Book Mail – Summer/Fall Book Stack

So yesterday I was able to get some great book mail to make the muggy weather tolerable! My summer TBR is shaping up nicely 🙂

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books, Blackstone Publishing, and Kensington Books for the free copies in exchange for my honest reviews.

WE, THE JURY – Robert Rotstein (Releasing October 23rd, 2018)

LITTLE SISTER – Isabel Ashdown (Releasing June 26th, 2018)

SISTER OF MINE – Laurie Petrou (Releasing August 7th, 2018)

LAST GIRL GONE – J.G. Hetherton (Releasing June 12th, 2018)

THE GUILTY DEAD – P.J. Tracy (Releasing September 11th, 2018)

Here are the synopses:

WE, THE JURY – Robert Rotstein

Told from the perspective of over a dozen participants in a murder trial, We, the Jury examines how public perception can mask the ghastliest nightmares. On the day before his twenty-first wedding anniversary, David Sullinger buried an ax in his wife’s skull. Now, eight jurors must retire to the deliberation room and decide whether David committed premeditated murder-or whether he was a battered spouse who killed his wife in self-defense.The path to justice is fraught with surprising pitfalls and confusing turns. An experienced, fair-minded judge mistakenly tells the jury that David is guilty and fears she’s losing her mind. The bailiff, once a decorated street cop but now a pariah in the sheriff’s department, must fend off the sexual advances of an amoral juror. An unscrupulous tabloid reporter tries to tamper with the justice system. Once inside the deliberation room, the jurors elect as foreperson an insecure, addled file clerk, who gets the job because no one else wants it. Despite-or perhaps because of-her delusions of grandeur, she loses control of the deliberations, allowing a juror known as the Housewife to monopolize the discussion. A buttoned-up jury consultant uses her professional experience to challenge her colleagues’ preconceived notions about the evidence. An apparently sweet grandmother turns out to be anything but. A Methodist minister sits silently, concealing a shocking secret that could change everything. As the jurors stagger toward a verdict, they must sift through contradictory testimony from the Sullinger’s children, who disagree on which parent was Satan; sort out conflicting allegations of severe physical abuse, adultery, and incest; and overcome personal animosities that threaten a fair and just verdict. Ultimately, the central figures in We, the Jury must navigate the blurred boundaries between bias and objectivity, fiction and truth.

LITTLE SISTER – Isabel Ashdown

No one knows you better than a sister–your dreams, your fears, your mistakes, and all your secrets.

It was just that way when Jess and her older sister, Emily, were children. Born barely a year apart, they were deeply entwined, complementing each other in their differences. When Jess felt awkward and shy, Emily, the consummate big sister, was happy to take the lead.

After a long estrangement, they’ve become close again. Jess moves into the comfortable Isle of Wight home Emily shares with her husband, step-daughter, and toddler. Any misgivings about the past are swept away and forgotten.

And then, on New Year’s Eve, little Daisy disappears while in Jess’s care.

Jess is in shock, unable to remember what happened. Emily, traumatized, watches helplessly as her life unravels. But as the search intensifies and the police detective’s questions grow more pointed, a different picture emerges. Behind the image of a seemingly happy family–Daisy’s doting teenage sister, Chloe, loving father and husband, James, and siblings Emily and Jess–there are devastating deceptions and long-ago choices that can never be unmade. And underlying everything is the story of what really happened to drive Emily and Jess apart years ago.

Unfolding through shifting perspectives, Little Sister is a brilliantly plotted, dark, and constantly surprising tale of love, rivalry, and broken loyalty that reveals how far one sister might go to protect–or destroy–another . . .

SISTER OF MINE – Laurie Petrou

A debut novel of domestic suspense in the vein of Liane Moriarty, Shari Lapena and Claire Douglas about two sisters bound together by a murder

Penny and Hattie have always only had each other—their father left long ago and their mother died in a sudden tragic accident. Penny has always watched out for Hattie, even when she felt usurped by her younger, more vivacious sibling. When Penny’s marriage turns sour and her once-charming husband becomes controlling and abusive, who does she turn to for help but Hattie? An unguarded cigarette, helped along by a few conveniently lit matches and some sleeping pills, creates a deadly fire that frees Penny from an unimaginable life, but not without a cost. The weight of their secret binds the two sisters together, for better or worse. When a new man enters their lives, the twists deepen and the secrets compound. Meanwhile, incidents of arson begin to break out locally and the detective who investigated the death of Penny’s husband develops renewed interest in the case, threatening to unravel all their secrets.

LAST GIRL GONE – J.G. Hetherton

This pulse-pounding series debut is the next obsession for fans of Julia Keller and David Bell, and readers of unflinching thrillers.

Sometimes, the journey home is the most harrowing. And it’s every parent’s worst nightmare.

Investigative journalist Laura Chambers is back in her tiny hometown of Hillsborough, North Carolina, the one place she swore never to return. Fired from the Boston Globe, her career in shambles, she reluctantly takes a job with the local paper. The work is simple, unimportant, and worst of all, boring―at least until a missing girl turns up dead, the body impeccably clean, dressed to be the picture of innocence.

Years earlier, ten-year-old Patty Finch left home and never made it back. But for the people of Hillsborough, Patty was just the beginning. Child after child disappeared, a reign of terror the town desperately wants to forget. Now that terror has returned to seize another girl. And another. And another.

This is the story Laura’s been waiting for―her one last chance to get back onto the front page. She dives deeper into a case that runs colder by the second, only to discover the truth may be far closer to home than she could have ever imagined. Powerful, intricate, and tense, Last Girl Gone will have you looking over your shoulder long after the last page.

THE GUILTY DEAD – P.J. Tracy

The Guilty Dead is the ninth book in P.J. Tracy’s addictive and internationally bestselling Monkeewrench series.

Gregory Norwood, wealthy businessman and close friend of Minnesota’s leading candidate for Governor, is found dead on the first anniversary of his son’s drug overdose. It seems clear to Detectives Gino and Magozzi that grief drove him to suicide.

Until they realise the left-handed man seems to have used his right hand to pull the trigger.

And they find the second body.

As the seemingly open-and-shut case becomes a murder enquiry, the detectives begin to delve into the dark secrets of one of the city’s most powerful families. It seems the murders are not the first in the Norwoods’ tragic story – and they won’t be the last . . .