As we speak, I’m packing up to head to New York City to attend Book Expo America, the biggest publishing/bookish event in the country. While I do have a list of books I’d have my hands on, there is one book I’m dying to get my hands on:

If you are going to be at BEA and see me aimlessly walking up and down the aisles, don’t be afraid to say hello! Also, if you do want to meet up, I will be checking email messages periodically. Feel free to shoot me an email (jennsbookshelf@gmail.com) or tweet me (@jennbookshelves). Here’s a picture to help you spot me:

Since I will be in NY through Friday, I opted not to run any new content on the blog this week. Instead, I  would like to focus on some of my favorite posts from the last few months.  These posts will hopefully give new readers an idea of the types of books I generally review, as well as tide over existing readers until I  return rested and invigorated next week!  Enjoy!

• Thank you, Cara Hoffman (Be Safe I Love You)
• Review: The Three by Sarah Lotz
• Review: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
• Review: The Accident by Chris Pavone
• Review: Above by Isla Morley
• Review: The Headmaster’s Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene
• Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

As you’ll see, I have quite the eclectic taste in books!

Enjoy the week, I’ll be back with vigor and all sorts of bookish energy next week!

I warned you there were  a lot of books I was looking forward to in June!  I don’t know how I’m going to possibly read them all, but I’m certainly going to try!

Following are the final set of books I’m anticipating. I must say, this has been one of my more eclectic book lists! As with the previous two posts, I’ve included the publishers summary and an opportunity for you to preorder by clicking on the book title or cover.

The Ways of the Deadby Neely Tucker (June 10):
When the teenage daughter of a powerful Washington, D.C., judge is found dead, three local black kids are arrested for her murder—but reporter Sully Carter suspects there’s more to the case. From the city’s grittiest backstreets to the elegant halls of power, wry yet wounded Sully pursues a string of cold cases, all the while fighting against pressure from government officials, police, suspicious locals, and his own bosses at the newspaper. Based on the real-life 1990s Princeton Place murders, Neely Tucker’s debut novel is a pitch-perfect rendering of a fast-paced newsroom and a layered, edge-of-your-seat mystery sure to please fans of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos.

Bliss House by Laura Benedict (June 15):
Death never did come quietly for Bliss House . . . and now a mother and daughter have become entwined in the secrets hidden within its walls. 

Amidst the lush farmland and orchards in Old Gate, Virginia, stands the magnificent Bliss House. Built in 1878 as a country retreat, Bliss House is impressive, historic, and inexplicably mysterious. Decades of strange occurrences, disappearances and deaths have plagued the house, yet it remains vibrant. And very much alive.

Rainey Bliss Adams desperately needed a new start when she and her daughter Ariel relocated from St. Louis to Old Gate and settled into the house where the Bliss family had lived for over a century. Rainey’s husband had been killed in a freak explosion that left her 14 year-old daughter Ariel scarred and disfigured.

At the grand housewarming party, Bliss House begins to reveal itself again. Ariel sees haunting visions: the ghost of her father, and the ghost of a woman being pushed to her death off of an upper floor balcony, beneath an exquisite dome of painted stars. And then there is a death the night of the party. Who is the murderer in the midst of this small town? And who killed the woman in Ariel’s visions? But Bliss House is loath to reveal its secrets, as are the good folks of Old Gate.

The Quick by Lauren Owen (June 17):
Lauren Owen’s thrilling first novel introduces an utterly beguiling world. London, 1893: James Norbury is a shy would-be poet, newly down from Oxford and confounded by the sinister, labyrinthine city at his doorstep. Taking up lodging with a dissolute young aristocrat, he is introduced to the drawing rooms of high society and finds love in an unexpected quarter. On the cusp of achieving a happiness long denied to him, he vanishes without a trace. In Yorkshire, his sister Charlotte – only in her twenties but already resigned to life as a rural spinster – sets out to find her brother. Her search for answers leads her to one of the country’s pre-eminent and mysterious institutions: The Aegolius Club, whose members include the richest, most ambitious men in England. Trying to save James – and herself – from the Club’s designs, Charlotte uncovers a secret world at the city’s margins populated by unforgettable characters: a female rope walker turned vigilante, a street urchin with a deadly secret, and the chilling “Dr. Knife.” As emotionally involving as it is suspenseful, The Quick will establish its young author as one of contemporary fiction’s most dazzling talents.

A Better World by Marcus Sakey (June 17): 
The brilliants changed everything.

Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we’d only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person’s most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional…and the rest of us.

Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.

Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the president of the United States, he’s against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose-because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.

And to reach it, they’re willing to burn this one down.

The Fever by Megan Abbott (June 17):
The panic unleashed by a mysterious contagion threatens the bonds of family and community in a seemingly idyllic suburban community.

The Nash family is close-knit. Tom is a popular teacher, father of two teens: Eli, a hocky star and girl magnet, and his sister Deenie, a diligent student. Their seeming stability, however, is thrown into chaos when Deenie’s best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class. Rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through the family, school and community.

As hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families and the town’s fragile idea of security.

