Most Anticipated Fiction of the Summer Sweepstakes
Who is stalking Florence Nightingale and her nurses? Is it the legendary Beast of the Crimean, or someone closer to home? In 1855, Britain and France are fighting to keep the Russians from snatching the Crimean Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, and Nightingale, a wealthy young society woman, has made it her mission to improve the wretched conditions in the British military hospitals in Turkey—despite fierce objections from the male doctors around her. When young women start turning up dead, their mouths sewn shut with embroidered fabric roses, Inspector Charles Field (the real-life inspiration for Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket in Bleak House) is sent from England to find the killer among the doctors, military men, journalists, and others swarming Turkey’s famous Barrack Hospital. Here Field meets both the famous Nightingale as well as Nurse Jane Rolly, the woman who will become his wife, and as he races to protect them, the prime suspect takes his own life.
Case closed. Or is it?
Twelve years later, back in London, amid the turmoil surrounding the expansion of voting rights, women again start turning up dead, their mouths covered by that telltale embroidered rose. Did Field suspect the wrong man before, or is he dealing with a deviant copycat? Either way, he must race against time to stop the killer before more bodies are discovered, and before his own family gets pulled into danger. Populated by real figures of the day, from Benjamin Disraeli to novelist Wilkie Collins to, of course, Florence Nightingale herself, and steeped in historical details of 1860s London, The Nightingale Affair plays out against a backdrop of a rapidly changing society. Most of all, it is a pure reading delight, offering shocks, unforgettably vivid scenes, and surprising twists.
Taking inspiration from the infamous, empowering song, Goodbye Earl follows four best friends through two unforgettable summers, fifteen years apart.
In 2004, Rosemarie, Ada, Caroline, and Kasey are in their final days of high school and on the precipice of all the things teenagers look forward to when anything in life seems possible . . . from falling in love, to finding their dream jobs, to becoming who they were meant to be.
In 2019, Kasey has returned to her small Southern hometown of Goldie for the first time since high school—and she still hasn’t told even her closest friends the truth of what really happened that summer after graduation, or what made her leave so abruptly without looking back. Now reunited with her friends in Goldie for a wedding, she’s determined to focus on the simple joy of being together again. But when she notices troubling signs that one of them might be in danger, she is catapulted back to that fateful summer. This time, Kasey refuses to let the worst moments of her past define her; this time, she knows how to protect those she loves at all costs.
Uplifting, sharp-edged, and unapologetic, Goodbye Earl is a funeral for all the “Earls” out there—the abusive men who think they can get away with anything, but are wrong—and a celebration of enduring sisterhood.
Publishers Weekly Best Romance Book of 2023 · Chicago Public Library Best Romance of 2023 · A "Sarah’s BookShelves" Best Debut of 2023 · Go On Girl Book Club pick
"Love would be so much easier if it were perfect…"
On the night of her husband Matt’s fortieth birthday, Rachel Abbott receives a sexy, explicit text from her husband that she quickly realizes was meant for another woman. Divorce is inevitable, and Rachel is determined not to leave her thirteen-year marriage empty handed. Meanwhile, Matt, a rising star mayor with his eye on the White House, can’t afford a messy split in the middle of his reelection campaign. They strike a deal: Rachel gets one million dollars and their lavish house in the wealthy DC suburb of Oasis Springs, as long as she keeps playing the ideal Black trophy wife until the election.
Then Rachel meets Nathan Vasquez, a very handsome, very lost twenty-six-year-old artist, and their connection makes Rachel forget about being the perfect politician’s wife. As Rachel reawakens Nathan’s long-dormant artistic aspirations, their attraction becomes impossible to resist. But secrets are hard to keep in a town like Oasis Springs, and Nathan has a few of his own. With the risk of scandal looming and their hearts on the line, they’ll have to decide whether the possibility of losing everything is worth taking a chance on love.
The Art of Scandal is a sizzling, conversation-starting debut about rekindling passion, the transformative power of art, and finding love in unexpected places.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Imperfectionists, the story of a chameleonic writer desperate to finish her final book, and the indelible characters from her own life who intrude on those efforts with increasingly unpredictable results.
