List: New in Large Type: Fall 2023
The River We Remember
When the body of a wealthy landowner is found floating in the Alabaster River on Memorial Day in 1958, Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero, struggles to solve this murder that has the town of Jewel, Minnesota, up in arms, while putting to rest the demons from his own past.
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Family Lore
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.
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Happiness Falls
Mia isn't initially concerned when her family fails to return from a walk, until her mute brother Eugene, who suffers from a rare genetic condition, returns bloody and alone and is unable to describe what happened to their father.
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Cutting Teeth
Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood--their careers, their sex lives, their bodies. Their children, though, disrupt their plans when an unsettling medical condition begins to go around the Little Academy preschool: the kids are craving blood. Then a young teacher is found dead, and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable four-year-olds. Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects... and so are their mothers. As the police begin to look more closely, the children's ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious.
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Silver Nitrate
Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend, Trist̀n, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she's been in love with him since childhood. Then Trist̀n discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives--even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants Montserrat and Trist̀n to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Trist̀n begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Trist̀n may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.
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The Secret Book of Flora Lea
In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone -- a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own. But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister's disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves. Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby's. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel's future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora's disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?
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Soul Boom
The trauma that our struggling species has experienced in recent years--because of both the pandemic and societal tensions that threaten to overwhelm us--is not going away anytime soon. Existing political and economic systems are not enough to bring the change that the world needs. In this book, Rainn Wilson explores the possibility and hope for a spiritual revolution, a "Soul Boom," to find a healing transformation on both a personal and global level. For Wilson, this is a serious and essential pursuit, but he brings great humor and his own unique perspective to the conversation. He feels that, culturally, we've discounted spirituality--faith and the sacred--and we need profound healing and a unifying understanding of the world that the great spiritual traditions provide. Wilson's approach to spirituality--the non-physical, eternal aspects of ourselves--is relatable and applies to people of all beliefs, even the skeptics. Filled with genuine insight--not to mention enlightening Kung Fu and Star Trek references--Soul Boom delves into ancient wisdom to seek out practical, transformative answers to life's biggest questions.
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Flags on the Bayou
In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi River. The Confederate army is in disarray and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle's plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an action-packed narrative that includes a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.
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Banyan Moon
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she's last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life: a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste. It all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, who resents her mother for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. They learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann's childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.
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The Cuban Heiress
On a voyage from New York to Havana aboard the Morro Castle, the fates of heiress Catherine Dohan, a woman living a lie, and Elena Palacio, bent on revenge against those who wronged her, are intertwined as they risk everything to see justice served once and for all.
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Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II
A groundbreaking new history of the role of American servicewomen in WWII, illuminating their forgotten yet essential contributions to the Allies' victory. Valiant Women is the story of the 350,000 American women who served in uniform during World War II. These incredible women served in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time. They were pilots, codebreakers, ordnance experts, gunnery instructors, metalsmiths, chemists, translators, parachute riggers, truck drivers, radarmen, pigeon trainers, and much more. They were directly involved in some of the most important moments of the war, from the D-Day landings to the peace negotiations in Paris. These women--who hailed from every race, creed, and walk of life--died for their country and received the nation's highest honors. Their work, both individually and in total, was at the heart of the Allied strategy that won World War II. Yet, until now, their stories have been relegated to the dusty shelves of military archives or a passing mention in the local paper. Often the women themselves kept their stories private, even from their own families. Now, military analyst Lena Andrews corrects the record with the definitive and comprehensive historical account of American servicewomen during World War II, based on new archival research, firsthand interviews with surviving veterans, and a deep professional understanding of military history and strategy.
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The Bone Hacker
Young men--tourists--have been disappearing on the islands of Turks and Caicos. The first victim was found in a strange location with both hands cut off; two other visitors vanished without a trace. But, recently, tantalizing leads have emerged and only Tempe can unravel them. Do these attacks have something to do with the islands' culture of gang violence? Tempe isn't so sure. She discovers evidence that what's at stake may actually have global significance. It isn't long before the sound of a ticking clock grows menacingly loud, and then Temper herself becomes a target.
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All That Is Mine I Carry With Me
One afternoon in 1975, ten-year-old Miranda Larkin comes home from school to find her mother missing. So begins a mystery that will span a lifetime. What happened to Jane Larkin? Investigators suspect Jane's husband, but no evidence is found linking him to a crime, and the case fades from the public's memory. Jane's three children are left to be raised by the man who may have murdered their mother. Two decades later, the remains of Jane Larkin are found. The investigation in awakened. The children, now grown, are forced to choose sides. With their father or against him? Guilty or innocent? And what happens if they are wrong?
