Literairyland: April 30-May 6, 2024

This week's hottest 🔥 new books, writer birthdays, and more.

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This week’s email includes 15 books.

Table of Contents

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This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Granite Harbor by Pete Nichols

Logline: A small town in coastal Maine is shaken to its core by a serial killer in this crime novel from Peter Nichols, bestselling author of The Rocks

Publisher: Celadon Books

Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack

Logline: Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies . . . one trip to die for.

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Romance

Colton Gentry's Third Act by Jeff Zentner

Logline: Recommended by The TODAY Show, this "story of love, healing, and second chances " (Emily Henry) from an award-winning author follows a down on his luck country musician who, in the throes of grief after a shocking loss, moves back home and rekindles a relationship with his high school sweetheart.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Happy Medium by Sarah Adler

Logline: A clever con woman must convince a skeptical, sexy farmer of his property's resident real-life ghost if she's to save them all from a fate worse than death in this delightful new novel from the author of Mrs. Nash's Ashes.

Publisher: Berkley Books

The Roads We Follow by Nichole Reese

Logline: A cross-country road trip. A secretive box of journals. An unforgettable summer romance.

Publisher: Bethany House Publishers

In Universes by Emet North

Logline: For fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Kelly Link, a profoundly imaginative debut novel set in numerous universes, which follows a queer physicist's search for belonging across time and space.

Publisher: Harper

Historical

Miss Morgan's Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles

Logline: The New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the "captivating, richly drawn" (Woman's World) The Paris Library returns with a brilliant new novel based on the true story of Jessie Carson--the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France.

Publisher: Atria Books

The Order of the Furies: 1795 by Niklas Natt Och Dag

Logline: The spellbinding and eerie finale to the #1 internationally bestselling "cerebral, immersive" (The Washington Post) historical trilogy follows two unlikely allies as they struggle to end the reign of a powerful cabal of depraved hedonists in 18th-century Stockholm.

Publisher: Atria Books

Literary

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

Logline: From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Nonfiction

Memoir

Mean Boys: A Personal History by Geoffrey Mak

Logline: A ferocious inquiry into art and desire, style and politics, madness and salvation, and coming of age in our volatile, image-obsessed present.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection by Dorsey Nunn

Logline: A decade behind bars spurs fifty powerful years of political and legal battles for freedom and human rights.

Publisher: Heyday Books

Reviews:
No reviews available

A Life Impossible: Living with Als: Finding Peace and Wisdom Within a Fragile Existence by Steve Gleason with Jeff Duncan

Logline: From NFL player Steve Gleason, a powerful, inspiring memoir of love, heartbreak, resilience, family, and remarkable triumph in the face of ALS.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Biography

The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby

Logline: The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history--until now.

Publisher: Pantheon Books

History

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

Logline: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War--a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code by Jason Bell

Logline: The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the earliest enemy of the Nazis, and the first spy to crack Hitler's deadliest secret code: the framework of the Final Solution.

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Health

ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness

Logline: The engaging, uplifting antidote to traditional ADHD books (which, let's be honest, if you have ADHD you'd never read anyway).

Publisher: Harper Horizon

Reviews:
No reviews available

Bookish Trivia 🤔

Tomorrow is Joseph Heller's birthday. Who played the role of Captain John Yossarian in the 1970 film adaptation of Heller's novel, Catch-22?

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This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events

April 30

  • Jeroen Brouwers

  • Jaroslav Hašek

  • Hugh Hood

  • Erni Krusten

  • Larry Niven

  • John Crowe Ransom

May 1

  • Sterling Allen Brown

  • Joseph Heller

May 2

  • Gottfried Benn

  • Martha Grimes

  • Jerome K. Jerome

May 3

  • Margaret Mitchell wins a Pulitzer Prize for Gone With the Wind (1937)

  • Juan Gelman

  • May Sarton

  • Dodie Smith

May 4

  • Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, is published (1948)

  • George Cooper

  • Richard Graves

  • David Guterson

  • Richard Hovey

  • Nick Joaquin

  • Thomas Kinsella

  • Amos Oz

  • Graham Swift

  • Gillian Tindall

May 5

  • The first published John Keats poem, "O Solitude," appears (1816)

  • Nellie Bly

  • Charles Exbrayat

  • Bret Harte

  • Ervin Lázár

  • Leo Lionni

  • Helen Maud Merrill

  • Christopher Morley

  • Miklós Radnóti

  • Henryk Sienkiewicz

  • Scott Westerfeld

May 6

  • John Steinbeck wins a Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

  • Guy des Cars

  • Jeffery Deaver

  • Ariel Dorfman

  • Erich Fried

  • Harry Golden

  • Ingrid Jonach

  • Gaston Leroux

  • Alain-René Lesage

  • Harry Martinson

  • Frank Dempster Sherman

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See you next week!

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