Richard  Shepherd

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Tennessee

The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist

THE TRUE CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR AND SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 'One of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. Engrossing, a haunting page-turner. A book I could not put down' The Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR __________ Meet the forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd. He solves the mysteries of unexplained or sudden death. He has performed over 23,000 autopsies, including some of the most high-profile cases of recent times; the Hungerford Massacre, the Princess Diana inquiry, and 9/11. He has faced serial killers, natural disaster, 'perfect murders' and freak accidents. His evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent, and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads. Yet all this has come at a huge personal cost. Unnatural Causes tells the story of not only the cases and bodies that have haunted him the most, but also how to live a life steeped in death. Thoughtful, revealing, chilling and always unputdownable, if you liked All That Remains, War Doctor and This is Going to Hurt you'll love this. __________ Included in The Times Books of the Year 2018 'Gripping, grimly fascinating, and I suspect I'll read it at least twice' Evening Standard 'A deeply mesmerising memoir of forensic pathology. Human and fascinating' Nigella Lawson 'An absolutely brilliant book. I really recommend it, I don't often say that but it's fascinating' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2 'Puts the reader at his elbow as he wields the scalpel' Guardian 'Fascinating, gruesome yet engrossing' Richard and Judy, Daily Express 'Fascinating, insightful, candid, compassionate' Observer

Unnatural Causes

774be09c-e187-4399-987d-4dcabc368d66-1

Lara Avery

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

In this dazzling debut, Lara Avery crafts a story of heart, humor, and hope, as a young widow learns that her late husband signed her up for a dating service before his death, propelling her on an uplifting journey of possibility, second chances, and falling in love again...with life. Robin Lindstrom spent her first year as a young widow cocooned in the safe haven of the Minnesota farmhouse she'd once shared with Gabe, the love of her life--the man she thought she'd be with 'til the end. But her world is turned upside down when she receives an email informing her that her late husband has enrolled in something called "Fluttr"--a dating service? The app subscription lasts 12 months; use it!, Gabe's message-from-the-grave reads. I don't like the thought of you being alone. If you won't do it for yourself, do it as a favor to me. Please. After twelve months of pulling herself together, Robin's fragile equilibrium is knocked sideways. How could Gabe, of all people, be asking her to venture out into the murky waters of 21st century online dating? As her underemployed brother, Theo, points out, it's "only" a year, and it's what Gabe wanted; he set this all up to go into effect a year after his death, which means it was basically his last request. And so Robin tentatively takes steps to put herself out into the world once more, even if it means awkward outings at bowling alleys, club-hopping with DJs she meets online, and stammering conversations at dinner. Along the way, she's surprised to find herself meeting new people, trying new things...and even getting to know a new version of herself. Because everyone deserves a second chance at love--and loving life.

The Year of Second Chances

15533da4-02c6-4973-9c43-64102f445d04-1

Lauren Groff

A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE “Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review) From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

Fates and Furies

26fe3c11-c260-4543-a2c1-d0e641be6006-1

J. Ryan Stradal

"Stradal serves up another saga of food and family, hurt and healing, pitched between cliff-hanger moments. . . that make the pages fly." --People

From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them

    Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.
    Ned is also an heir--to a chain of home-style diners--and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?
    In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

70a5a196-fb8e-4f74-a527-ae1c738367b2-1

Bryan Washington

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss. Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

Family Meal

efb2d6f0-0a0f-47c6-a021-30bded192bef-1

Leila Slimani

One of the 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR of The New York Times Book Review The national bestseller by the author of Adèle, Sex and Lies, and In the Country of Others “You won't move until you reach the last page.” —People She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer.

The Perfect Nanny

571d5e06-682b-4b1e-b626-81e2dff77cb9-1

David Crow

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A True Story

David Crow presents a riveting account of his experience growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation with a mentally ill mother and violent father, an ex-con from San Quentin who groomed David to be his partner in crime. Raw and palpable, this memoir is an unforgettable testament to the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.

The Pale-Faced Lie

7f25da0b-a65c-4fc7-81c3-a6c6ae7f817f-1

Alicia Thompson

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn't exactly conducive to modern dating--and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she's used to suspecting the worst.
 
PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation--if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years.
 
It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he's clearly up to something). It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier--a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers

bfa516f8-ab6b-46bb-b118-787a86f5aeb3-1

Jane Roper

In this timely and witty combination of So You've Been Publicly Shamed and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? a viral photo of a politician's wife's “feminine hygiene malfunction” catapults her to unwanted fame in a story that's both a satire of social media stardom and internet activism, and a tender mother-daughter tale. Kathleen Held’s life is turned upside down when she arrives home to find her house on fire and her husband on the front lawn in his underwear. But the scandal that emerges is not that Bill, who's running for Senate, is having a painfully cliched affair with one of his young staffers: it's that the eyewitness photographing the scene accidentally captures a period stain on the back of Kathleen’s pants. Overnight, Kathleen finds herself the unwitting figurehead for a social media-centered women’s right movement, #YesWeBleed. Humiliated, Kathleen desperately seeks a way to hide from the spotlight. But when she stumbles upon the Society of Shame—led by the infamous author Danica Bellevue—Kathleen finds herself part of a group who are all working to change their lives after their own scandals. Using the teachings of the society, Kathleen channels her newfound fame as a means to reap the benefits of her humiliation and reclaim herself. But as she ascends to celebrity status, Kathleen's growing obsession with maintaining her popularity online threatens her most important relationship IRL: that with her budding activist daughter, Aggie. Hilarious and heartfelt, The Society of Shame is a pitch-perfect romp through politics and the perils of being "extremely online"—without losing your sanity or your true self.

The Society of Shame

ed48acb0-9531-4e4e-b169-60076cbea134-0

Jamie Day

Raves for the hottest thriller of 2023! "This is wicked fun." --Publishers Weekly “Absolutely amazing. Readers are going to flip!” —Lisa Gardner, New York Times bestselling author of ONE STEP TOO FAR "Like a firecracker on a hot summer night . . . If you like my novels, you’ll love THE BLOCK PARTY.” ―Elin Hilderbrand, #1 Bestselling author of THE HOTEL NANTUCKET This summer, meet your neighbors. The residents of the exclusive cul-de-sac on Alton Road are entangled in a web of secrets and scandal utterly unknown to the outside world, and even to each other. On the night of the annual Summer block party, there has been a murder. But, who did it and why takes readers back one year earlier, as rivalries and betrayals unfold—discovering that the real danger lies within their own block and nothing—and no one—is ever as it seems.

The Block Party

591dac07-b2b2-4080-9447-6a099493235f-1

Caitlin Mullen

In this sophisticated, suspenseful debut reminiscent of Laura Lippman and Megan Miranda, two young women become unlikely friends during one fateful summer in Atlantic City as mysterious disappearances hit dangerously close to home. Summer has come to Atlantic City but the boardwalk is empty of tourists, the casino lights have dimmed, and two Jane Does are laid out in the marshland behind the Sunset Motel, just west of town. Only one person even knows they’re there. Meanwhile, Clara, a young boardwalk psychic, struggles to attract clients for the tarot readings that pay her rent. When she begins to experience very real and disturbing visions, she suspects they could be related to the recent cases of women gone missing in town. When Clara meets Lily, an ex-Soho art gallery girl who is working at a desolate casino spa and reeling from a personal tragedy, she thinks Lily may be able to help her. But Lily has her own demons to face. If they can put the pieces together in time, they may save another lost girl—so long as their efforts don’t attract perilous attention first. Can they break the ill-fated cycle, or will they join the other victims? A “beautifully written, thoughtful page-turner” (Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists), Please See Us is an evocative and compelling psychological thriller that explores the intersection of womanhood, power, and violence.

Please See Us

e35d6518-71e7-4e39-8630-4e73de3b4e61-1

Laura Dave

"When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her"--

The Last Thing He Told Me

66d00c90-f91d-42cd-af24-73cbadc48eb5-1

Gillian McAllister

From the author of the Reese's Book Club Pick and the New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes a new heart-stopping thriller in which a missing-person case unravels deeper, darker secrets that hit too close to home and can only lead to more danger for the detective and an impossible moral choice: What will she do? There's a man out there. His weapon isn't a gun, or a knife. It's a secret. OLIVIA: 22 years old. No history of running away. Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Missing for one day and counting . . . JULIA; The detective heading up the case. She knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her daughter. But Julia has no idea how close to home this case is going to get. Because her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must not find out what happened to Olivia and must frame somebody else for her murder . . . What would you do?

