Tuesday releases are here! Sift through the table of contents to jump directly to a specific book or read through each synopsis below. What upcoming books are you looking forward to?
- The Stone Witch of Florence – Anna Rasche
- The Witches of El Paso – Luis Jaramillo
- Our Evenings – Alan Hollinghurst
- Shock Induction – Chuck Palahniuk
- What Does It Feel Like? – Sophie Kinsella
- The Rest of You – Maame Blue
- The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern – Lynda Cohen Loigman
- The Murderess – Laurie Notaro
- The Book of Witching – C.J. Cooke
- The Book of George – Kate Greathead
- Gathering Mist – Margaret Mizushima
- Identity Unknown – Patricia Cornwell
- Killing Time – M. C. Beaton
- The Night Woods – Paula Munier
- The Puzzle Box – Danielle Trussoni
- The Most Wonderful Time – Jayne Allen
- The Last One at the Wedding – Jason Rekulak
The Stone Witch of Florence – Anna Rasche
1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift—harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.
Ginevra obliges, assuming the city’s leaders are finally ready to accept her unorthodox cures amid a pandemic. But upon arrival, she is tasked with a much different she must use her collection of jewels to track down a ruthless thief who is ransacking Florence’s churches for priceless relics—the city’s only hope for protection.
If she succeeds, she’ll be a recognized physician and never accused of witchcraft again. But as her investigation progresses, Ginevra discovers she’s merely a pawn in a much larger scheme than the one she’s been hired to solve. And the dangerous men behind this conspiracy won’t think twice about killing a stone witch to get what they want…
The Witches of El Paso – Luis Jaramillo
If you call to the witches, they will come.
1943, El Paso, teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.
In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.
Our Evenings – Alan Hollinghurst
Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.
Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.
Shock Induction – Chuck Palahniuk
In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent.
The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?
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What Does It Feel Like? – Sophie Kinsella
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.
As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.
Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.
The Rest of You – Maame Blue
On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana during the 1990s.
Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, sisters Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, The Rest of You explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern – Lynda Cohen Loigman
On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.
As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.
As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.
Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
The Murderess – Laurie Notaro
It’s October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they’re pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd.
The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction. The one question on everyone’s How could a twenty-six-year-old reverend’s daughter and doctor’s wife—petite, pretty, well educated, and poised—commit such a heinous act on two people she’d called “my dearest friends in the world”? Everyone has their theories and judgments, but no one knows the whole truth.
What unfolds in this gripping work of true-crime fiction is a collision of jealousy, drug addiction, insanity, rage, and inescapable choices. At its heart, a condemned and tragic mystery woman whose trial—and its shocking twists—will make history.
The Book of Witching – C.J. Cooke
Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.
Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?
The Book of George – Kate Greathead
If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny; distant from but still reliant on his mother; funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.
And yet, it’s hard not to root for George at least a little. Beneath his cynicism is a reservoir of fondness for Jenny’s valiant willingness to put up with him. Each demonstration of his flaws is paired with a self-eviscerating comment. No one is more disappointed in him than himself (except maybe Jenny and his mother). As hilarious as it is astute and singular as it is universal, The Book of George is a deft, unexpectedly moving portrait of millennial masculinity.
Gathering Mist – Margaret Mizushima
Deputy Mattie Wray, formerly Mattie Cobb, is summoned to Washington’s Olympic peninsula for an urgent search and rescue mission to find a celebrity’s missing child. With only a week left before her wedding, Mattie is hesitant to leave Timber Creek, but her K-9 partner Robo’s tracking skills are needed.Dense forest, chilling rain, and unfriendly locals hamper their efforts, and soon Mattie suspects something more sinister than a lost child is at play. When one of the SAR dogs becomes ill, her fiancé Cole Walker suspects poison. Fearing for Mattie’s and Robo’s safety, Cole joins the search and rescue team as veterinary support.Secrets that have lain hidden within the rugged terrain come to light and when it is uncovered that the missing child was kidnapped, the search becomes a full-blown crime scene investigation, forcing Mattie, Robo, and Cole into a desperate search to find the missing child before it’s too late.
Identity Unknown – Patricia Cornwell
Autopsies can reveal the secrets of the dead.
And this victim is sending Scarpetta a message…
Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once loved. While teaching in Rome during the early days of her career, Scarpetta had an intense love affair with Sal Giordano that led to a lifelong friendship.
The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue.
As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil…
Killing Time – M. C. Beaton
Agatha Raisin’s private detective agency is working flat out on a series of burglaries which take a violent turn when a friend of Agatha’s is murdered during a raid on his antiques shop. Although determined to nail the villains, Agatha still makes time to help Sir Charles Fraith prepare to stage a massive, hugely glamorous event in the grounds of his ancestral home, Barfield House.
