August 18, 2023

New Fiction

Under The Influence by Noelle Crooks – After a series of go-nowhere jobs in the New York publishing world, Harper Cruz is broke, lonely, and desperate for a salary that won’t leave her scrambling to make rent each month.  So when she stumbles across a job posting from an influencer offering triple her last paycheck, she automatically submits her resume.  Harper may be not familiar with self-help guru Charlotte Green, but Charlotte’s relentless optimism and charismatic can-do spirit have created a cultlike following of women across the country.  When she selects Harper out of thousands of other applicants in less than twenty-four hours, its obvious she sees something she likes.  Despite the pressure to accept the offer just as quickly as she’s been given it, Harper decides to take a leap of faith and become the newest member of The Greenhouse.  Taking the job means a move to Nashville, and Harper is quickly dazzled by the glamorous world Charlotte has built in Music City.  The Greenhouse is more than a workplace – it’s a family – and Harper soon finds herself swept into its inner circle.  At first, she loves working in such an inspirational environment, where mandatory dance parties, daily intentions, and group bonding activities make up for long hours and Charlotte’s persistent demands for loyalty.  But the deeper Harper is pulled into Charlotte’s world, the more she realizes that having it all and being it all comes with a price.

After Death by Dean Koontz – Michael Mace, head of security at a top-secret research facility, opens his eyes in a makeshift morgue twenty-four hours following an event in which everyone perished – including him and his best friend, Shelby Shrewsberry.  Having awakened with an extraordinary ability unlike anything he- or anyone else – has ever imagined, Michael is capable of being as elusive as a ghost.  He sets out to honor his late friend by helping Nina Dozier and her son, John, whom Shelby greatly admired.  Although what Michael does for Nina is life changing, his actions also evoke the wrath of John’s father, a member of one of the most violent street gangs in Los Angeles.  But an even greater threat is descending: the Internal Security Agency’s most vicious assassin, Durand Calaphas.  Calaphas will stop at nothing to get his man.  If Michael dies twice, he will not live a third time.  From the tarnished glamour of Beverly Hills to the streets of South Central to a walled estate in Rancho Santa Fe, only Michael can protect Nine and John – and ensure that light survives in a rapidly darkening world.

Mrs. Porter Calling by AJ Pearce – London, April 1943.  A little over a year since she married Captain Charles Mayhew and he went away to war, Emmy Lake is now in charge of Yours Cheerfully, the hugely popular advice column in Woman’s Friend magazine.  Boosted by her best friend, Bunty, Emmy is dedicated to helping readers face the increasing challenges of wartime life.  The postbags are full and Woman’s Friend is thriving.  But Emmy’s world is turned upside down when a glamorous socialite, the Honorable Mrs. Cressida Porter, becomes the new publisher of the magazine and wants to change everything the readers love.  Aided by Mrs. Pye, a Paris-obsessed fashion editor with delusions of grandeur, and Small Winston, the grumpiest dog in London, Mrs. Porter fills the pages with expensive clothes and frivolous articles about her friends.  Worst of all, she announces that she is cutting the advice column, and her vision for the publication means Emmy’s future there looks dire.  With the stakes at work and at home higher than ever, Emmy and her friends must find a way to save the magazine that they love.

None Of This is True by Lisa Jewell – Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at the hot, new local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair.  Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday.  They are, in fact, birthday twins.  A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school.  Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series.  She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.  Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep going on the project.  Slowly, she starts to realize that Josie is hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life – and into her home.  But, as quickly as she had arrived, Josie Fair disappears.  Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives in grave danger.