Where did the month of June go!? I’ve completely lost track of time, evidence by my lack of a preview post(s) for July. Better late than never, I say!
July is just around the corner. Most of everyone is enjoying the summer. Publishers are preparing for their big Fall releases. One would think this would give us all time to catch up on our TBR stacks, right? Clearly that’s not the case!
Following is just some of the July titles I’m really excited about, books releasing the first week of July. As always, I’ve included the publisher’s summary. Anxious to preorder a copy? Just click on the title or book cover!
Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman (July 7):
Within the hallowed halls of Harvard University, student life teems with excitement as graduation looms near. Hundreds of students dream of the possibilities their newfound freedom will offer, never fathoming that one of their privileged own would be left behind forever.
When a senior is found brutally murdered on campus, her death becomes an immediate and shocking enigma. The handsome and charismatic master Rufus Storrow is a suspect, and there’s talk of a jealous lover’s spat gone horrifically wrong. As a role model among students and a faculty favorite, the possibility of his guilt is baffling. Moreover, Georgia, Charlie, and Alice are all connected to both the victim and professor in some way, and though they have an idea who the murderer may be, none can speak confidently to the truth.
Over the course of the next decade, the three friends grapple with each new phase of adulthood, but they cannot forget the event that marked their lives. As they witness the unraveling of their former professor’s life, they must confront their own weaknesses and shortcomings, each in desperate search for answers.
A Necessary End by Holly Brown (July 7):
Thirty-nine-year-old Adrienne is desperate to be a mother. And this time, nothing is going to get in her way.
Sure, her husband, Gabe, is ambivalent about fatherhood. But she knows that once he holds their baby, he’ll come around. He’s just feeling a little threatened, that’s all. Because once upon a time, it was Gabe that Adrienne wanted more than anything; she was willing to do anything. . . . But that was half a lifetime ago. She’s a different person now, and so is Gabe. There are lines she wouldn’t cross, not without extreme provocation.
And sure, she was bitten once before by another birth mother—clear to the bone—and for most people, it’s once bitten, twice shy. But Adrienne isn’t exactly the retiring type.
At nineteen, Leah bears a remarkable resemblance to the young woman Adrienne once was. Which is why Adrienne knows the baby Leah is carrying is meant to be hers. But Leah’s got ideas of her own: Her baby’s going to get a life in California; why shouldnt she? All she wants is to live in Adrienne’s house for a year after the baby’s born, and get a fresh start.
It seems like a small price for Adrienne to pay to get their baby. And with Gabe suddenly on board, what could possibly go wrong?
The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble (July 7):
The Maguire brothers each have their own driving, single-minded obsession. For Jonathan, it is his magnificent, talented, and desirable wife, Harriet. For Roger, it is the elaborate universe he has constructed in a shed in their parents’ garden, populated by millions of tiny insects. While Jonathan’s pursuit of Harriet leads him to feelings of jealousy and anguish, Roger’s immersion in the world he has created reveals a capability and talent which are absent from his everyday life.
Roger is known to all as a loving, protective, yet simple man, but the ever-growing complexity of the insect farm suggests that he is capable of far more than anyone believes. Following a series of strange and disturbing incidents, Jonathan begins to question every story he has ever been told about his brother–and if he has so completely misjudged Roger’s mind, what else might he have overlooked about his family, and himself?
The Insect Farm is a dramatic psychological thriller about the secrets we keep from those we love most, and the extent to which the people closest to us are also the most unknowable. In his astounding debut, Stuart Prebble guides us through haunting twists and jolting discoveries as a startling picture emerges: One of the Maguire brothers is a killer, and the other has no idea.
Signal by Patrick Lee (July 7):
In the middle of the night, ex-Special Forces operative Sam Dryden gets a urgent call from an old colleague, desperate for his help in a last-minute secret mission. Without a moment’s hesitation, Dryden agrees. The two race to a remote shack in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, where they break in, rescue four kidnapped girls, then flee into the hills just seconds ahead of the arriving police and FBI team.
