New Book Tuesday: August 29th

Here are the new books coming out for this week on New Book Tuesday. Click each book for more information and to purchase. Which are you planning to read? Do you have a favorite of all the new titles being released this week? Tell us in the comments section below.

Never A Hero by Vanessa Len

About the Book:

Despite all of the odds, Joan achieved the impossible. She reset the timeline, saved her family – and destroyed the hero, Nick.
But her success has come at a terrible cost.
She alone remembers what happened. Now, Aaron, her hard-won friend – and maybe more – is an enemy, trying to kill her. And Nick, the boy she loved, is a stranger who doesn’t even know her name. Only Joan remembers that a greater and more dangerous enemy is still out there.
When a deadly attack forces Joan back into the monster world, she finds herself on the run with Nick – as Aaron closes in.
Torn between love and family and monstrous choices, Joan must find a way to re-gather her old allies to face down the deadliest of enemies, and to save the timeline itself.

About the Author:

Vanessa Len writes YA fantasy about girl anti-heroes, monsters, and enemies who are maybe in love. She’s read every Diana Wynne Jones book more times than she can count. She’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and she lives in Melbourne, Australia. Only a Monster is Vanessa’s first novel, and you can visit her online at www.vanessalen.com.

The Brothers Hawthorne by Jennifer Lynne Barnes

About the Book:

Grayson Hawthorne was raised as the heir apparent to his billionaire grandfather, taught from the cradle to put family first. Now the great Tobias Hawthorne is dead and his family disinherited, but some lessons linger. When Grayson’s half-sisters find themselves in trouble, he swoops in to do what he does best: take care of the problem—efficiently, effectively, mercilessly. And without getting bogged down in emotional entanglements.

Jameson Hawthorne is a risk-taker, a sensation-seeker, a player of games. When his mysterious father appears and asks for a favor, Jameson can’t resist the challenge. Now he must infiltrate London’s most exclusive underground gambling club, which caters to the rich, the powerful, and the aristocratic, and win an impossible game of greatest stakes. Luckily, Jameson Hawthorne lives for impossible.

Drawn into twisted games on opposite sides of the globe, Grayson and Jameson—with the help of their brothers and the girl who inherited their grandfather’s fortune—must dig deep to decide who they want to be and what each of them will sacrifice to win.

About the Author:

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty acclaimed young adult novels, including The Inheritance Games trilogy, Little White Lies, Deadly Little Scandals, The Lovely and the Lost, and The Naturals series: The Naturals, Killer Instinct, All In, Bad Blood, and the e-novella, Twelve. Jen is also a Fulbright Scholar with advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2012 and was a professor of psychology and professional writing at the University of Oklahoma for many years. She invites you to her online at www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com or follow her on Twitter @jenlynnbarnes.

Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh by Rachael Lipincott

About the Book:

What if you found a once-in-a-lifetime love…just not in your lifetime?

Audrey Cameron has lost her spark. But after getting dumped by her first love and waitlisted at her dream art school all in one week, she has no intention of putting her heart on the line again to get it back. So when local curmudgeon Mr. Montgomery walks into her family’s Pittsburgh convenience store saying he can help her, Audrey doesn’t know what she’s expecting…but it’s definitely not that she’ll be transported back to 1812 to become a Regency romance heroine.

Lucy Sinclair isn’t expecting to find an oddly dressed girl claiming to be from two hundred years in the future on her family’s estate. But she has to admit it’s a welcome distraction from being courted by a man her father expects her to marry—who offers a future she couldn’t be less interested in. Not that anyone has cared about what or who she’s interested in since her mother died, taking Lucy’s spark with her.

While the two girls try to understand what’s happening and how to send Audrey home, their sparks make a comeback in a most unexpected way. Because as they both try over and over to fall for their suitors and the happily-ever-afters everyone expects of them, they find instead they don’t have to try at all to fall for each other.

But can a most unexpected love story survive even more impossible circumstances?

