Here are the books that I am anticipating for the month of May. Some of them I will purchase and some I will borrow from my local library.
May 6th
My Friends By: Fredrik Backman
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.
Lore Olympus Volume 8 By: Rachel Smythe
You have no authority here.”
Revelations rock Olympus as Persephone’s trial ends, threatening to throw the gods into a new war.
Though Persephone and Hades become closer than ever after she opens up to him about all she has endured, their peace is shattered when another truth is revealed: Apollo is Zeus’s son. The announcement shocks the pantheon, and the king of the gods realizes that the would-be usurper wants Persephone’s power to take the throne.
Zeus banishes Persephone to the Mortal Realm and, out of fear, cuts it off entirely from the rest of the gods. This decree succeeds in undercutting Apollo’s plan, but also inadvertently begins a decade-long divine cold war when Hades strikes back by shuttering the Underworld. With the gods scattered and weakened, Kronos uses the ensuing bedlam to finally escape his imprisonment and begin staging his own coup.
Persephone has only one choice when she discovers all the realms on the verge of collapse: Descend into the Underworld to try to defeat the power-hungry Titan, claim her rightful place as queen, and reunite with her one true love.
Stuck By: Kayla Miller
A storm is brewing—- in the skies and in Olive’s friend group.
Olive is excited to reunite with Max and Bree at Camp Acorn Lake, but the buses have barely pulled away when her two closest camp friends start fighting…and it’s not just a little squabble. They refuse to speak to each other and, even worse, try to make Olive choose sides. Any attempt to smooth things over seems to aggravate them more, leaving Olive stuck in the middle. With Willow enjoying her busy activity and social schedule, Olive has no choice but to spend most of her time with unhappy first-time camper Nat. It’s far from the fun-filled, sun-filled summer she had planned.
Luckily, Olive is able to distract herself with a new challenge: pitching a winning plan for improving the camp! Willow, Nat, and even the feuding Max and Bree want to help Olive make the camp a better place, but with all the drama, they’re lacking the teamwork to make the dream work. Can Olive find a way to free herself and her friends from everything that’s holding them back, or are they doomed to stay stuck in their disagreements?
Overgrowth By: Mira Grant
This is just a story. It can’t hurt you anymore.
Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she’s an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has been willing to listen.
Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it’s already been warned, and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia’s biological family is on the way to bring her home, and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.
What happens when you know what’s coming, and just refuse to listen?
The Survivor Wants to Die at the End By: Adam Silvera
In this third book of the USA Today and #1 New York Times mega-bestselling They Both Die at the End series, two strangers—each with their own complicated relationship to Death-Cast—help each other learn to live.
Paz Dario stays up every night, waiting for the Death-Cast call that would mean he doesn’t have to keep faking his way through this lonely life. After a devastating day, Paz decides he’s done waiting around for Death-Cast. If they say he’s not dying, he’ll just have to prove them wrong. But right before Paz can die, a boy saves his life.
Alano Rosa is heir to the Death-Cast empire that encourages everyone to live their best lives, but he doesn’t feel in control of his own existence thanks to his father. And with a violent organization called the Death Guard threatening Alano, his End Day might be closer than he thinks. It’s time to live.
Fate brings Paz and Alano together, but it’s now up to the boys to survive the tragic trials ahead so no one dies at the end.
This book contains themes that some readers may find difficult.
The Gate, The Girl, and the Dragon By: Grace Lin
Jin is a Stone Lion—one of the guardians of the Old City Gate who is charged to watch over humans and protect the Sacred Sphere. But to Jin, those boring duties feel like a waste of time.
What isn’t a waste of time? Perfecting his zuqiu kick, scoring a Golden Goal, and becoming the most legendary player of all the spirit world.
But when Jin’s perfect kick accidentally knocks the Sacred Sphere out through the gate, he has no choice but to run after it, tumbling out of the realm he calls home and into the human world as the gate closes behind him.
Stuck outside the gate, Jin must find help from unlikely allies, including a girl who can hear a mysterious voice and a worm who claims he is a dragon. Together, they must find the sphere and return it to the world beyond the gate…or risk losing everything.
Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Saving the World By: Roseanne A. Brown
Serwa Boateng has gone head-to-head with vampires, witches, and even a death god. But now, with the fate of the magical world at stake, she’ll have to face her toughest foe yet: her own grandmother.
Finally free after decades of being trapped inside the Midnight Drum, the dreaded obayifo Nana Bekoe seeks the destruction of the Abomofuo. Even worse, she has Serwa’s father under her thrall. Now, the hunters have become the hunted, as the Slayers’ defenses are powerless in the face of an enemy who has access to all their secrets.
Serwa’s only chance of saving her father might just lie with the Keepers, an organization whose powers exist outside the normal rules of magic. But the Keepers are even more secretive than the Abomofuo, and finding them will require Serwa to trek across the United States. At least she has her friends by her side for the journey . . . friends who currently hate her guts. The survival of everything and everyone Serwa has ever loved hinges on her completing this final hunt without losing herself in the process.
Serwa Boateng has been a Slayer. She’s been a vampire. But now, it’s time for her to become something else entirely: a hero.
