Hi.

Welcome to Hasty Book List—your cozy corner of the internet for all things bookish. Here, I share the stories I’m reading, the ones I can’t stop thinking about, and a few literary surprises along the way. I’m so glad you’re here.

Books Publishing This Week

Books Publishing This Week

The afternoon at the beginning of April feels like a breath you didn’t realize you were holding finally being released. The light is brighter now, more certain, stretching confidently across the room and pooling in warm patches on the floor. When you look outside, you notice it immediately—the subtle green haze on the trees, the way the grass is beginning to return, the air carrying something softer, almost sweet.

You open a window just slightly, letting the breeze drift in. It’s still cool, but it doesn’t bite the way it used to. It brushes against your skin instead, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and something new pushing up from below the surface. The world feels like it’s waking up, and you feel yourself waking with it.

You move through your afternoon slowly, deliberately. There’s no rush. Maybe you’ve finished what you needed to do for the day, or maybe you’ve simply decided to pause. Either way, this moment feels like it belongs to you.

You pour yourself something light—sparkling water, iced tea, maybe even just cold water with a slice of lemon. It feels right for the season, this shift away from the heaviness of winter. You carry your drink and your book to a place where the light gathers best—a chair near the window, a step outside onto a patio, or even just a quiet corner where the sun can reach you.

The book rests in your hands, new and untouched. There’s something about starting a book in early April that feels different from any other time of year. It’s not about escape. It’s about expansion. About stepping into something that mirrors the way the world is opening up around you.

You open it slowly, the spine giving just enough to remind you this is a beginning. The pages are crisp, almost cool beneath your fingertips. You take a sip of your drink and begin to read.

The first lines settle into you gently. There’s no urgency, no rush to be pulled forward. Instead, the story unfolds in the same way the season is unfolding—quietly, steadily, with the promise of more to come.

Outside, a breeze lifts the edge of your page, and you press it down absently, your eyes never leaving the words. You can hear birds now, more than you have in months, their calls overlapping in a kind of scattered harmony. Somewhere in the distance, someone is laughing. A door opens. A car passes.

You turn another page.

The light shifts again, warmer now, casting a golden tone across the book in your lap. You lean back slightly, letting the sun touch your face, your shoulders. It feels like a small reward after the long stretch of winter.

The story begins to take shape. Characters emerge. A setting sharpens. You feel that quiet pull—the one that doesn’t demand your attention but earns it. You’re not trying to rush through it. You’re letting it grow, the way everything around you is growing.

You pause for a moment, lifting your gaze to the window. The sky is a clear blue now, streaked with thin clouds that drift lazily across it. The trees move gently in the breeze, their branches no longer stark, but softening.

You return to the book.

Time loosens its grip. You don’t check it. You don’t need to. The afternoon stretches around you, generous and open. You shift in your seat, tucking your legs beneath you, settling deeper into the moment.

When you finally close the book—just a few chapters in—you mark your place carefully. The light has shifted toward early evening now, but it still lingers, still warm.

You sit for a moment longer, book in your lap, feeling the quiet satisfaction of beginning.

April has arrived not with force, but with invitation.

And this afternoon, with a new story unfolding in your hands, feels like your way of saying yes.

Books Publishing April 5 - 11

Books Publishing This Week

The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn

Physician Layla Bailey has spent over a year telling herself she's moved on from a painful but amicable divorce from her college sweetheart. Staying friends with her ex seemed like the mature thing to do, but when Layla is invited to her former sister-in-law’s destination wedding in Paris—where Layla once spent her own romantic honeymoon—she knows her commitment to maturity might be her worst enemy…especially since her ex isn’t attending alone.

The only thing that could make the week more difficult is getting through it without the distraction of the wedding.... But when what Layla thought was a harmless conversation about the choices of her younger self leads to the bride getting cold feet, Layla finds herself facing down the groom’s mysterious, taciturn best man, Griffin, who will do anything to make sure this wedding happens.

Since she broke it, Griff demands she help him fix it. Going along with his plan to alleviate the engaged couple's doubts seems like Layla’s best chance at maintaining a good relationship with a family she once called her own. But as she learns more about the past heartbreak that’s driving Griff to help his friend, she gets closer and closer to confronting the true depth of her own pain…while finding herself more and more willing to risk it all again for Griff.

Books Publishing This Week

The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne

In the 1980s, women were not supposed to be funny. But when a group of college improv comedians gets the chance to join a new late-night show, it’s Lillian Martin who stands out. The new show was called The Midnight Show and it would air every Friday night, live from New York, and change the landscape of TV and comedy forever.

But first it would change Lillian’s and her friends’ lives. When the show becomes a runaway hit, the cast is thrown into the spotlight. Suddenly, they’re skipping the line at the city’s hottest clubs and posing on the cover of Rolling Stone. Lillian, in particular, seems destined for bigger things—until one winter night in Lower Manhattan, she vanishes, leaving nothing behind but questions. Was Lillian a victim of her own excesses? Was it a mugging gone wrong? Or could she have been killed by someone in her own inner circle?

