HomeLEISUREHalf-a-dozen books worth curling up with

Half-a-dozen books worth curling up with

It’s a thrill-a-minute this month … with a little love thrown in for fun.

Emma loves her husband and their daughter. But almost everything she’s told them about herself is a lie. And she might have got away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job. Leo is an obituary writer and Emma is a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – reading and writing about her life. But as he starts to unravel her past, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name is fictitious. When the truth of Emma’s past life finally emerges, she has to prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was. But first, she must tell him about the love of her other life! PanMacmillan

Forecast: Storm clouds are on the horizon! L.A. Weather by Maria Amparo Excandón is an hilarious, fast-paced family drama, a novel about a Mexican-American family living in LA. There’s Oscar – the weather-obsessed patriarch, who is harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else, except the fact that LA’s dry as a bone and he’s desperate for it to rain. Then there’s his wife, Keila … she’s desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel. There are three daughters …  a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt, and a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers. They’re all left blindsided when Keila announces she wants to divorce Oscar.   Secrets, deception, and betrayal. And the family’s toughest decision yet …  whether to stick together or burn it all down. PanMacmillan.

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Annie Ward’s The Lying Club is set at  an elite private school in the Colorado mountains, where a tangled web of lies draws together three vastly different women. Natalie, a young office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke, a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater. And Asha, an overachieving and overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by their relationships with the handsome, charming assistant athletic director Nicholas, who Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs. But when two bodies are carried out of the school early one morning, it seems the jealousy between mothers and daughters, rival lovers and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town. Quercus

In Peter Swanson’s Nine Lives, nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke. Until bad – very bad – things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned. Then, a father is shot in the back while running. A frightening pattern is emerging, but these nine appear to have nothing in common. Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they’re located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it? FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Faber and Faber, available at Exclusive Books

Their love story has gone viral. But it hasn’t even begun! In Kate Spencer’s In A New York Minute, Franny meets Hayes in the opposite of a meet-cute.Her dress gets caught in the subway doors and rips, leaving her in the fashion equivalent of a hospital gown. Hayes is a stuffy suit, whose one redeeming quality is giving Franny his jacket, saving her from showing her assets to half of New York. Franny is eager to forget the whole horribly embarrassing encounter as soon as possible, but neither of them anticipated a fellow commuter live-blogging them as #subwaybaes – turning their awkward run-in into click-bait and a manufactured love story for the ages. PanMacmillan

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, authors of The Wife Between Us and An Anonymous Girl, have just released The Golden Couple which will keep you thrilled and guessing until the very end. Avery Chambers helps people overcome everything from domineering parents to assault. And if she can’t fix you in ten sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. Her successes help her, almost, absorb the emptiness she feels since her husband’s death. Her latest clients are the Bishops, Marissa and Mathew, who seem like the golden couple. Until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things, both because she loves her husband and for the sake of their eight-year-old son. Hearing about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her license due to controversial methods. But when the Bishops glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger. PanMacmillan

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