Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a HarperCollins Fall preview event at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, Ga.
While I already had some of the ARCs at home, it was a great opportunity to learn about the entire Fall/Winter lineup.
I came home with 5 additional novels and while I have not yet had any time to read them, I thought I would share them, and also one delivered via the mail, with you and give a quick synopsis of each, so that you can decide if you might want to pick up a copy when they are available, without waiting for me to tell you what I think.
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Even if it Kills Her, by Kate White
October 31, 2017
Kate White returns to her New York Times bestselling
Bailey Weggins’ Mystery series, with this favorite true-crime
journalist turned sleuth’s most chilling case to date.
Bailey
Weggins’ great new friend in college, Jillian Lowe, had everything
going for her. Pretty, popular, and whip-smart, she lit up any room that
she walked into. All of that dramatically changed during her sophomore
year, when a neighbor became unhinged and murdered her family. Jillian
immediately left school, and ever since, Bailey has felt guilty for not
staying in closer contact and being a greater support to her friend.
Now,
sixteen years later, Bailey is shocked to see Jillian at her book
event, and even more stunned when her still-gorgeous friend approaches
her with a case. The man accused of murdering her family is on the brink
of being cleared of the crime through new DNA evidence. With the real
killer walking free, Jillian is desperate for Bailey’s help to identify
him and allow her the closure she yearns for.
As the two women
return to Jillian’s childhood town to investigate, it doesn’t take long
for their sleuthing to cause shock waves. Someone starts watching their
every move. As they uncover deeply-guarded secrets, so shocking that
they make Jillian rethink her entire relationship to her family, Bailey
and Jillian find themselves in great peril. They must decide just how
much they’re willing to risk to finally discover the truth about the
Lowe family’s murder.
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
October 3, 2017
The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy
returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian
foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood.
Twelve
times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile
trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in
Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the
mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American
and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they
toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend.
While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine
dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only
opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and
she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can
find.
When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a
taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise.
But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union
is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe.
To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their
power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On
the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs
of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that
will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her
town—indeed all that she loves.
Seventy-five years later, Ella
May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his
grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating
the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first
time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting
in 1929.
Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the
heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor
movement in early twentieth-century America—and pays tribute to the
thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic
rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this
eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash’s place among our nation’s finest
writers.
The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman
April, 2018
Philomena meets The Orphan Train in this
suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit—the
story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her
daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other.
In
1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious
civility—much like Maggie Hughes’ parents. Maggie’s English-speaking
father has ambitions for his daughter that don’t include marriage to the
poor French boy on the next farm over. But Maggie’s heart is captured
by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents
force her to give baby Elodie up for adoption and get her life ‘back on
track’.
Elodie is raised in Quebec’s impoverished orphanage
system. It’s a precarious enough existence that takes a tragic turn when
Elodie, along with thousands of other orphans in Quebec, is declared
mentally ill as the result of a new law that provides more funding to
psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages. Bright and determined, Elodie
withstands abysmal treatment at the nuns’ hands, finally earning her
freedom at seventeen, when she is thrust into an alien, often unnerving
world.
Maggie, married to a businessman eager to start a family,
cannot forget the daughter she was forced to abandon, and a chance
reconnection with Gabriel spurs a wrenching choice. As time passes, the
stories of Maggie and Elodie intertwine but never touch, until Maggie
realizes she must take what she wants from life and go in search of her
long-lost daughter, finally reclaiming the truth that has been denied
them both.
An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King
September, 2017
Click HERE to read an excerpt.
Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.
Now 40 million of them can't find wives.
China’s
One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have
created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year
2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will
not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such
leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to
glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian
measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.
Wei-guo
holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve
himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at
love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter
matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum
allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal
spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo
feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls,
streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are
dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of
patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to
save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.
In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future.
The Other Mother by Carol Goodman
March, 2018
From the author of the internationally bestselling The Lake of Dead Languages comes a gripping novel about madness, motherhood, love, and trust.
When
Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive
to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a
whole new world. Tucked in the Catskills, the stone mansion looks like
something out of a fairy tale, its lush landscaping hiding the view of
the mental asylum just beyond its border. Daphne secured the live-in
position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that
she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take
her daughter away.
Daphne’s new life is a far cry from the one she
had in Westchester where, just months before, she and her husband
welcomed little Chloe. From the start, Daphne tries to be a good mother,
but she’s plagued by dark moods and intrusive thoughts that convince
her she’s capable of harming her own daughter. When Daphne is diagnosed
with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels
unstoppable—until she meets Laurel Hobbes.
Laurel, who also has a
daughter named Chloe, is everything Daphne isn’t: charismatic,
sophisticated, fearless. They immediately form an intense friendship,
revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. Soon,
they start to look alike, dress alike, and talk alike, their lives
mirroring one another in strange and disturbing ways. But Daphne
realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a
very shocking price—one that will ultimately lead her to that towering
mansion in the Catskills where terrifying, long-hidden truths will
finally be revealed....
Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
October 10, 2017
Click Here to read an excerpt
It's the most wonderful time of the year… and the perfect
moment to escape to a charming English village! From the beloved author
whose novels are "sheer indulgence from start to finish" (SOPHIE
KINSELLA) comes a delightful holiday story — funny, heartfelt, romantic
and packed with recipes — perfect for the winter months.
In
the Cornish coastal village of Mount Polbearne, the Christmas season
has arrived. It’s a joyous time for family, friends, and feasting, as
decorations sparkle along the town’s winding streets and shop windows
glow with festive displays. And in Polly’s Little Beach Street Bakery,
the aroma of gingerbread cookies and other treats tempts people in from
the cold.