Books Publishing This Week
The evening settles in gently, bringing with it the first true warmth of mid-April. The air outside still holds a trace of the day’s sun, and when you crack open the window, a soft breeze filters in, carrying the scent of damp earth and the faint sweetness of blooming flowers. The sky outside is painted in dusky hues, streaks of soft pink and lavender fading into the deepening blue of twilight.
Inside, the light is warm and golden, casting soft shadows across the room. It’s the kind of evening that invites stillness, that makes you want to curl up and let the world outside drift away. You pull a knit blanket over your lap, its familiar weight settling around you like a quiet comfort. There’s something peaceful about this time of day—the way the house feels calmer, the way the world seems to slow just enough for you to take a deep breath and let go of everything except the moment in front of you.
And in front of you is a book.
You’ve been looking forward to this all day—the chance to finally open its pages, to sink into a new story while the night unfolds around you. The cover is cool beneath your fingertips as you pick it up, tracing the embossed letters before carefully turning to the first page.
The words greet you like an old friend, even though they are entirely new. You settle in, shifting deeper into your chair as the story begins to take shape. The characters emerge, the setting unfurls, and slowly, the world outside fades into the background. There is nothing but the soft glow of the lamp beside you, the gentle flicker of a candle on the table, and the steady rhythm of turning pages.
Somewhere in the distance, a car passes by, its headlights briefly sweeping across the window. The breeze stirs the curtains, cool air brushing against your skin. The transition from winter to spring always feels like a quiet shift, subtle and slow, but tonight, you can feel it in the way the air moves—lighter, softer, full of quiet promise.
You reach for your tea, the warmth spreading through your fingers as you take a slow sip. It’s herbal, soothing, the kind of drink that makes you want to savor the moment just a little longer. The scent mingles with the faint floral notes drifting in through the open window, wrapping the evening in something delicate and comforting.
As the night deepens, so does the story. You don’t check the time, don’t glance at your phone—you don’t need to. Time doesn’t matter when you’re caught in the spell of a good book, when the lines between reality and fiction blur just enough that you feel as if you exist somewhere in between.
Eventually, the candle flickers low, the wax pooling at its base. The night outside is darker now, the last remnants of twilight swallowed by the quiet hush of evening. You know you should probably stop, should mark your place and turn out the light. But you don’t, not yet.
Instead, you turn another page, letting the story carry you further into the night, wrapped in the warmth of the blanket, the softness of mid-April air, and the quiet magic of a book that already feels like home.
I want to note that I do not get paid to do these posts, I just love authors and the book industry. However, they do take time and energy to create. If you want to donate a few dollars to my coffee fund, which keeps this blog going, you can do so here: https://venmo.com/AshleyHasty or here: http://paypal.me/hastybooklist.
Books Publishing This Week: April 13 - 19
One Death at a Time by Abbi Waxman
Author Interview with Abbi Waxman
A cranky former actress teams up with her Gen Z sobriety sponsor to solve the murder that threatens to send her back to prison in this dazzling new mystery novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.
When Julia Mann, a bad-tempered ex-actress and professional thorn in the side of authority, runs into Natasha Mason at an AA meeting, it’s anything but a meet-cute. Julia just found a dead body in her swimming pool, and the cops say she did it (she already went to jail for murder once, so now they think she’s making a habit of it). Mason is eager to clear Julia’s name and help keep her sober, but all Julia wants is for Mason to leave her alone.
As their investigation ranges from the Hollywood Hills to the world of burlesque to the country clubs of Palm Springs, this unconventional team realizes their shared love of sarcasm and poor life choices are proving to be a powerful combination. Will secrets from their past trip them up, or will their team of showgirls, cat burglars, and Hollywood agents help them stay one step ahead? Are dead piranhas, false noses, and a giant martini glass important clues or simply your typical day in Los Angeles? And will they manage to solve the crime before they kill each other, or worse, fall off the wagon? Trying to keep it simple and take it easy is one thing—trying to find a murderer before they kill again is a whole other program.
Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B? by Terri-Lynne DeFino
For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn’t.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she’d fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale’s future dreams don’t hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina’s passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it’s a turning point for them both.
It’s Gale’s time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…
Watch Me Deluxe Limited Edition (The Shatter Me Series: The New Republic by Tahereh Mafi
James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win.
