[Manabi]

This month's Amazon First Reads selections are out, they are:

This month Prime members get to choose two Kindle books for free!

When I Was You by Minka Kent [Genre: Psychological Thriller]

A stolen identity leads a woman down a dark and desperate path in a gripping novel of psychological suspense by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Minka Kent.

After barely surviving a brutal attack, Brienne Dougray rarely leaves her house. Suffering from debilitating headaches and memory loss, she can rely only on her compassionate new tenant, Dr. Niall Emberlin, a welcome distraction from the discomfiting bubble that has become her existence.

But Brienne’s growing confidence in her new routine is shaken when she stumbles across unsettling evidence that someone else is living as…her. Same name. Same car. Same hair. Same clothes. She’s even friended her family on social media. To find out why, Brienne must leave the safety of her home to hunt a familiar stranger.

What she discovers is more disturbing than she could have ever imagined. With her fragile mind close to shattering, Brienne is prepared to do anything to reclaim her life. If it’s even hers to reclaim.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

In When I Was You, author Minka Kent turns the time-tested memory-loss narrative on its head. Kent couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if she was someone else. After all, identity theft is a rampant problem in the modern era. In 2017 there were 14.4 million cases of the crime in the US. The result is a twisting novel that is sure to keep you riveted until the very last line.

Brienne Dougray hasn’t trusted her memory since a horrible attack several months before our novel begins. Since then, she’s become a shut-in, isolated from her coworkers and even her friends. The only person she has frequent contact with is her roommate, Niall.

Now there’s someone else out there claiming that she is Brienne Dougray.

But what if the person who stole your identity didn’t just steal your credentials? What if they really became you, right down to the clothes you wear? Is Brienne still herself if someone else is out there living her life, driving her car...and doing a better job at it than Brienne ever did? - Jessica Tribble Wells, Editor

The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock by Jane Riley [Genre: Contemporary Fiction]

His life is perfectly regimented. Is there really room for something as unpredictable as love?

Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life—not that she’s aware of it.

When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he’s never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love—and all the mess that comes along with it.

But, with a habit of burying his feelings, can he learn to embrace his lovability and find the woman who will make him feel whole?

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

When this book first landed on my desk, I knew that I had found something very special. Quirky and uplifting, both laugh-out-loud funny and intensely poignant. I was enchanted by Oliver Clock and defy you to not be blown over by him too!

Oliver Clock has constructed a carefully organized world for himself, which is perhaps just a little OCD. He’s lonely, desperate for love, and having just inherited his family’s funeral home business, not the most attractive prospect. But his secret is that he has been in love with Marie, the funeral florist, for fifteen years. He’s never been able to tell her how he feels, and when she suddenly passes away, his opportunity is lost. Devastated by her death, Oliver is given Marie’s diary and discovers that she had secretly harbored a love for him too. This brings on a realization from Oliver that perhaps he is worthy of a happy relationship after all.

This book’s sparkly wit and charm had me from the first chapter. Author Jane Riley has a way of bringing rays of light into the most bittersweet of situations and conjuring up characters who are unforgettable. A truly joyful read! - Sammia Hamer, Editor

Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman [Genre: Suspense]

Harrowing loss, psychological trauma, and a deadly mystery test the human will to survive in this electrifying novel from award-winning author Brian Freeman.

Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”

Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder—a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.

Lisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

I don’t want to spoil this book for you. I want you to dive into the pages of Brian Freeman’s Thief River Falls with the same excitement and eagerness that I did. I want you to worry as Lisa Power shelters a nameless runaway, wondering why these men are after the boy. I want you to question every story as Lisa does, searching endlessly for the truth.

Most important, I want you to experience the ending the way I did: devouring the text, eager for a conclusion to a mystery that was unlike anything I’d read before.

When The Sixth Sense debuted in theaters in 1999, viewers across the globe entered into a tacit agreement: don’t spoil the ending for those who haven’t seen it. When a friend mentioned the twist to me two days before I saw the film, I thought he was kidding. Ten minutes into the film, I knew that he’d spoiled the movie.

