[Manabi]

This month's Kindle First selections are out, they are:

The Night Bird by Brian Freeman [Genre: Suspense]

Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn’t like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco—as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks—Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie’s controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories…and all the victims were her patients.

As Frost and Frankie carry out their own investigations, the case becomes increasingly personal—and dangerous. Long-submerged secrets surface as someone called the Night Bird taunts the pair with cryptic messages pertaining to the deaths. Soon Frankie is forced to confront strange gaps in her own memory, and Frost faces a killer who knows the detective’s worst fears.

As the body count rises and the Night Bird circles ever closer, a dedicated cop and a brilliant doctor race to solve the puzzle before a cunning killer claims another victim.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

We all have fears, and in many cases this is a healthy thing. A fear of snakes may save you from a nasty bite. Fear of heights will keep you from getting too close to the edge of a cliff. In my case, fear of clowns has spared me from the weight-gaining hazards of (name of fast-food chain redacted).

Conversely, fears can be destructive. Ralph Waldo Emerson is often quoted as saying, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” Being brave in the face of insurmountable odds, facing my deepest fears with courage and strength, is my ultimate life goal.

Fear can not only make us scared but also take us prisoner, keeping us from that big beautiful life that we know is just out of our reach. What if we didn’t have to be afraid? What if we could be brave for those precious five minutes longer and become the hero of our own stories?

In The Night Bird, Detective Frost Easton investigates a series of disturbing cases in which the victims have been literally scared to death. The only link these women shared was that they each underwent a special therapy to rewrite their memories so they could forget their deepest fears. Of course rewriting the past all sounds well and good, but if you could amend your memories, how could you ever be sure the right things were changed?

The mystery of The Night Bird is mind-bending, and the detective is authentic, but the questions author Brian Freeman asks are downright scary and forced me to take a deeper look at what I would do in the face of fear that can actually kill.

- Jacque Ben-Zekry, Editor

The Mutual Admiration Society: A Novel by Lesley Kagen [Genre: Family Life]

From the New York Times bestselling author of Whistling in the Dark comes an unforgettable novel that illuminates the sweet and brittle bonds of family, the tenderness of growing up, the heartbreak of longing for what we’ve lost, and the poignancy of finding love.

FACT: Unbeknownst to eleven-year-old Theresa “Tessie” Finley, she’s in over her head.

PROOF: After hearing a scream and catching a glimpse of a mysterious man carrying a body beneath the flickering streetlights in the cemetery behind her house, Tessie adds solving a murder case to her already quite full to-do list.

Tessie has elected herself president of the crime-stopping Mutual Admiration Society—as if dealing with her “sad madness” over the tragic drowning of her beloved father; showering tender loving care on her “sweet but weird” younger sister, Birdie; and staying on the good side of their hard-edged mother weren’t enough. With partner in crime Charlie “Cue Ball” Garfield, Tessie and Birdie will need to dodge the gossips in their 1950s blue-collar neighborhood—particularly their evil next-door neighbor, Gert Klement, who’d like nothing better than to send the sisters to “homes.” And, of course, there’s the problem of steering clear of the kidnapping murderer if they have any hope of solving the mystery of all mysteries: the mystery of life.

A rich and charming tour de force, The Mutual Admiration Society showcases Lesley Kagen’s marvelous storytelling talents. Laced with heartwarming humor and heartbreaking grief, this novel is nothing short of magical.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

There are some novels about growing up and about family that we treasure forever. At the center of The Mutual Admiration Society, a beautiful coming-of-age story, is Tessie, a young girl who is the joy of her neighborhood and the glue that holds her family together. I fell in love with Tessie as she skips through her life with an uncommon mix of fearlessness and tenderness, leaping off of author Lesley Kagen’s luminous pages and right into my heart.

In her close-knit 1950s Wisconsin neighborhood, Tessie is the ultimate caretaker. She keeps an eye—a nosy but loving one—on her neighbors and their mysterious grown-up goings-on, determined to decipher them. Tessie is eternally devoted to her endearing, not-quite-right sister. She struggles to understand her standoffish, always-working mother. And Tessie is truly a daddy’s girl, mesmerized by her rugged father’s charming ways, single-mindedly willful in her quest to hold on to him. When tragedy hits, I felt a fierce desire to protect Tessie from hardships, to hold up the shield of her childhood whimsy in all of its beauty and innocence.

