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Thriller

(144)

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My first job out of college was managing a dive shop. I spent my days filling scuba tanks, selling dive equipment, and listening to customers’ tales of wreck dives, night dives, and deepwater dives. I learned the many rules of surviving underwater, but I was truly just an amateur diving enthusiast.

Sloan McPherson, the fearless lead character in Andrew Mayne’s new series, is anything but an amateur. She is far more comfortable below the waterline than above. When Sloan isn’t recovering bodies and evidence for the Lauderdale Shores police force, she is studying underwater archaeology.

On one of Sloan’s academic dives in a murky canal, she can barely see a foot ahead of her, and she has broken an important rule of scuba: never dive alone. So when she hears a big splash nearby, she assumes it’s an alligator. But it’s much worse: a dead body has been dumped in the canal. Soon Sloan realizes she knows the victim and becomes embroiled in the crime—as an investigator and the investigated.

Wall Street Journal bestselling author Andrew Mayne is the absolute master of creating gutsy characters who thrive in extreme circumstances. I found myself almost gasping as I followed Sloan into the fantastical and shadowy underwater world. But I was careful to remember the first rule of scuba diving: never hold your breath.

— Liz Pearsons, Editor

(41)

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Why her and not me? It’s a seemingly simple question, but as psychology professor Jackie Strelitz discovers in Stories We Never Told, no question is without consequence.

Jackie is, for the most part, content in her career and marriage. But she’s completely thrown when her former lover and colleague, Harlan, returns from sabbatical and strikes up a romance with Jackie’s new associate. Their relationship sends Jackie into a tailspin of obsession, secrets, and questioning, leading her to truths that shatter the carefully constructed walls of her life.

Stories We Never Told is a gripping novel made all the more satisfying by author Sonja Yoerg’s masterful writing. The suspense builds slowly, tensions mount with each page, and dark revelations come to light in shocking ways. As Jackie is forced to examine everything she thought she knew about herself and those around her, she realizes we all have a story to tell. We often keep those stories close, but opening ourselves to others is the only way to find the ending we deserve.

— Chris Werner, Editor

(34)

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I saw a heartwarming story recently about a woman who took in a teenage boy who showed up on her doorstep. He needed shelter. She needed company. And a bond was formed. Now ten years later, they still enrich each other’s lives.

Marin Montgomery knew this story when she sat down to write What We Forgot to Bury. But where most people saw a feel-good story, she saw thriller inspiration. What if the teenager only looked innocent? What if the homeowner had something else in mind?

Charlotte Coburn is a shut-in with a tragic past. Teenaged Elle is a kid with a troubled upbringing. During a terrible storm, Elle shows up on Charlotte’s doorstep, and Charlotte is immediately terrified: How do you respond to a stranger on your stoop? But letting Elle in is the right thing to do, Charlotte tells herself. She could be a suburban hero, the kind she reads about in human-interest pieces. But what Marin Montgomery knows is that sometimes those “right” decisions come at a terrible price.

More important, they make for an exciting, twisting, and utterly surprising read. I’ll never look at a heartwarming tale the same way.

— Jessica Tribble Wells, Editor

(41)

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My mother was the youngest of three sisters (much like the Sunshine sisters in Jennifer Probst’s delightful new series), and the nuances of their relationships fascinate me. I was delighted when I cracked open Love on Beach Avenue, expecting a romance, which of course I got in spades, but the author’s ability to go deep into the minds and psyches of all her characters—while still maintaining a delightful sense of humor—is what really pushed it over the edge for me.

I’m an only child. Though I didn’t grow up lonely because I always had my books, sibling dynamics have always been something that deeply intrigues me. From the dynamics of the Sunshine sisters themselves to the special bond between the hero and his younger sister, which runs deeper than expected as he became her guardian when their parents died years earlier, I found this book to be unputdownable.

My family never went into the wedding planning business (too bad for me), but luckily, Jennifer’s Sunshine sisters bring all the charm and excitement of falling in love and planning a wedding—and not necessarily in that order! Bridezillas, overbearing older brothers, mean little Yorkies, and small-town charm round out this beachy romance. The Jersey shore has truly never been hotter.

