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.

---

 

In a fresh and riveting thriller debut, Robyn Gigl introduces Erin McCabe, a New Jersey criminal defense attorney doing her best to live a quiet life in the wake of profound personal change – until a newsworthy case puts both her career and safety in jeopardy….

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict.

Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise, and duty-bound to protect her from the possibility of a death sentence.

Sharise claims she killed the senator’s son in self-defense. As Erin assembles the case with her partner, former FBI agent Duane Swisher, the circumstances hint at a more complex and chilling story with ties to other brutal murders. Senator Townsend is using the full force of his prestige and connections to publicly discredit everyone involved in defending Sharise. Behind the scenes, his tactics are even more dangerous. His son had secrets that could destroy the senator’s political aspirations – secrets worth killing for. And as leads begin mysteriously disappearing, it’s not just the life of Erin’s client at stake, but her own….

One of my Instagram friends reviewed the most recent book in this series of legal thrillers and I was intrigued. This first book is free with my Audible membership.

---

Everyone thinks my husband is dead. Just like we planned…

Eleven years ago, my husband disappeared. Eleven long hard years I waited, my heart breaking for our son, who didn’t know his father was coming back.

Today, my hands shake as I try to understand what I’ve just learned: my husband has a new wife. This wasn’t part of our plan.

Eleven years ago, my husband made a terrible mistake. I sacrificed everything to help him fix it. But now he’s put our son and me in danger again.

We had a plan. He broke the rules. But who will pay the price?

Thanks to Jacob @ Hooked From Page One for this lucky find. It is also free with my Audible membership.

---

Perfect Series

Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. As a named partner at her firm, life is going exactly how she planned.

The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He’s a struggling writer who has had little success in his career and he tires of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working.

Out in the secluded woods, at the couple’s lake house, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers.

Then, one morning everything changes. Kelly is found brutally stabbed to death and now, Sarah must take on her hardest case yet, defending her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.

The Perfect Marriage is a juicy, twisty, and utterly addictive thriller that will keep you reading all night long.

The shocking sequel to Jeneva Rose’s multimillion-copy bestselling thriller, The Perfect Marriage.

It’s been eleven years since high-powered attorney Sarah Morgan defended her husband, Adam, against the charge of murdering his mistress. Sarah has long since moved on, starting a family with her new husband, Bob Miller, and changing careers. Her life is back to being exactly how she always wanted … or is it?

After discovering Bob engaged in a one-night stand, Sarah wastes no time filing for divorce. However, amid their ugly separation, new DNA evidence is uncovered in the case against Adam, forcing the police to reopen the investigation and putting Sarah right back in the spotlight. Everyone wants to know what really happened, most of all former Deputy Hudson, who is hell-bent on finding the truth.

But when the woman Bob slept with is reported missing, he and Sarah start to fight dirty, and a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues. Filled with page-turning suspense and Jeneva Rose’s signature twists and turns, this sequel will have readers Can Bob and Sarah achieve the perfect divorce? Or will it be “’til death do us part”?

Thanks to Kim @ It’s All About the Thrill for the heads up on the second book, which is scheduled for release in April. I’m in the library queue for the first book and the second is a library audiobook hopeful.

---

She invented Mr. Right…just in time for the holidays.

Every tangled web starts with one tiny white lie. The kind you spin when you’re desperate.

One day I, Mia D’Angelo, third-year pediatric resident, was telling my mom that I’d finally met the perfect guy. Gushing about how amazing he was. And how happy I was.

It was all true. Until my “perfect guy” turned out to be my co-worker and my only competitor for a spot in the best practice in town…and then suddenly I was dumped…again. But I kept going with the stories, to get her through a very tough time.

My mom’s health crisis ended, and just when I thought things had settled down, my family wanted to meet my wonderful boyfriend for Christmas.

So I asked (okay, begged) just about every male I knew under forty, except for Dr. Braxton Hughes.

