New Edelweiss E-galleys (3/6/23)

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

LAST TO LEAVE THE ROOM by Caitlin Starling
9781250282613 | 10/10/23

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before – and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world. As her employer grows increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads.

THE INTERN by Michele Campbell 
9781250274977 | 10/3/23

It took hard work, sacrifice, smarts, and determination for Maddy Rivera to make it to the hallowed halls of Harvard Law School. Now, she’s under the spell of a charismatic professor named Kathryn Conroy. Professor Conroy invites Maddy to apply for a prestigious internship with her firm and Maddy, beating out the competition, lands it. But everything comes with a price, and soon Maddy finds herself enmeshed in the professor’s life. The professor has secrets, someone may want to her dead, and someone has killed before. Is Maddy being used as protector, or as a decoy? And will she find the strength within herself to get to the truth about the Kathryn Conroy’s past?

THE GOLDEN GATE by Amy Chua
9781250903600 | 9/19/23

In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Berkeley Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a former presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still.

The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris’s sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth—not the powerful influence of Bainbridges’ grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley’s district attorney, or the interest of Chinese first lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in his findings—Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.

Chua’s page-turning debut brings to life a historical era rife with turbulent social forces and groundbreaking forensic advances, when race and class defined the very essence of power, sex, and justice, and introduces a fascinating character in Detective Sullivan, a mixed race former Army officer who is still reckoning with his own history.

CLEAT CUTE by Meryl Wilsner
9781250873309 | 9/19/23

Grace Henderson has been a star of the US Women’s National Team for ten years, even though she’s only 26. But when she’s sidelined with an injury, a bold new upstart, Phoebe Matthews, takes her spot. 22-year-old Phoebe is everything Grace isn’t—a gregarious jokester who plays with a joy that Grace lost somewhere along the way. The last thing Grace expects is to become teammates with benefits with this class clown she sees as her rival.

Phoebe Matthews is too focused on her first season as a professional soccer player to think about seducing her longtime idol. But when Grace ends up making the first move, they can’t keep their hands off of each other. 

As the World Cup approaches and Grace works her way back from injury, a miscommunication leaves the women with hilariously different perspectives on their relationship. But they’re on the same page on the field, realizing they can play together instead of vying for the same position. With every tackle the tension between them grows, and both players soon have to decide what’s more important—being together or making the roster.

The perfect blend of funny and steamy, Meryl Wilsner’s CLEAT CUTE is about being brave enough to win on and off the field.

THE PREDICTABLE HEARTBREAKS OF IMOGEN FINCH by Jacqueline Firkins
9781250836526 | 10/31/23

Imogen Finch has just been through her sixteenth breakup. She saw it coming, so she’s not as crushed as she might be, but with all sixteen of her exes leaving her for other partners, she’s come to believe a prediction her well-intentioned and possibly clairvoyant mother made over twenty years ago: that Imogen would never come first at anything or to anyone. Is her love life failing due to a magical curse? Insufficient effort? Poor timing or personality mismatches? Everyone has opinions on the matter. Imogen’s ready to give up altogether. But when Eliot Swift, her secret high school crush, returns to their small coastal town after a decade of nomadic travels, Imogen has new motivation to try again. Eliot’s full of encouragement. He suggests that her curse is not only imagined, it’s easily breakable. All they need is one win any win and she can believe in love, and in herself again.

From trivia games to swimming races to corn-shucking contests, the pair sets out to snag Imogen her first first. But when victory proves more elusive than Eliot anticipated, and when his deep-seeded wanderlust compels him to depart for far away places, Imogen fears she’s destined to remain in second place forever. Fortunately for them both, sometimes magic lingers in the most unexpected places. And love is far from predictable.

EXADELIC by Jon Evans
9781250877734 | 9/5/23

When an unconventional offshoot of the US military trains an artificial intelligence in the dark arts that humanity calls “black magic,” it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence.

Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. His predicament seems hopeless; his future, nonexistent. But when he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem…and unearths revelations that will propel him on a journey and a love story across worlds, eras, and everything, everywhere, all at once.

A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL by Julia Kelly
9781250865489 | 10/3/23

Evelyne Redfern’s family specializes in notoriety. Her father is Sir Reginald Redfern, a feckless, louche second son of an English baron, and her late beloved mother was a glamorous French party girl. Their disastrous marriage ended in divorce and a very public custody battle over nine-year-old Evelyne that only resolved when Genevieve died three years later. However, the damage was done, with the press dubbing Evelyne “The Parisian Orphan” and making her the most notorious child in the world.

Years later in 1940, Evelyne is estranged from her father and working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. She’s bored and craving more from her life, but the only contentment she can find is with stacks of mystery novels that fight for space with her roommate Moira’s ever-expanding wardrobe.

When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne at a night out at the Ritz, Evelyne seizes the chance for a change and finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at the war rooms is murdered and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise earned from years of reading mysteries to find the killer. Little does she know that doing so will put her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out David’s real reason for being in the cabinet war rooms is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up.

With her quick wit, sharp eyes, and determination, Evelyne is a heroine to root for. But can she find out who’s been selling England’s secrets and catch a killer all while battling her growing attraction to David and her own scandalous past?

DOOM BREAKER VOLUME 1 by Blue-Deep
9781990259746 | 7/25/23

Zephyr is the last human fighting evil in a world abandoned by the gods. After being slain by Tartarus, the Demon Lord, all of humanity seems lost. However, much to the sinister amusement of the gods, Zephyr is reincarnated to save humanity and avenge those he loves. Can Zephyr finally have his revenge against Tartarus and save the woman he loves, or is he doomed to repeat the past?

RAW DOG: THE NAKED TRUTH ABOUT HOT DOGS by Jamie Loftus
9781250847744 | 5/23/23

Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America’s Indigenous food traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, you cut them up and put them in a bowl of macaroni and cheese, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog. 

RAW DOG is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelogue documenting a cross-country road trip researching the landscape of American hot dogs as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus and her soon-to-be-ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021, a brief window of the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest. 

Loftus weighs in on:
The reality of hot dog production and working conditions from factories to fast food stands in a post-Upton Sinclair world
The best hot dog you can get in the United States right now
And yes, critically overlooked bun infrastructure problems.

So grab a dog, lay out your beach towel, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-11.

GREMORYLAND VOLUME 1 by A. Rasen
9781990778650 | 8/15/23

It’s too late to turn back now. The only way out is to survive GremoryLand.

Six old school friends are invited to be the first visitors to GremoryLand, a new horror theme park that promises an experience as unique as it is scary. But once this experience starts there is no turning back, and they find themselves tested beyond what they imagined, facing their most desperate fears in order to survive.

To escape GremoryLand, these six friends must not just survive their worst nightmares they also have to survive each other.