I have two days of forthcoming books for you, all books scheduled for release in July. And, one of the titles is by a favorite author. I’ll let you know when I get there. In the meantime, there are a number of interesting titles here.

I love to start off with a debut novel. Caroline Angell brings us All the Time in the World. After Charlotte, a gifted young musician, is betrayed, she takes a job as a nanny to have time to lick her wounds. But, she falls for her two young charges. And, when a tragedy occurs, she realizes she holds the key to holding the children’s world together. Charlotte has to choose between the future she planned, and the people she’s come to love. (Release date is July 12.)

Amy Avanzino takes us into the world of youth football in a funny novel, From the Sideline. After she loses her marriage, life savings, and waistline, Autumn Kovac is terrified of being hit by more heartache. So, when her son wants to try out for the the football team, the overprotective mom doesn’t react well. But, the world of youth competitive sports changes her, and she finds herself back in the dating game, and back in life. (Release date is July 19.)

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball introduces a teenage narrator, Lucia. She can’t stay in high school, lives in a converted garage with her broke and eccentric aunt. Her mother is in a mental institution. Her father is dead, and she always tells the truth about what matters. And, when she learns her new school has a secret Arson Club, she’s willing to do anything to belong in it. (Release date is July 5.)

The back of the book says, “Commissaire Dupin is back”, and I’m happy with that. Murder on Brittany Shores by Jean-Luc Bannalec brings back the outsider who enjoys his coffee and long walks. Ten miles off the coast of Brittany, three bodies wash up on the shore of the Glenan Islands. When the victims are identified Dupin is called to delve into a mystery that is tied to the past, while he tangles with treasures hunters, militant marine biologists, and dangerous divers. (Release date is July 26.)

Catherine Banner introduces readers to a family who live on an island off the coast of Italy in The House at the edge of Night. The island of Castlemare is not far enough from the mainland to escape the world’s trouble. It’s there that Amelo Esposito makes a life with his wife, Pina. The story spans almost a century, following the family that is transformed by two world wars, a great recession, by their deep bonds, and by bitter rivalries and the power of forgiveness. (Release date is July 12.)

Eleanor Brown, author of The Weird Sisters, now brings us The Light of Paris. Madeline is trapped – by her family’s expectations, her controlling husband, and her own fears. She remembers her grandmother Margie as the kind of woman she should have been. But, when she discovers a diary detailing Margie’s bold, romantic trip to Jazz Age Paris, she meets the grandmother she never knew. And, when she flees from her marriage, inspired by her grandmother, she creates her own Parisian summer. (Release date is July 12.)

Who would want to destroy a little library? That’s what Jenny Weston wants to know in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s A Most Curious Murder. Jenny had moved home to Bear Falls, Michigan after a bitter divorce. But, her idyllic vision of her hometown is destroyed when her mother’s little library is destroyed. The next door neighbor, Zoe Zola, a little person and Lewis Carroll enthusiast suspects the local curmudgeon. But, when he’s found dead in Zoe’s fairy garden, all fingers point to Zoe. Together, Jenny and Zoe look for the real killer in a story inspired by Alice in Wonderland. (Release date is July 12.)

Here’s the title by one of my favorite authors, Among the Wicked by Linda Castillo. The latest Kate Burkholder novel finds the Chief of Police leaving Ohio, going undercover as a widow in a reclusive Amish settlement in upstate New York to investigate the death of a young girl. Her investigation finds her deep in trouble, trapped and fighting for her life. (Release date is July 12.)

Jennifer Close’s novel, The Hopefuls, follows a young wife who accompanies her husband and his political dreams to Washington, D.C. She hates everything about the city, and people turn away from Beth when they learn she isn’t in politics. When Beth and her husband, Matt, meet a charismatic White House staffer named Jimmy, and his wife, the couples become inseparable. But, as Jimmy’s star dishes, their friendship, and Beth’s relationship with Matt, suffers. (Release date is July 19.)

Indra Das’ debut novel, The Devourers, takes readers to India, where a college professor, Alok, encounters a mysterious stranger with an extraordinary story. Tantalizes by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its conclusion. She agrees to translate an odd collection, and finds the chronicle of a race of people more than human, but kin to beasts. The story is about a wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who is drawn to a defiant woman, and ends up torn apart by two clashing worlds. (Release date is July 12.)

Snowdrops in Summer by Helen Duggan introduces three women, “heart” friends, who live in a small village in South Wales. They don’t have much, but together they “face the challenges of single motherhood, romance, and financial woes”. (Release date is July 15.)

Looking for a traditional cozy mystery series filled with recipes and small-town charm? Try Wendy Sand Eckel’s Death at the Day Lily Cafe. Rosalie Hart has finally opened the cafe of her dreams, but five minutes into the grand opening, a friend cashes in on a favor, asking her to help clear her sister of a first degree murder charge. Rosalie has to juggle the cafe and the case, but the suspect list grows. And, then Rosalie’s daughter, Annie gets caught in the crossfire, and Rosalie’s search becomes personal. (Release date is July 26.)