Don’t be my traitorous friend. Thief River Falls is a stunning novel with a profound twist that demonstrates what Brian Freeman fans have known for years: he’s a writer who after twenty novels will still surprise you. Please keep the secret safe—spoilers are no laughing matter. - Jessica Tribble Wells, Editor

Last Day by Luanne Rice [Genre: Domestic Suspense]

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice comes a riveting story of a seaside community shaken by a violent crime and a tragic loss.

Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.

Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.

Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?

Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

Black Hall, Connecticut, is known as a safe place. A small seaside town free of violent crime. So when gallery owner Beth Lathrop is brutally murdered, Beth’s family and friends are left reeling. None more so than Beth’s sister, Kate. With the help of Detective Conor Reid, Kate will dig deep into Beth’s final weeks and days, their attention rarely deviating from Beth’s cheating and opportunistic spouse.

Because it’s always the husband. As we’ve learned from countless crime shows—and actual CDC data—when a woman is murdered, her partner is the likely culprit. So what do we make of a husband with an airtight alibi? Is there such a thing?

That is the question that led me to read page after page after page late into the night. I was completely engrossed in Luanne Rice’s twisted and heartrending story of a horrific murder and its aftermath...and the brutal secrets buried in a tranquil seaside town.

After five years writing young adult fiction, beloved New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice has returned to her roots in compelling family drama for adults! And it is her best—and most thrilling—ever. Luanne has brilliantly combined elements of domestic and psychological suspense with police procedural, resulting in a book I read in one sitting. - Liz Pearsons, Editor

The Future of Feeling by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips [Genre: Nonfiction]

An insightful exploration of what social media, AI, robot technology, and the digital world are doing to our relationships with each other and with ourselves.

There’s no doubt that technology has made it easier to communicate. It’s also easier to shut someone out when we are confronted with online discourse. Why bother to understand strangers—or even acquaintances—when you can troll them, block them, or just click “Unfriend” and never look back? However briefly satisfying that might be, it’s also potentially eroding one of our most human traits: empathy.

So what does the future look like when something so vital to a peaceful, healthy, and productive society is fading away? The cautionary, yet hopeful, answer is in this champion for an endangered emotion.

In The Future of Feeling, Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips shares her own personal stories as well as those of doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, and scientists about moving innovation and technology forward without succumbing to isolation. This book is for anyone interested in how our brains work, how they’re subtly being rewired to work differently, and what that ultimately means for us as humans.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

I use social media and technology every single day. Some days it makes me feel informed, comforted, connected; other times, exposed, vulnerable, misunderstood, or just inadequate. The constant is that I feel those feels in front of my screen, alone.

Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips is a journalist who sees empathy as a vital and endangered element of a peaceful, healthy, and productive society, but she is also, like me and many of you, an adapter of the mobile and digital life we all now lead to keep up and keep in touch. Sharing data and expert predictions about what technology—especially, but not only, social media—is doing to our ability to empathize, Phillips will hopefully convince you of our potential as a society to keep innovating without succumbing to personal isolation.

This book is for those who are socially and politically engaged. Those who are actively looking for ways to make or support societal change, either in small ways or more systematically. The Future of Feeling is for anyone who is interested in how our brains and psyches work, how they might work differently in the near future, and what that means for us as humans. - Erin Calligan Mooney, Editor

The Names of the Dead by Kevin Wignall [Genre: Thriller]

They locked him up. Now he’s out—for revenge.

Former CIA officer James ‘Wes’ Wesley paid the ultimate price for his patriotism when he was locked up in a French jail for an anti-terror operation gone wrong—abandoned by the Agency he served, shunned by his colleagues and friends, cut off from his family.

Now he is shattered by the news that his ex-wife, Rachel, a State Department analyst, has been killed in a terrorist attack in Spain. He also discovers that his young son, Ethan, is missing. But Wes didn’t know he had a son—until now.

Why was Rachel in Spain? And why did she keep his son secret from him?