Forty years later, Lillian’s disappearance has still never been solved. But when a budding journalist looking to examine Lillian’s story from a modern lens begins asking questions, she stirs up decades-old drama—as well as tightly-held secrets some comedy legends would much rather stay buried.

A propulsive story of fame and friendship told through a variety of media—compiled interviews, articles, transcripts—The Midnight Show takes readers behind the scenes of the cutthroat world of comedy in 1980s New York and asks if the rush of getting a laugh is all it’s cracked up to be.

Books Publishing This Week

Woodstake by Darin S. Cape

“Woodstake” is a wickedly clever spin on the Dracula legend set during the iconic Woodstock festival of 1969, for readers 16 and older. When a vampire descends on the summer of love, a generation of hippies must survive three days of peace, music and blood in this darkly funny, genre-bending thrill ride. A razor-sharp blend of satire, horror, and ‘60s nostalgia, “Woodstake” is a must-read for fans of classic rock, genre mashups, and blood-soaked fun.

Books Publishing This Week

A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales from Costa Rica by Willa Goodfellow

Willa and her wife travel to Costa Rica to visit family—but what they discover is far more than they expected . In a sleepy fishing village on the Pacific coast, they meet a vibrant, curious group of expats who have come looking for paradise—or at least cheap beer.

At the Pato Loco, a local bar where stories flow as freely as the drinks, they meet Mama, the blind seventy-two-year-old co-owner of the place; her partner Mary, Willa’s sister, a bartender and installation artist; Richie, the aging hippie whose words are few but weighty; and a whole cast of unforgettable characters who will answer questions like:
What is it really like to live in another country?
How important is it to learn the local language?
How does a tight-knit community face the pressure of development?
Can you survive dengue—and would you want to?
Oh, and how do you perform CPR on a fish?

A collection of stories full of humor, heart, and wisdom from unexpected places, A Gritty Little Tourist Town follows Willa as she discovers connection within this community of strangers—one bar tale at a time.

Books Publishing This Week

The Verdant Cage by Jess Lourey

This breathtaking collectible is only available on a limited first print run in the U.S. and Canada only, a must-have for any book lover.

Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games, Wilder Girls, and The Grace Year, The Verdant Cage is a gripping dystopian thriller about rebellion, survival, and the terrifying cost of uncovering the truth.

Books Publishing This Week

Wifehouse by Sonya Walger

Annie and Hector have been hosting their friends Candace, Edouard, and their son, Remy, in the guest house of their Connecticut home for many months while their friends’ home undergoes renovations. As a thank-you, Candace gifts Annie French lessons with twenty-six-year-old local French tutor, Thierry. Hector, an actor, goes to film on location, leaving Annie—newly bereaving her mother—to single-parent their two kids. As the lessons progress, she finds herself unexpectedly vulnerable to the charms of a man closer in age to her own teenage daughter than to her own. A new life for Annie emerges, one she could never have foreseen.
Told over the course of one year, through the shifting perspectives of wife, husband, lover, best friend and children, Walger paints a contradictory, nuanced portrait of a woman who walks away from every role that tradition and society have expected of her.

Books Publishing This Week

Mrs. Jekyll by Emma Glass

Rosy Winter is dying.

Her husband, Charlie—sweet but out of his depth—tries to be supportive. Her sister-in-law, Sally, is too distracted by her own problems to help. Her students, once a source of delight, are now a daily reminder of Rosy’s mortality.

So, Rosy succumbs to anguish, allowing a force—murderous, sensual, feverish—to awaken and stir within her. An embodiment of her rage, a twisted joie de vivre, ripping recompense from the world around her.

A powerful feminist retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic classic, Mrs. Jekyll is a brilliant, evocative, and lyrical story of one woman’s refusal to yield her passion for life, even as her body betrays her.

Books Publishing This Week

The Write Off by Kara McDowell

Years of love and heartbreak come to a head when two authors who parted as enemies in their youth are forced to reunite on the campus where it all started and confront their tumultuous past in this captivating debut romance by Kara McDowell.

It’s been thirteen years since Mars Darling first met West Emerson on a bench outside their writing class. What started out as a friendly rivalry turned into a best friendship and then, for a time that felt all too brief, a romance. Now over a decade later, as Mars stands at their college campus as a once-esteemed YA fantasy author, ready to take on a book festival, she comes face to face with West. The muse behind her infamous trilogy’s heartthrob hero, the man who betrayed her in the worst way.

Mars is determined not to let her comeback tour be ruined by the fact that West is also at the festival as an author. But the longer they are on the campus that holds so many shared memories, the more time they have to untangle their past, and Mars starts to question if maybe it’s not only her writing career that deserves a second chance.

Told in two unfolding timelines—Mars and West’s frenzied college days where they grapple with their undeniable connection, and their tension-filled present of heartache and familiar yearning—this charming romance shows that while you can’t rewrite the past, it’s never too late to chase your happily ever after and get back the one that got away.

Books Publishing This Week

A Deal With The Elf King by Elise Kova

Swept away to a magical kingdom, one woman’s fate is to be the Elf King’s bride . . . or watch everything she’s ever known fall to ruin.

