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.

A grumpy rock star and a joyful children’s show creator revive television magic in this cozy small-town romance.

Griffin Harvey lives his life in the spotlight. Reluctantly. The brooding famous singer-songwriter is on the cusp of composing his sophomore album . . . if only he could find the notes. But after gaining custody of his two-year-old daughter, the only music he’s writing is about shapes and counting to ten.

Enter Beverly, who lives her life in the background producing children’s television and laughter. Except joy is hard to find when her nonprofit loses funding. She sinks all of her savings to revive the children’s show by herself, but when her variety show appearance collides with Griffin’s, their banter and chemistry is caught on live television.

Suddenly, Griffin is singing a new tune. He needs a muse, and Beverly needs all the help she can get. With his secret daughter in tow, they hide out in her cozy mountain hometown, attempting to script, compose, and revive television magic. Their dynamic shouldn’t work. He’s all harsh tattoos and rough hands while she’s bright colors and gentle touches. Once their three months of work are done, they’ll return to their separate worlds. But what happens when it seems the true magic might be found in each other?

Thanks to Suzanne @ The Bookish Libra for her great review. I’m in the library queue for the audiobook.

A trip to Ireland, a meddling sister, and a handsome stranger might be exactly what it takes for Grace to find herself again.

After her divorce, Grace Moreau has Tupperware’d her life. Everything neatly contained. Safe. Predictable. And now that her daughters have flown the nest, she has zero interest in stepping outside of it. Unfortunately, her younger sister Romy has other plans.

Whisked away on a surprise trip to Ireland, Grace is forced to let go of control. Her adventure begins at a quaint bed and breakfast, where she meets August Kincaid, a cynically cryptic screenwriter with writer’s block and striking blue eyes. He’s supposed to be finding romantic inspiration for a script he has no interest in writing, and Grace is supposed to be finding . . . well, she’s not quite sure what.

All she knows is that she’s not going to find it here . . . but, as luck would have it, the legendary Matchmaking Festival is happening at the exact same time.

As Romy’s carefully planned “side quests” send Grace through the lush Irish countryside–from the windswept Cliffs of Moher to the cobblestone streets of Galway–an unlikely friendship blossoms between her and August. Surrounded by ancient castles and rolling green hills, Grace finds her carefully constructed walls starting to crack. She didn’t want an intervention, and she certainly wasn’t looking for love. But maybe those who know her best knew exactly what she needed.

Forced to live in the moment and not just survive until the next day, Grace discovers a strength she’d forgotten she had and a connection she never expected to find. And she begins to wonder: Can she get back what was stolen? Can she open doors she so purposefully closed?

More importantly, can she take the ultimate leap and risk her heart to the one adventure she swore she’d never do again: fall in love?

Thanks to Jodie @ That Happy Reader for featuring this in her Weekend Post. I loved her last book, Brighter Than Before. Scheduled for release in March, it’s an audio review hopeful.

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When a shocking accident costs a young nanny her job, a handsome stranger offers her a position at his isolated estate – in this electrifying psychological thriller from New York Timesbestseller Lisa Unger.

When aspiring writer Ivy Chase loses her nanny job, she finds herself broke and with no place to go. Out of options, she has no choice but to accept an unexpected offer from handsome and wealthy widower Evan White. Soon, she’s on a private jet, heading towards the stranger’s isolated estate, Fox Glenn, to care for his two children.

Fox Glenn, lovingly restored by Evan’s late wife, Tess, is idyllic. But the children are haunted by their mother’s death. Lulu is tormented by a menacing imaginary friend named Lavender. Asher is sullen and angry. Almost as soon as Ivy arrives, the police are at the door. The former nanny, who Ivy has come to replace, has disappeared.

Meanwhile, Ivy’s previous employer has discovered shameful things about Ivy. She wants vengeance and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. As Ivy tries to unravel the mysteries of the White family while managing frightening threats of her own, she realizes she’s not safe anywhere – inside or outside the walls of Fox Glenn. Combining eerie gothic suspense with razor-sharp tension, Unger delivers an up-all-night, read-with-the-lights-on thriller about desire, deception, and revenge.

Thanks again to Jodie @ That Happy Reader for featuring this in her Weekend Post. Scheduled for release in March, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

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From the author of the horror sensation We Used to Live Here and The Caretaker comes a bingeable and perfectly unsettling audio collection of three brand new short stories, taking listeners all the way from a nightmareish flight through unfriendly skies to a submarine in the darkest depths of the ocean.

In Please Remain Seated, a young woman misses her flight home, and in her desperation to rebook, accepts a ticket on an airline she’s never heard of. She soon discovers she is the only passenger.

