New Releases and Publications

Hello, friends – and happy Tuesday! Welcome to another round of new releases that I was lucky enough to get an early copy of, and have either already read or are upcoming on my #TBR.

These books could be gifted from the publisher through sites like NetGalley or Edelweiss+, they could be electronic copies gifted directly to me from the publisher or the author, an early audiobook copy through the publisher or Libro.fm, or even a physical copy that has been sent to me from the author or publisher. I am so thankful for all of the reading opportunities that I am given through these various sources, and I am excited to share these new releases!

In these weekly posts I will include a 20% review if I am currently reading the book, as well as a link to my full review if I have already finished the book. And if I have not yet started the book by the time this is posted, I will leave those spots blank and edit the post to add them in later!

Send Noods: 50 Amazing Noodle Recipes that You Want Right Now

Author: Chloe Godot

Illustrated by: Alice Potter

Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Cookbook

Page Count: 128 pages

Thanks so much to the author, St. Martin’s Press, and Castle Point Books for the gifted finished copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

Get the noods you really want!

Things are looking hot. Chloe Godot’s Send Noods is a cleverly tantalizing book of 50 noodle recipes that will never fail to whet your appetite. When your actual DMs are just too cringeworthy and you’d rather have a bowl of ramen to keep you warm at night, turn to the cookbook that really satisfies.

Each chapter is organized to help you find your perfect match, from Chapter One: The Little Black Book of Basics, which steers you toward every good ol’ base sauce and broth you’ll ever need, to Chapter Two: Heart Warmers, that always deliver on their comfort-food promises, to Chapter Five: The Hotties, that leave you hungry for more. Go ahead and ogle the piping-hot illustrations of your deepest cravings, including:

– F*boy Fettuccini
– Red Flag Red Sauce
– Looking Fresh Pesto
– How You Doin’ Homemade Italian Sausage
– U Up? Udon
– Sex Is Cool, But Have You Tried My Pho?
– Swipe Right Ramen
– Slide into My DMs Strozzapreti
– Mack on This Mac ‘n’ Cheese
– Dreamboat Arrabiata

Complete with Alice Potter’s playful illustrations and explicit instructions that make each recipe’s intentions known, Send Noods is the book of hot dishes that will satisfy epicureans in ways unsolicited DMs just never could.

20% Review:

Since this is a cookbook I won’t be including a 20% review. But check out my full thoughts on this book at the link below!

Check out my full review here!

The Best Friend

Author: Jessica Fellowes

Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Adult, Mystery

Page Count: 320 pages

Thanks so much to the author, Minotaur Books, and Netgalley for the gifted advanced audio copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

Following the intense, toxic friendship of two kindred spirits across their lifetimes, The Best Friend is a dark, suspenseful novel and first standalone from Jessica Fellowes, New York Times bestselling author of the Mitford Murders series and the companion Downton Abbey books.

Bella and Kate. Kate and Bella. From childhood they were bosom friends, Bella sensible and cautious, Kate gregarious and just a little dangerous.

Yet in spite of their intimacy, their trust is fragile. Men came into their lives and things changed: a black seed was set in the heart of their relationship. Over decades, acts of both cruelty and love ferment until one shocking event tests them more than ever. Neither will escape unscathed.

Reminiscent of Elena Ferrante and Sally Rooney, and for readers of Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny and Ashley Audrain’s The Push, The Best Friend explores the darkest corners of female friendship, a place where loyalty and betrayal intersect with deadly consequences.

20% Review:

This is SUCH a quick read! I got through the first 30% or so in the first sitting without even noticing, and I’d have finished it already if I didn’t have to do annoying things like work. A good portion so far is written as dialogue, without quotation marks or notes of which character is speaking, which makes it read a bit more like a play than a novel. As a theatre person, I’m finding this to be a really fun and interesting departure from the norm! But this format might not be for everybody, so keep that in mind before reading.

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)

The Make-Up Test

Author: Jenny L. Howe

Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Romance, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Adult

Page Count: 336 pages

Thanks so much to the author, St. Martin’s Griffin, and Netgalley for the gifted advanced e-copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

ONE TO WATCH meets BEACH READ in this smart, swoony, romantic comedy, in which two college exes find themselves battling against each other—and their unresolved feelings—for a spot in a prestigious literature Ph.D. program.

Allison Avery loves to win. After acing every academic challenge she’s come up against, she’s finally been accepted into her dream Ph.D. program at Claymore University, studying medieval literature under a professor she’s admired for years. Sure, grad school isn’t easy—the classes are intense, her best friend is drifting away, and her students would rather pull all-nighters than discuss The Knight’s Tale—but she’s got this. Until she discovers her ex-boyfriend has also been accepted. Colin Benjamin might be the only person who loves winning more than Allison does, and when they’re both assigned to TA for the same professor, the game is on.

What starts as a personal battle of wits (and lit) turns into all-out war when their professor announces a career-changing research trip opportunity—with one spot to fill. Competing with Colin is as natural as breathing, and after he shattered her heart two years ago, Allison refuses to let him come out on top. But when a family emergency and a late night road trip—plus a very sexy game of Scrabble—throw them together for a weekend, she starts to wonder if they could be stronger on the same team. And if they fall for each other all over again, Allison will have to choose between a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and what could be a twice-in-a-lifetime love.

