Back again with my five most anticipated releases coming out this month. With so many releases this month, it was hard to select just five books, but these are the ones that really stand out in my mind for some reason – either because I have loved the author’s previous books or it’s a debut novel and sounds amazing. As I’ve done before, if I’ve already read
the book, I will link my review. And if I plan to listen to the book, I will indicate the audio publisher.
So here without further ado are the five books I am most excited about that will be published in May:
THE GIRL WHO DIED by Ragnar Jonassen
Pub Date: May 5th, Minotaur Books ‘
Summary:
Teacher Wanted At the Edge of the World
Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. Her savings are depleted, her love life is nonexistent, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby apartment. Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 1986 in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar seems like a small price to pay for a chance to earn some teaching credentials and get her life back on track.
But Skálar isn’t just one of Iceland’s most isolated villages, it is home to less than a dozen people. Una’s only students are two girls aged seven and nine. Teaching them only occupies so many hours in a day and the few adults she interacts with are civil but distant. She only seems to connect with Thór, a man she shares an attraction with but who is determined to keep her at arm’s length.
As darkness descends throughout the bleak winter, Una finds herself more often than not in her rented attic space – the site of a local legendary haunting – drinking her loneliness away. She is plagued by nightmares of a little girl in a white dress singing a lullaby. And when a sudden tragedy echoes an event long buried in Skálar’s past, the villagers become even more guarded, leaving a suspicious Una seeking to uncover a shocking truth that’s been kept secret for generations.
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THE WOMAN WITH THE BLUE STAR by Pam Jenoff
Pub date: May 4th, Park Row Books/ Harlequin Audio
Summary:
1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.
Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Scorned by her friends and longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.
Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by harrowing true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an emotional testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.
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THE PLOT by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Pub Date: May 11th, Celadon Books
Summary:
Hailed as breathtakingly suspenseful, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.
Jacob
Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably
published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program
and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t
written–let alone published–anything decent in years. When Evan
Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help
because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is
prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . .
. he hears the plot.
Jake returns to the downward trajectory of
his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan
Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his
former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book,
Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like
that–a story that absolutely needs to be told.
In a few short
years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the
author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all
over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail
arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.
As
Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his
readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late
student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was
Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a
novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from
whom?
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LOCAL WOMAN MISSING by Mary Kubica
Pub date: May 18th, Park Row Books
Summary:
People don’t just disappear without a trace…
Shelby
Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and
her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where
Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community.
Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more
questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.
Now,
eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know
what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find…
In
this smart and chilling thriller, master of suspense and New York Times
bestselling author Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new
level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth
buried.
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YOU WILL REMEMBER ME by Hannah Mary McKinnon
Pub Date: May 25th, MIRA Books
Summary:
Forget the truth.
Remember the lies.
He
wakes up on a deserted beach in Maryland with a gash on his head and
wearing only swim trunks. He can’t remember who he is. Everything–his
identity, his life, his loved ones–has been replaced by a dizzying fog
of uncertainty. But returning to his Maine hometown in search of the
truth uncovers more questions than answers.
Lily Reid thinks she
knows her boyfriend, Jack. Until he goes missing one night, and her
frantic search reveals that he’s been lying to her since they met,
desperate to escape a dark past he’d purposely left behind.
Maya Scott has been trying to find her estranged stepbrother, Asher, since he disappeared without a trace. Having him back, missing memory and all, feels like a miracle. But with a mutual history full of devastating secrets, how far will Maya go to ensure she alone takes them to the grave?
Shared fates intertwine in a twisty, explosive
novel of suspense, where unearthing the past might just mean being
buried beneath it.
Do any of these sound good? Let me know!
Thank you for the heads up. They are all on Netgalley's wish list.
Author
Yay!!!