Find the Best New Fiction from a Variety of Genres

My top picks for May new releases are from a variety of genres – romance, women's fiction, romantic comedy, psychological thriller and historical fiction.

1. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Olive is usually the unlucky twin – almost comically jinxed. She's dreading spending her sister's wedding day next to her nemesis – the best man, Ethan. When everyone in the wedding party except Olive and Ethan get food poisoning, there's a free honeymoon up for grabs. Olive won't miss out on paradise even if she must share it with Ethan.

They call a truce and head to Maui pretending to be newlyweds. Is the location making Olive and Ethan feel like a real couple? Could these enemies end up as lovers?

"What a joyful, warm, touching book! I laughed so hard I cried more than once, I felt the embrace of Olive’s huge, loving, complicated, hilarious family, and my heart soared at the ending. This is the book to read if you want to smile so hard your face hurts."  –Jasmine Guillory, New York Times bestselling author of The Proposal

Meet the Author(s) at the Library

Spend an evening with best friends and writing partners, Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings who use the pen name Christina Lauren at the library on Wed, May 15. The bestselling duo will talk about their work (Unhoneymooners is their 23rd book!) and answer questions.

2. Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

By mid-life, May Attaway, finds herself more comfortable with plants than people. When she unexpectedly has an extended leave from work, she decides to reconnect with four women who were once close friends. May's strategy is to embark on a female Odyssey. She wonders what would have happened if Penelope from Homer's classic The Odyssey had set out on an adventure of her own.

May explores friendship in the digital age as she visits each of her four friends in person. The friends all live very different lives in very different parts of the world. May learns the value of empathy and relationships.

"Wry, witty, ultimately uplifting, this gem of a novel celebrates the gifts in our ordinary lives.”—Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl

3. The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs to quickly find a cheap place to live. She answers an ad to share an apartment. Leon is a night shift worker who will take the apartment during the day and Tiffy can have it on nights and weekends. They'll never even need to meet.

Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes about garbage day and leftovers. These notes turn into a conversation. They are opposites but they start to become friends and maybe more than friends. Falling in love with your roommate seems like a terrible idea, especially if you've never met.

"It's a cheering, lovely look at friendship and love and learning to trust after heartbreak. I never wanted it to end." ―Maddie Dawson, bestselling author of Match Making for Beginners and The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness

4. Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols

“After nine years, astronaut Capt. Catherine Wells is coming back to Earth, alone, with no memory of what happened to her other four crew members nor any recollection of landing and exploring the planet Trappist1-f, reached through a space-time wormhole. It's been six years since NASA believed that Catherine and all her fellow crew members were killed in an event on the planet's surface. Since her supposed death, husband David and daughter Aimee, now 17, have moved on with their lives, and Catherine discovers that her best friend Maggie has moved in with them, so her homecoming is ambivalent to say the least. After the quarantine period is over, Catherine begins suffering periods of lost time and finding herself in places she should not be. Only one other person, Commander Iris Addy, had previously been through the wormhole to the Trappist-1 system, but she came back mentally unstable and was soon dismissed from NASA. Before her own career and life end in ruins, Catherine needs to find out what is causing her problems and whether Addy's problems and her own might be connected to the Trappist-1 system. VERDICT Sf aficionados will savor this surprising page-turner. The attempt to resolve the personal relationship problems inherent after long separations from friends, spouse, and child is compelling. Highly recommended.” –Library Journal

 5. A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum

Miri Abramov and her brilliant physicist brother, Vanya, were raised by their babushka who taught them to protect themselves at all costs and to always have an escape plan.

It's now the summer of 1914. War is looming and the Czar's army is tightening it's grip on the Jewish community. Fierce and headstrong, Miri is on the verge of becoming one of Russia's only female surgeons. Vanya is working to solve the puzzles of Einstein's theory of relativity. Should they leave their homeland now?

War is declared before they decide. Vanya and Miri's fiancé go missing. Miri braves a firing squad to look for them. As the eclipse of 1914 darkens the sky, the future of Miri's family and of science hangs in the balance.

"With the timelessness of a folk tale, the twists and turns of an adventure story, and the pleasures of a science thriller, A Bend in the Stars both fills the reader's heart and keeps it beating fast. This novel's strong gravitational pull draws you powerfully alongside Miri and Vanya in their harrowing quests, and its emotional payoff makes you never want to let them go."―Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men