New release: Wise Men

About the book:

Almost overnight, Arthur Wise has become one of the wealthiest and most powerful attorneys in America. His first big purchase is a simple beach house in a place called Bluepoint, a town on the far edge of the flexed arm of Cape Cod.

It’s in Bluepoint, during the summer of 1952, that Arthur’s teenage son, Hilly, makes friends with Lem Dawson, a black man whose job it is to take care of the house but whose responsibilities quickly grow. When Hilly finds himself falling for Lem’s niece, Savannah, his affection for her collides with his father’s dark secrets. The results shatter his family, and hers.

Years later, haunted by his memories of that summer, Hilly sets out to find Savannah, in an attempt to right the wrongs he helped set in motion. But can his guilt, and his good intentions, overcome the forces of history, family, and identity?

A beautifully told multigenerational story about love and regret, Wise Men confirms that Stuart Nadler is one of the most exciting young writers at work today

About the author:

Stuart Nadler is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. Recently, he was the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic. He is the author of the story collection The Book of Life.

Challenge Update

Congratulations go out to Reagan Arthur who has been chosen to head up Little, Brown — her official title will be senior v-p and publisher. While we are thrilled for Ms. Arthur, her promotion does mean some changes for the Reagan Arthur Books Challenge. The three -year old Reagan Arthur imprint will be closing; and as a result, there will be no new Reagan Arthur titles. However, if you read one of the earlier Reagan Arthur books, we’d still love for you to let us know so we can link to it here.

It’s been a pleasure hosting this very fun challenge for the past few years. Thanks for reading these books and sharing your thoughts with us.

Kathy and Julie

New release: Gods and Beasts

About the book:

It’s the week before Christmas when a lone robber bursts into a busy Glasgow post office carrying an AK-47. An elderly man suddenly hands his young grandson to a stranger and wordlessly helps the gunman fill bags with cash, then carries them to the door. He opens the door and bows his head; the robber fires off the AK-47, tearing the grandfather in two.

DS Alex Morrow arrives on the scene and finds that the alarm system had been disabled before the robbery. Yet upon investigation, none of the employees can be linked to the gunman. And the grandfather-a life-long campaigner for social justice-is above reproach. As Morrow searches for the killer, she discovers a hidden, sinister political network. Soon it is chillingly clear: no corner of the city is safe, and her involvement will go deeper than she could ever have imagined.

About the author:

Denise Mina is the author of Deception, the Garnethill trilogy, and Field of Blood. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her family.

New release: The Last Girlfriend on Earth

About the book:

In “Center of the Universe,” God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In “Magical Mr. Goat,” a young girl’s imaginary friend yearns to become “more than friends.” In “Unprotected,” an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy’s wallet. The stories in Simon Rich’s new book are bizarre, funny, and yet…relatable. Rich explores love’s many complications-losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it-and turns the ordinary into the absurd. With razor-sharp humor and illustrations, and just in time for Valentine’s Day, Rich takes readers for an exhilarating, hilarious ride on the rollercoaster of love.

About the author:

Simon Rich is a graduate of Harvard University. He has written for The New Yorker and was the youngest staff writer at “Saturday Night Live.” He is the author of Ant Farm, Free Range Chickens, Elliot Allagash, and What in God’s Name, and he has written scripts for Lorne Michaels and Judd Apatow. He currently writes for Pixar.

New release: Standing in Another Man’s Grave

We’re very excited because Ian Rankin has a new book out!

About the book:

John Rebus returns to investigate the disappearances of three women from the same road over ten years.

For the last decade, Nina Hazlitt has been ready to hear the worst about her daughter’s disappearance. But with no sightings, no body, and no suspect, the police investigation ground to a halt long ago, and Nina’s pleas to the cold case department have led her nowhere.

Until she meets the newest member of the team: former Detective John Rebus.

Rebus has never shied away from lost causes – one of the many ways he managed to antagonize his bosses when he was on the force. Now he’s back as a retired civilian, reviewing abandoned files. Necessary work, but it’s not exactly scratching the itch he feels to be in the heart of the action.

Two more women have gone missing from the same road where Sally Hazlitt was last seen. Unlike his skeptical colleagues, Rebus can sense a connection – but pursuing it leads him into the crosshairs of adversaries both old and new.

Rebus may have missed the thrill of the hunt, but he’s up against a powerful enemy who’s got even less to lose.

On the twentieth anniversary of Ian Rankin’s first American publication comes a novel bursting with the vitality and suspense that made its author one of crime fiction’s most dazzling stars. STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE is the triumphant return of John Rebus, and a riveting story of sin, redemption, and revenge.

About the author:

Ian Rankin is a #1 international bestselling author. Winner of an Edgar Award and the recipient of a Gold Dagger for fiction and the Chandler-Fulbright Award, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.

