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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A family in turmoil…

Phoebe Spencer left home a long time ago, desperate to get away from her mother’s emotional manipulation. She knows her life is better away from her family, but she can’t help feeling she’s simply running away from her problems…

Then Phoebe hears that her younger sister Lucy has disappeared, leaving behind her four-year old daughter, Darcy. Phoebe’s certain Lucy will be back soon – she’d never leave Darcy alone – and then Phoebe can get on with her life again.

But as the days pass there’s still no sign of Lucy, and everyone begins to fear the worst. Phoebe has to consider the terrible truth that Lucy might never come home. And as their mother makes it clear she wants to take control of Darcy’s life, Phoebe must do all she can to protect the girl her sister left behind – no matter the cost to her.

I wanted this as soon as I read the review by Carla @ Carla Loves to Read. It’s on my Libro.fm wishlist.

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Secrets are revealed and forbidden sparks ignited in this sizzling Sunrise Cove tale of enemies to lovers, redemption, missing treasures, and love—by romance superstar and New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis.

Anna Moore didn’t just wake up one day and decide to go on a wild quest — especially since her life no longer lends itself to wild anything — so how in the world does she end up racing against the clock with Owen Harris, a sexy, enigmatic adventurist, to prove her beloved dad innocent of stealing a million-dollar necklace? 

It’s all Wendy’s fault. Her older, bossy sister, who’s seven months pregnant and on bed rest in their small Lake Tahoe hometown, is desperate to clear their dad’s name. Owen though is convinced he’s guilty as hell and wants to return the jewelry back to its rightful owner—his elderly great aunt. Together they go on a scavenger hunt for clues to the past (with Wendy remotely along for the ride via an ear bud, supplying a running wry commentary to boot).  

On opposing sides and suspicious of each other as they are, Anna and Owen still can’t deny the inexplicable and explosive chemistry between them on this heart-stopping adventure, the outcome of which will prove the necklace isn’t the only thing stolen — their hearts have been as well.

Thanks to Anne @ Books of My Heart for featuring this in her Sunday Post. It’s the 6th book in the series and is scheduled for release in June, a library audiobook hopeful.

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A surprise pregnancy leads to even more life-changing revelations in this heartfelt, slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance of found family and unexpected love.

Eve Hatch lives for surprises! Just kidding. She expects every tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today. She loves her cozy apartment in Brooklyn that’s close to her childhood best friend Willa, and far from her midwestern, traditional family who has never really understood her. While her job is only dream-adjacent, it’s comfortable and steady. She always knows what to expect from her life . . . until she finds herself expecting after an uncharacteristic one-night stand.

The unplanned pregnancy cracks open all the relationships in her life. Eve’s loyal friendship with Willa is feeling tense, right when she needs her the most. And it’s actually Willa’s steadfast older brother, Shep, who steps up to help Eve. He has always been friendly, but now he’s checking in, ordering her surprise lunches, listening to all her complaints, and is . . . suddenly kinda hot? Then, as if she needs one more complication, there’s the baby’s father, who is (technically) supportive but (majorly) conflicted.

Up until this point, Eve’s been content to coast through life. Now, though—maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the way Shep’s shoulders look in a T-shirt—Eve starts to wonder if she has been secretly desiring more from every aspect of her life.

Over the course of nine months, as Eve struggles to figure out the next right step in her expanding reality, she begins to realize that family and love, in all forms, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

I learned of this from the publisher’s newsletter and like the sound of it. It’s scheduled for release this month and is a library audiobook hopeful.

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From the Amazon Charts and New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow Box and Last Day comes a breathtaking thriller about a family shaken by lies, vengeance, and a cold-blooded crime.

A fierce blizzard is burying the eastern seaboard, but on the icy Rhode Island shore renowned artist Maddie Morrison finds warm sanctuary from a contentious divorce at the legendary Ocean House. Hours later, her body is found buried under a blanket of snow and her little daughter, CeCe, has disappeared without a trace.

For Detective Conor Reid; his brother, Tom, a coast guard commander; and Maddie’s grieving sister, Hadley, the posh hotel becomes ground zero for an investigation. Trapped by the blizzard, they must hunker down and determine who in the young mother’s life could have possibly wanted her dead. There are stories of a twisted romantic past. Of old jealousies and resentments that still cut to the bone. And a history of greed, rage, and revenge that created the perfect storm for murder. A storm that has just begun.

