Tuesday Tomorrow
Mrs. March by Virginia Feito
Published by: Liveright
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A twenty-first-century Highsmith, Virginia Feito conjures the unforgettable Mrs. March, an Upper East Side housewife whose life is shattered by her husband’s latest novel.
In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March’s latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that his protagonist is based on Mrs. March herself: "But... - isn't she...' Mrs. March leaned in and in almost a whisper said, 'a whore?" Clutching her ostrich-leather pocketbook, she flees, that one casual remark destroying her belief that she knew everything about her husband - as well as herself. Suddenly, Mrs. March is hurled into a harrowing journey that builds to near psychosis, one that begins merely within the pages of a book but may uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of her past."
The comparison to Patricia Highsmith is too much to pass up. That and literary New York!
The Steal by C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose
Published by: Blue Box Press
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Paperback, 135 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend - until they’re stolen. Ania Throne is devoted to her jewelry company. The daughter of one of the world’s most famous jewelers, she arrives in Cannes with a stunning new collection. But a shocking theft by the notorious thief known as the Leopard throws her into upheaval - and plunges her on an unexpected hunt that challenges everything she believes.Jerome Curtis thinks he’s seen it all, especially when it comes to crime. Until he’s hired to investigate the loss of Ania Thorne’s collection, his every skill put to the test as he chases after a mysterious master-mind responsible for some of the costliest heists in history - and finds himself in a tangled web with a woman he really shouldn’t fall in love with.From the fabled Carlton Hotel to the elegant boulevards of Paris, Ania and Jerome must race against time to catch a thief before the thief catches them. With everything on the line, can they solve the steal or will the steal take more than diamonds from them? Set in the late 1950s, The Steal is a romantic caper by bestselling authors C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose."
August always needs a good Hitchcock To Catch a Thief vibe!
The Ophelia Girls by Jane Healey
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A mother’s secret past and her daughter’s present collide in this richly atmospheric novel from the acclaimed author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor.
In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings - and a little bit obsessed with each other. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaus. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks.
Twenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and gives Maeve the attention she longs for. She is recently in remission, unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary?
Alternating between the two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a suspense-filled exploration of mothers and daughters, illicit desire, and the perils and power of being a young woman."
I was all in at "obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings" because I honestly think this is a phase all girls go through!
The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore
Published by: Catapult
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Wolf Hall meets The Favourite in this beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves.
England, 1643. Puritanical fervor has gripped the nation. And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices.
Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumors of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca - and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling.
Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation's arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they've suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom."
I always like a modern sensibility on another time period so long as it's done right.
Death and Sensibility by Elizabeth Blake
Published by: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Bookstore owner Erin Coleridge seeks the scoundrel who silenced a conference's keynote speaker in Elizabeth Blake's second charming Jane Austen Society mystery.
When the quaint English town of York hosts a Jane Austen Society conference, bookseller Erin Coleridge is glad to get out of Kirkbymoorside for a while - until featured speaker Barry Wolf suddenly perishes from what appears to be a heart attack.
Erin is suspicious, since Barry had no history of heart disease. But who did him in? Was it the decedent's assistant, Stephen, who was observed chatting to Barry's young wife Luca earlier that night? Might it have been Barry's ex-wife Judith, who was seen arguing with her erstwhile betrothed at the bar? Meanwhile, conference co-chairs Hetty and Prudence have been at one another's throat since the conference. Is one of them the culprit?
Matters of the heart are putting Erin off her guard. Both Detective Inspector Peter Hemming and schoolteacher Jonathan Alder have made gestures of romantic interest, but Erin isn't sure who is her Willoughby and who is her Colonel Brandon. DI Hemming tries to persuade Erin that her entanglement in the murder investigation is far from sensible, but his entreaties come to naught. Dauntlessly, Erin joins forces with Kirkbymoorside's cat lady, Farnsworth, to ferret out the guilty party."
Did you know there's a Jane Austen themed episode of Midsomer Murders? Well there is and this series makes me relive the love!
At Summer's End by Courtney Ellis
Published by: Berkley Books
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"When an ambitious female artist accepts an unexpected commission at a powerful earl's country estate in 1920s England, she finds his war-torn family crumbling under the weight of long-kept secrets. From debut author Courtney Ellis comes a captivating novel about finding the courage to heal after the ravages of war.
Alberta Preston accepts the commission of a lifetime when she receives an invitation from the Earl of Wakeford to spend a summer painting at His Lordship's country home, Castle Braemore. Bertie imagines her residence at the prodigious estate will finally enable her to embark on a professional career and prove her worth as an artist, regardless of her gender.
Upon her arrival, however, Bertie finds the opulent Braemore and its inhabitants diminished by the Great War. The earl has been living in isolation since returning from the trenches, locked away in his rooms and hiding battle scars behind a prosthetic mask. While his younger siblings eagerly welcome Bertie into their world, she soon sees chips in that world's gilded facade. As she and the earl develop an unexpected bond, Bertie becomes deeply entangled in the pain and secrets she discovers hidden within Castle Braemore and the hearts of its residents.
Threaded with hope, love, and loss, At Summer's End delivers a portrait of a noble family - and a world - changed forever by the war to end all wars."
I'm an artist, why doesn't anyone invite me to country estates? All I have is living vicariously through books
Chasing Manhattan by John Gray
Published by: Paraclete Press
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"From the bestselling author of Manchester Christmas comes a new adventure full of love, generosity, and heart-pounding intrigue.
