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Book Spotlight: TRASHLANDS by Alison Stine

Trashlands by Alison Stine
ISBN: 9780778311270 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9780369703446 (ebook)
ISBN: 9781488212550 (digital audiobook)
ISBN: 9781665104821 (audiobook on CD)
ASIN: B08QSCJ5S5 (Kindle edition)
ASIN: B092BF8FK9 (Audible audiobook)
Publisher: Harlequin|MIRA
Release Date: October 26, 2021
Genre: Fiction | Literary Fiction | Dystopian Fiction

From the author of Road Out of Winter, winner of the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award, comes a resonant, visionary novel about the power of art and the sacrifices we are willing to make for the ones we love

A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency.

In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker,” pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club’s violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.

Amid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art.

When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. But is it possible to choose a future for herself?

Told in shifting perspectives, Trashlands is a beautifully drawn and wildly imaginative tale of a parent’s journey, a story of community and humanity in a changed world.

Excerpt

Read an excerpt here.

Advance Praise

“This thought-provoking apocalypse noir fires on all cylinders.” –Publishers Weekly starred review

“A harrowing tale that is a natural extension of our current climate crisis…. Highly recommended.” –Booklist, starred review

Meet The Author

Alison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, she has published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

Connect with the Author: Goodreads | Instagram | Twitter | Website

This spotlight brought to you by SparkPoint Studio

Book Spotlight: THE NORTHERN REACH by W.S. Winslow

The Northern Reach by W. S. Winslow
ISBN: 9781250776488 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9781250776495 (ebook)
ISBN: 9781250791511 (digital audiobook)
ASIN: B088MDT3TY (Audible audiobook)
ASIN: B088DQZMYV (Kindle edition)
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Release Date: March 2, 2021

A heart-wrenching first novel about the power of place and family ties, the weight of the stories we choose to tell, and the burden of those we hide.

Frozen in grief after the loss of her son at sea, Edith Baines stares across the water at a schooner, under full sail yet motionless in the winter wind and surging tide of the Northern Reach. Edith seems to be hallucinating. Or is she? Edith’s boat-watch opens The Northern Reach, set in the coastal town of Wellbridge, Maine, where townspeople squeeze a living from the perilous bay or scrape by on the largesse of the summer folk and whatever they can cobble together, salvage, or grab.

At the center of town life is the Baines family, land-rich, cash-poor descendants of town founders, along with the ne’er-do-well Moody clan, the Martins of Skunk Pond, and the dirt farming, bootlegging Edgecombs. Over the course of the twentieth century, the families intersect, interact, and intermarry, grappling with secrets and prejudices that span generations, opening new wounds and reckoning with old ghosts.

W. S. Winslow’s The Northern Reach is a breathtaking debut about the complexity of family, the cultural legacy of place, and the people and experiences that shape us.

Read an excerpt here.

Advance Praise

“Is there anything better than getting to walk through a small and unfamiliar town and peer through the windows into the lives lived in the houses there? The Northern Reach gives you that rich and satisfying treat. Here is a Maine as various and stark as the pull of tides in every human heart.”

– Sarah Blake, author of The Guest Book

“There should be a term for that rare, specific pleasure when a writer takes you to place you’ve never been and by the time the book is finished you feel like you know the landscape and its people as well as you do your own…Winslow’s debut novel is such a book, her clear-eyed vision of a small town in Maine is both steely and humane, and as transporting as a ticket home.”

– Helen Schulman, author of Come With Me

“If Johnny Cash had sung of New England, he might have envisioned these sweeping, haunted, hilarious and sad tales of W. S. Winslow’s…This is a devastating book by a major storyteller.”

– John Freeman, author of How to Read a Novelist

Meet The Author

W.S. Winslow was born and raised in Maine but spent most of her working life in San Francisco and New York in corporate communications and marketing. A ninth-generation Mainer, she now spends most of the year in a small town Downeast. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French from the University of Maine, and an MFA from NYU. Her fiction has been published in Yemassee Journal and Bird’s Thumb. The Northern Reach is her first novel.

Author Links: Facebook | Twitter | Website | Goodreads

This spotlight is brought to you courtesy of Flatiron Books

Book Spotlight: A FORGOTTEN MURDER by Jude Deveraux

A Forgotten Murder, Medlar Mystery #3, by Jude Deveraux
ISBN: 9780778309895 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9781488056475 (ebook)
ISBN: 9781980036180 (digital audiobook)
ISBN: 9781980057772 (audiobook on CD)
ASIN: B07R5WJB19 (Kindle edition)
ASIN: B07ZHNJ7VY (Audible audiobook)
Publisher: MIRA
Release Date: March 10, 2020

An English manor home, an unsolved mystery, too many suspects to count… It’s the perfect holiday for romance novelist Sara Medlar.

