January 15th: The Woman America Loves A Latte
by Holly Tierney-Bedord
(353 pgs/4.6 stars Amazon / 4.13 GR)
Veloura has never stood a chance. Raised by negligent parents and orphaned as a teen, she's settled for a life of low expectations. She spends her days sprucing up the shack of a has-been bull rider and washing hair down at the local salon. But when it turns out her fiancé doesn't have her best interests at heart, she's forced to come up with a new plan for herself. An opportunity to be the spokesperson for a coffee chain means a bright future could be hers, if only she can stay ahead of her dark past. Written in the same vein as Carl Hiaasen's humorous fictional crime novels and plays. Get ready to laugh and OMG right up to the END!
February 19th: Weepers
by Nick Chiarkas
(314 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 5 stars GR)
The 1957 murder of an undercover cop in a New York City housing project has unexpected ties to the unsolved disappearance of a young father walking home in those same projects with his son, Angelo, on Christmas Eve six years before. The only witness to the cop killing is Angelo, now 13, while on his way to seek his own revenge in the early morning hours. The killers know he saw them. A series of gripping events forge a union between a priest, a Mafia boss, a police detective, and Angelo, a gang member. In the end, Weepers shows us that the courage of the underdog—despite fear and moral ambiguity—will conquer intimidation.
March 11th: Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault
by Cathy Guisewite
(336 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 3.68 GR)
Guisewite turns her uniquely wry and funny gaze to her own day-to-day life, with topics ranging from the mundane—teaching her parents to use TiVo, organizing four decades of photos, attempting to meditate—to the more profound—her struggle to find a purpose post-retirement, helping her parents downsize their lives, and her personal definitions of feminism. Humorous, warm, and poignant, Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault is ideal reading for mothers, daughters, and everyone who is caught somewhere in between, and on the threshold of "What Happens Next."
April 15th: A Mistake of Consequence
by Terri Evert Karsten
(263 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 4.22 GR)
It is 1754 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Callie Beaton is nearly twenty, single, and determined not to marry anyone her grandfather deems worthy. But after her impulsive flight from yet another unwanted suitor leads her to the pier one rainy evening, Callie is mistaken for someone else and dragged aboard a ship. Trapped in a dark hold and at the mercy of strangers, Callie has no idea the ship is headed for a bustling port city across the ocean in America.Wracked with seasickness, unable to convince the ship's captain she is not who he thinks she is, and with only one tattered dress to her name, Callie somehow survives the horrid journey. She arrives in colonial Philadelphia penniless, nameless, and alone in a strange place. Two men offer her help: Ethan Asher, a handsome gentleman with a hidden past, and Davy McRae, a charming ship captain with a dangerous secret.Neither seems trustworthy, but when tragedy strikes, Callie is caught in the middle and must choose one of them to help her if she is to save herself and her newfound friends from disaster.In this historical romantic adventure, a Scottish lass who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time unwittingly embarks on a journey across the ocean to a new beginning where she searches for love, belonging, and ultimately her true destiny.
May 20th: Evvie Drake Starts Over
by Linda Holmes
(303 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 4.03 GR)
In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future. When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out. A joyful, hilarious, and hope-filled debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over will have you cheering for the two most unlikely comebacks of the year—and will leave you wanting more from Linda Holmes.
June 17th: The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
(336 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.05 GR)
A thrilling mixture of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting and greek tragedy. A Shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband, and the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening, her husband returns home late and Alicia violently kills him, and then never speaks another word. Her refusal to speak thrusts her into notoriety and all that goes with it, but Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist is determined to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of this notorious murder. Will the twisting path to answers consume him?
July 15th: Movie Night
August 19th: Hum If You Don’t Know The Words
by Bianca Marais
(448 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.2 GR)
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin’s parents are left dead and Beauty’s daughter goes missing. After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection.
September 16th: The Tattooist of Auschwitz
by Heather Morris
(288 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.27 GR)
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
October 21st: The Overdue Life Of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms
(332 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 3.96 GR)
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.
