It’s summer already, and this month’s Amazon First Reads are hot!

BONUS: Prime Members also get to read the haunting short story based on true events, Doctor Ice Pick by Claire Prentice, as well as the historical fiction novel by Rhys Bowen, The Venice Sketchbook FREE this month with Prime Reading!

Happy Reading!

 

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Synopsis Summary


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

Blackout

Author: Erin Flanagan
Pages: 303
ISBN: B09MCZ798K
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

In this unforgettable psychological thriller, the dark is a terrifying mystery for a woman on the edge.
Seven hard-won months into her sobriety, sociology professor Maris Heilman has her first blackout. She chalks it up to exhaustion, though she fears that her husband and daughter will suspect she’s drinking again. Whatever their cause, the glitches start becoming more frequent. Sometimes minutes, sometimes longer, but always leaving Maris with the same disorienting question: Where have I been?
Then another blackout lands Maris in the ER, where she makes an alarming discovery. A network of women is battling the same inexplicable malady. Is it a bizarre coincidence or something more sinister? What do all the women have in common besides missing time? Or is it who they have in common?
In a desperate search for answers, Maris has no idea what’s coming next—just the escalating paranoia that her memories may be beyond her control, and that everything she knows could disappear in the blink of an eye.


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Our Review

 


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

The Brighter the Light

Author: Mary Ellen Taylor
Pages: 360
ISBN: B0998WPHDS
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Montlake
Released: June 7, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Honeysuckle Season comes an evocative dual-timeline novel detailing one woman’s journey to discover the hidden stories of her family’s seaside resort.

When a shipwreck surfaces, old secrets are sure to follow.
Or so goes the lore in Ivy Neale’s hometown of Nags Head, North Carolina. When Ivy inherits her family’s beachfront cottage upon her grandmother’s death, she knows returning to Nags Head means facing the best friend and the boyfriend who betrayed her years ago.

But then a winter gale uncovers the shipwreck of local legend—and Ivy soon begins to stumble across more skeletons in the closet than just her own. Amid the cottage’s clutter are clues from her grandmother’s past at the enchanting seaside resort her family once owned. One fateful summer in 1950, the arrival of a dazzling singer shook the staff and guests alike—and not everyone made it to fall.

As Ivy contends with broken relationships and a burgeoning romance in the present, the past threatens to sweep her away. But as she uncovers the strength of her grandmother and the women who came before her, she realizes she is like the legendary shipwreck: the sands may shift around her, but she has found her home here by the sea.


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About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

The Secret Witness

Author: Victor Methos
Series: Shepard & Gray #1
Pages: 304
ISBN: B09DYFXKYW
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of A Killer’s Wife comes the thrilling first installment in the Shepard & Gray series, featuring a young sheriff who teams up with a former prosecutor to stop a copycat killer.

"This is Reaper speaking."
So begins an anonymous letter published in a Utah newspaper after a young couple is viciously murdered. Tooele County sheriff Elizabeth Gray leads the investigation into the double homicide, which is eerily reminiscent of a string of brutal killings years ago. When the letter leads detectives to yet another body, Gray calls on an old friend for help.

Former prosecutor Solomon Shepard is still struggling to recover from the deadly courtroom attack that ended his career. He’s been keeping a safe distance from the action, teaching criminology seminars about serial murders and psychopathology—until Gray asks for his help on the Reaper case.

As the body count mounts, Shepard and Gray race to unravel the deranged design of a copycat killer—and find themselves in a face-off with an enemy they never saw coming.


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Our Review

 


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

Happy Is On Hiatus

Author: A.C. Arthur
Pages: 283
ISBN: B09K7J5FJB
Genre: Women's Fiction
Publisher: Montlake
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

Sisterhood is the secret weapon for two women at crossroads in a bighearted multigenerational novel about family, forgiveness, and fresh starts by the author of The After Party.

When Rita McCall discovers her husband’s affair, there isn’t a lick of surprise—not a single tear or broken heart. Just a wife and mother who’s over it and ready to watch her twenty-three-year marriage go up in flames. Sticking close, thick as thieves since childhood, Rita’s unfailingly loyal cousins Jemel and Sharae become her lifeline. They stand beside her as she contemplates a new career and navigates the murky waters of being a preacher’s daughter disgraced by scandal.

