New Feature: Most Anticipated Releases of the Month – January 2021

In thinking how I wanted to approach this new year, one thing I wanted to add to the blog was a new feature highlighting some of the books that I am excited will be published throughout the month. Sometimes I will have already read the book, in which case I will link my review and sometimes I will be reading the book in the days to come. I will note the audio publisher if I listened to the book or plan to – you all know what a big audiobook fan I am!

So here without further ado are the five books I am most excited about that will be published in January:

 

BLOODLINE by Jess Lourey 

Pub Date: January 1, 2021, Thomas & Mercer/Brilliance Audio

Summary:
Perfect town. Perfect homes. Perfect families. It’s enough to drive some women mad…

In
a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is
cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown.
After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and
swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s
motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting.

And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village.

The
friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that
every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still
seems to hold the town in thrall. So does the sinister secret of a
little boy who vanished decades ago. And unless Joan is imagining
things, a frighteningly familiar figure from her past is on watch in the
shadows.

Her fiancé tells her she’s being paranoid. He might be
right. Then again, she might have moved to the deadliest small town on
earth.

 

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THE WIFE UPSTAIRS by Rachel Hawkins

Pub Date: January 5, 2021, St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan Audio

My Review

 

Summary:

A delicious twist on a Gothic classic, Rachel Hawkins’s The Wife Upstairs pairs Southern charm with atmospheric domestic suspense, perfect for fans of B.A. Paris and Megan Miranda.

Meet
Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker
in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs,
and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if
Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of
her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her
real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester.
Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident.
His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend,
their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in
Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer
her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.

Yet as
Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the
legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story,
who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she,
plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her
past––or his––catches up to her?

With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips
the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised
attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. In this vivid
reimagining of one of literature’s most twisted love triangles, which
Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?

 

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OUR DARKEST NIGHT by Jennifer Robson

Pub Date: January 5th, William Morrow Paperbacks

Summary:
To survive the
Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer’s wife
in this unforgettable novel from USA Today bestselling author Jennifer
Robson—a story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true
events, that vividly evokes the most perilous days of World War II.

It
is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for
Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most
of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation
growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to
survive—to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the
countryside with a man she has only just met.

Nico Gerardi was
studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the
seminary to run his family’s farm. A moral and just man, he could not
stand by when the fascists and Nazis began taking innocent lives. Rather
than risk a perilous escape across the mountains, Nina will pose as his
new bride. And to keep her safe and protect secrets of his own, Nico
and Nina must convince prying eyes they are happily married and in love.

But
farm life is not easy for a cultured city girl who dreams of becoming a
doctor like her father, and Nico’s provincial neighbors are wary of
this soft and educated woman they do not know. Even worse, their
distrust is shared by a local Nazi official with a vendetta against
Nico. The more he learns of Nina, the more his suspicions grow—and with
them his determination to exact revenge.

As Nina and Nico come to
know each other, their feelings deepen, transforming their relationship
into much more than a charade. Yet both fear that every passing day
brings them closer to being torn apart . . .

 

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THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE by Katrine Engberg

Pub Date: January 5, 2021, Gallery/Scout Press

 

Summary:

Detectives Jeppe
Korner and Anette Werner return in this thriller as they race to solve a
series of sordid murders linked to some of the most vulnerable patients
in a Danish hospital.

Hospitals are supposed to be places of
healing. But in the coronary care unit at one of Copenhagen’s leading
medical centers, a nurse fills a syringe with an overdose of heart
medication and stealthily enters the room of an older male patient.

Six
days earlier, a paperboy on his route in central Copenhagen stumbles
upon a macabre find: the naked body of a dead woman, lying in a fountain
with arms marked with small incisions. Cause of death?
Exsanguination—the draining of all the blood in her body.

Clearly,
this is no ordinary murder. Lead Investigator Jeppe Korner, recovering
from a painful divorce and in the throes of a new relationship, takes on
the investigation. His partner, Anette Werner, now on maternity leave
after an unexpected pregnancy, is restless at home with a demanding
newborn and an equally demanding husband. While Jeppe pounds the streets
looking for answers, Anette decides to do a little freelance sleuthing.
But operating on her own exposes her to dangers she can’t even begin to
fathom.

As the investigation ventures into dark corners, it
uncovers the ambition and greed that festers beneath the surface of
caregiving institutions—all the more shocking for their depravity—and
what Jeppe and Anette discover will turn their blood as cold as ice….

 

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BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED by Lisa Gardner

Pub Date: January 19, 2021, Dutton/Brilliance Audio

 

Summary:

From #1 New York Times bestselling
author Lisa Gardner, a propulsive thriller featuring an ordinary woman
who will stop at nothing to find the missing people that the rest of the
world has forgotten

Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged
woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she
spends her life doing what no one else will–searching for missing
people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up,
when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid
attention, Frankie starts looking.

A new case brings her to
Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is
searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her
high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the
victim’s wary family tells Frankie she’s on her own–and she soon learns
she’s asking questions someone doesn’t want answered. But Frankie will
stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person
to go missing could be her. 

 

 

 

Do any of these sound good? Let me know!