Books Coming Out in December
Book Roundup - Books Coming Out in December
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An Impossible Return by Caroline Laurent, Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Winner of the Prix Maison de la Presse
An epic love story set against a backdrop of injustice, devastating secrets, and the painful price of independence.
It’s 1967 in the Chagos archipelago―a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean―and life is peaceful and easy for hardworking Marie. Her fierce independence and love for her home are quickly apparent to Gabriel, the handsome and sophisticated Mauritian secretary to the archipelago’s administrator; it’s love at first sight. As these two lovers from neighboring islands welcome a new son, Joséphin, a bright future seems possible. But Gabriel is hiding a terrible secret. The Mauritian government is negotiating independence from Britain, and this deal with the devil will mean evacuating the Chagos, without warning or mercy―a betrayal that will put their love to the test.
Inspired by a shocking travesty of justice, the repercussions of which still reverberate more than fifty years later, bestselling Franco-Mauritian author Caroline Laurent paints a shimmering portrait of island life, a sensual paradise lost, and a gorgeous star-crossed love against all odds.
The Widow by Kaira Rouda
A husband with secrets. A wife with no limits. A riveting novel of marriage, privilege, and lies by Kaira Rouda, the USA Today bestselling author of The Next Wife.
Jody Asher had a plan. Her charismatic husband, Martin, would be a political icon. She, the charming wife, would fuel his success. For fifteen congressional terms, they were the golden couple on the Hill. Life was good. Until he wasn’t.
Martin’s secret affair with a young staffer doesn’t bother Jody personally. But professionally? It’s a legacy killer. Soon a reporter gets word of this scandal in the making, and Martin’s indiscretions threaten to ruin everything Jody has accomplished.
When Martin suddenly dies, it’s a chance to change the narrative—but the reporter won’t let go of his lead. As the balance of power shifts in the Asher house and on the Hill, it’s time for Jody to take control. And there’s nothing the ruthless widow won’t do to secure the future she’s entitled to. Even if she has a secret of her own.
Chasing Your Tail by Kate McMurray
Pastry chef Brad Marks is the new hot thing at the Whitman Street Cat Café; he makes tasty treats for both the human and feline guests at the café. All the patrons love him, and freelance writer Lindsay Somers understands why; five years ago, she was smitten by his charms too—until Brad broke her heart. Lindsay is happy with her new gig at a trendy weekly magazine, but when her boss assigns her to do a story on the cat café, she's thrown back into Brad's orbit yet again...
Fortress of Snow by Melanie Dickerson
Having spent most of her life behind the relative safety of her castle walls, Mazy is itching to go beyond and travel to far off lands with her father, but when he dies unexpectedly and her oldest brother abandons her, Mazy must travel to her other brother’s estate for aid. While there, she kindles and unexpected friendship with Sir Berenger of Dericott, a dashing and noble man with dreams to rescue a damsel in distress. But Mazy doesn’t need saving – in fact, her skills with a bow and knife rival that of the best knight, so when Sir Berenger is called off to war, he makes plans to distinguish himself in battle. When he returns, however, the King wants to recognize his service through marriage to a wealthy and titled widow, but Mazy begins to suspect that more than a marriage might be afoot and treachery lurks in the shadows, so she embarks on a journey to warn her friend and perhaps secure her own fairy-tale ending. Can Mazy claim the independence she so desperately wants and save her knight, and possibly her love, in the process?
Terra Nova by Henriette Lazaridis
The year is 1910, and two Antarctic explorers, Watts and Heywoud, are racing to the South Pole. Back in London, Viola, a photo-journalist, harbors love for them both. In Terra Nova, Henriette Lazaridis seamlessly ushers the reader back and forth between the austere, forbidding, yet intoxicating polar landscape of Antarctica to the bustle of early twentieth century London.
Though anxious for both men, Viola has little time to pine. She is photographing hunger strikers in the suffrage movement, capturing the female nude in challenging and politically powerful ways. As she comes into her own as an artist, she's eager for recognition and to fulfill her ambitions. And then the men return, eager to share news of their triumph.
But in her darkroom, Viola discovers a lie. Watts and Heywoud have doctored their photos of the Pole to fake their success. Viola must now decide whether to betray her husband and her lover, or keep their secret and use their fame to help her persue her artistic ambitions.
Witcha Gonna Do? by Avery Flynn
A witch with no magical abilities and her know-it-all nemesis must team up in the first of a new, hot romantic comedy series from USA Today bestselling author Avery Flynn.
Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca
A high-powered attorney from a success-oriented family, Louisa "Lulu" Malone lives to work, and everything seems to be going right, until the day she realizes it’s all wrong. Lulu’s cousin Mitch introduced her to the world of Renaissance Faires, and when she spies one at a time just when she needs an escape, she leaps into the welcoming environment of turkey legs, taverns, and tarot readers. The only drawback? Dex MacLean: a guitarist with a killer smile, the Casanova of the Faire… and her traveling companion for the summer.
