Below are a few fabulous titles to be released in September 2010. Feel free to peruse the list to see whether there’s anything you might like to pick up–after all, one’s to-read list can never be too long!
1022 Evergreen Place by Debbie Macomber
Blurb: Dear Reader, Guess what? I’m falling in love! With Mack McAfee. My baby daughter, Noelle, and I have been living next door to Mack since the spring. I’m still a little wary about our relationship, because I haven’t always made good decisions when it comes to men. My baby’s father, David Rhodes, is testament to that. I’m so worried he might sue for custody. In the meantime, the World War II letters I found are a wonderful distraction. Both Mack and I are trying to learn what happened to the soldier who wrote them and the woman he loved. Come by sometime for a glass of iced tea and I’ll show you the letters. Plus I’ll tell you the latest about Grace and Olivia, my brother Linc and his wife, Lori (who tied the knot about five minutes after they met!), and all our other mutual friends. Oh, and maybe Mack can join us… Mary Jo Wyse
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Willful Behavior by Donna Leon
Blurb: Mystery lovers everywhere are addicted to Donna Leon’s ever-honorable Commissario Guido Brunetti and her portrayal of Venice’s beautiful but sinister byways and canals. In Willful Behavior, Brunetti is approached for a favor by one of his wife’s students. Intelligent and serious , Claudia Leonardo asks for his help in obtaining a pardon for a crime once committed by her now-dead grandfather. Brunetti thinks little of it-until Claudia is found dead. Soon, another corpse and an extraordinary art collection lead Brunetti to long-buried secrets of Nazi collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews-secrets few in Italy want revealed.
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American Subversive by David Goodwillie
Blurb: As the twenty-first century enters its second decade, foreign wars, the lingering recession and a caustic political environment are taking their toll on Americans. But the party hasn’t ended for Aidan Cole and his friends, a band of savvy — if cynical — New York journalists and bloggers who thrive at the intersection of media and celebrity. At wine-sodden dinner parties or in dimly lit downtown bars, their frenetic talk — of scoops and page views, sexual adventures and trendy restaurants — continues unabated. Then, without warning, the specter of terrorism reenters their lives. A bomb rips through the deserted floor of a midtown office tower. Middle Eastern terrorists are immediately suspected. But four days later, with no arrests and a city on edge, an anonymous email arrives in Aidan’s in-box. Attached is the photograph of an attractive young white woman, along with a chilling message: “This is Paige Roderick. She’s the one responsible.” So begins an extraordinary journey into the dark soul of modern America — from a back-to-the-land community in the Smoky Mountains to a Weather Underground-like bomb factory in Vermont; from Fishers Island, isolated getaway of the wealthy elite, to the hip lofts of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. American Subversive is David Goodwillie’s sharp and penetrating take on the paranoia of our times — and its real, untold dangers. In examining the connection between our collective apathy and the roots of insurrection, Goodwillie has crafted an intoxicating story of two young Americans grasping for a foothold in a culture — and a country — that’s crumbling around them.
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Blurb: The first time we met, Jewel Valentine saved my life.
Isn’t it enough having your very own terminal disease, without your mother dying? Or your father dating your Art teacher? No wonder Sacha Thomas ends up in the lake that Saturday evening… But the real question is: how does he end up in love with Jewel Valentine? With the help of quirky teenage prodigies Little Al and True Grisham, Sacha and Jewel have a crazy adventure, with a little lobster emancipation along the way. But Sacha’s running out of time, and Jewel has secrets of her own. Girl Saves Boy is a hugely talented debut novel, funny and sad, silly and wise. It’s a story of life, death, love… and garden gnomes.
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Skippy Dies: A Novel by Paul Murray
Blurb: Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin’s venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop? Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory? Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s rival in love? Or could “the Automator”—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide? Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketballplaying midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.
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Married with Zombies by Jessie Petersen
Blurb: A heartwarming tale of terror in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Meet Sarah and David. Once upon a time they met and fell in love. But now they’re on the verge of divorce and going to couples’ counseling. On a routine trip to their counselor, they notice a few odd things – the lack of cars on the highway, the missing security guard, and the fact that their counselor, Dr. Kelly, is ripping out her previous client’s throat. Meet the Zombies. Now, Sarah and David are fighting for survival in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. But, just because there are zombies, doesn’t mean your other problems go away. If the zombies don’t eat their brains, they might just kill each other.