Fall in love with the Elf King in this enchanting installment of the Married to Magic novels—swoonworthy, escapist standalone reads that combine wondrous fantasy worlds with slow-burn romance from the New York Times bestselling author of Arcana Academy

Luella lives in a quiet village near the border of the land of the humans and the realm of magic, where the townsfolk keep its heavy secret:

The elves come for war or wives.

Once every generation, the Elf King enters Luella's village to take a bride to be his Human Queen, fulfilling a centuries-old treaty that prevents the destruction of humanity itself.

Luella never thought she’d be that woman. Independent, caring, and fiercely devoted to her people, she’s content in her quiet life as a humble herbalist. But when the Elf King arrives—icy, proud, and dangerously handsome—he claims her, and everything changes.

Now, Luella finds herself in the Elf King's domain, Midscape: a land filled with wild magic and unexpected beauty. But Midscape is dying, and only Luella can save it.

There's more to Luella than she ever imagined, and more to her fate than she dared dream. As the power of Midscape’s Human Queen stirs within her, so does an unexpected passion. The kingdom has found a way into her heart… as has its mysterious Elf King himself.

Luella didn't choose to be the Human Queen. But will she choose to love her new kingdom—and her new husband?

Includes a bonus scene, "Springtime Rites," from Eldas' point of view

A Married to Magic Novel

Books Publishing This Week

The Myth of the Perfect Mom by Erin Schlozman

Let go of impossible standards and embrace a more joyful, authentic postpartum experience with this self-help guide for new moms.

Are you tired of feeling like you have to "do it all" as a mom? Do you ever think, “Life was easier before kids” or “Why is this transition so hard?” After becoming a mother, priorities change, self-compassion changes, ambition changes...everything changes. And on top of all of these dramatic life shifts and the exhaustion of parenthood, mothers are expected to climb the Mount Everest of adulthood: be the best mom, the happiest mom, the most perfect mom.

But perfection is impossible to achieve. The good news? You don’t have to be everything for everyone. The Myth of the Perfect Mom breaks down the harmful myths surrounding what it takes to be a great mom and nine other “myths” that weigh new mothers down in postpartum. Therapist and owner of 4th Trimester Wellness, Erin Schlozman, provides compassionate, practical guidance for creating a postpartum life rooted in connection, grace, and self-acceptance.

The Myth of the Perfect Mom places the spotlight on the new mom’s emotional and psychological well-being and development because motherhood is as much about the birth of a mom as it is about the baby.

Schlozman addresses ten different myths of being a perfect mom, including the following:

Your birth should have been executed perfectly.
Moms should feel bonded to their babies immediately.
Postpartum bodies are ugly.
You’re either ambitious or a good mom, but you can’t be both.

The Myth of the Perfect Mom gives mothers the permission and the guidance to move past outdated ideals, be kind to themselves, and stop trying to be perfect so that they can parent in the way that is most authentic to them.

Books Publishing This Week

The Summer House Murder by Ava Roberts

A summer trip to the Adirondacks is turned upside down when a woman’s body is discovered in the lake in this twisty thriller, perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Paula Hawkins.

Sisters Esme, Piper, and Regina go on their annual visit to their remote summer house on Lake George expecting a tense vacation. Each has their own families to deal with plus their own secrets to hide. Esme, the oldest sister, is desperate to keep up appearances after discovering her husband’s infidelity with the one person who hurts her the most. Piper, the middle child, has a four-month-old baby boy and is too tired to keep playing peacekeeper to her siblings. Regina, the youngest, is a sarcastic rule breaker with a secret to hide that could cost her everything.

After tension boils over into an ugly fight late one night, the sisters go off in separate directions. Like most of their blowouts, they think they’ll cool off and resume the trip like normal the next morning. Only this time when dawn comes, a young woman’s body is discovered in the lake. As a criminal investigation narrows in on their family home, it becomes clear that the sister’s web of lies and secrets is inextricably linked to the woman in the lake.

A tense and fast-paced thriller, The Summer House Murder will leave readers breathlessly turning the page until they reach the thrilling conclusion to this twisted family drama.

Books Publishing This Week

The Summer I Found You by Jennifer O'Brien

A recently divorced single mom returns to her family’s fixer-upper beach house and finds romance amidst the heartbreak—and truths buried under generations of lies—in this summertime romance, perfect for fans of The Beach House and Nora Goes Off Script.

When Dahlia Newberry escapes her terrible marriage and returns to Long Island’s North Fork to put her family’s beach house on the market, she discovers the property has fallen into disrepair, and she has no idea how she’ll get it from fixer to fabulous in a month’s time.

Things start to look up when she discovers her neighbor is Noah, a handsome reality TV star known for his Hamptons-set home renovation series. Noah turns out to be quite handy and pitches in to help Dahlia with the renovations and, as chemistry sparks between them, her self-discovery too.

Meanwhile, Dahlia discovers a letter from her Aunt Lil, whose dying wish was for Dahlia to find a key that unlocks a mystery spanning three generations. Soon Dahlia is unearthing mysterious clues buried in the garden that threaten to upend everything she believes about her world.

The truth is supposed to set her free, but excavated secrets have a way of shattering an already fragile life—unless Dahlia can find a way to bloom into the woman she was always meant to be.

