New Release Adult Fiction: July 5, 2025
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: He’s the perfect man. It’s a perfect lie.
Nina Swann is intrigued when she received a condolence card from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of her late husband, who is looking to connect after her husband’s unexpected death. Nick is a man of substance and good taste. He has a smile that could melt the coldest heart and a knack for putting others at ease. But to Nina’s adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. Without telling her mother, Ash begins digging into Nick’s past. What she finds is more than unsettling…
Martha is a florist living in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and her devoted husband, Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time. When Martha questions him about his frequent absences, he always has a legitimate explanation, but Martha can’t share the feeling that something isn’t right.
Nina, Martha, and Ash are on a collision course with a shocking truth that is far darker than anyone could have imagined. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don’t let him in. But the past won’t stay buried forever.
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The First Gentleman by James Patterson and Bill Clinton
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: America has a powerful new president... And her husband's on trial for murder.
Clinton and Patterson are back. And they’re better than ever.
The President of the United States is up for reelection.
Her husband is on trial for murder.
Is the First Gentleman a killer?
A pair of brilliant investigative journalists set out to answer that burning question about the NFL star-turned-political spouse.
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Before Dorothy by Hazel Gaynor
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Chicago, 1924: Emily Gale and her new husband, Henry, yearn to leave the bustle of Chicago behind for the promise of their own American dream. But leaving the city means leaving Emily’s beloved sister, Annie, who was once closer to her than anyone in the world.
Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have made a life in the warmth of the community of Liberal, Kansas, and among the harsh beauty of the prairie. Their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep.
The wide-eyed child isn’t the only thing to disrupt Emily’s world. Drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and their much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of Dorothy.
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Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.
What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.
Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.
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King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: A son returning home.
A dangerous debt.
Secrets about to ignite . . . and a family consumed by flames.
Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident. When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals.
And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything.
A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It's a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.
As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever.
Everything burns.
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A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais
GENRE: Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: How do you solve a murder that hasn't happened yet?
Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and very, very alone. A life filled with loss has made her a recluse, an existence she’s content to endure until a letter arrives inviting her to interview for the position of Scruffmore family historian. Not only does an internet search for the name yield almost nothing, it’s a role she never applied to in the first place!
After she decodes the invitation’s hidden message with ease, the promise of her family secrets being revealed is too powerful a draw for the orphaned Destiny, who soon finds herself on Eerie Island. It’s a place whose inhabitants are almost as inhospitable as the tempestuous weather. The Scruffmores themselves turn out to be not much better, a snarled mess of secrets and motives connected by their mistrust for one another.
Their newly arrived guest proves to be just as much an enigma to them as they are to her. While Destiny slowly works to unravel the mysteries hidden throughout the ominous castle, she struggles to interpret disturbing nightly visions of what is to come. In the midst of cryptic ciphers, hidden passages, and the family’s magical heritage and line of succession, Destiny is certain of two things: one of the Scruffmores is going to die and she’s running out of time to stop it.
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A Mothers Love by Danielle Steel
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: On the occasion of her daughter Valerie’s wedding and her upcoming fiftieth birthday, bestselling author Halley Holbrook finds herself reflecting. Raising twins Valerie and Olivia is her proudest accomplishment. Halley has been able to give them the loving and safe home she never had, having survived a childhood so traumatic she’s never talked about it with her girls. Long ago, Halley decided to live in the sunlight of the present, not the dark shadows of the past.
After Valerie moves to Los Angeles with her producer husband, and Olivia follows to remain close to her sister, Halley is empty-nesting in her Fifth Avenue apartment. Facing her first holiday alone in years, she books a trip to Paris.
On the flight over, she meets charming Bart Warner, and the two become fast friends. Halley hasn’t dated since her partner died three years ago, yet she quickly begins to feel more like herself. But when a cunning thief makes off with her handbag and then begins to harass her, it reawakens old ghosts from her past. Vowing not to be a victim, and with Bart’s help, she chooses a bold course of action.
