lots coming out and much to look forward to. I missed the meeting but enjoyed the books.. Not sure what else I can say so I will say thanks

5★
“As always, Buzz Books presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at 55 of the buzziest books due out this season. Such major bestselling authors as Ryan Holiday, Nancy Horan, Kate Morton, and Abraham Verghese are featured, along with literary greats Jamel Brinkley, Eleanor Catton, Patrick DeWitt, and Cathleen Schine.“

Need I say more? Probably not, but of course I’ll mention a few that caught my eye. Some of these are on NetGalley for reviewers, but not all of them. There are pages of authors and books in the front – I noted these three (truly there are heaps).

Richard Russo has Somebody's Fool coming out in July 2023;
Max Porter has Shy in May 2023;
S.A. Cosby has All the Sinners Bleed in June 2023.

The excerpts are reasonably lengthy so you get a good feel for the storyline, the tone, the style and the characters. I’ll mention a few. Before each excerpt, there is a blurb or summary (as on Goodreads), so you can decide whether it sounds as if it's for you or not.

How to Love Your Daughter by Israeli author Hila Blum is out in July. A woman is standing alone in the dark, watching a window across the street where her married daughter (only child) lives. (Stalking?) She has travelled a long way to get here.

“Her husband, Yohan, stood in the kitchen with his back to me, toiling over dinner, while Leah passed between the rooms, crucified by the window frame, disappearing from one room and reappearing in another, bending reality as if she could walk through walls.”
And
“But it takes years to be able to look at these childhood photo albums and recognize the ways in which our love for our children twists and reshapes reality right before our eyes.”

Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter is out in August 2023. It is a tale of magic that begins the way the children in the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe discovered Narnia at the back of a wardrobe.

In this case, it’s a visitor who comes for dinner in the tiny apartment of a young couple with a small child, Rose, and no room to move. This long excerpt is actually only a short part of what is included. I just want to give you an idea of how much you get.

Stephanie arrives with a bottle of wine.

“Annie’s first instinct was to explain the size of their new home. The neighborhood, his office, the day care, what a steal! And then she would nudge Edward to apologize for the lack of space, so cramped, the amicable kind of cramped, the colorful balls and bags and dolls on the floor.

But it was Stephanie who spoke first. She said, ‘Should we eat outside? It’s such a beautiful night.’

She opened the door that normally led to their closet, and revealed a terrace, decorated with strings of twinkling lights. Knotted vines gathered around the edges, forking and blooming and racing up the sides of the apartment.

The terrace was news to Annie, and also news to Edward. Had they simply overlooked it this whole time? No, it wasn’t possible.

‘What?’ Annie said under her breath. She settled Rose against her hip and peered out onto this terrace (her terrace?), which was equipped with a table and four chairs, a grill, and the kind of sturdy umbrella one could shove open on a sunny afternoon. Everything looked glossy and expensive, as if just purchased, as if just invented. She felt like she had found a missing pair of glasses sitting on top of her head.
. . .
Stephanie was admiring a view that did not match the position of the apartment. There was no sight of Pigeon Tunnel, not anywhere. Straight ahead, they could see the remnants of a sunset, even though their side of the building faced east. Stephanie did not seem to notice the faulty geography.”

But it works only when Stephanie is there, so of course they invite her over regularly and enjoy their new-found space. Intriguing? Yes, but I should add that the blurb suggests there is a serious side. “Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.”

Prophet by Helen Macdonald (who wrote H is for Hawk) and Sin Blaché, is due out in August 2023. I enjoyed the excerpt, but I’ll just quote from the blurb.

“An all-American diner appears overnight in a remote British field. It's brightly lit, warm and inviting but it has no power, no water, no connection to the real world. It's like a memory made flesh - a nostalgic flight of fancy. More and more objects materialise: toys, fairground rides, pets and other treasured mementos of the past.

And the deaths quickly follow.

Something is bringing these memories to life, then stifling innocent people with their own joy. This is a weapon like no other. But nobody knows who created it, or why.”

A Shadow in Moscow by Katherine Reay looks intriguing. If CIA, MI6, KGB spark your interest, have a look at the Goodreads blurb. Due out in June 2023

I like the look of:
Hope by Andrew Ridker, July 2023
It begins with a dinner party with the usual couples in the social circle, but this time the hostess has everyone draw cards. Each card has a name and nationality on it, and each person is then to behave in character according to the lottery of birth they've drawn.

Then, she feeds them accordingly. No, they won't get the dessert brought by the woman who drew a card meaning all she gets is a small bowl of rice. They are each served different meals. Nobody is impressed, and from there, we learn more about them all. An interesting premise that appeals to me.

Debuts I noticed:
Burst by Mary Otis, August 2023

Go as a River by Shelley Read March 2023
The cover quote“Completely unforgettable” is by Bonnie Garmus whose recent debut Lessons in Chemistry made such a hit.

