New Fiction

Lost Believers

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women

by Lisa See

available in June, hardcover, Scribner

It is hard to find words to describe how deeply moved I was by the story of Tan Yunxian and the women around her. Sometimes the most powerful historic novels aren’t about the major events we hear about all the time. Instead, the power comes from small ways in which people who face adversity throughout history hold each other up and carve their place in time. –Kiana

The St. Ambrose School for Girls

by Jessica Ward

available in July, hardcover, Gallery

Queen bee Greta Stanhope picks Sarah Taylor as a target from day one and the most popular, horrible girl at school is relentless in making sure Sarah knows what the pecking order is. Thankfully, Sarah makes an ally out of her roommate Ellen and Nick Hollis, the devastatingly handsome RA. Between Ellen and Nick, Sarah hopes she can make it through the semester, dealing with not only her schoolwork and a recent bipolar diagnosis, but Greta’s increasingly malicious pranks. She’s determined not to give Greta the satisfaction of breaking her. But when scandal unfolds, and someone ends up dead, her world threatens to unravel in ways she could never have imagined. The St. Ambrose School for Girls is a dangerous, delicious, twisty coming-of-age tale that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

An Astronomer in Love

by Antoine Laurain

available in June, hardcover, Gallic

Books

In 1760, Guillaume le Gentil, real-life astronomer to King Louis XV, sets out for the oceans of India to document the transit of Venus. The weather is turbulent, the seas are rough and his quest may be more complicated than initially thought. 250 years later, estate agent Xavier Lemercier chances upon Guillaume’s telescope in a property he’s sold. As he looks out across the rooftops of Paris, he discovers an intriguing woman with a zebra in her apartment. Then the woman walks through the doors of his office, and his life changes forever.

by Irina Zhorov

available in August, hardcover, Scribner

Galina, a promising young geologist from Moscow, is falling in love with her pilot, Snow Crane, on a trip exploring for minerals in Siberia. Agafia was born in Siberia into a family of Old Believers, a small sect of Christians who rejected the reforms that shaped the modern Russian Orthodox church. Galina and Snow Crane are the first people she has ever met outside of her immediate family. As the two women develop a friendship, each becomes conflicted about futures that once seemed certain—and each is hindered by the immovable forces shaping their lives.

Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle available in August, hardcover, Pegasus Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist in a world of men. As she patiently goes from lesson to lesson, perfecting her craft, a mysterious tutor enters her life. Tassi is a dashing figure, handsome and worldly. But then a violent act threatens Artemisia’s honor, and her virtue. She has accused her painting teacher of the darkest betrayal; he accuses her of being an immoral liar. What really happened, and why will this trial scandalize seventeenth-century Rome?

Burn the Negative

by Josh Winning

available in July, hardcover, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

This page-turning thriller follows the main character Laura who is uncovering all of her skeletons in the closet that have come back to haunt her (literally and figuratively). It is all of your favorite aspects of horror movies in a novel—I found it very hard to put down. –Maddie

Dances

by Nicole Cuffy

available now, hardcover, One World

A provocative and lyrical debut novel follows a trailblazing Black ballerina who must reconcile the ever-rising stakes of her grueling career with difficult questions of love, loss, and her journey to self-liberation, from a sensuous new voice in fiction.