As it often is with tragedy, lightness follows. The lightness Tessie creates is breathtaking. I felt like I wanted to bottle it and carry it with me. Tessie got the best of me and took my heart with her. I’m devoted to her, forever.

- Kelli Martin, Editor

In the Shadow of Lakecrest by Elizabeth Blackwell [Genre: Historical Fiction]

The year is 1928. Kate Moore is looking for a way out of the poverty and violence of her childhood. When a chance encounter on a transatlantic ocean liner brings her face-to-face with the handsome heir to a Chicago fortune, she thinks she may have found her escape—as long as she can keep her past concealed.

After exchanging wedding vows, Kate quickly discovers that something isn’t quite right with her husband—or her new family. As Mrs. Matthew Lemont, she must contend with her husband’s disturbing past, his domineering mother, and his overly close sister. Isolated at Lakecrest, the sprawling, secluded Lemont estate, she searches desperately for clues to Matthew’s terrors, which she suspects stem from the mysterious disappearance of his aunt years before. As Kate stumbles deeper into a maze of family secrets, she begins to question everyone’s sanity—especially her own. But just how far will she go to break free of this family’s twisted past?

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

When Kate, the plucky heroine of In the Shadow of Lakecrest, marries into a family with a wickedly sordid past, she has only an inkling of what she’s getting into. The world in the 1920s didn’t have the benefit of today’s quick Internet searches and online histories. Kate has a sense that something’s not quite right, but no proof other than her own observations and creeping sense of unease. She can’t help but notice how overly affectionate and close her husband and sister-in-law seem to be. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law is a little too interested in Kate producing an heir. Nevertheless, Kate sets her worries aside, convinced that any family is better than the one she was born into.

It’s not until her mother-in-law restricts a very pregnant Kate to the dark, dank confines of the family estate that Kate realizes she’s really in trouble. This is where the book takes a delicious turn that’s a little bit Flowers in the Attic and a little bit Rebecca. Trapped, Kate must rely on her wits to unravel the family secrets to protect what’s her own. And what she uncovers is a shocker that will surely make anyone think twice before grousing about their in-laws ever again.

- Jodi Warshaw, Editor

The Winter Over by Matthew Iden [Genre: Thriller]

Each winter the crew at the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility faces nine months of isolation, round-the-clock darkness, and one of the most extreme climates on the planet. For thirty-something mechanical engineer Cass Jennings, Antarctica offers an opportunity to finally escape the guilt of her troubled past and to rebuild her life.

But the death of a colleague triggers a series of mysterious incidents that push Cass and the rest of the forty-four-person crew to the limits of their sanity and endurance. Confined and cut off from the outside world, will they work together or turn against one another? As the tension escalates, Cass must find the strength to survive not only a punishing landscape but also an unrelenting menace determined to destroy the station—and everyone in it.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

For nine months a year, researchers in Antarctica are unreachable to the outside world—remote, isolated, and living in perpetual night. On the first day of this “winter-over season,” the body of a murdered woman is found, and then immediately concealed. No investigation, no explanation.

And just like that The Winter Over had me hooked.

Cass, the site engineer, arrives at the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility seeking complete anonymity and an escape from her traumatic past. Given her shaky state of mind, she can hardly believe she passed the psych test necessary to secure a spot at the station.

After the last flight off the island leaves, the crew begins to experience strange incidents that don’t add up.

As I compulsively turned the pages, an uncertain feeling grew in me. Is this whole thing a setup, or maybe Cass isn’t telling us everything? But why? The sense of complete isolation and steady ratcheting of tension gave me a knot in my stomach the way almost nothing has since the first time I read And Then There Were None or watched Alien. I was on that station. Cold. Paranoid. Surrounded by darkness.

Alone.

To be fair, I am predisposed to love this story—ask me about my Edgar Allan Poe obsession—but Matthew Iden has some tricks up his sleeve for us. Just when I thought I knew what this book was, it became something else entirely.

- Jacque Ben-Zekry, Editor

Palm Trees in the Snow by Luz Gabás (Author), Noel Hughes (Translator) [Genre: Saga]

At once an epic family drama and a sweeping love story that spans both an ocean and a generation, Palm Trees in the Snow is an emotionally gripping and historically vivid tale of the secrets that can destroy a family—and the bonds that endure.