May 8th
Silverborn By: Jessica Townsend
Enter the fantastically Wundrous world of Nevermoor – perfect for all adventurous young readers. Morrigan Crow has a dangerous choice to make in the fourth of this bestselling, award-winning series …
Praise for Nevermoor: ‘Exciting, mysterious, marvellous and magical … quite simply one of the best children’s books I’ve read in years’ Robin Stevens, author of Murder Most Unladylike.
In the magical city of Nevermoor, long-buried secrets are coming to light, and Morrigan Crow’s life is about to turn upside down.
When Morrigan is invited into Nevermoor’s wealthy Silver District, she discovers a world of extravagance and a family mystery she’s eager to unravel. She could never imagine where it will lead: a white wedding, a golden dragon and a red pool of blood.
Embroiled in suspicion and danger, Morrigan leaps head first into a murder investigation, while also grappling with her ever-growing Wundersmith powers. And although her friends are there to help, she fears that could change if they learn she’s keeping a terrible secret of her own.
As shadowy forces awaken in Nevermoor, can Morrigan find a killer and solve the mystery in her own past … before the clock strikes midnight?
May 13th
Mark Twain By: Ron Chernow
Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity, Mark Twain. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley’s Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom. Before long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories that attracted national attention for their brashness and humor, writing under a pen name soon to be immortalized.
Chernow draws a richly nuanced portrait of the man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune and crafted his celebrity persona with meticulous care. Twain eventually settled with his wife and three daughters in Hartford, where he wrote some of his most well-known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi,and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earning him further acclaim. He threw himself into American politics, emerging as the nation’s most notable pundit. While his talents as a writer and speaker flourished, his madcap business ventures eventually forced him into bankruptcy; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.
Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars. No other white author of his generation grappled so fully with the legacy of slavery after the Civil War or showed such keen interest in African American culture. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.
The Dark Maestro By: Brendan Slocumb
Curtis Wilson is a classical music prodigy. Having played since the age of five, he is that rare performer who, through sheer force of will and phenomenal talent, has clawed his way out of inner-city DC and risen to the heights of the classical music world—soloing with the New York Philharmonic. Zippy, his father, is a midlevel drug dealer, and Larissa, his father’s girlfriend, is a loving mother figure to Curtis and the heart of the family.
Then, when Zippy runs afoul of the kingpin who has provided his livelihood and nurtured his son’s talents, the family finds their lives in danger. With no choice but to run, they enter the witness protection program and abandon their former lives, including Curtis’s extraordinary career. When law enforcement seems unable to bring the cartel down, Curtis, Zippy, and Larissa realize that their only chance of returning to the way things were is to take on the cartel themselves—their own way.
Dream on, Ramona Riley By: Ashley Herring Blake
Once upon a time, Ramona Riley was a student at a prestigious art school, with dreams of landing in Hollywood as a costume designer to the stars. But after her father’s car accident, she had to quit and return to her small New Hampshire town, Clover Lake, to help take care of her younger sister. Twelve years later, Ramona is still working at the town’s café, all but given up on her dream. But when a big-budget romantic comedy comes to Clover Lake to film, she wonders if this could be her chance. There’s only one problem—Dylan Monroe, her first kiss and Hollywood’s favorite wild child—is the star.
Dylan Monroe has always lived an unconventional life, having famous rock icons for parents. But she wants to prove that she’s not some chaotic, talentless nepo baby, that she has actual skills, that she’s just a normal person. To do that, Dylan takes on a project at a charming lake town—she even works at the town’s café (very quaint), shadowing a local waitress there (very cute), and asks her to take Dylan around to do Normal People Things.
But Dylan soon realizes it’s not just some small-town waitress she’s getting to know—Ramona Riley is someone she’s met before, someone who remembers her even more vividly. Before long, however, reality hits them, and both women must decide if the spark between them can fan the flames of their individual dreams, or if it will extinguish their light.
The Silversmith’s Puzzle By: Nev March
Captain Jim Agnihotri and Lady Diana Framji return to India as they investigate a murder amidst colonial Bombay’s complex hierarchy in March’s fourth mystery.
In 1894 colonial India, Lady Diana’s family has lost their fortune in a global financial slump, but even worse, her brother Adi is accused of murder. Desperate to save him from the gallows, Captain Jim and Lady Diana rush back to Bombay. However, the traditional Parsi community finds Jim and Diana’s marriage taboo and shuns them.
The dying words of Adi’s business partner, a silversmith, are perplexing. As Captain Jim peels back the curtains on this man’s life he finds a trail of unpaid bills, broken promises, lies and secrets. Why was the silversmith so frantic for gold, and where is it? What awful truth does it represent?
Set in lush, late-Victorian India, Captain Jim and Diana struggle with the complexities of caste, tradition, and loyalty. Their success and their own lives may depend on Diana, who sacrificed her inheritance for love. Someone within their circle has the key to this puzzle. Can she find a way to reconnect with the tight community that threw them aside?
May 27th
Problematic Summer Romance By: Ali Hazelwood
Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.
Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.
It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.
But not everything is as it seems—and clichés sometimes become plot twists.
When Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs—even if it’s a problematic one.
I am sure that I have missed some new releases in May. What are you most waiting for in May? Let’s chat in the comments below. Until next time, keep reading.
Debbie's Reading Corner 