There are an incredible amount of books to request on NetGalley—it’s a book lover’s dream! To help you navigate the Recently Added books in the most popular genres, we’re highlighting new books and audiobooks added to NetGalley in the last month. These books are so new even our team hasn’t read them yet, so you’ll find the books’ official summaries from the publishers below.
Remember: If you were approved for any of these books on NetGalley, you can read them directly in your NetGalley Shelf app. Don’t forget to submit a review!
Fiction
The Porcelain Moon by Janie Chang
From the critically acclaimed author of The Library of Legends comes a vividly rendered novel set in WWI France about two young women—one Chinese, one French—whose lives intersect with unexpected, potentially dangerous consequences.
France, 1918. In the final days of the First World War, a young Chinese woman, Pauline Deng, runs away from her uncle’s home in Paris to evade a marriage being arranged for her in Shanghai. To prevent the union, she needs the help of her cousin Theo, who is working as a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps in the French countryside. In the town of Noyelles-sur-Mer, Camille Roussel is planning her escape from an abusive marriage, and to end a love affair that can no longer continue. When Camille offers Pauline a room for her stay, the two women become friends. But it’s not long before Pauline uncovers a perilous secret that Camille has been hiding from her. As their dangerous situation escalates, the two women are forced to make a terrible decision that will bind them together for the rest of their lives.
Set against the little-known history of the 140,000 Chinese workers brought to Europe as non-combatant labor during WWI, The Porcelain Moon is a tale of forbidden love, identity and belonging, and what we are willing to risk for freedom.
People Person by Candice Carty-Williams, narrated by Danielle Vitalis
The author of the “brazenly hilarious, tell-it-like-it-is first novel” (Oprah Daily) Queenie returns with another witty and insightful novel about the power of family—even when they seem like strangers.
If you could choose your family… you wouldn’t choose the Penningtons.
Dimple Pennington knows of her half siblings, but she doesn’t really know them. Five people who don’t have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad’s gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. Dimple has bigger things to think about.
She’s thirty, and her life isn’t really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple’s life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she’s never felt more alone in her life. That is, until a dramatic event brings her half siblings Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie, and Prynce crashing back into her life. And when they’re all forced to reconnect with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things get even more complicated.
From an author with “a flair for storytelling that appears effortlessly authentic” (Time), People Person is a vibrant and charming celebration of discovering family as an adult.
Mystery
Last Seen in Lapaz by Kwei Quartey
When a whirlwind romance leads to the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman and a dead body, PI Emma Djan resorts to dangerous undercover work to track her down in Accra.
Just as things at work are slowing down for PI Emma Djan, an old friend of her boss’s asks for help locating his missing daughter. According to her father, Ngozi had a bright future ahead of her when she became secretive and withdrawn. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was be with her handsome new beau, Femi, instead of attending law school in the fall. So when she disappears from her parents’ house in Nigeria in the middle of a summer night, they immediately suspect Femi was behind it and have reason to believe the pair has fled to Accra.
During Emma’s first week on the case, Femi is found murdered at his opulent residence in Accra. There are no signs of Ngozi at the scene, and fearing the worst, Emma digs further, discovering that Femi was part of a network of sex traffickers across West Africa.
Emma must figure out which of Femi’s many enemies killed him, but more urgently, she must find Ngozi before she, too, is murdered in cold blood.
The Secrets You Hide by Kate Helm, narrated by Emma Powell
Georgia Sage has a gift: She can see evil in people. As a courtroom artist, she uses her skills to help condemn those who commit terrible crimes. After all, her own brutal past means she knows innocence is even rarer than justice. But when she is drawn back into the trial that defined her career—a case of twisted family betrayal—she realizes that her own reckless pursuit of justice may have helped the guilty go free.
As Georgia gets closer to the truth behind that case, something happens that threatens not only her career but also her sanity. At first, she fears her guilt around the events of her terrible childhood is finally coming back to haunt her, but the truth turns out to be even more terrifying…
Romance
Two Christmases by Suleena Bibra
When city meets country, finding the perfect Christmas will mean finding common ground. Don’t miss this charming opposites-attract holiday romance!
There’s no place like New York City for the holidays…
At least, according to Sonia Gupta. If only she could get South Carolina farmer Beau Abbot to agree. Convincing him to use her family’s art auction house to outfit his new business is turning out to be a hard sell—and keeping things professional in the face of Beau’s Southern charm is a whole other challenge.
