Editorial Content for Based on a True Story
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
The special occasion is the 70th birthday party for bestselling British children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman. But the weekend will end in disaster with at least one unplanned death. Being surrounded by family, close friends and colleagues makes for an interesting whodunit in Sarah Vaughan’s latest novel, the cleverly titled BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Read More
Teaser
Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday --- and her latest #1 bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs. But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century. Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built...With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email --- and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career. But when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?
Promo
Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday --- and her latest #1 bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs. But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century. Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built...With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email --- and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career. But when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?
About the Book
A compelling novel about power, money and lies from the author of ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL.
All families have secrets. But it's the lies that can kill.
A lavish 70th birthday party. A body found on a storm-lashed beach. And a secret that someone is dying to tell.
Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday --- and her latest #1 bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs.
But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.
Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built...
With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email --- and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career.
But when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?
Audiobook available, read by Juliet Stevenson
Editorial Content for Pool House
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
With POOL HOUSE, Mary H.K. Choi becomes the latest YA author to make the leap to adult fiction. Here, her focus on characters and their interactions with one another feels almost claustrophobic in the intensity of her narrative scrutiny. Read More
Teaser
Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, Stevie can’t wait to move away from L.A., and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, out-of-work actress Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
Promo
Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, Stevie can’t wait to move away from L.A., and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, out-of-work actress Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
About the Book
Bestselling young adult author Mary H.K. Choi debuts a brilliantly observed adult novel about mothers, daughters and the complexity of family set against the backdrop of Hollywood.
Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can’t wait to move away from it, and her mother’s orbit, to start over.
Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too.
Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
POOL HOUSE is a course charted through the wilderness of motherhood, a story about the challenges of navigating class, fame, burgeoning sexuality and grief as two women grapple with what it means to grow up and grow older in Hollywood.
Audiobook available, read by Joy Osmanski
Editorial Content for The American School of Spies: The Archaeologists Who Fought the Nazis and Saved the Treasures of Ancient Greece
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
It has been nearly 90 years since World War II commenced with Germany’s invasion of Poland. But it continues as a fertile area for historical research and writing by contemporary authors and scholars. Read More
Teaser
In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan deployed spies across Europe and around the world to try to thwart the Nazis. In Greece, Nazis weren’t just taking over territory; they were seizing and threatening to destroy some of the world’s most important and valuable historical monuments and artifacts. Donovan tapped a young Ivy League-trained archaeologist named Rodney Young to assemble and lead a team of spies to collect intel. Young set about recruiting the most unlikely of spies --- academics, classicists, epigraphers, and other specialists and scholars --- who would come to be known as “the Greek Desk.” These men and women, along with their Greek allies, went undercover and tried desperately to protect some of the world’s most significant treasures.
Promo
In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan deployed spies across Europe and around the world to try to thwart the Nazis. In Greece, Nazis weren’t just taking over territory; they were seizing and threatening to destroy some of the world’s most important and valuable historical monuments and artifacts. Donovan tapped a young Ivy League-trained archaeologist named Rodney Young to assemble and lead a team of spies to collect intel. Young set about recruiting the most unlikely of spies --- academics, classicists, epigraphers, and other specialists and scholars --- who would come to be known as “the Greek Desk.” These men and women, along with their Greek allies, went undercover and tried desperately to protect some of the world’s most significant treasures.
About the Book
From the New York Times bestselling author, the incredible true story of the American archaeologists and classicists who went undercover as OSS spies during World War II to fight the Nazis and protect the world's most precious relics.
In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan deployed spies across Europe and around the world to try to thwart the Nazis. In Greece, Nazis weren’t just taking over territory; they were seizing and threatening to destroy some of the world’s most important and valuable historical monuments and artifacts. Donovan tapped a young Ivy League-trained archaeologist named Rodney Young to assemble and lead a team of spies to collect intel.
