Holiday weeks are perfect for reading and there is a lot of new material to choose from! Check out the new romance, mystery, memoir and fiction books publishing this month and enjoy getting lost in the pages!

Where you’re Planted by Melanie Sweeney (Romance)

From the author of the “phenomenal achievement” (Kirkus) Take Me Home, a children’s librarian must temporarily move her public library into a shed in the county botanic gardens, where her archnemesis is the assistant director.

Single mom Tansy Perkins only has room in her life for her daughter and her library. And maybe the next book to add to her collection. But after a catastrophic hurricane severely damages her library, she’s forced to temporarily move her branch into the adjacent county botanic gardens, where Jack Reid—the world’s grouchiest gardener who rescued her and her daughter from the flood—happens to be the assistant director.

Jack has always preferred plants over people, having  built a strong track record of avoiding relationships ever since his divorce six years ago. So, Tansy and her quirky band of bookish colleagues’ encroachment into his carefully-kept territory is a little more than irksome, especially when it means sharing his already-scarce resources.

When Jack and Tansy are tasked with working together on the spring festival, they have no choice but to call a truce. And soon their newfound professional partnership gives way to a deep intimacy that they’ve both been silently craving. But Tansy has lost too much to risk her heart, and Jack has sworn off real love. When an opportunity arises for funding that both the library and gardens need, will their loyalties lie with the futures they’d always planned for, or the new spark they’ve found with each other?

Darling Beasts by Michelle Gable

A family drama with a speculative twist about three siblings and one beastly surprise, from the New York Times bestselling author

“Weird, witty, and totally delightful, with echoes of Schitt’s Creek but with more teeth! I loved it.” —Annie Hartnett, author of Unlikely Animals and The Road to Tender Hearts 

Gabby, Talia, and Ozzie Gunn, heirs to a media empire, are in trouble. After several bad investments and one major scandal, their father is now trying to restore their family’s good name with a senatorial run. Even worse? He’s demanding they move to California to join the campaign or risk being cut off.

It’s easy to say you don’t care about money when you have enough, but with mounting debts, unconventional hobbies, and in the case of Gabby, Portum Bestiae Syndrome—a very expensive condition in which strange symptoms arise and then an exotic animal appears—the siblings don’t have much of a choice. In California, they’ll just have to keep their distance and survive until it’s all over.

But almost immediately, the Gunns find themselves right in the thick of things, dodging headlines and the creatures that seem to pop up in the most inconvenient places. Not only that—the change in scenery even has them bonding, on hot-air balloon rides and sunny beaches. But when a family secret rears its head, reopening old wounds, this new existence is thrown into chaos, and the stage is set for a long-overdue reckoning…

The Lake Escape by Jamie Day (mystery/thriller)

The next riveting summer suspense by the author of THE BLOCK PARTY and ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY, Jamie Day.

They’ve been coming to Lake Timmeny in Vermont since they were babies. Now, Julia Crawford, David Dunne, and Erika Miller are returning for their annual summer getaway, a family tradition they’ve continued into adulthood. But for all its beauty, Lake Timmeny harbors a dark past. Two young women with no known connection to each other, aside from their shared vacation spot, vanished without a trace exactly thirty years apart.

Lacking evidence, the vanishings gave rise to a foreboding lore that the lakes take them, a legend that continues to this day. But it’s not only the lake that’s hiding something. All three friends harbor secrets and deceptions that lurk just beneath the surface. 

But, when David’s new girlfriend mysteriously vanishes after a night of drinking and tension, the lore of the lake resurfaces. As the group searches for the missing woman, long-buried secrets emerge, and an intricate web of lies, deceit, and betrayals stemming back generations is gradually revealed, putting all of them in grave danger. Can the friends keep their heads above water, or will they, too, succumb to the lake’s dark history?

Our Last Vinyard Summer by Brooke Lea Foster (historical fiction)

From the “great storyteller” (Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society) Brooke Lea Foster, a captivating new novel set in 1965 and 1978 about a graduate student who returns with her sisters to their family’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and begins to unravel old family secrets. 

After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother—a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement—calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts.

When Betsy arrives on the island a week later, she must reckon with her strained familial relationships, a long-ago forbidden romance, and the complicated legacy of her parents, who divided the family even as they did good for the world.

Following a dual timeline between 1965 and 1978, and filled with the vibrant, sunlit nostalgia of the cherished New England vacation setting, Our Last Vineyard Summer poignantly captures two generations of women navigating love, loss, and womanhood while trying to find the courage to stand up for what they believe in—and the strength to decide if the home they once loved is worth saving.

The One and Only Vivian Stone by Melissa O’Connor (historical fiction)

“Intriguing, sparkling with wit, and suspenseful in all the right places.” —Abby Jimenez, New York Times bestselling author

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in this enchanting novel about estranged lovers reconnecting over mysterious tapes found in an attic and the old Hollywood secret hidden within them.

After her grandmother’s death, thirty-something Margot DuBois prepares to sell the house quickly so she can go back to her predictable life in Santa Barbara. There, no one knows she used to write and that her lack of success wrecked her confidence. But while cleaning out the attic, she comes across eight unlabeled cassette tapes. Unable to use the damaged tape player, she calls in a favor from Leo—her first love and first epic heartbreak—and they strike a deal: he’ll fix the player if he can hear what’s on the tapes. When they manage to listen, the two are shocked to hear the voice of comedic legend Vivian Stone. Why did she record these tapes and how did Margot’s grandmother get them?

