Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Ohio

What if you could live the life you've always dreamed of -- but never pursued? What if your choices -- married or single, career or motherhood, city or country -- could be made all over again? Bestselling author Eileen Goudge ponders "what might have been" in this tender, provocative tale of two best friends who exchange lives -- and discover the surprising places where their deepest joys and satisfactions live.
Jessie Holland is a journalist on the rise in New York City -- and she wouldn't trade her walk-up apartment or her 2:00 a.m. sushi takeout for anything. Only lately, she's been in search of a hot story, and praying her career isn't cooling off. When her editor at Savvy magazine poses a compelling question -- can you ever really go home again? -- Jessie spins the fantasy into a feature story. Could she return to her western hometown and be truly content? Can a bona fide New Yorker exchange her subway pass for an SUV and find happiness?
Erin Delahanty appears to have an enviable life as the owner of a popular bed & breakfast in a picturesque Arizona town. What's less visible are the escalating fights between Erin and her husband, Skip, and the tensions that are affecting their teenage daughter. When Skip unexpectedly leaves her, Erin turns to her best friend Jessie for comfort -- and is handed a stunning proposition: Come live in Manhattan for six months, while Jessie runs the inn and steps into her shoes.
Neither woman has anything to lose: Jessie's romance with recently divorced news bureau chief Jonathan Silver is at a crossroads, while Erin needs time to sort out her marriage. But the choices and challenges they face in their new worlds take them both by surprise....What began as a daring magazine article will change both women forever. Can you go home again? Find out in this surprising and emotionally compelling novel from one of the freshest and most original storytellers of our time.

Otherwise Engaged

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#hardcover #fiction #bookofthemonth #botm #contemporaryfiction 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Wisconsin

A Novel

From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook--made into the Academy Award-winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper--comes a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero--everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas's backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.

From Matthew Quick, whose work has been described by the Boston Herald as "like going to your favorite restaurant. You just know it is going to be good," We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that life is full of guardian angels.

We Are the Light

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#hardcover #fiction #contemporaryfiction #bookofthemonth #botm #family 

New Hampshire

"How do you hold onto hope in a difficult time? In the small city of Wharton, Connecticut, lives are beginning to unravel. A woman loses the love of her life. A son struggles with addiction. A widow misses her late spouse. A husband betrays his wife. At the heart of these interlinking stories is one couple: Freddie and Greg Tyler. Greg has just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a brutal form of cancer. He has never been dependent or weak, and wants to overcome this the way he has succeeded at everything else: through grit and determination. But can Greg fight his illness? How will Freddie and their daughter cope if he doesn't? How do the other residents of Wharton learn to live with loss and to find happiness again? A debut that pulls at the heartstrings and immerses readers in a community, A Little Hope broadcasts the joy and hope to be found in the everyday acts of loving, forgiving, and surviving"--

A Little Hope

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Virginia

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! "With its countless epiphanies and surprises, 'Oona' proves difficult to put down." —USA Today "Reminiscent of Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Oona Out of Order is a delightfully freewheeling romp.” —Booklist (starred review) A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order. It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order... Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

Oona Out of Order

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Michigan

Everything We Didn’t Say

Massachusetts

#hardcover #fiction #contemporaryfiction #bookofthemonth #botm #family #drama #life

California

#paperback #fiction #contemporaryfiction #family #marriage

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

This clever and witty debut novel about the unexpected consequences of one woman’s attempt to exert control over her life by adhering to a strict wellness routine is “the kind of book you devour in a day or two…sexy and funny, but also very perceptive” (BuzzFeed). Kit and David were college sweethearts. Now married and in their thirties, they live in Kit’s childhood home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. While David has a successful career, jetting off on work trips to exciting destinations, Kit is stuck in a loop. She keeps quitting her job managing her sister’s bakery to seek a more ambitious profession, but fear of failure always brings her back to Sweet Cheeks. Kit finds a fraught solace in cycling through fad diets, which David, in his efforts to be supportive, follows along with her. Their latest program is the Radiant Regimen, an intense cleanse, and Kit is optimistic about embarking on a new chapter of healthy eating and self-control. Hungry in more ways than one, she soon falls into a flirtation with a carpenter named Matt who is building new shelves for the bakery kitchen. Unable to resist their mutual attraction, Kit and Matt soon begin a passionate affair. Kit suppresses her guilt by obsessing over her diet, pushing herself in greater extremes. Told in precise, intimate detail, Cheat Day is “an incredibly likable novel of hungers controlled and liberated, and marriage’s gray areas” (Booklist) that explores monogamy versus monotony, deprivation versus indulgence, and limitations of modern wellness.

