Well, part 2 is going to be much larger than I expected. When I went to work on Monday, I found a box from Simon & Schuster waiting for me with six more June releases in it. Are you ready for an enormous second listing of treasures in my closet? Here are the other June releases I have.

The Truth and Other Lies is the first novel from Sascha Arango, one of Germany’s most prominent screenplay writers. It’s the story of a famous writer, whose wife, the actual writer of his novels, meets an untimely death. His hidden-in-plain sight mistress is pregnant, and the police are after Henry about his past, a past he kept hidden. This is the story of a man trying to survive as the noose tightens. (Release date is June 23.)

In Harriet Evans’ A Place for Us, Martha, a wife and mother of three, sits down to write out the invitations for her eightieth birthday celebration. She’s decided to reveal a secret that could ruin the idyllic life she and her husband David have spent fifty years building, destroying her perfect family. (Release date is June 2.)

“Celebrated poet’s muse. Trusted queen’s maid. Adulteress. Enemy of the State.” Who is the real Penelope Devereux? Elizabeth Fremantle’s historical novel, Watch the Lady, tells of Penelope and her brother, the Earl of Essex, whose influence grows while Robert Cecil, the queen’s enforcer, watches. Penelope tries to save her brother while she conspires with her lover and a foreign king in a plot that could end her own life. (Release date is June 9.)

Patti Callahan Henry introduces two people in a story about the lengths we go to for love, The Idea of Love. Everything thinks Ella’s husband dies in a tragic sailing accident while trying to save her. That’s what she lets everyone believe. Screenwriter Hunter needs a hit, and he’s on the look-out for a love story. Ella’s will work. When they meet in Watersend, South Carolina, one lie leads to another until they find themselves caught in a web of deceit. (Release date is June 23.)

Andrew Hughes’ debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt, is based on the true story of a man of that name. It’s a historical thriller about a student convicted of killing a small boy. Delahunt “betrays his family, his friends, his society and ultimately, himself” in this story set in 1840s Dublin. As he awaits the hangman in his cell in Kilmainham Gaol, John Delahunt decides to tell his story in this statement. (Release date is June 15.)

Two sisters are suddenly sent from their home in Brooklyn to live with grandmother in Barbados in Naomi Jackson’s debut novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill. Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live for the summer of 1989 with their grandmother, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. While Dionne spends the summer searching for love, testing her grandmother’s limits, and wanting to go home, Phaedra explores and accompanies her grandmother. When the father they barely know shows up to claim them, both girls must choose between the Brooklyn they once knew and the Barbados of generations of their family. (Release date is June 30.)

Early one summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide? Lisa Jewell introduces that young woman’s husband in the novel, The Third Wife. Adrian Wolfe searches for the truth behind his seemingly perfect marriage. Divorces from his two previous wives were amicable. He thinks his five children were resilient. What pushed Maya over the edge? (Release date is June 9.)

Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians, now brings us China Rich Girlfriend. It’s a comedy of manners that takes readers through Asia’s most exclusive clubs, auction houses and estates to tell what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia’s most eligible bachelor, discovers her birth father. (Release date is June 16.)

Lawrence H. Levy introduces Mary Handley, the first female detective in Brooklyn, in the historical mystery, Second Street Station.  Not long after she’s fired from her job in a hat factory, she finds herself at a murder scene, that of Thomas Edison’s former bookkeeper. She’s hired by the Brooklyn Police Department as the city’s first policewoman, to solve the crime. They expect her to fail, but she digs in, questioning people such as Edison, J.P. Morgan, and Nikolas Tesla. She soon discovers she must delve into the machinations of the city’s most powerful men to find the killer. (Release date is June 9.)

Are you ready for an Apocalypse cow novel? Actually, Michael Logan’s World War Moo is the sequel to Apocalypse Cow. It began with a cow that wouldn’t die. The un-dead disease is now spreading to humans. All of Great Britain is infected. Now, the world has to decide if they’ll nuke the island off the map, or work against time to find a cure. (Release date is June 9.)