When Agatha begins to receive death threats and narrowly avoids being abducted by kidnappers, she takes advantage of a previously arranged trip to Majorca to lie low for a while. There she meets her partner, former police officer John Glass, who is now working as a dance instructor on a cruise liner. Their relationship founders over John’s apparent closeness to his stage dance partner, Louise. Putting her love life on hold, Agatha heads home, having worked out who has been threatening her life.
Can Agatha track down the would-be killer, nail her friend’s murderers and rescue her romance with John? Everything comes to a climax at the Barfield Extravaganza when on top of everything else, Agatha also manages to solve a 400-year-old Cotswold murder mystery!
The Night Woods – Paula Munier
The sixth Mercy Carr Mystery in which Mercy and Elvis must prove the innocence of a new friend accused of murder.
Record snow and sleet and rain are pummeling Vermont and a wild boar has escaped from an exclusive hunting club nearby―but that won’t stop a very pregnant and very bored Mercy Carr from hiking her beloved woods with her loyal dog Elvis. She’s supposed to be decorating the nursery and helping her mother plan the baby shower, but she’d much rather be playing Scrabble with Homer Grant, a word-loving, shotgun-toting hermit living deep in the forest. But when she and Elvis drop by Homer’s cabin for their weekly game, they arrive to find an unknown dead man―and no sign of Homer.
As they search the woods, Mercy discovers a patch of devastation that could only be left behind by wild boar. She’s relieved when Elvis tracks Homer, injured but alive. But Homer’s troubles are far from over, as he’s still the number one suspect and he remembers nothing of the attack. When another corpse with a link to Homer is found, Mercy is determined to help her friend, an effort complicated by the unexpected arrival of her young cousin Tandie, sent by Mercy’s mother to keep an eye on her until the baby is born.
As the floods worsen, Troy and Susie Bear are called out with all the other first responders, and Mercy finds herself alone at Grackle Tree Farm with a concussed Homer, Tandie, and Elvis. As waters rise and the wild boar rampages, Mercy realizes that the murderer is out there ready to strike again, this time much closer to home.
The Puzzle Box – Danielle Trussoni
It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan to open the legendary Dragon Box, a mysterious nineteenth-century puzzle that has remained unsolved for over 150 years.
The box was constructed during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods, when the samurai class was disbanded and the shogun lost power. In this moment of national crisis, Emperor Meiji placed a priceless Imperial secret in the Dragon Box, locked it, and hid it in a temple far from the palace. Only two people knew how to open the box: Meiji and the box’s sadistic constructor, Ogawa. Both died without telling a soul what was inside, or how to open it.
Since then, the Imperial family has held a clandestine contest to open the box every twelve years, in the Year of the Dragon. The Dragon Box is devilishly difficult, filled with tricks, booby traps, poisons, and mind-bending twists. Every puzzle master who has attempted to open it has died in the process.
But Brink is not any puzzle master. With his uncanny abilities, he may be the only person alive who can crack it. Yet, his determination is echoed by a radical group—headed by two sisters descended from an illustrious but disgraced samurai clan—who have vowed to claim Meiji’s secret. They know that the box’s contents have the power to change the fate of Japan, and the world. When they align with Brink’s archrival, Jameson Sedge, Brink is up against the most dangerous challenge of his life.
Mike Brink’s quest to open The Dragon Box launches him on a breakneck adventure across Japan, from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo to the pristine forests of Hakone to historic Kyoto to an ancient cave in Kyushu. In the process, he discovers the power of Meiji’s hidden treasure, and– more crucially– the true nature of his extraordinary talent.
The Most Wonderful Time – Jayne Allen
With Christmas around the corner, Ramona Tucker is desperate to get away. She has been lying to her family about her engagement to Malik, her (ex) fiancé. But breakups are fickle, and Ramona is convinced that she can make her pretend wedding real again—but only if she can avoid everyone discovering her secret at her mother’s over-the-top Christmas Eve party.
Two-thousand miles away in sunny Malibu, Chelsea Flint needs money to hold on to the beloved beachside cottage she shared with her late parents. The taxes are expensive, and her art isn’t paying the bills. Once an irresistible star of the Los Angeles art scene, Chelsea seems to have lost that spark that vaulted her to the top. If she doesn’t rediscover that magic—and sell a painting—soon, it will be her family’s home she’s selling instead.
The two women swap homes, just in time, thanks to some careful planning by Ramona’s best friend and a sturdy nudge from Chelsea’s gallerist godmother. Ramona’s Malibu dreams of sun and surf are interrupted as her first night brings an unwelcome stranger to her door, making her question who she can trust—the meddling neighbor Joan, or Jay, the handsome beachside fitness instructor with a secret of his own. Chelsea, desperate for Ramona to stay, hides what she knows—even if that means jeopardizing her budding connection with charming Carlos, whose dreams for his future could be the very key to unlocking Chelsea from the weight of her past.
The Last One at the Wedding – Jason Rekulak
Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.
He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.