The Unknown by Riley Sager
Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot.
Because New Avalon isn’t your ordinary island. A century ago, it was a commune for spiritual mediums—until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree in the middle of the island, one for each missing woman. Some locals say they simply left. Others think they were murdered. But the prevailing opinion, thanks to a diary left behind by one of the vanished, a young woman named Daisy Rue, is that a séance gone wrong conjured something supernatural that took them all one by one.
Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates, including legendary actress Violet Wright and white-hot director Ronan Peters, begin to realize all is not right with New Avalon. They hear strange noises in the night and notice mysterious symbols left behind by the island’s previous occupants. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin, Ronan, and the other actors stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again.
The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives.
In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman.
Etna by Paul Yoon
Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.
Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?
Eyes of Kings by Chloe Gong
The action-packed finale to Chloe Gong’s New York Times bestselling Flesh & False Gods trilogy—inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra —brings readers the ultimate showdown for power among gods and men.
War beckons in the kingdom of Talin. On one side sits Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa, and on the other, the recently dethroned August Shenzhi and Calla’s own predecessor Sinoa Tuoleimi. Neither will rest until the opposition is buried.
Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LaCour
New Orleans, 1944. Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette’s older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man. In the hidden garden they’ve discovered, Odette and Delphine can dream of futures full of passion and freedom.
But five years later, Odette’s life is nothing like what she’d planned. She’s a widowed mother, living in Los Angeles, and she and Delphine, who is passing as white, have spiraled away from each other. When Delphine reaches a breaking point, Odette must make a shattering choice to try to hold her family together.
Sunlight Finds You by Laura Moriarty
It’s 1949, early in the Cold War, but St. Petersburg, Florida is warm, lush, and booming with newcomers seeking sunshine and opportunity. For seventeen-year-old Nora, St. Pete feels like paradise, especially after she meets and wins over Leonard, the shy, brilliant son of transplanted New Yorkers. Nora and Leonard are soon spending balmy days and evenings together, and in her adoring, encouraging company, he grows more confident, even as he remains tender and caring. Leonard’s sophisticated mother welcomes Nora into their lives, but his father distrusts her motives.
When his suspicions are seemingly confirmed, Nora is forced to cut contact. In her longing and fear, she takes a chance that changes her life, exiling her from the family she loves and setting off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her into adulthood. It is a mature Nora who tells the story of her turbulent past. Wiser and more worldly, she commits to an honest but compassionate account, and to a future based on trusting, first and foremost, herself.
The Cruelest Game: Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis by Matthew Futterman
Alcaraz, Sinner, and Shelton . . . Sabalenka, Gauff, and Świątek . . . Djokovic, Williams, and Nadal. The story of modern tennis shines with immense fortune and glamour—as well as unrelenting high stakes—like the game has never seen before. Players excel and implode under excruciating pressure, alone on the court for the world to see. With legends like Rafa, Roger, and Serena retired and Novak trying to figure out when to go, a new generationof electric stars has burst onto the scene and begun their quest for the secret codes that will allow them to thrive at the top of a brutal game.
Matthew Futterman, whose dynamic insider reporting has placed him at the center of the tennis world, now takes us inside this rarified sport as it has never been seen. From private practice courts to the tunnels beneath the major tournament stadiums, from training academies to faraway wartorn hometowns, Futterman sits us down with the stars whose relentless drive leads them to battle against a game of millimeters, and explains the off-court tensions that can both lift and destroy them. With unmatched access to the top players and coaches, and their unique psyches and personalities, The Cruelest Game is a breathtaking account of what it takes to succeed, the price that is paid, and the insatiable competitive spirit that propels the rarest of athletes to greatness.
The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao Thai
Aside from the fact they are sisters, Vivi and Calla Nguyễn have little in common.
Vivi, the eldest, lives an orderly and predictable life. She works as an art conservator at a museum in Chicago, carefully preserving pieces of the past, all the while refusing to examine her own dark history.
Calla leads a much bolder, if occasionally reckless, existence. She’s an accomplished artist with a flair for the dramatic, charming and intriguing everyone she meets. She’s also a recovering addict, constantly causing Vivi to worry.
