With the summer season in full swing, the sunny days of fun can start to blur together. However, breaking away from the routine is really easy, especially when that escape takes the form of a new book! This July, we have several new paperback novels that will take you on fresh adventures into uncharted worlds. All you have to do is come along for the ride!
New in Paperback: 11 July Releases to Dip into This Summer
Against her expectations of spending the summer working with renowned artwork in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ann is instead assigned to a Gothic museum where she stumbles into a deep exploration of the secrets surrounding Renaissance occultism, eerie divination, and historical tragedies. Perfectly capturing the dark-academia aesthetic, Ann’s summer is anything but ordinary as she learns about the oddities of the world around her and must contemplate all that she thinks she knows about rationality when the words of fortune tellers, tarot card readers, and predictive oracles all suggest a dire future ahead.
A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
This instant New York Times bestseller that is “captivating in every sense of the word” (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author) follows a group of researchers uncovering a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York’s famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when she discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a “masterwork of literary suspense that surges to an otherworldly conclusion” (Mark Prins, author of The Latinist).
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Grace is simply a young girl from Appalachia who is looking for an interesting topic to explore in a history project due for school. Good thing her home region of eastern Tennessee is known for its historical ballads that immortalize grisly folklore and eerie stories of the past. Unfortunately, her research hits a little too close to home when she discovers that her distant great grandfather was the subject of one of these songs because of the psychopathic way in which he murdered his lover. Flashing back and forth between the present and the year 1907, as well as between the narratives of all the women of the bloodline who have unique experiences dealing with the trauma of the situation, THE BALLAD OF LAUREL SPRINGS is a transformative novel that captures the longstanding effects of generational hurt and the distinctive culture of folklore.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Atomic City Girls, a provocative novel set in eastern Tennessee that “explores the legacies—of passion and violence, music and faith—that haunt one family across the generations” (Jillian Medoff, author of This Could Hurt).
Ten-year-old Grace is in search of a subject for her fifth-grade history project when she learns that her four times-great grandfather once stabbed his lover to death. His grisly act was memorialized in a murder ballad, her aunt tells her, so it must be true. But the lessons of that revelation—to be careful of men and desire—are not just Grace’s to learn. Her family’s tangled past is part of a dark legacy in which the lives of generations of women are affected by the violence immortalized in folk songs like “Knoxville Girl” and “Pretty Polly” reminding them always to know their place—or risk the wages of sin.
Janet Beard’s stirring novel, informed by her love of these haunting ballads, vividly imagines these women, defined by the secrets they keep, the surprises they uncover, and the lurking sense of menace that follows them throughout their lives even as they try to make a safe place in the world for themselves. “This inspired story of Appalachian folklore” (Publishers Weekly) will move and rouse you.
When night falls, it is only natural to begin reflecting upon your life. This is what pushes David Asha to write about his biggest regret—leaving his young son, Elliot, behind, in a convoluted attempt to end his own life after his late wife passed. However, if David is alive to tell the story, why was Elliot adopted by his uncle Ben, who is suspected of foul play? And it can’t be a coincidence that the woman investigating this case, Detective Harriet Kealty, was madly in love with Ben before he dumped her out of nowhere. This is a crime thriller told through unconventional narrative techniques that will leave your head reeling but your heart touched.
For fans of Matt Haig and Anthony Horowitz, a “strange, compelling, and ultimately moving head-spinner of a novel” (John Connolly) in which the lives of a disgraced police officer, a prolific author, and an upstanding citizen are inextricably bound together by a series of mysterious deaths.
The Other Side of Night begins with a man named David Asha writing about his biggest regret: his sudden separation from his son, Elliot. In his grief, David tells a story.
Next, we step into the life of Harriet Kealty, a police officer trying to clear her name after a lapse of judgment. She discovers a curious inscription in a secondhand book—a plea: Help me, he’s trying to kill me. Who wrote this note? Who is “he”?
This note leads Harri to David Asha, who was last seen stepping off a cliff. Police suspect he couldn’t cope after his wife’s sudden death. Still, why would this man jump and leave behind his young son? Quickly, Harri’s attention zeroes in on a person she knows all too well.
Ben Elmys: once the love of her life. A surrogate father to Elliot Asha and trusted friend to the Ashas.
Ben may also be a murderer.
Compulsively readable and thought-provoking, “The Other Side of Night is one of those rare books that you’ll still be thinking about long after the last page” (Jenny Blackhurst, author of How I Lost You).
In this evocative reimagination of the life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici, who became Duchess consort of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio through marriage, Lucrezia’s personal feelings about her national duty are explored alongside a discussion of feminism in all its resilience and limitations. The House of Tuscany and the House of Ferrara were supposed to be united through the wedding of Alfonso II and Lucrezia’s older sister, until she died unexpectedly and her father offered up Lucrezia as a replacement bride. Transitioning from enjoying her youth, freely exploring both the palace and the world around her at her leisure, to the responsibilities of nobility—namely producing an heir to rule the Italian dynasty—is no easy task. Not much is known about what Lucrezia truly went through, but this fictionalized story is an inspiring homage to what could have been.
