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A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

The post Yesteryear first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

From the author of the acclaimed The World Wasn’t Ready for You comes a thrilling first novel, set in a near future where artificial intelligence runs the world, involving a young medical student who must unravel family secrets to uncover the truth of his father’s mysterious death.

In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system controlled by an all powerful corporation. The Shepherd Organization oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok.

But after his father—himself a physician—dies under mysterious circumstance that seems connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule.

What is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past?

The post The Hospital at the End of the World first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

In this pacy thriller, a female con artist chooses the wrong woman as her target, and both women end up on the run for their lives.

Avalon Dale is a masterful grifter. She researches her victims thoroughly, kidnaps and sedates them, cleans out their bank accounts, and uses injections and hair clippers to change their appearance so that when they wake up, they can’t easily prove who they are. It gives her a head start and a new identity to get away. She’s targeted Primrose Meath for her last big score, and then she’ll fade away to a life of ease and luxury–something she’s dreamed of since a very tough childhood.

On paper, Prim is the perfect target: wealthy, workaholic, and distracted by her cheating husband. But when Avalon finds Prim’s husband dead, she can’t get away so easily–not when the person whose identity she was about to steal is wanted for murder. The two women, opposites, enemies, are suddenly on the run together, and must learn to get along, to depend on each other, in order to get away. And then, what starts as a cat-and-mouse run to the coast of England becomes a fight for their survival.

The post Harmless Women first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Short, sharp, and expertly crafted, this realistic YA is a portrait of a girl who will do whatever it takes to carve out a place for herself in the world.

Destiny cannot count on anyone but herself. Her mother has struggled with addiction for all of Destiny’s seventeen years, moving them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend—including a particularly dark period in Texas, where Destiny ended up in a psychiatric hospital. But now they’re in a small town in a new state and her mother’s new boyfriend is sober and stable. And even more remarkable, Destiny has caught the eye of local golden boy Ryan.

But Destiny’s fairy tale bubble bursts when Ryan says their summer romance has to give way to football season. Destiny spirals hard, retreating into the same delusional and dissociative patterns that landed her in psychiatric care as a child, but this time the breakdown culminates in a pregnancy that can’t possibly be real.

Destiny’s skill as an artist is alternately a lifeline and a millstone as she struggles to resurface and reconnect with reality.

The post Girl Reflected in Knife first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Riveting stories brought to life in a novel brimming with factual accuracy, beautiful prose, and historical characters.

The Nazi regime’s bloody wake in Europe persists as they brutally send “undesirables” to their deaths in concentration camps. As a young Jew, Hannah leaves behind her mother and sister as she flees certain death, arriving in Le Chambon in search of refuge.

Driven by their deeply rooted faith in God, Protestant pastor André Trocmé and his formidable wife, Magda, have turned the unassuming community in the foothills of the French Alps into a quiet resistance-a haven where they shelter escapees from Hitler’s ever-tightening fist. It’s here that an author pens his Nobel Prize-winning novel and finds answers to his questions about God; and just outside the village borders, a one-legged female American spy sets up an operation to organize the French Resistance.

But a sadistic crew is on the rise. Under the supervision of the Butcher of Lyon, Gestapo officer Herr Lauer pursues the Jewish girl. Hannah was in his sights, but when she evaded him, his explosive rage and thirst for revenge set him on a spiraling mission to track her down-leading him straight to Le Chambon.

With lyrical prose and historical accuracy, Mark Buchanan weaves together a thrilling narrative from the real-life stories of a pastor, refugee, spy, and author, tangled together in a plot against the Reich.

The post What Is Left of the Night first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

We Need to Talk about Kevin as if written by Jason Reynolds and Tananarive Due meets Model Home by Rivers Solomon in an innovative twist on the haunted house novel: about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project.

Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.

Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.

But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.

Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price . . .

Story Locale: Present day, Housing project in fictional Michigan town

The post The Curse of Hester Gardens first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

A contemporary YA with a speculative twist about a college-bound girl who is struck by lightning and a storm cloud attuned to her emotions begins to follow her everywhere.

“I was struck by lightning and now there’s rain following me around. I was struck by lightning and now there’s rain following me around.”

Megh is a Desi girl whose plans to escape to college on the West Coast are complicated when she gets struck by lightning in the first week of a prestigious summer internship. What results is a storm cloud that follows her everywhere, which seems to react in direct response to her emotions. Megh’s struggles with depression, fear of leaving her home and loved ones, and uncertainty about her future cause the cloud to act up, and in order not to disrupt her future she’s determined to find a way to control her feelings–with the help of a fellow intern with kind eyes and warm smile.

With its sweet friends-to-lovers romance, beautiful female friendships, and an original and sensitive take on what it’s like to struggle with strong negative emotions, RIGHT AS RAIN has the emotional complexity and fantastical elements of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER and the modern attitude of EMERGENCY CONTACT. It’s the perfect laugh/cry read to accompany a hot, humid New York summer: charming and poignant and an all-around winsome teen read that speaks to living with depression honestly and movingly.

The post Right as Rain first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Joshua Donnelly has lived a careful, orderly life in the old house on Church Street, as his mama taught him. Then, on the coldest night of the year, a newborn baby appears in his care with no explanation and no instructions. Only a prayer answered in the most unexpected way.

Heather Thomas arrives in Peculiar carrying her own heartbreak, running from mistakes she cannot undo. When her path crosses Josh’s, the two form a fragile, improbable unit built on kindness, faith, and more hope than sense.

As gossip swirls, authorities ask questions, and the town watches closely, Josh and Heather must decide whether to trust coincidence or believe some gifts are heaven-sent.

A Most Peculiar Providence is a tender small-town novel about grace, second chances, and the quiet miracles that arrive when love opens the door.

The post A Most Peculiar Providence first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect.

1937. It’s been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. Even so, evidence of the Dust Bowl’s grim impact on families, especially on the women who bear the brunt of their husbands’ frustration and their children’s hunger, is everywhere.

When Martha Helen’s compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, she quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Suspicion, jealousy, and prejudice grip their neighbors – and emotions reach a frenzy after Martha Helen’s best friend, Frankie, disappears and is then found murdered. Ultimately, Martha Helen is forced to make sense of her conflicting feelings and loyalties in order to help find retribution and to reconcile the difference between the law and justice.

Full of period detail and Sandra Dallas’s trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.

The post The Hired Man first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

A struggling teen discovers solace in technology that lets him view the erased memories of others. As he delves into the past of another boy harboring a dark secret, he embarks on a thrilling journey that uncovers a love he was forced to forget.

Seventeen-year-old Eli was in a near-fatal car crash. As the anniversary looms, his therapist and his family struggle to help him deal with the fallout. The accident has left him emotionally numb, with no memory of the months following the crash.

Desperate to feel something again, Eli discovers a black market for people’s memories. Erased memories that others can watch via a virtual reality simulation.

When he enters the story of a boy called Jack, he discovers a dark truth…a mind-blowing secret that sets him on a dangerous journey that could lead his heart back to where it belongs, or shatter his life forever.

Story Locale: Near-future dystopian England

The post Erase Me first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.