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The Paper Birds by Jeanette Lynes
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Fresh out of high school, Gemma Sullivan lands what she believes is an office job, only to learn that she’s been hired for top-secret government codebreaking work in a cottage in Mimico, Ontario. The codebreaking “Cottage”—run by the brilliant, eccentric Miss Fearing, who was trained at England’s Bletchley Park—pulls Gemma in with its urgent lure and mystery. But along with this comes an oath of lifelong secrecy.
Gem can’t tell anyone about her job, not even her elderly Aunt Wren, who has raised her since the age of three after the tragic death of Gem’s parents. Her aunt harbours a deep love for crossword puzzles and Tarot cards and an equally passionate hatred for war after the death of her own fiancé in World War I. The last thing she’d want for her niece is a job that involves anything to do with the war.
The codebreaking is intense, even mind-numbing at times. One day during her lunch break Gem goes for a walk and discovers a German POW camp not far from the cottage. At the barbed-wire fence, she encounters a prisoner named Toby. Even though she risks losing her job, or worse, if she’s caught fraternizing with the enemy, Gem can’t stop visiting him. After several weeks of risky conversations, Toby disappears from the camp.
While Gem grows into her engrossing job, she hadn’t anticipated the tremendous mental strain it would cause, and she struggles with the burden of secrecy both at work and in her private life. As Gem is pulled deeper into wartime intelligence work, she becomes an integral part of the codebreakers’ circle. The Cottage codebreaking unit is small but determined; her female coworkers all possess a range of complementary skills. But in order to be successful, they must learn to work together.
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The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that's before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart.
Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother's enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?
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Slow Burn Summer by Josie Silver
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: When a levee collapses in Hinowah, a small town in Northern California, Colter Shaw is brought on by his sister, Dorion, a disaster response specialist, to help locate a family swept away by the raging water, with mere hours to survive.
But after a surprise attack along the river obstructs Colter's urgent search, the siblings are forced to consider a new Is the levee at risk of failing from natural causes, or is someone sabotaging it? Colter and Dorion must race against a ticking clock to uncover the truth and save the citizens before the village washes out completely, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
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So Far Gone by Jess Walter
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter and her belligerent new husband, Rhys Kinnick finally snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched the jerk. Immediately horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the world around him, and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out the car window and fled for a remote cabin in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.
Seven years later, when his grandchildren show up on his doorstep, Rhys barely recognizes them. Their mother has disappeared, and they need a safer place to stay than with their father, who has taken up with a Christian Nationalist militia. So what if Rhys’s cabin has no electricity or indoor plumbing, and the raccoons help themselves to the monthly grocery haul? He'll do whatever he needs to for these sweet kids.
But when the militia members show up and kidnap the children, Rhys realizes he'll have to re-enter the broken world. With the help of a bipolar retired detective and his caustic ex-girlfriend, Rhys reluctantly heads off on a madcap journey through the rubble of the life he left behind.
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Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: Joni Lark is living the dream. She’s one of the most coveted songwriters in LA…and she can’t seem to write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it.
When she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes that the sand, the surf, and the concerts at The Revelry, her family’s music venue, will spark her inspiration. But when she gets there, nothing is how she left it. Her best friend is avoiding her, her mother’s memories are fading fast, and The Revelry is closing.
How can she think about writing her next song when everything is changing without her?
Until she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it—belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with hangups of his own.
Surely, he’s a figment of her overworked imagination.
But then the very real man attached to the voice shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s aggravating and gruff on the outside—nothing like the sweet, funny voice in Joni’s head—and he has a plan:
They’ll finish the song haunting them both, break their connection, and hope they don’t risk their hearts in the process.
Because that song stuck in their heads? Maybe it’s there for a reason.
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The Surf House by Lucy Clarke
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: WISH YOU WERE HERE? THINK AGAIN…
High on the wave-pounded cliffs, far from the bustling souks of Marrakech, sits The Surf House.
A hidden gem on Morocco’s shores, the house is a sanctuary for the surfers, travellers and dreamers who wash in.
But the idyll is built on something rotten.
And when Bea arrives, relieved to find refuge after a dangerous encounter in a Marrakech alleyway, she soon gets caught in the swell of a deep, dark mystery.
Because another young woman went missing one year ago – and the last place she was sighted was The Surf House.