This debut novel by an accomplished home design influencer is perfect for fans of HGTV shows and steamy summer romances.

Books Publishing This Week

Two Truths and a Lie by Mark Stevens

In a taut, haunting follow-up to No Lie Lasts Forever, reporter Flynn Martin gets ensnared in a copycat killer’s game where winning means solving a crime―and losing could cost her everything.

Lambasted for a tragedy caught live on camera, then lauded for her help capturing the elusive PDQ, a serial killer, Flynn Martin’s career has reached new heights. But now, the TV journalist and mother has much further to fall. And someone wants to push her over the edge.

PDQ is behind bars, for life and then some, but someone on the outside has picked up the killer’s mantle. Flynn is neck-deep in an investigation when the copycat emerges, targeting her sources and delivering cryptic messages. It’s clear that Flynn’s stories are getting deadlier. This one proves no exception.

A family of four has gone missing, leaving behind ties to New Hope Church more tangled than they appear. The dangerous web rivals the threat in Flynn’s personal life. And it’s up to her to unravel each knot.

Scandal. Conspiracy. Murder. Flynn hardly knows where to begin―and if her stalker has their way, she might not live to see the end.

Books Publishing This Week

Seeing Joy: A Story of Life, Death, and What Comes Next by Alexandra Grabbe

Beatrice, one of America’s first career women, is still feisty at ninety-six. She lives with her daughter Alexandra, who has moved to Cape Cod to care for Bea while running a bed-and-breakfast out of their beloved old house. Like so many adult children caring for elderly parents, Alexandra must balance her new job as a caregiver with her role as daughter — and it isn’t easy.

Bea is demanding and very verbal. Her mind is like a fireworks display on a drizzly Fourth of July — some shots fizzle out, but there are still bits of brilliance. After a knee ailment confines Bea to bed, it becomes clear her life will soon end. Convinced nothing comes next, Bea declares she doesn’t want to die. When deceased friends and family start “visiting” Bea’s bedroom, Alexandra wonders if her mom is hallucinating. Or could these visits have deeper meaning? Bea entertains her “guests” by hosting tea parties and reliving treasured memories. She reveals an unexpected kind of joy to Alexandra — a joy that brings peace and chases away the fear of death as they experience their final days together.

Books Publishing This Week

Meet Me in Italy by Brenda Novak

A trip to Italy is the last thing Charlotte Williams-Jackson ever thought she’d be taking right now. After all, she’s finding her way through a brutal—and very public—divorce and somehow trying to write the follow-up to her blockbuster debut just in time to make her deadline. Writing a book with no idea in hand in three months is totally possible, right? But she never imagined that a letter would arrive that would blow what was left of her life to smithereens…

For not only is Charlotte adopted—something her beloved parents have never told her before—but her birth mother, Sabrina, has just died. Sabrina lived on the Amalfi Coast in the small town of Praiano with her twelve-year old daughter Lilly who is now completely and utterly without any family. Lilly needs a guardian and Charlotte can’t bear to turn her back on family. So she’ll travel to Italy, meet her sister, and decided what on earth to do next. After all, you can write a book from anywhere, right?

With a charming AirBNB booked and her childhood best friend, Sloane, and Sloane’s big brother along for a month-long vacation, Charlotte begins an adventure that will change everything she thought she knew about family, friendship, love, loss, and loyalty…and most of all, herself.

Books Publishing This Week

The Demon King by Peter V. Brett

The third and final book in The Nightfall Saga, the thrilling and action-packed epic fantasy series set in the world of The Demon Cycle, from New York Times bestselling author Peter V. Brett

“Heart-wrenching, smart, and modern . . . The Desert Prince has set a new standard for fantasy.”—Wesley Chu, author of The War Arts Saga

He is known as The Prince of Lies. The Father of Demons. He is Alagai Ka, the Demon King.

Though humanity won a hard-fought victory in its war against demonkind, the Demon King has escaped in search of a new queen to restart his dark hive, and has found signs of one on a distant shore.

But pursuing him are humanity's best hopes: Olive Paper and Darin Bales, whose legendary parents brought demonkind low once before. Olive and Darin will not rest until the demons are defeated, and so relentless is their hunt that they have followed Alagai Ka across the sea to a strange new land.

There they discover a culture unlike any they have never known, where demons live alongside humans as servants and companions. And there they meet the demon's masters--including a seductive prince who is drawn to Olive--who seem unable or unwilling to understand the danger they are in.

Because no human is safe from the Demon King's thirst for war--and every human must join the battle against his kingdom of death.

Book Three of The Nightfall Saga

Don’t miss any of Peter V. Brett's riveting Nightfall Saga:
THE DESERT PRINCE• THE HIDDEN QUEEN • THE DEMON KING

Books Publishing This Week

Witness Protection by Robert Whitlow

Jon Tremaine has lived in hiding for years--will coming out of the shadows to help a friend be too great a risk?

All is finally good. Jon Tremaine has created a new life in Brunswick, Georgia, as part of the Federal Witness Protection program after testifying against the former drug cartel he was involved with. Only his wife, Sarah, and a handler with the US Marshal's office know his true identity, and he is now the manager of a large commercial tree farm with a baby on the way. But when one of Jon's employees is arrested for allegedly smuggling drugs into the United States, he goes against his better judgment and inserts himself in the middle of the case, believing the man is an unsuspecting mole manipulated by sophisticated drug dealers.