Young set about recruiting the most unlikely of spies --- academics, classicists, epigraphers, and other specialists and scholars --- who would come to be known as “the Greek Desk.” These men and women, along with their Greek allies, went undercover and tried desperately to protect some of the world’s most significant treasures. The archaeologists hid priceless artifacts in ancient caves, bank vaults, and even underneath the city of Athens itself. They created fakes to give over to the Nazis to appease their lust for these remarkable works.
Ultimately, when it became clear the cat-and-mouse game on its own wasn’t going to save Athens, they brought in an army of Greek American soldiers to beat back the Nazi regime and save their homeland.
Audiobook available, read by John Pirhalla
Editorial Content for Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
“The future is here,” William Gibson wrote, “it’s just not evenly distributed.” There is one easy way to test this. Go to the Oculus in Lower Manhattan --- a gleaming 21st-century transit station that is as up-to-date as next Tuesday --- and from there take a PATH train to Newark Penn Station, which was built in 1935 and is still wearing its Art Deco heritage like a tattered cloak. It’s not exactly time travel, but you get the idea. Read More
Teaser
Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 attracted 10 million Americans and visitors from around the world. On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup. This celebration of America’s first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 --- a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today. Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists: Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
Promo
Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 attracted 10 million Americans and visitors from around the world. On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup. This celebration of America’s first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 --- a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today. Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists: Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
About the Book
The spectacular story of the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a world's fair to mark America’s 100th birthday --- and a moment of reckoning for a nation barrelling toward the Gilded Age.
“Those who were there felt that the wheel of history itself had turned before their eyes.”
Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the extravaganza attracted 10 million Americans --- nearly 20 percent of the population, among them P. T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain --- and visitors from around the world, including the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro (who couldn’t get enough of the exhibition). On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
This celebration of America’s first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever --- as big money threatened to overwhelm the government, underpaid workers waged the first national labor strike, feminists demanded rights for women, Native tribes went to war to repel the advancing settlement in the West, and Black Americans struggled to exercise their hard-won freedom. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 --- a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today.
Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists --- Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis --- revealing a country striving to live up to the promise of its founders while bracing for the tidal wave of the 20th century.
Audiobook available, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins
Editorial Content for Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin's Bomb
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
In DECODING THE DEVIL, noted author Sarah Valentine presents a revelatory account of little-known but significant American history: the employment of Black American women to monitor sensitive, secret data regarding the regime of the USSR and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Read More
Teaser
Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on their most dangerous nuclear rival. The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division --- The Plantation. Its 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in the country’s Soviet intelligence, even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War 30 years later. In DECODING THE DEVIL, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time.
Promo
Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on their most dangerous nuclear rival. The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division --- The Plantation. Its 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in the country’s Soviet intelligence, even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War 30 years later. In DECODING THE DEVIL, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time.
About the Book
As groundbreaking as CODE GIRLS and HIDDEN FIGURES, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin’s atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War.
Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on their most dangerous nuclear rival.
The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division --- The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas and harsh conditions, the Plantation’s 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States’ Soviet intelligence, even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War 30 years later.
In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. DECODING THE DEVIL pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists’ critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.
Audiobook available, read by Janina Edwards
Editorial Content for The Last Lady B
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Romances are romances, right? Not exactly, as Eloisa James proves so beautifully in her new novel, THE LAST LADY B. It seems the antithesis of romance when Genevieve agrees to marry Lord Burnsby, whom her father describes on the first page as “a nasty old goat with three dead wives.” Her groom is older than her father, but unlike her father, he's extremely wealthy and willing to offer her sister Rosie a dowry, without which Rosie will not be able to marry a titled gentleman. Read More
Teaser
Lady Genevieve Burnsby, her pet piglet and her septuagenarian husband travel to a haunted abbey in the Scottish Highlands. Evie is excited to meet a ghost, but she didn’t expect the funny, quirky guests to become the friends she’s never had. And she certainly didn’t imagine meeting Sir Godric Everly, a sardonic, witty solicitor who loathes her husband. Yet as secrets and lies turn Evie’s world upside down, Sir Godric becomes the one person she can trust. When ghosts, multiple wills and a shocking marriage certificate bring Lord Burnsby’s past crashing into his present, Burnsby promptly dies, leaving Evie free to remarry. More importantly, she has to figure out whose identity is false, whose vows are dishonorable, whose truths could destroy her reputation --- and where her heart belongs.
