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Editorial Content for My Name Was Eden

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Each year, there are debuts that impact readers. Occasionally, some of these titles earn year-end praise in the form of Best Debut Novel awards. MY NAME WAS EDEN by Eleanor Barker-White is a book that you should make note of, as I would not be surprised if this uniquely devised novel is remembered and honored when 2024 comes to a close.

I have always been intrigued by stories involving twins. But Barker-White takes a different approach to this topic by placing an uncommon occurrence at the center of this dark and cunning psychological thriller. Read More

Teaser

No one knows why Lucy's 14-year-old daughter, Eden, almost drowned in the lake after school one day. But now she’s safe and well. Lucy can start being a good mother. The mother she should have been all these years --- years that were fraught with grief over the loss of Eden’s twin during pregnancy. Yes, all that matters is that Eden is fine. But then Eden starts saying that Eden isn’t her name. Her name is Eli. The name Lucy had reserved for Eden’s unborn twin. Don’t worry, says the doctor. Eden is completely fine, says her husband. Of course I’m fine, Eden says, with that strange new smile of hers. I didn’t die. I’m here. But Lucy knows something is very wrong with Eden. She’s not her maddening, complicated teenage girl anymore --- this straight-backed, even-tempered and steady-eyed child in her house is someone else entirely. Eden, it seems, is the twin who disappeared.

Promo

No one knows why Lucy's 14-year-old daughter, Eden, almost drowned in the lake after school one day. But now she’s safe and well. Lucy can start being a good mother. The mother she should have been all these years --- years that were fraught with grief over the loss of Eden’s twin during pregnancy. Yes, all that matters is that Eden is fine. But then Eden starts saying that Eden isn’t her name. Her name is Eli. The name Lucy had reserved for Eden’s unborn twin. Don’t worry, says the doctor. Eden is completely fine, says her husband. Of course I’m fine, Eden says, with that strange new smile of hers. I didn’t die. I’m here. But Lucy knows something is very wrong with Eden. She’s not her maddening, complicated teenage girl anymore --- this straight-backed, even-tempered and steady-eyed child in her house is someone else entirely. Eden, it seems, is the twin who disappeared.

About the Book

In this edge-of-your-seat psychological debut, a mother’s experience with Vanishing Twin Syndrome triggers disturbing changes in her teenage daughter, perfect for fans of THE PUSH and THE UNDOING.

One twin vanished. The other twin remained. Until now...

No one knows why Lucy's 14-year-old daughter, Eden, almost drowned in the lake after school one day. But now she’s safe and well. Lucy can start being a good mother. The mother she should have been all these years --- years that were fraught with grief over the loss of Eden’s twin during pregnancy.

Yes, all that matters is that Eden is fine.

But then Eden starts saying that Eden isn’t her name. Her name is Eli. The name Lucy had reserved for Eden’s unborn twin.

 

Don’t worry, says the doctor. Eden is completely fine, says her husband. Of course I’m fine, Eden says, with that strange new smile of hers. I didn’t die. I’m here.

But Lucy knows something is very wrong with Eden. She’s not her maddening, complicated teenage girl anymore --- this straight-backed, even-tempered and steady-eyed child in her house is someone else entirely. Eden, it seems, is the twin who disappeared.

Audiobook available, read by Lucy Price-Lewis

Editorial Content for The Far Side of the Desert

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

L. Dean Murphy

In striking similarity to Bonnar Spring’s spectacular DISAPPEARED, siblings Samantha and Anne Montgomery “Monte” Waters are at a costumed fiesta in a medieval town in northwest Spain, where their brother Cal soon will join them. The three are brilliant progeny of well-connected D.C. power-broker parents. Sam and Cal are journalists, while multilingual Monte is a career employee of U.S. foreign service agencies. Read More

Teaser

Sisters Samantha and Monte Waters are vacationing together in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, enjoying a festival and planning to meet with their brother, Cal. But the idyllic plans are short-lived. When terrorists’ attacks rock the city around them, Monte, a U.S. foreign service officer, and Samantha, an international television correspondent, are separated, and one of them is whisked away in the frenzy. The family mobilizes, using all their contacts to try to find their missing sister, but to no avail. She has vanished. As time presses on, the outlook darkens. Can she be found, or is she a lost cause? And even if she returns, will the damage to her and those around her be irreparable?