When Clarence of Rabaltué discovers a series of old letters from her father’s past, she begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her once-noble family. Her father and his brother worked in the colony of Fernando Po, but these letters tell a different story than the tales of life in Africa that made it to the dinner table. Clarence has no idea what really went on during their time at the cocoa plantations—or why no one in her family has ever returned to the island in all the years since. But the letters suggest that a great love story is buried beneath the years of silence.

Setting out from her home in Spain’s snowy mountains, Clarence makes the same journey across the sea that her uncle and father traveled before her. There, she unlocks the painful secrets her family has hidden in the rich African soil. But what she discovers may also be the key to awakening her own listless heart.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

What truth could be so horrible that you would hide it from your own children? When Clarence, the protagonist of Palm Trees in the Snow, discovers letters that prove her father hasn’t told her everything about his time in Africa, she sets off on a life-changing journey to find out what he was really up to while his family waited at home.

On board for Clarence’s quest, I found myself transported to the 1950s, driving up a palm-lined road on the beautiful island of Fernando Po. The contrast between the snowy Pyrenees of her home and the palm trees crowding out the blazing island sun unsettles Clarence and opens her mind. How must her father have felt, working miles away from his family in a tumultuous new setting, suddenly charged with “managing” his new neighbors—by any means necessary? I was stunned to learn the backstory of this whole time period. Tension between Spanish nobles brought in to oversee the native workers in the cocoa fields incited unthinkable divides—and sparked impossible love. Because in spite of it all, people will always come together, even against the fiercest odds. For Clarence’s family, there is treasure to be found in the rubble of Spain’s failed efforts to tame this wild island: a story so passionate, so heartrending that her father had no choice but to shelter his family from it.

By delving into the difficult details of the not-so-distant past, we see the unmistakable power love has to shape history. As Clarence comes to understand what has kept her family together all these years, she finally believes that risks of the heart are well worth taking, even in her own life.

- Gabriella Page-Fort, Editor

Never Again So Close by Claudia Serrano (Author), Anne Milano Appel (Translator) [Genre: Literary Fiction]

Where do the pieces of us end up, the ones that we traded for love?

Antonia is ready for her life to start. A young woman from a small town in southern Italy, she wants to pursue her long-held dream of writing a novel. But when she moves to Milan and meets the alluring and charismatic Vittorio, he upends her world and changes her priorities. Their whirlwind relationship is as thrilling as it is painful: he doesn’t share Antonia’s faith in love and can’t reciprocate her feelings.

In the aftermath of their romance, Antonia rediscovers her passion for writing. It’s what she must do in order to get back to herself. Her words have the power to absorb her pain and transform her spirit. Now, she can find her truth—by insisting on it with pen and paper and by being as patient with herself as she is with her fictional characters.

Poignant and beautifully written, Never Again So Close is a story of love, loss, and the profound self-discovery born of a broken heart.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

We meet Antonia in bed with Vittorio. He sleeps soundly while she, suffering from insomnia, counts the moles on his back. The quiet intimacy of this moment carries through Never Again So Close, which includes the reader in the unsettling experience of falling in—and out of—love with the wrong person. And instantly I relate. We’ve all made mistakes in love, and like Antonia, we’ve needed distance to understand what went wrong.

Antonia is a writer, a creative person, a sensitive person, yet she has found herself with Vittorio, an aloof and quiet man. He’s extremely attractive, a brilliant publisher known for his seductive charm who whisks her along Italy’s coast on the back of his motorcycle. But beneath the surface, Antonia must accept the truth: he neglects her. She must leave him and take the time to honestly assess her feelings. She knows that to finish the novel she has been laboring on, first she must write the story of her aching heart. So Antonia settles into the kitchen with a notebook and begins to write her way through to the other side of this dead end in her life.

Like Elena Ferrante’s emotionally addictive Neapolitan Novels, Never Again So Close balanced the intensity of my reading experience with gorgeous Italian scenery. With sunshine drying my tears, a Mediterranean breeze in my hair, I am there as Antonia gets through to herself—and to me.

- Gabriella Page-Fort, Editor