New Edelweiss E-galleys (4/23/2024)

Hello e-galley readers! Check out some of the exciting e-galleys that were recently added to Edelweiss for your downloading pleasure:

DATING AND OTHER THEORIES by Susannah Nix
9781035025954| 9/3/24

Dating theory 1: Do opposites attract?

Everything about the guy in the apartment next door drives Esther to distraction: his hipster beanie, his movie and food opinions, and the fact that he won’t. Stop. Talking to her. As far as she’s concerned, they’ve got nothing in common.

Until she realizes he’s exactly the hipster hottie she needs . . . to distract her best friend from a bad-news ex. Lucky for Esther, Jonathan needs help with a sci-fi script, and she’s exactly the rocket scientist to do it. So they strike a deal. He’ll ask out her friend, and she’ll work with him on his script. Perfect, right?

Dating theory 2: Enforced proximity can lead to trouble . . .

Only, the more time Esther spends with him, the more loathing turns into attraction—and attraction into something even deeper. Before she knows it, he’s broken down her carefully constructed defences and thrown her well-ordered life into chaos.

Dating theory 3: Love is more complicated than rocket science . . .

THE ULTIMATE HIDDEN TRUTH OF THE WORLD by David Graeber
9780374610227| 11/12/24

A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as DEBT and the breakout New York Times bestseller THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes.

There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time—inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. Driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different.

The incisive, playful, and urgent essays collected in THE ULTIMATE HIDDEN TRUTH OF THE WORLD. . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovksy and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic thinker.

MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon
9780374607135| 10/1/24

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents’ death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, MODEL HOME is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.

A LEGEND IN THE BAKING by Jamie Wesley
9781250801876| 11/19/24

August Hodges was supposed to be the silent partner in Sugar Blitz Cupcakes. Emphasis on silent. That is until his impromptu feminist rant about how women bakers are the backbone of the industry and baking cupcakes isn’t a threat to masculinity goes viral, making him the hottest bachelor in town. With a new location in the works, August and his partners decide to capitalize on this perfect opportunity to help cement their place in the community. But the hiring of his best friend’s younger sister, the woman who has haunted some of his best dreams for years, was as much of a shock as his new-found fame.

Social media manager Sloane Dell fell hard for her brother’s best friend the moment she met him more than a decade ago, but that teenage infatuation cost her dearly. Still, she accepts her brother’s request to revamp the bakery’s social media presence to take advantage of August’s newfound popularity, knowing it’s the big break her fledgling career needs. She’ll just ignore the fact that August is still August, i.e. sexier and sweeter than any man has a right to be. And that he drives her crazy with his resistance to all her ideas.

They vow to leave the past in the past. But when an explosive make-out session makes it clear their attraction burns hotter than ever, Sloane and August are forced to reconsider what it means to take a risk and chase your dreams.

As they’re both about to find out, all’s fair in love and cupcakes.

BOOKED FOR MURDER by P. J. Nelson
9781250909954| 12/10/24

In this atmospheric southern cozy debut, Madeline Brimley returns to the bookstore she inherited, discovering that small towns hold deadly secrets.

Madeline Brimley left small town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she’s left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore, and restart her life, Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the back yard is set ablaze and a late night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn’t leave immediately.

But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there’s another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it’s up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victim.

SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA by TJ Klune
9781250881205| 9/10/24

SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA  is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade.

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

TIME OF THE CHILD by Niall Williams
9781639734207| 11/19/24

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. A visit from the doctor is a sign of bad things to come. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at real love—and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter’s lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams’ beloved THIS IS HAPPINESS, TIME OF THE CHILD is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.

YOU BETTER WATCH OUT by James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth
9781250286260| 10/15/24

From international bestselling authors James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth, comes a suspenseful, serial killer thriller that leaves you wondering, is Christmas really the best time of the year?

Forty-eight hours until Christmas, Jessica Kane wakes up with blurred vision, ears ringing, and in excruciating pain. A gash in her head and blood running down her face, the last thing she remembers is going for a run and something or someone hitting her in the head.

It doesn’t take her long to realize she is trapped in an unknown, deserted town with five other strangers who share similar stories of being attacked and stranded there. Unsure why and how they got there, she knows one thing for certain, she has to find a way out.

That becomes nearly impossible when someone is meticulously orchestrating their deaths, one by one, and the only thing Jessica can do is watch the life leave their eyes.

The fenced-in town is the killer’s very own playground and there’s nowhere left to hide . . . she better watch out because she could be next.

THE CO-OP by Tarah DeWitt
9781250329387| 11/12/24

LaRynn Lavigne and Deacon Leeds had one short and contentious summer fling when they were teens—certainly nothing to build a foundation on. But a decade later, when their grandmothers have left them with shared ownership of their dilapidated Santa Cruz building, they’re thrust back together and have to figure out how to brace up the pieces.

LaRynn has the money, but in order to access her trust, she has to be married. Deacon has the construction expertise, but lacks the funds. A deal is struck: Marry for however long it takes to fix up the property, collect a profit, and cut ties.

In a home without walls, LaRynn and Deacon quickly learn that it’s easy to hide behind emotional ones, even in a marriage. But with all the exposure and pitfalls that come with living with the opposite sex (and none of the perks, much to their growing mutual frustration) they’ll also have to learn what it means to truly cooperate as a team.

Filled with crackling tension, THE CO-OP is a steamy second chance romance about restoration and renovation, and uncovering all the things that build character within ourselves. It’s about the never-ending construction project that partnership is, and finding enjoyment at every stage.

EVIL IN ME by Brom
9781250622013| 9/17/24

EVIL IN ME is bestselling author Brom’s newest novel of possession, damnation, and rock-n-roll where one woman must get the world singing in order to save her soul.

Aspiring musician Ruby Tucker has had enough of her small rural town and dysfunctional family. But a falling out with her best friend and bandmate has killed her dreams of escaping and making it big in the Atlanta punk scene.

While helping her eccentric neighbor organize his religious artifacts, an ancient ring clamps down on her finger—possessing her with the spirit of a blood-thirsty demon. There’s no exorcizing it unless hundreds of people chant a spell to set Ruby free. And what’s worse, the ring is a beacon for evil, drawing an unimaginably wicked mob straight to Ruby, hungry for her flesh.

If Ruby can get her band back together, she has a shot at salvation. It’s time for her to face the music and put her whole soul into a song—one powerful enough to raise some Hell.