Promo

Sisters Samantha and Monte Waters are vacationing together in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, enjoying a festival and planning to meet with their brother, Cal. But the idyllic plans are short-lived. When terrorists’ attacks rock the city around them, Monte, a U.S. foreign service officer, and Samantha, an international television correspondent, are separated, and one of them is whisked away in the frenzy. The family mobilizes, using all their contacts to try to find their missing sister, but to no avail. She has vanished. As time presses on, the outlook darkens. Can she be found, or is she a lost cause? And even if she returns, will the damage to her and those around her be irreparable?

About the Book

A terrorist attack. A kidnapping. The ultimate vacation gone wrong.

Sisters Samantha and Monte Waters are vacationing together in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, enjoying a festival and planning to meet with their brother, Cal. But the idyllic plans are short-lived. When terrorists’ attacks rock the city around them, Monte, a U.S. foreign service officer, and Samantha, an international television correspondent, are separated, and one of them is whisked away in the frenzy.

The family mobilizes, using all their contacts to try to find their missing sister, but to no avail. She has vanished. As time presses on, the outlook darkens. Can she be found, or is she a lost cause? And even if she returns, will the damage to her and those around her be irreparable?

Moving from Spain to Washington to Morocco to Gibraltar to the Sahara Desert, THE FAR SIDE OF THE DESERT is a family drama and political thriller that explores links of terrorism, crime and financial manipulation, revealing the grace that ultimately foils destruction.

Audiobook available, read by Robin McAlpine

Editorial Content for Finding Sophie

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Imran Mahmood is a practicing criminal barrister in England and Wales. He utilizes all of this experience in his second novel, FINDING SOPHIE, which features some stunningly realistic courtroom scenes as part of a much larger story about a grieving family. Read More

Teaser

For the last 17 years, Harry and Zara King’s lives have revolved around their only daughter, Sophie. One day, Sophie leaves the house and doesn’t come home. Six weeks later, the police are no closer to finding her than when they started. Harry and Zara have questioned everyone who has ever had any connection to Sophie, to no avail. Except there’s one house on their block --- number 210, across the street --- whose occupant refuses to break his silence. As the question mark over number 210 devolves into obsession, Harry and Zara are forced to examine their own lives. They realize they have grown apart, suffering in separate spheres of grief. And as they try to find their way back to each other, they must face the truth about their daughter: who she was, how she changed and why she disappeared.

Promo

For the last 17 years, Harry and Zara King’s lives have revolved around their only daughter, Sophie. One day, Sophie leaves the house and doesn’t come home. Six weeks later, the police are no closer to finding her than when they started. Harry and Zara have questioned everyone who has ever had any connection to Sophie, to no avail. Except there’s one house on their block --- number 210, across the street --- whose occupant refuses to break his silence. As the question mark over number 210 devolves into obsession, Harry and Zara are forced to examine their own lives. They realize they have grown apart, suffering in separate spheres of grief. And as they try to find their way back to each other, they must face the truth about their daughter: who she was, how she changed and why she disappeared.

About the Book

Two parents conduct an increasingly desperate search for their missing daughter in “a clever, chilling thriller that is also unexpectedly moving” (Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of EVERYONE HERE IS LYING).

Someone is guilty.

For the last 17 years, Harry and Zara King’s lives have revolved around their only daughter, Sophie. One day, Sophie leaves the house and doesn’t come home. Six weeks later, the police are no closer to finding her than when they started. Harry and Zara have questioned everyone who has ever had any connection to Sophie, to no avail. Except there’s one house on their block --- number 210, across the street --- whose occupant refuses to break his silence.

Someone knows what happened.

As the question mark over number 210 devolves into obsession, Harry and Zara are forced to examine their own lives. They realize they have grown apart, suffering in separate spheres of grief. And as they try to find their way back to each other, they must face the truth about their daughter: who she was, how she changed and why she disappeared.

