Unfinished Business by J.A. Jance: Ali Reynolds’s personal life is in turmoil when two separate men show up on the scene – a serial killer and a former employee of her husband who has just been released from a sixteen-year prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend. With lives hanging in the balance, Ali must thread the needle between good and evil.
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy: Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love.
All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton: Australia, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot.
What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster: When a county initiative forces the students at a mostly black public school to move across town to a nearly all-white high school, the community rises in outrage. For two students, quiet and aloof Gee and headstrong Noelle, these divisions will extend far beyond their schooling. As their paths collide and overlap over the course of thirty years, their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that shape the trajectory of their lives.
In the Country of Others by Leïla Slimani: Mathilde, a spirited young Frenchwoman, falls in love with Amine, a handsome Moroccan soldier in the French army during World War II. As tensions mount between the Moroccans and the French colonists, Amine finds himself caught in the crossfire: in solidarity with his Moroccan workers yet also a landowner, despised by the French yet married to a Frenchwoman, and proud of his wife’s resolve but ashamed by her refusal to be subjugated.
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott: An African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Jason Mott’s novel and is the scaffolding of something larger and more urgent: since his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. Throughout, these characters’ stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish.
Sparks like Stars by Nadia Hashima: Kabul, 1978: the daughter in a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.
The Reincarnationist Papers by Eric Maikranz: Evan struggles with being different, having the complete memories of two other people who lived sequentially before him. He believes he is unique until he meets Poppy. She is like him, except that she is much older, remembering seven consecutive lives. But there is something else: she is a member of the secretive Cognomina. They are, in effect, immortals, compiling experiences and skills over lifetimes into near-superhuman abilities that they have used to drive history over centuries.
The Nature of Middle Earth by J.R.R. Tolkien: It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954-5. What may be less known is that he continued to write about Middle-earth in the decades that followed, right up until the years before his death in 1973. This new collection offers readers a chance to peer over Professor Tolkien’s shoulder at the very moment of discovery: and on every page, Middle-earth is once again brought to extraordinary life.