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Featured Guide

Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, author of The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru

Zina and her grandmother, Baba Valya, own a tearoom on rue Daru in Paris, where they have lived quietly since Zina’s mother’s untimely death. By day, the women serve tea. But when dusk falls, they divine fortunes and perform séances for their loyal clientele. Then the charming Princess Olga and her brother arrive, searching for knowledge about the disappearance of their father, the exiled Grand Duke, cousin of the last Tsar of Russia. Zina performs the séance and is able to summon the Grand Duke. But to her horror, he starts to haunt the shop and seems to know something sinister about her mother’s death. As Zina delves into her family’s hidden past, dark secrets are unearthed, threatening the home and tearoom Zina and her grandmother have worked so hard to build, not to mention their very lives.

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Elle Cosimano, author of Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line

Finlay Donovan’s nanny and partner-in-crime, Vero, has been extradited from Virginia to Maryland, where she’s facing criminal charges for a theft she swears she didn’t commit. A prisoner to an ankle bracelet as she awaits her trial, Vero is forced to live with her overbearing mother and nosy aunt. Threatening messages keep arriving on her mother’s door, demanding that Vero “turn over the money…or else.” But proving her innocence might be an impossible feat. Vero was the treasurer of her sorority when the money went missing --- one of the only people who had access to the cash. And her alibi is a date who ghosted her. With her court date quickly approaching, and her mysterious stalker on her tail, she needs to clear her name fast. Finlay sets off on a mission to suss out the real thief and bring Vero home.

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Lisa Unger, author of Served Him Right

Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister, Vera, for a brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend, Paul. But when shocking news about Paul arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana’s best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch. But Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul. As the investigation unfolds, rumors of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it also can be deadly. Ana and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long-buried history comes to light.

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M. L. Stedman, author of A Far-flung Life

Remote Western Australia, 1958. Here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds, the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of A FAR-FLUNG LIFE force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

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Marie Benedict, author of Daughter of Egypt

In the 1920s, archaeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert --- daughter of Lord Carnarvon --- whose daring spirit and relentless curiosity made the momentous find possible. Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt’s lost pharaoh. Her reign was bold, visionary --- and nearly erased from history. When Evelyn becomes obsessed with finding Hatshepsut’s secret tomb, she risks everything to uncover the truth about her reign and keep valued artifacts in Egypt, their rightful home. But as danger closes in and political tensions rise, she must make an impossible choice: protect her father’s legacy --- or forge her own.

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Amy Jo Burns, author of Wait for Me

Young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, with two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. When she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then she vanishes. Almost two decades later, 18-year-old Marijohn Shaw is spending her summer pumping gas, writing songs on her broken mandolin, and longing for a mother. Her father, Abe, has always sworn he was the last person to see Elle Harlow alive. But when a meteor strikes the woods of their sleepy Pennsylvania town and a piece of Elle’s past emerges from the wreckage, the truth of her disappearance sets fire to everything Marijohn believes about herself, her music, and her ability to love with abandon.

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Rachel Hochhauser, author of Lady Tremaine

Twice-widowed, Lady Etheldreda Verity Isolde Tremaine Bramley is solely responsible for her two children, a priggish stepdaughter, a razor-taloned peregrine falcon, and a crumbling manor. Fierce and determined, Ethel clings to the respectability her deceased husband’s title affords her, hoping it will secure her daughters’ future through marriage. When a royal ball offers the chance to change everything, Ethel risks her pride in pursuit of an invitation for all three of her daughters --- only to see her hopes fulfilled by the wrong one. As an engagement to the future king unfolds, Ethel discovers a sordid secret hidden in the depths of the royal family, forcing her to choose between the security she craves and the well-being of the stepdaughter who has rebuffed her at every turn.

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Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of Lake Effect

It’s 1977, and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of THE JOY OF SEX by her newly divorced friend, she no longer can dismiss the nearly nonexistent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the forbidden: a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a prominent neighbor brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible --- but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara’s world. Years later, Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down.

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Patricia Finn, author of The Golden Boy

After an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home. Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news. He has been named guardian of four children he didn’t know existed: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost he can no longer ignore. Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he’d tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future --- and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care.

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Allison Pataki, author of It Girl

At the dawn of the 20th century, New York’s streets teem with change: electricity, automobiles, the brash young President Teddy Roosevelt --- and the It Girls. As artists’ muses and working models, these independent young women soar to stardom because of their talent, charisma and irresistible beauty. While working as a shopgirl, the young Evelyn Talbot is recruited as a studio model and soon catches the eye of the preeminent artists of the age. When Broadway comes calling, Evelyn solidifies her status as the first self-made American female celebrity: the iconic Gibson Girl. When Evelyn finds herself at the center of a murder of passion declared “the Crime of the Century,” she is blamed for the acts of the men in her life. In the media frenzy that spirals around her, Evelyn realizes that to survive, she will have to write her own ending.

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