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June 2023 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. Zero Days
    by Ruth Ware
    9781982163419
    Simon & Schuster
    Jun 20, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    Zero Days
    by Ruth Ware
    9781982163419
    Simon & Schuster
    Jun 20, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    The New York Times bestselling “new Agatha Christie” (Air Mail) Ruth Ware returns with this adrenaline-fueled thriller that combines Mr. and Mrs. Smith with The Fugitive about a woman in a race against time to clear her name and find her husband’s murderer.

    Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect—her.

    Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer in this unputdownable and heart-pounding mystery from an author whose “propulsive prose keeps readers on the hook and refuses to let anyone off until all has been revealed” (Shelf Awareness).
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. The Five-Star Weekend
    by Elin Hilderbrand
    9780316258777
    Little, Brown and Company
    Jun 13, 2023
    FICTION / Friendship
    Hardback
    The Five-Star Weekend
    by Elin Hilderbrand
    9780316258777
    Little, Brown and Company
    Jun 13, 2023
    FICTION / Friendship
    Hardback
    From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hotel Nantucket: After tragedy strikes, food blogger Hollis Shaw gathers four friends from different stages in her life to spend an unforgettable weekend on Nantucket.

    Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper.

    So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.

    The husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets.

    The Five-Star Weekend is a surprising and captivating story about friendship, love, and self-discovery set on Nantucket. It will be a weekend like no other.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. Cross Down
    by James Patterson
    9780316404594
    Little, Brown and Company
    Jun 05, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
    Hardback
    Cross Down
    by James Patterson
    9780316404594
    Little, Brown and Company
    Jun 05, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
    Hardback
    In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Alex Cross is gravely injured and only his partner and friend John Sampson can keep him safe . . . and get justice.

    For the first time, John Sampson is on his own.

    The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC’s, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them.

    When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random—Sampson’s friend, his partner, his brother—have told him. Don’t trust anyone.

    As a shadow force advances on the nation’s capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter, and every American, including the president.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. The Whispers
    by Ashley Audrain Canada
    9780735239937
    Viking
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    The Whispers
    by Ashley Audrain Canada
    9780735239937
    Viking
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    “Expertly, subtly and powerfully rendered. . . . [The Whispers] delivers a sucker-punch ending you’ll have to read twice to believe.”—The New York Times Book Review

    “[An] electrifying . . . razor-sharp page-turner.” —Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After

    On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighbor­hood couples and their children gather for a barbecue as the summer winds down. Everything is fabulous until Whitney, the picture-perfect hostess, explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack—loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then his mother can only sit by her son’s hospital bed, where his life hangs in the balance.

    Over the course of a tense three days, the women of the neighborhood grapple with what led to that terrible night. People-pleasing Blair, Whitney’s best friend, suspects something isn’t as it seems. Rebecca, the ER doctor who helps treat Whit­ney’s son, has struggled to have a child of her own. And the all-knowing Mara, the older woman next door, watches everyone’s world unravel from her front porch.

    Exploring envy, women’s friendships, desire, and the intuitions that we silence, The Whispers is a chilling novel that marks Ashley Audrain as a major fiction talent.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. The Wind Knows My Name
    by Isabel Allende
    9780593598108
    Ballantine Books
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Wind Knows My Name
    by Isabel Allende
    9780593598108
    Ballantine Books
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration” (People), from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta

    “Timely, provocative . . . emotionally satisfying . . . [a story about] the kindness of strangers who become family.”—The New York Times Book Review

    AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

    Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

    Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita’s mother.

    Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Lady Tan's Circle of Women
    by Lisa See
    9781982117085
    Scribner
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    Lady Tan's Circle of Women
    by Lisa See
    9781982117085
    Scribner
    Jun 06, 2023
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    *NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!*

    From “one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot” (The New York Times Book Review) an immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China—perfect for fans of Lisa See’s classics Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane.

    According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

    From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.

    But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

    How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. Palazzo
    by Danielle Steel
    9781984821898
    Delacorte Press
    Jun 27, 2023
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    Palazzo
    by Danielle Steel
    9781984821898
    Delacorte Press
    Jun 27, 2023
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stirring novel about the legacies families inherit, create, and carry on, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

    After her parents perish in a tragic accident, Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. While navigating the challenges of running a company at twenty-three, Cosima must also maintain the four-hundred-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings: Allegra, who survived the tragedy that killed their parents with scars and a spinal injury, and Luca, who has a penchant for wild parties, pretty women, and poker tables.

    Cosima navigates her personal and professional challenges with a wisdom beyond her years, but her success has come at a cost: Her needs are always secondary. She’s married to the business, and her free time is given to those who rely on her . . . until she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. A brief conversation on her palazzo’s terrace turns into a tour of the Saverio workshop, and, fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant.

    Now the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Luca loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Cosima, forced to bail him out, is given an impossible choice: List the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself. But is there another way to save everything she has fought for before it goes up in flames?

    In Palazzo, Danielle Steel delivers a striking tale of family roots, ruin, and renewal.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. The Only One Left
    by Riley Sager
    9780593183229
    Dutton
    Jun 20, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    The Only One Left
    by Riley Sager
    9780593183229
    Dutton
    Jun 20, 2023
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    Named a summer book to watch by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Oprah, Paste, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Nerd Daily

    "Propulsive ... a dizzying Gothic whodunit."
    —New York Times Book Review

    Bestselling author Riley Sager returns with a Gothic chiller about a young caregiver assigned to work for a woman accused of a Lizzie Borden-like massacre decades earlier.

    At seventeen, Lenora Hope
    Hung her sister with a rope

    Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

    Stabbed her father with a knife
    Took her mother’s happy life

    It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.

    “It wasn’t me,” Lenora said
    But she’s the only one not dead

    As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Pageboy
    by Elliot Page Canada
    9781443469111
    HarperCollins Publishers
    Jun 06, 2023
    Hardback
    Pageboy
    by Elliot Page Canada
    9781443469111
    HarperCollins Publishers
    Jun 06, 2023
    Hardback

    THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    Winner of the 2023 Libby Book Award for Best Memoir and Autobiography

    The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his truth.

    “Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.

    With Juno’s massive success, Elliot became one of the world’s most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.

    As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough. Full of behind the scenes details and intimate interrogations on sex, love, trauma, and Hollywood, Pageboy is the story of a life pushed to the brink. But at its core, this beautifully written, winding journey of what it means to untangle ourselves from the expectations of others is an ode to stepping into who we truly are with defiance, strength, and joy.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. Love, Theoretically
    by Ali Hazelwood
    9780593638859
    Berkley
    Jun 13, 2023
    FICTION / Romance / Romantic Comedy
    Hardback
    Love, Theoretically
    by Ali Hazelwood
    9780593638859
    Berkley
    Jun 13, 2023
    FICTION / Romance / Romantic Comedy
    Hardback
    Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain.

    The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

    Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.

    Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?
    View this title on BNC CataList

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