New Edelweiss E-galleys (1/17/2024)

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

CURVY GIRL SUMMER by Danielle Allen
9781250331045 | 6/11/24

Aaliyah is determined to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a boyfriend. And after a failed blind date, the local bartender, Ahmad, suggests she joins a dating app.

Filled with lies, catfish, and fetishizing, the wild world of online dating makes Aaliyah think she’s in over her head. And she is. But with her two best friends and a protective bartender by her side, what could go wrong?

Everything. Everything could go wrong. And that’s the problem.

Because as Aaliyah is set on finding exactly what she’s looking for, she ends up finding something she never expects.

SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent by Judi Dench & Brendan O’Hea
9781250325778 | 4/23/24

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi’s love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, THE MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT.

GRAVITY LOST by L. M. Sagas
9781250871282 | 7/23/24

L. M. Sagas follows CASCADE FAILURE with an equally fast-paced sci-fi adventure sequel. GRAVITY LOST blends J. S. Dewes’ Divide series with the commercial fan appeal of The Expanse.

After thwarting a space station disaster and planetary destruction, the Ambit crew thought turning Isaiah Drestyn over to the Union would be the end of their troubles. Turns out, it’s only the start.

Drestyn is a walking encyclopedia of dirty secrets, and everyone wants a piece of him—the Trust, the Union, even the Guild. Someone wants him bad enough to kill, and with the life of one of their own on the line, the Ambit crew must jail-break the very man they helped capture and expose some of the secrets he’s been keeping before it’s too late.

In the Spiral, everything has a price. In their fight to protect what they love, Eoan, Nash, Saint, and Jal will confront some ugly truths about their enemies, and even uglier truths about their friends. But nothing will come close to the truths they’ll learn about themselves.

You can’t always fix what’s broken … and sometimes, it’s better that way.

A CERTAIN KIND OF STARLIGHT by Heather Webber
9781250867292 | 7/23/24

Everyone knows that Addie Fullbright can’t keep a secret. Yet, twelve years ago, as her best friend lay dying, she entrusted Addie with the biggest secret of all. One so shattering that Addie felt she had to leave her hometown of Starlight, Alabama, to keep from revealing a devastating truth to someone she cares for deeply. Now she’s living a lonely life, keeping everyone at a distance, not only to protect the secret but also her heart from the pain of losing someone else. But when her beloved aunt, the woman who helped raise her, gets a shocking diagnosis and asks her to come back to Starlight to help run the family bakery, Addie knows it’s finally time to go home again.

Tessa Jane Wingrove-Fullbright feels like she’s failing. She’s always been able to see the lighter side of life but lately darkness has descended. Her world is suddenly in shambles after a painful breakup, her favorite aunt’s unexpected health troubles, and because crushing expectations from the Wingrove side of her family are forcing her to keep secrets and make painful choices. When she’s called back to Starlight to help her aunt, she’s barely holding herself together and fears she’ll never find her way back to who she used to be.

Under the bright side of the stars, Addie and Tessa Jane come to see that magic can be found in trusting yourself, that falling apart is simply a chance to rise up again, stronger than ever, and that the heart usually knows the best path through the darkness.

FIRST IN THE FAMILY: A Story Of Survival, Recovery, And The American Dream by Jessica Hoppe
9781250865229 | 9/10/24

In this deeply moving and lyrical memoir, Hoppe shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm. For readers of THE RECOVERING by Leslie Jamison, SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER by Ashley C. Ford, and HEAVY by Kiese Laymon.

During the first year of quarantine, drug overdoses spiked, the highest ever recorded. And Hoppe’s cousin was one of them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” Hoppe writes. “People just disappeared.” At the time of her cousin’s death, she’d been in recovery for nearly four years, but she hadn’t told anyone.

In FIRST IN THE FAMILY, Hoppe shares her journey, the first in her family to do so, and takes the reader on a remarkable investigation of her family’s history, the American dream, and the erasure of POC from recovery institutions and narratives, leaving the reader with an urgent message of hope.

NOBODY’S HERO by M. W. Craven
9781250864598 | 12/3/24

The man who can’t feel fear is back . . . When a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London leads investigators to open a safe in Langley for the first time in ten years, they find a note directing them to a few key individuals. Three of the people on the list are dead. The fourth is Ben Koenig.

Koenig has no idea why his name is on the list. Then he realizes that he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear. Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down America, and for the safety of the country, she has been in hiding for years—until now. And if she has resurfaced, the danger may be closer and more terrifying than anyone can imagine.

Ben Koenig has to find her before it’s too late. But Ben suffers from a syndrome that means he can’t feel fear. He doesn’t always know when he should walk away . . . or when he’s leading others into danger. Fast, brutal, smart, and violent, NOBODY’S HERO is an engrossing story of contract killers, international terrorism, hard choices, and the future of the country—and the world as we know it.

