New Edelweiss E-galleys (2/5/2024)

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

GLASS HOUSES by Madeline Ashby
9780765382924 | 8/13/24

A group of employees and their CEO, celebrating the sale of their remarkable emotion-mapping-AI-algorithm, crash onto a not-quite-deserted tropical island.

Luckily, those who survived have found a beautiful, fully-stocked private palace, with all the latest technological updates (though one without connection to the outside world). The house, however, has more secrets than anyone might have guessed, and a much darker reason for having been built and left behind.

Kristen, the hyper-competent “chief emotional manager” (i.e., the eccentric boyish billionaire-CEO Sumter’s idea of an HR department) is trying to keep her colleagues stable throughout this new challenge, but staying sane seems to be as much of a challenge as staying alive. Being a woman in technology has always meant having to be smarter than anyone expects . . . and Kristen’s survival skills are more impressive than anyone knows.

PARADE by Rachel Cusk
9780374610043 | 6/18/24

Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.

In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.

At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.

When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.

PARADE is a novel that demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.

THE CURSED by Harper L. Woods
9781250358943 | 9/3/24

Betrayal.

He was the deception waiting in the night; the truth I never saw coming. After a lifetime of manipulation, I finally learned the truth. I was his puppet even if I never saw my strings.

Even knowing how deep his betrayal runs, I can’t shake the undeniable connection between Gray and I the way a single glance from him sets my soul on fire. We are not the same. We’re enemies, poised to battle for the future of the very thing I’d wanted to destroy.

With the Covenant gone, the revenge I thought I wanted is no longer my priority. The witches that remain played no role in my aunt’s death, and the only person standing in the way of righting those wrongs is the very man determined to keep me in his bed.

But the remaining members of the Coven will never forgive me for the role I played in their demise and subjugation, and the worst part of all is that I can’t even blame them for it. I’d been naive, believing my own delusions of grandeur when destiny clearly had other plans for me. Plans that had been set in motion centuries before my birth.

But even that had been a lie, and now it is my duty to do everything in my power to undo it.

To protect my Coven from my husband’s hatred no matter what the cost.

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE KISSMAS by Sara Raasch
9781250333193 | 10/8/24

Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.

But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.

Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand . . . and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.

It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

FENTANYL NATION: Toxic Politics and America’s Failed War on Drugs by Ryan Hampton
9781250288936 | 9/3/24

A passionate call to abandon ineffective drug-war policies, reframe addiction as a public health issue, and end the Fentanyl crisis.

The American overdose crisis has reached record-breaking heights; preventable overdoses are now responsible for more annual deaths than traffic accidents, suicide, or gun violence. Fentanyl—a potent, inexpensive, and easy-to-manufacture synthetic opioid has thoroughly contaminated the drug supply, and while it frequently makes front page news across the country, it remains poorly understood by policymakers and the public. Why, despite all of our efforts to raise awareness and billions of dollars of investments, does this emergency keep getting worse?

In FENTANYL NATION, recovery advocate Ryan Hampton separates the facts from the fiction surrounding Fentanyl, and shows how overdose deaths are ultimately policy failures. Instead of investing in education, harm reduction, effective treatment, and recovery, we have doubled down on more police, more incarceration, and harsher penalties for those caught in the grip of addiction. Yet history has shown time and time again that it is impossible to arrest our way out of a public health crisis; the government used the same strategy to fight the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80s and 90s, and it only resulted in racially disparate policing and the destruction of marginalized communities.

This urgent and informative manifesto reveals how prejudice, discrimination, and stigma have been codified into our drug laws, and calls for a compassionate and evidence-based approach that would address the core causes of addiction and save countless lives. We can end this crisis, but only if we get out of our own way.

FALL FOR HIM by Andie Burke
9781250886392 | 9/3/24

Dylan Gallagher’s extremely hot downstairs neighbor seemed to loathe him from the second he moved in, and given that Dylan just caused a flood, fell through the floor, landed directly onto that same neighbor’s bed, and made the worst timed “It’s Raining Men” joke ever, that seems unlikely to change.

