New Edelweiss E-galleys (11/29/2023)

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

SMALL ACTS OF COURAGE: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy by Ali Velshi
9781250288851 | 5/7/24

Small acts of courage matter. Sometimes, they change the world. Our history books are filled with the stories of those who fought for democracy and freedom—for idealism itself—against all odds, from Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. These iconic struggles for social change illustrate the importance of engagement and activism, and offer a template for the battles we are fighting today. But using the right words is often easier than taking action; action can be hard, and costly.

More than a century ago, MSNBC host Ali Velshi’s great-grandfather sent his seven-year-old son to live at Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi’s ashram in South Africa. This difficult decision would change the trajectory of his family history forever. From childhood, Velshi’s grandfather was imbued with an ethos of public service and social justice, and a belief in absolute equality among all people—ideals that his children carried forward as they escaped apartheid, emigrating to Kenya and ultimately Canada and the United States.

In SMALL ACTS OF COURAGE, Velshi taps into 125 years of family history to advocate for social justice as a living, breathing experience—a way of life more than an ideology. With rich detail and vivid prose, he relates the stories of regular people who made a lasting commitment to fight for change, even when success seemed impossible. This heartfelt exploration of how we can breathe new life into the principles of pluralistic democracy is an urgent call to action—for progress to be possible, we must all do whatever we can to make a difference.

THRONE OF GRACE: A Mountain Man, an Epic Adventure, and the Bloody Conquest of the American West by Tom Clavin & Bob Drury
9781250285836 | 5/7/24

It is the early 19th century, and the land recently purchased by President Thomas Jefferson stretches west for thousands of miles. Who inhabits this vast new garden of Eden? What strange beasts and natural formations can be found? Thus was the birth of Manifest Destiny and the resulting bloody battles with Indigenous tribes encountered by white explorers. Also in this volatile mix are the grizzled fur trappers and mountain men, waging war against the Native American tribes whose lands they traverse.

This is the setting of THRONE OF GRACE, and the guide to this epic narrative is arguably America’s greatest yet most unsung pathfinder, Jedediah Smith. His explorations into the forested frontiers on both sides of the Rocky Mountains and all the way to the West Coast would become the stuff of legend. Thanks to painstaking research and riveting writing, the story of the making of modern America is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and memorable men and women, settlers and Indigenous, who witnessed it. But it’s Smith who drives the narrative with his trailblazing path through the unexplored terrain of the American West.

THRONE OF GRACE is a gripping yarn that drops the reader into the center of an underreported era and introduces one of the great explorers in American history.

ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY by Jamie Day
9781250283207 | 7/16/24

The Precipice is a legendary, family-owned hotel situated on the rocky coast of Maine. The Bishop sisters–Iris, Vicki, and Faith–have come for the weekend to claim it. Their father is dead and each one of them wants it. Nineteen-year-old Charley Kelly is the chambermaid: smart, resilient, older than her years, and in desperate straits. She’s the sole caregiver for her grandmother and the wolf is at the door. The arrival of the Bishop sisters could mean disaster for Charley. Will they close the hotel? Fire her? Learn of her habit of pilfering from guests? Or even worse, learn that she’s hiding a woman on the run, shifting her from room to room so that no one knows she’s there? With a hurricane looming and the Bishop sisters closing in, this one weekend could be the death of all of them. Because each one has a secret; there’s murder in the air, and not all of them will check out of The Precipice Hotel. With razor-sharp wit, heart, thrills, and twists, Jamie Day delivers on his unique brand of summertime suspense.

RIGHT WHERE WE LEFT US by Jen Devon
9781250822024 | 6/18/24

Lucy Score meets EVERY SUMMER AFTER in this emotional, angsty second-chance romance from Jen Devon.

Temperance Jean Madigan and Duncan Brady have never gotten it right. After one radiant, secret summer together when they were eighteen, they’ve been on-again off-again ever since. Now, despite red-hot chemistry and TJ’s closeness with Duncan’s family, they’re virtually strangers, only capable of adversarial banter, awkward small talk—and the occasional messy hookup.

When a wedding at the Brady’s winery lands TJ there for the summer, their mutual avoidance strategies prove impossible. The last thing TJ wants is to be under those angsty, heated glances Duncan thinks he hides. And for Duncan, having fiery TJ constantly close is the ultimate distraction that he absolutely can’t afford. When forced proximity begins to chip away at their armor, buried tensions resurface, old wounds urge confrontation, and once-in-a-lifetime love demands one last chance to finally get it right.

Searing, compelling, and emotional, RIGHT WHERE WE LEFT US is a raw and unforgettable romance.

TEN TIMES CALMER: Beat Anxiety and Change your Life by Dr. Kirren Schnack
9781250341266 | 1/30/24

Feeling better starts now.

Dr. Kirren Schnack is here to tell you that your anxiety isn’t here to stay. Whether you’re going through something and need support to feel like yourself again, or if you have been dealing with anxious thoughts for a long time, TEN TIMES CALMER has the help you’ve been looking for.

Dr. Kirren is an Oxford trained clinical psychologist with twenty years’ experience. In TEN TIMES CALMER she offers a first aid kit of tools to help you understand what you’re going through and change how you’re feeling – and it might just be easier than you think.

