Frankel, Lauren. Hyacinth Girls. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501221941. Read by Emily Sutton-Smith & Laura Hamilton.
While 13-year-old Callie is eventually exonerated of bullying, threatening notes from her alleged victim, Robyn, begin to surface. As the notes become suicidal, Callie’s mother, Rebecca, is determined to save the unbalanced Robyn. As Rebecca navigates school disapproval and mean moms while trying to comfort Callie and help Robyn, she recalls her own intense betrayals and best-friendships at that age. But Rebecca has failed to understand what is really happening in Callie’s life, and now Callie is in terrible danger.
Harrison, Chris. The Perfect Letter. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501259791. Read by Christina Traister.
There aren’t many details available yet about Harrison’s first novel, but who can resist the idea of a romance novel written by the affable host of ABC’s “romance” reality show The Bachelor? There probably aren’t any catfights in hot tubs or weird, competitive group dates in Harrison’s Western-set story, but who knows?
Knight, Renée. The Disclaimer. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504611268. Reader TBA.
Finding a mysterious novel at her bedside plunges documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft into a living nightmare. Though ostensibly fiction, The Perfect Stranger recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the terrible day she became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew—and that person is dead. Now that the past is catching up with her, Catherine’s world is falling apart.
Parry, Leslie. Church of Marvels. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504610940. Reader TBA.
After their mother’s Coney Island sideshow, burns to the ground, Odile Church and her sister Belle are orphaned. Now Belle, the family’s star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her. In a parallel story, a young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped in Blackwell’s Lunatic Asylum. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak—a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both in Parry’s debut, set in turn-of-the-century New York.
Pitre, Michael. Fives and Twenty-Fives. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501227325. Read by Fajer Al-Kaisi, Kevin T. Collins, Nick Sullivan, Jay Snyder, and the author.
In this first novel by a former marine, “fives and twenty-fives” marks the measure of a marine’s life in the road-repair platoon led by Lt. Donavan—a bomb inside five meters cuts through the armor, killing everyone in the truck; a bomb inside 25 meters kills the dismounted scouts investigating the road ahead. Dispatched to fill potholes on the highways of Iraq, the platoon works to assure safe passage for citizens and military personnel. Their mission lacks the glory of the infantry, but in a war where every pothole contains a hidden bomb, road repair brings its own danger.