New Edelweiss E-galleys (1/9/23)

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

EVERYTHING IS FINE: Volume One by Mike Birchall
9781990259913 | 5/16/23

We need to forget. You know as well as I do.

Sam and Maggie are a normal couple, in a normal house, in a normal neighborhood. There is nothing strange about their heads, their neighbors, or their sweet little dog. Everything is fine.

This is the story of a couple doing their best to get by in a world where things are absolutely, totally, and unquestionably fine.

Collecting episodes 1–16 of the WEBTOON comic Everything Is Fine.

ANANSI’S GOLD: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo
9781635574739 | 8/1/23

The astounding, never-before-told story of how an audacious Ghanaian con artist pulled off one of the 20th century’s longest-running and most spectacular frauds.

When Ghana achieved independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for homegrown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to claim whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation’s inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country’s gold overseas.

Into this big lie stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty in Ghana and trained in the United States, John Ackah Blay-Miezah declared himself custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece, if only you would help Blay-Miezah rescue it—with your investment. Over the 1970s and ’80s, he and his accomplices—including Ghanaian state officials and Nixon’s former attorney general—scammed hundreds of millions of dollars out of thousands of believers. Blay-Miezah lived in luxury, deceiving Philadelphia lawyers, London financiers, and Seoul businessmen alike, all while eluding his FBI pursuers. American prosecutors called his scam “one of the most fascinating—and lucrative—in modern history.”
In ANANSI’S GOLD, Yepoka Yeebo chases Blay-Miezah’s ever-wilder trail. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call history writes itself into being one lie at a time.

MRS. PLANSKY’S REVENGE by Spencer Quinn
9781250843333 | 7/25/23

Bestselling author Spencer Quinn’s first new series since the meteoric launch of Chet and Bernie–introducing the irresistible and unforgettable Mrs. Plansky, in a novel perfect for book clubs and commercial fiction readers.

Mrs. Loretta Plansky, a recent widow in her seventies, is settling into retirement in Florida while dealing with her 98-year-old father and fielding requests for money from her beloved children and grandchildren. Thankfully, her new hip hasn’t changed her killer tennis game one bit.

One night Mrs. Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam. Of course, Loretta obliges—after all, what are grandmothers for, even grandmothers who still haven’t gotten a simple “thank you” for a gift sent weeks ago. Not that she’s counting.

By morning, Mrs. Plansky has lost everything. Law enforcement announces that Loretta’s life savings have vanished, and that it’s hopeless to find the scammers behind the heist. First humiliated, then furious, Loretta Plansky refuses to be just another victim.

In a courageous bid for justice, Mrs. Plansky follows her only clue on a whirlwind adventure to a small village in Romania to get her money and her dignity back—and perhaps find a new lease on life, too.

CUTTING TEETH by Chandler Baker
9781250839787 | 7/18/23

Bestselling author, Reese pick, and GMA pick Chandler Baker is back with a funny, daring mystery about what happens when ten preschoolers with an odd craving for blood are the only witnesses to a murder, pitched as BIG LITTLE LIES meets NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood—their careers, their sex lives, their bodies—when their children, who all attend preschool at Little Academy, develop an unsettling medical condition: the kids are craving blood. Then a young teacher is found dead, and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable 4-year-olds.

Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects. . . and so are their mothers.

As the police begin to look more closely, the children’s ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious. Part murder mystery, part motherhood manifesto, CUTTING TEETH explores the standards society holds mothers to—along with the ones to which we hold ourselves—and the things no one tells you about becoming a parent.

THE LAST DROP OF HEMLOCK by Katharine Schellman
9781250831842 | 6/6/23

Second in the captivating Nightingale series, THE LAST DROP OF HEMLOCK invites readers to join protagonist Vivian Kelly in a nighttime world where anything goes, but any drink could be your last.

New York, 1924. Vivian Kelly has gotten a job at the Nightingale, a speakeasy known to the young and fun as a place where the rules of society can be tossed aside for a dance and a drink, and things are finally looking up for her and her sister Florence. They might not be living like queens—still living in a dingy, two-room tenement, still scrimping and saving—but they’re confident in keeping a roof over their heads and, every once in a while, there is fried ham for breakfast.

Of course, things were even better before Bea’s Uncle Pearlie, the doorman for the Nightingale, is poisoned to death. Bea has been Vivian’s best friend since before she can remember, and though Pearlie’s death is ruled a suicide, Bea’s sure her uncle wouldn’t have killed himself. After all, he had the family to care for . . . and there have been rumors of a mysterious letter writer, blackmailing Vivian’s poorest neighbors for their most valuable possessions, threatening poison if they don’t comply.