It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo—Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson—led a worldwide rebellion and established the New Republic of the West. But after a decade of unsettling quiet, The Reestablishment is ready to make a devastating move, and they have the perfect person for the job.
Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. She always has a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence—and when she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates.
Brimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, Watch Me is an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape where enemies-to-lovers has never felt more impossible. Step into a beloved and breathtaking world that demands an answer to a desperate question—
Who are we when no one is watching?
All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis
In this compelling, moving story about brotherhood, identity, and social justice, a Black, autistic teen tries to figure out what happened the night his older brother was unjustly arrested.
All Aiden has ever wanted to do was play football just like his star quarterback brother, Brandon. An overstimulation meltdown gets in the way of Aiden making the team during summer tryouts, but when the school year starts and a spot unexpectedly needs to be filled, he finally gets a chance to play the game he loves.
However, not every player is happy about the new addition to the team, wary of how Aiden’s autism will present itself on game day. Tensions rise. A fight breaks out. Cops are called.
Brandon interferes on behalf of his brother, but is arrested by the very same cops who, just hours earlier, were chanting his name from the bleachers. When he’s wrongly charged for felony assault on an officer, everything Brandon has worked for starts to slip away, and the brothers’ relationship is tested. As Brandon’s trial inches closer, Aiden is desperate to figure out what really happened that night. Can he clear his brother’s name in time?
Things Left Unsaid by Sara Jafari
When twenty-six year old Shirin Bayat bumps into Kian at a house party in London, she is taken aback by the immediate feelings that resurface. It’s been a decade since they were close friends at school, before painful events pulled them apart, suddenly and seemingly forever. Ever since, Shirin has lived with the aching weight of things left unsaid between them.
Now they're back in each other's lives, at a time when Shirin needs someone she can trust the most. Feeling stuck in a sea of slippery friendships and deeply burned out by her publishing job, Kian is a bright light amongst a sea of gray. There’s nothing worse than losing the person you trust most with your deepest secrets and desires, and Shirin and Kian are determined to hold tightly to each other.
But of course, life often has other plans. Will it be different this time around, or are Shirin and Kian destined to fall apart once more?
The Murder Show by Matt Goldman
Showrunner Ethan Harris had a hit with The Murder Show, a television crime drama that features a private detective who solves cases the police can’t. But after his pitch for the fourth season is rejected by the network, he returns home to Minnesota looking for inspiration.
His timing is fortunate ― his former classmate Ro Greeman is now a local police officer, and she's uncovered new information about the devastating hit and run that killed their mutual friend Ricky the summer after high school. She asks Ethan to help her investigate and thinks that if he portrays the killing on The Murder Show, the publicity may bring Ricky's killer to justice.
Ethan is skeptical that Ricky's death was anything but a horrible accident, but with the clock running out on his career, he's willing to try anything. It doesn't take long for them to realize they've dug up more than they bargained for. Someone is dead set on stopping Ethan and Ro from looking too closely into Ricky’s death ― even if keeping them quiet means killing again...
The Murder Show is a pulse-racing novel about secrets, old friends, and how the past never leaves us by New York Times bestselling and Emmy Award winning author Matt Goldman!
The Marriage Sabbatical by Lian Dolan
Author Interview with Lian Dolan
After twenty-three years of building careers and raising kids together, Jason and Nicole Elswick are ready for a break from their daily lives. Jason has spent years planning his dream sabbatical—ditching work for a nine-month-long motorcycle trip through South America. Problem is, that’s Jason’s dream, not Nicole’s. After years working retail and parenting in Portland, Nicole craves the sun of the Southwest and the artistic community in Santa Fe, where she wants to learn jewelry design.
A chance encounter at a dinner party presents a surprising—and intriguing—way out of their dilemma. Over a little too much wine, Jason and Nicole’s married neighbors sing the praises of the 500 Mile Rule: their policy of enjoying themselves however they wish—and with whomever they wish—when they’re temporarily far apart. It seems like the perfect solution: nine months pursuing their own adventures—with a bit of don’t-ask-don’t-tell—and then a return to their shared lives. It’ll be a sabbatical from their marriage as well as their day jobs.