VERY BAD COMPANY by Emma Rosenblum
9781250906557 | 5/14/24

Every year, executives at the trendy tech startup Aurora gather the company’s top employees for an exclusive retreat in Miami and this year, Caitlin Levy–Aurora’s newest hire–is joining the team as Head of Events. The benefits are outstanding: a seven-figure salary, stock shares, a discretionary bonus, limitless vacation days–what could possibly go wrong?

When another high-level executive vanishes after the first night, the disappearance has the potential to derail the future of the company’s sale and cost everyone on the team millions. Now, more than ever, Caitlin and her colleagues must continue the charade–partaking in team building exercises, group brainstorms, dinners–in order to keep the future of Aurora afloat amid all the fatal speculations.

Compulsively readable, VERY BAD COMPANY is a slick send up of corporate culture wrapped in a captivating mystery.

A LITTLE LESS BROKEN: How An Amazing Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole by Marian Schembari
9781250895752 | 9/24/24

By the time Marian Schembari was diagnosed with autism at thirty-four years old, she had been labeled with Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, and depression. Therapists suggested she was a highly sensitive person, offered breathing techniques, and instructed her to practice gratitude journaling. None of this helped. She spent years hiding tics and frequently shutting down, wondering why she couldn’t just act like everyone else. It wasn’t until she witnessed a friend’s diagnosis and sought out professional testing that the pieces clicked into place. She wasn’t just odd or socially awkward, but actually autistic.

Today, more people than ever are being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder later in life. Improvements in the ability to recognize the signs have made it easier to properly identify neurodivergence, especially women and girls who have learned to mask their differences. But it’s still all too easy to go decades feeling broken.

A LITTLE LESS BROKEN is Schembari’s unflinchingly honest story of self-consciousness and doubt, frustration and anger, but also love, motherhood, and self-fulfillment. From the time in second grade when she hid in a closet, carefully writing down notes as her friends explained why they no longer liked her, to an adulthood where she can confidently ask for the accommodations at work and at home, Shembari offers solidarity for all those finding freedom while finding themselves.

THE DAUGHTERS’ WAR by Christopher Buehlman
9781250887672 | 6/25/24

Galva — Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill — has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted — not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.

THAT PRINCE IS MINE by Jayci Lee
9781250907769 | 7/30/24

Emma Yoon runs a small business as a culinary instructor in Los Angeles teaching Korean royal court cuisine to young ladies striving to marry into the exclusive upper crust Korean families. She has built her business alongside her renowned Korean matchmaker godmother, which brings her one step closer to her dream of opening up a culinary school on her own. But when her godmother’s fellow matchmakers decide to meddle in Emma’s love life in a bid to sabotage her godmother, and indirectly push Emma’s dream out of her reach, she must go on a series of arranged first dates and find herself the perfect-on-paper husband to help save both her godmother’s reputation and her dream–even if she’s not ready for love. But when she meets Michel Aubert, a professor at USC, after a series of disastrous first dates, she wonders if she might reevaluate her position on love.

Prince Michel Aubert is bound by duty and responsibility to his country, but an arranged marriage is the last thing he wants. If he is going to spend the rest of his life in service of his people, then he at least wants someone he loves and trusts by his side while doing it. He needs to find a woman who loves him for who he is before his engagement to his handpicked bride is announced. Emma Yoon might be just the woman he is looking for.

CUCKOO by Gretchen Felker-Martin
9781250794666 | 6/11/24

From the acclaimed author of MANHUNT comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.

Something evil is buried deep in the desert.
It wants your body.
It wears your skin.

In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.

Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.

The fate of the world depends on it.

BLOOD JADE by Julia Vee & Ken Bebelle
9781250837929 | 7/16/24

The follow-up to EBONY GATE, the critically acclaimed debut of Vee and Bebelle’s Phoenix Hoard series.

Emiko Soong, newly minted Sentinel of San Francisco, just can’t catch a break. Just after she becomes the guardian for a sentient city, a murder strikes close to home. Called by the city and one of the most powerful clans to investigate, she traces the killer whose scent signature bears a haunting similarity to her mother’s talent.

The trail will lead her back to Tokyo where the thread she pulls threatens to unravel her whole world and bring dark family secrets to light.

Meanwhile, the General rises in the East and Emiko must fight the hidden enemies of his growing army who are amped up on Blood Jade, while keeping her promises to her brother Tatsuya as he prepares for his tourney.

Her duties as Sentinel and her loyalties collide when she must choose between hiding her deepest shame or stopping the General’s relentless march.