Thank you to Harper Books for spoiling me with these free early copies in exchange for my honest reviews!
THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEAR – Jacqueline Winspear (Releasing March 23rd, 2021)
DUST OFF THE BONES – Paul Howarth (Releasing June 8th, 2021)
THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B DU BOIS – Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Releasing May 4th, 2021)
HOW LUCKY – Will Leitch (Releasing May 11th, 2021)
Book Descriptions:
THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEAR – Jacqueline Winspear (Releasing March 23rd, 2021)
As Europe buckles under Nazi occupation, Maisie Dobbs investigates a possible murder that threatens devastating repercussions for Britain’s war efforts in this latest installment in the New York Times bestselling mystery series.
September 1941. While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a message runner for a government office, witnesses an argument that ends in murder. Crouching in the doorway of a bombed-out house, Freddie waits until the coast is clear. But when he arrives at the delivery address, he’s shocked to come face to face with the killer.
Dismissed by the police when he attempts to report the crime, Freddie goes in search of a woman he once met when delivering a message: Maisie Dobbs. While Maisie believes the boy and wants to help, she must maintain extreme caution: she’s working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots the killer in a place she least expects. She soon realizes she’s been pulled into the orbit of a man who has his own reasons to kill—reasons that go back to the last war.
As Maisie becomes entangled in a power struggle between Britain’s intelligence efforts in France and the work of Free French agents operating across Europe, she must also contend with the lingering question of Freddie Hackett’s state of mind. What she uncovers could hold disastrous consequences for all involved in this compelling chapter of the “series that seems to get better with every entry”
DUST OFF THE BONES – Paul Howarth (Releasing June 8th, 2021)
The author of the acclaimed Only Killers and Thieves returns to 1890s Australia in this powerful sequel that follows the story of Tommy and Billy McBride, the widow of their family’s killer Katherine Sullivan, and the infamous Native Police officer Edmund Noone.
In 1890, estranged brothers Tommy and Billy McBride are living far apart in Queensland, each dealing with the trauma that destroyed their family in different ways. Now 21, Billy bottles his guilt and justifies his crimes while attempting to revive his father’s former cattle run. He’s drawn to his boss’s widow, Katherine Sullivan, yet refuses to confront his feelings for her. Katherine cherishes her newfound independence, and struggles to establish herself as head of the vast Broken Ridge cattle empire her corrupt late husband controlled with violence and money.
But even in the outback, the past cannot stay buried forever. When the McBride family murders and the subsequent reprisal slaughter of the Kurrong people become the subjects of a judicial inquest, both Billy and infamous Police Inspector Edmund Noone are called to testify. The inquiry forces Billy to relive events he has long refused to face. He desperately needs to find his brother, Tommy, who for years has been surviving in the wilderness with Arthur, the McBrides’ Indigenous stockman. But Billy is not the only one looking for Tommy. The ruthless Noone is determined to find the young man as well, and silence the brothers for good.
An enthralling, propulsive adventure that builds in suspense, told in gorgeous prose and steeped in history and atmosphere, Dust Off the Bones raises timeless issues of injustice, honor, morality, endemic racism, and violence. With an unflinching eye, Paul Howarth examines the cruelty of power and the brutal realities of life in a world familiar to our own.
THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B DU BOIS – Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Releasing May 4th, 2021)
The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.
HOW LUCKY – Will Leitch (Releasing May 11th, 2021)
For readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Nothing to See Here, a first novel as suspenseful and funny as it is moving, the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man grappling with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door.
Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair.
Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped.
How Lucky is the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man grappling with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door.
Jessicamap Reviews 
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