Just Another Missing Person

c2ce6d62-727d-4440-b097-ada9f7570029-0

Julia Bartz

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

"Darkly satirical and action-packed....An absolutely splendid debut!" --Wendy Walker, nationally bestselling author of Don't Look for Me

The Plot meets Please Join Us in this psychological suspense debut about a young author at an exclusive writer's retreat that descends into a nightmare.

Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn't dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell--they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza's erratic behavior, Wren's cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she's desperate to discover the truth and save herself.

A claustrophobic and propulsive thriller exploring the dark side of female friendships and fame, The Writing Retreat is the unputdownable debut novel from a compelling new talent.

The Writing Retreat

192e6ca9-178b-49df-bfb1-974c156f1171-1

Graeme Simsion

A socially awkward genetics professor who has never been on a second date sets out to find the perfect wife, but instead finds Rosie Jarman, a fiercely independent barmaid who is on a quest to find her biological father. Reprint.

The Rosie Project

cf6b033f-f446-45a1-b23c-6df0ff286a8d-1

"The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Rosie Project, starring the same extraordinary couple now living in New York and unexpectedly expecting their first child. Get ready to fall in love all over again. Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they're about to face a new challenge because-- surprise!--Rosie is pregnant. Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he's left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie. As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business, and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most. Graeme Simsion first introduced these unforgettable characters in The Rosie Project, which NPR called "sparkling entertainment along the lines of Where'd You Go Bernadette and When Harry Met Sally." The SanFrancisco Chronicle said, "sometimes you just need a smart love story that will make anyone, man or woman, laugh out loud." If you were swept away by the book that's captivated a million readers worldwide, you will love The Rosie Effect"--

The Rosie Effect

1522bb88-7e43-48bc-a20f-7a13d5527e52-1

Virginia Kantra

The timeless classic Little Women inspired this heartwarming modern tale of four sisters from New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra. The March sisters--reliable Meg, independent Jo, stylish Amy, and shy Beth--have grown up to pursue their separate dreams. When Jo followed her ambitions to New York City, she never thought her career in journalism would come crashing down, leaving her struggling to stay afloat in a gig economy as a prep cook and secret food blogger. Meg appears to have the life she always planned--the handsome husband, the adorable toddlers, the house in a charming subdivision. But sometimes getting everything you've ever wanted isn't all it's cracked up to be. When their mother's illness forces the sisters home to North Carolina for the holidays, they'll rediscover what really matters. One thing's for sure--they'll need the strength of family and the power of sisterhood to remake their lives and reimagine their dreams.

Meg and Jo

93de4708-3c11-4f5e-b151-014aafca7878-1

Four sisters face new beginnings in this heartfelt modern take on Little Women by New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra. Amy March is more like her older sister Jo than she'd like to admit. An up-and-coming designer in New York's competitive fashion industry, ambitious Amy is determined to get out of her sisters' shadow and keep her distance from their North Carolina hometown. But when Jo's wedding forces her home, she must face what she really wants...and confront the One Big Mistake that could upend her life and forever change her relationship with Jo. Gentle, unassuming Beth grew up as the good girl of the family. A talented singer-songwriter, she's overcome her painful anxiety to tour with country superstar Colt Henderson. But life on the road has taken its toll on her health and their relationship. Maybe a break to attend her sister's wedding will get her out of her funk. But Beth realizes that what she's looking for and what she needs are two very different things.... With the March women reunited, this time with growing careers and families, they must once again learn to lean on one another as they juggle the changes coming their way.

Beth and Amy

4bf93642-6b60-497b-b2c5-b80bb303db79-1

Jenny Pentland

A Memoir





A funny, biting, and entertaining memoir of coming of age in the shadow of celebrity and finding your own way in the face of absolute chaos that is both a moving portrait of a complicated family and an exploration of the cost of fame.



