And we have finally arrived at the last month of the year! It didn’t seem like we would ever get to the end of the year, but we finally made it to the end of 2022. While you are busy with holiday shopping and cooking, you think that you may not have enough time to wind down and relax with a good read. Although this month has fewer book releases than previous months, what is lacking in quantity, makes up in quality. December 2022 is closing out the year with some compelling reads. Relax with intriguing stories ranging from a plane crash to a heist on an ocean linear that are perfect for ringing in the new year.
Featured Book of the Month
No Accident by Laura Bates
No matter how you try to hide it, the truth will always come out . . .
When a small plane crash ends with a group of seven teens washed up on a deserted island, their first thought is survival. With supplies dwindling and the fear of being stranded forever becoming more of a reality, they quickly discover that being the most popular kid in high school doesn’t help when you’re fighting to stay alive.
And when strange and terrifying accidents start to occur all around them, the group realizes that they are being targeted by someone who was on the plane, and that the island isn’t their only danger. A terrible secret from a party the night before the flight has followed them ashore–and it’s clear that someone is looking for justice. Now survival depends on facing the truth about that party: who was hurt that night, and who let it happen? (Credit: Sourcebook Fire)
How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon : The Story of the 19th-Century Innovators Who Forged Our Future by Iwan Rhys Morus
The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization. And to get us there, they created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilization of the resources of the British Empire.
With their expert culture of accuracy and precision, they created telegraphs and telephones, electric trams and railways, built machines that could think, and devised engines that could reach for the skies. When Cyrus Field’s audacious plan to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic finally succeeded in 1866, it showed how science, properly disciplined, could make new worlds. As crowds flocked to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the exhibitions its success inaugurated, they came to see the future made fact—to see the future being built before their eyes.
In this rich and absorbing book, a distinguished historian of science tells the story of how this future was made. From Charles Babbage’s dream of mechanizing mathematics to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s tunnel beneath the Thames to George’s Cayley’s fantasies of powered flight and Nikola Tesla’s visions of an electrical world, it is a story of towering personalities, clashing ambitions, furious rivalries and conflicting cultures—a rich tapestry of remarkable lives that transformed the world beyond recognition and ultimately took mankind to the Moon. (Credit: Pegasus Books)
The Earl and the Pharaoh: From the Real Downton Abbey to the Discovery of Tutankhamun by The Countess of Carnarvon
In November 1922, the world was mesmerized by news of an astonishing historical find in Egypt’s legendary Valley of Kings: the discovery of the tomb of the Egyptian Pharoah Tutankhamun. George Herbert, himself a famed amateur Egyptologist and noted antiquities collector, financed the expedition and excavation headed by lead archaeologist Howard Carter, and accompanied him inside this sacred space that had remained untouched for centuries.
Inside the tomb, the explorers found King Tut’s sarcophagus and a treasure trove of astonishing artifacts: chariots and model boats, board games and paintings, a coffin made of pure gold. But these objects were more than just beautifully crafted works of art; they shed new light on Tutankhamun world and this fabled period of history, and changed our understanding of how the ancient Egyptians had lived–transforming overnight what had been formed through centuries of history and myth.
Drawing on Highclere Castle’s archives, the Countess of Carnarvon pays homage to her ancestor on the 100th anniversary of this extraordinary event. In vivid and dramatic detail, she brings into focus the larger-than-life characters and lustrous settings–as well as those twists of luck and tragedies that shaped Herbert’s life. Across the early 1900s, Highclere saw no less drama than the fictional Downton Abbey, with early tragedies for the Earl and love affairs, as well highs of exorbitant wealth and trials of punishing debt. But above all there was adventure. While Herbert first went to Egypt for his health, this mysterious, romantic land would become a second home; the beloved place where he funneled his attentions over a period of decades, never quite realizing how great the fruits of his labors would prove. (Credit: Harper)
The Bird Tattoo by Dunya Mikhail
Helen is a young Yazidi woman, living with her family in a mountain village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. One day she finds a local bird caught in a trap, and frees it, just as the trapper, Elias, returns. At first angry, he soon sees the error of his ways and vows never to keep a bird captive again.
