Summer Reads with Random House: ‘Beware That Girl’ By Teresa Toten

‘Beware That Girl’ By Teresa Toten

The Haves. The Have Nots. Kate O’Brien appears to be a Have Not. Her whole life has been a series of setbacks she’s had to snake her way out of–some more sinister than others. But she’s determined to change that. She’s book smart. She’s street-smart. And she’s also a masterful liar.

As the scholarship student at the elite Waverly School in NYC, Kate has her work cut out for her: her plan is to climb the social ranks and land a spot at Yale. She’s already found her “people” among the senior class “it” girls–specifically in the cosseted, mega-wealthy yet deeply damaged Olivia Sumner. As for Olivia, she considers Kate the best friend she’s always needed, the sister she never had.

When the handsome and whip-smart Mark Redkin joins the Waverly administration as head of fundraising, he immediately charms his way into the faculty and students’ lives–especially Olivia’s, although she doesn’t share what’s going on. It becomes increasingly obvious that Redkin poses a threat to Kate, too, in a way she can’t reveal and can’t afford to ignore. Mark has his own plan for a bright future and never doubts that he can pull it off. How close can Kate and Olivia get with Mark without having to share their dark pasts?

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/241368/beware-girl#9780385678377

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘The Hatching’ By Ezekiel Boone

‘The Hatching’ By Ezekiel Boone

A local guide is leading wealthy tourists through a forest in Peru when a strange, black, skittering mass engulfs him and most of the party. FBI Agent Mike Rich is on a routine stakeout in Minneapolis when he’s suddenly called by the director himself to investigate a mysterious plane crash. A scientist studying earthquakes in India registers an unprecedented pattern in local seismic readings. The US president, her defence and national security advisers and her chief of staff are dumped into crisis mode when China “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb on a desolate region of its own country. As such unsettling occurrences mount, the president’s old friend (and her chief of staff’s ex-wife), spider expert Melanie Guyer, receives a box at her lab at American University that contains an ancient egg unearthed at a South American dig.

So begins The Hatching, the hair-raising saga of a single week in which an ancient, frighteningly predatory species of spider re-emerges in force. When the unusual egg in Melanie Guyer’s lab begins to vibrate and crack, she finds herself at the epicentre of this apocalyptic natural disaster. Working closely with her ex-husband and his very powerful boss, she has to find some way to stem the brutal tide of man-eating arachnids.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/535295/hatching#9780345816504

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘I Let You Go’ By Clare Mackintosh

‘I Let You Go’ By Clare Mackintosh

On a rainy afternoon, a mother’s life is shattered as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street . .

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past.

At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run. As they chase down one hopeless lead after another, they find themselves as drawn to each other as they are to the frustrating, twist-filled case before them. Elizabeth Haynes, author of Into the Darkest Corner, says, “I read I Let You Go in two sittings; it made me cry (at least twice), made me gasp out loud (once), and above all made me wish I’d written it . . . a stellar achievement.”

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/532414/i-let-you-go#9781101987513

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘In the Unlikely Event’ By Judy Blume

‘In the Unlikely Event’ By Judy Blume

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place—Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.

In the Unlikely Event is vintage Judy Blume, with all the hallmarks of Judy Blume’s unparalleled storytelling, and full of memorable characters who cope with loss, remember the good times and, finally, wonder at the joy that keeps them going.

Early reviewers have already weighed in: “Like many family stories, this one is not without its life-changing secrets and surprises. There is no surprise that the book is smoothly written, and its story compelling. The setting—the early 1950s—is especially well realized through period references and incidents.” —Booklist (starred review) and “In Blume’s latest adult novel . . . young and old alike must learn to come to terms with technological disaster and social change. Her novel is characteristically accessible, frequently charming and always deeply human.” —Publishers Weekly

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/248821/unlikely-event#9780385685085

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘Stalker’ By Lars Kepler

‘Stalker’ By Lars Kepler

The police receive a video clip of a woman in a window and reason that someone must have been standing in the garden just outside her house to be able to film her. The next day the woman is found dead in her home, the vicious violence of the scene shocks even the most seasoned investigators.

A few days later, another clip is sent anonymously to the police, but there’s no way of identifying the woman before she too falls victim to a brutal attack. When he finds her, the woman’s husband is so traumatized by the violent scene that, in a state of panic, he starts cleaning the house. He even washes the blood from his wife’s body and puts her to bed, as if nothing is the matter. He may have seen a vital clue but is in such an extreme state of shock, and seems to be suffering from short-term memory loss that the police cannot usefully question him.

