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  • Writer's pictureJessica Kusisto

New Book Releases — May 28, 2024

Updated: May 27



Find Your Next Five-Star Read Here

Looking for the newest book releases? Check back here every Tuesday all the new releases in every genre. Want to receive this information via email? Sign up for my weekly email newsletter here.


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Romance

Every Tuesday, you can find the newest romance releases in a video on my YouTube channel! Watch it here.


Fantasy

Evocation by S.T. Gibson

As a teen, David Aristarkhov was a psychic prodigy, operating under the shadow of his oppressive occultist father. Now, years after his father’s death and rapidly approaching his thirtieth birthday, he is content with the high-powered life he’s curated as a Boston attorney, moonlighting as a powerful medium for his secret society.

But with power comes a price, and the Devil has come to collect on an ancestral deal. David’s days are numbered, and death looms at his door.

Reluctantly, he reaches out to the only person he’s ever trusted, his ex-boyfriend and secret Society rival Rhys, for help. However, the only way to get to Rhys is through his wife, Moira. Thrust into each other’s care, emotions once buried deep resurface, and the trio race to figure out their feelings for one another before the Devil steals David away for good…


The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

Kill the dragon. Find the blade. Reclaim her honor.


It’s that, or end up like countless knights before her, as a puddle of gore and molten armor.


Maddileh is a knight. There aren’t many women in her line of work, and it often feels like the sneering and contempt from her peers is harder to stomach than the actual dragon slaying. But she’s a knight, and made of sterner stuff.


A minor infraction forces her to redeem her honor in the most dramatic way possible, she must retrieve the fabled Fireborne Blade from its keeper, legendary dragon the White Lady, or die trying. If history tells us anything, it's that “die trying” is where to wager your coin.


Maddileh’s tale contains a rich history of dragons, ill-fated knights, scheming squires, and sapphic love, with deceptions and double-crosses that will keep you guessing right up to its dramatic conclusion. Ultimately, The Fireborne Blade is about the roles we refuse to accept, and of the place we make for ourselves in the world.


Mystery/Thriller


Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

In this new thriller on Camino Island, popular bookseller Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann an irresistible tale that might be her next novel. A giant resort developer is using his political muscle and deep pockets to claim ownership of a deserted island between Florida and Georgia. Only the last living inhabitant of the island, Lovely Jackson, stands in its way. What the developer doesn't know is that the island has a remarkable history, and locals believe it is cursed...and the past is never the past...



The Winner by Teddy Wayne

Conor O'Toole has never been anywhere like Cutters neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It's a sweet deal for the summer: in exchange for tennis lessons, he receives free lodging in a luxurious guest cottage. When Catherine, a sharp-tongued divorcée, offers double his usual rate, he soon realizes she's expecting additional services, and Conor tumbles into a secret erotic affair unlike anything he's experienced before. He simultaneously finds himself falling for an artsy, outspoken girl he meets on the beach. With cautious, strategic planning, Conor somehow manages this tangled web—until he makes one final, irreversible mistake.



Knife River by Justine Champine

When Jess was thirteen, her mother went for a walk and never returned. Jess and her older sister, Liz, never found out what happened. But one morning, fifteen years after their mother's disappearance, Jess gets the call she's been bracing for: Her mother's remains have been found. As Jess gets caught up in the case and falls back into an entanglement with her high school girlfriend, her understanding of the past, of Liz, of their mother, and of herself become more complicated—and the list of theories more ominous.



The Switch by Lily Samson

When young couple Elena and Adam are offered the chance to house-sit in their dream neighborhood for a few months, they jump at the opportunity. The leafy South London enclave is a world away from everything they know, complete with grand homes, lush gardens, and quaint local coffee shops.


Soon Elena crosses paths with the beautiful and enigmatic artist Sophia and her husband, Finn, and she and Adam are pulled into their orbit. Sophia is everything Elena isn't—glamorous, alluring, successufl—and Finn exerts a mysterious pull on Elena that she can't seem to shake.


Elena's infatuation with Finn grows stronger by the day, and when Sophia proposes a thrilling game to her new friend—swap partners in secret—Elena quickly agrees. It's not long before Elena experiences a sexual awakening that blossoms into an illicit love affair, but Sophia's plans are far more dangerous than Elena could have imagined...


Historical Fiction


The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, leaving her at Isabel's doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.