Dex has never had to work for much in his life, and why should he? Touring with his brothers as The Dueling Kilts is going great, and he always finds a woman at every Faire. But when Lulu proves indifferent to his many plaid charms and a shake-up threatens the fate of the band, Dex must confront something he never has before: his future.
Forced to spend days and nights together on the road, Lulu’s interest in the kilted bad boy grows as he shows her a side of himself no one else has seen. The stresses of her old lifestyle fade away as she learns to trust her intuition and follow her heart instead of her head. But when her time on the road is over, will Lulu go with her gut, or are she and Dex destined for separate paths?
The Golden Land by Elizabeth Shick
A debut novel that digs deep into the complexities of family history and relationships.
When Etta’s grandmother dies, she is compelled to travel to Myanmar to explore complicated adolescent memories of her grandmother’s family and the violence she witnessed there. Full of rich detail and complex relationships, The Golden Land explores those personal narratives that might lie beneath the surface of historical accounts.
The Sunshine Girls by Molly Fader
Two friends. A lifetime of secrets. One sparkling story.
1967 Iowa. Nursing school roommates BettyKay and Kitty don’t have much in common. BettyKay has risked her family’s disapproval to pursue her dreams away from her small town. Cosmopolitan Kitty has always relied on her beauty and smarts to get by and to hide a painful secret. Yet the two share a determination to prove themselves in a changing world, forging an unlikely bond on a campus unkind to women.
Before their first year is up, tragedy strikes, and the women’s paths are forced apart. But against all odds, a decades-long friendship forms, persevering through love, marriage, failure, and death, from the jungles of Vietnam to the glamorous circles of Hollywood. Until one snowy night leads their relationship to the ultimate crossroads.
Fifty years later, two estranged sisters are shocked when a famous movie star shows up at their mother's funeral. Over one tumultuous weekend, the women must reckon with a dazzling truth about their family that will alter their lives forever...
Your Table is Ready by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants.
From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolini helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.
Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, YOUR TABLE IS READY (St. Martin's Press, December 6, $29.99) takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.
From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at Larousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In YOUR TABLE IS READY, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.
YOUR TABLE IS READY is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.
The Third Instinct by Kent Lester
A high-octane thriller that sets Dan Clifford against ancient secret societies vying for power in the modern world; in the vein of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series.
In The Third Instinct, author Kent Lester brings his signature blend of cutting-edge science, history, and pulse-pounding action to the next Dan Clifford adventure.
A shadowy group of bio-hackers called the Firemen threaten to worsen the Covid pandemic by releasing an even more lethal version of the pathogen. But what drives the Firemen and how do their motivations relate to the wealth of the Roman Empire and to the third basic human instinct?
The answers may lie with prediction scientist Dan Clifford. Unemployed and struggling with two years of pandemic isolation, he is rebuilding both his career and personal life. His plans to propose to his adrenaline-junkie girlfriend, Rachel Sullivan, are interrupted by the FBI. Dan must connect a maze of clues from the shadowy underworld of Savannah's hacker community, to the ancient powerbrokers of Rome and in doing so, uncover a hidden agenda of big Pharma and a two-thousand-year-old battle for control of public opinion.
The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique by Samantha Verant
A talented chef discovers how spices and scents can transport her—and, more importantly, how self-confidence can unlock the greatest magic of all: love—in this perfectly seasoned new novel by Samantha Vérant.
Kate Jenkins doesn’t believe in fate. She believes in a clear vision, meticulous planning, and hard work in order to achieve her culinary dreams. On the cusp of opening her own Parisian restaurant, Bistro Exotique, she isn’t even concerned when her standoffish—and annoyingly sexy—neighbor dismisses her as a crazy American tourist or when she meets the wildly eccentric Garrance, the self-proclaimed Spice Master of Paris, who ominously warns her of the previous owner’s failures.
Confident and optimistic, Kate keeps calm and cooks on. Until a series of unfortunate events derail her plans and her entire staff quits.
Kate is about to throw in the kitchen towel on her lifelong dream when Garrance offers to use her mastery of scents and spices to help her, but it comes at a price: Kate must work with Garrance’s son, Charles, a world-class chef and total jerk. After Kate hesitantly concedes to the deal, she slowly learns to open her heart and mind to new concepts, not quite sure if the magic she’s experiencing comes from Garrance’s spices, from within herself, or from the growing chemistry with Charles. One thing is certain, though: her kitchen is getting increasingly hot.
The Den by Cara Reinard
When the patriarch of the Fox family suffers from a heart attack, leaving behind a large inheritance, his four children (along with their long-time former housekeeper) can’t help but come together at his deathbed. Valerie, the eldest, hopes for the family reunion to be amicable, but everyone quickly realizes that the fewer of them there are, the bigger their share of the inheritance. Who will inherit fortune? Who can be trusted? All these questions and more are explored in this can’t-miss domestic suspense.