I’m a fan of the author and readily accepted this when it was offered for audio review.

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She wants to be a duchess. Just not HIS duchess!

Pure and proper Lady Juliet Frain was born to be a duchess. Everyone says so. Now society awaits the announcement of the elegant beauty’s engagement to the dignified and honorable Duke of Granville. However all Juliet’s plans go awry when she meets the scandalous but sinfully attractive Duke of Evesham. The wild libertine is the last man Juliet wants to find irresistible, yet somehow she can’t keep her hands off him. And suddenly to her chagrin, nobody is calling Juliet either pure or proper!

He’s no Romeo…

After ten riotous years on the Continent, Lucas Hebden, Duke of Evesham, has returned to London, trailing a well-earned reputation as a rake and a reprobate. But an unexpected loss in a card game finds him far from London’s fleshpots and playing at amateur dramatics in the country. Even worse, he’s starting to confuse the poetic passion in Romeo and Juliet with the real-life passion that has him pursuing his disapproving but breathtakingly lovely leading lady. It’s clear that Lady Juliet Frain has no time for bad boys, and any sensible man would give up – but then nobody ever called Evesham sensible!

When Juliet’s suitor Granville arrives to propose, it’s the battle of the dukes! Once the curtain falls, which duke will emerge victorious and take the starring role in Juliet’s heart?

Thanks to Fantastic Fiction for the heads up on this next book in the series, scheduled for release this month. It’s an author review hopeful.

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From the New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a chilling story of twisted secrets and long-awaited revenge.

Lesson #1: Trust no one.

Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says.

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet…

I grabbed this when the audiobook showed up at my library.

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A breathtaking debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family, seen through the eyes of its youngest daughter as she comes of age in the 1990s.

“A beautiful exploration of a family . . . deeply moving.” Ann Napolitano, New York Timesbestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write ’em in your books and show everyone who we are.”

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they’ve built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

I hadn’t heard of this book until it was selected by Reese’s Book Club for February. I was able to get the audiobook from the library.

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The author of Good Neighbors, “one of the creepiest, most unnerving deconstructions of American suburbia I’ve ever read,” (NPR), returns with a cunning, out-of-the-box satirical thriller about a family’s odyssey into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy that might not be as ideal as it seems.

You’ll be safe here. That’s what the greasy tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. On a very trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda Farmer’s husband, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise for the .0001%. Though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps at the opportunity. They’d be crazy not to take it. With the outside world literally falling apart, this might be the Farmer-Bowens last chance.

But fitting in takes work. The pampered locals distrust outsiders, cruelly snubbing Linda, Russell, and their teen twins. And the residents fervently adhere to a group of customs and beliefs called Hollow . . . but what exactly is Hollow?

It’s Linda who brokers acceptance by volunteering her medical skills to the most powerful people in town with their pet charity, ActHollow. In the months afterward, everything seems fine. Sure, Russell starts hyperventilating through a paper bag in the middle of the night, and the kids have drifted like bridgeless islands, but living here’s worth sacrificing their family’s closeness, isn’t it? At least they’ll survive. The trouble is, the locals never say what they think. They seem scared. And Hollow’s ominous culminating event, the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, is coming.

Linda’s warned by her husband and her powerful new friends to stop asking questions. But the more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. Should the Farmer-Bowens be fighting to stay, or fighting to get out?

Sarah Langan’s latest novel A Better World is gleefully ruthless in its dissection of wealth, power, and privilege, timely in its depiction of a self-destructing world—and it is a prescient warning to us all.

Thanks to Kim @ It’s All About the Thrill for this one! Couldn’t resist and it’s an audio review hopeful scheduled for release in April.

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A mother is forced to the breaking point when her life and the lives of her children are threatened by an intruder

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs.

She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan. Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him. That face. That voice. And at once she knows her situation is even more dire than she’d feared, because she knows exactly who he is—and what he wants.

This showed up at my library and I hesitated for a couple of days until I read the review by Eva @ Novel Deelights and then remembered the one by Kelly @ From Belgium with Book Love. Unfortunately, I’m now in a crazy long queue for the audiobook.

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What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?