With the Nightingale’s dangerously lovely owner, Honor, worried for her employees’ safety and Bea determined to prove her Uncle was murdered, Vivian once again finds herself digging through a dead man’s past in hopes of stopping a killer.

PLAY TO WIN by Jodie Slaughter
9781250821843 | 7/11/23

Miriam Butler’s life is going nowhere in the slowest, most excruciating way possible. Stuck in the same barely-paying job she’s had since she was sixteen and spending every night sleeping in the spare twin bed in her mother’s house, her existence might be hilarious if it wasn’t so bleak. One trip to her favorite Quickie Mart upends everything when she finds herself the winner of a Mega Millions Lottery Jackpot. Unfortunately, not even life-altering roses come without their painful thorns. Hers just so happen to be in the form of an estranged husband who has the right to claim his share of her money.

It’s been eight years since Leo Vaughn has had a conversation with his wife. When she calls out of the blue, practically begging him to come back to Greenbelt, the last thing he expects her to tell him when he gets there is that she’s come into a whole heap of money. She offers him a life-changing proposition of his own. Take a lump sum, finally sign the divorce papers, and be done with her for good. Only, a forever without her is the last thing Leo wants. So he gives a proposition of his own. One that won’t cost her nearly as many millions, but will buy him the time to do the one thing he’s been hungry to do since he left—win her back.

SPRING’S ARCANA by Lilith Saintcrow
9781250791658 | 5/2/23

AMERICAN GODS vs. Baba Yaga in this Russian-inspired contemporary fantasy by New York Times bestseller Lilith Saintcrow.

Nat Drozdova is desperate to save a life. Doctors can do little for her cancer-ridden mother, who insists there is only one cure—and that Nat must visit a skyscraper in Manhattan to get it.

Amid a snow-locked city, inside a sleek glass-walled office, Nat makes her plea and is whisked into a terrifying new world. For the skyscraper holds a hungry winter goddess who has the power to cure her mother…if Nat finds a stolen object of great power.

Now Nat must travel with a razor-wielding assassin across an American continent brimming with terror, wonder, and hungry divinities with every reason to consume a young woman. For her ailing mother is indeed suffering no ordinary illness, and Nat Drozdova is no ordinary girl. Blood calls to blood, magic to magic, and a daughter may indeed save what she loves…

…if it doesn’t consume her first.

This is the way to the Dead God’s Heart.

THORNHEDGE by T. Kingfisher
9781250244093 | 8/15/23

There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?

If only.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…

THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng
9781639731930 | 10/17/23

From bestselling Booker-shortlisted author Tan Twan Eng comes a novel recounting W. Somerset Maugham’s trip to Malaya after World War I and the secretive couple with whom he grows entangled.

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert’s, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary, Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one.

Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings—and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. As her friendship with Willie grows, she makes the dangerous decision to confide in him, telling him tales of life in the Straits, including how she came to know Dr. Sun Yat Sen, a charismatic Chinese revolutionary, and the scandalous case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in Kuala Lumpur—an outrage drawn from fact and, to Willie, worthy of fiction.

A mesmerizingly beautiful novel based on real events, THE HOUSE OF DOORS traces the fault lines of race, gender, and power under Empire, and dives deep into the complicated nature of love and friendship in its shadow.

WESTERN ALLIANCES by Wilton Barnhardt
9781250090003 | 8/1/23

From the New York Times-bestselling author of LOOKAWAY, LOOKAWAY, Wilton Barnhardt’s WESTERN ALLIANCES is a vivid portrait of a wealthy family set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis. This laugh-out-loud, darkly funny novel follows the Costa family—whose members are every bit as richly absurd as the characters in HBO’s Succession.

Salvador, the patriarch, runs one of Wall Street’s biggest banks the summer before everything collapses; Roberto and Rachel, his two children, have never worked a day in their lives; and Lena, his ex-wife, is a scheming hypochondriac. Part travelogue, part epic family drama, the novel follows Roberto and Rachel across Europe as the two dilettantes come to terms with their father’s choices and the repercussions of his actions.

Oozing with his signature satire and biting wit, Barnhardt invites readers on a literary romp from an elegant Paris apartment to a hilariously-inept London hotel, ancient churches and crypts to gleaming Mediterranean coasts, hot dog stands in Providence, RI to the best places in Manhattan, and terrifying encounters in the Serbian countryside to dangerous liaisons in Moscow, as two grown-up rich kids are forced to come of age at last. Alice Sebold calls Barnhardt “an absolute ringmaster of fiction,” and in WESTERN ALLIANCES, he delivers yet again an un-put-down-able saga examining privilege, loyalty, ambition, and what family members owe to one another.