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List: New Fiction in April 2025
Into the Gray Zone
Pike Logan uncovers a geopolitical scheme that has spiraled out of control in India in this latest pulse-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former special forces officer Brad Taylor.
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Six Days in Bombay
When painter Mira Novak arrives at a hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to recover quickly. Her nurse, Sona, is excited to learn more about the artist who shares her half-Indian identity. Sona is carried away by Mira's travel stories and is shocked by accounts of the painter's many lovers throughout Europe. When Mira dies mysteriously, Sona falls under suspicion. The proof of Sona's innocence may lie in a note and four paintings Mira left in her care, sending Sona on a mission to visit the Mira's former friends and lovers across a Europe nearing war. While discovering her own identity, Sona learns that the painter's facade hid a far more complicated, troubled soul.
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The Sirens
A spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea, from the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller Weyward 2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover's throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister's house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack--but Jess is nowhere to be found. As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess's strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women's voices on the waves. Desperate for answers, Lucy finds and begins to read her sister's adolescent diary. 1999: Jess is a lonely sixteen-year-old in a rural town in the middle of the continent. Diagnosed with a rare allergy to water, she has always felt different, until her young, charming art teacher takes an interest in her drawings, seeing a power and maturity in them--and in her--that no one else has. 1800: Twin sisters Mary and Eliza have been torn from their loving father in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship bound for Australia. For their entire lives, they've feared the ocean, as their mother tragically drowned when they were just girls. Yet as the boat bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can't explain, and they feel the sea beginning to call to them... A breathtaking tale of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood across time and space, The Sirens captures the power of dreams, and the mystery and magic of the sea.
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The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits
Sisters Cassie and Zoe were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe yearned for fame while Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows. In the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters. But after a year, the band abruptly broke up. Two decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.
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The World's Fair Quilt
As fall paints the Pennsylvania countryside in flaming colors, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson is contemplating the future of her beloved Elm Creek Quilts. The Elm Creek Quilt Camp remains the most popular quilter's retreat in the country, but unexpected financial difficulties have beset them and the Bergstrom family's stately nineteenth-century manor. Now in her eighth decade, Sylvia is determined to maintain her family's legacy, but she needs new resources--financial and emotional. Summer Sullivan--a founding Elm Creek Quilter--arrives to discuss an antique quilt that she wants to display at the Waterford Historical Society's quilt exhibit. When Sylvia and her sister Claudia were teenagers, they had entered a quilt in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The Bergstrom sisters' quilt would be perfect for the Historical Society's exhibit, Summer explains. Sylvia is reluctant to lend out the quilt, which has been stored in the attic for decades, nearly forgotten. In keeping with the contest's 'Century of Progress' theme, the girls illustrated progress of values--scenes of the Emancipation Proclamation, woman's suffrage, and labor unions. But although it won ribbons, the quilt also drove a wedge between the sisters. As Sylvia reluctantly retraces her quilt's story for Summer, she makes an unexpected discovery--one that restores some of her faith in this unique work of art, and helps shine some light on a way forward for the Elm Creek Quilts community.
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The Maid's Secret
Head maid Molly Gray's discovery of a priceless artifact sparks a media frenzy, a daring heist, and revelations from her grandmother's hidden diary, intertwining a present-day mystery with a long-lost tale of forbidden love and family secrets.
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Great Big Beautiful Life
Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson are on Little Crescent Island to write the biography of the octogenarian who claims to be Margaret Ives - heiress, tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most scandalous families of the 20th century. Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose who’ll tell her story. But each of them are given only pieces of her story - which they can’t swap due to an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them whenever they're in the same room. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story - just like the tale Margaret’s spinning - could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad, depending on who’s telling it.
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A Mind Of Her Own
Born in 1900s Paris, Alexandra's life is shattered by World War I and the Spanish Flu, leading her to a journalism career where she meets a fellow reporter battling his own losses, sparking a cautious yet powerful connection.
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Overkill
Chuck Brewster, the former business partner of Ali Reynolds’s husband B. Simpson, once carried on an affair with Clarice, B.’s first wife. So when he’s found murdered with Clarice standing nearby covered in blood, it seems an open and shut case. But Clarice swears she’s innocent and begs for Ali’s help. At the same time, someone is targeting Camille Lee while she’s on the road for High Noon. Ali is swiftly running out of time to find the real killer and keep her employee safe in this high-octane thrill ride.
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Sealed With a Hiss
When a decades-forgotten car bobs to the surface of a creek in Virginia, with a body in the driver’s seat, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and her animal companions—felines Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, Tee Tucker the Corgi and Irish Wolfhound Pirate—team up to solve the mystery.
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The Amalfi Curse
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
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Tough Luck
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
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Summer Light On Nantucket
Divorced mother of four Blythe Benedict takes her family to Nantucket, her island home-away-from-home, but she must contend with teenage angst, her ex-mother-in-law’s declining health, and a troubling secret involving her ex-husband. Meanwhile, she reconnects with former high school sweetheart Aaden, but their romance becomes complicated when another man enters the picture.
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The Murder Machine
This state-of-the-art smart home has everything: a next-generation entertainment system, an ultramodern kitchen where every appliance is online and even a personal AI to control it all. Standing above its owner's lifeless body, FBI agent Jude Mackenzie is faced with the daunting task of discovering how the woman was killed by her own home. How do you catch a murderer that doesn't leave any fingerprints?
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Secrets of Adulthood
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before distills her key insights into simple truths for living with greater satisfaction, clarity, and happiness.
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Fun for the Whole Family
The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country. Decades later, the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years...until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota. As the weekend unfolds, and the siblings wrestle with their shared past and uncertain futures, they’ll discover that Jude has been keeping three secrets, each of which could change everything.
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The Last Session
When a catatonic woman shows up at the psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears she knows her from somewhere. She's shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her past. Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can't remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down. Thea's at a loss-especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared. Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in Southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees' romantic and sexual issues. Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her harrowing past. However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her mind...or worse.
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Shadow of the Solstice
In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.
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How to Seal Your Own Fate
Present day: Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane crosses her path and shares a cryptic message. When Peony Lane is found dead only hours later inside the locked Gravesdown Estate, Annie quickly realizes that someone is out to make her look guilty while silencing Peony at the same time. Sixty years earlier, teenage Frances Adams finds herself caught between two men, both of whom are keeping secrets from her.
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Happy Land
A woman learns the astonishing truth of her family's ties to a real-life American kingdom in this transporting and riveting new novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Award-winning author of Take My Hand. In the hills of Appalachia, there once existed a land ruled by a king and a queen. Inspired by distant memories of African kingdoms, a community of formerly enslaved men and women grasped freedom and started lives on mountain land that they owned. They worked hard, lived well, and loved there. For a time the kingdom thrived...and then it disappeared. Present Day. Nikki hasn't seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she's determined to get answers while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki a shocking story about her great-great-great-grandmother Queen Luella and the very land they are standing on. Land that Mother Rita says must be protected. The more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she finds in the woods-who are buried beneath stone grave markers-the more she understands that sometimes, atonement for the previous generations' mistakes falls squarely on the shoulders of the descendants. And it's up to her to make things right.
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