There is an eclectic selection of new novels out sure to delight you when you're ready to curl up with a book on a cold night, and we will check these out here: Better Than Friends, by Jill Shalvis; Confessions, by Catherine Airey; The Starlight Heir, by Amalie Howard; and Hammajang Luck, by Makana Yamamoto.
Better Than Friends
By Jill Shalvis
Avon; Paperback, $18.99; Ebook, $12.99; Digital Audio, $27.99
Jill Shalvis is a New York Times bestselling author who lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters, and any resemblance to them is mostly a coincidence. She has had a legendary career writing romantic fiction, and her book, The Trouble with Mistletoe, has been adapted into a feature film, with two books optioned for television. Visit her website jillshalvis.com for a complete book list and a daily blog which details her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
Better Than Friends is a story of old flames reuniting in Sunrise Cove in this enemies-to-lovers, second-chance, small-town proximity love story about family, friendships, and true love.
When Olive Porter's parents go missing, she has no other choice, even if reluctantly, but to seek out Noah Turner, her ex and the only person she trusts implicitly and not at all.
Noah is a special investigative agent for the National Park Service who is used to living under intense pressure. That was before he got injured on the job, and he has been recuperating at home while being smothered by his loving but nosy family. There is nothing he wants more than a good distraction.
When Olive shows up looking like a million bucks, Noah has to do a gut and heart check, because there is no way he can fall for her again. She once blew up his entire life and never looked back, but now, quite ironically, Olive is also his ticket out of town. The question is, will the risk be worth the reward?
Confessions
By Catherine Airey
Mariner Books; 480 pages; hardcover, $30.00; eBook, $14.99; Audio, $27.99
Catherine Airey grew up in England in a family mixed Irish and English descent. She studied English at Cambridge and now lived in County Cork.
Confessions is Airey's debut novel, and it is a story that follows three generations of women from New York to rural Ireland, and back again.
Set in New York City in late September 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, the walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady's father is there, on the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. Then, a letter arrives from an aunt she didn't know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, and the name triggers a memory.
There was a videotape that Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.
In County Donegal in 1974, an eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport, and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Roisin lives with her older sister, Maire.
At times kind and cruel, Maire, a brilliant artist, is a mystery to Roisin, as is Maire's relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire him as an artist in residence, Roisin enlists Michael's help to get Maire the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart.
The story then jumps to Burtonport in 2018, where Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and her great aunt, Ro. Abortion was just legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother's activism.
Lyca receives an unexpected message from a childhood friend, and that sends her searching the mysterious attic in her house, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. It's here that she unearths secrets that have been hidden for decades, ones that perhaps were better left unknown.
Airey's haunting debut delivers a tale of family and fate, survival and revelation that examines the irresistible gravity of the past, how it is pervasively present even when it's thought to be buried or forgotten.
The Starlight Heir
By Amalie Howard
Avon Books; 368 pages; hardcover, $18.99; eBook, $12.99' Audio, $26.99
Amalie Howard is a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling romance author who is the author of several award-winning young adult novels. She has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, and Seventeen Magazine. When she isn't writing, she can be found reading, serving as the President of her one-woman Harley Davidson motorcycle club, or taking a power nap.
The Starlight Heir is Howard's newest book, and it is a romantasy that will leave you spellbound. A bladesmith is blessed by stars, a prince had a dangerous secret and a god is bound in shadows.
His Imperial Majesty King Zarek requests your presence as his esteemed guest.
When Suraya Saab receives this royal invitation at her forge, she believes it's a joke. Nobles might be in search of her skills as a blacksmith, as she is one of few who can suffuse her work with precious jadu, the last source of magic in the realm, but she has no qualifications as a bride for the crown prince.
The invitation still is a chance at adventure and the means to finally visit the capital her late mother loved. However, what awaits her in Kaldaru is nothing she could have imagined, and it's fraught with danger.
It isn't the crown prince, but his impossibly handsome, illegitimate half brother, Roshan, who draws her interest, as well as her ire.
The invitation isn't a quest to find a bride, but a veiled hunt for the Starkeeper, a girl who is rumored to hold the magic of the stars in her blood. Across the city, there is unrest brewing between the noble houses and the rebel militia.
When the rebels launch an attack, Suraya and Roshan fins themselves on the run, trying to deny that there's a simmering attraction between them, and the knowledge that Suraya herself might be the Starkeeper.
Roshan also is guarding secrets of his own, and with no control of the the power that's stirring within her, Suraya has drawn the attention of a dark god, and immortal whose interest might be the biggest threat of all.