Jax Miller’s debut novel is Freedom’s Child, the story of a woman who risks everything to make amends for her past. No one is the small Oregon town where she lives knows that the brazen woman they know from the local bar is actually in witness protection after killing her husband, a cop, twenty years earlier. When she learns her daughter, who she gave up for adoption, has disappeared, possibly kidnapped. She’ll no longer be protected by the government, but she heads for Kentucky to find her, knowing her husband’s sadistic family are out for revenge. (Release date is June 2.)

Sam Munson brings us a “sorcerous crime wave in New York City” in The War Against the Assholes. Mike Wood, who enforces his moral code with muscle, is recruited by Hob to assist in a world of magic worked by force of will, and a war against the kind of wizardry schools that Hob and his fellow practitioners call the Assholes. In a city laid out as a game board upon which this war is fought, Mike is recruited in a war fought by illusion and supported by sleight of hand. (Release date is June 16.)

In Carla Norton’s new thriller, What Doesn’t Kill Her, a young woman learns to fight back. Reeve LeClaire now considers herself a college student, not Daryl Wayne Flint’s victim, although he once held her captive for four years. She’s recovering a life of her own. And, then Flint, who appeared to be a model patient, escapes from Olshaker Psychiatric Hospital, and kills someone from his past. As he leaves a bloody trail behind him, Reeve suddenly realizes she knows him better than anyone else, and she’s the only one who can stop him. (Release date is June 30.)

Owen Sheers takes readers into a world of love, loss, grief, and secrets in I Saw a Man. When journalist Caroline Turner is killed in Pakistan in a drone strike, her grieving husband leaves their cottage in Wales and tries to build a new life in London. His friendship with neighbors there is the start of a long healing process, which is interrupted by a letter from the American soldier responsible for Caroline’s death. The letter stirs up Michael’s emotions, clouding his judgment. Then, when a terrible accident occurs, Michael once again bears the burden of a secret. (Release date is June 9.)

I’m not sure I understand the premise of Steve Stern’s The Pinch. It’s set in a mythical Jewish community in the late 1960s. The Pinch, once a thriving Jewish community centered on North Main Street in Memphis, has only one tenant. Lenny Sklarew peddles drugs and shelves books, until he learns he is a character in a book about the rise and fall of the Pinch. Muni Pinsker wrote the book after arriving in the neighborhood at its height. From there, the description gets more confusing, telling about the real-world experience of Lenny and the Pinch. (Release date is June 2.)

There’s been a lot of buzz about Erika Swyler’s debut novel, The Book of Speculation. It introduces Simon Watson, a young librarian who finds himself drawn to a book that arrived on his doorstep. It seems to be a kind of journal from the owner of the traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports many strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. And it’s that woman who ties the book to Simon’s family, where generations of “mermaids”, including Simon’s mother, have drowned. (Release date is June 23.)

Kate Walbert introduces a cast of characters who she follows as they negotiate a swiftly changing neighborhood in the novel The Sunken Cathedral.  Walbert uses a chorus of voices to explore the growing disconnect between the world of action and the longings, desires, and doubts her characters experience. She “paints portraits of marriage, of friendship, and of love in its many facets”. (Release date is June 9.)

And, we’ll end with a novel of romance and drama during wartime. Madeleine’s War by Peter Watson is based on actual events in Britain and France leading up to D-Day. Matthew Hammond, a British military officer, sustained such a serious injury that he lost a lung. However, he still serves his country, training resistance fighters in England. But, he falls in love with Madeleine, a French-Canadian, and is torn about putting her in danger. But, she’s needed as the Allies muster all their forces, and he can only hope he has taught her enough to keep her safe. (Release date is June 2.)

Honestly? I’m glad I could close with Madeleine’s War since I found the descriptions of the last few novels a little vague. I hope you don’t find most of the descriptions too vague. Is there something here you want to read? June is certainly filled with treasures.