About the Author:

Rachael Lippincott is the coauthor of All This Time, #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart, and She Gets the Girl and the author of The Lucky List and Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh. She holds a BA in English writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Originally from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, she currently resides in Pennsylvania with her wife and daughter.

Together We Rot by Skyla Arndt

About the Book:

Wil Greene’s mom has been missing for over a year, and the police are ready to call the case closed—they claim she skipped town and you can’t find a woman who wants to disappear. But she knows her mom wouldn’t just leave…and she knows the family of her former best friend, Elwood Clarke, has something to do with it.

Elwood has been counting down the days until his 18th birthday—in dread. It marks leaving school and joining his pastor father in dedicating his life to their congregation, the Garden of Adam. But when he comes home after one night of after a final goodbye with his friends, already self-flagellating for the sins of drinking and disobeying his father, he discovers his path is not as virtuous as he thought. He’s not his father’s successor, but his sacrifice. For the woods he’s grown up with are thirsty, and must be paid in blood.

Now on the run from a family that wants him dead, he turns to the only one who will believe him: Wil. Together, they form a reluctant partnership; she’ll help him hide if he helps her find evidence that his family killed her mother. But in the end they dig up more secrets than they bargained for, unraveling decades of dark cult dealings in their town, led by the Clarke family.

And there’s a reason they need Elwood’s blood for their satanic rituals. Something inhuman is growing inside of him. Everywhere he goes, the plants come alive and the forest calls to him, and Wil isn’t sure if she can save the boy she can’t help but love.

About the Author:

Skyla Arndt has always loved the creepy, crawly side of life. When she was younger, she thought that love might translate to hunting Bigfoot, but luckily for him, writing proved easier. Together We Rot is her debut novel.

After You Vanished by E. A. Neeves

About the Book:

SADIE meets WE WERE LIARS in this heartfelt mystery, in which one girl desperately searches to find out what happened to her missing sister.

Teddy’s favorite place is Bottomrock Lake, where sunfish swim in their little saucer nests and lilypads edge the shore. She’s worked there as a lifeguard every summer, including last year, when her twin sister Izzy waded into the lake for a midnight swim and never came out. Now, Teddy can’t stop scripting stories for where she went. Izzy was an accomplished swimmer, so she couldn’t possibly have drowned. And if she did somehow drown, where’s her body and why is her passport missing?

When Toby, the gorgeous jerk who was with Izzy on the night she vanished, comes to Bottomrock to work as a lifeguard alongside Teddy, she can’t help but be suspicious. How many of her sister’s secrets does he hold? And how can Teddy unearth them—without falling for the boy who watched her sister disappear?

Told from Teddy’s point of view directly to Izzy, AFTER YOU VANISHED is a mystery that will have readers trying to piece together the secret life of a sister who’s gone.

About the Author:

E.A. Neeves grew up in New England, where she spent many summers lifeguarding at an idyllic lake, and occasionally catching snapping turtles. She enjoys tea, swimming, and board games that take entire evenings to play. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found spending time with her family at their (probably not haunted) home in Salem, MA. After You Vanished is her YA debut.

The Reunion by Kit Frick

About the Book:

Eleven Mayweathers went on vacation. Ten came home.

It’s been years since the fragmented Mayweather clan was all in one place, but the engagement of Addison and Mason’s mom to the dad of their future stepbrother, Theo, brings the whole family to sunny Cancún, Mexico, for winter break. Add cousin Natalia to the mix, and it doesn’t take long for tempers to fray and tensions to rise. A week of forced family “fun” reveals that everyone has something to hide, and as secrets bubble to the surface, no one is safe from the fallout. By the end of the week, one member of the reunion party will be dead—and everyone’s a suspect:
The peacekeeper: Addison needs a better hiding place.
The outsider: Theo just wants to mend fences.
The romantic: Natalia doesn’t want to talk about the past.
The hothead: Mason needs to keep his temper under control.

It started as a week in paradise meant to bring them together. But the Mayweathers are about to learn the hard way that family bonding can be deadly.

