New Edelweiss E-galleys (7/15/2025)

Dahlia “Doll” Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs. Now she’s the star of her own stage at McPhee’s Tavern. As part of Chicago’s—yes Chicago’s—country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. That is, until her boyfriend up and went, taking the rent money with him.

Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex McPhee—again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he’s part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. Dahlia just wishes she didn’t keep giving him reasons to have to do it.

Just as Dahlia suspects she’s scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn’t spoken to in twenty years shows up. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother—Dahlia’s mother, too, even if the missing suburban mom the girl describes sounds different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago.

Though no one is using the word sister anytime soon, Dahlia is drawn into reuniting the family that might’ve been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee’s Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she’s believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was, maybe, beginning to let into her heart.

THE ODDS OF YOU by Kate Dramis
9781250393678 | 1/6/26

Sage Collins knows a thing or two about odds. A year ago, she was a data analyst until she burned it all down to pursue her dream of becoming an author. One whirlwind bestseller and a struggling second book later, and Sage isn’t sure she’ll ever write a novel again.

But then an accidental encounter with an irritating passenger on the flight to Comic Con leaves Sage in an untested position. That passenger is Theo Sharpe: a breakout actor on the cusp of fame. And, unfortunately, the paparazzi have mistaken her for his girlfriend.

Armed with signature British charm and a smile that could tame oceans, Theo wears fame like a well-fit coat . . . though Sage can see there’s something deeper held in his eyes. But his fans are too involved in the drama, the pressure to deliver the next bestseller is on, and Sage and Theo both must agree there’s nothing between them. They don’t have to acknowledge that saying it doesn’t make it true.

When Sage decides to flee to Scotland to clear her head and write her novel, she expects to find fresh air and the stillness to think. What she doesn’t expect is Theo Sharpe come back into her life . . . and how he may be her greatest miscalculation of all.

THE BONE QUEEN by Will Shindler
9781250393319 | 2/3/26

Single mother Jenna arrives on the tranquil shores of Athelsea fueled by the desperate hope to find Chloe, her teenage daughter who’s disappeared from their London home. She has no idea why–all she knows is that Chloe had changed in the previous two weeks, haunted by something, or someone, and the ferry ticket here is the only clue she has.

As she explores the village and interacts with the locals, Jenna soon realizes a macabre secret is being hidden in plain sight. A dark legend of a vengeful woman called the Bone Queen is spoken of in hushed tones amongst the villagers, some of whom are frantically trying to suppress the tale that has long terrorized their lives.

As Jenna starts to learn more about the Bone Queen and her previous victims, the village’s grip on reality begins to loosen and no one can say for sure who, or what, is responsible for the deaths and disappearances on Athelsea. Suffering from what she can no longer distinguish between paranoid hallucinations or real manifestations, Jenna must act quickly before Chloe is next . . .

The Bone Queen has left her mark, and one day she’ll collect.

LADY TREMAINE by Rachel Hochhauser
9781250396341 | 3/3/26

A widow twice-over, Etheldreda is now saddled with the care of her two children, a priggish stepdaughter, and a razor-taloned peregrine falcon. Her entire life has become a ruse, just like the manor hall they live in: grand and ornate on the exterior, but crumbling, brick by brick, inside. Fierce in the face of her misfortune, Ethel clings to her family’s respectability, the lifeboat that will float her daughters straight into the secure banks of marriage.

When a royal ball offers the chance to secure the future she desperately desires, Etheldreda must risk her secrets, pride, and limited resources in pursuit of an invitation for her daughters—only to see her hopes fulfilled by the wrong one. As an engagement to the heir of the kingdom unfolds with unnerving speed, she discovers a sordid secret hidden in the depths of the royal family, forcing her to choose between the security she’s sought for years and the wellbeing of the feckless stepdaughter who has rebuffed her at every turn.

As if BRIDGERTON met CIRCE, and exhilarating to its core, LADY TREMAINE reimagines the myth of the evil stepmother at the heart of the world’s most famous fairytale. It is a battle cry for a mother’s love for her daughters, and a celebration of women everywhere who make their own fortunes.

MOST ELIGIBLE by Isabelle Engel
9781250396204 | 1/13/26

Georgia Rose is not going on the hit reality dating show Love Shack to find love. She’s there to write a killer exposé on the producers, which will guarantee the journalism job of her dreams. But when Georgia’s unforgettable one-night stand from the year before, country singer Rhett Auburn, steps into the Malibu mansion as the season’s new host, all of her carefully crafted plans unravel.

