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By Maureen Lee Lenker
Expected publication: July 11th, 2023
From Goodreads:
From
Entertainment Weekly writer Maureen Lee Lenker comes a swoony
romantic comedy set in the world of 1930s film.
Joan
Davis is a movie star, and a damned good actor, too. Unfortunately,
Hollywood only seems to care when she stars alongside Dash Howard,
Tinseltown's favorite leading man and a perpetual thorn in Joan's
side. She's sick of his hotshot attitude, his never-ending attempts
to get a rise out of her―especially after the night he sold her out
to the press on a studio-arranged date. She'll turn her career around
without him. She's engaged to Hollywood's next rising star, after
all, and preparing to make the film that could finally get her taken
seriously. Then, a bombshell drops: thanks to one of his on-set
pranks gone wrong, Dash and Joan are legally married.
Reputation
on the line, Joan agrees to star alongside Dash one last time and
move production to Reno, where divorce is legal after a six-week
residency. But between on-set shenanigans, fishing competitions at
Lake Tahoe, and intimate moments leaked to the press, Joan begins to
see another side to the man she thought she had all figured out, and
it becomes harder and harder to convince the public―and
herself―that her marriage to Dash is the joke it started out as.
The 1930s and this cover (!!) – how can you go wrong?
Do you think you’ll be picking this one up?
From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set at an Italian villa with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.
Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.
As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.
Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.
Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy and Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein––The Villa welcomes you into its deadly legacy. - from Goodreads
It Happened One Summer (2021)
