Shelley's Book Nook

☆☆☆☆1/2 ebook, 284 pages Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Henry Holt & Company About the Book: There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out – and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was thirty years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days. Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past and an editor keen to understand it. But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve. Alex Pavesi's The Eighth Detective is a love letter to classic detectiv...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 284 pages Expected publication: July 28th 2020 by Amazon Publishing UK About the Book: The chaotic but happy equilibrium of the Nightingale family is thrown into disarray when Cecily—whose children can’t remember her ever being remotely spontaneous—disappears to a Greek island with no warning or explanation. Her reasons for doing something so out of character are a total mystery to her three daughters, high-powered executive Felicity, unfulfilled GP Julia and organised mother-of-five Lily. What connection could she possibly have with Kefalonia? But Cecily has gone to continue a story she thought ended decades ago—one that could have a huge impact on her family. And when she returns, she’ll have to tell them the truth. Will Cecily be able to hold her family together once she reveals her big secret? And might she discover that she’s not the only one with a story to tell? This story is about women, and how they cope with crises and keep the family together. The story is...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 225 pages Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Random House Publishing, Ballantine Books About the Book: Justin Childs is handsome, likeable, smart. A devoted son to his mother, Carol; a loving husband to his wife, Annie; and a sure-footed, savvy business partner to his best friend from college, Will. To so many, the perfect man. He’s also a liar. And now he’s dead. When Justin’s body is retrieved from the wreckage of a car accident, his death leaves his loved ones with more questions than answers. In life, his charm and easygoing nature inspired trust, making him friends wherever he went. Now that he’s gone, the cracks begin to show: disturbing discrepancies in his company’s financials, unaccounted-for absences, a medical record that appears to be entirely fabricated. As the secrets and betrayals pile up, Annie, Carol, and Will realize their beloved Justin was not the man they thought he was. And why was he found dead with Valium in his system when he notoriously ...

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 349 pages Expected publication: June 2nd 2020 by Scribner About the Book: Drawn from the author’s own family history, An Elegant Woman is a story of discovery and reinvention, following four generations of women in one American family. As Isadora, a novelist, and two of her sisters sift through the artifacts of their forebears’ lives, trying to decide what to salvage and what to toss, the narrative shifts to a winter day in 1910 at a train station in Ohio. Two girls wait in the winter cold with their mother—the mercurial Glenna Stewart—to depart for a new life in the West. As Glenna campaigns in Montana for women’s suffrage and teaches in one-room schoolhouses, Tommy takes care of her little sister, Katherine: trapping animals, begging, keeping house, cooking, while Katherine goes to school. When Katherine graduates, Tommy makes a decision that will change the course of both of their lives. A profound meditation on memory, history, and legacy, An Elegant Woman follows...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 291 pages Expected publication: July 23rd 2020 by Avon Books UK About the Book: Orla and Kate have been best friends forever. Together they’ve faced it all – be it Orla’s struggles as a new mother or Kate’s messy divorce. And whatever else happens in their lives, they can always look forward to their annual weekend away. This year, they’re off to Lisbon: the perfect flat, the perfect view, the perfect itinerary. And what better way to kick things off in style than with the perfect night out? But when Orla wakes up the next morning, Kate is gone. Brushed off by the police and with only a fuzzy memory of the night’s events, Orla is her friend’s only hope. As she frantically retraces their steps, Orla makes a series of shattering discoveries that threaten everything she holds dear. Because while Lisbon holds the secret of what happened that night, the truth may lie closer to home… I really liked this book and didn’t see the end coming, it was definitely a shocker. It ha...