Charmingly bookish and unequivocally fat positive, The Make-Up Test embraces the truth that people can sometimes change and grow, even when you least expect it.

20% Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I start reading this book!)

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender

Author: Kit Heyam

Narrated by: Kit Heyam

Audio Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Nonfiction, History, LGBTQIA+, Transgender

Audiobook Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Thanks so much to the author, Hachette Audio, and Libro.fm for the advanced audio copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity  

Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.  

Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures. 

20% Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I start reading this book!)

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)

Marple: Twelve New mysteries

Authors: Agatha Christie, Naomi Alderman, Leigh Bardugo, Alyssa Cole, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Natalie Haynes, Jean Kwok, Val McDermid, Karen M. McManus, Dreda Say Mitchell, Kate Mosse and Ruth Ware

Narrated by: Alex Kingston, Adjoa Andoh, Miriam Margolyes, Celia Imrie, Chipo Chung, Adrian Scarborough, Imogen Stubbs, Alison Steadman, Jodhi May, Cathy Tyson and Ramon Tikaram

Audio Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Mystery, short Stories, Anthologies, Thriller, Crime

Audiobook Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

Thanks so much to the authors, HarperAudio, and Libro.fm for the advanced audio copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

A brand-new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Mystery’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by twelve remarkable bestselling and acclaimed authors.

This collection of a dozen original short stories, all featuring Jane Marple, will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author reimagines Agatha Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery.

Naomi Alderman
Leigh Bardugo
Alyssa Cole
Lucy Foley
Elly Griffiths
Natalie Haynes
Jean Kwok
Val McDermid
Karen M. McManus
Dreda Say Mitchell
Kate Mosse
Ruth Ware

Miss Marple was first introduced to readers in a story Agatha Christie wrote for The Royal Magazine in 1927 and made her first appearance in a full-length novel in 1930’s The Murder at the Vicarage. It has been 45 years since Agatha Christie’s last Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was published posthumously in 1976, and this collection of ingenious new stories by twelve Christie devotees will be a timely reminder why Jane Marple remains the most famous fictional female detective of all time.

20% Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I start reading this book!)

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)

Always the First to Die

Author: R. J. Jacobs

Narrated by: Petrea Burchard

Audio Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Adult

Audiobook Length: 8 hours 33 minutes

Thanks so much to the author, Dreamscape Audio, and Libro.fm for the advanced audio copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

For fans of Riley Sager with a classic slasher twist, Always the First to Die follows a former horror movie actress as she returns to the set of her most iconic film, only to find that the strange circumstances begin to resemble the plot of her most famous film.

After her husband’s death, Lexi has refused to return to the Pinecrest Estate on the Florida Keys, too many hard memories on that strip of land. Memories of meeting her husband on the set of an iconic horror movie. Of being cast as an extra, of watching herself get killed on screen. And of scoffing at the rumors of the Pinecrest Estate “curse,” until she witnessed a cast member die that very summer. But when her daughter sneaks away to visit her grandfather, legendary horror movie director Rick Plummer, Lexi is forced to face her past. That’s when a Category Four hurricane changes course, and hits the southern coast.

Unable to get through to her daughter, Lexi drives to the Keys in the wake of the storm. What she finds is an island without cell service, without power, and with limited police presence. A desolate bit of land, with only a few remaining behind: the horror director, the starlet once cast as the final girl, the young teenager searching for clues of her father, the mother determined to get off the island, and…the person picking them off one-by-one.

Soon enough Lexi’s life begins to resemble Rick’s most famous horror film, and she must risk her life to save her daughter before someone, or something, destroys them all.

20% Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I start reading this book!)

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)

Bindle Punk Bruja

Author: Desideria Mesa

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo

Audio Publication Date: September 13, 2022

Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Adult, Mystery

Audiobook Length: 14 hours 10 minutes

Thanks so much to the author, HarperAudio, and Libro.fm for the advanced audio copy of this book!

Description from Goodreads:

A part-time reporter and club owner takes on crooked city councilmen, mysterious and deadly mobsters, and society’s deeply rooted sexism and racism, all while keeping her true identity and magical abilities hidden –inspired by an ancient Mexican folktale.

Yo soy quien soy. I am who I am.

Luna–or depending on who’s asking, Rose–is the white-passing daughter of an immigrant mother who has seen what happens to people from her culture. This world is prejudicial, and she must hide her identity in pursuit of owning an illegal jazz club. Using her cunning powers, Rose negotiates with dangerous criminals as she climbs up Kansas City’s bootlegging ladder. Luna, however, runs the risk of losing everything if the crooked city councilmen and ruthless mobsters discover her ties to an immigrant boxcar community that secretly houses witches. Last thing she wants is to put her entire family in danger.

But this bruja with ever-growing magical abilities can never resist a good fight. With her new identity, Rose, an unabashed flapper, defies societal expectations all the while struggling to keep her true self and witchcraft in check. However, the harder she tries to avoid scrutiny, the more her efforts eventually capture unwanted attention. Soon, she finds herself surrounded by greed and every brand of bigotry–from local gangsters who want a piece of the action and businessmen who hate her diverse staff to the Ku Klux Klan and Al Capone. Will her earth magic be enough to save her friends and family? As much as she hates to admit it, she may need to learn to have faith in others–and learning to trust may prove to be her biggest ambition yet.

20% Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I start reading this book!)

Review:

(This will be added at a later date, once I have finished this book!)