Meanwhile, when rains it pours for ER Nurse Derek Chang. The timing of the astronomically expensive deluge couldn’t be worse. Paying off his sister’s debts emptied Derek’s bank account, and the underlying root cause of the collapsed ceiling came from his own unit. Also, the local HOA tyrant has been sniffing around trying to fine him for the illicit, extended visit of his best friend’s dog.

Dylan has his own reasons to keep the catastrophe quiet. He offers to fix the damage himself and help keep Derek’s dog-sitting secret. The two men have to squeeze all their emotional baggage and the 130lb dog into a tiny one-bedroom apartment. Dylan knows he’s not Derek’s type, so he’s intent on getting the repair job done as quickly as possible so he doesn’t do anything stupid like acting on his inconvenient attraction. Meanwhile Derek’s trying to ignore the fact that the surprisingly funny, tattooed nerd sleeping on the couch is growing on him more and more, despite his determination to hate him.

LOVING ME AFTER WE: The Essential Guide to Healing, Growing, and Thriving After a Toxic Relationship by Ginger Dean
9781250876669 | 7/16/24

For fans of HOW TO DO THE WORK by Dr. Nicole LePera and THE BOOK OF BOUNDARIES by Melissa Urban, LOVING ME AFTER WE is the book that will teach you how to love yourself after you’ve lost yourself in a toxic relationship, and embody confidence, emotional security and self-love.

A breakup can feel like the end of the world but what if could serve as the start of a better you?

In our search for love, affection, and acceptance, we often find ourselves repeating old patterns with new partners. Our brains seek familiar touch points as a way of navigating the unpredictability of our lives, but this means we can find ourselves reentering relationships with the same toxic dynamics. Toxic relationships are especially hard to recover from, especially when they uncovered some of our earliest and deepest traumas. When we leave them, we often find ourselves nursing a broken heart, again and again.

Even Ginger Dean, a celebrated psychotherapist, found herself stuck in this cycle, but something eventually clicked: Heartbreak didn’t have to be a foregone conclusion. Heartbreak can bring us back home to ourselves, not only in our romantic relationships, but in every area of our lives. Once we start healing our hearts, other aspects of our lives open up to bloom.

Through personal anecdotes, practical guidance, and a little bit of tough love, Ginger brings her wisdom and empathy to any reader who is ready to join the revolution of women healing their hearts so they can start the best love affair they’ve ever known with themselves. Loving ourselves, healing our emotional wounds, setting boundaries, breaking trauma bonds, and doing the necessary healing work after a toxic relationship is a radical decision in today’s society. We become savage self-lovers. We are loving me after we.

CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE by Sophie Sullivan
9781250910608 | 9/17/24

Lexi Danby is looking for some no-strings, fall fun. Once a college track star, she was forced to drop out when her father passed away. Now she’s trying to make ends meet while putting herself through school and caring for her grieving mother. When her comically bad waitressing lands her directly in the path of a handsome, charming stranger named Will, Lexi may just have found the distraction she’s been looking for. Their first date looks promising until a misunderstanding at a party thrusts Lexi and Will into a fake engagement they can’t talk themselves out of. And Will turns out to be a member of Seattle royalty.

Will Grand is heir to a major company, and Seattle’s most eligible bachelor. But he’s been placed in charge of an important merger with a company that values family above all else, and needs to show them that he’s settled down. While a fake engagement is advantageous from a business standpoint, it’s not so great for a budding relationship with a woman who’s wary of commitment. With a woman who Will is beginning to care about much more than he could have anticipated.

As Lexi gets a taste of Will’s glamorous world and the pair keeps up the pretense of their fake engagement for the press, they decide to see where a more casual relationship takes them out of the spotlight. And amid apple picking in comfy flannels, outdoor breweries in the crisp air, and fun Halloween preparations, Lexi starts to realize the scariest part of the season might just be taking a chance on love.

TRIPPY: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics by Ernesto Londoño
9781250878540 | 5/7/24

When he signed up for a psychedelic retreat run by a mysterious Argentine woman deep in Brazil’s rainforest in early 2018, Ernesto Londoño, a veteran New York Times journalist, was so depressed he had come close to jumping off his terrace weeks earlier. His nine-day visit to Spirit Vine Ayahuasca Retreat Center included four nighttime ceremonies during which participants imbibed a vomit-inducing plant-based brew that contained DMT, a powerful mind-altering compound.