Growing up, Jenny Pentland's life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother's smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland's early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr's success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded Hollywood--with its toxic culture of money, celebrity, and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school. 

By adolescence, Jenny struggled with anxiety and eating issues. Her parents and new stepfather, struggling to help, responded by sending Jenny and her siblings on a grand tour of the self-help movement of the '80s--from fat camps to brat camps, wilderness survival programs to drug rehab clinics (even though Jenny didn't take drugs). Becoming an adult, all Jenny wanted was to get married and have kids, despite Roseanne's admonishments not to limit herself to being just a wife and mother. 

In this scathingly funny and moving memoir, Pentland reveals what it's like to grow up as the daughter of a television star and how she navigated the turmoil, eventually finding her own path. Now happily married and raising five sons on a farm, Pentland has worked tirelessly to create the stable family she never had, while coming to terms at last with her deep-seated anxiety. 

This Will Be Funny Later is a darkly funny and frank chronicle of transition, from childhood to adulthood and motherhood--one woman's journey to define herself and create the life she always wanted. 

This Will Be Funny Later

7ada5191-a559-40a6-9b9e-6b915b6de7f8-1

Holly Peterson

In the Hamptons, everyday people are as complicated and fascinating as millionaires... When Katie Doyle moves across the country to the Hamptons, she is hoping to find summer employment, new friends for her young son, and a chance to explore a new love affair with George, a dazzling investor. What she finds is a strange cocktail of classes, where society’s one-percenters vacation alongside local, hardworking people who’ve lived in the Hamptons for generations. Though she’s looking forward to her move, Katie is wary about mingling in her boyfriend’s East Coast elite circles. She soon discovers Southampton isn’t all that it seems to be on the surface—and neither are the people who live there. As George takes Katie on a whirlwind tour of country clubs, haute couture, and lavish events, Katie is amazed to witness sudden whims becoming dire needs, extramarital affairs blossoming right and left, and people purchasing friends and loyalties like a pair of shoes. Even the middle-class townspeople maintain determined façades while maneuvering like sharks among the wealthy summer invaders. The more Katie becomes immersed, the more she learns the stories of both the upstairs and downstairs, the upper crust and middle of the road. The combustion between classes becomes explosive as the summer tears on. Betrayals, a sexual predator, and a missing person lost in murky waves drive the reader on a racing Learjet through impossible twists and turns before landing at the shocking conclusion. When Katie meets Luke, a marine biologist and teacher, he makes her realize what it is she really wants, as she understands the life she’s begun for herself is built on shifting Hamptons’ dunes.

It Happens in the Hamptons

8054d92a-b831-4ab4-97e8-35e6443dc6b1-1

Jennifer Weiner

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of That Summer comes another heartfelt and unputdownable novel of family, secrets, and the ties that bind. When Veronica Levy bought her home on the Outer Cape, she imagined generations of her family gathering there each summer for many years to come—but things didn’t work out that way. Forty years later, Ronnie’s husband is gone. Her son, Sam, is in California, and rarely makes the trip back home. Her daughter, Sarah, packs her kids’ summers full of enriching, educational, resume-building activities that do not include collecting seashells or playing Frisbee on the beach. When Sarah’s stepdaughter Ruby announces her engagement, it feels like a natural end point. Ronnie will reunite the family for one last summer celebration, and then say goodbye to the house she’s loved for her entire life. Another soon-to-be smash hit from the “undisputed boss of the beach read” (The New York Times), The Last Summer is a hilarious, delicious, and wickedly observed story about parents and children, husbands and wives, the places we call home, and all the ways that love can surprise us.