As Jason bikes his way across a continent and Nicole reclaims the art she’s long neglected, they discover the pleasures and pitfalls of the 500 Mile Rule, confronting temptations of all kinds, uncomfortable truths about themselves, and gaining new perspective on their partnership.
But all sabbaticals come to an end…then what?
Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris
Author Interview with C.S. Harris
August 1816. England is in the grip of what will become known as the Year Without a Summer. Facing the twin crises of a harvest-destroying volcanic winter and the economic disruption caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British monarchy finds itself haunted by the looming threat of bloody riots not seen since the earliest days of the French Revolution. Amidst the turmoil, a dead man is found hanging upside down by one leg in an abandoned chapel, his hands tied behind his back. The pose eerily echoes the image depicted on a tarot card known as Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The victim—Lord Preston Farnsworth, the younger brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions—was a passionate crusader against what he called the forces of darkness, namely criminality, immorality, and sloth. His brutal murder shocks the Palace and panics the already troubled populace.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, learns of the murder from a ragged orphan who leads him to the corpse and then disappears. At first, everyone in the dead man’s orbit paints Lord Preston as a selfless saint. But Sebastian quickly realizes that the man had accumulated more than his fair share of enemies, including Major Hugh Chandler, a close friend of Sebastian’s who once saved his life. Sebastian also discovers that the pious Lord Preston may have been much more dangerous than those he sought to redeem.
As dark clouds press down on the city and the rains fall unceasingly, two more victims are found, one strangled and one shot, with ominous tarot cards placed on their bodies. The killer is sending a gruesome message and Sebastian is running out of time to decipher it before more lives are lost and a fraught post-war London explodes.
Pride or Die by CL Montblanc
In this delightful dark comedy debut, when the members of an LGBTQ+ club find themselves accidentally framed for attempted murder, it's up to them to clear their names before it's too late. It’s kind of hard to graduate high school when you’re the prime suspect in an attempted murder. Seventeen-year-old Eleanora Finkel just wants to finish her senior year and get the hell out of Texas. But when her LGBTQ+ club meeting inconveniently coincides with an attack on the school’s head cheerleader, she and her friends find themselves in the hot seat. In order to clear their names and ensure the survival of their club for future queer teens, they’ll have to track down the real culprit themselves. Unfortunately, Eleanora is far from a professional detective; she’s riddled with anxiety, annoyingly attracted to the case’s cute victim, and her trusty crochet hook feels insufficient for fighting off a killer. But if her chaotic friend group can't sleuth their way out of an entire freaking murder mystery, they might just become the next targets.
Wild and Wrangled by Lyla Sage
She’s the one that got away. He’s the one that never let her go.
From the bestselling author of Done and Dusted and Swift and Saddled, the next book in the Rebel Blue Ranch series, a small-town romance in which past lovers get a second chance to rediscover what they lost
“The perfect farewell . . . I dare you to get to the last page without turning right back around to walk through the gates of Rebel Blue all over again. I’ll see you there.”—Jessica Joyce, USA Today bestselling author of The Ex Vows
Camille Ashwood had always loved a plan. Her latest was her best yet. She was going to get married so she could secure her daughter’s future, get her overbearing parents off her back, and finally start building her own life in small-town Meadowlark, Wyoming. Easy, right?
But when her groom doesn’t show up to the wedding, Cam’s life is turned upside down—she doesn’t even have a place to live. That is until she finds out the house she’s loved since high school is available to rent. There’s only one problem: the neighbor.
Dusty Tucker has spent nearly all of his adult life running. Running from what, though? More like who: Cam Ashwood. But ever since he returned home last year, the girl who was his first, well, everything has become a woman seemingly determined to keep him at arm’s length. And he was okay with that—at least, that’s what he kept telling himself. She was getting married, after all. But now she’s single and living next door. Dusty wants to show her that they can be friends, and that he can stay put.
Despite her best attempts to stay far away from Dusty Tucker, Cam realizes that being close to him is like slipping into her favorite jeans. Easy. Comfortable. That is until past wounds start to open and feelings—both old and new—wreak havoc. Nearly ten years after they first met, Dusty and Cam begin to wonder if their first love can also be their last. And this time, will it be forever?