Dave Eggers, author of The Circle, now introduces us to a small family in Heroes of the Frontier. Josie and her children’s father have split up. She’s lost her dental practice, and is being sued by a former patient. It’s the last straw when her ex asks to take the children to meet his new fiancee’s family. Josie decides to make a run for it, figuring Alaska is about as far as can get. It’s an adventure at first, but their journey through an Alaskan wilderness is plagued by wildfires as the family is chased by enemies both real and imagined. (Release date is July 26.)

Jenn Fagan’s The Sunlight Pilgrims is the follow-up to The Panopticon. November 2020, and the world is bracing of the worst winter on record. Dylan MacRae, reeling from a series of devastating losses, heads north to bury his mother’s and grandmother’s ashes on the Scottish islands of his ancestors. It’s there that he meets a survivalist mother, and her daughter, Stella, who until one year earlier was a boy named Carl. Life changes course for all three of them, and, as they prepare for a rapidly changing climate, secrets are revealed that link them in unexpected ways. (Release date is July 19.)

Police chief Josie Gray returns in Tricia Fields’ Midnight Crossing. When she hears a car in the middle of the night, she goes outside and discovers a woman, mute with shock and terror, hiding on her porch. And, then she finds the body of another young woman in a nearby field. The small town is located on the border of Texas and Mexico, a way station for coyotes who ferry immigrants, but they usually move farther north. Now, she discovers someone in town has a bigger role in the trafficking business than Gray ever expected. (Release date is July 5.)

In Patrick Flanery’s I Am No One, Jeremy O’Keefe returns to New York after living a decade in England. The professor of German history is happy to be near his daughter once again, but he’s lonely, and walks through the city at night, feeling as if he could disappear and no one would ever know. But, someone notices him. He’s being followed, and records of his online activity are delivered to his apartment. It only gets more upsetting until Jeremy wonders if he’s unwittingly committed a crime. (Release date is July 5.)

The description of Margherita’s Notebook says it’s perfect for those who love Chocolat and Under the Tuscan Sun. Authors Elisabetta Flummery and Gabriella Giacometti take readers to Tuscany where Margherita escaped after her husband breaks her heart. She has a passion for cooking and wants to reopen her late mother’s restaurant. Her dreams come into conflict with Nicola Ravellia, a businessman who is buying up the vineyards of local farmers, but the two come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. And, I’m going to leave you wondering about this sensual story filled with recipes for authentic Italian dishes. (Release date is July 26.)

When Melanie Gideon wrote Valley of the Moon, she was inspired by the same fairy tale that inspired Brigadoon. Lux is a single mom struggling to make her way in the world when she stumbles across an idyllic community in the Sonoma valley and feels instantly at home. Then, she realizes it actually is a place from another time. In 1906, an earthquake left Greengage stuck in the past. Soon, Lux finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world, her son, and the first place she has ever felt fully at home. (Release date is July 26.)

Jane Green’s Falling introduces Emma Montague, a woman searching for the life she wants. It’s not her upper-crust British life. It’s not the cutthroat world of finance in New York. Maybe it’s her passion for creating beautiful spaces, the waterfront town of Eastport, Connecticut, and the local handyman and his six-year-old son. But, she’s going to have to find for what she wants, and, for the first time in her life, stay to do it. (Release date is July 19.)

The Hemingway Thief is a debut novel by Shaun Harris. In 1922, Ernest Hemingway asks his wife, Hadley to pack up very last piece of his work and join him in Switzerland. While Hadley waits for her train in Paris, the suitcase containing a year’s worth of Hemingway stories vanishes, never to be seen again. At least until Henry “Coop” Cooper, lounging on a Baja beach with his friend, Grady, joins Grady in the attempt to save a drunk from two thugs. Coop tags along, only to find that the drunk, a small time thief, has stolen the never-before-seen first draft of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast from a wealthy rare book dealer. What starts as a hunt for a legendary writer’s lost works becomes a deadly adventure. (Release date is July 19.)

The last book for today is Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton, another debut. It’s
a story set around the creation of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the last days of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. In 1940, Magot Fiske arrives in Monterey  Bay with her entrepreneur father. Steinbeck is hiding out from his fame at the lab of Ed Ricketts, the biologist known as Doc in Cannery Row. Fascinated by Ricketts, Margot becomes his sketch artist, and her father is soliciting the biologist’s advice on a controversial project to transform Cannery Row into an aquarium. Margot’s affair with Ricketts sets in motion a chain of events that changes Monterey. (Release date is July 19.)

So which books fascinate you? Debut novels about Hemingway or Steinbeck? Linda Castillo’s latest Kate Burkholder novel? Stories of domestic fiction? If nothing fits your interests today, check back tomorrow for the second part of Treasures in My Closet for July.