Eva is Isabel's antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn't. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl, Isabel's suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel's paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known.


Literary Fiction


The Second Coming by Garth Risk Hallberg

Spring, 2011. When thirteen-year-old Jolie Aspern goes down onto the subway tracks to retrieve her dropped phone—and nearly gets hit by a train—the last thing she wants is sympathy from her estranged dad, Ethan. A recovering addict and felon, now living in California, Ethan has long struggled to see beyond himself. But when news of Jolie's accident reaches him, Ethan comes to fear she's in more serious trouble than anyone realizes. And believing he's the only one who can save her, he decides to return home.


So begins the journey of Jolie and Ethan, father and daughter, apart and together, different yet the same. It will stretch from Manhattan in the midst of the Great Recession to a remote beach on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where their lives really began. In time, it will push Jolie out past her depth with a mysterious stranger, and Ethan in over his head with his first love—Jolie's mom.


Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg

When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.


After Bernie's former photography professor dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah vows to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania to document America through words and photographs.


What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.


A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi

Emma and Agathe are sisters. They were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been different as can be. Agathe, the younger sister, is disorderly, chaotic, and fiery. Five years older, Emma has always been the more mature sister, the defender, the protector, the worrier. Their relationship as adults is scarred by a tragedy that transformed their happy, ordinary childhoods into something much more complex and challenging. For a long time, Emma hasn't wanted to be involved in Agathe's life. But then they must return together to the Basque Country, to the house of their adored grandmother, to empty out her home and in the process to reconcile, to remember, and to pour out what is in their hearts.


Nonfiction

Accordion Eulogies by Noé Alvarez

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion. Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family's migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew.


Álvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that's been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history. Like the accordion itself, Álvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world—as a father, a son, a musician—he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.


In These Streets by Josiah Bates

Journalist Josiah Bates pulls back the curtain on a crisis that continues to plague the United States in this gripping narrative. Fueled by the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest, gun violence has surged to unprecedented levels, devastating marginalized communities and urban areas across the nation.


Bates embarks on a heart-wrenching journey, crisscrossing the country to meet victims, perpetrators, community activists, and renowned scholars. Through their powerful stories, he unearths the hidden causes behind the escalating gun violence epidemic. From the corrosive effects of poverty to the contentious debates surrounding policing and calls to defund law enforcement, Bates fearlessly navigates the intricate web of factors influencing gun violence. Through firsthand accounts and expert analysis, he exposes the systematic failures the perpetrate this cycle of destruction and delivers a powerful clarion call for change.


A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko

A few years after quitting his job to follow an ill-advised dream of becoming a guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, the National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that, McBride promised, would be "a walk in the park." Against his better judgement, Fedarko agreed to the scheme, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as "the toughest hike in the world."


The ensuing ordeal, which lasted more than a year, came within a hair's breadth of killing them both. Along the way, veteran long-distance hikers ushered them into secret pockets, invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim, where only a handful of humans have ever laid eyes. Members of the canyon's eleven Native American tribes brought them face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider myths at the center of our national parks—and exposed them to the impinging threats of commercial tourism.


A Walk in the Park is a singular portrait of a sublime place, a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America's greatest natural treasure.


Young Adult


The Redemption of Daya Keane by Gia Gordon

The end of Daya Keane's junior year in Escondido, Arizona is anything but expected. And it starts when her longtime swoon-worthy crush, Beckett Wild, actually talks to her at a party neither of them should have been at. But as Daya's best friends point out, Beckett is also the poster girl for the wildly popular youth group at Grace Redeemer, the megachurch Daya's mom prays at and pushes her daughter to attend.


Amid the concert-worthy light shoes, high-energy live band, and pastor preaching to love thy neighbor so long as thy neighbor "gets right with God" first, Daya struggles to find her place in a house of worship that doesn't seem to create space for someone like her. Now Daya has to decide how far she's willing to surrender to Beckett's world of Grace Redeemer, and who she's willing to become to be with her.


Flawless Girls by Anna-Marie McLemore

The Soler sisters are infamous in polite society—brazen, rebellious, and raised by their fashionable grandmother who couldn’t care less about which fork goes where. But their grandmother also knows the standards that two Latina young ladies will be held to, so she secures them two coveted places at the Alarie House, a prominent finishing school that turns out first ladies, princesses, and socialites.