Cheat Day

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#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #mystery #everythingwedidntsay #contemporaryfiction #thriller 

This is an ARC! #contemporaryfiction #fiction #lgbtq #queer #romance #humor #darkhumor #adultfiction

North Carolina

An exuberant dark comedy about love, grief, sex, guilt, and one woman's harebrained scheme to tranquilize her voraciously amorous girlfriend for a few days so that she might pay off her drug dealer, make soup, and finally get some peace and quiet.
 
"A brilliantly quirky, surreally funny story.... An intriguingly headstrong yet vulnerable character with an astonishing talent for making the worst possible life-decisions." --Sarah Haywood, best-selling author of The Cactus

Frances was not looking for a relationship when she met Elaine in a bar. She was, in fact, looking to drown her sorrows in a pint or twelve and nurse a broken heart, shattered by the gorgeous, electric Adrienne. But somehow (it involved a steady stream of beer and weed, as things often did with Frances) Elaine ended up in Frances's bed and never left. Now, faced with mounting pressure from her drug dealer, Dom (and his goon, Betty), Frances comes up with a terrible idea: She asks Elaine to move in with her for real. Unfortunately, this seemingly romantic overture makes Elaine even more sex-crazed and maniacal with love. Frances fears she may never escape the relationship, so, given no choice, she makes the obvious decision: She will sedate Elaine.
 
A story as enthusiastically madcap and funny as it is smart and emotionally surprising, Sedating Elaine introduces a roster of unforgettable characters and an indelible, wildly exciting new voice in fiction.  

Sedating Elaine

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#hardcover #fiction #contemporaryfiction #bookofthemonth #family #life #drama #botm 

Pennsylvania

#hardcover #fiction #romance #botm #relationships #family #contemporaryfiction #paperback 

New York

The Sweetest Remedy

#paperback #fiction #nicholassparks #beachread #contemporaryfiction #contemporaryromance #romance 

Minnesota

Divorced and disillusioned about relationships, Theresa Osborne is jogging when she finds a bottle on the beach. Inside is a letter of love and longing to "Catherine," signed simply "Garrett." Challenged by the mystery and pulled by emotions she doesn't fully understand, Theresa begins a search for this man that will change her life. What happens to her is unexpected, perhaps miraculous-an encounter that embraces all our hopes for finding someone special, for having a love that is timeless and everlasting.... Nicholas Sparks exquisitely chronicles the human heart. In his first bestselling novel, The Notebook, he created a testament to romantic love that touched readers around the world. Now in this New York Times bestseller, he renews our faith in destiny, in the ability of lovers to find each other no matter where, no matter when...

Message in a Bottle

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#paperback #contemporaryfiction #ritaleganski

New Jersey

"Suffused with the mystical charm of New Orleans and the Louisiana bayou, Leganski's lyrical debut novel conjures dreams of voodoo, the power of healing, and the distinction between hearing and listening. This extraordinary, evocative novel will cast a spell over fans of magical realism in the vein of Alice Hoffman, Kaye Gibbons, and Sarah Addison Allen. Simply enchanting." -- Library Journal (starred review)

A magical debut novel from Rita Leganski, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is the tale of a mute boy whose gift of wondrous hearing reveals family secrets and forgotten voodoo lore, and exposes a murder that threatens the souls of those who love him.

Bonaventure Arrow didn't make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But he was listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings. By the time he turns five, he can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops. He also hears the voice of his dead father, William Arrow, mysteriously murdered by a man known only as the Wanderer.

Exploring family relics, he opens doors to the past and finds the key to a web of secrets that both hold his family together, and threaten to tear them apart.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s New Orleans, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is a magical story about the lost art of listening and a wondrous little boy who brings healing to the souls of all who love him.

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow

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#hardcover #contemporaryfiction #fiction 

"The breathtaking, emotional new novel from Clare Mackintosh. A story about impossible choices. A story about the strength and fragility of love"--

After the End

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Utah

A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society's expectations to find her voice and her destiny. "Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal." All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel, gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight, and tradition seeks to clip her wings. Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Forugh's poems are considered both scandalous and brilliant; she is heralded by some as a national treasure, vilified by others as a demon influenced by the West. She perseveres, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules, at enormous cost. But the power of her writing only grows stronger amid the upheaval of the Iranian revolution. Inspired by Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews, and including original translations of her poems, this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran, and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.--Amazon.