New release: The Doctor of Thessaly

About the book:

A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach. A local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard. Trouble arrives at a bad time to the backwater village of Morfi, just as the community is making headlines with a visit from a high-ranking government minister. Fortunately, where there’s trouble, there’s Hermes Diaktoros, the mysterious fat man whose tennis shoes are always pristine and whose investigative methods are always unorthodox.

Hermes must investigate a brutal crime, thwart the petty machinations of the town’s ex-mayor and his cronies, and try to settle the troubled waters of two sisters’ relationship. But how can he unravel a mystery that not even the victim wants solved?

Set against a radiant Mediterranean backdrop, THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY is a spellbinding mystery about the dark consequences of envy.

About the author:

Anne Zouroudi was born in England and has lived in the Greek islands. Her attachment to Greece remains strong; the country is the inspiration for much of her writing. She now lives in northern England.

New release: What in God’s Name

Today is the release date of WHAT IN GOD’S NAME by Simon Rich.

About the book:

Welcome to Heaven, Inc., the grossly mismanaged corporation in the sky. For as long as anyone can remember, the founder and CEO (known in some circles as “God”) has been phoning it in. Lately, he’s been spending most of his time on the golf course. And when he does show up at work, it’s not to resolve wars or end famines, but to Google himself and read what humans have been blogging about him.

When God decides to retire (to pursue his lifelong dream of opening an Asian Fusion restaurant), he also decides to destroy Earth. His employees take the news in stride, except for Craig and Eliza, two underpaid angels in the lowly Department of Miracles. Unlike their boss, Craig and Eliza love their jobs – uncapping city fire hydrants on hot days, revealing lost keys in snow banks – and they refuse to accept that earth is going under.

The angels manage to strike a deal with their boss. He’ll call off his Armageddon, if they can solve their toughest miracle yet: getting the two most socially awkward humans on the planet to fall in love. With doomsday fast approaching, and the humans ignoring every chance for happiness thrown their way, Craig and Eliza must move heaven and earth to rescue them – and the rest of us, too.

 

 

 

New release: Dare Me

DARE ME by Megan Abbot is the latest Reagan Arthur book and it’s one we’ve been highly anticipating!

About the book:

Since both girls were small, Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy’s best friend and right-hand lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they’re seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls – until the young new coach arrives.

Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach’s golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as “top girl” – both with the team and with Addy herself.

And then a suspicious suicide hits close to home, and the police investigation focuses on Coach and her squad. As Addy begins to suspect what really happened, the line between right and wrong grows blurrier, and she must decide where her loyalties truly lie-and how far is too far to go for someone you love.

The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as “total authority and an almost desperate intensity,” provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl.

About the author:

MEGAN ABBOTT is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Die a Little, The Song Is You, Queenpin and Bury Me Deep, which was nominated for six awards: the 2010 Edgar Award, Hammett Prize, the Macavity, Anthony and Barry Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her upcoming novel, The End of Everything, comes out in July 2011.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English Literature and went on to receive her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She lives in Queens, New York City.

Abbott’s stories have appeared in Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (2006), Wall Street Noir (2007), Detroit Noir (2007), Storyglossia, Queens Noir (2007), Phoenix Noir and the upcoming Speed Chronicles. Her nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, was published in 2003. She is also the editor of the Edgar-nominated A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, featuring original tales by 25 mystery and crime authors.

Abbott won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2008 for Queenpin. She was previously nominated in 2006 for Best First Novel. In 2008, she won the Barry Award (Deadly Pleasures and Mystery News award) and has been nominated three times for the Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention award).

 

New release: Summerland

Just in time for the beach, Elin Hilderbrand has a new book out!  About Summerland:

A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. But what begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver of the car, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny’s boyfriend Jake and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt – but the emotional damage is overwhelming, and questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel.

As summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed about the survivors and their parents – secrets kept, promises broken, hearts betrayed. Elin Hilderbrand explores the power of community, family, and honesty, and proves that even from the ashes of sorrow, new love can still take flight.

About the author:

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.

 

New release: This Bright River

This Bright River by Patrick Somerville is being released today!  About the book:

A compelling story of young love and old secrets

Lauren Sheehan’s career in medicine came to a halt after a chain of violent events abroad. Now she’s back in the safest place she knows-St. Helens, Wisconsin-cut off from career, friendship, and romance.

Ben Hanson’s aimless young life has bottomed out after a series of bad decisions, but a surprising offer from his father draws him home for what looks like his final second chance. In Wisconsin, he finds his family fractured, still unable to face the truth behind his troubled cousin’s death a decade earlier.

As Lauren cautiously expands her horizons and Ben wrestles with his regrets and mistakes, their paths intersect. Could each be exactly what the other needs? Or the last thing in the world either one can handle?

The weight of secrets, the price of success, and the cost of love all linger at the heart of this surprising, unsettling, deeply satisfying novel. Rich with the dark humor and piercing intelligence that made The Cradle so beloved, This Bright River confirms Somerville’s status as one of the most engaging and daring young writers at work today.

About the author:

Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives with his wife in Chicago, and is currently the Blattner Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University.