The History of a Difficult Child by Mihret Sibhat, June 2023

“The Beginning
At the beginning is God, and for some reason God is trying to get rid of all the water in His p disobey your father anymore—you run up the front stair into the house.ossession, so He grabs His containers and turns them upside down, hurling down the water with all His might, as though He were mad at somebody. The water lands on a small town in southwestern Ethiopia, where this phenomenon is known as bokkaa or zinab, depending on which language your family speaks. It comes down with such violence that, if you’re the type of girl who loves to disobey her father and run around in the rain, you’d mistake the liquid blanketing your face for a kind of punishment. When the thunder starts GOU-GOU-GOU-GOU-ing as if God Himself is chasing someone across the floor of the sky, and the lightning cuts through the thick black cloud like it’s trying to open the sky for the Return, you do not disobey your father anymore—you run up the front stair into the house.”

It looks great.

These Buzz Books are FREE for anyone to download. There are different categories and some older publications as well. I picked mine up from NetGalley (thanks)
https://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/

It is so easy to check Goodreads or Amazon or publisher websites to see what others are saying about the new books on the horizon. Go for it!

Absolutely love this resource for book lovers who prefer newly published titles to classics & backlists.. It has a great structure making for easy browsing and timely decisions for one’s TBR list!

I am looking forward to a lot of books on this list! Can't wait for them to come out and big thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing us to read them!

This sampler have some wonderful books highlighted! A great way to see what we should look forward to in the Spring / Summer season.

Great selection as always, though as usual I wish some excerpts were from the beginning of the book. Feels a bit confusing otherwise.

Another amazing sampler. I absolutely love seeing these and what they have for future releases. This gives you just the right amount of content to decide if you really want to support the author and content provided!

Wonderful little cheat sheet of upcoming titles and buzz worthy reads, but wish there were more than three YA titles.

I always look forward to the release of the Buzz Books collections, they're such a great way to get a taste of all the amazing books that are coming up. I love being able to get more of an idea of what a book is like before requesting a galley. I've recently been really getting into nonfiction so I was particularly interested in the nonfiction section this time, which I honestly haven't paid that much attention to before.

Almost everything here was new to me, and I've added so many to my TBR. There are so many great books coming out!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Publishers Lunch for putting this together!

I anxiously await each Buzz Books edition! I always find lots of great reads, many by authors I wasn't familiar with. And I also appreciate the opportunity to find out when all the new books are coming out. These are wonderful!

Thank you, Netgalley for giving me access to the latest edition of Buzz Books! I love getting to see and read excerpts from some of the buzziest upcoming titles! A lot of the books in this edition looked intriguing and I can't wait until they're published!

What a fun preview of upcoming spring/summer books! Each year I create a comprehensive summer reading guide and the Buzz Books 2023 was incredibly helpful to see which books I might like to request on NetGalley to include in my summer reading guide. I appreciated the samples of the books to get an idea for an author's writing style, especially for debut authors I was not familiar with. What a great resource for early readers!

This buzz books collection gave a great taste of what is to come for spring/summer! I am excited to read more.

I love these Buzz Books and the chance they give us to look into books being published in the coming year. This book has so many amazing stories coming our way.

Oooh, so many books to look forward to! Where to even start! My TBR is definitely getting longer! Thank you NetGalley!

So many incredible books coming out soon! This got me to request a bunch of new books I had never heard of: Prophet, House of Cotton, Medusas' Sisters. Plus the Mastering the Art of French Murder which has been on my radar. Here's to another great couple of seasons of reading!

I always love to read the Buzz Books seasonal collection to add all of the upcoming titles to my TBR!

*many thanks to netgalley for the gifted copy for review

Buzz Books does it again! Once again, I was treated to both a list of and samples from new books being published this spring and summer. And, once again, my TBR list has become overloaded! Twice a year I look forward to Buzz Books' latest, and this newest one surely did not disappoint. I am looking forward to reading many great books mentioned here, and I especially enjoyed the samples from Mastering the Art of French Murder, The Dog of the North, and Homecoming (another Kate Morton!). Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with this.

It was great to see the selection of upcoming Spring and Summer books! I always enjoy discovering the kinds of stories authors are coming out with.
I'm particularly excited about the book, Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina. The premise sounds amazing: "A young Native girl's hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe's reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut."
Another one that sounds interesting is, The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James, a midcentury gothic set in 1960s Italy. It's about an American actress and single mother who "snags a starring role in a mysterious horror movie shooting on location in a crumbling medieval castle outside Rome."
Can't wait to get my hands on these two! There were also many excerpts with gorgeous writing. I especially loved the writing in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
Thanks to NetGalley and Publishers Lunch for an advance reader copy!

I honestly thought there would be more books in here that piqued my interest. But hey, maybe one will surprise me!