Archives par étiquette : St. Martin’s Press

CHECKING YOU OUT de Jennifer Chen

XO, Kitty meets Dash & Lily in this rom com about two teens falling in love via letters left in their favorite library books – even if in real life they think they have nothing in common.

CHECKING YOU OUT
by Jennifer Chen
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, June 2026

Lizzie Wei is a huge book nerd, and proud of it. And when she realizes there is a mysterious reader who has been checking out all of her favorite books from the library, she can’t help but get a crush on someone she’s never even met. Her friends make it their mission to find Lizzie’s long lost book soulmate and convinces her to leave notes for her crush. But what if the person Lizzie is looking for, isn’t at all what she expects?

Dylan Lin loves reading, secretly anyway. Ever since a bullying incident at his last school, he’s hidden his love of fantasy novels, instead leaning into his jock persona. Now he’s the tennis team captain, runs every day, and actively avoids reading. So, when he decides to start volunteering at a kitten nursery, and his super cute co-volunteer Lizzie asks if he likes reading, he says no. He never expects the look of complete and utter disappointment on Lizzie’s face.

Lizzie is certain her secret crush isn’t Dylan. It can’t be! But when he accidentally makes an obscure reference to her favorite book during their volunteer shift, she’s not so sure anymore. Can Lizzie forgive Dylan for lying? And can Dylan be brave enough to be himself?

Jennifer Chen’s CHECKING YOU OUT is a contemporary romance about being true to yourself and celebrating what you love, because you just might find the perfect person to share it with.

Jennifer Chen is a freelance journalist and the author of two young adult novels, Artifacts of an Ex and Hangry Hearts. Jennifer is a proud mentor for WriteGirl, a creative writing organization and a loving foster kitten mom. She lives in Los Angeles with her TV writer husband, twins, two pugs, and two cats named Gremlin and Taro.

TENDERNESS de Rowan Beaird

From the beloved author of The Divorcées comes a novel set in the 1970s during an island wedding, where the bride has recently left a sinister cult that might still be trailing her.

TENDERNESS
by Rowan Beaird
Flatiron/St. Martin’s Press, July 2026

On a remote island off the coast of Virginia, family and friends gather to celebrate the wedding of Shay O’Connor and Andrew Pruitt. From the moment the guests arrive, all they can whisper about is the bride, who recently left the headline-making cult Synanon. Why would someone like Shay, an Ivy League graduate with a wealthy, doting fiancée, join Synanon? And has she really escaped their grasp?

Told from the interwoven perspectives of Shay’s brother William, her longtime friend Joel, and Shay herself, Tenderness is a slow-burn mystery that excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets. As the wedding day approaches, Joel and William pull at the loose threads of Shay’s story, and it becomes clear there is an even greater threat on the island than the secrets each character is keeping from one another.

Set in the tinderbox of the 1970s, Tenderness is a lit match, bringing hidden truths to light and asking if we can ever see ourselves or the people we love for who they truly are.

Rowan Beaird’s fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and Gulf Coast. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. She is the author of the acclaimed novel The Divorcées (Flatiron, 2024).

THE NIGHT GARDENER de Susannah Charleson

In the spirit of Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller, Fox and I by Catherine Raven, and Wintering by Katherine May, THE NIGHT GARDENER is a beautiful inquiry into the natural world, as well as a contemplation on loss and grief and the hope of re-birth. A perfect mix of narrative, memoir and nature writing.

THE NIGHT GARDENER:
Grief, Regrowth, and the Secret Life of Nature After Dark
by Susannah Charleson
St. Martin’s Press, Fall 2027/Winter 2028

It is another sleepless night for Susannah Charleson, beset by grief over the death of her mother, and waging a years’ long battle with insomnia in the way one does when a loved one is lost and you’re left contemplating life. A shrill cry echoes in the middle of the night (Human? Animal? What?), and Susannah is drawn out onto her porch and suddenly headlong into a childhood memory of that same sound—a fox crying out in the dark—and a youthful fascination with the night that likewise kept her curious younger self up at odd hours. What goes on when humans are sleeping? Susannah remembers wondering. What lives do the plants, animals, and insects lead in the night?

And so, she lights on the idea of using her anxious, sleepless hours in another way—by gardening at night. She studies the medieval practice of two sleeps, in which an individual rests twice each night, divided by an active middle-of-the-night pursuit. She researches the history of the land and the soil on which her house is perched. She gathers tools, gear, seeds, and a research-grade microscope, hatching plans to rise night after night when the rest of the world is sleeping and work outside over the course of a year to transform her disheveled yard into a beautiful garden sanctuary and wildlife habitat. Frozen ground, stubborn roots, a fall that trips her watch alarm, a tornado blowing through, and a four-foot snake with a penchant for surprises make for a bumpy beginning, but as each night passes, dogs by her side, and progress is made, what Susannah discovers in the dark is a revelation. And a salvation.