Criminal psychiatrist and hypnotist Erik Maria Bark is called in hypnotize the man in order to unlock his memories of the murder scene. But what Dr Bark uncovers in his sessions with the dead woman’s husband make him decide to lie to the police.

It becomes clear that the case cannot be solved without the help of Detective Joona Linna, the man who’s been missing for more than a year and has been presumed dead.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/222700/stalker#9780771043499

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘Me Before You’ By Jojo Moyes

‘Me Before You’ By Jojo Moyes

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/251520/hopefuls#9780385685153

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘Serial Monogamy’ By Kate Taylor

‘Serial Monogamy’ By Kate Taylor

What happens when life and ambition collide with betrayal and disease? Sharon’s comfortable existence as a novelist, wife and mother to twin daughters is shattered by a cancer diagnosis, and by her husband’s affair with a graduate student. The only relief in sight is a new writing project—an engrossing serialized novel based on the story of the 19th-century actress Nelly Ternan, the young mistress of the aging Charles Dickens. Chronicling this infamous affair, Sharon is forced to examine with new eyes the secrets and struggles at the heart of domestic life, as she strives to mend her own marriage and heal her body. This surprising and intricate novel shifts between Sharon’s Toronto and Nelly’s Victorian England in interwoven chapters, asking deep questions about what really makes up the story of a relationship and a life.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/530290/serial-monogamy#9780385685634

Summer Reads with Random House: ‘Break in Case of Emergency’ By Jessica Winter

‘Break in Case of Emergency’ By Jessica Winter

An irreverent and deeply moving comedy about friendship, fertility, and fighting for one’s sanity in a toxic workplace.

Jen has reached her early thirties and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation’s ostensible aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas. Jen’s complicity in this passive-aggressive hellscape only intensifies her feelings of inferiority compared to her two best friends—one a wealthy attorney with a picture-perfect family, the other a passionately committed artist—as does Jen’s apparent inability to have a baby, a source of existential panic that begins to affect her marriage and her already precarious status at the office. As Break in Case of Emergency unfolds, a fateful art exhibition, a surreal boondoggle adventure in Belize, and a devastating personal loss conspire to force Jen to reckon with some hard truths about herself and the people she loves most.

Jessica Winter’s ferociously intelligent debut novel is a wry satire of celebrity do-goodism as well as an exploration of the difficulty of navigating friendships as they shift to accommodate marriage and family, and the unspoken tensions that can strain even the strongest bonds.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/252908/break-case-emergency#9781101946145

Summer Reads: ‘Upping Your Ziggy: How David Bowie Faced His Childhood Demons – and How You Can Face Yours’ by Oliver James

‘Upping Your Ziggy: How David Bowie Faced His Childhood Demons – and How You Can Face Yours’ by Oliver James

David Bowie was one of the most famous men of his generation, and remains one of the greatest rock stars of all time. But while his flamboyant career in the public eye has been well documented, much less is known about his family history.

In this new book psychologist Oliver James, bestselling author of They F*** You Up, Affluenza and Not in Your Genes, explores the mental illnesses that afflicted members of Bowie’s family, and Bowie’s fear that he too was destined for insanity.

Three of his aunts became psychotic and his grandmother declared the family cursed. His half brother Terry also became psychotic, hallucinating a visitation from God, the famous ‘crack in the sky and a hand pointing down to me’ about which Bowie sang. These family crises left Bowie afflicted with a fear of madness. His music and stage personae during the 1970s were his way of eluding it.

Born David Jones, he dubbed himself Bowie. During 1973 there were periods in which he actually believed he was Ziggy Stardust. Through Ziggy, and other subsequent personas including Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke, he engaged in an internal dialogue played out on an international stage from which he eventually emerged as the emotionally healthy man who died in January this year.

If most exceptional achievement derives from childhood adversity, so does nearly all mental illness. His brother Terry passed through the door marked ‘Madness’. Bowie opened it, took a good look around and then passed through the adjoining one, marked ‘Artistic Self-Expression’.

Using Bowie’s example, Oliver James shows the therapeutic value to us all of personas, illustrated with cases from his work as a therapist. He demonstrates how we can convert the lead of childhood adversity into the gold of emotional health through identifying the roots of our many selves and choosing who we become.

http://us.karnacbooks.com/product/upping-your-ziggy-how-david-bowie-faced-his-childhood-demons-/39019/