Five-Star Suspense, Contemporary and Historical Fiction Coming Your Way This Summer

 

I fell in love with Eleanor Brown’s writing after reading her book, The Weird Sisters. If you haven’t read it- do so now!  Any Other Family has an interesting premise- a group of siblings are adopted by different families but all the families are very involved with each other’s lives in order to foster a close bond with the siblings. This set-up isn’t without trouble and strife. Just like any other family, they have their issues.

Take a look:

Though they look like any other family, they aren’t one—not quite. They are three sets of parents who find themselves intertwined after adopting four biological siblings, having committed to keeping the children as connected as possible.

At the heart of the family, the adoptive mothers grapple to define themselves and their new roles. Tabitha, who adopted the twins, crowns herself planner of the group, responsible for endless play dates and holidays, determined to create a perfect happy family. Quiet and steady Ginger, single mother to the eldest daughter, is wary of the way these complicated not-fully-family relationships test her long held boundaries. And Elizabeth, still reeling from rounds of failed IVF, is terrified that her unhappiness after adopting a newborn means she was not meant to be a mother at all.

As they set out on their first family vacation, all three are pushed into uncomfortably close quarters. And when they receive a call from their children’s birth mother announcing she is pregnant again, the delicate bonds the women are struggling to form threaten to collapse as they each must consider how a family is found and formed.

If you enjoy stories about dysfunctional families and contemporary fiction, give this one a whirl when its out on July 12.

 

 

Years ago, I devoured Sarah Addison Allen’s books. There is just something so magical about her writing and I was thrilled to see she was coming out with a new book, Other Birds. We’ve had to wait seven long years for her newest novel!

I absolutely loved the setting of South Carolina, the group of characters, and pretty much everything about Other Birds. There is a little magical realism that I don’t usually like but in this book, I didn’t mind it.

Here’s the plot:

Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits—a stunning cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.

When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment on Mallow Island, she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a girl on the run, two estranged middle-aged sisters, a lonely chef, and a legendary writer, and three ghosts. Each with their own story, Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t written yet.

Out on August 30!

 

 

I loved Aggie Blum Thompson’s book, I Don’t Forgive You, and was so very excited to read All The Dirty Secrets. When I find an author I like, I want to read everything they ever wrote and I will also be tempted to beg for a manuscript or work in progress.

In All The Dirty Secrets, the book begins with a drowning accident at a party over 25 years ago. One of the girls who attented, Liza, has been dealing with what happened ever since. And then it happens again and again, Liza has a connection to the person who drowned. Are these deaths somehow connected?

Synopsis:

One warm summer night twenty-five years ago, Liza Gold and her friends celebrated their high school graduation with a party on the beach. It should have been the best night of their lives, only one of them never came back out of the ocean.

The tragedy haunted Liza Gold for years. Now, she’s a recently divorced working mom struggling to connect with her standoffish teenager daughter Zoe when history repeats itself. Another young woman has drowned at Beach Week, and this time the victim is Zoe’s secret best friend.

Liza begins to suspect that the two deaths are somehow related, which causes her to face hard truths and take an unflinching look at the people she’s called her closest friends for the past two decades. She must discover what really happened to both women before it’s too late.

I liked this book, not as much as Aggie’s first book, but it was still a solid read! I am always up for a good suspense. There is a Goodreads giveaway happening right now for this book. It comes out on July 12.

 

I was totally hooked by the premise of The Drug Trial by S. R. Masters! Would you sign up for a drug trial if you were promised that you’d get a luxury vacation in the Canary Islands plus a large chunk of money? Sounds pretty appealing right? Who would turn it down?

However…you don’t know anything about the drug. Too big of a gamble for most people but Elle is desperate for a change, for anything really, that will get her away from her overbearing mother. A nice vacation is exactly what Elle needs so she decides to sign up.  At first, everything is fine but then things take a turn… you have to read it to see how this unfolds. YIKES.

Synopsis:

Would you sign up to a medical trial if you didn’t know the possible side effects?

18-40? PAID CLINICAL TRIAL IN THE CANARY ISLANDS – UP TO £20,000 TAX FREE

It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. An all-inclusive luxury trip abroad, all you need to do is take a pill every day and keep a diary.

Except you don’t know anything about the drug or what its side effects might be.

