New Edelweiss E-galleys (3/28/22)

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

THE UNKEPT WOMAN: A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery by Allison Montclair
ISBN 9781250750341 | on sale 7/26/22

In London, 1946, Miss Iris Sparks – currently co-proprietor of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau – has to deal with aspects of her past exploits during the recent war that have come back around to haunt her.

The Right Sort Marriage Bureau was founded in 1946 by two disparate individuals – Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge (whose husband was killed in the recent World War) and Miss Iris Sparks who worked as an intelligence agent during the recent conflict, though this is not discussed. While the agency flourishes in the post-war climate, both founders have to deal with some of the fallout that conflict created in their personal lives. Miss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss and it seems that Iris’s past may well cause something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances, and her son – a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls.

Together these indomitable two are determined and capable and not just of making the perfect marriage match.

VANESSA JARED’S GOT A MAN by LaQuette
ISBN 9781250773395 | on sale 9/20/22

Vanessa Jared, a 40-something divorcee, decided that the best way to pull herself out of their post-divorce slump was to form The Savvy, Sexy, Singles Club and start the “Do Me” portion of her and her friends’ lives.

But on the two year anniversary, a sexy sheriff shows up on Vanessa’s doorstep wanting her to help him keep his little sister from marrying her no-good ex. Vanessa is not down for this at all. She wants nothing to do with her ex…until she spots a photo of her ex’s new fiancee wearing her grandmother’s ring–which he clearly stole from her. So now it is on. Vanessa is ready to take this trifling (fill-in-the-blank) down. What she does not expect is to fall in love along the way.

THE BARTENDER’S CURE by Wesley Straton
ISBN 9781250809070 | on sale 6/28/22

Samantha Fisher definitely does not want to be a bartender. But after a breakup and breakdown in San Francisco, she decides to defer law school for a year to move to New York, crashing on her best friend’s couch. When she is offered a job at Joe’s Apothecary, a beloved neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, she tells herself it’s only temporary.

As Sam learns more about bartending and gets to know the service industry lifers and loyal regulars at Joe’s, she is increasingly seduced by her new job. She finds acceptance in her tight-knit community and even begins a new relationship. But as the year draws to a close, Sam is increasingly pulled between the life she thought she wanted and the possibility of a different kind of future. When destructive cycles from her past threaten to consume her again, Sam must decide how much she’s willing to let go of to finally belong.

WHO YOU MIGHT BE by Leigh N. Gallagher
ISBN 9781250817846 | on sale 6/21/22

It’s the late nineties—the dawn of the internet—and Judy and Meghan have lied to their mothers and run away for the weekend, to see a girl they’ve met in a chat room. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Cassie, desperately clinging to childhood hopes, travels deep into the Nevada desert to reunite with her real mother at a strange and isolated compound. And, across the country, Caleb, an entitled teenager, is miserable following his family’s move from upper-crust San Francisco to boring Ann Arbor—until, emboldened by privilege, his tours of blighted Detroit become graffiti-writing escapades, with his faithful little brother in tow.

Each of these adventures derails in severe, alarming ways, only to resurface and collide two decades later in an unforgettable finale that explores the power—and limits—of the narratives that come to define us. Deftly written and peopled with precisely drawn, indelible characters pushed to great extremes, WHO YOU MIGHT BE considers the ramifications of life’s most trying encounters and the resilience it takes to determine for ourselves who we might be.

AT CERTAIN POINTS WE TOUCH by Lauren John Joseph
ISBN 9781526631305 | on sale 12/6/22

It’s four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realize the date is February 29—the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters, and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago.

Ten years earlier, our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power plays, initiates a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims—and culminate in terrible betrayal.

AT CERTAIN POINTS WE TOUCH is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco, and New York—a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.

STAY AWAKE by Megan Goldin
ISBN 9781250280664 | on sale 8/9/22

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE.

Two years ago, Liv was living with her best friend, dating a new man, and thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, the same message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget—permanently.

A complex thriller that unfolds at a breakneck speed, STAY AWAKE will keep you up all night.