Adventure, mystery, and a dire hostage situation . . . what more could you ask for? GOING ROGUE is the twenty-ninth installment of the Stephanie Plum crime thriller novels in which the famous New Jersey bounty hunter is being threatened by the abductor of her coworker Connie. This time around, our criminal isn’t looking for an exorbitant amount of money or any special favors—all he has his eye on is a special coin that a man left behind before he was brutally murdered. What should have been an easy exchange becomes more complicated when Stephanie realizes the coin is missing from their office and a full-on hunt for both Connie and the coin is imperative. Full of red herrings, unforeseen twists, and clever detective work, GOING ROGUE will keep you on the edge of your seat!
Stephanie Plum breaks the rules, flirts with disaster, and shows who’s boss in this “fast and fun” (Publishers Weekly) thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich.
Monday mornings aren’t supposed to be fun, but they should be predictable. However, on this particular Monday, Stephanie Plum knows that something is amiss when she turns up for work at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli, who is as reliable as the tides in Atlantic City, hasn’t shown up.
Stephanie’s worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail. Unfortunately, this coin, which should be in the office—just like Connie—is nowhere to be found.
The quest to discover the coin, learn its value, and save Connie will require the help of Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur, her best pal Lula, her boyfriend Morelli, and hunky security expert Ranger. As they get closer to unraveling the reasons behind Connie’s kidnapping, Connie’s captor grows more threatening and soon Stephanie has no choice but to throw caution to the wind, follow her instincts, and go rogue.
Full of surprises, thrills, and humor, Going Rogue reveals a new side of Stephanie Plum, and shows Janet Evanovich at her scorching, riotous best.
Emma and her daughter, Flora, have always had a rocky relationship. Emma prioritizes her political career above all else, and Flora just wants to be supported as she deals with high school bullying. Their lives become more intertwined when Emma, inspired by the tragic suicide of one of Flora’s classmates, focuses her platform on defending the privacy of women, especially pertaining to making revenge porn illegal. However, when Emma is framed for the murder of a man she would surely want dead, and Flora’s experiences with cyberbullying are escalated, it seems that no one in the world is on the mother-daughter duo’s side. What makes a reputation? And when an unexpected crisis destroys the reputation that someone has so carefully built, is any semblance of recovery even possible? REPUTATION explores all the nuances of distinguishing between right and wrong as well as the volatile optics associated with such decisions.
“Astonishingly timely and clever, utterly gripping.” —Lucy Foley, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Sarah Vaughan has done it again. Superb.” —Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author
The bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal—now a hit Netflix series—returns with a psychological thriller about a politician whose less-than-perfect personal life is thrust into the spotlight when a body is discovered in her home.
As a politician, Emma has sacrificed a great deal for her career—including her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, Flora.
The glare of the spotlight is unnerving for Emma, particularly when it leads to countless insults, threats, and trolling as she tries to work in the public eye. As a woman, she knows her reputation is worth its weight in gold but as a politician, she discovers it only takes one slip-up to destroy it completely.
Fourteen-year-old Flora is learning the same hard lessons at school as she encounters heartless bullying. When another teenager takes her own life, Emma lobbies for a new law to protect women and girls from the effects of online abuse. Now, Emma and Flora find their personal lives uncomfortably intersected…but then the unthinkable happens.
A man is found dead in Emma’s home. A man she had every reason to be afraid of and to want gone. Fighting to protect her reputation and determined to protect her family at all costs, Emma is pushed to the limits as the worst happens and her life is torn apart.
Another breathless and twisty novel from an absolute “master of suspense” (CrimeReads), Reputation brilliantly illustrates that it isn’t who you are that matters…it’s who people think you are.
The third installment of the Fairmile series, DAWNLANDS, is a continuation of the storylines explored in its predecessors through Alinor’s perspective: she continues her fight to elevate the voice of women; deals with her exiled brother Ned’s unannounced return to the kingdom; must protect the queen from siege as a promise to Livia; and navigates her son Rob’s involvement with the looming war. With all these conflicts arising, 1600s England is simply experiencing turmoil like never before as political, religious, and military crises are permeating all aspects of everyday life. This historical fiction novel is not only a highly anticipated follow-up to the previously introduced characters but also a discussion of love, sacrifice, ambition, honor, and deception.
The “superb” (People) Fairmile series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory continues as the fiercely independent Alinor and her family find themselves entangled in palace intrigue and political upheaval in 17th-century England.
It is 1685 and England is on the brink of a renewed civil war. King Charles II has died without an heir and his brother James is to take the throne. But the people are bitterly divided, and many do not welcome the new king or his young queen. Ned Ferryman cannot persuade his sister, Alinor, that he is right to return from America with his Pokanoket servant, Rowan, to join the rebel army. Instead, Alinor and her daughter Alys, have been coaxed by the manipulative Livia to save the queen from the coming siege. The rewards are life-changing: the family could return to their beloved Tidelands, and Alinor could rule where she was once lower than a servant.
Alinor’s son is determined to stay clear of the war, but, in order to keep his own secrets in the past, Livia traps him in a plan to create an imposter Prince of Wales—a surrogate baby to the queen.