The ayahuasca trips provided Londoño an instant reprieve from his depression and became the genesis of a personal transformation that anchors this sweeping journalistic exploration of the booming field of medicinal psychedelics. Londoño introduces readers to a dazzling array of psychedelic enthusiasts who are upending our understanding of trauma and healing. They include Indigenous elders who regard psychedelics as portals to the spirit world; religious leaders who use mind-bending substances as sacraments; war veterans suffering from PTSD who credit psychedelics with changing their lives; and clinicians trying to resurrect a promising field of medicine hastily abandoned in the 1970s as the United States declared a War on Drugs.

Londoño’s riveting personal narrative pulls the reader through a deeply researched and brilliantly reported account of a game-changing industry on the rise. TRIPPY is the definitive book on psychedelics and mental health today, and Londoño’s in-depth and nuanced look at this shifting landscape will be pivotal in guiding policymakers and readers as they make sense of the perils, limitations, and promises of turning to psychedelics in the pursuit of healing.

DEVIL IS FINE by John Vercher
9781250894489 | 6/18/24

Reeling from the sudden death of his teenage son, our narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of immediately selling the land. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is much more than he can process in the throes of grief. As a biracial Black man struggling with the many facets of his identity, he’s now the owner of a former plantation, passed down by the men on his white mother’s side.

Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovery and a fight for reclamation of a painful past. With the wit of Paul Beatty’s THE SELLOUT and the nuance of Zadie Smith’s ON BEAUTY, DEVIL IS FINE is a darkly funny and brilliantly-crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind, and those we inherit.

HONEY by Isabel Banta
9781250333469 | 6/25/24

It is 1997 and Amber Young is about to become one of the most infamous pop stars of her era. Plucked from a small town in New Jersey to join the newly formed girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles, Amber is given the opportunity of a lifetime.

Enter Gwen Morris and Wes Kingston, two of Amber’s musical contemporaries who are in a highly publicized relationship. Gwen has the top music video on MTV’s Total Request Live and Wes is a member of the most popular boy band in the world, ETA. In Gwen, Amber finds the first friend who can truly understand her maybe the only person who ever will. But when Amber goes on tour with ETA as one of their opening acts, she develops an infatuation with Wes that threatens both her friendship with Gwen and the career she is so desperately trying to build. Under the spotlight, Amber is forced to reckon with her own desires, agency, and sense of self and how the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything.

Through meticulous research about this era of pop music, and featuring iconic moments from early 2000s pop culture, Isabel Banta’s debut novel, HONEY, reimagines the pop stars of the late 90s and early 2000s, who we idolized and hated, oversexualized and underestimated, giving them the fresh, multifaceted story they deserve.

PUPPY BRAIN: How Our Dogs Learn, Think, and Love by Kerry Nichols
9781250867919 | 4/30/24

Do you want to learn how to help your dog feel safe? Do you dream of owning a dog who enjoys meeting new people and exploring new places? Kerry Nichols, founder of Nicholberry Goldens, brings readers into the whelping box and onto the frontlines of a puppy’s developmental journey with her trademark clarity and wit.

With guidance about everything from crate training to spaying and neutering, PUPPY BRAIN distills the latest insights and breakthroughs from canine research into practical, actionable, evidence-based guidance.

Through years of research into brain development and the use of intentional breeding practices that focus on honoring a puppy’s choices and needs, Kerry has developed an approach that results in a harmonious, fulfilling relationship with our dogs rather than one steeped in rote obedience. PUPPY BRAIN will reshape the way you think about your dog and show you how to meet your dog’s most basic needs.

With irresistible photos, clear guidance, and engaging humor, PUPPY BRAIN reveals the best parenting practices based on how your dog’s mind works. As her hundreds of thousands of followers can attest, Kerry’s guidance will help you raise dogs who are confident, loving, and happy. The perfect gift for dog lovers and psychology enthusiasts alike, PUPPY BRAIN is the definitive resource for anyone looking to raise their puppy with respect and love.