In order to save the realm from eternal darkness, Soraya will have to choose between the truth and the lie, to stand and fight or kneel and die.
Hammajang Luck
By Makana Yamamoto
Harper Voyager; paperback, 368 pages; $19.99
Makana Yamamoto was born on the island of Maui, and while growing up split time between the Mainland and Hawai'i, they grew up on the beaches and in snowbanks. Always a scientist at heart, Makana fell in love with sci-fi as a teenager, and led the science fiction and fantasy house in college. Fiction became the perfect medium for Makana, who was a writer from childhood, to explore their interests, as well as reconnect with their culture, which coalesced into a passion for diverse sci-fi.
Makana, who currently lives in New York City, loves writing multicultural settings and queer characters, as well as imagining what the future could look like for historically marginalized communities. Within the pages of Hammajang Luck, its worlds is brought to life with the use of Hawaiian pidgin as well as other cultural touchstones. Edie, the main character, is nonbinary, as is Makana, and hammajang is an adjective meaning a disorderly or chaotic state, used in a predicative use, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Hammajang Luck is Yamamoto's trail-blazing debut science fiction novel, and a love letter to Hawai'i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build a better one.
Edie is done with crime, especially after spending eight years behind bars. That can change a person, as it costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most. It is all Angel's fault, as she sold out Edie in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives.
Instead, it was Edie who was sent to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station to to spend nearly a decade alone.
When a chance for early parole comes out of nowhere, Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find Angel waiting, and she has an offer.
There is one last job, one last deal, one last target, and the trillionaire tech god whom they couldn't bring down last time. The one thing Edie needs to do, which is to trust Angel again, also happens to be the last thing she wants to do.
In this excerpt, Yamamoto writes of Edie's reaction to being told she'll be released from prison: "'I'M NOT ELIGIBLE FOR PAROLE FOR SIX MONTHS.'
That didn't seem to matter to the surly-looking guard peering into my cell. I couldn't see his face between the light pouring in from the hallway and the flashlight beam in my eyes, but I assumed he looked surly. Every guard here had that perpetual look - a cross between 'some jackass spat in my soy synth' and 'Mother just grounded me for war crimes.' It was better than the other one they wore - a cross between 'it's both Christmas and my birthday' and 'Mother just ungrounded me for war crimes.' That look didn't precede any good.'
The guard grunted. 'Must be your lucky day.'
Nobody was lucky in this prison, least of all me.
But I bit back the words. There was no way in hell I was really up for parole, nor did I ever have the chance. The warden said as much the last time I was dragged to his office. Though I figured it was still worth investigating, if only to break up the monotony of prison life. What else did I have to do at 0100 hours other than stare at the moldering HVAC unit?
I swung my legs off the top bunk and hopped down, still light on my feet. I didn't have a cellmate, but I liked being off the ground. I've always enjoyed heights. Maybe I was meant to live in the Upper Wards. It was always her dream. But - again - nobody here was lucky, least of all me.
The guard kept his flashlight trained on me as I pulled on my boots. I offered my wrists to him at the door, and he cuffed them to my ankles. The long chains rattled as I walked. I was apparently on parole, but within the prison walls, I was meant to be shackled.
It wasn't a long March along the crisscrossing catwalks to the receiving area, but it seemed to stretch on forever. The other prisoners were either asleep in their bunks or uninterested in where I was going. Not that there were many people who would miss my presence in the prison yard - after hustling more than a few of them out of their weekly commissary funds, I didn't have the best reputation.
Another even surlier guard met me at the receiving area.
'Warden's not here to meet me?' I asked.
Guard the Surlier spoke in a thick colony drawl. 'It's the middle of the night, why would he?'
'Thought he'd like to see me off, we've become such good pals.'
Guard the Former scowled at me.
I still had no idea how or why I'd been granted parole. It felt like an unlocked cell door - a trap. Like the warden was just waiting for me to leave and break some law I'd never even heard of. I recoiled at the thought. After she fucked me over, Joyce Atlas threw the book at me during my sentencing. It made sense he'd try to make me even more miserable now.
I glanced between the two of them, then directed my next question at Guard the Surlier. 'You don't happen to know who released me, do you?'
He scowled at me too. 'Not lookin' a gift horse in the mouth, are you, Morikawa?'
Other people may have jumped at the chance, but I know too well that there were no gifts or grace on Kepler. Everything had a price. I just didn't know how much this would cost me - yet."
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