has a reputation for saving failing restaurants with her take-no-crap attitude. She gets the job done on time, under budget, and millions of viewers tune in to watch her do it.
The fine dining restaurant Taylor works for has some serious problems and management doesn’t want her input. It’s time to leave. But how is she supposed to find a new position when a TV host with delusions of grandeur keeps painting her as a problem chef? Taylor refuses to play nice with Erin, especially on camera. They make each other’s blood boil, which is why it’s even more annoying that they can’t manage to keep their hands off each other.
Erin only cares about entertaining viewers. Taylor is unprofessional and immature. Or at least that’s what they each think. As the cameras roll and their careers hang in the balance, will Erin and Taylor make the jump from enemies to lovers?
The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway
by Ashley Schumacher
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Genre: YA
Publisher: Wednesday Books
“Ashley Schumacher’s latest novel is a delightful read, with diverse characters and an irresistible setting. The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway proves that there’s no better place to find yourself than at a Renaissance Faire.” – Jen Deluca, author of Well Met
Dumplin’ meets Well Met in this novel about finding your place in the world, learning love is a risk worth taking, and discovering what happens when you take your fate into your own hands.
Since her mother’s death, Madeline “Gwen” Hathaway has been determined that nothing in her life will change ever again. That’s why she keeps extensive lists in journals, has had only one friend since childhood, and looks forward to the monotony of working the ren faire circuit with her father. Until she arrives at her mother’s favorite end-of-tour stop to find the faire is under new management and completely changed.
Meeting Arthur, the son of the new owners and an actual lute-playing bard, messes up Maddie’s plans even more. For some reason, he wants to be her friend – and ropes her into becoming Princess of the Faire. Now Maddie is overseeing a faire dramatically changed from what her mother loved and going on road trips vastly different from the routine she used to rely on. Worst of all, she’s kind of having fun.
Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway is filled with a wise old magician who sells potion bottles, gallant knights who are afraid of horses and ride camels instead, kings with a fondness for theatrics, a lazy river castle moat with inflatable crocodile floaties, and a plus-sized heroine with a wide open heart… if only she just admits it.
“Set in one of my favorite places in the world ― a Renaissance Faire full of jousts, royalty, bards, and castles― this is a wise, beautiful, funny book with tremendous heart. I absolutely loved it.” – Jamie Pacton, author of The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly and Lucky Girl
Stateless
by Elizabeth Wein
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Genre: YA Historical Mystery (12 Years and Up)
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
From the beloved #1 bestselling author of Code Name Verity, this thrilling murder mystery set in 1937 Europe soars with intrigue, glamour, secrets, and betrayal.
When Stella North is chosen to represent Britain in Europe’s first air race for young people, she knows all too well how high the stakes are. As the only participating female pilot, it’ll be a constant challenge to prove she’s a worthy competitor. But promoting peace in Europe feels empty to Stella when civil war is raging in Spain and the Nazis are gaining power—and when, right from the start, someone resorts to cutthroat sabotage to get ahead of the competition.
The world is looking for inspiration in what’s meant to be a friendly sporting event. But each of the racers is hiding a turbulent and violent past, and any one of them might be capable of murder…including Stella herself.
Take What You Need
by Idra Novey
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Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Viking
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Vulture, Today.com, Elle, and Lit Hub.
From “one of the finest and bravest novelists at work today,” (Vulture) award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of “astonishing and singular” honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.
Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind.
What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean’s last years and in her art.
With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeros in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.
Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most with passionate and resonance, this novel illuminating can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.
A Tempest at Sea
by Sherry Thomas
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Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Berkley
Charlotte Holmes’s life is in peril when her brilliant deductive skills are put to the test in her most dangerous investigation yet, locked aboard a ship at sea.
After feigning her own death in Cornwall to escape from Moriarty’s perilous attention, Charlotte Holmes goes into hiding. But then she receives a tempting offer: Find a dossier the crown is desperately seeking, and she might be able to go back to a normal life.
Her search leads her aboard the RMS Provence. But on the night Charlotte makes her move to retrieve the dossier, in the midst of a terrifying storm in the Bay of Biscay, a brutal murder takes place on the ship.
Instead of solving the crime, as she is accustomed to doing, Charlotte must take care not to be embroiled in this investigation, lest it become known to those who harbor ill intentions that Sherlock Holmes is abroad and still very much alive.
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
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Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Publisher: Berkley
A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.
What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
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