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Driven to Ink by Karen E. Olson
Blurb: Brett Kavanaugh is a tattoo artist and owner of Vegas’s hottest tattoo shop, The Painted Lady. And in her spare time, she does some sleuthing. After discovering the corpse of a Dean Martin impersonator-sporting a spider web tattoo and a clip cord from a tattoo machine wrapped around his neck-Brett infiltrates That’s Amore, a drive-through wedding chapel, as a bride-to-be looking for the mark of a murderer…
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The Alehouse Murders by Maureen Ash
Blurb: After years of captivity in the Holy Land, Templar Bascot de Marins escapes with injuries to his body and soul. Now on sojourn at Lincoln Castle, he hopes to regain his strength, and mend his waning faith-but not even the peace of God’s countryside is safe from the mortal crimes of man… When four victims are found slain in the town alehouse, Bascot discovers that what appears to be the grisly end to a drunken row is in fact a cunning and baffling case of murder. Bascot tracks his quarry from bawdy-house to baron’s keep, once again risking his life for the justice of God’s will.
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Dead Is Just a Rumor by Marlene Perez

The End of the Road by Sue Henry
Blurb: Maxie McNabb and her miniature dachshund, Stretch, are just back from their latest adventure when a murder shatters the quiet in their hometown of Homer, Alaska. Now it’s up to Maxie to find the killer—a search that leads her to a place called “the end of the road.”
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Blurb: Claire is at the start of her medical career when she falls in love with Addison Boehning, a biochemist with blazing genius and big dreams. A complicated pregnancy deflects Claire’s professional path, and she is forced to drop out of her residency. Soon thereafter Addison invents a simple blood test for ovarian cancer, and his biotech start-up lands a fortune. Overnight the Boehnings are catapulted into a financial and social tier they had never anticipated or sought: they move into a gracious Seattle home and buy an old ranch in the high desert mountains of eastern Washington, and Claire drifts away from medicine to become a full-time wife and mother. Then Addison gambles everything on a cutting-edge cancer drug, and when the studies go awry, their comfortable life is swept away. Claire and her daughter, Jory, move to a dilapidated ranch house in rural Hallum, where Claire has to find a job until Addison can salvage his discredited lab. Her only offer for employment comes from a struggling public health clinic, but Claire gets more than a second chance at medicine when she meets Miguela, a bright Nicaraguan immigrant and orphan of the contra war who has come to the United States on a secret quest to find the family she has lost. As their friendship develops, a new mystery unfolds that threatens to destroy Claire’s family and forces her to question what it truly means to heal.
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Scoop to Kill by Wendy Lyn Watson
Blurb: During the local college’s annual Honor’s Day festivities, a graduate student is killed. When the English professor suspected of his murder also meets an untimely end, Tallulah Jones steps out from behind the counter of Remember the a-la-Mode to clear the professor’s name-before anyone else gets put on ice…
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Blurb: Writer Lisa Jones went to Wyoming for a four-day magazine assignment. She was committed to a long-term relationship, building a career, and searching for something she could not name. At a dusty corral on the Wind River Indian Reservation, she met Stanford Addison, a Northern Arapaho who seemed to transform everything around him. He gentled horses rather than breaking them. It was said he could heal people of everything from cancer to bipolar disorder. He did all this from a wheelchair; he had been a quadriplegic for more than twenty years. Intrigued, Lisa sat at Stanford’s kitchen table and watched. And she listened to his story. Stanford spent his teenage years busting broncos, seducing girls, and dealing drugs. At twenty, he left the house for another night of partying. By morning, a violent accident had robbed him of his physical prowess and left in its place unwelcome spiritual powers—an exchange so shocking that Stanford spent several years trying to kill himself. Eventually he surrendered to his new life and mysterious gifts. Over the years Lisa was a frequent visitor to Stanford’s place, the reservation and its people worked on her, exposing and healing the places where she, too, was broken. This is her story, intertwined with Stanford’s, and it explores powerful spirits, material poverty, spiritual wealth, friendship, violence, confusion, death, and above all else, love.
