Hot Off The Shelf: September 12th New Releases
It’s hard to believe that it’s already September! It’s time to get cozy with a nice tea or anything pumpkin-flavoured to settle into the autumn mood.
There are books from new authors, second books from acclaimed authors, and stories you may seem interested in just by the synopsis. At Maude’s Book Club, we want our community to broaden their horizons and try new genres!
Here are the new books being released in the second week of September!
September 12th
Long ago, the world was destroyed by gods. Only nine cities were spared. Separated by a vast wilderness teeming with monsters and unimaginable dangers, each city is now ruled by a guardian - royalty who feeds on mortal pleasure. Born with an intuition that never fails, Calista knows her talents are of great value to the power-hungry world, so she lives hidden as a courtesan of the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for his protection, she grants him information.
When her intuition leads her to save a travelling prince in dire trouble, the voice inside her blazes with a warning — and promise. Today, he’ll bring her joy. One day he’ll be her doom.
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience.
With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which the mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror — and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
In this book of short stories, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a lost man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here — the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle of class.
But that narrative was called into question one night when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father — whose absence defined his upbringing - died in a car crash. McCaulley was being asked to deliver his father’s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hard-working, and perfect.
Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now terrified renters who’ve fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out…and failed.
Sage Flores has been running from her family — and their “gifts”— ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly returns to her hometown. Like slipping into an old, comforting sweater, Sage takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands.
What should be a simple task is complicated by her partner in botany sleuthing: Tennesse Reyes. He broke her heart in high school, and she never fully recovered. Working together is reminding her of all their past tender, genuine moments — and new feelings for this mature sexy man are starting to take root in her heart.
She gave up on magic. But the magic didn’t give up on her.
Two exes. One misbehaving mother. Surprising magic. The perfect recipe for Halloween chaos.
Flair Hardwicke knows the deal: Magic is real, love isn’t and replying on either end in disaster. She’s seen the havoc romance and witchcraft wreaked on her mother’s life, and Flair swore off all of it long ago after the boy she thought was her destiny ditched her. But then her strictly no-magic life falls apart, and Flair inherits her grandmother’s home and bakery in Rattleboro, Kansas.
In the opening story, "The Songbird," we meet the building's caretaker, a WWI veteran trying to rebuild his life amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. In "The Telephone," a 21st-century poet's longing for a bygone era nurtures a friendship that transcends time. A 1930s department store mannequin navigates the challenges of womanhood in the surreal, darkly humorous tale, "The Mannequin." And in "The Suitcase," an exhausted woman scrambles to tidy up her boyfriend's unprocessed emotions, which have materialized inside boxes all over the apartment. As we witness the quiet but fraught moments of the tenants' everyday lives, these uncanny narratives create a world that is at once familiar and fantastic.
Daniel Rosenberg and Liyah Cohen-Jackson’s last conversation—fourteen years ago at summer camp—ended their friendship. Until they find themselves seated next to each other on a plane, and bitterly pick up right where they left off. At least they can go their separate ways again after landing...
That is, until Daniel's marketing firm gets hired by the Chicago museum where Liyah works as a junior curator, and they’re forced to collaborate with potential career changing promotions on the line.
Have you picked any of the books listed above? If you have, let us know which ones! If you have any recommendations similar to the books listed above drop them in the comments below.
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