From The Booking Desk:

Last night, Game of Thrones returned and this week there are some excellent books to occupy your time waiting for the next episodes to arrive. I fully expect these to be some of the biggest books of the year.

Angie Kim – Miracle Creek (FSG, Hardcover, $27.00, 04/16/2019)

BOLO Books Comments:

Even though Miracle Creek is not being marketed as crime fiction, I’ve been advocating for this novel for months now. The courtroom aspects will please any lover of crime fiction and the story has heart for days. I fully expect this novel to break out big in the literary community, so don’t delay in reading it. The spoiler-free BOLO Books Review of Miracle Creek will give you some more information.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .

In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine―a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night―trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges―as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author’s own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life “submarine” patient. Both a compelling page-turner and an excavation of identity and the desire for connection, Miracle Creek is a brilliant, empathetic debut from an exciting new voice.

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Alafair Burke – The Better Sister (Harper, Hardcover, $26.99, 04/16/2019)

BOLO Books Comments:

You likely don’t need me to tell you to go read a new Alafair Burke novel. This is an author who consistently provides compelling storylines mixed with authentic courtroom drama. You can tell from the spoiler-free BOLO Books review of The Better Sister that Burke is at the top of her game here.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

Keep your enemies close and your sister closer.

Though Chloe was the younger of the two Taylor sisters, she always seemed to be the one in charge. She was the honor roll student with big dreams and an even bigger work ethic. Nicky—always restless and more than a little reckless—was the opposite of her ambitious little sister. She floated from job to job and man to man, and stayed close to home in Cleveland.

For a while, it seemed that both sisters had found happiness. Chloe earned a scholarship to an Ivy League school and moved to New York City, where she landed a coveted publishing job. Nicky married promising young attorney Adam Macintosh and gave birth to a baby boy they named Ethan. The Taylor sisters became virtual strangers.

Now, more than fifteen years later, their lives are drastically different—and Chloe is married to Adam. When he’s murdered by an intruder at the couple’s East Hampton beach house, Chloe reluctantly allows her teenage stepson’s biological mother—her estranged sister, Nicky—back into her life. But when the police begin to treat Ethan as a suspect in his father’s death, the two sisters are forced to unite . . . and to confront the truth behind family secrets they have tried to bury in the past.

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Heather Gudenkauf – Before She Was Found (Park Row, Paperback, $16.99, 04/16/2019)

BOLO Books Comments:

I did not receive an advanced copy of Heather Gudenkauf’s latest, so I can’t provide any specifics. But I can say that as a fan of Gudenkauf’s previous work, I have high hopes for this novel and will be checking it out very soon.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

For twelve-year-old Cora Landry and her friends Violet and Jordyn, it was supposed to be an ordinary sleepover—movies and Ouija and talking about boys. But when they decide to sneak out to go to the abandoned rail yard on the outskirts of town, little do they know that their innocent games will have dangerous consequences.

Later that night, Cora Landry is discovered on the tracks, bloody and clinging to life, her friends nowhere to be found. Soon their small rural town is thrust into a maelstrom. Who would want to hurt a young girl like Cora—and why? In an investigation that leaves no stone unturned, everyone is a suspect and no one can be trusted—not even those closest to Cora.

Before She Was Found is a timely and gripping thriller about friendship and betrayal, about the power of social pressure and the price of needing to fit in. It is about the great lengths a parent will go to protect their child and keep them safe—even if that means burying the truth, no matter the cost.