Helen and Elias fall deeply in love, marry and start a family in Sinjar. The village has seemed to stand apart from time, protected by the mountains and too small to attract much political notice. But their happy existence is suddenly shattered when Elias, a journalist, goes missing. A brutal organization is sweeping over the land, infiltrating even the remotest corners, its members cloaking their violence in religious devotion. Helen’s search for her husband results in her own captivity and enslavement.
She eventually escapes her captors and is reunited with some of her family. But her life is forever changed. Elias remains missing and her sons, now young recruits to the organization, are like strangers. Will she find harmony and happiness again? (Credit: Pegasus Books)
The Opportunist by Elyse Friedman
When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, his twenty-eight-year-old nurse, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May-December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana, a hardworking single mom, has more important things to worry about.
But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive and persuade Alana to fly to their father’s West Coast island retreat to perform one simple task in their plan to make the gold digger go away. Kelly, however, proves a lot more wily than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Just how far will her siblings go to retain control? (Credit: Mira)
Young Bloomsbury : The Generation That Redefined Love, Freedom, and Self-Expression in 1920s England by Nino Strachey
In the years before the First World War, a collection of writers and artists–Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey among them–began to make a name for themselves in England and America for their irreverent spirit and provocative works of literature, art, and criticism. They called themselves the Bloomsbury Group and by the 1920s, they were at the height of their influence.
Then a new generation stepped forward–creative young people who tantalized their elders with their captivating looks, bold ideas, and subversive energy. Young Bloomsbury introduces us to this colorful cast of characters, including novelist Eddy Sackville-West, who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet; artist Stephen Tomlin, who sculpted the heads of his male and female lovers; and author Julia Strachey, who wrote a searing tale of blighted love. Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives.
The group had always celebrated sexual equality and freedom in private, feeling that every person had the right to live and love in the way they chose. But as transgressive self-expression became more public, this younger generation gave Old Bloomsbury a new voice. Revealing an aspect of history not yet explored and with “effervescent detail” (Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake), Young Bloomsbury celebrates an open way of living and loving that would not be embraced for another hundred years. (Credit: Atria Books)
You Never Said Goodbye by Luca Veste
Sam Cooper is on the verge of a happy life–a true feat after his disastrous childhood. Sam’s mother, Laurie, died tragically and his father was torn apart by grief. But now after years of silence, Sam’s father makes a shocking confession on his deathbed.
Who was Laurie Cooper? What happens when you discover you’ve been lied to for twenty-five years? Sam is determined to find out, but someone wants to silence the truth forever. Following a trail from London to Connecticut, Sam will have to uncover exactly what his mother did and why–no matter the cost. (Credit: Sourcebooks Landmark)
The Album by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Even in the early 1930s, Crescent Place is a neighborhood out of the past. The five Victorian mansions and the remote patch of pasture placed between them have the air of the 1890s, even as the city–once miles away from this idyllic retreat–encroaches and surrounds the enclave. But while these rarified residences may appear calm on the outside, their isolated interiors contain dark secrets, prolonged feuds, and generations of high-toned trouble.
In these houses are a husband and wife who fight constantly, and another couple who hasn’t spoken to each other in two decades. There is a widow in permanent mourning and a daughter whom the newspapers call psychotic. And there is a bedridden old woman who is about to be killed with an ax.
When her murder shatters the well-mannered quiet of the cul-de-sac, the tabloids delight in trumpeting Crescent Place’s peculiarities. But as the search for the killer intensifies, it becomes clear that the area’s strangest secrets have yet to be revealed. (Credit: American Mystery Classics)
The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev
When sixty-five-year-old Bindu Desai inherits a million dollars, she’s astounded–and horrified. The windfall threatens to expose a shameful mistake from her youth. Desperate to keep the secret, Bindu quickly spends it on something unexpected: a condo in a posh retirement community in Florida.