About the Author:

Kit Frick is a MacDowell Fellow and International Thriller Writers Award finalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. The author of The Split, the young adult thrillers Before We Were Sorry (originally published as See All the Stars), All Eyes on Us, I Killed Zoe Spanos, Very Bad People, and The Reunion, as well as the poetry collection A Small Rising Up in the Lungs, Kit loves a good mystery but has only ever killed her characters. Honest. Visit Kit online at KitFrick.com and on Twitter and Instagram @KitFrick.

My Father, the Panda Killer by Jamie Jo Hoang

About the Book:

San Jose, 1999. Jane knows her Vietnamese dad can’t control his temper. Lost in a stupid daydream, she forgot to pick up her seven-year-old brother, Paul, from school. Inside their home, she hands her dad the stick he hits her with. This is how it’s always been. She deserves this. Not because she forgot to pick up Paul, but because at the end of the summer she’s going to leave him when she goes away to college. As Paul retreats inward, Jane realizes she must explain where their dad’s anger comes from. The problem is, she doesn’t quite understand it herself.

Đà Nẵng, 1975. Phúc (pronounced /fo͞ok/, rhymes with duke) is eleven the first time his mother walks him through a field of mines he’s always been warned never to enter. Guided by cracks of moonlight, Phúc moves past fallen airplanes and battle debris to a refugee boat. But before the sun even has a chance to rise, more than half the people aboard will perish. This is only the beginning of Phúc’s perilous journey across the Pacific, which will be fraught with Thai pirates, an unrelenting ocean, starvation, hallucination, and the unfortunate murder of a panda.

Told in the alternating voices of Jane and Phúc, My Father, The Panda Killer is an unflinching story about war and its impact across multiple generations, and how one American teenager forges a path toward accepting her heritage and herself.

About the Author:

Jamie Jo Hoang, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, grew up in Orange County, CA—not the wealthy part. She worked for MGM Studios and later, as a docu-series producer. Now she writes novels and blogs full time. When Jamie’s not writing, she’s wandering, pondering, and chasing experiences. Her self-published first novel, Blue Sun, Yellow Sky, is a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year.

What Happened on Hicks Road by Hannah Jayne

About the Book:

Those eyes. Wide. Ice blue. A swath of blond hair illuminated in headlights. Then, blackness.

Thump!

“We hit something.”

Lennox Oliver is loving her new life in California. For the first time, she feels normal. She has friends, and a maybe boyfriend and best of all no one knows the truth about her past and what happened to her mom.

But everything changes the night after a party when a drive on the supposedly haunted Hicks Road turns deadly and Lennox hits something…or someone.

Her friends say it was nothing, at worst, a deer in the road. But Lennox can’t shake the vision of the girl in the headlights: bloody hair, wide, terrified eyes, lips parted in a scream. When she goes out to investigate, there’s a slight dent in the car, but that’s it: no body, no blood.

Lennox wants to go to the police―but how can she? She shouldn’t have been driving, and as her friends remind her, there’s no evidence that she actually hit anything. All Lennox wants to do is go back to her boring, normal life. But when a note saying FIND ME is slipped through her window, she fears that there was a girl she hit on Hicks Road that night …or she’s slipping deeper into the illness that took her mother.

About the Author:

Hannah Jayne lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes cozy mysteries, young adult fiction, chick lit, and grocery lists that she never seems to remember to bring to the grocery store. Hannah shares a house with two neurotic, feet-attacking cats and has Kryptonite-like weakness for donuts. Visit www.hannahjschwartz.com.

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

About the Book:

One sister must fall for the other to rise.

Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offers her in sacrifice to the Demon Witch, she is forever changed. Cursed with a serpent’s face, Channi is the exact opposite of her beautiful sister, Vanna—the only person in the village who looks at Channi and doesn’t see a monster. The only person she loves and trusts.