Kelli Quinn, a highly skilled litigator with an Atlanta law firm, has moved to Brunswick to work with her best friend from law school, hoping to rebuild her life after a painful divorce. She and her two children find a temporary home with her aunt Carly, a woman whose great faith is making an impression on her new houseguests. For the first time in a very long while, Kelli sees a future where she can find balance between the job she loves and the family she loves even more.

New to the firm and in need of clients, Kelli agrees to represent Jon's employee. The unfolding investigation reveals layers of criminal activity and possible connections to Jon's past, putting everyone at risk of exposure--and even death.

Books Publishing This Week

Learning to Whistle: A Novel by Tess Perko

For fans of Sue Monk Kidd and Joyce Manard, a debut contemporary women’s fiction novel about a recently bereft daughter who journeys to South America to run away from her grief—and instead finds self-discovery and healing.

When she is supposed to be having the time of her life in college in California, Leonie loses her mother to breast cancer. After taking her last college course in Buenos Aires, she cashes in her return flight ticket and refuses to go home, erroneously believing that her grief will subside if she avoids her family. Narrating in her own grief-stricken voice, Leonie travels across Argentina, makes friends, and falls in love. She discovers her vulnerability and strength while working at a winery in Mendoza, riding over the treacherous Andes Mountains, and hiking the ancient pilgrimage to Machu Picchu—and, in doing so, slowly begins to heal.

Vividly rendered and full of heart, Learning to Whistle will resonate with every person who has ever been forced to venture into the world when they didn’t feel ready for it—with or without the guidance of a parent.

Books Publishing This Week

Kiss, Marry, Kill: A Novel by Lori Gold

Which would you choose: kiss, marry, or kill?

When three best friends and founders of a health and wellness app on the verge of hitting the big time play a spin on the game of “kiss, marry, kill” at their company’s summer outing, they wake up the next morning in an alternate universe to discover they’ve each done just that.

Kiss: In the “real world,” quiet, indecisive Aubrey is heartbroken over things ending with her fiancé. In the new reality ushered in by the game, Aubrey finds herself in bed, naked, next to their company’s newly hired graphic designer.

Marry: Practical, straight-laced Ilena, on the brink of a divorce following a stressful struggle with infertility, wakes up six months pregnant and married to their company’s general counsel.

Kill: Mallory’s philosophy is to ask neither forgiveness nor permission. Yet the reckless behavior of their biggest investor crosses lines even Mallory didn’t know she had. Especially since she’s been secretly sleeping with him for the past year. She’s mad enough to kill. But in this world, he’s already dead.

Told alternately from the perspectives of these three best friends, this Sliding Doors-esque story explores the nuances of ambition, the power of female friendship, and the many facets of love in our lives, ultimately asking: Do our choices define us, or do we define our choices?

Books Publishing This Week

Redemption Row by William Palmer

Debut Christian author William Palmer honors his father’s legacy with a transformative look inside a secret prison discipleship program in 1990s Los Angeles. A novel inspired by true events, “Redemption Row” (April 7, 2026, Flow Motion Media) reveals never-before-shared testimonies of radical grace and moral transformation from prisoners, chaplains, and community leaders, and how this program transformed both the prison culture and the surrounding inner city communities.

Set in 1990s Los Angeles amid riots, racial unrest, and the height of mass incarceration, “Redemption Row” is inspired by the incredible true story of Chaplain Robert Palmer, a US Army chaplain who enters the California State Prison system not to preach sermons, but to spark a quiet revolution of the soul.

Inside, he meets men the world has discarded: gang leaders, lifers, wrongfully convicted seekers. Through secret discipleship, relentless compassion, and radical ordinations, Palmer transforms the prison chapel into a sacred battlefield:where scripture becomes a sword, brotherhood is forged in fire, and faith defies the machinery of punishment. But Palmer’s mission threatens powerful forces, including Warden Calvin Drake, a man who sees inmates as irredeemable cogs in a carceral empire. What follows is an embodied spiritual war—one that challenges the very nature of justice, grace, and human dignity.

“Redemption Row” is not just about surviving prison—it's about transcending it. With rich biblical symbolism and raw emotional power, this is the story of men who break the chains of oppression to become new men that exemplify faith, divine love, revival, and goodness as they return to minister in the same neighborhoods that once abandoned them. It is a story of defiant love, luminous transformation, and the legacy of a man who believed that no soul is too far gone to be born again through Christ.

Books Publishing This Week

Into the Blue: A Love Story by Emma Brodie

AN ASTONISHING LOVE STORY FROM JENNA BUSH HAGER’S NEW VENTURE, THOUSAND VOICES

From the award-winning author of Songs in Ursa Major comes an epic, decades-spanning love story that blazes through the worlds of acting and comedy, and charts a connection so powerful it might just break space and time itself.

In the summer of 2000, AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live; instead, she’s stuck working in a video rental store, with slim odds of escaping her small Massachusetts town. Then in walks Noah Drew, the enigmatic and intense scion of the Drew acting dynasty, and her life changes forever. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two forge a deep, cosmic bond, first as friends, then as acting partners—until one day, Noah disappears without a word.

