New Books Hitting Shelves This Week

New Books Hitting Shelves This Week

Destination Funeral

When Babe―the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers―dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm-swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will.

Didion arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again―along with the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and broke them apart.

What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels when they wake up and discover…it’s Saturday. Again. And again. And again.

Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them all those years ago. Because maybe, just maybe, an endless weekend is exactly what they all need to save their own lives.

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Song for Another Home

When news hits in 1950 that the Americans have entered the war between North and South Korea, Oksoon and her family believe the conflict will soon end. But then China joins the war, and they decide to flee their home in Pyongyang despite the freezing temperatures and lack of food. Journeying from the barren, war-torn streets of the North in the winter to the seedy back alleys of the South Korean capital of Seoul in the summer, the family falls in with an unlikely group of miscreants.

Meanwhile, far to the south, Oksoon’s cousin Junho seeks refuge at an orphanage for abandoned children. As the institution struggles to keep its doors open, Junho, with his elementary command of English, is tasked with drafting letters to American missionaries and benefactors to ask for money. When the enigmatic director brings her aristocratic niece to the orphanage, Junho finds himself caught between his impulse for survival and his growing affections for the young woman, even though his feelings put him at risk of being expelled from the only safe place he knows.

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Mudlark

Jenny Sweet’s marriage is ending—and with it her band and maybe even her fragile relationship with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Neko. A reluctant wife and mother, Jenny plans a new journey of self-discovery after one more gig at Burning Man. But when Neko disappears amid the chaos of the festival, Jenny fears that everything that mattered to her has been lost. As she races against the dark, Jenny finds herself thrown into the past, and into the heart of a gathering storm.

Now twenty-five, Neko is a mudlark: a trained recruit who braves the rival factions and feral survivalists in the ruins of a crumbling, flooded Manhattan for resources that grow scarcer by the day. When she stumbles upon the master of her mother’s long-lost solo album and later hears that someone else is searching for it—someone who could be her mother, missing for over a decade—she embarks on a perilous adventure with a ragtag crew that will take her from treetop societies to decadent raves to the underground bunker where she will, finally, confront her mother’s fate—and her own.

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Lost in Curiosity: Field Notes from Scientists’ Adventures into the Unknown

Chronicling researchers’ struggles and hopes in the field and lab, Kwok documents it all: fending off relentless snowfall on a remote Greenland glacier, desperately searching for an elusive frog in the rainforests of Borneo, and scrambling to capture fleeting signals of a faraway moon outside our solar system. These are the untold stories of devoted young scientists and restless minds who are chasing nature’s riddles, without knowing what they’ll uncover.

Through vivid reporting and moments of unexpected emotion, Kwok reveals the inner lives of researchers who care profoundly about understanding our world and saving what’s left of it. From enigmatic fossils and mind-bending physics to the puzzling behavior of wild animals, Lost in Curiosity is a journey through the questions that keep scientists up at night―and the sometimes strange, always illuminating paths they take to answer them.

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Yes, Chef

After a public meltdown in the dining room of one of Manhattan’s most elite restaurants, Chef Jack Hartman is back in his South Florida hometown. Angry, grieving, and saddled with the unwanted storefront his late mentor left him, his life is spinning out of control. And that’s before Poppy Winfield—the bubbly, infuriating daughter of his former boss—shows up at his dock.

Poppy needs to escape. From her family, her ex-boyfriend, and her reputation as someone who has never taken anything seriously. But more than that, she wants to prove herself—and she has just the plan to do it. Unfortunately, that plan involves Jack Hartman, the most arrogant, intimidating man she’s ever had the pleasure of throwing a shrimp at.

Poppy proposes a deal: they work together to open a revamped version of his mentor’s restaurant. Jack will handle the menu, and she’ll use her social media influence to sell the hell out of its grand opening. If she and Jack can make it a success, it’ll be a ticket for them both to return to New York.

Jack is intrigued, but only on his terms: If Poppy’s going to do this, she must learn the ropes of the business. From him.

As sparks fly both in and out of the kitchen, Poppy and Jack are left wondering, could they be a perfect pairing? Or is this whole experiment a recipe for disaster?

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If Books Could Kill

When Roxie makes a tongue-in-cheek wish to live out the plot of her favorite author’s next novel, she has romance in mind—namely, the sweet, safe, swoon-worthy storylines Anna Matthews is known for. It should be a dream come true when her wish is granted and she finds herself swept into a first date with a handsome stranger who seems designed to take her breath away.

Except for one little hiccup: That handsome stranger tries to take her breath away. Literally. With a knife. The thing is, Roxie may be the new Anna Matthews protagonist—but this time, Anna is writing a crime thriller.

Thrown into a perilous genre she’s never read, Roxie is desperate for help. So when her escape takes her straight into the path of Grant Hoffman, an anxious English professor with a convenient love of crime novels, she decides that kidnapping a grown man is a small price to pay for her own survival. Together, Roxie and Grant navigate a madcap story in which the lines between fiction and reality blur. They’ll find out if they have what it takes to make it to The End—or maybe even Happily Ever After.

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Henry Tudor Must Die

Anne Boleyn is going to die, and neither her cleverness nor her witchery can save her. So when her late rival, Catalina de Aragón, miraculously appears in her cell at the Tower of London on the eve of her execution, very much alive and offering a daring escape plan, no one is more surprised than Anne.

Lina doesn’t have Anne’s magic—but she has just as much hate for England’s wretched king. Severed from her daughter and stripped of all her influence, Lina breathes only for the Hellebore Sisterhood, a clandestine and powerful society with a vested interest in keeping both queens alive . . . and using their particular skills to advance womankind.

Anne and Lina’s old rivalries pale in comparison to a common enemy. And they’re not alone. Anna von Kleve, Kat Howard, and even Catherine Parr all have their own bones to pick with the king. One by one, they capture their pawns, infiltrating the court and eliminating the men who plotted against them. Always inching closer to their true target . . .

And they want his head.

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The New People

Months after the housing bubble bursts, newlywed Chicagoans Emma and Rachel move into a charming little house in a conservative Indiana college town, hoping for a fresh start after a painful miscarriage. As Rachel immerses herself in her new role as a tenure-track professor and bestselling novelist, adjunct Emma struggles in the shadow of her wife’s success. Desperate to build something of her own, Emma secretly pursues IVF, even as Rachel insists they wait to have children. The house, initially a symbol of new beginnings, becomes a refuge for Emma from the town she’s convinced is set against her—until strange occurrences make her question whether she and her wife are truly alone.

They aren’t.

Charlotte and Dirk, the former homeowners, are secretly living in the attic above Emma and Rachel’s attached garage. Dispossessed by the recession and anxious about her husband’s declining health, Charlotte listens to the interlopers below, and her resentment steadily grows. What starts as small acts of defiance—missing food, flipped breakers in the fuse box, subtle scratches in the furniture—soon becomes sabotage. But when her campaign to drive out the couple goes too far, Charlotte’s and Emma’s stories converge in an explosive climax that will reveal the lengths people will go to reclaim what they’ve lost.

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The Story Keeper

In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.

When a curious book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle’s library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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