Saturdays at the Café

 

Saturdays at the Café is a weekly feature hosted here to talk about and discuss the books I’ve discovered during the past week, added to my shelf and am excited about reading. They may be new/scheduled releases I’ve seen on NetGalley, at the library, or from publishers or they may be older titles my friends have reviewed and shared on Goodreads or blogs.

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New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens a spectacularly spine-chilling novella in which an American art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets are about to unravel, revealing this seemingly charming English village’s grim history.

Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and handsome brother.

But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she’d ever imagined?

Over thirty years later the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons later.

I learned of this from a BookBub alert. Scheduled for release next month, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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When a catastrophic wildfire suddenly rips through a woman’s hometown, she thinks she is lucky to have survived…until she finds a dead woman in her driveway, clutching a piece of paper with her name on it….

Alison is alive. She rode out the fire on the damp tiles of her bathroom, her entire body swaddled in a wet woolen blanket. The flames crackled around her, the bitter char of eucalyptus settling in the back of her throat. The wildfire devastated the Victoria countryside she calls home, and when Alison creeps out of her hiding place, she spots a soot-covered cherry red car in her driveway, and in it, a woman. She finds the woman’s bag. An ID: Simone Arnold. A piece of paper: Alison’s full name and address. But why?

As Alison searches for answers across Australia’s harsh landscape, she soon learns that the fire isn’t the only threat she’s facing….

Thanks to Anne @ Books of My Heart for including this in her Sunday Post as one of her book hauls. I was drawn in by the setting.

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Nova Scotia Summer Series

THERE’S A PLACE IN OUR HEARTS RESERVED FOR MIRACLES . . .

From Luanne Rice, the celebrated author of Beach Girls and many other New York Times bestsellers, comes this powerful novel of a mystery, a love affair, and a bond that cannot be broken set in a seaside town where miracles are made . . .

On the first day of summer, Mara Jameson went out to water her garden—and was never seen again. Years after her disappearance, no one could forget the expectant mother whose glowing smile had captured the heart of everyone who’d known her: Maeve Jameson, still mourning the loss of a granddaughter she had struggled to protect . . . Patrick Murphy, a dogged police detective obsessed with a vanished woman . . . and Lily Malone, drawn to the rugged beauty of the Nova Scotia coast and its promise of a new life.

Here Lily hopes to raise her nine-year-old daughter, Rose, far from the pain and loss of the past. Here she will meet a gifted scientist, Liam Neill, whose life is on a similar trajectory from heartbreak to hope. And before the season is over, Lily will find the magic that exists in people we love the best . . . the everyday miracles that can make the extraordinary happen anywhere.

Few novelists touch our hearts, quicken our souls, and enrich our lives like Luanne Rice. Now she brings full circle one of her most compelling explorations of the heart . . . all the ways it can be broken . . . and the magic that makes it whole again.

On the windswept coast of Nova Scotia, two friends and their young daughters have found refuge in the rugged community of Cape Hawk. Lily Malone and nine-year-old Rose are making a new home with a man who will do whatever it takes to protect them. Marisa Taylor and young Jessica are beginning to recapture the music that once filled their world with joy.

But now a stranger from faraway New England has made his way to Cape Hawk, bearing secrets from the past and news of an uncertain future. And each woman will face choices that will irrevocably shape all the seasons to come—between lives left behind, mysteries unsolved, and loves that must be reclaimed or abandoned forever . . .

I’m a fan of the author and jumped at the chance to listen to this duet when it was offered for audio review, even though it’s an older series but with new audio editions.

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What happens when two serial killers begin to compete with each other?

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Gardiner comes a new high-octane thriller in the acclaimed UNSUB series.

FBI Special Agent Caitlin Hendrix faces a case from nightmares.

In a Tennessee prison, Efrem Judah Goode draws haunting portraits of women he claims he has killed. Around the country, desperate families of the missing seek answers in his eerie drawings. And on darkened back roads and New York City streets, a new killer poses duct-taped bodies at the sites of Goode’s murders.

Two serial killers are locked in a twisted rivalry. To stop the brutal slayings, FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix must unravel the connection between Goode and the Broken Heart Killer. Their warped competition destroys anyone in their path. Caught between a manipulative psychopath and a ruthless UNSUB, Caitlin has to dive into not one, but two dark and twisted minds. She will risk everything, plunging into the depths of their depraved clash to hunt down an unstoppable killer.

Thanks to Yvo @ It’s All About Books for her review of the  second book in the series. During our discussion in the comments, I learned about the upcoming release of this fourth book, coming out next month. It’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Identity presents a suspenseful new novel of tragedy and trauma, love and family, and the evil that awaits.

As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother’s. Here, twelve-year-old Thea can run free and breathe in the smells of pine and fresh bread and Grammie’s handmade candles. But as her parents head back to suburban Virginia, they have no idea they’re about to cross paths with a ticking time bomb.

Back in Kentucky, Thea and her grandmother Lucy both awaken from the same nightmare. And though the two have never discussed the special kind of sight they share, they know as soon as their tearful eyes meet that something terrible has happened.