Seven years later, in New York City, AJ is shocked to find herself cast in the same intergalactic TV production as Noah, by then a well-known Hollywood heartthrob. As their on-screen characters grow closer every day, the lines between reality and acting begin to blur. Unable to stay away from each other, AJ and Noah are forced to confront the truth of what happened years ago—and the devastating secret that will send their lives careening apart, even as fate continues to draw them together.

Blending unforgettable characters, explosive chemistry and yearning, and profound emotion, Into the Blue is a journey unlike any other—one that asks: What does it mean to diverge from the script to forge your own story?

Books Publishing This Week

The Museum of Unusual Occurrence by Erica Wright

Every small town thinks it’s special―That might be true, but this one actually is.”

Rational and cynical Aly Orlean’s life in her psychic hometown of Wyndale, Florida couldn’t be more hectic. It’s all about running her business, raising a teenage sister, sending out holiday greetings―and her new task: finding a killer.

For her Museum of Unusual Occurrence not only houses odd curiosities but now has a brand-new display: The body of Rose Dempsey, a local twenty-year-old, set up in one of the exhibits as if she has been ritually sacrificed.

With the police clueless, Aly is worried that this is a vicious warning for her and her solitary way of life. Fearing for her sister Merope’s well-being, she’s determined to find out why the killer murdered Rose and how her body was placed in Aly’s museum . . . But might the killer be someone hiding in plain sight?

Books Publishing This Week

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

In a near future, where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a young Roomba vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power in this compelling, original novel.

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient Roomba listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she witnesses in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, seeks to remove Harold from his home, a place he’s lived in for fifty years.

With the help of Adrian, a neighborhood boy who grows close to Scout and Harold, as well as Kate, Harold and Edie’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear.

Books Publishing This Week

Piper at the Gates of Dusk by Patrick Ness

Two-time Carnegie Medalist Patrick Ness makes a thrilling return to the world of Chaos Walking with this launch of the extraordinary New World trilogy.

It’s been twenty years since the monstrous war that almost tore New World apart, and there’s a new generation on the planet. Todd and Viola’s sons Ben and Max have known only peace growing up on the family farm outside a bustling human settlement. They dream of the usual things, like school and adventure, until the nightmares begin . . . A sudden sickness has infected the young people of New World with Noise in the form of their worst thoughts about themselves. Some suspect the Spackle, the indigenous people with whom humans have a very uneasy truce. Others wonder about a connection to a mysterious object looming in the sky. And then, one by one, the children of New World begin to disappear. Ben, with his mother’s logical mind, and Max, with his father’s courageous heart, become caught up in separate quests for answers, journeys that will test their beliefs in their parents, each other, and in their very existence on the planet.

Books Publishing This Week

Blood Trail by Matt Query and Harrison Query

A poacher-turned-game-warden is on the hunt for a bloodthirsty cult in this unnerving thriller from the authors of the “artful chiller” (Lincoln Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Wilderness Reform.

Clark Rickert was once the most prolific big game poacher throughout the Rocky Mountain west but when he lost both his son and his wife, he turned away from hunting. Now a game warden working for the very law enforcement officers that once pursued him so aggressively, Clark is overwhelmingly successful at his job.

So, when there’s a string of disappearances in rural Montana, Clark is selected to join a task force on an operation targeting a mysterious, violent cult in the area. As he works to uncover the truth, Clark begins to be plagued by visions and starts to realize that there is a deeper purpose to his assignment and the cult might up to something far more terrifying than anyone could have guessed.

From two authors who “set themselves apart with sterling prose” (Publishers Weekly), Blood Trail is an eerie and suspenseful horror novel that will sink its teeth in you.

Books Publishing This Week

The Impossible Garden of Clara Thorne by Summer N. England

Love grows in the most unimaginable of places in Summer N. England’s sweet and spicy cozy romantasy debut, for fans of The Spellshop and For Whom the Belle Tolls!

Most stories end with a happily ever after. But mine? Well, it begins with one …

After a lonely childhood, Clara Thorne is living out her happy ending as the magically gifted gardener for the town of Moss. Sure, her closest companion is a surly hedgehog, and she’s forever stuck on the first line of her novel, but she has a home. That is, until The Goddess chooses Clara for an important quest—travel to the cursed town of Dwindle and grow them a garden. In less than a month.

Only Clara’s hiding a terrible secret: her magic doesn’t work outside Moss. Worse, The Goddess has assigned the absurdly sexy, annoyingly cheerful Hesper Altanfall to keep her safe. Clara would rather eat thorns than accept help—especially since Hesper insists that Clara’s magic is bound to her heart, not her home.

Nevertheless, the two can’t help growing closer as they traverse enchanted woods and share tavern beds. But with an ancient evil threatening from the shadows, saving Dwindle will require more than enchanted crops. Clara will need to unearth a magic she’s always believed impossible.