☆☆1/2 ebook, 173 pages Expected publication: July 7th 2020 by Henry Holt & Company About the Book: Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD—and now they’re filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts. When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend, it feels almost harmless—one of those innocuous ruptures that exist online, in texts. But her timing is uncanny. Sasha is facing a crisis, too, and perhaps after years apart, their shared moments of crux can bring them back into each other’s lives. This is a well-written story, but there was just something about it that I couldn’t connect to. It felt like there was so much internalization and many things felt unresolve...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 365 pages Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mariner Books About the Book: Now: On the verge of marriage and a fresh start, thirty-eight year old Charlie Lewis finds that he can’t stop thinking about the past, and the events of one particular summer. Then: Sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don’t remember in the school photograph. He’s failing his classes. At home he looks after his depressed father—when surely it should be the other way round—and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. But when Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. In order to spend time with Fran, Charlie must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person. He must join the Company. And if the Company sounds like a cult, the truth is even more appalling: The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet lear...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 257 pages Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Gallery Books About the Book: When Nancy Hennessy is murdered, she leaves behind two best friends, an adoring husband and daughter, and a secret lover whose identity she took to the grave. Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy, and cherished by those who knew her—from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders and her friends Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other, and maybe even themselves. A gripping, immersive novel about impossible expectations and secrets that fester and become lethal, Imperfect Women unfolds through the perspectives of three fascinating women. Their enduring, complex friendship is the knot the reader must untangle to answer the question Who killed Nancy? Most love is fantastic. Magical and fantastic. But sometimes love is dangerous. Sometimes it rips out the heart and tramples over...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 265 pages Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Scribner About the Book: Danny’s life is falling apart. He’s become a single father to eleven-year-old Will—who hasn’t spoken since the death of his mother in a car crash a year earlier—and Danny has just been fired from his construction job. To make matters worse, he’s behind on the rent and his nasty landlord is threatening to break his legs if he doesn’t pay soon. Danny needs money, and fast. After observing local street performers in a nearby park, Danny spends his last few dollars on a tattered panda costume, impulsively deciding to become a dancing bear. While performing one day, Danny spots his son in the park, and chases off the older boys who are taunting him. Will opens up for the first time since his mother’s death, unaware that the man in the panda costume is his father. Afraid of disclosing his true identity, Danny comforts his son. But will Danny lose Will’s trust once he reveals who he is? And will he be...

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 289 pages Expected publication: July 9th 2020 by Avon Books UK About the Book: Both of them loved him. One of them killed him . . . Louise has had to watch her husband, Andrew, start a new family in the four years since he left her. The ‘other woman’ is now his wife – but Louise isn’t ready to let Caz enjoy the life that was once hers, or to let go of the man she still loves. As Louise starts to dig into Caz’s past, the two women’s pretence of civility starts to slip. But in trying to undermine each other, they discover more about the man they both married. And when Andrew is murdered at a family party, both women are found standing over the body. It’s always the wife. But which one? At the beach, no one can hear you scream. This was quite the interesting story, I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. The narrative shifts back and forth between the points of view of Louise and Caz and we get the "after" chapters as police interviews...I r...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 236 pages Expected publication: July 23rd 2020 by Duckworth Books About the Book: What if everyone you loved was suddenly taken away? Five siblings struggle to stay together as the tides of war threaten to tear them apart. When Germany invades and occupies France in the Second World War, the five Laskowski children lose everything: their home, their Jewish community and most devastatingly their parents who are abducted in the night. There is no safe place left for them to evade the Nazis, but they cling together, never certain when the authorities will come for what is left of them. Inspired by the poignant, true story of the author’s mother, this moving historical novel conveys the hardship, the uncertainty and the impossible choices the Laskowski children were forced to make to survive the horrors of the Holocaust. This is going to be short because I seem to be lacking words for how much I loved this book. In fact, saying I loved it almost seems wrong because readi...

