Hello everyone! This month weâre talking about how to find great books just for you, our partnership with the prestigious Los Angeles Review of Books, and some great new authors joining the Meet the Author program.
Weâre excited to introduce personalized book recommendations (âYour Picksâ) to Bookship Premium, as of version 8.5, in your app stores now. Finding great books to read can be a challenge. And new books by your favorite authors often slip through the cracks. Who has time to keep up with all that? Let us do the work for you!
Bookship tracks what over 1000 of the best book websites, reviewers and curators are writing about. With Your Picks, you tell us what kinds of books and authors you like, and every day we scan those sites, uncovering books that best match your personal interests and current events. Theyâre available under Browse / Your Picks, and once a week weâll send you a summary email with your best picks for that week. Weâll also send you an email when one of your authors releases a new book. Read more about it.
Your Picks is a Bookship Premium feature, along with Book Briefings and access to large reading groups. Bookship Premium is $2.99 / month (or your local equivalent). It helps us keep the lights on and stay ad-free. You can try it for free for two weeks. We hope youâll help support us, and find this new feature of value!
Speaking of the best book websites, we are excited to announce Bookship is partnering with the prestigious Los Angeles Review of Books during their annual summer member drive!
The Los Angeles Review of Books is a reader-supported nonprofit that offers fresh critical and literary content online and in print. Youâll discover original fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from established and up-and-coming writers in their print journal and lively reviews, essays, and interviews on their site. Support these efforts by becoming a member during the annual summer member drive starting July 21 and receive the benefits of membership including curated digital downloads, book club discussions with LARB editors, totes, books, and more. https://lareviewofbooks.org/join. Readers who join at the LARB Books level between Wed. July 28 â Tue. August 3 get a digital and print copy of TomĂĄs Rivera Prize-winning Migrations by J.L. Torres, a tote, 3 months free of Bookship Premium access, plus start a reading group and meet J.L. Torres!
We continue to add amazing new authors to our Meet The Author program, including some with exciting new books coming out, and two authors from our very own Hawaii! As a reminder, when your book club reads one of these authors, they are ready to meet with your group via video chat, including our new Bookship Live video chat!
Sara Ackerman is the super friendly and approachable author of a great series of books set in Pearl Harbor era Hawaii. She is a USA Today Bestselling author, and currently lives on the Big Island with a houseful of bossy animals. |
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Radar Girls, Sara's latest novel, arrives July 27th. An extraordinary story inspired by the real Women's Air Raid Defense, where an unlikely recruit and her sisters-in-arms forge their place in WWII history.
NY Times Bestselling author Kate Quinn said: "A fresh, delightful romp of a novel... this gang of irrepressible friends lives up to their name in sparkling fashion.". | |
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| | Chris McKinney | | Midnight, Water City |
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I've been a fan of Hawaii native Chris McKinney since 2003, when I read his book The Tattoo on recommendation of my auntie. As a relative newcomer to Hawaii, it opened my eyes to the reality of "paradise". I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with Science Fiction! |
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This first entry in a sci-fi noir trilogy explores the sordid past of a murdered scientist, deified in death, through the eyes of a man who once committed unspeakable crimes for her. With a rich, cinematic voice and burning cynicism, Midnight, Water City is both a thrilling neo-noir procedural and a stunning exploration of research, class, climate change, the cult of personality, and the dark sacrifices we are willing to make in the name of progress. | |
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Vaseem Khan is the author of two crime series set in India, the Baby Ganesh Agency series set in modern Mumbai, and the Malabar House historical crime novels set in 1950s Bombay. His first book, The UNEXPECTED INHERITANCE OF INSPECTOR CHOPRA, was a Times bestseller and an Amazon Best Debut, now translated into 15 languages. |
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'The Da Vinci Code meets post-Independence India. I'd be surprised if I read a better book this year', says M. W. Craven.
A priceless manuscript. A missing scholar. A trail of riddles. For over a century, one of the world's great treasures, a six-hundred-year-old copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy, has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero, John Healy, the case lands on Inspector Persis Wadia's desk.
Boy does this sound like my kind of book. | |
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| | Sadeqa Johnson | | Yellow Wife |
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Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels. Her accolades include the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the USA Best Book Award for Best Fiction. She is a Kimbilio Fellow, former board member of the James River Writers, and a Tall Poppy Writer. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives near Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and three children. |
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An O, the Oprah Magazine and SheReads, Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Books of 2021 Pick,a PARADE and BuzzFeed Books We Love Pick.
âYellow Wife is a heartbreaking stunner of a book. Johnson deftly creates a cast of characters based on real historical figures and events that transport the reader to the horrors of the slave trade of the pre-war South. Exquisitely researched and richly crafted. I was utterly riveted.â -- author Aimie K. Runyan | |
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| | Denny S. Bryce | | Wild Women and the Blues |
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An award-winning author, Denny won the RWA Golden HeartÂŽ and was a three-time GH finalist, including twice for WILD WOMEN AND THE BLUES. She also writes book reviews for NPR Books and entertainment articles for FROLIC Media. And did we mention she's a former professional dancer? So this book is written from the heart. |
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I love jazz. I'm just gonna leave that there. It's not for everybody, but it is for me. And I have family in Chicago. So it was exciting to see this book!
In a stirring and impeccably researched novel of Jazz-age Chicago in all its vibrant life, two stories intertwine nearly a hundred years apart, as a chorus girl and a film student deal with loss, forgiveness, and loveâŚin all its joy, sadness, and imperfections.
âThe music practically pours out of the pages of Denny S. Bryce's historical novel, set among the artists and dreamers of the 1920s.ââOprahMag.com | |
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J. L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories; a novel, The Accidental Native; and the collection of poetry, Boricua Passport. He has published stories and poems in numerous journals and magazines, including the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Haydenâs Ferry Review, Eckleburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Las Americas Review, and the anthology Growing Up Latino. Torres is a professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh. Born in Puerto Rico, raised in the South Bronx, he lives in Plattsburgh, New York. |
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J.L. Torresâs second story collection, Migrations, is the inaugural winner of the TomĂĄs Rivera Book Prize.
A âsucioâ goes to an underground clinic for therapy to end his machista ways and is accidentally transitioned. Ex-gangbangers gone straight deal with a troubled, gifted son drawn to the gangsta lifestyle promoted by an emerging music called hip hop. Dead and stuck âbetween somewhere and nowhere,â Roberto Clemente, the great Puerto Rican baseball icon, soon confronts the reason for his predicament. These are a few of the characters in Migrations. | |
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Thanks for reading and staying in touch. If you have any trouble with Bookship, please drop me a note.
Happy Reading!