Now seventeen, Vanna is to be married off in a vulgar contest that will enrich the coffers of the village leaders. Only Channi, who’s had to rely on her strength and cunning all these years, can defend her sister against the cruelest of the suitors. But in doing so, she becomes the target of his wrath—launching a grisly battle royale, a quest over land and sea, a romance between sworn enemies, and a choice that will strain Channi’s heart to its breaking point.

Weaving together elements of The Selection and Ember in the Ashes with classic tales like Beauty and the Beast, Helen of Troy, and Asian folklore, Elizabeth Lim is at the absolute top of her game in this thrilling yet heart-wrenching fantasy that explores the dark side of beauty and the deepest bonds of sisterhood.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Lim grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was raised on a hearty diet of fairy tales, myths, and songs. Before becoming an author, Elizabeth was a professional film and video game composer, and she still tends to come up with her best book ideas when writing near a piano. An alumna of Harvard College and the Juilliard School, she now lives in New York with her husband and her daughters.

Elizabeth’s internationally bestselling novels include Six Crimson Cranes, The Dragon’s Promise, Spin the Dawn, and Unravel the Dusk. She is also a contributor to Disney’s A Twisted Tale series.

The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu

About the Book:

Clementine Chang moves from Earth to Mars for a new start and is lucky enough to land her dream job with Dr. Marcella Lin, an Artificial Intelligence pioneer. On her first day of work, Clem meets Dr. Lin’s assistant, a humanoid AI named Kye. Clem is no stranger to robots—she built herself a cute moth-shaped companion named SENA. Still, there’s something about Kye that feels almost too human.

When Clem and Kye begin to collaborate, their chemistry sets off sparks. The only downside? Dr. Lin is enraged by Kye’s growing independence and won’t allow him more freedom. Plus, their relationship throws into question everything Clem thought she knew about AI. After all, if Kye is sentient enough to have feelings, shouldn’t he be able to control his own actions? Where is the line between AI and human?

As her past and Kye’s future weigh down on her, Clem becomes determined to help him break free—even if it means risking everything she came to Mars for.

About the Author:

Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist with several upcoming graphic novels from HarperCollins. She is the co-creator of Mooncakes, a young adult fantasy graphic novel published in 2019 from Lion Forge Comics/Oni Press, which has been nominated for Hugo, Ignatz, and GoodReads Choice awards. Her work has been featured on Catapult, B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, and Tor.com, among other places. Visit her online at www.artofwendyxu.com.

House of Marionne by J. Elle

About the Book:

17 year-old Quell has lived her entire life on the run. She and her mother have fled from city to city, in order to hide the deadly magic that flows through Quell’s veins.

Until someone discovers her dark secret.

To hide from the assassin hunting her, and keep her mother out of harm’s way, Quell reluctantly inducts into a debutante society of magical social elites called the Order that she never knew existed. If she can pass their three rites of membership, mastering their proper form of magic, she’ll be able to secretly bury her forbidden magic forever.

If caught, she will be killed.

But becoming the perfect debutante is a lot harder than Quell imagined, especially when there’s more than tutoring happening with Jordan, her brooding mentor and— assassin in training.

When Quell uncovers the deadly lengths the Order will go to defend its wealth and power, she’s forced to choose: embrace the dark magic she’s been running from her entire life or risk losing everything, and everyone, she’s grown to love.

Still, she fears the most formidable monster she’ll have to face is the one inside.

About the Author:

J. Elle is the New York Times bestselling author of young adult and middle-grade fantasy fiction and a 2022 NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth and Teens. The former educator credits her nomadic lifestyle and humble inner-city beginnings as inspiration for her novels. When she’s not writing, Elle can be found on the hunt for desserts without chocolate, looking for any excuse to get dressed up, and road-tripping her way across the country with her two dogs in tow.

All You Have to Do by Autumn Allen

About the Book:

In ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, two Black young men attend prestigious schools nearly thirty years apart, and yet both navigate similar forms of insidious racism.