November 18th: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
(336 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 3.97 GR)
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
December 16th: Movie night
by Holly Tierney-Bedord
(353 pgs/4.6 stars Amazon / 4.13 GR)
Veloura has never stood a chance. Raised by negligent parents and orphaned as a teen, she's settled for a life of low expectations. She spends her days sprucing up the shack of a has-been bull rider and washing hair down at the local salon. But when it turns out her fiancé doesn't have her best interests at heart, she's forced to come up with a new plan for herself. An opportunity to be the spokesperson for a coffee chain means a bright future could be hers, if only she can stay ahead of her dark past. Written in the same vein as Carl Hiaasen's humorous fictional crime novels and plays. Get ready to laugh and OMG right up to the END!
February 19th: Weepers
by Nick Chiarkas
(314 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 5 stars GR)
The 1957 murder of an undercover cop in a New York City housing project has unexpected ties to the unsolved disappearance of a young father walking home in those same projects with his son, Angelo, on Christmas Eve six years before. The only witness to the cop killing is Angelo, now 13, while on his way to seek his own revenge in the early morning hours. The killers know he saw them. A series of gripping events forge a union between a priest, a Mafia boss, a police detective, and Angelo, a gang member. In the end, Weepers shows us that the courage of the underdog—despite fear and moral ambiguity—will conquer intimidation.
March 11th: Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault
by Cathy Guisewite
(336 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 3.68 GR)
Guisewite turns her uniquely wry and funny gaze to her own day-to-day life, with topics ranging from the mundane—teaching her parents to use TiVo, organizing four decades of photos, attempting to meditate—to the more profound—her struggle to find a purpose post-retirement, helping her parents downsize their lives, and her personal definitions of feminism. Humorous, warm, and poignant, Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault is ideal reading for mothers, daughters, and everyone who is caught somewhere in between, and on the threshold of "What Happens Next."
April 15th: A Mistake of Consequence
by Terri Evert Karsten
(263 pgs / 5 stars B&N / 4.22 GR)
It is 1754 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Callie Beaton is nearly twenty, single, and determined not to marry anyone her grandfather deems worthy. But after her impulsive flight from yet another unwanted suitor leads her to the pier one rainy evening, Callie is mistaken for someone else and dragged aboard a ship. Trapped in a dark hold and at the mercy of strangers, Callie has no idea the ship is headed for a bustling port city across the ocean in America.Wracked with seasickness, unable to convince the ship's captain she is not who he thinks she is, and with only one tattered dress to her name, Callie somehow survives the horrid journey. She arrives in colonial Philadelphia penniless, nameless, and alone in a strange place. Two men offer her help: Ethan Asher, a handsome gentleman with a hidden past, and Davy McRae, a charming ship captain with a dangerous secret.Neither seems trustworthy, but when tragedy strikes, Callie is caught in the middle and must choose one of them to help her if she is to save herself and her newfound friends from disaster.In this historical romantic adventure, a Scottish lass who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time unwittingly embarks on a journey across the ocean to a new beginning where she searches for love, belonging, and ultimately her true destiny.
May 20th: Evvie Drake Starts Over
by Linda Holmes
(303 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 4.03 GR)
In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future. When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out. A joyful, hilarious, and hope-filled debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over will have you cheering for the two most unlikely comebacks of the year—and will leave you wanting more from Linda Holmes.
June 17th: The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
(336 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.05 GR)
A thrilling mixture of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting and greek tragedy. A Shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband, and the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening, her husband returns home late and Alicia violently kills him, and then never speaks another word. Her refusal to speak thrusts her into notoriety and all that goes with it, but Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist is determined to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of this notorious murder. Will the twisting path to answers consume him?
July 15th: Movie Night
August 19th: Hum If You Don’t Know The Words
by Bianca Marais
(448 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.2 GR)
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin’s parents are left dead and Beauty’s daughter goes missing. After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection.
September 16th: The Tattooist of Auschwitz
by Heather Morris
(288 pgs / 4.5 stars B&N / 4.27 GR)
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
October 21st: The Overdue Life Of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms
(332 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 3.96 GR)
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.
November 18th: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
(336 pgs / 4.3 stars B&N / 3.97 GR)
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
December 16th: Movie night