— Maria Gomez, Editor

(22)

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Have you ever looked at a family photograph and thought, Their relationships look too idyllic to be true? I for one for am guilty of planting a picture-perfect smile on my face when confronted with a camera, but Emily Rossi, the heroine of Little White Secrets, has the weight of her family’s happiness on her shoulders.

Author Carol Mason is a master of creating characters at once relatable and full of emotional depth while offering up perceptive glimpses into the many guises of their human relationships, whether that be mother-child or husband-wife. Here she deftly unwraps the complexities of these family ties and homes in on how the reality of a loving husband and two thriving teenagers isn’t what it might seem.

— Sammia Hamer, Editor

(48)

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With her debut memoir, In the Shadow of the Valley, Bobi Conn etches a love song to home, and like any great love song, though there is longing and elegy, there is too the unmistakable melody of Bobi’s transcendence as we witness her become a phoenix rising to the truth of her own story.

More than a world plagued by OxyContin, violence, and broken schools, and more than simply geography—a valley between mountains that she and her family inhabit—Bobi’s Kentucky holler is a place where grandmothers wait on their front porch with open arms and food, calling empty bellies to their warming stoves, where streams and blackberry brambles bloom in abundance, and where women stretch the lack that can afflict a whole region into family heirlooms and leftovers. Bobi’s holler is where both love and a little something extra for a rainy day are hidden away in tight corners, protected from the broken men they love and their angry fists.

Here, in this beautiful, complicated landscape, Bobi rewrites the ravaged and narrow myths of what it in means to grow up poor and sounding like the place you come from, showing us that thriving, like survival, never looks quite like what we’ve been taught to expect. For fans of Janesville and The Glass Castle, In the Shadow of the Valley is a gorgeously and authentically written book.

— Hafizah Geter, Editor

(17)

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Like all science fiction classics, A Girl From Nowhere is at once an epic and intensely human story. Taimin is a survivor. Born in a wasteland populated with scavengers, his family struggles to stay alive at the border of a fearsome no-man’s-land, the firewall on the edge of their world. When his last remaining loved ones are murdered by raiders, he finds himself deserted and alone. But he soon discovers a reason for hope—a mythical city that offers the only chance at refuge from the wasteland.

On his journey, he encounters a young mystic, Selena, and together they set off in search of the city. Slowly but surely, these characters crept under my skin, defiantly chasing their dream in spite of the dangers of the beautifully drawn, ruthless world Maxwell crafts around them.

But what stuck with me, long after reading, was that rich sense of world-building Maxwell brings to the wasteland. As Taimin and Selena search for salvation, the truth of their world waits for them at the fringe. In fact, some of the novel’s most exhilarating moments are when we glimpse it momentarily before the author skilfully pulls us back on course. This rich tapestry of resilience drew me into its world—and has yet to let go.

— Jack Butler, Editor

(61)

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Based on a true story and told through the eyes of a Jewish boy’s teddy bear, Bear and Fred is a book that touches the soul. It’s World War II, and Bear doesn’t understand why his boy, Fred Lessing, is being forced to leave his family, live with strangers, and lie about who he is. Bear is also desperately worried about being left behind. But through it all, Fred never leaves Bear. And Bear never leaves Fred.

The fear and confusion Fred Lessing must have felt as a young child separated from his family is heartbreaking to imagine, and it is so beautifully expressed by the voice of Bear in this book. You’ll know after reading it how lucky Fred was to have Bear. You might also feel as if Bear is your friend too.

Today Bear lives at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, and you can see his picture at the end of this book. Bear and Fred was originally written in Hebrew and since translated into multiple languages, and I am honored to share it with you in English for the first time. I hope it will touch your soul as it’s touched mine and so many others’ around the world.

— Marilyn Brigham, Editor

Devoted by Dean Koontz—available for a limited time price

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Thriller

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