The headaches start, a dull ache at first. Every day worse than the last.

Then a body is found.

You discover that a side effect is psychosis. You don’t know who has taken the placebo and who has taken the real drug.

Coming out on July 7!

 

 

You know you are going to get a good story when you settle in with a Shalini Boland book! I enjoyed every page of A Perfect Stranger. Emily suspects something is going on with her husband Aiden and is worried. She’s pregnant with their second child and her worry is justified when Aiden tells her what’s really going on.  Then there is Dani, the gorgeous wife of Aiden’s boss. She has a perfect life and doesn’t really concern herself with the likes of Emily, however, the two women are on a collision course neither of them sees coming.

Synopsis:

Annie comes home from a market trip with her young son, George, only to make a gruesome discovery. Could the perpetrator be the new lodger she and her husband, David, just rented their spare bedroom to?

Emily dreams of one day owning a house where her son, Josh, and the little one on the way can grow up, but when her husband, Aidan, insists on leaving his lucrative job as a luxury car salesman, she senses something more is afoot – even while she harbours a secret of her own. What is Aidan hiding, and will it jeopardize their young family’s future?

Meanwhile, Aidan’s boss, Marcus, finds himself caught between placating his wife Dani’s all-consuming desire to get pregnant and managing the less than savoury group of associates now helping to run his car dealership. How far is Marcus willing to go to prove his love for Dani? Or will his business come first?

This was a very good reading, entertaining and quick moving with no boring parts! Coming out on July 11.

 

 

This was another really good, entertaining read that I enjoyed. The Mother-In-Law by Karen King. Maybe you’ve read some scary mother-in-law stories but this book ended up being a little different than what I first anticipated. It was a fun read that broke me out of a reading slump. Another story that offers twists and turns, highly entertaining.

Synopsis:

I’ve fallen in love with a man called Sam. And he’s perfect, just perfect.

It’s a whirlwind romance. And when our dream home falls through just before our wedding, we decide to move in with his parents. He says his mother, Evelyn, is the sweetest person. But I’m not so sure.

She’s obsessively protective over Sam. She wants to know where he is all the time. She wakes us up in the morning, bustling into our room like he’s a small child, not a grown man. She doesn’t want me to be alone with him. And with every day that passes – as I keep having accidents I can’t believe are coincidental – I start to fear more that she doesn’t want me to marry her son.

That she wants to be the only person he will ever love.

Then I overhear an argument between her and Sam’s dad. Evelyn has a secret. And it changes everything I thought I knew about the family I’m marrying into.

From that moment, I know that if I want to make it to my wedding day alive, I will need to be very, very careful…

Out on July 29!

 

 

The Mother’s Secret by Kathryn Croft is out now! I have always really enjoyed Kathryn’s books! She is a great suspense writer and focuses on a couple named Eve and Aidan who are desperate to start their family. But when Eve finally has a daughter, she runs away and pretends as if the never had a baby. WHY? What is she running from? What secret is Eve carrying? Or is she just a horrible person?

Synopsis:

Eve wanted nothing more than to be a mother. She and her husband, Aidan, planned to have a family, but with each devastating miscarriage her hopes dwindled. When she eventually gave birth to her daughter, Kayla, it should have been the happiest time of her life. Instead, it was a waking nightmare for Eve, and one she was desperate to escape.

Now, Eve has left all that behind. She pretends that she never had a child, and keeps her secrets close. But someone knows the truth. They know that Eve told a lie, and the clock is ticking before her shocking decision is revealed. Once the story comes out, there’ll be no way out for Eve. If people learn about the crime she covered up, they’ll never look at her the same way again. She must get her little girl back, before it’s too late. If she can’t, running away won’t be an option. This time, Eve will face the consequences, and pay the price she should have paid years ago…

You can get a copy of this book now.

 

 

I don’t read nearly enough historical fiction books. It’s one of my favorite genres and I was so happy to read The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman. What a wonderful and gripping story, one that I was thrilled to lose myself in.

I’m always searching for books that take place during the Civil War era and they are few and far between. This book is beautifully written with incredible detail thanks to what I imagine was a very intense research.

HIGHLY recommended!

Synopsis:

1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.

As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during thebrutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors’ family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.

Out on August 30!