Song of a Captive Bird

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#hardcover #fiction #jillsantopolo #romance #contemporary #adultfiction #after #contemporaryfiction 

The Light We Lost mixes with a touch of Daisy Jones and the Six in this novel of first love, passion, and the power of choice--and how we cannot escape the people we are meant to be. Two loves. Two choices. One chance to follow her dreams. Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions fifteen years ago: music, and Rob. She's a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They're happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily's present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she'd hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily's past passions come roaring back into her life, she'll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love?

Everything After

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#hardcover #fiction #botm #naimacoster #relationships #whatsmineandyours #africanamericans #bookofthemonth #readwithjenna #contemporaryfiction

When a county initiative in the Piedmont of North Carolina forces the students at a mostly black public school on the east side to move across town to a nearly all-white high school on the west, the community rises in outrage. For two students, quiet and aloof Gee and headstrong Noelle, these divisions will extend far beyond their schooling. As their paths collide and overlap over the course of thirty years, their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that shape the trajectory of their lives. On one side of the school integration debate is Jade, Gee's steely, single, black mother, grieving for her murdered partner, and determined for her son to have the best chance at a better life. On the other, is Noelle's enterprising mother, Lacey May, who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. The choices these mothers make will resound for years to come. And twenty years later, when Lacey's daughters return home to visit her in hospital, they're forced to confront the ways their parents' decisions continue to affect the life they live and the people they love. WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS is a sweeping, rich tapestry of familial bond and identity, and a sharp, poignant look at the ways race affects even the closest of relationships. This is not just one love story, but many: It's the all-consuming volatile passion of young lovers and the quieter comfort of steady companionship; it's the often tenuous but unbreakable bond between siblings; and it's the unconditional love that runs between parent and child and encompasses adoration, contempt and forgiveness. With gorgeous prose, Naima Coster explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.

What's Mine and Yours

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#hardcover #bookofthemonth #contemporaryfiction #botm #fiction #advancereadercopy #paperback #arc 

#mivieish #contemporaryfiction #nonlineartimeline #multipleviewpoints

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Texas

#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #mystery #everythingwedidntsay #contemporaryfiction #thriller #botm 

Selling this book to create space for my shelf. This book has a bit of shelf wear in the top left-hand corner of the front jacket and the bottom right-hand corner of the back jacket. Otherwise, this book is in excellent conditions and has never been read. 

Puerto Rico

We Are the Light (BOTM Edition)

#hardcover #fiction #botm #mystery #suspensethrillers #thriller #contemporaryfiction #crime #adult 

Since they found the body, I've been replaying what I saw. What happened between them, out where no one could hear? I think it was murder. In Cottonwood Estates, a quaint suburb full of PTA parents and manicured lawns, the Best Book Club Group in the World gathers once a month over cockails, gossip, and their latest read. As they debate endings and characters, each of them has her own secret story. Lena has hardly left her house in decades after a tragedy befell her family, but she’s finally joining the group. Her neighbor Annie has a past, and she knows something about what happened to Lena, something she can never share. New resident Jen deeply wants to make some friends, but she’s hiding a secret about her son. And no matter what, they’ll keep their children safe – even if to protect them, someone has to die. L. Alison Heller, whose work has been praised by Liane Moriatry as "warm, witty...refreshingly true to life,” ventures into suspenseful territory with The Neighbor's Secret, a novel of books, secrets, and women who will remind you of your own book club.

Eileen Goudge

Otherwise Engaged

Matthew Quick

We Are the Light

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope

Margarita Montimore

Oona Out of Order

Nicole Baart

Everything We Didn’t Say

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope

Liv Stratman

Cheat Day

Nicole Baart

Everything We Didn’t Say

Dawn Winter

Sedating Elaine

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope

Jane Igharo

The Sweetest Remedy

Nicholas Sparks

Message in a Bottle

Rita Leganski

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow

Clare MacKintosh

After the End

Jasmin Darznik

Song of a Captive Bird

Jill Santopolo

Everything After

Naima Coster

What's Mine and Yours

Matthew Quick

We Are the Light

Elissa R Sloan

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Margarita Montimore

Oona Out of Order

Nicole Baart

Everything We Didn’t Say

Matthew Quick

We Are the Light (BOTM Edition)

L. Alison Heller

The Neighbor's Secret