New Edelweiss E-galleys (2/27/2024)

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

LOUD: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve by Drew Afualo
9780374614058 | 8/30/24

Drew Afualo is best known as the internet’s “Crusader for Women” and is at the head of a new generation of entertainment’s rising stars. LOUD is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir. It makes it clear that behind her fearsome laugh is a mission and a life philosophy, a strategy for self-confidence from the inside out, and a pathway to once and for all remove men from the center of how women and femmes think about themselves.

Afualo has amassed more than nine million followers across her social platforms. When she first started creating content in 2020, she realized that men on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and other apps were creating sexist content aimed at disparaging women, and also containing rampant fatphobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry with very real-life consequences. It didn’t take long for her to step into the role of unofficial watchdog for misogyny, and her signature laugh is now recognized as a feminist call to arms, a summoning cry to rid the internet (and our hearts, minds, and lives) of “terrible men” and create a space to fight outdated patriarchal ideals.

THE BOOK OF GEORGE by Kate Greathead
9781250351029 | 10/8/24

If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny; distant from but still reliant on his mother; funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.

And yet, it’s hard not to root for George at least a little. Beneath his cynicism is a reservoir of fondness for Jenny’s valiant willingness to put up with him. Each demonstration of his flaws is paired with a self-eviscerating comment. No one is more disappointed in him than himself (except maybe Jenny and his mother). As hilarious as it is astute and singular as it is universal, THE BOOK OF GEORGE is a deft, unexpectedly moving portrait of millennial masculinity.

THE ASHES & THE STAR-CURSED KING CURSED by Carissa Broadbent
9781250343154 | 6/4/24

Love is a sacrifice at the altar of power.

In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn.

Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside.

When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom–and gaining her vengeance against the lover who betrayed her. But to do so, she’ll need to harness a devastating ancient power, intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.

But with enemies closing in on all sides, nothing is as it seems. As she unravels her past and faces her future, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power—and the devastating love that could be her downfall.

SHADES OF MERCY by Bruce Borgos
9781250848093 | 7/16/24

In the usually quiet high desert of Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck faces one of his greatest challenges—a series of unlikely, disturbing and increasingly deadly events of unknown origins.

After a career in Army intelligence, Porter Beck is back in Nevada, doing the same lawman’s job his father once did. His sparsely populated jurisdiction is usually very quiet. But on the night of July 4th, Sheriff Beck sees a strange light streak across the dark sky. He prays it won’t crash in drought-stricken Lincoln County, where the wildfires are already burning. But it does, and the resultant explosion triggers an avalanche of death and destruction in the high desert, impacting Beck’s oldest friend, the community at large, even his sister, Brinley.

Beck’s search for answers leads him to a young girl that Brinley is mentoring, a sixteen-year-old tech-whiz, Mercy Vaughn, currently incarcerated at the local youth center. Despite all the assurances he’s given, Beck senses the young hacker may be up to more than her jailers know and that she herself is more than she claims to be. And it’s not just Beck—a vicious Mexican drug cartel and a brutal foreign agent, also have a stake in learning the truth behind the mask that is Mercy Vaughn. And they are leaving a trail of destruction and death in their path.

RED RIVER ROAD by Anna Downes
9781250868015 | 8/27/24

Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, her free-spirited younger sister Phoebe vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her.

Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy retraces her sister’s steps, searching for the clues that the police have missed in the sun-bleached, apparently blissful, lens-flared photos. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and how dangerous were they?

And then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, who is on the run from her own dark past. Katy realizes that Beth might be her best and only chance of finding the truth, and the two women form an uneasy alliance to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this wild, beautiful and dangerous place.

Utterly compelling, pulse-pounding and haunting, Anna Downes takes us on a twist-filled journey into what drives us to keep searching for those we have lost, the family bonds that can make or break us, and the deception of memory.

THE COURTING OF BRISTOL KEATS by Mary E. Pearson
9781250331977 | 11/12/24

After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an “aunt” she’s never heard of who promises she can help, she reluctantly agrees to meet—and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Even her father might still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures to a whole other realm—the one he is from.

Desperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods and fae and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae king, Tyghan. But what she doesn’t know is that he’s the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father—dead or alive.

HAUNT SWEET HOME by Sarah Pinsker
9781250330260 | 9/3/24

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she’s truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

Eerie and empathetic, HAUNT SWEET HOME is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.

WHENEVER YOU’RE READY by Rachel Runya Katz
9781250888334 | 9/10/24

Nia and Jade had been inseparable ever since their best friend, Michal, introduced them at her tenth birthday party. But now it’s been three years since Michal died of cancer—since the brutal fight Nia and Jade had in the weeks after—and they’re barely on speaking terms.

Until Nia reads a letter Michal wrote for her 29th birthday, asking her and Jade to go on the southern Jewish history road trip they’d planned before she died. To add to the complications, Michal’s then-boyfriend and Jade’s twin brother, Jonah, joins the trip. Despite the years apart and Jade and Jonah’s strained relationship, any awkwardness quickly disappears as it becomes clear how much Nia and Jade have missed each other.

Unfortunately, old issues soon arise. Nia has been in love with Jade since they were teenagers, and Jade has been so committed to their friendship that she never let herself consider something more. As the stops pass, tensions mount, running high until Nia and Jade are forced to confront what happened three years ago, their feelings for one another, and even their respective relationships with Jonah.

Rachel Runya Katz’s WHENEVER YOU’RE READY is about family, friendship, and the kind of first love that could last a lifetime—if only you are willing to take a chance.

A PIRATES LIFE FOR TEA by Rebecca Thorne
9781250333179 | 10/1/24

Kianthe and Reyna are on the hunt for dragon eggs to save their hometown—but it requires making a deal with Diarn Arlon, lord of the legendary Nacean River. Simply capture the river pirate Serina, who’s been plaguing Arlon’s supply chains, and bring her in for justice. Easy peasy.

Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of Arlon’s constables determined to capture the pirate. Except Bobbie and Serina have a more complicated history than anyone realized, and it might jeopardize everything.

While Kianthe and Reyna watch this relation-shipwreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that these disaster lesbians need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna’s favorite pastime.

The dragon eggs may have to wait.

JANUARIES by Olivia Blake
9781250330680 | 10/15/24

JANUARIES is a collection of new and iconic short stories and novellas from The New York Times bestselling author Olivie Blake.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, the tutelary spirit to a magical bridge rapidly approaches burnout. Meanwhile, congress enacts a complex auditing system designed to un-waste your youth, a banished fairy answers a Craigslist ad, a Victorian orphan gains literacy for her occult situationship, and a multiverse assassin contemplates the one who got away. Escape the slow trudge of mortality with these magical ruminations on life, death, and the love (or revenge) that outlasts both, featuring modified fairytales, contemporary heists, absurdist poetry, and at least one set of actual wedding vows.