Picks

Center, Katherine. What You Wish For. St. Martin’s. Jul. 2020. 320p. ISBN 9781250219367. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250219381. CD. WOMEN’S
Elementary school librarian Samantha Casey is distraught when her school’s new principal turns out to be secret crush Duncan Carpenter from way back—and even more distraught to find that Duncan turns out to be a cold fish obsessed with rules and school safety. Last year’s Things You Save in a Fire was a LibraryReads Pick and was also chosen by over a half-dozen venues as an anticipated summer read. 

Chase, Eve. The Daughters of Foxcote Manor. Putnam. Jul. 2020. ISBN 9780525542384. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780525542407. Downloadable. WOMEN’S
In 1970, one year to the day after a family tragedy, the Harringtons’ lovely London home succumbs to sky-high flames, and Mrs. Harrington, the two children, and live-in nanny Rita move to Foxcote Manor. There, the very forest seems to breathe danger, and despite the family’s happily rescuing a baby girl abandoned at their gate, more tragedy is to come. Forty years later, Sylvia Harrington is compelled by her daughter to face the past by revisiting Foxcote Manor. Chase’s first two novels, Black Rabbit Hall and The Wildling Sisters, were both LibraryReads picks, so expect another sparkler. 

Franqui, Leah. Mother Land. Morrow. Jul. 2020. 384p. ISBN 9780062938848. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062938862. WOMEN’S
When thirtyish New Yorker Rachel Meyer moves to Mumbai with her Indian-born husband, Dhruv, the culture shock reverberates more harshly than she had anticipated. Even more shocking, Dhruv’s mother arrives from Kolkata, explaining that she has left her husband and will move in with them. Now the two women are on a collision course. Following last year’s popular America for Beginners. 

Sullivan, J. Courtney. Friends and Strangers. Knopf. Jun. 2020. 416p. ISBN 9780525520597. $26.95; ebk. ISBN 9780525520603. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. WOMEN’S
Up all night with her new son and barely engaging with her work during the day, journalist Elisabeth isn’t happy with small-town life after 20 years in New York. It’s a comfort to talk with Sam, the babysitter she hires from the local women’s college, who is torn between career aspirations and new love and welcomes Elisabeth’s advice. But the gap between them comes into stark relief when Sam befriends Elisabeth’s father-in-law. From New York Times best-selling author of Saints for All Occasions and more.

Friends, Family, Lovers

Louis, Lia. Dear Emmie Blue. Emily Bestler: Atria. Jul. 2020. 320p. ISBN 9781982135911. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781982135935. WOMEN’S

McKinlay, Jenn. Paris Is Always a Good Idea. Berkley. Jul. 2020. 320p. ISBN 9780593101353. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9780593101360. Downloadable. WOMEN’S

Macomber, Debbie. A Walk Along the Beach. Ballantine. Jul. 2020. 352p. ISBN 9780399181368. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780399181375. lrg prnt. CD/downloadable.

Poeppel, Amy. Musical Chairs. Emily Bestler: Atria. Jul. 2020. 416p. ISBN 9781501176418. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781501176432.
Elle writing competition winner Louis’s Dear Emmie Blue features a teenage girl who release a balloon with her email and a secret attached, then falls madly for the French boy who finds it to the detriment of other aspects of her life (75,000-copy first printing). A best-selling author in mass market, McKinlay moves into trade paperback original with Paris Is Always a Good Idea, the story of a young woman who revisits her gap year in Ireland, France, and Italy, looking for lost loves but finding something different. In the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Macomber’s A Walk Along the Beach, shy Willa—especially close to sister Harper after their mother’s death—is ready to follow Harper’s advice about risking love until tragedy befalls Harper. In Poeppel’s Musical Chairs, Bridget and Will hatch a plan to lure shining-star violinist Gavin Glantz back to their Forsyth Trio, which they founded together as Juilliard students, even as Bridget wrestles with multiple family complications (40,000-copy first printing).

Historical

Adams, Alina. The Nesting Dolls. Harper. Jul. 2020. 384p. ISBN 9780062910943. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062910967. HISTORICAL 

Harmel, Kristin. The Book of Lost Names. Gallery: S. & S. Jul. 2020. 416p. ISBN 9781982131890. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781982131913. HISTORICAL

Hooper, Elise. Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women’s Olympic Team. Morrow Paperbacks. Jul. 2020. 512p. ISBN 9780062937995. pap. $16.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062938008. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

Rees, Celia. Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook. Morrow Paperbacks. Jul. 2020. 288p. ISBN 9780062938015. pap. $16.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062938022. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

Rindell, Suzanne. The Two Mrs. Carlyles. Putnam. Jul. 2020. 432p. ISBN 9780525539209. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780525539223. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Turnbull, Bryn. The Woman Before Wallis: A Novel of Windsors, Vanderbilts, and Royal Scandal. Mira: Harlequin. Jul. 2020. 384p. ISBN 9780778388197. $27.99; pap. ISBN 9780778361022. $17.99; ebk. ISBN 9781488058929. HISTORICAL
Odessa-born debuter Adams’s The Nesting Dolls tells the story of the Soviet Union and its aftermath through the lives of three women—Daria, who finds a husband but not safety in 1930s Odessa; Natasha, who can’t study mathematics at Odessa University in the 1970s because she is Jewish; and Zoya, who finds 2019 Brighton Beach smallminded though it might be where she belongs. Based on real-life events, international best seller Harmel’s The Book of Lost Names unfolds the story of a graduate student named Eva who flees Paris in 1942 for a mountain village in the Free Zone and ends up forging identity documents for Jewish children escaping to Switzerland (75,000-copy first printing). Author of The Other Alcott, Hooper uses Fast Girls to reimagine the experiences of the female members of the first integrated women’s U.S. Olympic team at the 1936 summer games in Nazi Berlin (75,000-copy first printing). In Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook, by award-winning British YA novelist Rees, who's going adult, an at-loose-ends young schoolteacher applies to work for Britain’s Control Commission in post–World War II Germany but instead ends up spying for the OSS (150,000-copy first printing). In The Two Mrs. Carlyles, Other Typist author Rindell blends history and suspense as shrinking Violet reinvents herself and marries wealthy widower Harry Carlyle after a terrible secret is buried beneath the crushed rock of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Finally, debuter Turnbull turns in the story of Thelma Morgan Furness, sister to the first Gloria Vanderbilt and The Woman Before Wallis in the affections of Edward, Prince of Wales (never mind her marriage to a viscount) (150,000-copy first printing).