THE NIGHT GARDENER is a beautiful look into the science of the natural world, as well as into the human soul, an inquiry of the sort that can only happen when the world quiets enough so we can listen, really listen, and see, and not just appreciate but come to understand.

Susannah Charleson is an award-winning journalist, professor and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search and Rescue Dog. Charleson’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post, AARP Magazine, People, The Bark, Life+Dog, and on ABC’s Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, and NPR’s Here & Now.

SHAZAM de Chris Barton

Written by the co-founder and first CEO of Shazam, the music identification app, this is the inside story of how an “impossible” idea became a global phenomenon. Moneyball meets Grit, this is a story of inspiration and perseverance that we think will have wide appeal.

SHAZAM: The Quest to Bring an Impossible Idea to Life
by Chris Barton
St. Martin’s Press, Winter 2028

Today, Shazam is one of the most iconic and widely used apps in the world, with a brand name so recognizable that it has become a verb. But what few people know is that it was invented before smartphones existed. Chris dreamed up Shazam in 1999, when people were still buying CDs and carrying around portable CD players with wired headsets. There was no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and certainly no App Store. The closest thing to streaming music was the illegal sharing of digital files on platforms like Napster. There was no Facebook, Instagram, or even Myspace. Chris’s idea, that anyone, anywhere, could use their phone to identify a song playing in the background, sounded like science fiction. More than 100 experts told him it couldn’t be done, but Chris refused to give up. Instead, he assembled a dream team of brilliant minds—engineers, scientists, and business thinkers—who shared his vision (after some persuasion). United by a shared sense of purpose and determination, they set out to build the impossible from scratch. Together, they would develop the technology that would power the world’s first AI-driven consumer tool, years before anyone had even heard the word “app.” What followed was an eighteen-year odyssey marked by near-bankruptcy, groundbreaking innovation, sabotage, fierce competition with behemoths like Google and Sony, and bitter internal battles among team members. Through every setback and betrayal, Chris never gave up on his vision, and he continued to fight to keep Shazam on course. In the end, the idea that no one thought could work became a global phenomenon. This is more than a tech success story. It’s a deeply human, often emotional narrative about vision, grit, and the power of believing in the impossible.

This story will appeal to music lovers, business book readers, or anyone who likes a narrative about overcoming odds and finding success.

Chris Barton is the original co-founder and first CEO of Shazam, which he conceived the idea of as an MBA student at U.C. Berkeley. He was also a founding member of Google’s mobile partnerships team and later joined Dropbox as one of its first 100 employees. Barton has an active speaking platform, delivering keynote speeches to audiences all around the world.

CLEAR WATER de Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

An atmospheric and mesmerizing literary thriller that follows a woman’s return to her small town, and the secrets of its haunted past. For fans of Liz Moore and Samantha Schweblin.

CLEAR WATER
by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes
Flatiron Books, November 2026

Alma Figueroa, recently furloughed from her job as a paralegal and still trying to find her footing after a divorce, is driving home one night when a girl dressed in white appears out of nowhere. Afraid that the girl is injured, Alma takes her to the hospital. The girl is unharmed, but won’t speak and has no identification. Alma is determined to help her, but then the girl disappears without a trace. She is not the only girl in white to be seen. Reports come in of girls appearing in the snow, in the woods, and in the middle of roads. And while none of their faces match the photos on the missing persons posters scattered all over town, evidence of neglect echoes in their unwavering silence.

As Alma starts to investigate, she soon uncovers something larger, something the town has been actively ignoring, that just might connect back to her sister Kayla’s death when they were in high school. When another girl from town goes missing, Alma must figure out what the girls in white are trying to tell her before it is too late.

Clear Water unfolds over three timelines, moving between the present-day appearance of the girls in white, Alma’s return to the small town several years earlier, and the teenage years in which her sister Kayla gets pulled into addiction. With a haunting quality, a literary feel, and elements of mystery and noir, this lush and lyrical book is a poignant story about sisters, secrets, grief, and what it means when the people in authority continue to overlook the most vulnerable in their community.

Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maryland and author of Are We Ever Our Own: Stories (winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize, 2022) and The Sleeping World (Touchstone, 2016). She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Millay Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, and was a Bernard O’Keefe Scholar in Fiction at Bread Loaf.