The Wicked Widow: A Wicked City Novel
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

Williams is back with an installment in her Wicked City series (starting with The Wicked City, 2017), featuring dual timelines and Jazz Age flapper Gin Kelly. In 1998, Ella Dommerich is just separated from her cheating husband, pregnant, and moving in with her new beau, Hector. Ella's aunt asks her to dig up some dirt on current presidential candidate Franklin Hardcastle, who was briefly married to another relative of theirs. Ella discovers a mysterious connection to Gin Kelly, as well as some shady dealings with the Hardcastles, but she is fired from her analyst job before she can uncover the whole truth. In the 1920s, Gin Kelly is happy to play the role of new wife to Oliver Anson Marshall, but after some honeymoon bliss, Anson has to go undercover once again as a Prohibition agent, this time faking his own death. Gin is now pregnant and a "widow" when she finds that she is not safe from the violence of the bootlegging industry. Both women face danger from different generations of Hardcastles, and they fear for those they love. Series fans will enjoy.

Williams continues her Wicked City series (after the Wicked Redhead) with an engrossing New York City mystery spanning several decades. In 1998, Ella Dommerich moves into her boyfriend Hector's Greenwich Village walk-up, following her separation from Patrick, the father of her unborn child. Ella's aunt Julie asks her to use her investigative skills as a financial analyst to dig up dirt on Senator Frank Hardcastle, a presidential candidate who was once married to another relative of Ella and Julie's, and to whom Julie bears a grudge. In a parallel narrative set in 1924, Geneva Kelley marries Oliver Anson Marshall and they move into the townhouse later occupied by Hector and Ella. After Louis Hardcastle, the head of an East Coast bootlegging organization, is murdered, Louis's son blames Anson, a former Prohibition enforcement special agent, and Anson decides to fake his death and go into hiding to protect Geneva. As Ella continues to delve into the background of the Hardcastle family while enduring prenatal nausea, she discovers connections to Patrick's employer and some financial anomalies, and ropes Patrick in to an increasingly dangerous situation. Williams's fast-paced story line features engaging dialogue and thematic connections between Ella and Geneva. Series fans will eat this up. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. (Oct.)

In Sisters of the Great War, Missouri Review Editors' Prize winner Feldman crafts the story of ambitious young American Ruth Duncan--she wants to be a doctor--and her shy sister, Elise, who volunteer their services in war-torn 1914 Europe and discover love, nurse Ruth with an Englishman in the medical corps and Elise with another woman in the ambulance corps (50,000-copy first printing). In The Book of Magic, which concludes Hoffman's "Practical Magic" series, three generations of Owens women and a long-lost brother attempt to break the curse that has bound their family since Maria Owens practiced the Unnamed Art centuries ago (200,000-copy first printing). Launched with lots of in-house love, multi-AP-award-winning Miller's The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven features a young man who seeks adventure by moving to an Arctic archipelago in 1916, then withdraws further to an isolated fjord, where he's sustained by a loyal dog and letters from home until the arrival of an unexpected visitor (50,000-copy first printing). In a follow-up to Morris's multi-million-best-selling The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey, Three Sisters--Livia, Magda, and Cibi--survive Auschwitz and escape the Germans during the 1945 death march from the camp (500,000-copy first printing). In Saab's debut, Polish resistance fighter Maria is imprisoned in Auschwitz and forced by brutal camp deputy Fritzsch to play chess for his entertainment--and her life; the war's approaching resolution brings Maria closer to The Last Checkmate and a chance to avenge the deaths of her family (150,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). Following up The Wicked Redhead with The Wicked Widow, Williams zigzags between 1925 New York, where brassy, flashy flapper Geneva "Gin" Kelly happily settles into a high-society marriage to (of all things) a Prohibition agent, and 1998, with troubled Ella Dommerich relying on Gin's ghostly help when her aunt pushes her to discover anything nasty she can about an old family enemy running for president (75,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing).

