My apologies, my work travel schedule means I completely lost track of time and forgot to post the third part of this list! In case you missed it, a few days ago I shared Part I and Part II of my most-anticipated books of March. Finally, these are the titles publishing the last part of the month.
Following the publisher’s summary is a short explanation about why I’m excited about a particular title. Without further ado:
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (March 22)
Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs’ joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.
Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.
This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.
Family drama. I’m sold.
No One Knows by J. T. Ellison (March 22)
The day Aubrey Hamilton’s husband is declared dead by the state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move on with her life. But Aubrey doesn’t want to move on; she wants Josh back. It’s been five years since he disappeared, since their blissfully happy marriage—they were happy, weren’t they?—screeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime suspect in his disappearance. Five years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness, questions. Why didn’t Josh show up at his friend’s bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new life?
In No One Knows, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Nicholas Drummond series expertly peels back the layers of a complex woman who is hiding dark secrets beneath her unassuming exterior. This masterful thriller for fans of Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, and Paula Hawkins will pull readers into a you’ll-never-guess merry-go-round of danger and deception. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops…no one knows.
J.T. Ellison is a favorite author of mine. Her books are those that I make a point of picking up as soon as they publish!
The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson (March 22):
SET IN THE SUMMER OF 1914 in the village of Rye, England, a similar setting to Pettigrew.
Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, arrives as the first female candidate to teach Latin in the local school, and over the course of the novel she and the nephew of her sponsor fall in love.
Surrounding them is a vibrant, colorful cast of characters with whom the reader will fall in love, as they did in Pettigrew.
AS IN JANE AUSTEN, social and domestic dramas and subplots abound…
UNTIL ALL PALES IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT WAR.
First off, I loved, loved, loved Simonson’s previous novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. Add that this is recommended to fans of Downton Abbey? Sign me up.
Jane Steele by Lydsay Faye (March 22):
“Reader, I murdered him.”
A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.
Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito, and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past?
A satirical romance about identity, guilt, goodness, and the nature of lies, by a writer who Matthew Pearl calls “superstar-caliber” and whose previous works Gillian Flynn declared “spectacular,” JANE STEELE is a brilliant and deeply absorbing book inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre, serial killer? There isn’t anything about this I don’t love. if you buy one book that I recommend in March, let it be this one!
That wraps it all up; my most anticipated books of March. Did I miss any? Which titles are you looking forward to most?
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