Not everyone has access to therapy and not everyone needs it, but we could all do with a little more calm in our lives. The ten chapters cover everything from dealing with anxious thoughts and stress to managing uncertainty and safely tackling trauma, each takes you a step closer to an anxiety-free life. Inside you’ll find short anxiety busting exercises with a big impact and a toolkit of well-researched and clinically proven tips that will help you find calm each and every day.

NEXT OF KIN by Samantha Jayne Allen
9781250863836 | 4/23/24

At a gathering for her cousin’s wedding party, newly-licensed PI Annie McIntyre gets asked an age-old question: what really makes us who we are, nature or nurture? Clint Marshall, an up-and-coming musician and an adoptee at a personal crossroads, wants to hire Annie to find his biological parents, and that question is on his mind. Annie accepts his case, not knowing then that she, too, must decide if she really believes what she tells him that night—in essence, that people are in charge of their destinies. That people can change.

When Annie discovers her client’s father is a bank robber who her granddad, Leroy, arrested back when he was sheriff, reverberations sound between the past and the present, igniting old flames and rivalries. When the brother of her client dies suddenly, his death ruled a suicide, Annie questions whether or not it was in fact homicide—and who in this family of outlaws would rather some secrets stay buried.

As Annie sets out to find who killed the brother—and stays out of sight lest she be next—she finds herself searching abandoned, overgrown fields, scouring pool halls and roadside motels, wondering if she will ever escape the sense that her world in Garnett, TX expands and contracts in off-kilter ways, growing smaller and yet still more confounding. Fearing that in a place where everyone knows everyone, your enemy is always closer than you think.

THE MANICURIST’S DAUGHTER by Susan Lieu
9781250835048 | 3/12/24

Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family’s past, and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, they became experts at the “refugee hustle.” Susan’s mother was their savvy, beautiful, charismatic north star. She pulled them out of poverty and orchestrated every success. Until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died as a result of negligence during a routine plastic surgery . . . seeking beauty treatments she didn’t need.

After her mom’s death, Susan was expected to go back to school as if nothing happened. Within her family, there was no shared grief or emotional outpouring. For the next 20 years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone—why did the most perfect person in her life feel the need to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? How could she manage the same cultural pressures her mother faced, and succumbed to, in her own life, within her own body? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on to continue operating for years after her mother’s death?

THE MANICURIST’S DAUGHTER is much more than a memoir about grief, trauma, and body image. It is a story of fierce determination, strength in shared culture, and finding your place in the world. Susan Lieu is the daughter of manicurists. She is the daughter of survivors and the inheritor of all they faced to reach a better life. She finds her strength in her family’s story, and she will continue to build on that foundation for future generations.

FIASCO by Constance Fay
9781250330451 | 6/4/24

Cynbelline Khaw is a woman of many names. She’s Generosity, a cultist who never quite fit in. She’s Bella, the daughter who failed to save her cousin’s life. And then there’s Cyn, the notorious bounty hunter who spaced a ship of slavers.

She’s exhausted, lonely, and on her very last legs—but then a new client offers her a job she can’t refuse: a bounty on the kidnapper who killed her cousin. All Cyn has to do is partner with the crew of the Calamity, a scouting vessel she encountered when she was living under a previous alias. One tiny little issue, she’s been given an additional bounty: deliver the oh-so-compelling medic, Micah Arora, to the treacherous Pierce Family or all her identities will be revealed, putting her estranged family in danger.

Hunting a kidnapper doesn’t usually mean accidentally taking your sexy new target to dinner at your parent’s house, a local mystic predicting you’ll have an increasingly large number of children, or being accompanied by a small flying lizard with a penchant for eating metal, but, as they field investigative hurdles both dangerous and preposterous, Cyn and Micah grow ever closer. When a violent confrontation reveals that everything Cyn thought about her past is wrong, she realizes that she has the power to change her future. The first part of that is making sure that Micah Arora is around to be a part of it.

SERVICE MODEL by Adrian Tchaikovsky
9781250290281 | 6/4/24

Murderbot meets REDSHIRTS in a delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder from the Hugo-nominated author of ELDER RACE and CHILDREN OF TIME.

To fix the world they must first break it, further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.

When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away.

Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.

THE SPELLSHOP by Sarah Beth Durst
9781250333971 | 7/9/24

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people, and as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she hasn’t had to.

She and her assistant, Caz, a sentient spider plant, have spent most of the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s precious spellbooks, protecting the magic for the city’s elite. But a revolution is brewing and when the library goes up in flames, she and Caz steal whatever books they can and flee to the faraway island where she grew up. She’s hoping to lay low and figure out a way to survive before the revolution comes looking for her. To her dismay, in addition to a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor, she finds the town in disarray.

The empire with its magic spellbooks has slowly been draining power from the island, something that Kiela is indirectly responsible for, and now she’s determined to find a way to make things right. Opening up a spell shop comes with its own risks—the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela comes to make a place for herself among the quirky townspeople, she realizes that in order to make a life for herself, she must break down the walls she has kept so high.