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The Nigerwife
Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband, a palatial house in the heart of glittering Lagos, Nigeria, and a glamorous group of friends. She left gloomy London and a dark family past behind for sunny, moneyed Lagos, becoming part of the Nigerwives -- a community of foreign women married to wealthy Nigerian men. But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her so-called perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her Auntie Claudine decides to take matters into her own hands. Armed with only a cell phone and a plane ticket to Nigeria, she digs into her niece's life and uncovers a hidden side filled with dark secrets, isolation, and even violence. But the more she discovers about her niece, the more Claudine's own buried history threatens to come to light. An inventively told and keenly observant thriller where nothing is as it seems, The Nigerwife is a razor-sharp look at the bonds of family, the echoing consequences of secrets, and whether we can ever truly outrun our past.
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The Celebrants
It's been five years since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, no closer to having their lives figured out. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living--and living well. But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.
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Traitors Gate
A plot to steal Britain’s crown jewels animates bestseller Archer’s flaccid sixth crime caper featuring Royal Protection Supt. William Warwick.
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Talking to My Angels
Etheridge has lived a life of many blessings-- but has also struggled mightily along the way. Changes in the music industry threated her livelihood; she was diagnosed with breast cancer; and she endured two contentious breakups, all under the scrutiny of the public eye. Then she lost her son Beckett to opioid addiction. Here Etheridge dives into how both joy and sorrow serve as catalysts for growth. In this memoir she creates a rich portrait of success and survival-- and an inspiring story of healing.
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Lady Tan's Circle of Women
According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian -- born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness -- is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations -- looking, listening, touching, and asking -- something a man can never do with a female patient. From a young age, Yunxian learns about women's illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose -- despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it -- and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other's joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom. But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife -- embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.
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Silver Alert
Herb has a secret: he's not quite the man he once was. And when his children learn of this, they decide it is time to move him and his wife, Susan, who is slipping into early Alzheimer's herself out of their Key West home and into assisted living. But curmudgeonly Herb--annoyed with his kids and unsettled by the ever-changing world--is not going quietly. He has one trusted friend, a young woman named Renee who has been helping to care for Susan. But Renee, too, is guarding secrets of her own, trying to start over after a truncated childhood where she had to abandon her dreams and her talents, and disappointed by a boyfriend who refuses to commit. Together, Herb and Renee--who is really Dee Dee--take off on one last joyride up the Florida Keys, setting off a Silver Alert, and, ultimately, setting up a moment where Dee Dee can come into her own. What life do we deserve? And how do we make it our own? In this funny, heartwarming novel, Silver Alert shows us how sometimes, you just have to seize the narrative.
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The Three of Us
What if your two favorite people hated each other with a passion? The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all else--even his distaste for Temi. On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband's shortcomings. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made, the wife's two confidantes are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions, throwing everyone's integrity into question--and their long-drawn-out territorial dance, carefully constructed over years, into utter chaos. Told in three taut, mesmerizing parts--the wife, the husband, the best friend--over the course of one day, The Three of Us is a subversely comical, wildly astute, and painfully compulsive triptych of domestic life that explores cultural truths, what it means to defy them, and the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to ourselves and the people we're meant to love.
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Canary Girls
During World War I, April Tipton, a nineteen-year-old former maid, takes a job at Thornshire Arsenal filling shells, where she befriends the wife of a star footballer and the decides to join the ladies' football club.
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Pink Lemonade Cake Murder
The Tri-County Summer Solstice Celebration has come to town, and Hannah attracts fans serving lip-smacking pink lemonade desserts. But the mood sours when a body turns up. A retired MLB player has met a terrifying end and--and the list of suspects could fill a small stadium. Among them could soon be Delores, Hannah's mother, who publicly held a grunge against the victim after he infamously dunked her in the tank at a previous county fair. Now, with her mother's innocence on the line, Hannah can't afford to strike out as she begins a dangerous investigation into the ruthless killer who's truly in a league of their own.
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Love and Let Die: James Bond, the Beatles, and the British Psyche
The Beatles are the biggest band in the history of pop music. James Bond is the single most successful movie character of all time. Most countries can only dream of a cultural export becoming a worldwide phenomenon on this scale. For Britain to produce two iconic successes on this level is unprecedented. Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Looking at these two touchstones in this new context will forever change how you see the Beatles, the James Bond films, and six decades of cross-Atlantic popular culture.
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Second Act
A top Hollywood executive seeks a new beginning when his career takes an unplanned turn.
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