New Books Hitting Shelves This Week
The Wildest Sun
When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never known. But her quest-spanning from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West-is complicated by the fact that she believes him to be famed luminary Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she's truly meant to be. But what will happen if she is wrong, or if her real story falls outside of the legend of her parentage that she’s revered all her life?
Where the Dead Wait
William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition, in which his remaining men only survived by eating their dead comrades, he returned in disgrace.
Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same frozen waters. Perhaps this is Day’s chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens-the man who’s haunted his whole life-back home. But when the rescue mission becomes an uncanny journey into his past, Day must face up to the things he’s done.
Abandonment. Betrayal. Cannibalism.
Aboard ship, Day must also contend with unwanted passengers: a reporter obsessively digging up the truth about the first expedition, as well as Stevens’s wife, a spirit-medium whose séances both fascinate and frighten. Following a trail of cryptic messages, gaunt bodies, and old bones, their search becomes more and more unnerving, as it becomes clear that the restless dead are never far behind. Something is coming through.
Gold
"Find me in another life. Find me in them all."
Every end is also a beginning.
I thought I was going to die, and would have if it weren’t for Slade. The only way he could save me was to open a rip between worlds. The only way for me to save myself was to go through it.
Sometimes, fleeing one dangerous place just brings you to another.
Annwyn.
The realm of the fae.
There is magic and beauty here, though around every corner, threats lurk.
But I’m a threat too.
Orbital
slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space-not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts-from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan-have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live.
A River of Golden Bones
Twins Calla and Briar have spent their entire lives hiding from the powerful sorceress who destroyed their kingdom…and from the humans who don’t know they are Wolves. Each twin has their own purpose in life: Briar’s is to marry the prince of an ally pack and save the Golden Court. Calla’s purpose is to remain a secret, her twin’s shadow . . . the backup plan.
No one knows who Calla truly is except for her childhood friend-and sister’s betrothed-the distractingly handsome Prince Grae. But when Calla and Briar journey out of hiding for Briar’s wedding, all of their well-made plans go awry. The evil sorceress is back with another sleeping curse for the last heir to the Golden Court.
Calla must step out of the shadows to save their sister, their kingdom, and their own legacy. Continuing to hide as a human and denying who she truly is, Calla embarks on a quest across the realm, discovering a whole world she never knew existed. Outside the confines of rigid Wolf society, Calla begins to wonder: who could she be if she dared to try?
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
These came out last week but I saved them for this week because there aren't many new books published before Christmas. Next week there won't be a new books post.