A country Christmas can’t be beat…
It takes a lot to impress country boy Beau, given his general aversion to everything in the big city—except possibly Sonia. Certain nothing compares to the charm of Christmas in the South, Beau invites Sonia home to the farm, showing her everything a country Christmas has to offer. But relationship-wary Sonia isn’t looking for a commitment—especially not with a guy who has no plans to stay in the city.
’Tis the season for romance.
Soon, Sonia finds herself swept up in the festivities—and Beau. Too bad embracing the best of both worlds doesn’t allow your heart to be in two places at once…
A Bookshop Christmas by Rachel Burton, narrated by Laura Brydon
A snowstorm. A stranger. A spark. It should be the perfect start to the perfect love story.
But real life is far messier and more complicated than in the pages of the books in Megan Taylor’s family bookshop – the last few years have left this young widow in no doubt of that. Moving back home to York should have been a fresh start, but all it did was allow her to retreat from the world.
When prize-winning author Xander Stone rams his supermarket trolley into her ankles and then trashes her taste in books, Megan is abruptly awoken from her self-imposed hibernation. It’s time to start living again, and she’s going to start by putting this arrogant, superior – admittedly sexy – stranger in his place.
Just as she is beginning to enjoy life again, the worst happens and Megan begins to wonder if she should have stayed hidden away. Because it turns out that falling in love again is about more than just meeting under the mistletoe…
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo
Nghi Vo’s Locus and Igynte Award Finalist, and Crawford and Hugo Award-Winning Series, The Singing Hills Cycle, continues…
Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.
Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.
Councilor by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., narrated by Michael Bower
L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of Saga of Recluce and the Imager Portfolio, continues his brand new, gaslamp, political fantasy series with Councilor, the thrilling sequel to Isolate. Welcome to the Grand Illusion.
Continued poor harvests and steam-powered industrialization displace and impoverish thousands. Protests grow and gather followers.
Against this rising tide of social unrest, Steffan Dekkard, newly appointed to the Council of Sixty-Six, is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths.
This makes him dangerous.
As unknown entities seek to assassinate him, Dekkard struggles to master political intrigue and infighting, while introducing radical reforms that threaten entrenched political and corporate interests.
Young Adult
The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa
El Diablo is in the details in this Latinx pirate fantasy starring a transmasculine nonbinary teen with a mission of revenge, redemption, and revolution.
On Mar León de la Rosa’s sixteenth birthday, el Diablo comes calling. Mar is a transmasculine nonbinary teen pirate hiding a magical ability to manipulate fire and ice. But their magic isn’t enough to reverse a wicked bargain made by their father, and now el Diablo has come to collect his payment: the soul of Mar’s father and the entire crew of their ship.
When Mar is miraculously rescued by the sole remaining pirate crew in the Caribbean, el Diablo returns to give them a choice: give up their soul to save their father by the harvest moon, or never see him again. The task is impossible—Mar refuses to make a bargain, and there’s no way their magic is a match for el Diablo. Then Mar finds the most unlikely allies: Bas, an infuriatingly arrogant and handsome pirate—and the captain’s son; and Dami, a gender-fluid demonio whose motives are never quite clear. For the first time in their life, Mar may have the courage to use their magic. It could be their only redemption—or it could mean certain death.
Long Story Short by Serena Kaylor, narrated by Sarah Beth Goer
Growing up homeschooled in Berkeley, California, Beatrice Quinn is a statistical genius who has dreamed her whole life of discovering new mathematical challenges at a school like Oxford University. She always thought the hardest part would be getting in, not convincing her parents to let her go. But while math has always made sense to Beatrice, making friends is a problem she hasn’t been able to solve. The compromise? The Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy and a detailed list of teenage milestones to check off. She has six weeks to show her parents that she can pull off the role of “normal” teenager and won’t spend the rest of her life hiding in a library.
Unfortunately, hearts and hormones don’t follow any rules, and there is no equation for teenage interactions. When she’s adopted by a group of eclectic theater kids and immediately makes an enemy of the popular―and annoyingly gorgeous―British son of the camp founders, she realizes that relationships are trickier than calculus. With her future on the line, she stumbles through illicit parties, double dog dares, and more than your fair share of Shakespeare. But before the final curtain falls, will Beatrice realize that there’s more to life than she can find in the pages of a book?
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