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 325 pages Expected publication: March 9th 2021 by Henry Holt & Company About the Book: Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed “outlaw.” Rules are for other people, the cowards. At school, she is the distant one, the child the other kids make fun of—her clothes are torn, her hair never properly fixed. But let them throw their sticks, because she’ll throw stones. Duchess might be a badass, but she’s really just trying to survive. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin. She is the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He’s the chief of police, trying to keep Cape Haven, with its beautiful bluffs overlooking the sea, not only safe, but safe from becoming a cookie-cutter tourist destination for the rich. But he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent hi...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 318 pages Expected publication: July 14th 2020 by Lake Union Publishing About the Book: Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. While growing up in charming small-town Buttonwood, Alabama, she’s happened across lost wallets, jewelry, pets, her wandering neighbor, and sometimes, trouble. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across an abandoned newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree. Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace’s secrets. The unexpected discovery of the newborn baby girl will alter Blue’s and Sarah Grace’s lives forever. Both women must fight for what they truly want in life and for who they love. In doing so, they uncover long-held secrets that reveal exactly who they really are—and what they’re willing to sacrifice in the name of family. Perfection from th...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 283 pages Expected publication: July 7th 2020 by Amazon Publishing UK About the Book: When her loving, free-spirited grandmother Primrose passes away, Victoria is bereft, yet resilient—she has survived tragedy before. But even her strength is tested when a mysterious woman attends Prim’s funeral and claims to be the mother Victoria thought was dead. As the two women get to know each other and Victoria begins to learn more about her past, it becomes clear that her beloved grandmother had been keeping life-changing secrets from her. Desperate for answers, she still struggles to trust anyone to tell her the truth. To live a full and happy life, Victoria knows she must not only uncover the truth, but find a way to forgive her family. But after so many years, is trusting them even possible? That’s the things with lies, darling; they are like wounds that never quite heal, the hurt goes too deep. It’s not only the thing that is said or done that rankles, it’s also the fact ...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 362 pages Expected publication: July 7th 2020 by Berkley Publishing Group About the Book: Ryan Francis has it all—great job, wonderful wife, beautiful child—and he loves posting photos of his perfect life on social media. Until the night his friend Blake asks him to break into a woman’s home to retrieve incriminating items that implicate Blake in an affair. Ryan refuses to help, but when Blake threatens to reveal Ryan’s darkest secret—which could jeopardize everything in Ryan’s life—Ryan has no choice but to honor Blake’s request. When he arrives at the woman's home, Ryan is shocked to find her dead—and just as shocked to realize he knows her. Then his phone chimes, revealing a Facebook friend request from the woman. With police sirens rapidly approaching, Ryan flees, wondering why his friend was setting him up for murder. Determined to keep his life intact and to clear his name, Ryan must find the real murderer—but solving the crime may lead him closer to home tha...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 272 pages Expected publication: July 7th 2020 by Lake Union Publishing About the Book: With her deceased sister’s Route 66 bucket list in hand, California girl Joy Evers sets out on a cross-country road trip to meet up with her fiancé, checking off the bullets along the way. Singer-songwriter Dylan Westfield has a serious case of wanderlust and a broken-down car. Stuck at a diner between LA and Flagstaff, he meets Joy, his complete opposite. She’s energetic. He’s moody. She’s by the book. He’s spontaneous. She believes in love at first sight. He thinks love is a complicated mess. But Joy has a brand-new convertible. They strike a deal. She’ll drive him to New York. He’ll pay for gas. Only three rules apply: no exchanging of last names; what happens on the road, stays on the road; and if one of them wants to take a side trip, they both must agree. The tune made her think of love and loss and life’s unexpected routes, like the road that had led her to him. The only t...

