The Light Between Oceans
By M.L. Stedman
Scribner, $25
Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia after four harrowing years on the Western Front in WWI and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on an isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best. Tom marries a bold and loving young woman, Isabel, and brings her to the island. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is 2 years old, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world and their choice has devastated one of them. This debut novel is both beautifully written and an unforgettable story.
Gold
By Chris Cleave
Simon & Schuster, $27
Kate and Zoe met at 19 when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling. Now at 32, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her 8-year-old daughter Sophie is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenetic months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Zoe is intense and aloof, her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession and the advantage she has over Kate to break the bond they have shared for more than a decade? Chris Cleave examines the values that lie at the heart of our relationships, and the choices we make when everything is on the line.
The Next Best Thing
By Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books, $26.99
Actors aren’t the only ones trying to make it in Hollywood. At 23, Ruth Saunders left her childhood home in Massachusetts and headed west with her 70-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to make it as a screenwriter. Six years later, she hits the jackpot when she gets “the call.” She discovers the sitcom she wrote, “The Next Best Thing,” has gotten the green light, but her dreams of Hollywood happiness are threatened by demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on her boss, and her grandmother’s upcoming nuptials. Jennifer Weiner’s newest book is a funny and heartfelt story about what it’s like for a young woman to love, and lose, in the land where dreams come true.
Bloodline
By James Rollins
William Morrow, $27.99
New York Times bestselling author James Rollins takes you to the edge of medicine, genetics, and technology, revealing a horrifying truth that is locked inside the Bloodline. Somali pirates hijack a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa, kidnapping a young, pregnant American woman, who just so happens to be the daughter of the U.S. president. For this sensitive mission, Sigma is aided by a pair of special operatives with unique talents: former Army Ranger Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane. But what should be a straightforward rescue turns into a fiery ambush and a deadly act of betrayal as Gray Pierce and his team discover that the hostage is a pawn in a shattering act of terrorism with dark repercussions. And the danger is only beginning.
The Age of Miracles
By Karen Thompson Walker
Random House, $26
The Age of Miracles is a brilliant debut coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world. Eleven-year-old Julia and her family awaken to discover that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, and the environment is thrown into disarray. As Julia struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, she is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather, who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, she can’t escape from what is happening to the world she once knew.
