May 9th, 2025
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Terri ReedTerri Reed
Fresh Pick
THE GREEK HOUSE
THE GREEK HOUSE

New Books This Week

Reader Games


The books of May are here—fresh, fierce, and full of feels.

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Wedding season includes searching for a missing bride�and a killer . . .


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Sometimes the path forward begins with a step back.


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One island. Three generations. A summer that changes everything.


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A snapshot made them legends. What it didn�t show could tear them apart.


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This life coach will give you a lift!


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A twisty, "addictive," mystery about jealousy and bad intentions


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Trapped by magic, haunted by muses�she must master the cards before they�re lost to darkness.


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Masquerades, secrets, and a forbidden romance stitched into every seam.


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A vanished manuscript. A murdered expert. A castle full of secrets�and one sharp-witted sleuth.


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Two warrior angels. First friends, now lovers. Their future? A WILD UNKNOWN.


Cactus Jack
Brad Smith

Arcade
June 2020
On Sale: June 16, 2020
312 pages
ISBN: 1950691454
EAN: 9781950691456
Kindle: B083SSZFFT
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction

Brad Smith “rivals Elmore Leonard at his best” (Publishers Weekly). His latest novel, for fans of Richard Russo and Jane Smiley, is a terrific novel about a thirty-something single woman, the untried colt she inherits, a horse-crazy little girl, and their band of misfits and has-beens who stick it to the establishment in the cutthroat world of horse racing.

Billie Masterson is a thirty-something chronic underachiever, drowning herself in alcohol and bad relationships in Ohio. She hasn’t been home to the family’s broken-down thoroughbred farm in Kentucky since college. Her mother committed suicide when Billie was a teen and she blames her father, Will Masterson. When Will drops dead while working on the farm, Billie returns to rural Kentucky for the funeral, intending only to pay her respects before high-tailing it back to Ohio. However, she’s informed by her father’s lawyer, the garrulous David Mountain Clay, that she now owns the farm…and all the debt that goes with it.

Determined to sell everything, settle the debts and get out of town, Billie discovers that her father’s colt, a horse named Cactus Jack, is the object of obsession for billionaire Reese Ryker, the louche scion of a department store dynasty and now owner of Double R Racing, one of the top thoroughbred stables in the world. Billie is willing to sell everything to Ryker—until she realizes that he’s an entitled misogynist and a not-so-subtle racist. Against her better judgment, she decides to keep the farm and the untested horse.

To do that she needs to race the animal—and beat Ryker at his own game. Assisted by a team of misfits, including a washed-up trainer with whom she has a bit too much history, the horse-crazy little girl next door, and her father’s ex-girlfriend, Billie and Cactus Jack take the track by a storm.

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