The impulsive decision blindsides Bindu’s daughter-in-law, Aly. At forty-seven, Aly still shares a home with Bindu even after her divorce from Bindu’s son. But maybe this change is just the push Aly needs to fight for the segment she’s been promised for years at the news station where she works.
As Bindu and Aly navigate their new dynamic, Aly’s daughter, Cullie, is faced with losing the business that made her a tech-world star. The only way to save it is to deliver a new idea to her investors–and of course they want the half-baked dating app she pitched them in a panic. Problem is, Cullie has never been on a real date. Naturally, enlisting her single mother and grandmother to help her with the research is the answer. (Credit: Mindy’s Book Studio)
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature. (Credit: Grand Central Publishing)
Sunburn by Andi Watson and Simon Gane
Rachel is a teenager who lives a grey suburban life in grey suburban England. It’s a world of scrambled eggs every Tuesday, brown sauce and warm beer. With her summer already mapped out for her, a job working at the butcher and a caravan holiday in Clacton, she longs to be treated as an adult. When a family friend invites her to spend the summer with them in Greece she jumps at the chance to escape her life. The Warners are everything her parents are not, glamorous, sophisticated and carefree. When Rachel meets Benjamin, the handsome young friend of the Warners, she soon learns that on a small island everyone knows each other’s business and feels the pain of growing up. (Credit: Image Comics)
A Dash of Salt and Pepper by Kosoko Jackson
Xavier Reynolds is doing less than stellar. He just got dumped, was passed over for a prestigious fellowship, and to top it all off he’s right back home in Harper’s Cove, Maine (population: 9,000). The last thing he wants to do is to work as a prep chef in the kitchen of the hip new restaurant in town, The Wharf. Especially since the hot, single-father chef who owns it can’t delegate to save his life.
Logan O’Hare doesn’t understand Xavier or why every word out of his mouth is dipped in sarcasm. Unfortunately, he has no choice but to hire him–he needs more help in the kitchen and his tween daughter, Anne, can only mince so many onions. It might be a recipe for disaster, but Logan doesn’t have many options besides Xavier.
Stuck between a stove and a hot place, Logan and Xavier discover an unexpected connection. But when the heat between them threatens to top the Scoville scale, they’ll have to decide if they can make their relationship work or if life has seasoned them too differently. (Credit: Berkley Books)
Rogues’ Gallery Vol. 1 by Hannah Rose May and illustrated by Justin Mason
Expected Publication Date: December 13
After years portraying the popular comic book character, The Red Rogue, Maisie Wade is desperate to hang up the spandex suit. When her exit from the Red Rogue’s TV series leads to its unceremonious cancellation, Maisie finds herself trapped in her home by a group of unhinged intruders. Cosplaying as the character’s archvillains, these fans want to teach Maisie a lesson. To survive the night, Maisie must become the hero she has grown to despise. (Credit: Image Comics)
The Tudors in Love : Passion and Politics in the Age of England’s Most Famous Dynasty by Sarah Gristwood
Expected Publication Date: December 13
Why did Henry VIII marry six times? Why did Anne Boleyn have to die? Why did Elizabeth I’s courtiers hail her as a goddess come to earth?
The dramas of courtly love have captivated centuries of readers and dreamers. Yet too often they’re dismissed as something existing only in books and song–those old legends of King Arthur and chivalric fantasy.
Not so. In this ground-breaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals the way courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty. From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant’ of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors, the Tudors re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature. The Tudors in Love dissects the codes of love, desire and power, unveiling romantic obsessions that have shaped the history of the world. (Credit: St. Martin’s Press)
A Million To One by Adiba Jaigirdar
Expected Publication Date: December 13
Josefa is an unapologetic and charismatic thief, who loves the thrill of the chase. She has her eye on her biggest mark yet–the RMS Titanic, the most luxurious ship in the world. But she isn’t interested in stealing from wealthy first-class passengers onboard. No, she’s out for the ultimate prize: the Rubiyat, a one of a kind book encrusted with gems that’s worth millions.