It’s then that Sam Dryden learns the real secret behind this mission. His former teammate has been working security for an old friend whose company discovered something, and developed a device around that discovery, which had the power to change the course of history. But, as Newton’s laws predict, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. There are some very bad people determined to get their hands on this device, and will stop at nothing to do so. This hidden group apparently has the money, the connections, the men, and the material to accomplish anything they want. Now the only thing standing in their way is Sam Dryden.
The Fraud by Brad Parks (July 7):
In the next in Brad Parks’s award-winning series, investigative reporter Carter Ross’s latest story turns deadly when his pregnant girlfriend is kidnapped
In the most thrilling entry yet in Brad Parks’s award-winning series, investigative reporter Carter Ross must chose who gets to live: him or his unborn child.
A rash of carjackings terrorizing Newark become newsworthy when one such theft ends in the murder of a wealthy banking executive. The affable, wisecracking Ross is assigned the story, but he’s weary of only writing about victims of crime who happen to be rich and white. To balance his reporting, he finds a Nigerian immigrant of more modest means who was also killed during a recent carjacking.
When it turns out the two victims knew each other, sharing an unexplained round of golf at a tony country club shortly before their deaths, Carter is plunged onto the trail of a deadly band of car thieves that includes a sociopathic ex-convict. When his unborn child is put in harm’s way, it becomes more than just a story for Carter. And he’ll stop at nothing to rescue the baby-even if it costs him his own life.
Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell (July 7):
The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still.Pretty Is beautifully defies ripped-from-the-headlines crime story expectations and announces the debut of a masterful new storytelling talent.
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us about Crime by Val McDermid (July 7)
Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers we have, whose novels have captivated millions of readers worldwide with their riveting narratives of characters who solve complex crimes and confront unimaginable evil. In the course of researching her bestselling novels McDermid has become familiar with every branch of forensics, and now she uncovers the history of this science, real-world murders and the people who must solve them.
The dead talk—to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.Forensics draws on interviews with some of these top-level professionals, ground-breaking research, and McDermid’s own original interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top forensic scientists.
Along the way, McDermid discovers how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine one’s time of death; how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer; and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist were able to uncover the victims of a genocide. It’s a journey that will take McDermid to war zones, fire scenes, and autopsy suites, and bring her into contact with both extraordinary bravery and wickedness, as she traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.
Swerve by Vicki Pettersson (July 7):
It’s high summer in the Mojave Desert, and Kristine Rush and her fiancé, Daniel, are en route from Las Vegas to Lake Arrowhead, California, for the July Fourth holiday weekend. But when Daniel is abducted from a desolate rest stop, Kristine is forced to choose: return home unharmed, but never to see her fiancé again, or plunge forward into the searing desert to find him…where a killer lies in wait.
One road. One woman. One killer.
Sprinting against the clock, and uncertain if danger lies ahead or behind, Kristine must blaze an epic path through the gaudy flash of roadside casinos, abandoned highway stops, and a landscape rife with horrors never before imagined. Desperate to save her doomed husband-to-be, Kristine must summon long forgotten resources if she’s to go head-to-head against this unpredictable killer. And she’d better hurry. Because she only has twenty-four hours…to make one hell of a trip.
Speak by Louisa Hall (July 7):
In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.
A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend’s mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.
Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps—to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human—shrinking rapidly with today’s technological advances—echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.
The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch (July 7):
With the flash of a camera, one girl’s life is shattered, and a host of others altered forever. . .
In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image wins acclaim and prizes, becoming an icon for millions—and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer’s best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own.
As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends, including a fearless bisexual poet and an ingenuous performance artist, to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the United States. And yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question: What does the writer really want? Who is controlling the action? And what will happen when these two worlds—east and west, real and virtual—collide?
A fierce, provocative, and deeply affecting novel of both ideas and action that blends the tight construction of Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending with the emotional power of Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children is a major step forward from one of our most avidly watched writers.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the second part of this list!
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