January 1, 2023
In this follow-up to Audrain's New York Times best-selling debut, The Push, a child loudly berated by his mother at a suburban barbeque later slips from his window and ends up in a coma, prompting Whispers in the neighborhood about what really happened. After debuting with the all-star A Proposal They Can't Refuse, Ca�a cooks up A Dish Best Served Hot, featuring a single dad who falls for his daughter's teacher but jeopardizes their relationship with actions (undertaken for familial duty) of which she disapproves (50,000-copy first printing). In mega-popular Carr's The Friendship Table, four women working together on a highly rated cooking show join forces when they discover that their youngest member has an abusive boyfriend (200,000-copy first printing). When her mother, badly injured in an accident, asks Cornelia Brown to bring her the Northern Lights, a puzzled but obliging Cornelia sorts through her mother's secret past to figure out what she means in Watch Us Shine; from New York Times best-selling de los Santos (75,000-copy first printing). In Trinity author Hall's Reproduction, a novelist abandons a book about Mary Shelley that touches on her challenging pregnancies when she confronts her own painful pregnancy and childbirth and instead turns to writing a modern Frankenstein (75,000-copy first printing). The young man who walks into the Cape Cod bookstore where unassuming Harlow Smith works isn't exactly A Little Ray of Sunshine--he's the child she secretly birthed and gave up for adoption 17 years previously; from the New York Times best-selling Higgins. With the death of her husband, popular food blogger Hollis Shaw decides to heal by engaging in something called The Five-Star Weekend, which entails inviting a best friend from each stage of her life to a special gathering--in this case, on mega-best-selling author Hilderbrand's beloved Nantucket (750,000-copy first printing). Moderately contented Heather is surprised to find herself gobsmacked when a former flame finds new love, and friends Daphne and Tori have their own troubles, but in Mallery's latest, will The Happiness Plan of each woman work? In Monaghan's Same Time Next Summer, following the LibraryReads pick Nora Goes Off Script, Sam is hunting for a wedding venue near her family's Long Island beach house when she encounters Wyatt, the love of her life until he broke her heart at age 17. Following the LJ-starred The Messy Lives of Book People, also a LibraryReads pick, Patrick's The Little Italian Hotel features relationship expert Ginny Splinter, who's sideswiped when husband Adrian asks for a divorce and recovers by taking four strangers to Italy on the vacation she had originally planned with Aidan in the (75,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Pride and Piazza's You Were Always Mine, a Black woman named Cinnamon is grateful to be leading a secure, quiet life when she causes an uproar by keeping a white baby she finds abandoned in the park by teenage Daisy, whose grandparents threaten to take custody. In this latest from the beloved Shipman, daring Mary Jackson is Famous in a Small Town in Michigan for her 65-year-old record in the annual cherry pit-spitting contest until modest schoolteacher Becky, determined to shatter her shell, lands in town and breaks the record (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). When her parents die in an accident when she is 23, Cosima Saverio inherits their fabulous Palazzo and haute couture Italian leather brand, but she's all work until...
April 15, 2023
Long-hidden secrets and trauma threaten two women's plans for their lives. Pride and Piazza, the duo behind We Are Not Like Them (2021), a thought-provoking and popular-with-book-clubs treatment of race and interracial friendships, advance that conversation with a contemporary story about race and mothering. Cinnamon Haynes, a 34-year-old community college counselor, lives with her (unsuccessful) entrepreneur husband, Jayson. Cinnamon survived for years as a Black child in the foster care system and still deals with its painful legacy. One coping mechanism she employs is to avoid revealing her background to most people, including her best friend, Lucia, and Jayson. When Cinnamon strikes up a casual but genuine friendship with Daisy, a 19-year-old White woman she's taken to meeting every Friday in a local park for lunch, the stakes are raised dramatically in Cinnamon's game of escaping her past. Daisy, who carries several secrets of her own, upends Cinnamon's carefully constructed facade when she designs a plan for Cinnamon to "accidentally" find and then raise the baby daughter she's given birth to after a concealed pregnancy (and her flight from the area). Reluctant to subject anyone else to the conditions and experiences she suffered in the care system, Cinnamon struggles to balance her increasing affection for the blue-eyed baby--whom she refers to as Bluebell--against the social and personal factors weighing against her becoming Bluebell's adoptive mother. Pride and Piazza's narrative offers myriad opportunities for reflections on interracial adoption, the loss of cultural and racial legacy in those adoptions, and what is truly in the best interest of the child. The slow reveal of Cinnamon's journey allows for varying points of view to be shared, including those of friends, spouses, mothers-in-laws, and social workers, as well as the motivations of both Cinnamon and Daisy. Pride and Piazza ask hard questions about race and what it means to be a mother.
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Starred review from April 1, 2023
Career counselor Cinnamon takes her lunch break alone in the park, reading quietly on a bench. One day, she has company. Daisy is a couple of years out of high school, living with Caleb, a boy from back home. Cinnamon and Daisy chitchat in the park, bond over many lunch breaks, and become friends. But then Daisy stops showing up. Her disappearance concerns Cinnamon but is soon eclipsed by a shocking discovery under a bush: a baby. Where is Daisy? Whose baby is this? Cinnamon is forced to make decisions on the fly. As a child of the foster care system, Cinnamon fears what will become of the cherub should she take the infant to the police. She already knows the situation is intensified by the fact that the baby is white, and Cinnamon is Black: racism in adoption looms large. Choosing the baby's safety, Cinnamon decides that she must care for the child until Daisy returns to explain. Like their first joint venture, We Are Not like Them (2021), the authors' latest is both a nuanced portrait of female kinship and a wider look at American society. It reads like your favorite show, offering entertaining escapism and satisfying cultural criticism all at once.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: We Are Not Like Them was a Good Morning America Book Club pick and an overall smash hit. Don't be caught without the new one from this beloved author team.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.