Dora Frenhofer, a once successful but now aging and embittered novelist, knows her mind is going. She is determined, however, to finish her final book, and reverse her fortunes, before time runs out. Alone in her London home during the pandemic, she creates, and is in turn created by, the fascinating real characters from her own life.Like a twenty-first-century Scheherazade, Dora spins stories to ward off her end. From New Delhi to New York, Copenhagen to Los Angeles, Australia to Syria to Paris, Dora’s chapters trot the globe, inhabiting the perspectives of her missing brother, her estranged daughter, her erstwhile lover, and her last remaining friend, among others in her orbit. As her own life comes into ever sharper focus, so do the signal events that have made her who she is, leaving us in Dora’s thrall until, with an unforeseen twist, she snaps the final piece of the puzzle into place.
The Imposters is Tom Rachman at his inimitable best. With his trademark style—at once “deliciously ironic and deeply affectionate” (The Washington Post)—he has delivered a novel whose formal ingenuity and flamboyant technique are matched only by its humanity and generosity.
“When a Tom Rachman novel lands in the bookstores, I stop living and breathing to devour it. It’s hard to think of anyone who has a better grasp on the world we live in (and I mean, like, the entire planet) and can write about it with such entertainment and panache.” —Gary Shteyngart
An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction
Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.
And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know.
With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free oneself from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.
In Victorian London, where traveling sideshows are the very pinnacle of entertainment, there is no more coveted ticket than Ashe and Pretorius' Carnivale of Curiosities. Each performance is a limited engagement, and London's elite boldly dare the dangerous streets of Southwark to witness the Carnivale's astounding assemblage of marvels. For a select few, however, the real show begins behind the curtain. Rumors abound that the show’s proprietor, Aurelius Ashe, is more than an average magician. It's said that for the right price, he can make any wish come true. No one knows the truth of this claim better than Lucien the Lucifer, the Carnivale's star attraction. Born with the ability to create fire, he's dazzled spectators since he was a boy.
When Odilon Rose, one of the most notorious men in London, comes calling with a proposition regarding his young and beautiful charge, Charlotte, Ashe is tempted to refuse. After revealing, however, that Rose holds a secret that threatens the security of the troupe's most vulnerable members, Ashe has no choice but to sign an insidious contract.
The stakes grow higher as Lucien finds himself drawn to Charlotte and her to him, an attraction that spurs a perilous course of events. Grave secrets, recovered horrors, and what it means to be family come to a head in this vividly imagined spectacle—with the lives of all those involved suspended in the balance.
Julia Bennett has worked hard to create a stable life for her daughter, Cora, in Southern California. So when Cora leaves for college, the worst thing Julia expects on move-in day is an argument with her ex-husband and his new wife. But a sudden attack leaves the campus stunned—and only Julia’s quick actions save Cora’s life. Shaken in the aftermath, and haunted by a dark secret, Julia starts to wonder: What if the attack wasn’t as random as everyone believes?
Newly pregnant Ren Petrovic has an unusual career—she’s a trained assassin, operating under a strict moral code. Ren wasn’t on campus that day, but she knows who was: her husband, Nolan. What she doesn’t know is why Nolan has broken their rules by not telling her about the job in advance. The more Ren looks into the attack, the more she begins to question: Who really hired Nolan? And why did one woman in the crowd respond so differently from all the rest?
Julia and Ren each want answers, but their searches quickly pit them against each other. One woman is a hired killer, but the other is a determined survivor. And both mothers will defend their families to the bitter end.
"Slick, smart, layered, and full of surprises." —Lisa Unger
"An exciting thriller perfect for fans of Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Pieces of Her." —Buzzfeed
"Wholly addictive." —May Cobb
"Chavez is at the top of her game." —Jeneva Rose
"Fresh and surprising." —BookPage (starred review)
Named a "Summer Must-Read" by CrimeReads • Book Riot • BuzzFeed • Fresh Fiction • BookBub • Wealth of Geeks • Daily Times • Ground News • SheReads • Mercury News • East Bay Times • Boston Herald • The Orange County Register