Between listening to Vivian recount everything from her forbidden love for Hollywood’s leading actor, to working under a misogynistic exec, to her chemistry with her costar-turned-husband on TV, Margot and Leo fall down a memory lane of their own. Margot is inspired by Vivian’s tenacity and courage to keep fighting for the life she wants, but everything changes when Vivian reveals a secret from her past in this moving exploration of how it’s never too late to start over.

The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club by Gloria Chao (cozy mystery)

In this laugh-out-loud murder mystery, three women dating the same man band together to get revenge, but when they discover his body, they’ll need to solve his murder before they go down for it.

The body in the closet was going to be a problem. Kathryn Hu knew it. Yes, Tucker Jones was a cheating scumbag, and yes, she’d agreed to meet Olivia and Elle—Tucker’s other girlfriends—to exact revenge for all he’d put them through… But then they found him. Dead.  

The Palace at the End of the Sea by Simon Tolkien (historical fiction)

A young man comes of age and crosses continents in search of an identity—and a cause—at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War in a thrilling, timely, and emotional historical saga.

New York City, 1929. Young Theo Sterling’s world begins to unravel as the Great Depression exerts its icy grip. He finds it hard to relate to his His father, a Jewish self-made businessman, refuses to give up on the American dream, and his mother, a refugee from religious persecution in Mexico, holds fast to her Catholic faith. When disaster strikes the family, Theo must learn who he is. A charismatic school friend and a firebrand girl inspire him to believe he can fight Fascism and change the world, but each rebellion comes at a higher price, forcing Theo to question these ideologies too.

From New York’s Lower East Side to an English boarding school to an Andalusian village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Theo’s harrowing journey from boy to man is set against a backdrop of societies torn apart from within, teetering on the edge of a terrible war to which Theo is compulsively drawn like a moth to a flame.

The Great American Suburban Experiment by Mark Ehrenkranz

“What Mark has done is remarkable, setting his life—joys and agonies included—against the reality and myth of suburbia. His book is an honest odyssey into the psyche of someone who’s been through hell and back.”
Peter Travers, ABC-TV, former Senior Critic, Rolling Stone Magazine 

Please respect that this book contains mature themes with family and personal secrets. It includes depictions of addiction, recovery, and other dysregulated behaviors.

The Great American Suburban Experiment is a poignant account of the author’s struggles and his life in the film industry. It is set during the inception of suburbia, a period that profoundly transformed the country, marking one of the most prosperous periods in American History. By getting radically honest and brutally vulnerable, the writer bravely tells the story of his quest to understand the complex American Dream. This tale is a very private and personal account, thoroughly expressed with unabashed truth and integrity. The book poses many questions, including whether the abundance of the period and the new consumerism promoted excess, which in turn created unhealthy habits and addiction. It is also intriguing to hear about some of the names he mentions, along with his insider stories.

Lucky Break by Jaclyn Westlake (Romance)

When a spate of bad luck upends her life, Eliza moves to a charming—and mysterious—Midwestern lake town, where she just might find herself while trying to find the truth.

Eliza has always had a plan—until her meticulously plotted life implodes, and her engagement falls apart. At thirty-two she suddenly finds herself second-guessing the picture-perfect future she’d always envisioned, one that included raising 2.5 children near her tight-knit Italian family in San Francisco.

Then she is offered the chance to start over in Juneberry Lake, a small Midwestern town eager to lure remote workers to their picturesque community. Shocking everyone, including herself, she packs up her apartment and buys a lake house sight unseen.

Juneberry Lake is as delightful as it looked in the pictures. And the pictures didn’t even include Joel, a fellow new arrival who works alongside her every day in an adorable coffee shop. But if Eliza is hoping to spy her uncertain future in the shimmering waters of Juneberry Lake, she’ll find herself out of luck. Because her friendly Midwestern neighbors are keeping a marvelous secret—one that will help Eliza see that her recent spate of bad luck was never her fault…and that the tide can turn when you least expect it.

 

The Knowing by Tanya Talaga (Nonfiction)

From the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers , an urgent exploration of the residential school system It is believed that nearly 20,000 Indigenous children have been lost on Turtle neglected, medically experimented on, abused, murdered. This is one of Canada’s greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment. Generations of Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many after being sent to residential schools, “Indian hospitals” and asylums—a coordinated system designed to destroy who First Nations, Métis and Inuit are. The system, fuelled by Church and state, committed the most heinous of sexually, physically and emotionally abusing children over decades, many of whom died and were buried on the grounds of the schools. In 2021, the discovery of 215 graves believed to house the bodies of Indigenous children on the land of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School made international headlines. Canada’s quiet horror became its very loud, public disaster, as all eyes turned to a country long seen as a model of justice and equality, a country quick to condemn the human rights violations of others, now exposed as not only having failed to stop genocide but actively pursuing it as government policy. In The Knowing , award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga, one of Canada’s top investigative journalists, retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, by tracing the life of her great-great grandmother and family as they lived through this government- and Church-sanctioned genocide.