Someone will pay.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Harry and Zara, and in a dual timeline between the weeks after Sophie’s disappearance and a year later in the middle of a murder trial, Imran Mahmood’s taut yet profoundly moving novel explores how differently grief can be experienced even when shared by parents --- and how hope triumphs when it springs from the kind of love that knows no bounds.

Audiobook available, read by Lydia Bakelmun and Oliver Hembrough

Editorial Content for Otter Country: An Unexpected Adventure in the Natural World

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

You probably know someone who is fixated --- maybe even borderline obsessed --- with seeing a certain animal. For many people, it’s a particular bird: a pileated woodpecker, an owl in flight. But for others, it’s an elusive mammal: a blue whale, a moose, a fisher. In nature writer Miriam Darlington’s case, the object of her fixation is the otter. She’s so keen on finding this slippery animal that on several occasions she calls it her “grail.” Read More

Teaser

Mysterious, graceful and ever-clever, otters have captivated our imaginations, despite the fact that few people have encountered one in the wild. In OTTER COUNTRY, celebrated nature writer Miriam Darlington captures the fascination she's had for these playful animals since childhood and chronicles her immersive journey into their watery world. Over the course of a single year, Darlington takes readers on a winding expedition in pursuit of these elusive creatures. As she’s drawn deeper into wilder habitats, Darlington meets biologists, conservationists, fishing and hunting enthusiasts, and poets --- enriching her understanding, admiration and awe of the wild otter. With each encounter, she reveals the scientific, environmental and cultural importance of this creature and the places it calls home.

Promo

Mysterious, graceful and ever-clever, otters have captivated our imaginations, despite the fact that few people have encountered one in the wild. In OTTER COUNTRY, celebrated nature writer Miriam Darlington captures the fascination she's had for these playful animals since childhood and chronicles her immersive journey into their watery world. Over the course of a single year, Darlington takes readers on a winding expedition in pursuit of these elusive creatures. As she’s drawn deeper into wilder habitats, Darlington meets biologists, conservationists, fishing and hunting enthusiasts, and poets --- enriching her understanding, admiration and awe of the wild otter. With each encounter, she reveals the scientific, environmental and cultural importance of this creature and the places it calls home.

About the Book

A plan formed in my mind. I would explore the places in this land that hid my grail. I would spend a whole year or longer, if that’s what it took, wading through marshes, hiding between mossy rocks, paddling down rivers and swimming in sea lochs; recording my journey through the seasons as I searched for wild otters.

Mysterious, graceful and ever-clever, otters have captivated our imaginations, despite the fact that few people have encountered one in the wild. In OTTER COUNTRY, celebrated nature writer Miriam Darlington captures the fascination she's had for these playful animals since childhood, and chronicles her immersive journey into their watery world.

Over the course of a single year, Darlington takes readers on a winding expedition in pursuit of these elusive creatures --- from her home in Devon, England, and through the wilds of Scotland, Wales, the Lake District and the countryside of Cornwall. As she’s drawn deeper into wilder habitats, trekking through changing landscapes, seasons and weather, Darlington meets biologists, conservationists, fishing and hunting enthusiasts, and poets --- enriching her understanding, admiration and awe of the wild otter. With each encounter, she reveals the scientific, environmental and cultural importance of this creature and the places it calls home.

Full of wonder, hope and an abiding love for the natural world, OTTER COUNTRY is a beautiful and captivating work of nature writing, pursuing one of nature’s most endearing and endlessly fascinating creatures.

Editorial Content for Dead in Long Beach, California

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Sarah Rachel Egelman

There is something about the title of Venita Blackburn’s first novel, not to mention the cover, that points to a lurid tale, perhaps something noir. But the darkness and mystery in DEAD IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA are interior and more intimately psychological. It is the story of a woman, Coral Brown, in the depths of shock and grief upon discovering her brother’s body. The week that follows has her making the choice to keep Jay’s death a secret, even from those who love him as much as she does, as she wrestles with her memories and her feelings of loss. Read More

Teaser

Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles --- and triples --- down on posing as her brother. As Coral’s swirl of lies slowly closes in on her, the quirky and mysterious alien world of Wildfire becomes enmeshed in her own reality, in the process pushing long-buried memories, traumas and secrets dangerously into the present.