Viva and Twilly are plunged into a mystery—involving dark money and darker motives—they are determined to solve, and become entangled in a world populated by some of Hiaasen’s most outrageous characters: Claude and Electra Mink—billionaire philanthropists with way too much plastic surgery and a secret right-wing agenda—and Congressman Clure Boyette—who dreams of being Florida’s (and maybe America’s) most important politician. The only things standing in his way are his love for hookers and young girls, and his total lack of intelligence. We meet Noel Kristianson—a Scandinavian agnostic injured when Figgo thinks he’s a Jewish threat to humanity and runs him over with his car; Jonas Onus—Figgo’s partner in white power idiocy; and many, many more.
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The Teacher of Auschwitz by Wendy Holden
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Fredy built a wall against suffering in their hearts . . .
Amid the brutality of the Holocaust, one bright spot shone inside the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. In the shadows of the smokestacks was a wooden hut where children sang, staged plays, wrote poetry, and learned about the world. Within those four walls, brightly adorned with hand-painted cartoons, the youngest prisoners were kept vermin-free, received better food, and were even taught to imagine having full stomachs and a day without fear. Their guiding light was a twenty-seven-year-old gay, Jewish Fredy Hirsch.
Being a teacher in a brutal concentration camp was no mean feat. Forced to beg senior SS officers for better provisions, Fredy risked his life every day to protect his beloved children from mortal danger.
But time was running out for Fredy and the hundreds in his care. Could this kind, compassionate, and brave man find a way to teach them the one lesson they really needed to how to survive?
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The Wedding People by Alison Espach
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
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Welcome to Murder Week by Karen Dukess
GENRE: Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak. A whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
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The Whyte Python World Tour by Travis Kennedy
GENRE: Mystery, Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: It’s Los Angeles, 1986, and metal rules the world. For aspiring drummer Rikki Thunder, life is good - even if he is sleeping in a condemned paint store and playing with a band that’s going nowhere.
But when he gets a shot to join L.A.’s hottest up-and-coming band, Whyte Python, Rikki’s young life turns up to 11. Soon he has a hit single scorching up the charts, and the new love of his life in the audience. Rikki couldn’t ask for anything more.
But good fortune can be deceiving. With the Cold War breathing its last gasps and American music blasting through the Iron Curtain, a youth revolution is taking hold - and a hair band is unknowingly playing host to the final battle for the hearts and minds of the Eastern Bloc.
Rikki Thunder soon realizes there is a deeper web of influence propelling Whyte Python, and the stakes for his mission - to spread peace, love, and epic shredding across the globe - are far more dangerous than he could ever imagine.
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With a Vengeance by Riley Sager
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.
In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.
Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.
But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.
With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.
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The Death Mask (Eve Duncan #31) by Iris Johansen
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: World-renowned forensic sculptor Eve Duncan’s skills frequently make her a target. And in this epic adventure, they make her the first choice to create an Egyptian death mask for a nefarious potential client. But Eve cannot be bought, not for all the riches in a gold mine. Her would-be employer soon realizes that he must threaten the lives of those she holds dear to procure Eve’s services and force her to travel to Africa to mold the priceless mask.
Eve knows that her husband, Joe Quinn, is out there somewhere, searching tirelessly for a way to help. Joe has back-up from Alex Dominic, a mercenary for hire, but nothing will make it easier to set his emotions aside in order to navigate the impenetrable jungle and mastermind a breathtaking escape.
Against an unpredictable enemy, Eve and Joe must each focus on their own unique abilities to get out alive. The future of their love and their family depends upon it.
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Problematic Summer Romance (Not In Love #2) by Ali Hazelwood
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.
Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.
It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.
But not everything is as it seems—and clichés sometimes become plot twists.
When Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs—even if it’s a problematic one.
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The President’s Shadow (The Shadow #3) by James Patterson
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery
THE SYNOPSIS: The world is under attack.
Failure is not an option.
Disguised by his secret identity The Shadow, Lamont Cranston enacts vigilante justice in New York City.
But he’s not alone – his descendent and protégé Maddy has joined the fight. However, she has a lot to learn.
From a destructive superweapon to a deadly virus, the fate of the world is in their hands. There is no room for mistakes – now more than ever.
Maddy and Lamont must combine forces to eliminate these threats – and save all mankind.
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