Months after the two fall out in the wake of their father’s death, Calla appears on the steps of the museum with a sketch and a letter she found in their father’s belongings. The sketch is an exact copy of Blue Mirror, a striking painting by a Vietnamese painter named K.P. Lý. In the letter, Lý writes about a mysterious lost work of art. Calla is convinced it is meant for their family, and that it was their father’s deathbed wish for her and Vivi to find it together. Intrigued yet reluctant to follow her capricious sister, Vivi must decide whether she’s willing to face or shut the door to the past.
The Wild Beneath by Kelly Anderson
Annie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures alongside her parents and best friend Evan. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is stranded on land and forced to confront how eccentric she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear.
Their connection is instant, electric. Walker’s touch gives Annie visions of the ocean’s hidden world, a life she’s never known but feels inexplicably drawn to. Yet even as she is pulled toward him, Evan—the steadfast love who has always been there—remains on dry land, offering the stability she may have to leave behind. Annie is torn between Evan’s grounding presence and Walker’s magnetic secrets. But then, Walker vanishes, along with the answers she needs about who she really is.
Six years later, Annie has left the sea and buried the past—until Walker’s otherworldly sound returns, pulling her back toward the ocean and the life she abandoned. The truth under the water is more ancient than she ever could have known, and Annie must confront a choice that will test her heart and determine her future.
The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen
In 1964, four remarkable young women at a prestigious university became the subjects of parapsychology experiments by a visionary scientist. On the cusp of a historic breakthrough, the women mysteriously vanished and the program was erased from history.
Decades later, Riley Bell, newly divorced and desperate for a fresh start, accepts a caretaker job for an elderly widow named Betty. Riley steps into a home that is frozen in another era – no microwave, television, or cell phones, and Betty has never heard of the internet.
Why has Betty lived in such profound isolation for so many years, and why does she need Riley now? As the story unfolds across two timelines – Betty’s 1960s era of 5 o’clock martinis and high-stakes experiments, and Riley’s quest to uncover the truth about the missing women – old secrets rise to the surface. And the only way to survive is to confront the mystery that has lingered for sixty years.
Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd
Mercurial tech entrepreneur Inigo Frank has perfected commercial time travel, though it is tightly regulated and so expensive that it’s open only to the very wealthiest.
His company, Tempus Tours, has so far been approved for just one route: a journey back to London in 1941, to the days of the Blitz, allowing the super-rich to experience the awesome sights and sounds of the aerial bombardment of the capital during World War II. It’s a slick operation—routes across the wartime city are meticulously plotted, guides are extensively trained, and rules for the time tourists are strictly enforced.
To immortalize his achievement, Frank enlists award-winning filmmaker Phoebe Hunt to create a fly-on-the-wall documentary. On her first day shadowing Inigo, she is set to witness the return of a billionaire property developer and his family from their trip to the past. But instead of their awe-filled return, she captures the group arriving bloodied and traumatized, with one of their number missing.
Not only that, but Phoebe recognizes the missing woman, and knows not only that she’s not who she claims to be but that she has every reason to harbor a grudge against her. And as events begin to unravel in the present day, it seems increasingly clear that she had sinister motives for returning to the past—and that people close to Phoebe are in danger.
Phoebe must race to untangle the truth—before past and the future are rewritten.
When Lemons Give You Life by Anna Johnston
Retired Michelin-star chef Griff Barlow has lost his appetite. He’s done with grief, guilt and the beige slop they dare call food at Sunny Glen Aged Care Facility, where he now resides.
Six decades of life have given him all the lemons he can handle, so he breaks into the nursing home kitchen to bake himself one last tart. It’s supposed to be his final meal but the act of cooking stirs a dormant joy. Soon, he’s regularly sneaking in after dark, serving up flavor and comfort to fellow residents, who, in turn, begin to come alive with each bite of Griff’s delicious concoctions. Yet behind the apron is a lie so big it could destroy the one thing Griff has left to protect.
Lisa, Griff’s younger sister and sole visitor, is navigating a midlife ADHD diagnosis, the spark of a new romance, and unexpected news that may change life as she knows it. Despite their fractured sibling relationship, she continues to show up, though hope of a reconciliation between the two is long gone, buried in the silence between them.
But the truth has a way of boiling over, and when secrets, soufflés, and second chances collide, Griff and Lisa may discover a recipe for forgiveness.