Following the runaway success of her first novel, Chase Harrington is hiding in Manhattan. Assuming the visions from her past are behind her, Chase takes an assignment that lands her in the center of a new mystery surrounding a mansion known as Briarcliff Manor and deceased millionaire Sebastian Winthrop.
A letter, left by Sebastian, reveals three secrets surrounding the mansion where Chase is now living. Silent messages begin to appear, urging her to help those closest to her who are now in peril, including a deaf child shut away from the world and a war veteran still haunted by his past.
With her handsome boyfriend Gavin and faithful dog Scooter at her side, Chase must unlock the secrets of Briarcliff, help those she has come to love and face the surprise ending not even she saw coming.
This latest Chase Harrington adventure is so full of romance, kindness, mystery, and astounding twists and turns, it will leave you wanting to grab a flashlight and best friend, to go searching for clues in the dark."
Here for Briarcliff Manor!!!
The Other Me by Sarah Zachrich Jeng
Published by: Berkley Books
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Two lives. The one you wanted. The one that wanted you.
Her birthday should be like any other night.
One minute Kelly's a free-spirited artist in Chicago going to her best friend's art show. The next, she opens a door and mysteriously emerges in her Michigan hometown. Suddenly her life is unrecognizable: She's got twelve years of the wrong memories in her head and she's married to Eric, a man she barely knew in high school.
Racing to get back to her old life, Kelly's search leads only to more questions. In this life, she loves Eric and wants to trust him, but everything she discovers about him - including a connection to a mysterious tech startup - tells her she shouldn't. And strange things keep happening. The tattoos she had when she was an artist briefly reappear on her skin, she remembers fights with Eric that he says never happened, and her relationships with loved ones both new and familiar seem to change without warning.
But the closer Kelly gets to putting the pieces together, the more her reality seems to shift. And if she can't figure out what happened on her birthday, the next change could cost her everything..."
I love Sliding Doors like stories!
Paper and Blood by Kevin Hearne
Published by: Del Rey Books
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"There's only one Al MacBharrais: Though other Scotsmen may have dramatic mustaches and a taste for fancy cocktails, Al also has a unique talent. He's a master of ink and sigil magic. In his gifted hands, paper and pen can work wondrous spells.
But Al isn't quite alone: He is part of a global network of sigil agents who use their powers to protect the world from mischievous gods and strange monsters. So when a fellow agent disappears under sinister circumstances in Australia, Al leaves behind the cozy pubs and cafes of Glasgow and travels to the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria to solve the mystery.
The trail to his colleague begins to pile up with bodies at alarming speed, so Al is grateful his friends have come to help - especially Nadia, his accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter. Together with a whisky-loving hobgoblin known as Buck Foi and the ancient Druid Atticus O'Sullivan, along with his dogs, Oberon and Starbuck, Al and Nadia will face down the wildest wonders Australia - and the supernatural world - can throw at them, and confront a legendary monster not seen in centuries."
Australia bound!
The Big Hurt by Erika Schickel
Published by: Liveright
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"This complex memoir shows what it was like growing up in the shadow of a literary father and a neglectful mother, getting thrown out of boarding school after being seduced by a teacher, and all of the later-life consequences that ensue.
In 1982, Erika Schickel was expelled from her East Coast prep school for sleeping with a teacher. She was that girl - rebellious, precocious, and macking for love. Seduced, caught, and then whisked away in the night to avoid scandal, Schickel's provocative, searing, and darkly funny memoir, The Big Hurt, explores the question, How did that girl turn out?
Schickel came of age in the 1970s, the progeny of two writers: Richard Schickel, the prominent film critic for TIME magazine, and Julia Whedon, a melancholy mid-list novelist. In the wake of her parents' ugly divorce, Erika was packed off to a bohemian boarding school in the Berkshires.
The Big Hurt tells two coming-of-age stories: one of a lost girl in a predatory world, and the other of that girl grown up, who in reckoning with her past ends up recreating it with a notorious LA crime novelist, blowing up her marriage and casting herself into the second exile of her life.
The Big Hurt looks at a legacy of shame handed down through a maternal bloodline and the cost of epigenetic trauma. It shines a light on the haute culture of 1970s Manhattan that made girls grow up too fast. It looks at the long shadow cast by great, monstrously self-absorbed literary lives and the ways in which women pin themselves like beautiful butterflies to the spreading board of male ego."
It's James Ellroy if you got to that section and were wondering who it was like me!
Pumpkin Heads by Wendell Minor
Published by: Charlesbridge
Publication Date: August 10th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 32 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Halloween is time to pick pumpkins and carve them into pumpkin heads - jack-o'-lanterns of every shape and size!
Award-winning author and artist Wendell Minor uses simple language and striking autumn settings to celebrate jack-o'-lanterns in this reissue of a Halloween classic. The perfect holiday read aloud, Pumpkin Heads takes readers and trick-or-treaters from the pumpkin patch for picking, all the way home for carving, and gets everyone in the Halloween spirit."
The universal rule in my house is, if Wendell Minor had anything to do with the book it belongs on our bookshelves.
Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
The Study of Secrets by Cynthia Kuhn
The First Actress by C.W. Gortner
The Darkling Halls of Ivy edited by Lawrence Block
Something is Killing the Children Volume One by James Tynion IV
