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 single mother strives to understand the enigma of a reclusive novelist in a poignant novel about belonging, secret lives, and the want to disappear by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Amelia Booker, a journalist and expert in American literature, receives a photograph leading to the possible whereabouts of E.L. Swann, an author who vanished forty years ago after the success of her first and only novel. It’s too intriguing a literary mystery for Amelia not to follow.

In Santa Rosarita, Mexico, Amelia and her seven-year-old son, Jaden, meet the elderly and guarded Ella Steinbach, known to locals for riding her donkey to market, then retreating from the world again to her hilltop house. Prickly and defensive at first, Ella reluctantly concedes the truth about her identity. If not for Ella’s deep affection for the bright and introverted Jaden, she would have found the intrusion unforgivable. Instead, she grants an interview on the condition that Amelia tell no one where E.L. Swann has been found.

As days turn into weeks, and Ella reveals more than expected about her past, she and Amelia form a difficult but surprising bond. From it comes the realization that the personal struggles we endure determine the necessary choices we make to move forward. But no matter how much Amelia tries to convince her otherwise, E.L. Swann really does wish to be left alone. And only by accepting the author as she is can Amelia maintain the life-changing connection.

Thanks to Yvo @ It’s All About Books for featuring this in her Stacking the Shelves post. Scheduled for release in May, it’s an audio review hopeful.

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Fate works in mysterious ways—and this Valentine’s Day, it’s feeling particularly mischievous. From accidental Zoom crashes to graveyard resurrections, six beloved romance authors bring you a collection of increasingly steamy second chances.

Accidentally Yours by Christina Lauren
When marketing consultant Veronica accidentally crashes the wrong Zoom meeting, she’s shocked to receive a job offer from the company’s intriguing CEO. Their professional email exchanges quickly turn flirty, but Veronica’s mind keeps drifting to her reserved but gorgeous new neighbor. As Valentine’s Day approaches, she’ll discover that sometimes the most improbable meet-cute can lead to the perfect match. (2 hours, 10 minutes)

Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young
When a history teacher receives a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret love affair in the 1950s, it leads her to a time capsule hidden decades ago. But it’s the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love who changes everything, proving that sometimes the heart knows exactly where—and when—it belongs. (2 hours, 9 minutes)

Second Act Romance by Julie Soto
When food poisoning takes out the lead in their Valentine’s Day production of Oklahoma!, TV sensation Colby J. Turner swoops in to save the show. But for leading lady Bex Hardgrave, this last-minute casting is more drama than she bargained for. Eight years ago, their onstage chemistry sparked real-life fireworks—until a misunderstanding brought down the curtain. As showtime approaches, Bex and Colby must decide if their second-chance romance deserves its own standing ovation. (1 hour, 24 minutes)

A Play for Love by Trilina Pucci
Years ago, during a college production of Romeo and Juliet, Rory and Oliver shared one unforgettable stage kiss before fate pulled them apart. Now, while drowning her Valentine’s Day sorrows at brunch, she spots her former Romeo, wearing nothing but gold shorts and wings, playing Cupid for the lovelorn masses. Their chemistry still sizzles, but these former leads will need more than Shakespeare’s guidance to turn their second chance into a true romance. (2 hours, 3 minutes)

Death to Valentine’s Day by Catherine Cowles
After her boyfriend’s betrayal, the last thing Maia St. James wants is Valentine’s Day. But when friends drag her to a Death to Valentine’s Day masquerade ball at a mountain lodge, she ends up kissing a masked stranger—only to discover he’s her ex’s older brother. And when a guest is found murdered, the party becomes a deadly mystery. Now Maia must unmask a killer before her second chance at romance is cut short. (2 hours, 20 minutes)

Valentine’s Slay by Navessa Allen
Louisiana gravedigger Noah Evans’s Valentine’s night shift takes an unexpected turn when his high school crush, Emma, starts screaming from her freshly dug grave. As they unearth a deadly family conspiracy, Noah and Emma discover that old flames burn even hotter the second time around—especially when someone’s trying to kill them. (2 hours, 13 minutes)

I love these collections and accepted this for audio review.