Saving Vincent by Joan Fernandez
In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh Bonger lives safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passion for selling the work of unknown artists, especially his ill-fated dead brother, Vincent. When Theo dies unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness is shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—is worthless. Pressured to move to her parents’ home, Jo defies tradition, instead choosing to open a boarding house, raise her infant son alone, and promote Vincent’s art herself. Her ingenuity and persistence draw the opposition of a powerful Parisian art dealer who vows to prevent her success. How will Jo overcome the forces working against her, and save herself along with Vincent?
Another Fine Mess by Lindy Ryan
From Lindy Ryan, "one of the most electrifying voices in the horror genre” (Gwendolyn Kiste), Another Fine Mess brings the Evans women back around in this unputdownable, crackling, rollicking mystery of humor, heart, and horror.
Making sure dead things stay buried is the family business ...
For over a hundred years, the Evans women have kept the undead in their strange southeast Texas town from rising. But sometimes the dead rise too quick–and that’s what left Lenore Evans, and her granddaughter Luna, burying Luna’s mother, Grace, and Lenore’s mother, Ducey. Now the only two women left in the Evans family, Luna and Lenore are left rudderless in the wake of the most Godawful Mess to date.
But when the full moon finds another victim, it’s clear their trouble is far from over. Now Lenore, Luna, and the new sheriff―their biggest ally―must dig deep down into family lore to uncover what threatens everything they love most. The body count ticks up, the most unexpected dead will rise–forcing Lenore and Luna to face the possibility that the undead aren’t the only monsters preying on their small town.
The Perfect Divorce by Jeneva Rose
Author Interview with Jeneva Rose
From the author of the multimillion-copy bestselling thriller The Perfect Marriage
Till death do us part. Yours. Not Mine.
It’s been eleven years since high-powered attorney Sarah Morgan defended her husband, Adam, against the charge of murdering his mistress. Sarah has long since moved on, starting a family with her new husband, Bob Miller, and changing careers. Her life is back to being exactly how she always wanted … or is it?
After discovering Bob engaged in a one-night stand, Sarah wastes no time filing for divorce. However, amid their ugly separation, new DNA evidence is uncovered in the case against Adam, forcing the police to reopen the investigation and putting Sarah right back in the spotlight. Everyone wants to know what really happened, most of all former deputy Marcus Hudson, who is hell-bent on finding the truth.
But when the woman Bob slept with is reported missing, he and Sarah start to fight dirty, and a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues. Filled with page-turning suspense and Jeneva Rose’s signature twists and turns, this book will have readers wondering, Can Bob and Sarah achieve the perfect divorce? Or will it be “till death do us part”?
The Art of Change by Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff
In a world of unprecedented disruption, mastering the art of change isn't just an advantage—it's essential for survival.
Drawing from decades of work with global organizations, military commanders, and NASA leaders, Jeff and Staney DeGraff reveal how true transformation emerges not from avoiding contradictions, but from embracing them.
This groundbreaking book, the third installation in their comprehensive innovation series, introduces a revolutionary framework for understanding and leveraging paradox. Through rich storytelling and battle-tested strategies, the DeGraffs unpack seven fundamental contradictions that define transformative growth:
How do we achieve more by doing less? Why does certainty often lead to failure, while embracing uncertainty paves the path to breakthrough? When does resistance become the catalyst for change? The Art of Change demonstrates how these seeming contradictions hold the key to profound transformation—both personally and professionally.
This isn't just another business book—it's a practical philosophy for navigating complexity in dynamic environments. Whether you're leading a Fortune 500 company, steering a non-profit through turbulent times, or seeking personal growth, you'll discover:
A proven framework for turning obstacles into opportunities
Practical tools for making better decisions in ambiguous situations
Strategies for building resilience through embracing paradox
Methods for driving innovation by challenging conventional wisdom
Techniques for leading transformational change in any environment
The Art of Change completes a pioneering trilogy that establishes a comprehensive school of thought around innovation and transformation. Building on the foundations laid in their previous works, the DeGraffs provide their most sophisticated and nuanced exploration yet of how to drive meaningful change in complex systems.
Don't just manage change—master it. Learn how to transform paradoxes into breakthroughs and turn uncertainty into your greatest advantage. The Art of Change is your essential guide to navigating the contradictions that define our era and achieving lasting transformation in an increasingly fluid world.