After solving two murder cases in their hometown of Lachlan, Florida, Sara Medlar, her niece Kate and their friend Jack need a change of scenery. Sara arranges for them to visit an old friend of hers in England. Upon arrival at Oxley Manor, a centuries-old estate that has been converted to a luxury hotel, Kate and Jack quickly realize that Sara is up to something. They learn that Sara has also invited a number of others to join them at Oxley.

When everyone assembles, Sara lets them know why they are there. Decades earlier, two people ran off together from Oxley and haven’t been heard from since—and Sara wants to solve the case. As the people who were there the night the two went missing, the guests find themselves cast in a live mystery-theater event.

In reenacting the events of that night, it becomes clear that everyone has something to hide and no one is safe, especially when the discovery of a body makes it clear that at least one of the people who disappeared was murdered.

Sara, Jack, and Kate are once again at the heart of a mysterious case that only they are able to solve. But someone is willing to continue to kill to keep the truth about Oxley Manor buried, and none of the guests are safe.

New York Times bestselling author Jude Deveraux has crafted another irresistible case in her bestselling Medlar Mystery series.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Meet the Author

Jude Deveraux is the author of forty-three New York Times bestsellers, including For All Time, Moonlight in the Morning, and A Knight in Shining Armor. She was honored with a Romantic Times Pioneer Award in 2013 for her distinguished career. To date, there are more than sixty million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Connect with the author via Facebook, Twitter, or her website.

This spotlight brought to you by MIRA

2017 Book 203: EVERY LAST LIE by Mary Kubica

Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica
ISBN: 9780778319986 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9781460396698 (ebook)
ASIN: B01N0UM130 (Kindle version)
Publication Date: June 27, 2016
Publisher: Park Row Books

New York Times bestselling author of THE GOOD GIRL, Mary Kubica is back with another exhilarating thriller as a widow’s pursuit of the truth leads her to the darkest corners of the psyche.

“The bad man, Daddy. The bad man is after us.”

Clara Solberg’s world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident…until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.

Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick’s death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out—and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara’s investigation and Nick’s last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date—one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.

Clara Solberg is a happy, but tired stay-at-home mom. She’s just given birth to her second child and the only thing she truly longs for is a good night sleep. Awaking to find that her husband dead, his business in shambles, his life insurance canceled, her daughter traumatized, and her parents dealing with their own set of problems just might be more than she can handle all at once. These are just a few of the things going on in Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica.

Clara and Nick Solberg are a happy and loving couple. Clara has gladly given up her career in photography to be a stay-at-home mother to their four-year-old daughter Maisie. After Nick’s sudden traumatic death, Clara has to deal with a traumatized Maisie, a newborn infant, a house in constant need of repair, a dwindling amount of income, the possibility that her husband’s car crash might not have been an accident based on her daughter’s night terrors, and her mother’s ever-increasing problems associated with early-onset dementia. Clara is somewhat single-minded in what she is and isn’t willing to deal with, but she’s sure that Nick must have been murdered based on her daughter’s terrors and statements and begins to investigate. Her investigation reveals more than she may have ever wanted to know in some regards, but is she getting closer to the truth or simply uncovering more secrets and lies? Was Nick murdered or was it just a tragic accident?

I’m a huge fan of mystery thrillers, suspense thrillers, and psychological thrillers and Ms. Kubica crafts some of the best thrillers I’ve read and she’s done it yet again with Every Last Lie. I enjoyed this fast-paced story, found it to be part mystery thriller and part psychological thriller, and a wholly entertaining read. I also enjoyed the way Ms. Kubica told this story in alternating viewpoints, so the reader gets to know both Clara and Nick (and let me say there were times I wanted to bop them both upside the head and say “get a grip!”). Are there bad guys in Every Last Lie? Well, yes and no (you’ll need to read the story to discover the truth of this for yourself). There’s a lot of action going on in Every Last Lie and if I told you everything that happened you wouldn’t need to read the book, but I’ll tell you there are hints of marital infidelity, gambling, theft, workplace incompetence/negligence, bullying, marital abuse, and much more. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you’re not sure about this genre then I suggest you add all of Ms. Kubica’s titles (The Good Girl, Pretty Baby, Don’t You Cry, and Every Last Lie) to your TBR list, because after reading just one of her books you’re sure to be a fan. If you’ve read any of Ms. Kubica’s previous titles, then you’ll definitely want to grab a copy of Every Last Lie to read.

Read an excerpt from Every Last Lie here.

Watch the book trailer for Every Last Lie:

Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book for review purposes from the publisher via NetGalley. I was not paid, required, or otherwise obligated to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Buy the Book

Available at BookDepository | Alibris