Ending January with a Bang
We’re closing out the first month in 2021 and have some great NEW RELEASES to share. If you’re still in the house looking for an escape, these may be some titles you want to add to your #TBR pile!
Where Madness Lies by Sylvia True
Description
Germany, 1934. Rigmor, a young Jewish woman is a patient at Sonnenstein, a premier psychiatric institution known for their curative treatments. But with the tide of eugenics and the Nazis’ rise to power, Rigmor is swept up in a campaign to rid Germany of the mentally ill.
USA, 1984. Sabine, battling crippling panic and depression commits herself to McLean Hospital, but in doing so she has unwittingly agreed to give up her baby.
Linking these two generations of women is Inga, who did everything in her power to help her sister, Rigmor. Now with her granddaughter, Sabine, Inga is given a second chance to free someone she loves from oppressive forces, both within and without.
This is a story about hope and redemption, about what we pass on, both genetically and culturally. It is about the high price of repression, and how one woman, who lost nearly everything, must be willing to reveal the failures of the past in order to save future generations.
With chilling echoes of our time, Where Madness Lies is based on a true story of the author’s own family.
The Project by Courtney Summers
Description
"[A] deeply disconcerting investigative thriller that seems unassuming but worms under the skin and into the mind." - Booklist (Starred Review)
"A powerful, suspenseful, and heartbreaking thriller about identity, sisterhood, and belonging." - Kirkus (Starred Review)
"A gripping, flawless psychological thriller ready to leave readers shattered." - School Library Journal (Starred Review)
"In this compelling and absorbing YA novel, two sisters make the most painful of choices based on their love for one another." - Shelf Awareness
"This is a beautifully-written, compelling book about the lengths to which someone will go in order not to lose their sense of belonging. It’s full of twists and turns, keeping its readers guessing until the very end. The characterisation is masterfully done and so empathetic that the reader will find it almost impossible not to sympathise with the characters even if they are seemingly going down the wrong path. It’s a tour de force, unflinchingly posing uncomfortable questions and forcing its readers to dig deep into themselves in order to find the answers." - The Nerd Daily
From Courtney Summers, the New York Times bestselling author of the 2019 Edgar Award Winner and breakout hit, Sadie, comes a sensational follow-up—another pulls-no-punches thriller about an aspiring young journalist determined to save her sister from a cult.
"The Unity Project saved my life."
Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo's sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there's more to the group than meets the eye. She's spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.
"The Unity Project murdered my son."
When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its charismatic and mysterious leader, Lev Warren, he proposes a deal: if she can prove the worst of her suspicions about The Unity Project, she may expose them. If she can't, she must finally leave them alone.
But as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members, and spends more time with Lev, it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what's real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn't know if she can afford not to.
Welcome to The Unity Project.
"This book is brave and raw and exciting and wise--wise about girls and women, weakness and strength, and the bittersweet beauty of being human."--Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood Series
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
Description
IT’S MURDER BEING A HIT-MOM
"Getting the job done" for one single mom takes on a whole new meaning in Finlay Donovan is Killing It, a deliciously witty adult debut—the first in a brilliant new series from YA Edgar Award nominee Elle Cosimano.
Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.
When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet . . . Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.
Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moments, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from award-winning author Elle Cosimano.
“Funny and smart, twisty and surprising.”—Megan Miranda
And Then She Vanished by Nick Jones
Description
He only looked away for a second.
Still haunted by the disappearance of his little sister Amy over twenty years ago, Joseph Bridgeman’s life has fallen apart. When a friend talks him into seeing hypnotherapist Alexia Finch to help with his insomnia, Joseph accidentally discovers he can time travel. His first trip only takes him back a few minutes, but his new-found ability gives him something he hasn’t felt for the longest time: hope.
Joseph sets out to travel back to the night Amy went missing and save her. But after several failed attempts, he discovers the farther back he travels, the less time he gets to stay there. And the clock is ticking.
With the help of Alexia, Joseph embarks on a desperate race against the past to save his sister. Can he master his new skill and solve the mystery of Amy’s disappearance before it’s too late?