Backroads opens with a car somewhere deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, a disoriented driver spins out off the road after hitting…something. Calling out to offer help, what he finds is not a creature in need, but a dangerous, inexplicable predator, and a life-or-death chase begins.

And Anomaly brings listeners on a deep-sea a first-time diver joins an experienced crew on what should be a simple mission—before all goes horribly wrong.

After reading the great review by Kristin @ K2 Reader, I accepted this for audio review.

The newest swoon-worthy novel from one of the hottest, fastest-rising Rom Com stars, Katherine Center!

Addie Mitchell has her dream job (or is it a nightmare?) working as an assistant to her grade-school frenemy who is now one of Texas’s biggest social media influencers. January Knox isn’t quite as obnoxious as she was years ago, but she’s a very demanding boss and her manager/mother could easily make life a living hell. Still, it pays the bills and Addie has already chased enough impractical dreams. When January receives an email from a mutual childhood friend, Denton Hayes, she tells Addie to ignore and delete it.

Denton Hayes, middle school heartthrob, is now working in Antarctica as a penguinologist and there is nothing he can do for January, so she doesn’t want to give him the time of day. But Addie writes back, beginning a correspondence where she poses as January and Denton writes to her about the loneliness and isolation of the Arctic. Plus, he has really fascinating details about birds!

Slowly, Denton and Addie become more and more attracted to each other through their letters, but the lie has grown so big that Addie can’t own up to it. Besides, what’s the harm in corresponding with a man who is literally thousands of miles across the planet? But when Denton leaves the Arctic and arrives in Texas expecting to take up with January where they left off, Addie is in a pickle of her own making. Can a love built on a lie actually last? Or will Denton find out the truth and fly the coop? Told with Katherine Center’s legendary wit and heart, THE LOVEBIRDS will make your heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s!

I learned about this from the author’s newsletter. Scheduled for release in May, it’s an audio review hopeful.

Part memoir by the daughter of the iconic comedian Richard Pryor, part exploration of the historical and contemporary use of the N-word, this hybrid book peels back the curtain on the life of Pryor and interrogates the most perplexing word in the American lexicon, a word he helped popularize.

The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only contemplated, it’s one that she has taught and observed up close.

When a white student quoted her father and blurted out the N-word in the middle of a class she was teaching, Professor Pryor’s worlds collided. In that moment, she was forced to confront the history of the notorious slur in the United States, and her complicated relationship with her father Richard Pryor, who made the word a trademark of his comedy in the 1970s.

As she dives into her research, her own memories of the N-word come flooding back in unprocessed memories that she hadn’t thought about for decades. In reckoning with those memories, Elizabeth goes on a more public journey of discovery of the messy and sometimes surprising legacies of racism in the United States.

A braided narrative that seamlessly integrates the history of the N-word with Elizabeth’s own story of growing up the Black Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor, Something We Said follows Elizabeth as she becomes a leading scholar and teacher of the very word her father put on the pop culture map.

Thanks to Nikki @ Nikki Lee Thrill Seeker for reaching out to tell me I needed to listen to this memoir. Thanks to my library for the audiobook.

New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens another fantastically creepy holiday novella, featuring a young writer sent to a seaside mansion to help a famous novelist finish his next book—only, when two dead bodies turn up, he must uncover the killer before the clock ticks down to Christmas Day.

When author Nicholas Child is dropped by his publisher, his agent sends him to spend the holidays at the Cape Cod mansion of her other client, Marco Tavares. Marco needs to finish the long-overdue follow-up to his bestselling novel, and Nicholas is going to help him.

But when Nicholas arrives at Marco’s sprawling seaside estate, which is decked out in twinkling lights and a towering Christmas tree, he finds himself in the middle of a gathering where holiday cheer is in short supply—and every visitor seems to have a motive to kill their host.

Along with Marco and his wife Nora—who are currently sleeping in separate rooms—also present is Marco’s oddball sister, near-silent grandmother, ex-girlfriend and her jealous husband, and long-suffering best friend, Billy Sousa. The most intriguing guest is named James Beers, another writer who believes that Marco’s bestselling novel was based on one of his ideas.

As Christmas Day approaches, a single boozy night culminates in two corpses, and Nicholas becomes convinced that the whole thing was a setup from the start.

With his signature slow burn and deft exploration into the dark corners of the human psyche, Swanson’s latest mystery is a master class in twists and thrills. Dive into the story here, and find Can Nicholas uncover the truth before the killer strikes again?

Thanks to a Goodreads friend for the heads up about this new Christmas story. Scheduled for release in October, it’s a library audiobook hopeful.

What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?