New Edelweiss E-galleys (5/22/23)

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

WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE by Charlotte Stein
9781250867933 | 2/6/24

When grumpy ex-footballer Alfie Harding gets badgered into selling his memoirs, he knows he’s never going to be able to write them. He hates revealing a single thing about himself, is allergic to most emotions, and can’t imagine doing a good job of putting pen to paper.

And so in walks curvy, cheery, cute as heck ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, who knows just how to sunshine and sass her way into getting every little detail out of Alfie. They banter and bicker their way to writing his life story, both of them sure they’ll never be anything other than at odds.

But after their business arrangement is mistaken for a budding romance, the pair have to pretend to be an item for a public who’s ravenous for more of this Cinderella story. Or at least, it feels like it’s pretend—until each slow burn step in their fake relationship sparks a heat neither can control. Now they just have to decide: is this sizzling chemistry just for show? Or something so real it might just give them their fairytale ending?

THE DEAD TAKE THE A TRAIN by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw
9781250867025 | 10/3/23

Julie is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-year-old whose only retirement plan is dying early. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs, exorcize the nastiest demons, and make deals with the cruelest gods to claw her way to the top. But nothing can prepare her for the toughest job yet: when her best friend, Sarah, shows up at her door in need of help. Keeping Sarah safe becomes top priority.

Julie is desperate for a quick fix to break the dead-end grind and save her friend. But her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts Sarah – and the entire world – directly in the path of annihilation.

The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, THE DEAD TAKE THE A TRAIN fuses Cassandra Khaw’s cosmic horror and Richard Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly.

ALL THE HIDDEN PATHS by Foz Meadows
9781250829306 | 12/5/23

The follow-up to Foz Meadows’s A STRANGE AND STUBBORN ENDURANCE, a sultry political & romantic fantasy exploring gender, sexuality, identity, and self-worth.

With the plot against them foiled and the city of Qi-Katai in safe hands, Velasin and Caethari have begun to test the waters of their relationship. But the wider political ramifications of their marriage are still playing out across two nations, and all too soon, they’re summoned north to Tithena’s capital city, Qi-Xihan, to present themselves to its monarch.

With Caethari newly invested as his grandmother’s heir and Velasin’s old ghosts gnawing at his heels, what little peace they’ve managed to find is swiftly put to the test. Cae’s recent losses have left him racked with grief and guilt, while Vel struggles with the disconnect between instincts that have kept him safe in secrecy and what an open life requires of him now.

Pursued by unknown assailants and with Qi-Xihan’s court factions jockeying for power, Vel and Cae must use all the skills at their disposal to not only survive, but thrive – because there’s more than one way to end an alliance, and more than one person who wants to see them fail.

WELCOME TO THE HYUNAM-DONG BOOKSHOP by Hwang Bo-reum, Translated by Shanna Tan
9781639732425 | 2/20/24

Yeong-ju is burned out. With her high-flying career, demanding marriage, and busy life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Yet an old abandoned dream nags at her, and in a leap of faith, she leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeong-ju moves to a small residential neighborhood outside the city where she opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

For the first few months, all Yeong-ju does is cry, deterring visitors. But the long hours in the shop give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and bookshop, and as she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she begins to ease into her new life and welcome new friends and visitors to her circle: Min-jun, a disillusioned student she hires as a barista; Jeong-suh, a regular whose crochet work Yeong-ju gives out at events; Min-cheol, a lost high schooler searching for meaning in the shelves; and countless others who take refuge and find comfort in the home Yeong-ju builds. Surrounded by friends, authors, and the books that connect them all, she finds new meaning as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop morphs into an inviting space for hurt and lost souls to rest, heal, and learn how to write their own stories—even if it takes a leap of faith.

SUGAR, BABY by Celine Saintclare
9781639732463 | 1/9/24

SUGAR, BABY follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs at the weekend searching for fulfillment and distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.

Emily’s life is the escape Agnes has been longing for—extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. But her new lifestyle is the last straw for her religious mother, Constance.

Thrown out of her family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But these girls come from money: they possess a safety net Agnes does not. And as she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next—a married man who wants to show off the glamourous, exotic girl on his arm; a Russian billionaire’s wife who makes her central to a sex party in Miami—Agnes finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before.

A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, SUGAR, BABY is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.

THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN): A Memoir by Sly Stone, with Ben Greenman
9780374606978 | 10/17/23

One of the few indisputable geniuses of pop music, Sly Stone is a trailblazer and a legend. He created a new kind of music, mixing Black and white, male and female, funk and rock. As a songwriter, he penned some of the most iconic anthems of the 1960s and ’70s, from “Everyday People” to “Family Affair.” As a performer, he electrified audiences with a persona and stage presence that set a lasting standard for pop-culture performance. Yet his life has also been a cautionary tale, known as much for how he dropped out of the spotlight as for what put him there in the first place. People know the music, but the man remains a mystery. In THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN), his much-anticipated memoir, he’s finally ready to share his story—a story that many thought he’d never have the chance to tell.

Written with Ben Greenman, who has written memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson, among others, and created in collaboration with Sly Stone’s manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN) includes a foreword by Questlove.

PIGLET by Lottie Hazell
9781250289841 | 3/5/24

Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up and coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancée, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears, and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what you know you deserve, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, a mess, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, PIGLET is both an examination of women’s sometimes complicated relationship with food, and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.

DIVA by Daisy Goodwin
9781250279927 | 1/23/24

In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas was known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she was the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. But her fame was hard won: raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her golden voice, she learned early in life to protect herself from those who would use her for their own ends.

When she met the fabulously rich Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, for the first time in her life, she believed she’d found someone who saw the woman within the legendary soprano. She fell desperately in love. He introduced her to a life of unbelievable luxury, showering her with jewels and sojourns in the most fashionable international watering holes with celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

And then suddenly, it was over. The international press announced that Aristotle Onassis would marry the most famous woman in the world, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, leaving Maria to pick up the pieces.

In this remarkable novel, Daisy Goodwin brings to life a woman whose extraordinary talent, unremitting drive and natural chic made her a legend. But it was only in confronting the heartbreak of losing the man she loved that Maria Callas found her true voice and went on to triumph.