That Night by Chevy Stevens (June 17):
Toni Murphy was eighteen when she and her boyfriend, Ryan, were wrongly convicted of the murder of her younger sister.  Now she is thirty-four and back in her hometown, working every day to forge and adjust to a new life on the outside.  She’s doing everything in her power to avoid violating her parole and going back to prison.  But nothing is making that easy–not Ryan, who is convinced he can figure out the truth; not her mother, who clearly doubts Toni’s innocence; and certainly not the group of women who made Toni’s life miserable in high school and may have darker secrets than anyone realizes.  Before Toni can truly move on, she must risk everything to find out the truth and clear her name.

Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (June 19):
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days–as he has done before–and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

Memorial Day weekend is upon us! Since I’ll be traveling next week for BEA (Book Expo America) I hope to spend the weekend relaxing, curled up with a few great books. Some of these books I’m mentioning in these June book previews are certain to be included in my pile of books.

Yesterday, I shared the first part of this list. I warned you, this month’s list is a big one! If I didn’t do enough damage to your wallet yesterday, following are some more titles I’m looking forward to reading!

Two Soldiers by Anders Roslund, Borge Hellstrom (June 10):
In a bleak Stockholm suburb where juvenile gang crime is rapidly on the rise, two 19-year-old boys, best friends since third grade and drug addicts since age 9, have spent their young lives establishing a ruthless criminal enterprise-known as the Råby Warriors. With the recruitment of children as foot soldiers, the Warriors are now poised to become the most powerful syndicate in the region.

Twenty years on the force, José Pereira now heads the Organized Crime and Gang Section in Råby. If it was not so deadly, Pereira might appreciate the absurdity of watching boys like Leon and Gabriel, raised on Hollywood images, morph themselves into characterizations of gangsters.

After Leon and Gabriel execute a maximum-security prison break, in which a female guard is kidnapped and feared murdered, Pereira is joined in his investigation by Chief Superintendent Ewert Grens, whom Roslund and Hellström readers will recognize as the maverick detective who never gives up. For Grens, this case awakens troubled ghosts from his past. Soon all four men are on a violent collision course that will irrevocably change all their lives.

Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey (June 10):
Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.

But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.

This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.

As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth? 

Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson (June 10):
The stunningly creative, epic sequel to Wilson’s blockbuster thriller and New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse.

“The machine is still out there. Still alive.”

Humankind had triumphed over the machines. At the end of Robopocalypse, the modern world was largely devastated, humankind was pressed to the point of annihilation, and the earth was left in tatters…but the master artificial intelligence presence known as Archos had been killed.

In Robogenesis, we see that Archos has survived. Spread across the far reaches of the world, the machine code has fragmented into millions of pieces, hiding and regrouping. In a series of riveting narratives, Robogenesis explores the fates of characters new and old, robotic and human, as they fight to build a new world in the wake of a devastating war. Readers will bear witness as survivors find one another, form into groups, and react to a drastically different (and deadly) technological landscape. All the while, the remnants of Archos’s shattered intelligence are seeping deeper into new breeds of machines, mounting a war that will not allow for humans to win again.

Daniel H. Wilson makes a triumphant return to the apocalyptic world he created, for an action-filled, raucous, very smart thrill ride about humanity and technology pushed to the tipping point.

All Day and a Night by Alafair Burke (June 10):
The latest story dominating the tabloids – the murder of  psychotherapist Helen Brunswick—couldn’t be further from Carrie Blank’s world handling federal appeals at an elite Manhattan law firm.  But then a hard-charging celebrity trial lawyer calls Carrie with an offer she can’t refuse: Anthony Amaro, the serial killer police blamed for the murder of Carrie’s older sister, Donna, has new evidence related to Brunswick’s murder that he believes can exonerate him. Determined to force the government to catch Donna’s real killer, Carrie takes on Amaro’s wrongful conviction claim. 

On the other side of Amaro’s case is NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, who, along with her partner, JJ Rogan, is tapped as the “fresh look” team to reassess the investigation that led to Amaro’s conviction.  The case is personal for them, too: Ellie wonders whether they got the assignment because of her relationship with the lead prosecutor, and Rogan has his own reasons to distrust Amaro’s defense team. 

As the NYPD and Amaro’s lawyers search for certainty among years of conflicting evidence, their investigations take them back to Carrie’s hometown and secrets left behind there. And when Carrie falls victim to a brutal attack, it becomes clear that the young attorney got too close to the truth.

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (June 10):
Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.

But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town—and Noria.  And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.

Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (June 10):
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

Never Look Back by Clare Donoghue (June 10):
Three young women have been found brutally murdered in south London, their bodies discarded in plain view, the victims only yards away from help during each attack. And the murderer is getting bolder.

Detective Inspector Mike Lockyer is the head of homicide on the South London police force, and with three bodies on his watch and a killer growing in confidence, he and DS Jane Bennett are frantically trying to find a link between these seemingly isolated incidents. Slowly, the case is also invading Lockyer’s life outside the office, and the fact that his daughter matches the victim profile is putting a painful strain on their already fragile relationship.

Meanwhile, Sarah Grainger is too afraid to leave her house. Once an outgoing London photographer, she started locking herself away once she became aware of a shadowy stalker following her every move. Now his actions are escalating. He’s desperate to tell Sarah a secret…a secret that Lockyer needs to know.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the last part of my most anticipated books of June!

