It’s like I always say, “Sorry, I’m late!”
I intended to get this out for the beginning of July, but then my cat died and everything felt terrible for a while. Then my in-laws visited for a month and, you know, I mentally shut down when my routine is threatened. And not to complain, though I love to, it doesn’t help that we went from July 1st to September in like five minutes?? The passage of time is nonsense.
I have been reading, even if I’m not talking about it. And actually focusing on books I already own! So that’s a positive. The physical TBR must have gotten smaller by now? Maybe? The problem is, to read books I own instead of chasing down the shiniest new thing, I obviously have to buy books. Right? Right. This is just basic logic. Math. You can’t argue with math.
So here are my top picks for new releases coming out in the second half of 2024.
You can find my list for the first half of the year here.
Get ready to add to cart, pre-order and plan a bookstore date!
🔪Broken Bayou
JENNIFER MOORHEAD
Genre: Thriller
Pub Month: July
What the FUCK It’s About: Dr. Willa Watters is a prominent child psychologist at the height of her career. But when a viral video of a disastrous television interview puts her reputation on the line, Willa retreats to Broken Bayou, the town where she spent most of her childhood summers. There, she visits her aunts’ old house and discovers some of her troubled mother’s belongings still languishing in the attic—dusty mementos harbouring secrets of her harrowing past.
Willa’s hopes for a respite are quickly crushed, not only by what she finds in that attic, but also by what’s been found in the bayou.
With waters dropping due to drought, mysterious barrels containing human remains have surfaced, alongside something else from Willa’s past, something she never thought she’d see again. Divers, police, and media flood the area, including a news reporter gunning for Willa and Travis Arceneaux—a local deputy and old flame.
Willa’s fate seems eerily tied to the murders. And with no one to trust, she must use her wits to stay above water and make it out alive.
🔪The God of the Woods
LIZ MOORE
Genre: Contemporary Crime Fiction
Pub Month: July
What the FUCK It’s About: Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
🔪The Unraveling
VI KEELAND
Genre: Thriller
Pub Month: July
What the FUCK It’s About: After experiencing a terrible loss, New York City psychiatrist Meredith McCall feels painfully adrift. When she crosses paths with a man with whom she has a tragic connection, she follows him, sparking an unhealthy obsession with Gabriel Wright.
How is he doing so well while her life is in shambles?
But when Gabriel walks into her office as a patient, seemingly unaware of who she is, she knows it crosses all ethical and moral bounds to treat him. Yet, Meredith can’t bring herself to turn him away and becomes further entangled.
With her life and career continuing to unravel, it appears that things could not get any worse… until they do.
🔪The Astrology House
CARINN JADE
Genre: Thriller
Pub Month: July
What the FUCK It’s About: Margot needs a minute. She’s been working eighty-hour weeks as a newly minted partner at her law firm. She’s disconnected from her brother, the only family she has left. And she’s still not pregnant after years of trying.
Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat promises rest, relaxation, and wisdom for Margot and her friends. With Instagram-worthy views and nightly astrology readings in an impeccably restored waterfront Victorian house, this getaway should be nothing but idyllic fun. For Margot’s brother, Adam, it’s the perfect opportunity to rekindle the romance that fuels his writing, but his wife, Aimee, hides the darkness of her past with a beautiful social media feed. Their friend, Farah, is a successful doctor who cannot admit she’s losing control. But no one holds a greater secret than their astrologer host, Rini. She has a plan for all her guests, and one won’t be leaving Stars Harbor alive.
🔪I Was A Teenage Slasher
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Genre: Horror
Pub Month: July
What the FUCK It’s About: 1989, Lamesa, Texas.
A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge.
Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
🔪House of Glass
SARAH PEKKANEN
Genre: Thriller
Pub Month: August
What the FUCK It’s About: A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?
Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny – in the midst of her parent’s bitter divorce – and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella’s mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.
From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there’s something eerie about the house itself: It’s a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.
As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny’s murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella’s supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?
🔪Society of Lies
LAUREN LING BROWN
Genre: Mysterty
Pub Month: August
What the FUCK It’s About: When a young woman is found dead on her college campus, her sister doesn’t believe it was an accident—and her search for answers leads her closer to home than she ever would have imagined in this thrilling debut novel from an exciting new talent.
Maya can’t wait to return to Princeton for Reunions—it’s been a decade since she graduated, but she is looking forward to seeing old faces and reminiscing about her college days. And this year is even more special because her little sister, Naomi, is graduating.
But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya’s worst nightmare when she gets a call no one ever wants—Naomi is dead. The police are saying it’s an accident, but Maya suspects there is more to the story than they are letting on.
As Maya pieces together the months leading up to her sister’s death, she starts to realize how much Naomi hid from her. Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus—the same one Maya belonged to—despite Maya’s warnings. And if she had to guess, she’d say Naomi was also tapped for the secret society within it.