Books Publishing This Week

The Girlie Playhouse by V. N. Alexander

The Girlie Playhouse is narrated by “Pixie,” the daughter of a famous cabaret dancer who was murdered by a sanctimonious preacher. In flashbacks, she describes that tragedy, which has filled her with loss and longing. Pixie, who admits that she has a thing for “girls with meretricious charms,” becomes a stripper herself and meets Trixie—who reminds her of her own mother—at a club called the Girlie Playhouse. Max, a regular at the joint, thought he was happily married until he saw Trixie and begins a relationship with her. After Max wins the lottery, he splurges a share of the winnings on the exotic dancers in the Girlie Playhouse, fueling a media frenzy and prompting feminist protests at the venue. When he demands that Trixie quit stripping, he sets in motion a chain of events that leads to her undoing. At once delicate and risqué, this uninhibited story looks closely at the strip club business while probing the inner lives of dancers and their customers.

Books Publishing This Week

Elizabeth and Marilyn by Julie Owen Moylan

What really happened when Queen Elizabeth II met Marilyn Monroe? This stunning historical novel imagines the summer that bonded the world's two most famous women, both thirty years old and chafing against the façade of global celebrity.

On a cool early-autumn evening in 1956, a glittering array of stars turns out in London for a Royal Film Premiere, where they will be presented to Queen Elizabeth II—an elegant young mother and wife, gracious and self-sacrificing, who has embraced her patriotic duty despite never expecting to take the throne so soon. Cameras flash, and a crowd surges forward as a limousine pulls up. Out steps a vision in dazzling gold: the greatest star of the era, Marilyn Monroe. She's a global sensation and money-making machine for Hollywood, with curves that drive men wild and a smile that lets women know she’s in on the joke.

Finally, the two most famous women in the world will come face-to-face in public for the first time. And the world is watching—unaware that Elizabeth and Marilyn have already had an accidental encounter that has changed their lives.

Inspired by the months in the summer of 1956 when Elizabeth and Marilyn lived as neighbors in nearby Windsor, British author Julie Owen Moylan imagines a meeting the two might have had in their shared garden. Born within weeks of each other, Lilibet and Norma Jeane would seem to have only their age in common. Yet beneath the glamorous costumes and jewels, both women are fighting to hold on to the men they love while trying to do their work in a man's world, battling demons their adoring public could only guess at. Until now...

Books Publishing This Week

A Different Kind of Vow by Laurie Collister

At thirty-two, Laurie outgrows her sleepy beach town and moves to the epicenter of the anything-goes eighties: Los Angeles. There, she befriends a teenage wizard and a Russian defector. She enrolls in a Hogwarts-style psychic college. She gets a job at a hilltop Hindu convent, where she considers taking her monastic vows. She dates an Indian guru and shares heart-to-heart conversations with a Catholic priest.

But it is only when her home nearly burns to the ground that Laurie finds what she is looking for: her true calling. Reading passages from a cache of 300 old diaries that were spared by the flames, Laurie locates clues planted in her past and gradually comes to a realization: She must let go of the conventional, “white-picket fence” marital vow she has sought for decades, and instead must fashion an entirely different kind of vow for herself.

With this knowledge in hand, Laurie sets about fulfilling her sacred contract. In turn, she experiences for the first time an intense rightness—a sense that this is how her life is meant to be.

Books Publishing This Week

Almost Grown; a New York memoir by Jesse Malin

Jesse Malin is a “gritty troubadour of the streets” (Rolling Stone) and “fearless storyteller” (Uncut) who tours internationally, and collaborates with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Lucinda Williams. Malin went from playing CBGB at age thirteen to Madison Square Garden in his twenties. His first solo album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction, which was hailed as “a masterpiece rising from the pain of a difficult youth” (Classic Rock), launched his long and successful solo career. Almost Grown is a raw, honest, and often funny account of how a hyperactive kid from Queens made his dreams come true—and the hustlers, sweethearts, misfits, and lifelong friends he met along the way. With Malin as its streetwise narrator, the book has more in common with The Basketball Diaries or Just Kids than with the standard rock biography. In 2023, Malin was struck with a rare spinal stroke that paralyzed him from the waist down. The lifelong runner and vegetarian went public with this news—and his fierce resolve to walk again—in an interview with Rolling Stone. In December 2024, Malin gave his first public performances since his stroke. Malin’s sold-out theatrical production, Silver Manhattan: A Musical Memoir of Survival, just debuted in Manhattan.

Books Publishing This Week

The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden

This 10-year anniversary edition of Bernice L. McFadden’s NAACP Image Award–winning classic explores the Holocaust from the perspective of two African American musicians imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Winner of a 2017 American Book Award, Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Fiction) and 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee (Fiction) this is a timely reissue of this award winning work of fiction. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden’s mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden’s familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.

Books Publishing This Week

The Greek House by Dinah Jefferies

The moment Thirza Caruthers sets foot on Corfu, memories flood back: the scent of jasmine, the green shutters of her family’s home — and her brother Billy’s tragic disappearance years before.

Returning to the Greek house, high above clear blue waters, Thirza tries to escape by immersing herself in painting — and a passionate affair.

But as webs of love, envy, and betrayal tighten around the family, buried secrets surface.

Is it finally time to uncover the truth about Billy’s vanishing?

