Archives de catégorie : Fiction

THIS IS HOW WE END THINGS de R.J. Jacobs

Six students. One professor. All trained in the art of deception. All with a reason to kill…

THIS IS HOW WE END THINGS
by R.J. Jacobs
Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2023

It’s almost spring break in the university town of Forest, North Carolina. Campus is deserted and the temperature is dropping. Someone is watching and waiting. Someone who has killed before plans to kill again.

Under the direction of Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students remain on campus. They have been conducting an experiment on the psychology of deception to uncover the science behind lies. But they each have something to hide themselves.

Then, a test goes awry, and an angry subject ends up in handcuffs. The group believes it to be a fluke incident. But when one of them is discovered murdered in Lyon’s office less than twenty-four hours later, they find that their studies may have deadly consequences–and that each of them had a reason to kill. With a local detective on the case and a major snowstorm moving in, the students soon realize that lies can be more dangerous than they ever believed. How do you spot a liar who may be an expert on the psychology of deception?

R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans. He is the author of Always the First to Die.

THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL de Penny Haw

Carl Benz may be known as the “Father of the Automobile,” but Bertha Benz was the woman behind the wheel driving the world into a new era. THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL is a gorgeous historical fiction novel that takes a peek under the hood, examining the life of a fascinating woman who refused to let men hit the brakes on her revolutionary machine.

THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL
by Penny Haw
Sourcebooks Landmark, November 2023

He is known as The Father of the Automobile, but she drove their success.

Bertha Benz not only invested her dowry in the invention of the world’s first motorized carriage, which she and her husband, Carl labored over for years; she’s also the chief designer, mechanic, and tester of the machine.

Now, however, with the moguls who promised to back the machine withdrawing their support, Carl is ready to throw in the towel. Bertha knows that to give up would not only bankrupt the Benz family, but that it would also ruin everything they’ve worked for and their marriage. Besides, Bertha believes in the machine.

Ignoring the cynics and the men who ridicule her, Bertha takes matters into her own hands, secretly planning a trip that will either hasten the couple’s passage to absolute derision and impoverishment or prove to the world their genius. What Bertha doesn’t know is that Carl is on the cusp of making a deal with their nemesis. She is not only risking her marriage and life’s work, but is also up against her husband’s doubt and duplicity, the bias of every man she knows— and the clock.

Penny Haw is a long-time journalist and columnist and latter-day author. She has written for many leading South African newspapers and magazines for more than three decades. The Wilderness Between Us was her debut contemporary novel for adults and The Invincible Miss Cust was her debut historical fiction novel. Haw lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

THIS DAY IS DARK de r.h. Sin

r.h. Sin’s THIS DAY IS DARK is a blistering case study of when red flags are mistaken for passion and love falls in the hands of the wrong people, as explored in his signature poetic voice.

THIS DAY IS DARK
by r.h. Sin
Andrews McMeel, August 2023

From New York Times bestselling author r.h. Sin comes THIS DAY IS DARK, a heartbreakingly relatable collection of poetry and prose that captures some of the darkest moments over an 18-year period. THIS DAY IS DARK is an evocative exploration into what it means and how it feels when forever is temporary and once celebrated love becomes unrecognizable.

r.h. Sin is a New York Times bestselling author of poetry books. He lives in New York with his wife, poet Samantha King Holmes, and two kids.

ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY de Stacy Willingham

A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.

ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY
by Stacy Willingham
Minotaur, January 2024
(via Writers House)

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can’t say no―something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It’s a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she’s been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered… and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal―another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

Stacy Willingham is the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things. She studied journalism at the University of Georgia and holds an MFA from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

MY NAME IS IRIS de Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse, the PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park, returns with a riveting literary dystopian novel set in a near-future America where mandatory identification wristbands make second-generation immigrants into second-class citizens—a powerful family saga for readers of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind.

MY NAME IS IRIS
by Brando Skyhorse
Avid Reader, May 2023
(via Writers House)

One day, Iris Prince, a middle-class, ideologically conservative Mexican American mother and wife, finds a mysterious wall growing outside her modest Southern California home. In addition to the maddening structure—which is impossible to remove and mutates at random—the rest of the world is also changing. A newly passed law suddenly denies basic rights like drivers’ licenses and steady employment to Americans who cannot prove at least one of their parents was born in the United States. Biometric wristbands are used to identify people who are “of verifiable origin” under the new system, while unverifiables are ignored or harassed with abandon.

Iris has always prided herself on being a model minority and assimilating into White American culture. She and her like-minded Mexican American husband Alex have raised their daughter Melanie to be bilingual, but there are strict rules about when Spanish is and isn’t acceptable, and about what other parts of their culture to selectively embrace. As Alex’s behavior becomes suspicious, Iris soon realizes she may not be eligible for the coveted wristband—at least not without going to dangerous, drastic lengths to get one. Meanwhile, the wall outside their home is growing, and their neighbors are watching more closely than ever…

A powerful story about family, identity, intolerance, and immigration, MY NAME IS IRIS is a brilliant and timely look at what it means to be American as seen through one woman’s tumultuous journey through a world that insists on telling her who she can and can’t be.

Brando Skyhorse’s debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park, won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir, Take This Man, was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 and one of NBC News’s 10 Best Latino Books of 2014. Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers’ Workshop program at UC Irvine.