The more Maya uncovers, the more terrified she becomes that Naomi’s decision to follow in her footsteps might have been what got her killed. Because Maya’s time at Princeton wasn’t as wonderful as she always pretended it was—after all, her sister wasn’t the first young woman to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past…and to the secrets she’s kept all these years.
🔪The Body Next Door
MAIA CHANCE
Genre: Mystery
Pub Month: August
What the FUCK It’s About: Hannah McCollough’s life is far from perfect, but you’d never know it by looking at her. Instead, you’d see a beautiful young mother wholly devoted to her two children and a docile wife utterly besotted with her self-made millionaire husband, Allan. You’d see the designer clothes she wears, the luxury car she drives, the dewy-eyed au pair she employs.
You wouldn’t see the dark secret she carries.
But when a construction crew unearths the body of a young girl near the McCulloughs’ vacation home on Orcas Island, Hannah has no choice but to confront her past. She wonders how much Allan knows about the victim and the apocalyptic cult she was connected to. Meanwhile, Allan can’t seem to understand why his beautiful young bride, as polished and pristine as the collectible artifacts in his glass case, would threaten their fairy-tale lifestyle by digging too deep, in places she knows she shouldn’t.
As the police investigation into the gruesome discovery deepens, the facade of Hannah’s picture-perfect marriage starts to crumble, and she soon finds herself on a dire hunt for answers. And Hannah’s search takes an unexpected turn after she crosses paths with three strangers with shocking secrets of their own.
🔪The Madness
DAWN KURTAGICH
Genre: Horror
Pub Month: August
What the FUCK It’s About: With one unexpected email from her estranged best friend, Lucy, Mina Murray’s carefully curated life is turned upside down. Leaving behind her psychiatric practice in London, along with her routine and the calm it brings, she returns to the windswept shores of Wales. Faced with everything she’s left behind, she soon discovers that Lucy’s symptoms mirror those of her mysterious patient with amnesia hundreds of miles away.
With nothing but an untreatable sickness connecting the two women, and with Lucy’s life on the line, Mina finds herself asking questions and being drawn ever-deeper into a web of secrets, missing girls, and the powerful, nameless force at its center—one that has been haunting her for years.
As terrible, ancient truths begin to reveal themselves, Mina prepares to confront her own darkest secrets, and with them, an evil beyond comprehension. Together with a group of smart, savvy women, Mina seizes one last, desperate chance to stop the cycle that began so long ago. But there are dangers to inviting the attentions of what might not be a man, but a monster…
🔪Here One Moment
LIANE MORIARTY
Genre: Literary Mystery
Pub Month: September
What the FUCK It’s About: Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”
Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
🔪So Thirsty
RACHEL HARRISON
Genre: Horror
Pub Month: September
What the FUCK It’s About: Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life.
Her husband surprises her with a birthday weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi.
Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.
The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.
🔪The Hitchcock Hotel
STEPHANIE WROBEL
Genre: Horror-Thriller
Pub Month: September
What the FUCK It’s About: Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.
🔪A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer (SCYTHE Mystery, #1)
MAXIE DARA
Genre: Urban Fantasy-Mystery
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Kathy Valence is forty-two, mid-divorce, and pregnant with her ex’s baby. She’s also a modern-day grim reaper employed by S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), but frankly that’s the easiest part of her life right now. Or at least it was, until her latest client’s soul goes missing.
When she finally tracks down seventeen-year-old Conner Ortiz, he angrily denies he died of natural causes, despite what his file says. He insists that someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E. murdered him, and he demands Kathy find out who and why.
Kathy has only forty-five days to figure out what happened to Conner and help him move on before the boy’s soul is doomed to roam the Earth as a ghost forever. She’s forced to rely on the help of her retired mentor, her almost ex-husband—and some sneaky moves by Conner himself. This is the wildest case of her career. . .and one wrong move could cost Kathy her job, not to mention her life.
🔪Killer House Party
LILY ANDERSON
Genre: YA Horror
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Red Solo cups? Check. Snacks? Check. Abandoned mansion full of countless horrors that won’t let you leave? Check.
The Deinhart Manor has been a looming shadow over town for as long as anyone can remember, and it’s been abandoned for even longer. When the final Deinhart descendent passes, the huge gothic manor is up for sale for the first time ever. Which means Arden can steal the keys from her mom’s real estate office…
It’s time for a graduation party that no one will ever forget. Arden and her best friends Maddy, Remi, and Shane, each have different reasons for wanting to throw the party to end all parties. But when the manor doors bar everyone inside and the walls begin to bleed, all anyone wants to do is make it out alive.
🔪The Boyfriend
FRIEDA MCFADDEN
Genre: Mystery-Thriller
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can’t shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.
Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He’s charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.
Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.
Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim…
🔪This Cursed House
DEL SANDEEN
Genre: Gothic-Horror
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
🔪The Book of Witching
CJ COOKE
Genre: Horror-Fantasy
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.
Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?
🔪The Last One at the Wedding
JASON REKULAK
Genre: Horror-Thriller
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.