From the last battle in the desolate Somerset Levels to the hidden caves on the slave island of Barbados, this third volume of an epic story follows a family from one end of the empire to another, to find a new dawn in a world which is opening up before them with greater rewards and dangers than ever before.
In this story of redemption and forgiveness, Shantanu Das is struggling with his own problems and regrets. All he has a fresh divorce, an estranged daughter, and a dead daughter who passed unexpectedly shortly after coming out. Haunted by the way he did not accept his late daughter Keya’s sexuality before she died, Shantanu desperately seeks any way he can rectify the past. Opportunity comes when he discovers an unfinished play manuscript that Keya was working on with her girlfriend—a story that his other daughter, Mitali, is willing to produce on Broadway as a homage to her late sister. While this novel deals with some heavy topics and uncomfortable realities, it is an inspiring and poignantly heartwarming take on the importance of family and acceptance, even when there seems to be no hope.
A “painfully beautiful” (Booklist), heartwarming, and charmingly funny debut novel about how a discovered box in the attic leads one Bengali American family down a path toward understanding the importance of family, even when splintered.
Shantanu Das is living in the shadows of his past. In his fifties, he finds himself isolated from his traditional Bengali community after a devastating divorce from his wife, Chaitali; he hasn’t spoken to his older daughter, Mitali, in months. Years before, when his younger daughter, Keya, came out as gay, no one in the Das family could find the words they needed. As each worked up the courage to say sorry, fate intervened: Keya was killed in a car crash.
So, when Shantanu finds an unfinished play Keya and her girlfriend had been writing, Mitali approaches the family with a wild idea: What if they were to put it on? It would be a way to honor Keya and finally apologize. Here, it seems, are the words that have escaped them over and over again.
Set in the vibrant world of Bengalis in the New Jersey suburbs, this “delightful” (Diksha Basu, author of The Windfall) debut novel is both poignant and, at times, a surprisingly hilarious testament to the unexpected ways we build family and find love, old and new.
A charmingly ghostly love story begins when a young teenage girl, Blanca, passes away in childbirth, and is left haunting a monastery until famous French novelist George Sand and her family move in four hundred years later. Fantastical and queer, Blanca’s initial attraction to George builds into a deeper crush as she sees how George is able to overcome many of the limitations placed on women and their lives—limitations she could not overcome in the era she lived in. Through the observations and unrequited yearnings of Blanca, you’ll end up falling for George and her beautifully complex family as well.
*A Cosmopolitan Best Book of Summer * One of BuzzFeed’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books*
An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sands.
In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants.
Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).
Charming, original, and emotionally moving, this “deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle” (Cosmopolitan) between George, Chopin, and Blanca—a gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.
For those that dream of having children, infertility can be a gut-wrenching reality that may feel like the end of the world. For Aviva, who desperately wants to be a mother and is strongly against technological interventions in conception, her infertility is her worst nightmare. It fuels her fourth studio album, Womb Service, which dives into menstrual-related issues and the biological hardships every woman faces, and eventually becomes her first smash hit. Now, not only is infertility slowly taking over her life, it also becomes a publicly known fact that defines who she is. HUMAN BLUES, told over the course of nine menstrual cycles, questions all that we accept about not only motherhood but also womanhood as a whole.
“Crackling and bighearted...A powerhouse [that] echoes with the truth that we find harmony when we listen first to ourselves.” —Oprah Daily * “Takes off with magnificent speed and never lets up.” —The New York Times * “Revolutionary.” —NPR’s Morning Edition * A Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A provocative and “darkly funny” (Cosmopolitan) novel about a woman who desperately wants a child but struggles to accept the use of assisted reproductive technology—a “riotous, visceral” (Vanity Fair) send-up of feminism, fame, art, commerce, and autonomy.
On the eve of her fourth album, singer-songwriter Aviva Rosner is plagued by infertility. The twist: as much as Aviva wants a child, she is wary of technological conception, and has poured her ambivalence into her music. As the album makes its way in the world, the shock of the response from fans and critics is at first exciting—and then invasive and strange. Aviva never wanted to be famous, or did she? Meanwhile, her evolving obsession with another iconic musician, gone too soon, might just help her make sense of things.
Told over the course of nine menstrual cycles, this utterly original novel is a “fast, fiery, and often funny” (The Boston Globe) interrogation of our cultural obsession with childbearing. It’s also the story of one fearless woman at the crossroads, ruthlessly questioning what she wants and what she’s willing—or not willing—to do to get it.
Being a vampire hunter is already difficult for Remy Pendergast, but his job is even harder after his mother runs off with a vampire, leaving many to believe that Remy may be half-vampire and the culprit behind an untimely murder that disrupted a peace treaty between two separate vampire courts. This is a detective story with high stakes for Remy, the vampires, and the people who are being preyed on by the creatures of the night. A fresh and queer take on the classic vampire novel, SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL will transport you into a new world of darkness, magic, and the human condition.
Full of court intrigue, queer romance, and terrifying monsters—this “deliciously fun” (Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches) epic fantasy appeals to fans of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree and the adult animated series Castlevania.
Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.
When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.
It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.
But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.
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