Josefa can’t score it alone, so she enlists a team of girls with unique talents: Hinnah, a daring acrobat and contortionist; Violet, an actress and expert dissembler; and Emilie, an artist who can replicate any drawing by hand.
They couldn’t be more different and yet they have one very important thing in common: their lives depend on breaking into the vault and capturing the Rubiyat. But careless mistakes, old grudges, and new romance threaten to jeopardize everything they’ve worked for and put them in incredible danger when tragedy strikes.
While the odds of pulling off the heist are slim, the odds of survival are even slimmer…(Credit: HarperCollins)
A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino
Expected Publication Date: December 13
In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo an unusual statue of a Japanese mythic beast – a kirin – stands guard over the district from the classic Nihonbashi bridge. In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the bridge and collapses right under the statue of the winged beast. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold, goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man was not passed out, he was dead; that he was not drunk, he was stabbed in the chest. However, where he died was not where the crime was committed – the key to solving the crime is to find out where he was attacked and why he made such a super human effort to carry himself to the Nihonbashi Bridge. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.
Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder – and must bring his skills to bear to uncover what actually happened that night on the Nihonbashi bridge. What, if any, connection is there between the murdered man and Yashima, the young man caught with his wallet? Kaga’s investigation takes him down dark roads and into the unknown past to uncover what really happened and why. (Credit: Minotaur Books)
Heartbreak Boys by Simon James Green
Expected Publication Date: December 20
When their ex-boyfriends get together and start Instagramming a disgustingly perfect summer of love, Jack and Nate decide to concoct a mutual Insta-worthy summer adventure of their own to prove they’re just fine and everything’s great.
Of course, it’s hard to have an epic summer road trip when they’re stuck in a van with Nate’s mid-life crisis-bound parents and his annoying younger sister. And it’s been years since Jack and Nate have said more than a few sentences to each other. But their followers don’t have to know any of that.
How hard could faking the high life be? Posting as @TheHeartBreakBoys, the duo stumbles into one hilarious situation after another–and each discover that maybe the cure for heartbreak has been the boy riding next to him all along. (Credit: Clarion Books)
Friday, Book Two: On a Cold Winter’s Night by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Marcos Martin
A young adult detective hero finally grows up, in this Eisner-winning hit series from creators Ed Brubaker (RECKLESS, FRIEND OF THE DEVIL, PULP, KILL OR BE KILLED) and Marcos Martin (THE PRIVATE EYE, Daredevil).
Friday Fitzhugh’s best friend and partner, Lancelot Jones (the smartest boy in the world) has been killed, and the police in their small town of King’s Hill are not up to the task of solving the crime. Now, Friday must pull herself out of her grief and hunt the cold winter night for justice, all on her own this time. (Credit: Image Comics)
One Last Secret by Adele Parks
Expected Publication Date: December 27
Everyone has secrets, don’t they?
One last client
A week at a beautiful chateau in the south of France—it should be a straightforward final job for Dora. She’s a smart, stunning and discreet escort, and Daniel has paid for her services before. This time, all she has to do is to convince the assembled guests that she is his girlfriend. Dora is used to playing roles and being whatever men want her to be. It’s all about putting on a front.
One last chance
It will be a last, luxurious look at how the other half lives before Dora turns her back on the escort world and all its dangers. She has found someone she loves and trusts. With him, she can escape the life she’s trapped in. But when Dora arrives at the chateau, it quickly becomes obvious that nothing is what it seems…
One last secret
Dora finds herself face-to-face with a man she has never forgotten, the one man who really knows her. And as old secrets surface, it becomes terrifyingly apparent that one last secret could cost Dora her life…(Credit: Mira)
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cup of tea with that book, please 