Books Publishing This Week
Books Publishing This Week: March 24 - 30
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As you wake up on a March weekend in early Spring, a sense of anticipation fills the air. The sunlight filtering through your curtains carries a hint of warmth, promising the emergence of new life after the long winter slumber. With a gentle breeze stirring outside, you feel the urge to embrace the tranquility of the season, to immerse yourself in a world of words and imagination.
Stepping into your cozy reading nook, you eye the stack of books awaiting your attention. Yet, today, a new addition catches your eye—a book you've been eagerly anticipating, its cover a tantalizing glimpse into a world yet unexplored. You reach out, running your fingers over the embossed title, feeling a surge of excitement course through you.
Settling into your favorite armchair, you crack open the book, releasing the scent of freshly printed pages mingling with the subtle aroma of spring blossoms drifting in from the window. As you delve into the first chapter, you feel yourself being transported to a realm where time slows and worries melt away. The outside world fades into insignificance as you lose yourself in the narrative, each word a brushstroke painting vivid scenes in your mind.
The characters come alive, their struggles and triumphs resonating with your own experiences. You laugh with them, you cry with them, and you root for them as they navigate the twists and turns of their journey. With each page turned, you find yourself drawn deeper into the story, eagerly anticipating what lies ahead.
Outside, the world carries on its bustling pace, but within the pages of your book, time seems to stand still. You lose track of hours, engrossed in the magic of storytelling, the rhythm of your breath matching the ebb and flow of the narrative. The afternoon sun dances across the room, casting long shadows that seem to whisper secrets of distant lands and forgotten tales.
Occasionally, you pause to savor a particularly poignant passage, allowing the words to wash over you like a gentle tide, leaving behind a sense of wonder and contemplation. The author's prose weaves a tapestry of emotions, painting scenes so vivid you can almost reach out and touch them.
As evening approaches, you reluctantly set the book aside, though its characters linger in your thoughts like old friends bidding farewell. The fading light outside heralds the end of another day, but in your heart, a newfound sense of inspiration blooms—a seed planted by the words you've consumed, ready to take root and flourish in the days to come.
With a contented sigh, you close the book, its cover a promise of future adventures yet to unfold. As you reflect on the journey you've just embarked upon, you can't help but feel grateful for the opportunity to lose yourself in the pages of a story—a simple pleasure that never fails to renew your spirit and ignite your imagination.
As the stars twinkle into existence outside your window, you carry the echoes of the story with you into the night, eager to return to its embrace when the dawn breaks on another March weekend in early Spring. For in the world of books, there are endless possibilities waiting to be discovered, and with each new page turned, you find yourself one step closer to unlocking the mysteries of the universe.
Scroll down to find out what book you might be reading…
The Truth about the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline
Author Interview with Lisa Scottoline.
TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm—except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can’t get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator.
But one night, TJ’s world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he just murdered one of the clients, an accountant he’d confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.
TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first.
The Good, The Bad, and The Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
What should have been a family celebration of Chinese New Year descends into chaos when longtime foes crash the party in this hilariously entertaining novel by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.
After an ultra-romantic honeymoon across Europe, Meddy Chan and her husband Nathan have landed in Jakarta to spend Chinese New Year with her entire extended family. Chinese New Year, already the biggest celebration of the Lunar calendar, gets even more festive when a former beau of Second Aunt’s shows up at the Chan residence bearing extravagant gifts—he’s determined to rekindle his romance with Second Aunt and the gifts are his way of announcing his courtship.
His grand gesture goes awry however, when it’s discovered that not all the gifts were meant for Second Aunt and the Chans—one particular gift was intended for a business rival to cement their alliance and included by accident. Of course the Aunties agree that it’s only right to return the gift—after all, anyone would forgive an honest mistake, right? But what should have been a simple retrieval turns disastrous and suddenly Meddy and the Aunties are helpless pawns in a decades-long war between Jakarta’s most powerful business factions. The fighting turns personal, however, when Nathan and the Aunties are endangered and it’s up to Meddy to come up with a plan to save them all. Determined to rescue her loved ones, Meddy embarks on an impossible mission—but with the Aunties by her side, nothing is truly impossible…
Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.
Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.
It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.
The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.
(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)
Half-Lives by Lynn Schmeidler
A playful debut short story collection imagining women's lives in a world free of social limitations.
Amid heightened restrictions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, Lynn Schmeidler's debut short story collection, Half-Lives, is a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women's bodies and psyches. Playful and experimental, these sixteen stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where structures of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply. The protagonists grapple with the roles they choose and with those that are thrust upon them as they navigate their ever-evolving emotional lives. A woman lists her vagina on Airbnb, Sleeping Beauty is a yoga teacher who lies in state on the dais of her mother's studio, and a museum intern writes a confession of her affair in the form of a hijacked museum audio guide.
Half-Lives is the 2023 Rising Writer Prize winner, selected by Matt Bell.
Everyone Is Watching by Heather Gudenkauf
The Best Friend. The Confidante. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Exec.
Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them know what (or who) to expect, and it will be livestreamed. Completely secluded in an estate in northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated.
When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality TV show—someone is out for blood. And the game can’t end until the world knows who the contestants really are…
Studies at the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan
Author Interview with Jenny Colgan.
The long-awaited and never-before published finale in New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan’s delightful School by the Sea series.
After all those lessons, it’s time to graduate....
Beloved literature teacher Maggie Adair loves her life at the prestigious Downey House boarding school on the gloriously sunny, windy English coast. It was there that she found her footing as a teacher and fell in love with her colleague David—the two great anchors of her life. But these days Maggie’s feeling restless, lured by the promise of a different life back in her Scottish hometown. How can you follow your heart when it seems to be taking you in two directions at once?
Meanwhile, Maggie’s favorite students are abuzz at the thought of graduation and set to fly the nest to their next adventure. What will life hold for mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice, and shy, hard-working Simone when they finally finish their studies at the school by the sea? Will Maggie stay to welcome the next class of girls, or will she too graduate to new adventures?
Zandi's Song by Zandile Ndhlovu
Zandi is a girl on a mission: to bring a message of conservation to the world.
Zandi was always thinking and dreaming about the ocean. Then, one special day, the ocean calls for her. Zandi tentatively approaches the water—and that’s when her adventure begins! She soon finds herself transformed into a mermaid and on an unforgettable underwater journey, where she hears the song of the ocean.
But there is something threatening this magical world. Is the key to protecting it buried in stories from the past? Join Zandi in her mission to protect our beloved oceans, in this inspiring story written by South Africa’s first Black female free diving instructor.
The Seafarer's Secret by Carol Ann Collins
Secrets are revealed. Lies are exposed. And in order to have a future, William and Eva will have to delve into the past.
William Templeton, widower and police chief of Eden, North Carolina is working the scene of a local woman's drowning when the body is found with an old gold coin in her pocket – identical to a coin that was discovered on Catherine's body, his estranged wife, over a year ago. Catherine's case, originally deemed a tragic accident, has been reopened, forcing William to step down as police chief.
Historian and Blackbeard expert, Eva Knightly, is brought into the investigation to help identify the coins and can't understand why her good friend Catherine never mentioned anything about it. When more coins surface at a local church, Eva and William know it's more than mere coincidence. With the entire town whispering about Blackbeard, cursed coins, and lost treasure, it becomes hard to separate what is true and what is a myth.
The Seafarer's Secret is a thrilling cinematic mystery featuring the exigent slow-burning romance between William and Eva as they work together to reveal the secrets and lies of Eden, North Carolina. Though, in order to have a future, they'll have to look deep into the past to keep from being a modern-day killer's next victim.
Closet of Dreams by Mark Ukra and Tara Mesalik MacMahon
When your fears disappear, your dreams appear! Child is a nine-year old aspiring pitcher who dreams of playing on his local little league team. But his plans are put on hold when a gang of bullies targets him. He confides in his grandmother, Gamma, and she sends him to the Closet of Dreams, a place she invented so that he’d have a safe place to go when he gets scared. A star-pitcher back in her day, Gamma now works with rescued circus animals. When Child sees his animal friends have hidden talents, he turns to them for help. Can Child put his fears aside and save his team?
Forgetting to Remember by M.J. Rose
Discover a spellbinding love story in this dazzling time-travel adventure from the NYT bestselling author of The Last Tiara, M.J. Rose.
Setting aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of jewel-framed miniature eye portraits—a brilliant romantic device and clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One piece among the assembly intrigues her more than all the others: a twilight-blue man’s eye framed by opals shimmering with enchanting flashes of fiery color. But the beauty is just the beginning. Not only is the painting a self-portrait of one of her favorite Pre-Raphaelite artists, Ashe Lloyd Lewis, but the brooch itself is a portal eight decades into the past.
Despite being cast into an era she was never meant to be in, Jeannine and Ashe develop an immediate and passionate bond, complicated by the undeniable fact that she does not belong in 1867, and the disaster about to destroy her family and reputation in her time.
Striving to live a dual life and dangerously straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her career and her father from scandal in the present while desperately trying to save her lover’s life in the past.
Night and Its Longings by Philip Cioffari
Jake Garrett, a writer living in New York’s Greenwich Village, is paid a surprising late-night visit from the husband whose wife, Vera, Jake had an affair with ten years earlier. Even more surprising: the husband asks Jake to help find her, for she’s disappeared. Jake is thrust back into a world he thought had been lost to him forever. Jake’s undying love for Vera propels his search for her through the night-time streets of the city and, finally, to the remote beaches of the Carolina coast. This is a tale of lost love, adultery, and crime told in a taut, lyrical style—keeping the love story and the mystery inseparably intertwined. At its heart pulses the greatest mystery of all: the Self—why we do what we do, how we make amends for a life gone wrong, and how in the darkness of night, we see ourselves in the clearest light.
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