A Murder in Hollywood by Michael Crichton

From Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, ER, Twister, Rising Sun, and Disclosure comes a new Hollywood mystery thriller, originally written in 1973 by Crichton but never before published, that will keep you guessing until the very end.

In the glitz and decadence of 1970s Hollywood, an era when sex and drugs were readily available on any movie set, the writer of the next Western blockbuster, Bloodrock, has just been found dead in his motel bathtub. Now publicist Harvey Jason is desperately trying to keep the project on track while the famed Harlow Perkins, a brilliant and ruthless investigator, begins to unravel the mystery and hunt the killer down.

From scorching-hot desert locations to sleazy motel bars, the members of the cast and crew—each one with a very dark secret of their own—will send this case deeper and deeper into a maze of confusion and shadows until the shocking truth is revealed.

Will the murderer be found? Or will the true identity of the killer turn out to be just another Hollywood illusion?

Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells’ bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good. After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know. Including human children. Ugh. This may well call for… eye contact!

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere, and Scarpetta’s began when Patricia Cornwell embedded herself in a morgue.

In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalized twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham’s wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalization and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner’s office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon.

Cornwell leaves no stone unturned in this deeply candid account of her life, offering inspiring insight into what made her into the international sensation she is today.

Change of Plans by Sarah Dessen

Finley has always felt most comfortable in someone else’s shadow. Fortunately, she’s got Colin, her magnetic boyfriend, who sweeps her along for activities, friendships, and future plans. Then she goes on a last-minute trip with her distant mom to a family vacation house that Finley didn’t know existed and is now about to be sold.

Her mom was estranged from her own parents and siblings since leaving home for college, and it’s a novelty for Finley to see her aunts and cousins. There’s also the handful of teens who work at the Egg, her aunt’s diner, and make up a found family of their own—including undeniably handsome guitarist Ben.

Then her relationship with Colin goes into freefall, and Finley’s roadmap for life after high school is gone. She has no choice but to live, for the first time, without plans. The longer Finley stays, the closer she gets to the truth about why her mother stayed away—and why she’s brought Finley here now.

And the closer she grows to new friends at the Egg, the more she starts to fall for charmingly awkward, soulful Ben and to realize how much of herself she’s been missing. By the end of the summer, nothing will be the same—for this community or for Finley herself.

Five Weeks in the Country by Francine Prose

In the summer of 1857, when British newspapers warned of an approaching comet about to destroy the earth, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dickens’s home, Gad’s Hill, in the countryside outside London. Dickens had met Hans Christian Andersen at a dinner party, a decade before, and, in a moment of desperation, had invited him to visit.

The visit did not go well. The eccentric Danish author of classic fairy tales, who barely spoke English, outstayed his welcome and alienated the Dickens household, which included nine children. Even the oblivious, obsessively self-conscious Andersen sensed the increasing tension between Dickens and his unhappy wife, Catherine, but was slow to understand—or to believe—that Dickens had fallen in love with a young actress appearing in his new play. For Andersen, those five weeks were a series of social mistakes and embarrassments but ultimately a lesson in how life’s most humbling experiences can be transformed into art.