New Books Hitting Shelves This Week
Graveyard Shift
Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.
One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks-and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
Playground
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.
Intermezzo
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties-successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women-his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude-a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour
Evie Lang’s life is in shambles. On the heels of losing her beloved aunt, she's unceremoniously fired from her poetry professorship by her secret boyfriend. Lacking income and inspiration, she's stuck in Ohio with no idea how to move forward-until hope arrives in a surprising letter.
Auntie Hảo left Evie the deed to her San Francisco row house, a place full of Evie’s happiest memories. The catch? To inherit, she must go on a pre-arranged matchmaking tour in Việt Nam. The last thing Evie wants is to spend time with a group of strangers looking for love. But she can't resist the chance to finally visit her family’s native home.
A world away, Adam Quyền has a chip on his shoulder. He’s working around the clock as CMO for his sister’s elite matchmaking business, a job complicated by her insistence that he knows nothing about love. He’s desperate to prove himself, so when she challenges him to join the inaugural tour, he reluctantly agrees.
Adam thinks Evie is chaotic and unpredictable. Evie thinks Adam is grumpy and uptight. But from the bustling streets of Hồ Chí Minh City to the soaring waterfalls in Đà Lạt, they keep getting thrown together, their animosity charged with attraction…and they discover that true love may be out there, if they are willing to take a leap.
A Fire in the Sky
Dragons are extinct. Witches are outcast. Magic is dying.
But human lust for power is immortal.
Dragon fire no longer blisters the skies over Penterra, but inside the lavish palace, life is still perilous…especially for Tamsyn. Raised in the glittering court alongside the princesses, it's her duty to be punished for their misdeeds. Treated as part of the royal family but also as the lowliest servant, Tamsyn fits nowhere. Her only friend is Stig, Captain of the Guard...though sometimes she thinks he wants more than friendship.
When Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands, descends on her home, Tamsyn’s world becomes even more dangerous. To save the pampered princesses from a fate worse than death, she is commanded to don a veil and marry the brutal warrior. She agrees to the deception even though it means leaving Stig, and the only life she’s ever known, behind.
The wedding night begins with unexpected passion-and ends in near violence when her trickery is exposed. Rather than start a war, Fell accepts Tamsyn as his bride...but can he accept the dark secrets she harbors-secrets buried so deep even she doesn’t know they exist? For Tamsyn is more than a royal whipping girl, more than the false wife of a man who now sees her as his enemy. And when those secrets emerge, they will ignite a flame bright enough to burn the entire kingdom to the bone.
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy.
She hates his guts.
He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)
But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.
That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.
She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?
As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth-and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.
Assuming they don’t kill each other first.
In the Garden of Monsters
Italy, 1948
Julia Lombardi is a mystery even to herself. The beautiful model can’t remember where she’s from, where she’s been or how she came to live in Rome. When she receives an offer to accompany celebrated eccentric artist Salvador Dalí to the Sacro Bosco-Italy’s Garden of Monsters-as his muse, she’s strangely compelled to accept. It could be a chance to unlock the truth about her past…
Shrouded in shadow, the garden full of giant statues that sometimes seem alive is far from welcoming. Still, from the moment of their arrival at the palazzo, Julia is inexplicably drawn to their darkly enigmatic host, Ignazio. He’s alluring yet terrifying-and he seems to know her.
Posing for Dalí as the goddess Persephone, Julia finds the work to be perplexing, particularly as Dalí descends deeper into his fanaticism. To him, she is Persephone, and he insists she must eat pomegranate seeds to rejoin her king.
Between Dalí’s fevered persistence, Ignazio’s uncanny familiarity and the agonizing whispered warnings that echo through the garden, Julia is soon on the verge of unraveling. And she begins to wonder if she’s truly the mythical queen of the Underworld…
The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco
Welcome to San Francisco, a city with killer charm.
The chill of a San Francisco summer can be deadly. No one knows this better than Capri Sanzio, who makes her living giving serial killer tours of the city. Capri has been interested in the topic since she was a kid, when she discovered she’s the granddaughter of serial killer William ‘Overkill Bill’ Sanzio. She’s always believed in his innocence, though she's never taken the leap to fully dive into the case.
But now an Overkill Bill copycat has struck in San Francisco. And Capri’s former mother-in-law, Sylvia, just cut off Capri’s daughter’s tuition payments. Needing cash, Capri wonders if this is the time to exonerate her grandfather. The case is back in the news and the police will be looking to understand the past to catch a present-day killer. Capri could finally uncover the truth about Overkill Bill-documenting the process with a podcast and a book-and hopefully earn some money.
Before Capri can get very far, the cops discover the copycat’s latest victim: Sylvia. Capri soon finds herself at the heart of the police’s investigation for an entirely different reason. She and her daughter are prime suspects.
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society
Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies-and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural.
When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9