A Note From the Publisher
Nick Jones was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and now lives in the Cotswolds, England. In a previous life, he ran his own media company and was a 2nd Dan black belt in Karate. These days he can be found in his writing room, working on his latest mind-bending ideas, surrounded by notes and scribbling on a large white board. He loves movies, kindness, gin, and vinyl.
Advance Praise
“Smart, emotionally intelligent, and full of surprises—page-turning time travel, with a twist you won’t see coming.”
-Nicholas Sansbury Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Hell Divers and Extinction Horizon
“A wonderfully personal ‘trying to change history’ story, And Then She Vanished is a fantastic, timey-wimey page turner!”
-Peter Clines, bestselling author of 14, The Fold, and Paradox Bound
The Last Tiara by M.J. Rose
Description
From New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller M.J. Rose (“One of the master storytellers of historical fiction.” —New York Times bestseller Beatriz Williams) comes a provocative and moving story of a young female architect in post-World War II Manhattan, who stumbles upon a hidden treasure and begins a journey to discovering her mother’s life during the fall of the Romanovs.
Sophia Moon had always been reticent about her life in Russia and when she dies, suspiciously, on a wintry New York evening, Isobelle despairs that her mother’s secrets have died with her. But while renovating the apartment they shared, Isobelle discovers something among her mother’s effects—a stunning silver tiara, stripped of its jewels.
Isobelle’s research into the tiara’s provenance draws her closer to her mother’s past—including the story of what became of her father back in Russia, a man she has never known. The facts elude her until she meets a young jeweler, who wants to help her but is conflicted by his loyalty to the Midas Society, a covert international organization whose mission is to return lost and stolen antiques, jewels, and artwork to their original owners.
Told in alternating points of view, the stories of the two young women unfurl as each struggles to find their way during two separate wars. In 1915, young Sofiya Petrovitch, favorite of the royal household and best friend of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, tends to wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital within the grounds of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg and finds the love of her life. In 1948 New York, Isobelle Moon works to break through the rampant sexism of the age as one of very few women working in a male-dominated profession and discovers far more about love and family than she ever hoped for.
In M.J. Rose’s deftly constructed narrative, the secrets of Sofiya’s early life are revealed incrementally, even as Isobelle herself works to solve the mystery of the historic Romanov tiara (which is based on an actual Romanov artifact that is, to this day, still missing)—and how it is that her mother came to possess it. The two strands play off each other in finely-tuned counterpoint, building to a series of surprising and deeply satisfying revelations.
Bad Habits by Amy Gentry
Description
A whip-smart psychological thriller from the author of Good as Gone (a New York Times Notable Book), in which a grad student becomes embroiled in a deadly rivalry that changes her into someone unrecognizable to her struggling family, her ambitious academic friends, and even herself
Claire "Mac" Woods—a professor enjoying her newfound hotshot status at an academic conference—finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. But at the conference's hotel bar, Mac is surprised to run into a face from a past she'd rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac's foil, rival, and former best friend.
When Gwen moved to town in high school, Claire—then known as Mac, a poor kid from a troubled family who had too much on her plate—saw what it meant to have. Money, sophistication, culture, the very blueprints to success. Mac had almost nothing, except the will to change. Change she did, habitually grinding herself to work as hard as straight-A Gwen, even eventually getting admitted into the same elite graduate program as Gwen. But then Mac and Gwen become entangled with the department’s power-couple professors and compete head-to-head for a life changing fellowship. The more twisted the track toward success becomes, the more Mac has to contort herself to stay one step ahead—which deception signals the point of no return?
Jack-knifing between Mac's world-expanding graduate days and the crucible of the hotel and its unexpected guests, Bad Habits follows Mac's reckoning between her hardscrabble past and tenuous present. What, exactly, did Mac do to get what she has today? And what will she do to keep it? With taut, powerful prose, Amy Gentry asks how far we'll go to get what we want--and whether we can ever truly leave the past behind.