Oranges for Magellan by Richard Martin
Everything good in Joe Magellan's life—family, teaching career, sanity—has been undermined by his baffling compulsion: breaking the world record for flagpole-sitting. Through the years Joe has made seven attempts at the record, his best effort a measly eleven days. Oranges begins on January 20, 1981, the day Joe is 'cured' of his compulsion at Dr. Malcolm Kerridge's 'Out, Damn Obsession!' seminar. Alas, the charlatan's cure does not take. Joe immediately stumbles upon the perfect flagpole, sixty feet high, and, before long, to the horror of his wife and son, he climbs up and settles in on a ten-foot-square redwood platform for one final assault on the record, while Clover and Nate run the little cafÉ below. Joe's pursuit of the pole-sitting grail is disrupted by Clover's budding artistic aspirations; by Nate's rebellion at J. Edgar Hoover Middle School; by the seductions of Joe by an ex-seminar mate and of Clover by an art gallery owner; by the commercialization and massive popularity of the pole-sitting enterprise; and by the ruthless Shipwreck Blake, who both terrorizes and inspires Joe with assistance from the spirit of the original pole-sitter Simeon Stylites, the 5th century monk who dwelt on a pillar for thirty years.
A Light in the Forest by Melissa Payne
Bestselling author Melissa Payne’s past novels The Night of Many Endings, Memories in the Driftand The Secrets of Lost Stones have been praised as “richly layered and compassionate” (Booklist), “emotional” (Library Journal) and “sparked with magic” (author Sonja Yoerg). This winter, readers will be taken on a suspenseful journey sparked with hope in her unputdownable new novel, A Light in the Forest (On Sale: December 13, 2022; Lake Union Publishing; paperback; 9781662503689).
“A Light in the Forest is a story about resilience and courage in the face of generational trauma,” says Payne. “It follows the tale of a woman who spent her life hiding from the truth, a young mother struggling to escape an abusive relationship, and a community of people willing to protect and support their own. It’s about finding hope, even in the darkest of times, and learning to trust others when everything seems lost.”
The Lipstick Bureau by Michelle Gable
Inspired by one of the OSS’s few female operatives, Barbara Lauwers, a WWII novel set at OSS’s Morale Office in Rome, which was responsible for creating black propaganda and distributing it behind enemy lines. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller's Secret.
1944, Rome: Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of OSS's few female operatives abroad and multi-lingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers.
Despite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers, and others?now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau?find success, forming a bond amid the cobblestone streets and storied villas of the newly liberated city. But her work is also a way to escape devastating truths about the family she left behind in Czechoslovakia and a future with her controlling American husband.
As the war drags on and the pressure intensifies, Niki begins to question the rules she's been instructed to follow, and a colleague unexpectedly captures her heart. But one step out of line, one mistake, could mean life or death...
Loosely inspired by real-life OSS operative Barbara Lauwers, Michelle Gable's The Lipstick Bureau is about a woman challenging convention and boundaries to help win a war, no matter the cost.
Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson
Stevie Bell solved the case of Truly Devious, and now she’s taking her detecting skills abroad when she becomes embroiled in a mystery from 1990s England. Another pulse-pounding and laugh-out-loud stand-alone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.
Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain—questions about college, love, and life in general.
Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.
The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.
Seven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.
Cinderella and the Duke by Lydia Drake
The Weatherford Ball is the last chance Julia Beaumont has to escape the clutches of her horrid stepmother. Any potential husband will do―rich, poor, even a reasonably well-groomed walrus. But all of Julia’s matrimonial chances are completely obliterated…thanks to the actions of an infuriating and utterly rakish duke.
Gregory Carter, Duke of Ashworth, would never risk his cherished bachelorhood by flirting with marriage-starved debutantes. But one look at the luscious and refreshingly clever Julia, and he simply can’t resist a stolen kiss―scandal be damned. Then just as things start getting deliciously interesting, the lady flees…leaving only a slipper behind.
And it must have been one dandy of a kiss. Because now Julia has proposed to him. After all, the lady needs a husband, and this roguish duke will certainly do. It’s simply a matter of making him the perfect scandalous offer…
Never Cross a Highlander by Lisa Rayne
Ailsa Connery has waited three long years to finally escape her enslavement at Stirling Castle and reunite with her clan. But her carefully laid plans are completely destroyed by the arrival of the infamous Highland warrior known as Dubh Mahoun, the Black Devil...who has plans of his own.
Kallum MacNeill's fearsome reputation has long allowed him to keep hidden his secret double life of freeing enslaved captives across the land. It's only when he kidnaps a servant lass―quite by accident―that he finds himself facing a wee predicament. He must accompany the lass home or risk her exposing his true identity. It'd be easy enough...if the feisty hellion didn't fight him at every turn.
As they make their way to the Highlands, the perils the two must face are surpassed only by their constant sparring. Soon, their heated sniping sparks heat of a totally different kind. The kind that ignites a hunger that could consume them both. Yet the difficult journey is no match for the dangerous secrets they're about to uncover.