Promo

Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles --- and triples --- down on posing as her brother. As Coral’s swirl of lies slowly closes in on her, the quirky and mysterious alien world of Wildfire becomes enmeshed in her own reality, in the process pushing long-buried memories, traumas and secrets dangerously into the present.

About the Book

Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother.

Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles --- and triples --- down on posing as her brother, risking not only her own sanity but her relationship with her precocious niece, Khadijah. As Coral’s swirl of lies slowly closes in on her, the quirky and mysterious alien world of Wildfire becomes enmeshed in her own reality, in the process pushing long-buried memories, traumas and secrets dangerously into the present.

A form-shifting and soul-crunching chronicle of grief and crisis, Venita Blackburn’s debut novel, DEAD IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, is a fleet-footed marvel of self-discovery and storytelling that explores the depths of humankind’s capacity for harm and healing. With the daring, often hilarious imagination that made her an acclaimed short-fiction innovator, Blackburn crafts a layered, page-turning reckoning with what it means to be alive, dead and somewhere in between.

Audiobook available, read by Lynnette Freeman

March 8, 2024

Here comes my least favorite weekend of the year --- the one with one less hour! The past two weeks, I have been waking up before my alarm goes off and hitting my exercise bike early, but I think that is destined to end quickly as soon as the clocks change. I read my morning emails --- and answer some --- while I ride. Multitasking to start the day!

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

March 2024

The word “leaving” takes on so many different meanings in Roxana Robinson’s latest novel, LEAVING.

When in college Warren asked Sarah to travel through Europe with him, she contemplated it for a short time and then realized that she did not feel he would protect her or care for her as she needed. So she declined, leaving him for the first time. A few decades pass, and they run into each other at the opera, picking up their conversation. Sarah has divorced her husband (another leaving), and her children are grown. Warren still is married, but he and his wife are living in different orbits. At times they come together, but for the most part, the love between them is a lot paler than it once was. Let’s just say that love has left, and instead routine and obligation has settled in.

The Audie Awards 2024

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2024 Audie Awards®, the premier awards program in the United States recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment.

Week of March 25, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of March 25th include ROMANTIC COMEDY, a hilarious and deeply tender novel from Curtis Sittenfeld, in which a comedy writer thinks she has sworn off love --- until a dreamy pop star flips the script on all her assumptions; HANG THE MOON by Jeannette Walls, a riveting work of historical fiction about an indomitable young woman in Virginia during Prohibition; EARTH'S THE RIGHT PLACE FOR LOVE, a beautiful novel from Elizabeth Berg that tells the story of two young people growing up in Mason, Missouri, and how a shy young man named Arthur Moses becomes the wise and compassionate person readers loved in THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV; THE WATCHMAKER'S DAUGHTER by Larry Loftis, the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII --- at the cost of losing her family and being sent to a concentration camp; and the paperback original EVERYONE IS WATCHING, a twisty thriller from Heather Gudenkauf in which a mysterious high-stakes game proves life-threatening.

Week of March 18, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of March 18th include ZERO DAYS by Ruth Ware, an adrenaline-fueled suspense novel about a woman in a race against time to clear her name and find her husband’s murderer; Sandra Brown's OUT OF NOWHERE, a fast-paced, emotional thriller in which the lives of a young mother and a high-rolling consultant collide under devastating circumstances --- culminating in a desperate manhunt that will change their futures forever; WE SHOULD NOT BE FRIENDS, a warm and funny book from Will Schwalbe that follows an improbable and life-changing college friendship over the course of 40 years; TWO WARS AND WEDDING by Lauren Willig, a dramatic coming-of-age story with a dual timeline and a single heroine --- a bold and adventuring young woman who finds herself caught up in two very different wars on both sides of the Atlantic; and the paperback original I PROMISE IT WON’T ALWAYS HURT LIKE THIS, Clare Mackintosh's deeply felt memoir of unfathomable loss and infinite hope.