The kids will be staying with Grammie now in Redbud Hollow, and thanks to Thea’s vision, their parents’ killer will spend his life in supermax. Over time, Thea will make friends, build a career, find love. But that ability to see into minds and souls still lurks within her, and though Grammie calls it a gift, it feels more like a curse―because the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability. Thea can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away. He knows it, and hungers for vengeance. A long, silent battle will be waged between them―and eventually bring them face to face, and head to head…

Not only is Nora an auto read but I love, love love ❤️ her standalones, learning about this one from one of my Goodreads group members. This is scheduled for release in May and is both a library audiobook and audio review hopeful.

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There’s a magnetic attraction when a happy-go-lucky gig worker agrees to a fake relationship with a rich, uptight New Yorker in this steamy romantic comedy from New York Timesbestselling author Samantha Young.

Star Shine Meadows is all about freedom, thanks to the hippie parents who raised her. Juggling her jobs as a professional costume character actor and a line sitter, she believes in no expectations, no stressful ambitions, and no-strings-attached relationships. So when she meets a birthday girl’s grumpy uncle while working a princess party, she can’t help but needle him. She’ll never see him again, and honestly, he’s pretty hot.

Rafe Whitman may be a veterinarian with a great bedside manner, but that doesn’t mean his patience extends to anyone with opposable thumbs. His family will not stop nagging him about finding “the one,” so when he runs into obnoxiously cheery Star again, he makes her an offer: He’ll pay her more than she would make doing her odd jobs if she’ll pretend to be his girlfriend at family gatherings. She can stop sitting in line waiting for someone else’s new phone, and he’ll get his family off his back.

When the tension between them heats to a breaking point, Star’s desire for “no strings” is tested against Rafe’s staunch stability. They say opposites attract, after all….

I’d initially given this a pass until I read the review by Tessa @ Tessa Talks Books and changed my mind. I used to read the author’s older stuff (loved it) so thanks to my library for coming through with the audiobook.

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Two women. An office filled with secrets. One terrible crime that can’t be taken back

Dawn Schiff is strange. At least, everyone thinks so at Vixed, the nutritional supplement company where Dawn works as an accountant. She never says the right thing. She has no friends. And she is always at her desk at precisely 8:45 a.m.

So when Dawn doesn’t show up to the office one morning, her coworker Natalie Farrell—beautiful, popular, top sales rep five years running—is surprised. Then she receives an unsettling, anonymous phone call that changes everything…

It turns out Dawn wasn’t just an awkward outsider—she was being targeted by someone close. And now Natalie is irrevocably tied to Dawn as she finds herself caught in a twisted game of cat and mouse that leaves her wondering: who’s the real victim?

But one thing is incredibly clear: somebody hated Dawn Schiff. Enough to kill.

This showed up at my library and I quickly got in the short queue. At this rate, I’m going to need to binge read her books I’ve collected.

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In this heartwarming story from New York Times bestselling author Courtney Cole, an unhappily married couple makes a wish on an enchanted snow globe that they had never met, but when they wake up the next day in separate lives, the magic of Christmas helps them to realize that some love is just meant to be.

Two weeks ’til Christmas…

Noel Blake is not in a great place. After several years of marriage, she and her husband Jonah are quietly drifting apart. The only time they really talk at all anymore is when they walk their dog, Elliott. And even then it usually ends in bickering.

When, one snowy day, Elliott manages to slip his leash, they find him blocks away in the care of a mysterious old man who asks them to make a wish on an old snow globe. Eager to get their dog safely home, they agree to his strange request. Neither one realizes that the wish they’re about to make will change the course of their lives… possibly forever.

When Noel and Jonah wake up the next morning, they’re in separate beds, separate apartments, separate lives. But are they any happier? As they live the existences they’d always wished for, both feel that something very important is missing. And when a chance encounter brings the pair back together, they find they have a spark of something very special.

Will they be able to find their way back to each other before it’s too late, or does the Christmas Magic have another fate in store?

Cole has quickly become my go-to author for Christmas stories. A NetGalley email gave me the heads up but of course I’m holding out for the audio version, scheduled for release in November and a library audiobook hopeful.

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Riley Sager meets If We Were Villains in a compelling new psychological thriller by RJ Jacobs, following a tight-knit group of graduate students studying the psychology of lying. When one of them is discovered dead after an experiment, everything the group thought they knew about deception crumbles…

Campus is empty, a winter storm is blowing in, and someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to kill again.

Forest, North Carolina. Under the instruction of enigmatic Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students are studying the tedious science behind the acts of lying. But discovering the secrets of deception isn’t making any of the student’s more honest though. Instead, it’s making it easier for them to guard their own secrets – and they all have something to hide.

When a test goes awry and one of them is found dead, the students find themselves trapped by a snowstorm on an abandoned campus with a local detective on the case. As harbored secrets begin to break the surface, the graduates must find out who’s lying, who isn’t, and who may have been capable of committing murder. It turns out deception is even more dangerous than they thought…

A foreboding new dark academia thriller of deception and suspense, This is How it Endsfollows the unraveling of a close group of students as they contend with what it means to lie, and be lied to.

I loved the sound of this as soon as I read the review by Lynne @ Fictionophile. It’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?