Category Archives: 2024 Releases

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumours, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now phenomenally huge hit true crime… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Infidelity
  • Alcoholism
  • Intimate partner abuse (on-page)
  • Graphic murder (on-page)

The Teacher by Freida McFadden

Lesson #1: Trust no one. Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except… Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye. Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says. But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Teacher-student relationship & grooming
  • Statutory rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Blood & injury including concussion
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder by strangulation

Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham

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… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Infidelity
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Significant weight loss due to trauma

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time. Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of a parent
  • Stalking
  • Fire

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island. I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time ― it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect recounted
  • Sex work recounted (survival)
  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Child homelessness recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe

Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty. Unapologetically punk, the essays segue between the miraculous and the mundane, the spiritual and the physical, as they examine the role of art and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Parent with substance addiction & alcoholism
  • Abortion & miscarriage
  • COVID-19 pandemic discussed

The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan

When new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she’s expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running it, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her? Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she’s only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help. Sofie Baumann, a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Death of a fiancée

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love. But when… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Workplace harassment
  • Depression
  • Miscarriage

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage
  • Cancer
  • Death of an infant

The Things We Didn’t Know by Elba Iris Pérez

Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town that is the only home they’ve known. With no plan and no money, she leaves them with family in the mountainside villages of Puerto Rico and promises to return. Months later, when Andrea and Pablo are brought back to Massachusetts, they find their hometown significantly changed. As they navigate the rifts between their family’s values and all-American culture and face the harsh realities of growing up, they must embrace both the triumphs and heartache that mark the journey to adulthood.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence & child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Vietnam War
  • Colonisation