Don’t get me wrong. I could always count on him in a pinch. At work, that is.

Brax is an amazing pediatrician, but he would never fit the bill as a boyfriend. Maybe in looks. And charm. And his big heart. The problem is that he’s the biggest commitment-phobe this side of the Mississippi.

He’s the kind of guy I would definitely never take home for Christmas. There’d be no kissin’ under the mistletoe, no canoodling under the tree—because my heart could not survive falling for him again.

My car is packed and I’m down to no one, when magically, there he is, duffle in hand, melt-me smile on his face.

Oh, joy.

Keeping it professional is going to be a whole lot harder than I thought. Especially when he charms my parents, my whole family, and even my dog.

And Dr. Wrong…well, he’s suddenly looking awfully right.

Thanks to Jodie @ That Happy Place for her wonderful review of this book. I was approved on NetGalley for the audiobook.

---

Benjamin Stevenson returns with a Christmas addition to his bestselling, “deviously good fun” (Nita Prose), Ernest Cunningham mysteries. Unwrap all the Christmas staples: presents, family, an impossible murder or two, and a deadly advent calendar of clues. If Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club kissed under the mistletoe.

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

THE MAGICIAN

THE ASSISTANT

THE EXECUTIVE

THE HYPNOTIST

THE IDENTICAL TWIN

THE COUNSELLOR

THE TECH

My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there. A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens. And an advent calendar. Because, you know, it’s Christmas.

If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it.

After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?

I grabbed this 3rd book in the series when the audiobook showed up at my library.

---

A hilarious and heartfelt novel about how loves and lives are never truly lost, for fans of Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip where she knows the grass is greener: Ireland. Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving—a dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee’s life a decade ago.

When Meg arrives, the people in town are so nice, treating her not as a stranger, but a friend. Except for the (extremely hot) bartender giving her the cold shoulder. Meg writes it all off as jetlag until she looks in the mirror. Her hair is no longer bleached within an inch of its life, her skin has a few natural fine lines, and her nose looks like… well, her old nose. Her real nose.

Her phone reveals hundreds of pictures of her life in this little town: with an adorable dog she doesn’t know; with the bartender who might be her (ex?) boyfriend; and at a retail job unrelated to acting. Eventually, she comes to accept that she somehow made a quantum slide into an alternate version of her life. But the most shocking realization of all? In this life, her best friend Aimee is alive and well…but wants nothing to do with Meg.

Despite her bewilderment, Meg is clear-eyed about one thing: this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reconnect with her friend and repair what she broke. She finagles an opportunity to act in the play Aimee is writing and directing and as the project unfolds, Meg realizes that events as she remembers them may not be the only truth, and that an impossible choice looms before her.

Thanks to one of my Instagram friends for this one. Scheduled for release in June, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

---

When Sophie Thatcher wakes up in a room she doesn’t recognize after a night she can’t remember, she assumes she had too much to drink and went home with a date.

Except…the date is nowhere to be found.
No one is.

The space she finds herself in is completely nondescript—the walls bare, fridge empty.
And just when she thought things couldn’t get bleaker or more confusing, she realizes the doors are locked from the outside.

Trapped inside an unfamiliar place and faced with a clock counting down to a mysterious deadline, Sophie tries desperately to recall the hours missing from her memory and formulate a plan to escape, but each attempt proves more futile than the last.

Hidden away from the world and unable to contact the people who would care that she’s missing, Sophie has two questions ringing in her mind: Who would bring her to this place? And why?

When she’s joined in her personal prison by someone she never thought she’d see again, everything changes and the idea of her being a random target instantly vanishes.

Whoever brought Sophie to this place has plans for her and, if she can’t figure out a way to escape before time runs out, her fate may be to remain hidden forever.

Ominous, dark, and completely disturbing, this pulse-pounding thriller from the twisted mind of million-copy bestselling author Kiersten Modglin is unlike anything you’ve read before.

Another one I grabbed when the audiobook showed up at my library.

---

What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?