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Set against the rugged beauty of the northern woods, the heartwarming first novel by columnist Carrie Classon explores how chosen family can sweeten bitterness into surprising joy.

Alone in the Northwoods, Norry Last settles in for another springtime lull at the remote resort she inherited from her father. She’s content with the solitude, maybe resigned. But when a blizzard hits, those little cabins by the lake start to fill up fast.

First to arrive is Lizzie, an eight-year-old with resilience and wisdom beyond her years, neglected by a mother struggling with addiction. Next comes Wendell, a cantankerous old fellow whose house collapses in the storm, the same way hope collapsed inside him long before. And then there’s Bud, the helpful handyman who’s always buzzing around, his kindness thawing something Norry thought she’d buried deep in the Minnesota snow.

As white melts to green, the Last Resort’s unlikely companions learn to share space, stories, and quiet comforts—an unexpected family that makes perfect sense. After all, Lizzie needs to be cared for. Wendell needs to care. Norry needs to open up. And Bud? Bud just might fix everything.

I accepted this for audio review just based on the description.

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Phillip Brown and Timothy Sweitzinger became best friends as boys, went off to war together, and remained steadfast as men to guard each other’s backs from all threats. When Timothy is found in bed with a dead woman, covered in her blood and with no memory of what happened, Phillip vows to uncover what really happened. Phillip’s investigation takes him all over the city of Baltimore, from the lowest of its citizens to the highest, and even to those who were thought to be above suspicion.

Phillip’s sweetheart, Virginia Wiest, poses as Timothy’s fiancée in order to speak to him in his jail cell with messages from Phillip, although Timothy is losing hope and is beginning to resist any more involvement from Phillip and his family, especially Phillip’s sister, Sarah. But Timothy does share that he’d been searching for young girls who’d gone missing from their families prior to being found with a dead woman.

Phillip must take up the work of finding the missing girls in order to find the real killer. With help from friends and a former enemy, Phillip uncovers a criminal ring engaged in kidnapping girls and selling them into prostitution. But as he closes in on those responsible for framing Timothy, the villains become determined to stop him. Soon everyone close to Phillip is in danger, and he must find the killer before the killer finds him.

This is the third book in the The Brown’s of Butcher Hill historical mystery series. It’s an author review hopeful.

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For a father and daughter, it’s a journey through the four seasons in a poignant short story about memories and everlasting love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate.

Olympic silver medalist Kalista Brooks has built a successful life in California, complete with a thriving sports technology company and a handsome fiancé. But when her father’s heart condition takes a critical turn, she rushes home to Atlanta. There, her father makes a surprising to relive favorite memories from all four seasons in just one month at their old farmhouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

With help from the community and her long-lost sidekick Calvin Calhoon, Kalista creates a tapestry of cherished moments—dogwoods in bloom, homemade blackberry jam, autumn bonfires, and a magical winter evening that will live forever in her heart. But as father and daughter share these precious weeks together, Kalista discovers that time has a way of revealing what matters most. In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains where she grew up, she learns that sometimes the sweetest seasons of life come when we least expect them.

Thanks to Larry @ Get Booked With Larry for his great review. I quickly accepted this for audio review!

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In this twisty thriller from New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover, a frustrated author looks for her muse in a remote hideaway, but what she finds defies all expectations…and reality.

Her words used to set the page on fire. But a viral backlash over her latest film adaptation forced Petra Rose to take a hiatus, resulting in missed deadlines and an overdue mortgage. Branded a fraud and fame-hungry opportunist, she learned the hard way what happens when the internet turns on you. And she’s been uninspired to write ever since.

Now, with her next suspense novel outlined and savings nearly gone, she retreats to a secluded lakeside cabin, hoping to find inspiration. It’s Petra’s last-ditch attempt to save her career—and herself.

Then he shows up.

Detective Nathaniel Saint arrives with disturbing news, his presence igniting a creativity in her she thought long since burned out. Petra’s words return in a rush, and her fictional cop character begins to mirror the very real cop who’s becoming her muse.