The Summer Place

8eb42388-82b6-4869-9c65-cd28cd928525-1

Lisa M. Matlin

Most people wouldn’t buy an infamous murder house to renovate for fun . . . but Sarah Slade is not most people. “This debut novel deftly explores our shadows—the dark parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. I couldn’t stop reading.”—Julia Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat A therapist and self-help writer with all the answers, Sarah Slade has just bought a gorgeous Victorian in the community of her dreams. Turns out, you can get a killer deal on a house where someone was murdered. Plus, renovating Black Wood House makes for great blog content and a decent distraction from her failing marriage. Good thing nobody knows that her past is just as filthy as the bloodstain on her bedroom floor. But the renovations are fast becoming a nightmare. Sarah imagined custom avocado wallpaper, massive profits, and an appreciative husband who wants to share her bed again. Instead, the neighbors hate her guts and her husband still sleeps on the couch. And though the builders attempt to cover up Black Wood’s horrifying past, a series of bizarre accidents, threatening notes, and unexplained footsteps in the attic only confirms for Sarah what the rest of the town already knew: Something is very wrong in that house. With every passing moment, Sarah’s life spirals further out of control—and with it, her sense of reality. But as she peels back the curling wallpaper and discovers the house’s secrets, she realizes that the deadly legacy of Black Wood House has only just begun.

The Stranger Upstairs

20923f96-2f48-4dd7-be8a-08888588d244-1

Elisabeth Egan

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

“Egan’s delightful debut is a fresh, funny take on the age-old struggle to have it all.” —People *People, Summer’s Best Books*Entertainment Weekly, 8 Big Fat Beach Reads*Woman’s Day, Great Summer Reads*Publishers Weekly, Best Summer Books*Good Housekeeping, Your Ultimate Summer Reading List*Minneapolis Star Tribune, 10 Novels Not to Miss*Coastal Living, Great Summer Reads *Time Out New York, Summer Reading List*Goop Newsletter, Best Summer ’15 Reading* Fans of I Don’t Know How She Does It and Where’d You Go, Bernadette will cheer at this “fresh, funny take on the age-old struggle to have it all” (People) about what happens when a wife and mother of three leaps at the chance to fulfill her professional destiny—only to learn every opportunity comes at a price. In A Window Opens, beloved books editor at Glamour magazine Elisabeth Egan brings us Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all, sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age. Like her fictional forebears Kate Reddy and Bridget Jones, Alice plays many roles (which she never refers to as “wearing many hats” and wishes you wouldn’t, either). She is a mostly-happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker or the breadwinner. But when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in—and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up which promises to be the future of reading, with its chain of chic literary lounges and dedication to beloved classics. The Holy Grail of working mothers―an intellectually satisfying job and a happy personal life―seems suddenly within reach. Despite the disapproval of her best friend, who owns the local bookstore, Alice is proud of her new “balancing act” (which is more like a three-ring circus) until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up and her work takes an unexpected turn. Readers will cheer as Alice realizes the question is not whether it’s possible to have it all, but what does she―Alice Pearse―really want?

A Window Opens

0c69341b-e79e-4cbc-b511-3e3df758f87a-1

Alison Espach

Named a Best Book of 2022 by NPR and The Chicago Tribune

From Alison Espach, author of the New York Times Editors' Choice novel The Adults, comes a dazzlingly unconventional love story for readers of Ask Again, Yes and Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally's questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy--until a tragedy leaves Sally's life forever intertwined with his.

Opening in the early nineties and charting almost two decades of shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story about two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other and a wryly astute coming-of-age tale brimming with unexpected moments of joy.

"Heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence--a deeply felt, finely wrought, and highly satisfying novel. Alison Espach has created a family whose every sorrow, joy, and idiosyncrasy is utterly, vibrantly real."--New York Times bestselling author Claire Lombardo

Browse by categories

Richard Shepherd

Unnatural Causes

Lara Avery

The Year of Second Chances

Lauren Groff

Fates and Furies

J. Ryan Stradal

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

Bryan Washington

Family Meal

Leila Slimani

The Perfect Nanny

David Crow

The Pale-Faced Lie

Alicia Thompson

Love in the Time of Serial Killers

Jane Roper

The Society of Shame

Jamie Day

The Block Party

Caitlin Mullen

Please See Us

Laura Dave

The Last Thing He Told Me

Gillian McAllister

Just Another Missing Person

Julia Bartz

The Writing Retreat

Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project

Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Effect

Virginia Kantra

Meg and Jo

Virginia Kantra

Beth and Amy

Jenny Pentland

This Will Be Funny Later

Holly Peterson

It Happens in the Hamptons

Jennifer Weiner

The Summer Place

Lisa M. Matlin

The Stranger Upstairs

Elisabeth Egan

A Window Opens

Alison Espach

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

Get The App