Books Publishing This Week

As Far As She Knew by Diana Awad

Amira Abadi, a devoted wife for twenty-three years, believed she had a strong, loving marriage, but when her husband Ali dies suddenly, that certainty shatters. As whispers of betrayal spread through their tight-knit Arab American community, Amira refuses to let others define her husband’s legacy, or her path forward. Diving into an investigation of Ali’s final days, Amira uncovers decades-old secrets that challenge everything she thought she knew. With her children struggling to process their father’s death, Amira must balance protecting her family with pursuing the truth, even as each revelation brings her closer to danger.

AS FAR AS SHE KNEW mines the intricacies of marriage as it explores the gray area that exists between fidelity and duplicity.

Books Publishing This Week

Start at the End by Emma Grey

This is a love story . . . but not the one you’re expecting.

Start at the End is a powerful, soul-stirring, sliding-doors novel from the bestselling author of The Last Love Note and Pictures of You that explores second chances and unwritten endings.

Audrey and Fraser tumble into a romance for the ages. After an unlikely start, they fall deeply in love and dream of the life they’ll build together—until one tragic moment upends everything. Facing the unimaginable and wrestling with guilt, they’re left haunted by “what ifs,” each asking where they would be if fate had spun a different story.

Start at the End is an unforgettable drama of two soulmates who have to find a way to start over when they had only just begun.

Books Publishing This Week

The Big Mouse Party by Anastasia Temborska

Welcome to Mice CIty, where a cheerful crew of little mice is getting ready for the party of the year!This picture book bursts with energy, color, and sound bubbles to read, repeat… and enjoy! Toddlers and older readers alike are invited to dive into a playful adventure where celebration and learning go hand in hand.Follow the three tiny heroes as they plan, decorate, cook―and of course, dance! On every page, a fun seek-and-find challenge invites children to spot the hidden mice, discover new words, and sharpen their observation skills.

Books Publishing This Week

Mount Verity by Therese Bohman

Tinged with Swedish lore, this enthralling coming-of-age tale explores art and guilt in the wake of a mysterious tragedy at the end of the 1980s.

On the night of Easter Eve 1989, 12-year-old Hanna’s older brother Erik and some friends go to the infamous Mount Verity, where there is a cave that, according to legend, was used in the witch trials in Östergötland during the 17th century. Rumor has it that whoever does not tell the truth and goes down into the cave will disappear into the mountain. Erik never comes home that night.

Over the years, Hanna and her childhood friend Marcus develop an increasingly symbiotic relationship, until life takes them in different directions. He pursues an academic career, while she fails to get into art school, feeling uncertain about her path and doubting her talent. When Hanna finally becomes a successful artist, she cannot let go of what it has cost her. What justice decided that she was allowed to live while Erik vanished? What is there left to believe in when the worst has happened? And can the story of Mount Verity be more than a fable?

Mount Verity is an atmospheric, naturalistic tale of survivor’s guilt told in prose at once dreamy, almost magical, and yet realistic and rife with slowly building suspense.

Books Publishing This Week

The Last Letters of Sally and Walter by Cammie McGovern

With the tenacious spirit of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and the long-lived verve of Thursday Murder Club comes a heartwarming story of a curmudgeon and a newcomer who strike up an unlikely friendship over cutthroat Scrabble at their retirement home, outrageously starting something new in their golden eras.

As a new resident of Golden Grove, an independent living community for active seniors, Sally wants to do everything in her power to start off on the right foot. But between navigating unspoken social rules of the community and leaving two struggling adult children back at home, fitting in becomes harder than she expected. So when she sees flyers advertising the Scrabble Club, she thinks she might as well give it a try. She quickly realizes her faux pas when she walks into the library to find just one man, Walter Kretzer, who has a reputation for being "a bit intense."

Walter has taken his Scrabble club a pinch too seriously in the past, but when he meets Sally, with her golden-flecked eyes and sensible style, and discovers she is something of a prodigy at the game, he can't help but feel his fate is about to change. As he draws Sally into the world of high-stakes Scrabble tournaments, his feelings for her grow and inspire him to take a hard look at his life. When the truth about Sally's reasons for moving to Golden Grove are suddenly exposed, Walter finds himself with the gumption to make his last chapter in life the best yet.

Books Publishing This Week

The Model Patient by Lucy Ashe

A psychological tour-de-force about obsession, control, and the dangerous relationship between a therapist and patient in 1960s London.

Evelyn Westbrook has given up her career as a model and wants to find fulfilment in married life. But when her husband suggests they start trying for a baby, everything begins to unravel. Struggling to cope with crippling nightmares, Evelyn takes the advice of a friend and goes to see a psychotherapist. She is apprehensive about exposing her intimate issues: what she absolutely does not want to do is unearth the secrets of her past. The enigmatic Dr. Daley, however, is determined to take her back there, and she soon finds herself drawn to him. Evelyn’s interest in her therapist turns to obsession, and she becomes locked in a powerful relationship where the question of whether he is caring for her or manipulating her becomes impossible to untangle.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link. Thank you for supporting this blog and the books I recommend! I may have received a book for free in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Unboxing My Latest Book Haul

Unboxing My Latest Book Haul