Caught up in the drama of backstabbing contestants, producer blackmail, and death-defying dates, Georgia must keep her identity—and history with Rhett—a secret. Despite the lies between them, it isn’t long before Georgia and Rhett’s heated behind-the-scenes moments start to feel more genuine than the romance Georgia’s faking for the cameras. But with her assignment unfinished and the executive producer on her tail, a second chance with Rhett could be her riskiest move of all.

THE UNWRITTEN RULES OF MAGIC by Harper Ross
9781250394552 | 1/27/26

Emerson Clarke can’t remember a time when she felt in control of her life. Her father—a celebrated author—blew in and out of her childhood like a hurricane until he got Alzheimer’s. Her mother numbed loneliness with gin. And recently, her teen daughter has shut her out without explanation. The only place Emerson has ever been in charge is in front of the keyboard where, as a ghostwriter, she dictates everything that happens on the page. If only she could arrange reality the same way, life could be perfect. An impossible fantasy—or so she believes until she makes a startling discovery.

After her father’s wake, Emerson steals her father’s vintage typewriter—the very one he’d forbidden anyone to touch—and tests its keys by typing out a frivolous wish. After it comes true the very next day, she tries another. When those words also spring to life, she becomes obsessed with using the typewriter to engineer happiness for herself and her daughter. Easier said than done.

As Emerson shapes her real-life circumstances, she uncovers disturbing truths about her family’s history and the unexpected cost for each story-come-true. She should destroy the typewriter, but when her daughter’s secret finally emerges, Emerson is torn between paying the price for bending fate and embracing the uncertainty of an unscripted life.

PICKY: HOW AMERICAN CHILDREN BECAME THE FUSSIEST EATERS IN HISTORY by Helen Veit
9781250402509 | 2/24/26

Are children naturally picky? It sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn’t make sense today. Don’t kids have special taste buds? Aren’t they highly sensitive to food’s texture and color? Aren’t children incapable of liking “adult foods,” and don’t parents risk harming kids psychologically by urging them to eat?

But Americans in the past didn’t think any of those things. They assumed that children could enjoy the same foods as adults, and children almost always did. They loved spicy relishes, vinegary pickles, and bitter greens. They spent their allowances on raw oysters and looked forward to their daily coffee. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters? The story is fascinating—and about much more than rising abundance. PICKY shows how fussy eating came to define “children’s food” and reshape American diets at large. Maybe most importantly, it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.

GOOD INTENTIONS by Marisa Walz
9781250397409 | 2/3/26

Cady has worked hard to have a good life. She has a thriving luxury event-planning business, the man she’s loved since she was seventeen, and a social calendar she can barely keep up with. She also has Dana, her identical twin, her beyond best friend, her most trusted confidante. When Cady gets a call that Dana has been in a serious accident and arrives moments too late to say goodbye, her world falls apart.

But to Cady’s family’s growing concern and confusion, it’s not Dana’s death that consumes her. It’s Morgan, a grieving mother Cady encountered in the hospital waiting room, the day her sister died. It can’t be a coincidence, that they both experienced tragedy at the same moment, in the same place—Cady doesn’t believe in coincidences. Instead, she is convinced that she must help this stranger overcome her tragedy, in order to come to terms with her own.

Or . . . is there more to it? Is it possible that Cady wants something else from Morgan? Something she can’t even admit to herself?

Slyly twisted and deeply provocative, GOOD INTENTIONS captures the moral ambiguity that can arise in the face of impossible choices. Like the aftermath of a car accident—and against your better judgment—you won’t be able to look away.

THE BODY BUILDERS by Albertine Clarke
9781639737130 | 3/3/26

Ada lives a solitary life. She spends her days in her apartment building’s swimming pool, occasionally visiting with her cousin Francesca. Ada’s parents are recently divorced after her father became a bodybuilder: He spends his days at the gym, warm with human proximity. Her mother spends her days alone.

When Atticus turns up by the pool, Ada immediately feels an intimate connection between them: They share a life, maybe even a consciousness. Little by little, Ada’s estrangement from her familiar reality widens. She worries she may be losing her mind. After her mother entreats Ada to join her on a remote Greek holiday, Ada is jolted out of the physical world and into a new, artificial environment, one that a potentially otherworldly force has designed for her. The Facility makes real Ada’s every wish but hides secrets behind its closed doors and endless hallways. It asks: When a person’s life, in the odd space between mind and body, is inherently one of isolation, are our relationships merely projections of ourselves?

Albertine Clarke transforms the speculative into an entirely singular experience of deep interiority. With precision, subtlety, and confidence THE BODY BUILDERS lands like a blow, widening a crack that allows us to perceive the world differently than we ever imagined.