Younger sister Isla is back home within a day. She refuses to become one of the eerily sweet Alarie girls in their prim white dresses. Older sister Renata stays. When she returns months later, she’s unfailingly pleasant, unnervingly polite, and, Isla discovers, possibly murderous. And the same night she returns home, she vanishes.


As their grandmother uses every connection she has to find Renata, Isla re-enrolls, intent on finding out what happened to her sister. But the Alarie House is as exacting as it is opulent. It won’t give up its secrets easily, and neither will a mysterious, conniving girl who’s either controlling the house, or carrying out its deadly orders.


The Quince Project by Jessica Parra

Castillo Torres, Student Body Association event chair and serial planner, could use a fairy godmother. After a disastrous mishap at her sister’s quinceañera and her mother's unexpected passing, all of Cas’s plans are crumbling. So when a local lifestyle-guru-slash-party-planner opens up applications for the internship of her dreams, Cas sees it as the perfect opportunity to learn every trick in the book so that things never go wrong again.


The only catch is that she needs more party planning experience before she can apply. When she books a quinceañera for a teen Disneyland vlogger, Cas thinks her plan is taking off… until she discovers that the party is just a publicity stunt―and she begins catching feelings for the chambelán.


As her agenda starts to go way off-script Cas finds that real life may be more complicated than a fairy tale. But maybe Happily Ever Afters aren’t just for the movies. Can Cas go from planner to participant in her own life? Or will this would-be princess turn into a pumpkin at the end of the ball?


Stay Dead by April Henry

In the aftermath of a car accident that claimed the life of her senator father, sixteen-year-old Milan finds herself adrift, expelled from her third boarding school. Milan’s mother, who has assumed the senate seat, diverts her private plane to pick up her daughter. But on their way home, a bomb rips off a wing and the plane crashes in the mountains. In her final moments, Milan’s mother entrusts her with a key. She reveals it will unlock the evidence that so many people have already died for—including Milan’s father. The only way Milan can survive, her mom tells her, is to let everyone believe she died with the other passengers.


​Milan is forced to navigate a perilous descent in freezing conditions while outwitting everything from a drone to wild animals. With relentless assassins on her trail, she must untangle the web of deceit and save herself and countless others. Will she piece together the truth in time?


Don't be a Drag by Skye Quinlan

When eighteen-year-old Briar Vincent's mental health takes a turn for the worst, her parents send her to spend the summer in New York City with her older brother, Beau, also known as the drag queen Bow Regard.


Backstage at the gay bar where Beau performs, Briar just wants to be a fly on the wall, but she can't stand by when the cute but conceited drag king Spencer Read tries to put down another up-and-coming performer. To prove to him that even a brand-new performer could knock him off his pedestal, Briar signs up for the annual drag king competition.


There's just one flaw in her plan: Briar has never done drag before.


With the help of her brother and a few new friends, Briar becomes Edgar Allan Foe, a drag king hellbent on taking Spencer down. But unless she can learn how to shake her anxiety and perform, she doesn't stand a chance of winning Drag King of the Year, overcoming her depression and inner demons, or avoiding falling for her enemy, who might not be so bad after all.


The Lillies by Quin Diacon-Furtado

Everyone wants to be a Lily.


At Archwell Academy, it’s the ticket to a successful future. But like every secret society, there is something much darker beneath the surface … sometimes girls disappear.


When four Archwell students find themselves trapped in a time loop, they must relive their worst memories, untangling the Lilies’ moldering roots and unraveling the secrets at the core of their school … before they destroy their futures forever.


The Only Light Left by Erik J. Brown

After a long and treacherous journey south, Andrew and Jamie have finally found safety in the Florida Keys. But they soon learn that safety doesn't always mean happily ever after.


Settling into life in the Islamorada colony with other survivors of the bug, Andrew believes they've finally found themselves a home, even a family. But anxious Jamie is less comfortable in their new community and is eager to return north to keep the promise they made to their friend Henri—to bring her to the colony and reunite her with her daughter. Besides, would it really be so bad to find someplace just for the two of them?


When a hurricane and a shocking betrayal force them to leave the colony in search of new shelter, it brings their tensions to a head—and puts them in the path of some old enemies. Andrew and Jamie must set aside their differences to survive once more and find a new home. But what if "home" means different things to each of them?

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