Their “research” sessions blur the lines between fantasy and reality. Each glance, every touch pulls Petra deeper into a world she thought she’d never lose herself in again. She’s never felt more alive. But inspiration this powerful comes at a cost.

When Saint starts taking his role in her career a little too seriously, Petra’s forced to confront the chaos she created. But doing so could cost her more than the reputation she’s been trying to salvage. The reputation the world wrote for her—the reputation only she can reclaim.

I learned about this upcoming book from a BookBub email of most anticipated 2026 releases. It’s an audio review hopeful.

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#1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell returns with a breathtakingly honest novel about a woman who lost everything — and isn’t sure she wants it back.

Everybody knows that Cherry’s husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie…

Almost nobody knows that he isn’t coming home.

Tom is the creator of Thursday–a semi-autobiographical webcomic, turned bestselling graphic novel, turned international phenomenon.

Semi-autobiographical. That means there’s a character in this movie based on Cherry… “Baby.”

Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby.

Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page–let alone on the big screen. But there’s no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store.

While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the Internet’s latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wanted and the house they were going to raise a family in…and wondering who she’s supposed to be without him.

Cherry had promised to love Tom through thick and thin.

She’d meant it.

One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems, including Tom’s overgrown puppy, at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album…and someone recognizes her from across the room.

Russ Sutton knew Cherry when she was a young art student with a fondness for pin-up dresses and patent leather heels. Before Tom.

Russ knows Cherry. He likes Cherry.

And best of all…he’s never heard of Thursday..

Another book I learned about from that BookBub email. Scheduled for release in April, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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The Queen of the Summer Read is back with her first novel in two years!

Maeve and Therese Dunigan are sisters—but the two have been estranged for years. They could not be more Maeve, a rule-follower and Therese, a rebel. But when their mother’s death brings the family back together, the two find that they have inherited a painting—one that could be worth millions and could save each of them from their respective wolves at the door. The only issue is, the painting might be a fake and the only way the can solve the problem is to find the original. This means a road trip—to Ireland, to their family roots, and to a mysterious crime that occurred years ago. With tensions simmering, the two hit the road and find themselves on twisty lanes, in colorful villages, at local pubs, and with handsome men whose gift of the gab is surpassed only by their charm. Can Maeve and Therese find the real painting, remove a family curse, solve a cold case, and actually survive without killing each other? Join Mary Kay Andrews on a road trip that will entertain you for miles.

More from that BookBub email but I also learned about it from Jodie @ That Happy Reader in her 2026 Most Anticipated Releases post. Scheduled for release in June, it’s an audio review hopeful.

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The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Another book featured in that BookBub email. Scheduled for release in June, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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When a young woman, a golf prodigy, accidentally kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial in this spellbinding novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant.

1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a practice ball from her tee with a wooden club. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, travels 150 miles per hour for fifteen yards and slams, with sickening force, into the forehead of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, causing a traumatic rupture in the frontal lobe of his brain. Kenny brings his right hand to his forehead, then topples to his side. He is dead before the ambulance even arrives.

In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man forty years her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when Henry Fallows, the golf pro, looks more closely at the torn net, when the detective investigating the case recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a district courtroom, The Amateur What happens when one small moment—a swing, a ball, a piece of string—changes the course of an entire life?

Another one of the books featured in that BookBub email. Scheduled for release in August, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop?

No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there.
The chance to re-live the moments that meant most.
To see what kind of person you really were.

For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice.

Before he gave it all away.

He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . .

A magical, time-travelling love story, from the world of The Midnight Library.

My last book from that BookBub email. Scheduled for release in May, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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A twisty, jaw-dropping psychological thriller that unravels a mother’s worst nightmare—that her child is capable of terrible violence—when her teenage son becomes a suspect in the murder of two classmates, from the author of The Deepest Lake.

Over one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son was secretly involved in their lives—and possibly, their deaths.

Abby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime—he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?

Swirling with sharp questions about family and masculinity, What Boys Learn is a twisty thriller that unravels a mother’s worst fears to explore how boys are raised—and what they are taught they can get away with.

Thanks to Nikki @ Nikki Lee Thriller Seeker for her amazing review. I got this for audio review.

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What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?