Although she would never turn her back on her cousin, Sharae has her own issues to deal with after learning of her father’s jailhouse death and an inheritance she doesn’t want. The last things she needs right now are a handsome lawyer snooping around in her business and a secret that comes back to bite.

With the cousins at life-changing crossroads, it’ll take the wisdom of the Aunts and their family’s legacy of feeding the soul to guide them through the painful secrets, betrayals, and empowering revelations ahead. They’ll learn that what matters most is holding tight to love, to the promise of happiness, and most of all to each other.


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About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

Author: Zibby Owens
Pages: 263
ISBN: B09HXFSXQY
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Little A
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

A deeply personal memoir about one woman’s journey to finding her voice and rewriting her story by the creator and host of the award-winning podcast: Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books™.

Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family.

But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her. She turned to books and writing for help.

Just when things seemed particularly bleak, Zibby unexpectedly fell in love with a tennis pro turned movie producer who showed her the path to happiness: away from type A perfectionism and toward “letting things unfold organically.” What “unfolded” was a meaningful career, a great love, and finally, her voice, now heard by millions of listeners.

An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one’s true calling, Bookends will inspire and uplift.


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Our Review

 


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

A Gracious Neighbor

Author: Chris Cander
Pages: 304
ISBN: B09GPFG5D2
Genre: Domestic Thriller, Drama
Publisher: Little A
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

A gripping novel about friendship, secrets, misjudgments, and redemption among women by the USA Today bestselling author of The Weight of a Piano.

Martha Hale is an affable wife and mother who lives in an affluent neighborhood of well-tended lawns and high expectations. If only her clumsiness at penetrating the social circles of her neighbors weren’t making Martha so lonely.

That’s why she’s thrilled when the glamorous Minnie Foster, a former high school classmate, moves in next door. Despite Martha’s determination, picking up where they left off is trickier than anticipated—especially when their memories of the past don’t always align. But Martha is undeterred. In fact, her preoccupation with Minnie’s life, her success, and her marriage is becoming an obsession. When she sees a darkness and shame hiding inside Minnie’s perfectly deceptive home, Martha realizes that not even Minnie’s secrets are what they seem.

Visceral, sharp-witted, and deeply empathetic, A Gracious Neighbor explores the judgments women pass on one another and the ills of a society curated to keep them on the outside looking in.


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Our Review

 


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

This Way Out

Author: Tufayel Ahmed
Pages: 268
ISBN: B09D3JCQ19
Genre: Contemporary, LGBT
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

It’s time everyone knew the truth, and what better way to announce you’re getting married (and gay) than on your family WhatsApp group?

Amar can’t wait to tell everyone his wonderful news: he’s found The One, and he’s getting married. But it turns out announcing his engagement on a group chat might not have been the best way to let his strict Muslim Bangladeshi family know that his happy-ever-after partner is a man—and a white man at that.

Amar expected a reaction from his four siblings, but his bombshell sends shockwaves throughout the community and begins to fracture their family unit, already fragile from the death of their mother. Suddenly Amar is questioning everything he once believed in: his faith, his culture, his family, his mother’s love—and even his relationship with Joshua. Amar was sure he knew what love meant, but was he just plain wrong?

He’s never thought of his relationship with Joshua as a love story—they just fit together, like two halves of a whole. But if they can reconcile their differences with Amar’s culture, could there be hope for his relationship with his family too? And could this whole disaster turn into a love story after all?


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Our Review

 


About the Book

June Amazon First Reads

Pink Is Not a Color

Author: Lindsay Ward
Pages: 289
ISBN: ‎ B09DCZPC42
Genre: Childrens
Publisher: Two Lions
Released: July 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

Pink finds happiness right where she always knew it was in this colorful companion to the popular picture book This Book Is Gray.

Pink loves her rosy world, from her pink toy dinosaur to her pet flamingo, Phil. But when she sees the Primaries and Secondaries getting ready for the Rainbow Extravaganza, she begins to wonder why she isn’t in the rainbow…and if that means she’s not really a color. Then she meets the Tints, and she’s even more confused. Luckily, a friend shows her the many ways she spreads joy—reminding Pink that she is truly one of a kind, rainbow or not.
Featuring the world of colors introduced in This Book Is Gray—and a few new color concepts—this is a tale about appreciating who you are and realizing that only you can decide what makes you happy.


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Our Review

 

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