Well, it seems we were graced with just a few days of spring before the heat and humidity of summer made an appearance! With summer brings lazy days of reading, be it spent curled up on a beach or in your favorite chair out on the patio.

I’m going to warn you now that this list of most anticipated books of June is lengthy. So many outstanding books are releasing next month. I’ve broken it up into three posts to save your eyes (and your wallets!) for undue pain or stress! This first post covers those books released the first week of June

I’ve included a link to preorder the book (click on the title or the book image) as well as the publisher’s summary.

The Director by David Ignatius (June 2): Graham Weber has been the director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents’ names to prove it. This is the moment a CIA director most dreads.

Weber turns to a charismatic (and unstable) young man named James Morris who runs the Internet Operations Center. He’s the CIA’s in-house geek. Weber launches Morris on a mole hunt unlike anything in spy fiction-one that takes the reader into the hacker underground of Europe and America and ends up in a landscape of paranoia and betrayal. Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it’s drawn, The Director is a maze of deception and double dealing, about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones and nothing can be trusted. The CIA has belatedly discovered that this is not your father’s Cold War, and Weber must play catch-up, against the clock and an unknown enemy, in a game he does not yet understand.

Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch (June 3):
When a medical mistake goes horribly wrong and Ralph Meier, a famous actor, winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser is forced to conceal the error from his patients and family. After all, reputation is everything in this business. But the weight of carrying such a secret lies heavily on his mind, and he can’t keep hiding from the truth…or the Board of Medical Examiners.

The problem is that the real truth is a bit worse than a simple slipup. Marc played a role in Ralph’s death, and he’s not exactly upset that the man is gone. Still haunted by his eldest daughter’s rape during their stay at Ralph’s extravagant Mediterranean summerhouse-one they shared with Ralph and his enticing wife, Judith, film director Stanley Forbes and his far younger girlfriend, Emmanuelle, and Judith’s mother-Marc has had it on his mind that the perpetrator of the rape could be either Ralph or Stanley. Stanley’s guilt seems obvious, bearing in mind his uncomfortable fixation on the prospect of Marc’s daughter’s fashion career, but Marc’s reasons for wanting Ralph dead become increasingly compelling as events unravel. There is damning evidence against Marc, but he isn’t alone in his loathing of the star-studded director.

A Barricade in Hell by Jaime Lee Moyer (June 3):
The powerful follow-up to Jaime Lee Moyer’s Delia’s Shadow

Delia Martin has been gifted (or some would say cursed) with the ability to peer across to the other side. Since childhood, her constant companions have been ghosts. She used her powers and the help of those ghosts to defeat a twisted serial killer terrorizing her beloved San Francisco. Now it’s 1917—the threshold of a modern age—and Delia lives a peaceful life with Police Captain Gabe Ryan.

 That peace shatters when a strange young girl starts haunting their lives and threatens Gabe. Delia tries to discover what this ghost wants as she becomes entangled in the mystery surrounding a charismatic evangelist who preaches pacifism and an end to war.  But as young people begin to disappear, and audiences display a loyalty and fervor not attributable to simple persuasion, that message of peace reveals a hidden dark side.

 As Delia discovers the truth, she faces a choice—take a terrible risk to save her city, or chance losing everything?

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith (June 3):
If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.

Your mother…she’s not well, his father tells him. She’s been imagining things – terrible, terrible things. She’s had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.

Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad… I need the police… Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother’s unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (June 3):
In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands.

In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.

In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.

Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta (June 3):
When fourteen-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he’s plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare.

The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.

The clock is ticking, the mountains are burning, and those who wish Jace Wilson dead are no longer far behind.

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez (June 3):
A boy and a girl who fall in love. Two families whose hopes collide with destiny. An extraordinary novel that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American.

Arturo and Alma Rivera have lived their whole lives in Mexico. One day, their beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Maribel, sustains a terrible injury, one that casts doubt on whether she’ll ever be the same. And so, leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel can get better.

When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panama, sees Maribel in a Dollar Tree store, it is love at first sight. It’s also the beginning of a friendship between the Rivera and Toro families, whose web of guilt and love and responsibility is at this novel’s core.

Woven into their stories are the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. Their journeys and their voices will inspire you, surprise you, and break your heart.

Suspenseful, wry and immediate, rich in spirit and humanity, The Book of Unknown Americans is a work of rare force and originality.

Suspicion by Joseph Finder (June 4): When single father Danny Goodman suddenly finds himself unable to afford the private school his teenage daughter adores, he has no one to turn to for financial support. In what seems like a stroke of brilliant luck, Danny meets Thomas Galvin, the father of his daughter’s new best friend, who also happens to be one of the wealthiest men in Boston. Galvin is aware of Danny’s situation and out of the blue offers a $50,000 loan to help Danny cover his daughter’s tuition. Uncomfortable but desperate, Danny takes the money, promising to pay Galvin back. What transpires is something Danny never imagined.

Stay tuned this weekend for more of my most anticipated books of June!