He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.
🔪The Blue Hour
PAULA HAWKINS
Genre: Contemporary-Mystery
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge….
🔪It Will Only Hurt For a Moment
DELILAH S. DAWSON
Genre: Horror-Fiction
Pub Month: October
What the FUCK It’s About: Sarah Carpenter is starting over.
She’s on the run—leaving behind her unsupportive, narcissistic ex-boyfriend and alcoholic, abusive mother—and headed for a new beginning at Tranquil Falls, a secluded artists’ colony on the grounds of a closed hotel. There, with no cell signal or internet to distract her, she hopes to rediscover her love for pottery and put the broken pieces of her life back together.
But when Sarah uncovers the body of a young woman while digging a hole for a pit kiln, things start to fall apart. Her fellow artists begin to act in troubling ways. The eccentric fiber artist knits an endless scarf. The musician plays the same carousel song over and over until his fingers bleed. The calligrapher grins with ink-stained teeth. Not to mention the haunting dreams Sarah has night after night.
When she discovers glass shards in her clay, Sarah wonders if someone is out to get her—or if she’s losing her grip on reality out here in the wilds, where the pounding of the waterfall never, ever fades. As she investigates the beautiful valley and the crumbling resort looming over them all, she unearths a chilling past that refuses to remain buried . . .
🔪A Very Bad Thing
JT ELLISON
Genre: Mystery-Thriller
Pub Month: November
What the FUCK It’s About: A great writer knows when to deliver a juicy plot twist. But for one author, the biggest twist of all is her own murder.
With twenty hit titles, and a highly anticipated movie tie-in, celebrated novelist Columbia Jones is at the top of her game. Fans around the world adore her. But on the final night of her latest book tour, one face in the crowd makes the author collapse. And by the next morning, she’s lying dead in a pool of blood.
Columbia’s death shocks the world and leaves Darian, her daughter and publicist, reeling. The police have nothing to go on—at first. But then details emerge, pointing to the author’s illicit past. Turns out many people had motive to kill Columbia. And with a hungry reporter and frustrated cop on the trail, her secrets won’t stay buried long. But how many lives will they shatter as the truth comes out?
🔪Perfect Girl
TRACY BANGHART
Genre: Horror YA Horror
Pub Month: November
What the FUCK It’s About: Jessa has been raised to be the “perfect girl.” She is unfailingly polite, never rocks the boat, and always follows the rules―no matter what. Her friends love to give her a hard time for being such a goody-two-shoes, but Jessa likes it this way. She knows what’s expected of her, and she’s happy to be the person her parents (and society) want.
When a freak storm takes out the power during a sleepover at Jessa’s creepy, old house, things go south before the pizza gets cold. Her friends are at each other’s throats, unexpected guests keep showing up (some more welcome than others), and it’s not just her brother serving up jump scares. A killer looking for the perfect girl has targeted Jessa, and she’ll have to reject everything she’s been taught if she wants to keep herself―and her friends―alive until sunrise.
Who knew perfection could be so dangerous?
🔪You’re Dead to Me
AMY CHRISTINE PARKER
Genre: YA Horror
Pub Month: December
What the FUCK It’s About: Ruby is a scholarship senior at elite Oleander High School with a chip on her shoulder and an attitude to match—which she puts to good use as the infamous local anonymous gossip blogger ReputationKiller. When she’s outed as the voice behind the account, the entire town turns against her.
But after she’s scared witless by a vision of her own ghost dressed in a blood-splattered prom dress, she is faced with an awful truth. Someone out there doesn’t just hate her—they want her dead.
With less than a week until the prom, Ruby starts investigating. Turns out Oleander Bay isn’t the picture-perfect resort town it purports to be. With so many secrets, scandals, and people hell-bent on covering them up at all costs, the murderer could be anyone. Can Ruby beat the clock counting down to prom—and her death—and survive the night?
🔪What the Wife Knew
DARBY KANE
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Pub Month: December
What the FUCK It’s About: Dr. Richmond Dougherty is a renowned pediatric surgeon, an infamous tragedy survivor, and a national hero. He’s also very dead—thanks to a fall down the stairs. His neighbors angrily point a finger at the newest Ms. Dougherty, Addison. The sudden marriage to the mysterious young woman only lasted ninety-seven days, and he’d had two suspicious “accidents” during that time. Now Addison is a very rich widow.
As law enforcement starts to circle in on Addison and people in town become increasingly hostile, sides are chosen with Kathryn, Richmond’s high school sweetheart, wife number one, and the mother of his children, leading the fray. Despite rising tensions, Addison is even more driven to forge ahead on the path she charted years ago…
Determined at all costs to unravel Richmond’s legacy, she soon becomes a target—with a shocking note left on her bedroom You will pay. But it will take a lot more than faceless threats to stop Addison. Her plan to marry Richmond then ruin him may have been derailed by his unexpected death, but she’s not done with him yet.
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