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Blurb: Cheerleader Isobel Lanley is horrified when she is paired with Varen Nethers for an English project, which is due—so unfair—on the day of the rival game. Cold and aloof, sardonic and sharp-tongued, Varen makes it clear he’d rather not have anything to do with her either. But when Isobel discovers strange writing in his journal, she can’t help but give this enigmatic boy with the piercing eyes another look. Soon, Isobel finds herself making excuses to be with Varen. Steadily pulled away from her friends and her possessive boyfriend, Isobel ventures deeper and deeper into the dream world Varen has created through the pages of his notebook, a realm where the terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe come to life. As her world begins to unravel around her, Isobel discovers that dreams, like words, hold more power than she ever imagined, and that the most frightening realities are those of the mind. Now she must find a way to reach Varen before he is consumed by the shadows of his own nightmares. His life depends on it.
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Sabotaged by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Blurb: After helping Chip and Alex survive 15th century London, Jonah and Katherine are summoned to help another missing child, Andrea, face her fate. Andrea is really Virginia Dare, from the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jonah and Katherine are confident in their ability to help Andrea fix history, but when their journey goes dangerously awry, they realize that they may be in over their head. They’ve landed in the wrong time period. Andrea doesn’t seem that interested in leaving the past. And even worse, it appears that someone has deliberately sabotaged their mission…
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Blurb: After a summer spent reclaiming her sanity and trying to forget the boy she fell in love with by the bridge where her best friend drowned – the boy who must not exist, cannot exist, because she knows that he is dead – Abbey returns to Sleepy Hollow, determined to leave the ghosts of her past behind. She throws herself into schoolwork, perfume-making and her friendship with Ben, her cute and funny lab partner, who just might be able to help her get over Caspian once and for all. But Abbey is never going to truly be able to move on from Caspian, and Caspian has no choice but to return to her side: for Caspian is a Shade and Abbey is his destiny. The two are tied not only to each other, but also to the town of Sleepy Hollow, and the famous legend that binds their fates – a legend whose true ending and dark truths they are only just beginning to guess…
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Blurb: Since coming to Crossroads, Oklahoma, former outcast Aden Stone has been living the good life. Never mind that one of his best friends is a werewolf, his girlfriend is a vampire princess who hungers for his blood, and he’s supposed to be crowned Vampire King—while still a human! Well, kind of. With four—oops, three now—human souls living inside his head, Aden has always been “different” himself. These souls can time-travel, raise the dead, possess another’s mind and, his least favorite these days, tell the future. The forecast for Aden? A knife through the heart. Because a war is brewing between the creatures of the dark, and Aden is somehow at the center of it all. But he isn’t about to lie down and accept his destiny without a fight. Not when his new friends have his back, not when Victoria has risked her own future to be with him, and not when he has a reason to live for the first time in his life…
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The Dressmaker by Posie Graeme-Evans
Blurb: Set in 1850s London, at the height of Victoria’s reign, Posie Graeme-Evans’ glorious fourth historical novel tells of a woman ahead of her time. Ellen Gowan is a famous dress designer for ladies of high society and one of the very few women in England who owns her own business. But her life wasn’t always one of such privilege. The only surviving daughter of a Cambridge scholar-turned village minister and a beautiful woman who was disowned by her family for marrying for love, Ellen had a childhood plentiful in affection, if not in currency and dresses made of fine silks. Tragedy strikes on her thirteenth birthday, when her father dies suddenly, leaving Ellen and her mother penniless and dependent upon the kindness of her mother’s estranged family.
Life takes Ellen down various roads of opulence and depravity until she lands in the arms of the devilishly handsome Raoul de Valentin, whom she marries. Just when Ellen realizes that she is with child, Raoul abandons her. Determined to survive, she begins her long climb to success, first by toiling at a dress factory, then opening up her own salon in the fashionable Battle Square. Years pass, and Ellen has evolved into Madame Gowan, dress maker to royalty and the Great Six Hundred. All is truly well, until the day Raoul de Valentin unexpectedly arrives at her doorstep once more, threatening to destroy all that she has achieved.
The Dressmaker is a romantic odyssey that takes readers into the most luxurious of ballrooms and the most squalid of brothels.

Healer by Carol Cassella
Broken by Lisa Jones
The Haunted by Jessica Verday











Great list – thanks for sharing!
shelleyrae @ Book’d Out recently posted..Banned Books Week & Judy Blume
My pleasure, Shelley