Promo
Lady Genevieve Burnsby, her pet piglet and her septuagenarian husband travel to a haunted abbey in the Scottish Highlands. Evie is excited to meet a ghost, but she didn’t expect the funny, quirky guests to become the friends she’s never had. And she certainly didn’t imagine meeting Sir Godric Everly, a sardonic, witty solicitor who loathes her husband. Yet as secrets and lies turn Evie’s world upside down, Sir Godric becomes the one person she can trust. When ghosts, multiple wills and a shocking marriage certificate bring Lord Burnsby’s past crashing into his present, Burnsby promptly dies, leaving Evie free to remarry. More importantly, she has to figure out whose identity is false, whose vows are dishonorable, whose truths could destroy her reputation --- and where her heart belongs.
About the Book
Lady B may have married Bluebeard; she may have fallen in love with a gorgeous, grumpy solicitor; she may have met a ghost and survived to tell the tale! New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Eloisa James delights with witty historical romance with a gothic twist.
In the depths of winter, Lady Genevieve Burnsby, her pet piglet and her septuagenarian husband travel to a haunted abbey in the Scottish Highlands. Evie is excited to meet a ghost (perhaps one of her husband’s three previous wives), but she didn’t expect the funny, quirky guests to become the friends she’s never had. And she certainly didn’t imagine meeting Sir Godric Everly, a sardonic, witty solicitor who loathes her husband.
Yet as secrets and lies turn Evie’s world upside down, Sir Godric becomes the one person she can trust.
When ghosts, multiple wills and a shocking marriage certificate bring Lord Burnsby’s past crashing into his present, Burnsby promptly dies, leaving Evie free to remarry…though as a virgin wife, now a virgin widow, she is more unnerved by the marriage bed than a spectral visit.
More importantly, she has to figure out whose identity is false, whose vows are dishonorable, whose truths could destroy her reputation --- and where her heart belongs.
Audiobook available, read by Mary Jane Wells
Editorial Content for Headlights
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
The recent resurgence of horror has been happening not just in the movie theaters but across the shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world. One of the many new voices at the forefront of this movement is CJ Leede, whose first two books, MAEVE FLY and AMERICAN RAPTURE, have garnered numerous awards and nominations. Read More
Teaser
Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again. Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue. Now Daniel will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along --- before he and the people he loves become the next victims.
Promo
Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again. Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue. Now Daniel will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along --- before he and the people he loves become the next victims.
About the Book
Every instinct tells him to run. Every memory tells him he can’t.
Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again.
Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue.
Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along --- before he and the people he loves become the next victims.
Perfect for fans of The Shining and Longlegs, bestselling author CJ Leede’s HEADLIGHTS is a pulse-pounding hunt across the frozen wilderness of Colorado.
Audiobook available, read by Andrew Eiden
June 12, 2026
I came across a couple of very interesting ideas this week about “staying in the moment.”
Last Thursday night, Francesca on our team went to a Phoebe Bridgers concert at Madison Square Garden where all attendees had to check their phones at the door. Their strictly enforced “no-camera” and “no-phone” policy meant that attendees were forbidden from bringing phones, smartwatches, cameras, or even pens and paper. All devices had to be turned off and sealed in lockable bags by venue staff. Instead people stayed in the moment watching the show.
June 11, 2026
This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Friday, June 12th at 2pm ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THAT LAST CAROLINA SUMMER by Karen White, which is now available in paperback. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!