Williams is back with an installment in her Wicked City series (starting with The Wicked City, 2017), featuring dual timelines and Jazz Age flapper Gin Kelly. In 1998, Ella Dommerich is just separated from her cheating husband, pregnant, and moving in with her new beau, Hector. Ella's aunt asks her to dig up some dirt on current presidential candidate Franklin Hardcastle, who was briefly married to another relative of theirs. Ella discovers a mysterious connection to Gin Kelly, as well as some shady dealings with the Hardcastles, but she is fired from her analyst job before she can uncover the whole truth. In the 1920s, Gin Kelly is happy to play the role of new wife to Oliver Anson Marshall, but after some honeymoon bliss, Anson has to go undercover once again as a Prohibition agent, this time faking his own death. Gin is now pregnant and a "widow" when she finds that she is not safe from the violence of the bootlegging industry. Both women face danger from different generations of Hardcastles, and they fear for those they love. Series fans will enjoy. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

In Sisters of the Great War, Missouri Review Editors' Prize winner Feldman crafts the story of ambitious young American Ruth Duncan—she wants to be a doctor—and her shy sister, Elise, who volunteer their services in war-torn 1914 Europe and discover love, nurse Ruth with an Englishman in the medical corps and Elise with another woman in the ambulance corps (50,000-copy first printing). In The Book of Magic, which concludes Hoffman's "Practical Magic" series, three generations of Owens women and a long-lost brother attempt to break the curse that has bound their family since Maria Owens practiced the Unnamed Art centuries ago (200,000-copy first printing). Launched with lots of in-house love, multi-AP-award-winning Miller's The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven features a young man who seeks adventure by moving to an Arctic archipelago in 1916, then withdraws further to an isolated fjord, where he's sustained by a loyal dog and letters from home until the arrival of an unexpected visitor (50,000-copy first printing). In a follow-up to Morris's multi-million-best-selling The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey, Three Sisters—Livia, Magda, and Cibi—survive Auschwitz and escape the Germans during the 1945 death march from the camp (500,000-copy first printing). In Saab's debut, Polish resistance fighter Maria is imprisoned in Auschwitz and forced by brutal camp deputy Fritzsch to play chess for his entertainment—and her life; the war's approaching resolution brings Maria closer to The Last Checkmate and a chance to avenge the deaths of her family (150,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). Following up The Wicked Redhead with The Wicked Widow, Williams zigzags between 1925 New York, where brassy, flashy flapper Geneva "Gin" Kelly happily settles into a high-society marriage to (of all things) a Prohibition agent, and 1998, with troubled Ella Dommerich relying on Gin's ghostly help when her aunt pushes her to discover anything nasty she can about an old family enemy running for president (75,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing).

Williams continues her Wicked City series (after the Wicked Redhead) with an engrossing New York City mystery spanning several decades. In 1998, Ella Dommerich moves into her boyfriend Hector's Greenwich Village walk-up, following her separation from Patrick, the father of her unborn child. Ella's aunt Julie asks her to use her investigative skills as a financial analyst to dig up dirt on Senator Frank Hardcastle, a presidential candidate who was once married to another relative of Ella and Julie's, and to whom Julie bears a grudge. In a parallel narrative set in 1924, Geneva Kelley marries Oliver Anson Marshall and they move into the townhouse later occupied by Hector and Ella. After Louis Hardcastle, the head of an East Coast bootlegging organization, is murdered, Louis's son blames Anson, a former Prohibition enforcement special agent, and Anson decides to fake his death and go into hiding to protect Geneva. As Ella continues to delve into the background of the Hardcastle family while enduring prenatal nausea, she discovers connections to Patrick's employer and some financial anomalies, and ropes Patrick in to an increasingly dangerous situation. Williams's fast-paced story line features engaging dialogue and thematic connections between Ella and Geneva. Series fans will eat this up. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. (Oct.)