In April 1968, in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Kevin joins a protest that shuts down his Ivy League campus…

In September 1995, amidst controversy over the Million Man March, Gibran challenges the “See No Color” hypocrisy of his prestigious New England prep school…

As the two students, whose lives overlap in powerful ways, risk losing the opportunities their parents worked hard to provide, they move closer to discovering who they want to be instead of accepting as fact who society and family tell them they are.

About the Author:

Autumn is an educator, a writer, an editor and a reviewer of books for children and young adults, and an independent scholar of children’s literature. She edits picture books and board books as a senior editor at Barefoot Books, and teaches children’s literature at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Autumn holds an MA-MFA in children’s literature and writing for children from Simmons, a master‘s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied cultural psychology, and a B.A. in literature from Yale.  Her graduate studies and her practice as an educator in community settings inform her interest in children’s literature as a tool of cultural transmission and as a potential site of cultural transformation.

Reign by Katharine McGee

About the Book:

America’s royal family is in shambles. Queen Beatrice is in a coma and Princess Samantha has gone missing—from the look of things, she ran away with her boyfriend, Lord Marshall Davis. Which means that Prince Jefferson is currently on the throne. For some in America, it’s exactly what they wanted: a King ruling the country. And for Daphne Deighton, who has tricked Jefferson into dating her again, it’s the ultimate dream come true.

Surely this is all just temporary. Won’t Beatrice wake up and reclaim her rightful place? Samantha can’t really be gone…can she? And Prince Jefferson will never truly be over his childhood crush, Nina Gonzalez. Right?

For the Washington family, the stakes are higher than ever. Love might save the throne….if secrets don’t destroy everything first.

About the Author:

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of the American Royals series and the Thousandth Floor trilogy. She studied English and French literature at Princeton University and has an MBA from Stanford. She’s been speculating about American royalty since her undergraduate days, when she wrote a thesis on “castle envy”—the idea that the American psyche is missing out on something because Americans don’t have a royal family of their own. She lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband and son. Visit her online at katharinemcgee.com. Follow her at @katharinemcgee.

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

About the Book:

Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood.

The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.

But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is―monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

About the Author:

Jamison Shea was once a flautist, violist, anthropologist, linguist, choreographer, dancer, professional fire alarm puller, digital producer, and account executive―but they’ve always been a writer. Born in Buffalo, NY and now surrounded by darkness and gloom in Finland, when Jamison isn’t writing horror, they’re drinking milk tea and searching for long-forgotten gods in eerie places. I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me is their debut novel.

A More Than a Thief by Beverly Patt

About the Book:

In 1892, in the bustling town of Fall River, Massachusetts, 16-year-old Victoria feels trapped by her high-society, pre-debutante life. Not only is she forced to have a chaperone for anything outside of the house, but she is also stuck playing nursemaid to her mother suffering from an unexplained paralysis. Victoria’s only escapes are visits with her neighbor Miss Lizzie Borden, reading Sherlock Holmes serials and―when the urge overtakes her―stealing. When her next-door neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Borden are murdered and Lizzie is accused of committing the acts, Victoria begins crossing paths with apprentice detective Declan Dempsey as they both search for the truth. Victoria doesn’t want to believe that Lizzie committed those murders. Because if her friend has a dark side, what does that mean for Victoria with her own sordid secret? When Victoria discovers Lizzie also shares her penchant for stealing, Victoria swears off her secret habit for good. In her quest to not become Lizzie Borden, Victoria loses old friends, makes questionable new ones, and finds her fiercest enemy resides within her own skin.

About the Author:

Beverly Patt writes from her suburban Chicago home, where she lives with her high-school sweetheart husband, four kids, one dog and countless dust bunnies. She did not always want to be a writer. At age four, she wanted to be a dog when she grew up, so she could marry her dog, Gentle. Eventually realizing that wasn’t going to work out, she switched her goal to become a vet…then a psychologist…then a special education teacher. Now retired from teaching, Bev spends her days writing, making soup and trying to play tennis (and only sometimes succeeding). Bev and her family lived in Harrow for a short stint and can’t wait to return. For more about Bev and her books, go to www.beverlypatt.com.

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