Defending Jacob by William Landay My rating: 5 of 5 stars We were despised, somebody had to be responsible for Jacob, and we had created the boy and raised him—we must have done something wrong. I always wanted to read this novel and it was sitting on my shelf for years....then I heard the was a mini series based on the book. I have to read the book before I watch the series so I picked up my paperback yesterday and couldn't put the thing down! The plot, characters, and action of this novel are simply perfect. Landay's writing is superb: I couldn't stop reading nor imagining such a shocking ending. It raises many moral questions that no parent should ever ponder, but I guess that's what makes this such a powerful book. The novel is a page-turner from the beginning; and it never lets up. We readers get a intensive look into the American justice system's failures in assuring that the innocent go free and the guilty face justice. Landay's writing style is d...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 251 pages Expected publication: July 21st 2020 by Gallery Books About the Book: Lou Ann Hunter’s mother, Patricia, has always had a passionate nature, which explains why she’s been married and divorced five times and spooned enough male patients to be ousted from three elderly care facilities. She also has Alzheimer’s, which is why she wants to spend the rest of her life surrounded by childhood memories at Sutton Hall, her family’s decrepit plantation home in Louisiana. Lou Ann, a.k.a. Lulu the Love Guru, has built an empire preaching sex, love, and relationship advice to the women of America—mostly by defying the example her mother has set for her. But with Patricia suddenly in need of a fulltime caretaker, Lou Ann reluctantly agrees to step out of the spotlight and indulge her mother’s wishes, even if it means trading in her Louboutins and Chanel N°5 for boots and mosquito repellant. Upon her arrival at Sutton Hall, Lou Ann discovers that very little functions as it ...

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 340 pages Expected publication: July 28th 2020 by Scribner About the Book: Who is Evie, the girl with no past, running from? She was discovered hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a terrible crime. Her ability to tell when someone is lying helped Cyrus crack an impenetrable case in Good Girl, Bad Girl. Now, the closer Cyrus gets to uncovering answers about Evie’s dark history, the more he exposes Evie to danger, giving her no choice but to run. Ultimately, both will have to decide if some secrets are better left buried and some monsters should never be named. I loved the first book in this series and the second did not disappoint. This was one of the most intriguing stories Michael Robotham has written. Talk about your twists and turns, this one has them in spades. I had to put the book down once (duty calls, you know), which I didn't want to do. I picked it back up as soon as I could. I really enjoyed the character interactions and watched as the focal ...

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 299 pages Expected publication: July 21st 2020 by Macmillan-Tor, Forge Books About the Book: Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. While growing up in charming small-town Buttonwood, Alabama, she’s happened across lost wallets, jewelry, pets, her wandering neighbor, and sometimes, trouble. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across an abandoned newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree. Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace’s secrets. The unexpected discovery of the newborn baby girl will alter Blue’s and Sarah Grace’s lives forever. Both women must fight for what they truly want in life and for who they love. In doing so, they uncover long-held secrets that reveal exactly who they really are—and what they’re willing to sacrifice in the name of family. This book wa...

☆☆☆☆1/2 ebook, 301 pages Expected publication: June 1st 2020 by Legend Press About the Book: Veronica and her wealthy husband George are unpacking boxes, hoping a fresh start in their newly refurbished Victorian terrace will help them heal from a recent trauma. Next door, Simone returns to her neglected council flat. Miserable and trapped, she struggles to take care of her children under the watch of her controlling husband Terry. When childhood friend Sarah re-enters Veronica’s life, things are thrown even further off balance. As tensions in their own lives rise, the painful memory that binds them threatens to spill into their present. Three lives collide in this story of family, inequality and revenge. He turns to her with a slow look of disgust, as though observing a ballerina taking off her costume to reveal that beneath the glittered skirts, there is only humanity: bloodied toes, bruised bones. And she watches his face as every last illusion of beauty is shattered. I have...

☆☆☆1/2 ebook, 296 pages Expected publication: July 15th 2020 by Legend Press About the Book: Three months into her new role as a psychiatrist at a clinic in New York, Erin Cartwright is asked to evaluate the case of a man who murdered his mother and sisters at the age of seventeen. Found not guilty by reason of insanity and held in a maximum-security psychiatric facility for twenty-seven years, Timothy Stern is now eligible for release. Upon learning the crime occurred in the same village she once visited as a child, Erin is on the verge of refusing to take the case, when a startling discovery triggers memories she’d rather keep hidden, and a suspicion the wrong man is behind bars. I had a hard time getting into this book, it was slow going but yet it captured my attention because I wanted to know the answers. The introduction throws you off and you keep looking for a place to tie it together. It eventually comes, but still seems a little disjointed. That's not to say that t...