The Wedding People by Alison Espach
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
In 1581, Emilia Bassano feels trapped by the societal expectations for women. As Lord Chamberlain’s mistress, she has access to all of England’s theatrical productions. Desperate to see her own work come to life, Emilia pays William Shakespeare to use his name, writing herself out of history. A century later, Melina Green has written a play based on Emilia’s life and is faced with the same question: should she give up her credit as the author just to see her work performed?
Publication Date: 20 August
And So I Roar by Abi Dare
In a sequel to The Girl with the Louding Voice, teenage runaway Adunni has escaped a forced marriage and settled into life in Lagos, Nigeria, with Tia. When Tia visits her dying aunt’s bedside, she learns her mother has been hiding a secret for two decades. Now Tia must choose between protecting Adunni and finally learning the truth. Meanwhile, Adunni discovers that her voice might be loud enough to advocate for herself and all the girls from her hometown.
Publication Date: 6 August 2024
The House Keeper’s Secret by Iona Grey
For five years, Kate Furniss has been hiding from her past, working as the housekeeper of a Northern England estate. Until one summer, Kate’s peace is shattered by the arrival of a handsome new footman with secrets of his own. Jumping between Jem’s WWI experiences and their passionate love affair in 1911, The Housekeeper’s Secret ponders how much they are willing to risk for love.
Publication Date: 13 August 2024
The Break-up Pact by Emma Lord
Two best friends who haven’t spoken in ten years pretend to date after break-ups with their respective exes go viral, in this delightfully fun and deeply emotional novel.
There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. “Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf… you won’t regret it.” (Arundhati Roy)
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.
In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.
A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger
A disappearance and a dead body put Cork O’Connor’s family in the crosshairs of a killer in the twentieth book in the New York Times bestselling series from William Kent Krueger, “a master storyteller at the top of his game” (Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author).
The disappearance of a local politician’s teenaged daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O’Connor’s grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman—but nobody seems that interested. Nobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. As Cork and the tribal officers dig into the circumstances of this mysterious and grim discovery, they uncover a connection to the missing teenager. And soon, it’s clear that Cork’s grandson is in danger of being the killer’s next victim.
The Plus One by S.C. Lalli
White Lotus meets The Guest List in international bestselling author S. C. Lalli’s next thrilling novel, where two business moguls were set to be married in the biggest event of the year—until they’re both found murdered the day before the wedding—and a social outsider must unravel the mystery before her own hidden agenda is revealed.
The wedding of Radhika Singh and Raj Joshi, a weeklong affair at a luxury resort in Cabos, isn’t just going to be the event of the season—it will also mark the union of two highly influential and wealthy Indian-American families. No expense will be spared for what Radhika and Raj have coined “R&R,” a week of rest, relaxation, and celebrating their love.
Shaylee “Shay” Kapoor is just an outsider, but she just so happens to be dating Raj’s best friend, Caleb Prescott III, and is sucked into this world of wealth and excess. But on the morning the wedding festivities are supposed to begin, the resort’s wedding coordinator Daniela makes a frightening Raj and Radhika are dead, gunshots to the head.
Chaos descends on the hotel as the guests are turned away or sent home. Shay stays by Caleb’s side as the investigation starts to unfold, family and close friends grieve, and accusations run wild. The police believe the murders are a drug cartel hit.
But even if it was a cartel hit, even if the murderer somehow got past the resort’s security, the hotel room doors have state-of-the-art locks. There was no way for the murderer to slip into the room without a key. And only the sister of the bride, Zara; the best men, Caleb and Sean; and the wedding coordinator, Daniela, have keys.
Shay may be an outsider—and she definitely has secrets of her own—but she may be the only person with enough perspective to untangle everyone’s lies, and discover why anyone would want the bride and groom dead. . .
Hera by Jennifer Saint
Even the gods must have their queen.
When the immortal goddess Hera and her brother Zeus overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side. But as they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera begins to see that Zeus is just as ruthless and cruel as the father they betrayed. While Zeus ascends, Hera is relegated to the role of wife and mother, a role she never wanted. She was always born to rule, but must she lose herself in perpetuating this cycle of violence and cruelty? Or can she find a way to forge a better world?
In this enthralling retelling, Greek mythology’s most famous and maligned goddess finally tells her own story, as power, passion, and divine strength collide in the heart of Olympus.
A Couple of B's 