New Arrivals for the Week of July 14

When the Debt Police come calling, ex-Hollywood stylist Jada Williams isn’t going quietly. Stranded at the Glendale mall with two equally overqualified, underpaid coworkers, she crafts a bold plot to wipe out their student loans—and strike back at the system that sold them a lie. The Payback is “terrifically fun... made me laugh out loud at least once every chapter,” raved The Los Angeles Times.

In this delectable novel from the bestselling author of Salt and Cod, a 2,000-year-old cheesecake recipe upends life on West 86th Street. Set in the 1970s Upper West Side—where poppyseed strudel and gossip flow in equal measure—Cheesecake charts the rise of one Greek family’s restaurant and the gentrification it fuels, one slice at a time. “The atmosphere [Kurlansky] creates is vivid and oh-so-New York," says Kirkus Reviews. "Good fun.”

During Argentina’s brutal military regime, hundreds of babies were taken from their imprisoned mothers and secretly adopted by junta loyalists. This riveting narrative nonfiction debut follows the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo—relentless women who risked everything to expose the truth, recover their grandchildren, and challenge state-sanctioned silence.

In this eerie multigenerational horror saga, a graduate student researching a forgotten horror novelist uncovers sinister links between her thesis, her family history, and a vanished woman from the 1930s. Set between 1900s Mexico and 1990s Massachusetts, The Bewitching is “suspenseful and terrifying,” according to a starred review from Kirkus. “Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.”

When a writer discovers her ex-husband’s debut novel features an unflattering version of herself, she spirals—quietly, then spectacularly. Domestic rhythms give way to absurd revelations in this sharp, surreal exploration of authorship, memory, and identity.

From “unalive” to “rizz,” social media has unleashed a linguistic revolution—and a new era of etymology shaped by algorithms, influencers, and platform-specific code-switching. In Algospeak, linguist and viral creator Adam Aleksic blends original research with internet-savvy insight to chart how communication is being warped and reimagined online. “Aleksic is more than a worthy guide through the complexities of algospeak… a fun, illuminating read,” says BookPage. “No cap.”

When a woman’s body surfaces in the Venetian Lagoon, Gabriel Allon uncovers a stolen da Vinci, a Vatican cover-up, and a criminal network stretching from London to the Riviera. Fast-paced and razor-sharp, An Inside Job is Silva in peak form—an elegant collision of art, espionage, and power, with a climax that threatens the pope himself.

After the sudden loss of her sister, a struggling singer from Washington Heights risks everything for one last shot at the stage. Between diner gigs, casting couches, and the ghosts of who she used to be, she must navigate the line between ambition and authenticity. “Guerrero’s writing is fully charged from the jump,” says Debutiful. “It’s as equally soft and sweet as it is biting.”

After a breakup and career implosion, a young woman steps into a new role—wife, stepmother, homemaker—only to find the house she now inhabits still ruled by the memory of the woman who came before. As voices begin to echo through the walls, what starts as unease spirals into obsession, revealing a past that refuses to stay buried. "Modern gothic meets psychological suspense in this wholly original work," praised Kirkus Reviews.

Science writer Laura Poppick explores four pivotal episodes in planetary history—from the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere to the long reign of the dinosaurs—through the layers of rock that record them. Combining immersive reporting with big-picture insight, Strata “illuminates transformative moments from history—and explores where we might go from here,” writes InsideHook.