Granted early release, Wes takes flight across Europe to search for the truth and exact his revenge. But can he catch the spies who betrayed him before they track him down? In order to find the answers and save his son, Wes realises he must confront the dark secrets in his own past—before it’s too late.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

Kevin Wignall is the master of the intelligent international thriller. As soon as I open one of Kevin’s bestselling books, I know I am going to be immersed in a highly cinematic world with instantly relatable characters, a chase that will traverse the globe, and a pulse-pounding race to the finish that always leaves me breathless.

Former CIA officer James “Wes” Wesley believes he has already paid the ultimate price for his patriotism, locked up in a French jail. But when he learns that his ex-wife, Rachel, has been killed in a terrorist attack in Spain and the young son Wes hadn’t known existed is missing, Wes is released on compassionate grounds to uncover the truth. Journeying across Europe, he will reopen old wounds and uncover long-buried secrets that will push him to the limit.

I suspect that, like Wignall’s previous book To Die in Vienna, which is reportedly coming to the silver screen starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the characters from The Names of the Dead will also soon delight fans on the big screen. - Laura Deacon, Editor

In a Field of Blue by Gemma Liviero [Genre: Historical Fiction]

From the bestselling author of The Road Beyond Ruin comes a novel about a family torn apart by grief and secrets, then pulled back together by hope in the wake of World War I.

England 1922. It’s been four years since Rudy’s brother Edgar went missing in war-torn France. Still deep in mourning and grappling with unanswered questions, Rudy and his mother struggle to move on. When the enigmatic Mariette arrives unexpectedly at the family’s manor claiming to be Edgar’s widow, and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay, hoping she’ll shed light on the missing pieces.

Captivated by Mariette, Rudy finds that their mutual loss and grief bind them…as does the possibility of new love. But Mariette’s revelations bring more questions than answers about Edgar’s death. Suspicions threaten to divide Rudy’s already fractured family, setting him on a quest for the truth that takes him from England to France and beyond.

In his search, Rudy is forced to confront the tragedies of war and the realities of the brother he’s lost and the woman he’s found. Will the truth set him free to find peace, or will it forever shadow his future?

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

This beautiful story of love and devotion opened my eyes to the lasting trauma that so many soldiers carry off the battlefields. We’ve made great strides in treatment. But during World War I we didn’t have a clear understanding of the phenomenon. Many blamed the soldiers themselves, accusing them of cowardice and malingering.

In 1918, Rudy’s brother Edgar goes missing in France. Unable to shake his grief, Rudy is determined to unravel exactly what happened to his brother. Suspicion surrounds his death, and Mariette, the woman who claims to be Edgar’s widow, complicates Rudy’s quest for the truth. He falls hopelessly in love with her, but he’s tortured by guilt and unanswered questions. If Edgar is still alive, where is he? If he’s not, how can Rudy and his family make sense of his death?

In a Field of Blue both cast a light on the lasting effects of war and filled me with hope, showing how far a man will go to fulfill his promise to honor and protect those he loves. - Jodi Warshaw, Editor

Bird Hugs by Ged Adamson [Genre: Children's Picture Book]

Bernard isn’t like other birds. His wings are impossibly long, and try as he might, he just can’t seem to fly. He’s left wondering what his wings are good for…if they’re even good for anything at all. But a chance encounter with a dejected orangutan leads Bernard to a surprising discovery: that maybe what makes him different is actually something to be embraced.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

I often think the world would be a kinder place if we embraced the sentiments found on the pages of picture books. Just take Bernard, a bird with impossibly long wings. He can’t fly, try as he might, and his friends fly off. But does he feel sorry for himself? Well, yes, for a bit. But when he comes upon a sad orangutan, he stops thinking about himself and focuses on how he can help, which as it turns out is with a great big hug.

The next thing he knows, there’s a parade of lions, giraffes, bats, and even a very brave worm waiting for a chance to tell him their problems and get one of his famous hugs. In the end, Bernard discovers that the thing that makes him different not only brings him purpose and joy, but lifts up so many others too. One hug, this charming book reminds us, can make all the difference. - Kelsey Skea, Editor