Greetings, librarians. The Library Love Fest team has made it back safe and sound from ALA Midwinter in Atlanta, Georgia and we're eager to kick off a new round of LibraryReads suggestions! Fresh debuts, the return of old friends, love, mystery, and some far-out speculative fiction, there's something here for every reader. Remember, the deadline to vote for the April LibraryReads list is February 20th. Happy reading!
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Miss You by Kate Eberlen
For fans of: Jojo Moyes, Elin Hilderbrand, and Nick Hornby
A wryly romantic debut novel with echoes of One Day that asks, what if you just walked by the love of your life, but didn’t even know it?
"An unashamedly romantic novel, but one that also deals with the ongoing and deep-seated effects of grief. Both intricate and engrossing, its real pleasure lies in Eberlen’s assured writing with its level of detail and rich characterization."
—Sunday Express (London)
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
Public Librarian? Click here to request a physical galley
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman
For fans of: Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee novels
A deadly bombing takes Navajo Tribal cops Bernadette Manuelito, Jim Chee, and their mentor, the legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, back into the past to find a vengeful killer in this riveting Southwestern mystery from the bestselling author of Spider Woman’s Daughter and Rock with Wings.
Praise for Rock with Wings, the previous entry in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series: "Hillerman uses the southwestern setting as effectively as her late father did while skillfully combining Native American lore with present-day social issues."
—Publishers Weekly
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
Public Librarian? Click here to request a physical galley
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts
For fans of: We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas and The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez
The Great Gatsby brilliantly recast in the contemporary South: a powerful first novel about an extended African-American family and their colliding visions of the American Dream.
"Stephanie Powell Watts’s inspired reimagining of the novel long regarded as the American masterwork of the twentieth century gives soul, body, and voice to those left out of Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the American dream… bold, brilliant, and timely. It is just what contemporary American fiction needs."
—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Last of Her Kind and Sempre Susan
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
Public Librarian? Click here to request a physical galley
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
Ragdoll by Daniel Cole
For fans of: Tana French, Ian Rankin, and Lauren Beukes
A pulse-pounding London-set procedural with a dark sense of humor, Ragdoll follows a volatile detective as he tracks down a murderer before he becomes its next victim.
"A gruesome delight! Daniel Cole’s thriller Ragdoll, in which gritty detective William 'Wolf' Fawkes comes upon a single corpse stitched together out of six bodies, had me flipping pages furiously. It’s an impressive debut, dark, propulsive, and surprisingly funny."
—Gregg Hurwitz, bestselling author of Orphan X
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
Public Librarian? Click here to request a physical galley
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
Fallout by Sara Paretsky
For fans of: Ian Rankin, J.A. Jance, and Deborah Crombie
Award-winning, bestselling Sara Paretsky brings her legendary investigator V. I. Warshawski back in a puzzling case that will take the private investigator out of her comfort zone and into deadly new territory as she searches for a young film student and a former film star who are on the run in the heart of the Midwest.
"Fallout is the best yet in one of our genre’s crucial, solid-gold, best-ever series. Paretsky is a genius, and she’s never afraid to dig a little deeper." —Lee Child
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
The Forbidden Garden by Ellen Herrick
For fans of: Kate Morton and Sarah Jio
From the author of The Sparrow Sisters comes a lush, imaginative novel that takes readers into the heart of a mysterious English country garden, waiting to spring to life.
"The Forbidden Garden is a romantic, big-hearted novel that celebrates femininity in all its nurturing, resilient, and fearless power."
—Heather Young, author of The Lost Girls
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
The Color of Our Sky by Amita Trasi
For fans of: The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar
In the spirit of Khaled Hosseini, Nadia Hashimi, and Shilpi Somaya Gowda comes this powerful debut from a talented new voice—a sweeping, emotional journey of two childhood friends in Mumbai, India, whose lives converge only to change forever one fateful night.
"A skillful tapestry of storytelling with contemporary appeal that will please fans of Thrity Umrigar and women’s fiction."
—Library Journal starred review
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
For fans of: 300 Days of Sun by Deborah Lawrenson and What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
In this suspenseful, provocative novel of friendship, secrets, and deceit, a successful writer returns to her elite Swiss boarding school to get to the bottom of a tragic accident that took place while she was a student twenty years earlier.
"Suspenseful…. If your guilty-pleasure reads include elite boarding schools, secret societies, murder, and scandal, this one’s for you."
—Kirkus Reviews
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
The Day I Died by Lori Rader-Day
For fans of: What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan and Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little
From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother’s desperate search for two lost boys.
"Mary Higgins Clark Award winner Rader-Day’s third novel will thrill readers who can’t get enough of the psychological suspense genre."
—Library Journal
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch
For fans of: The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman and Hild by Nicola Griffith
The bestselling author of The Small Backs of Children offers a vision of our near-extinction—and a heroine, a reimagined Joan of Arc, poised to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed and forever change history in this provocative dystopian novel reminiscent of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Edan Lepucki’s California.
"As ferociously intelligent as it is heart-wrenchingly humane, as generous as it is relentless, as irresistible as it is important."
—Cheryl Strayed
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
In the Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones
For fans of: Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson and If I Stay by Gayle Forman
A moving, sweet, and uplifting novel of love, grief, and the heartache of letting go, from a wonderful new Australian author.
"You will weep, and marvel, and pass this book on, and on, to your friends." —Nikki Gemmell, author of The Bride Stripped Bare
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
War Cry by Wilbur Smith and David Churchill
For fans of: Paula McLain's Circling the Sun and Ken Follett
The saga of the legendary Courtney family continues in this fourteenth installment in Wilbur Smith’s bestselling series—the sequel to 2009’s Assegai—a thrilling tale of espionage, adventure, and danger, set in Africa and spanning from the Great War’s end to the dark days of World War II.
"The best historical novelist."
—Stephen King
Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads deadline: February 20th
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For more suggestions, click here!
Please remember: If you love what you read, consider leaving a review on Edelweiss and nominating your chosen titles for the April LibraryReads list. The deadline to vote for the April LibraryReads list is February 20th. For more information, visit LibraryReads.org. Happy reading!
-The LLF Team