Between Silence and Surrender: 6 Literary Novels That Stay

04 Jul 2025

Between Silence and Surrender: 6 Literary Novels That Stay

Some stories don’t need explosions to leave a mark. These literary novels explore the quiet fractures—marriages that can’t be saved, families that won’t forgive, and the moments when silence becomes its own kind of surrender.

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Life and Death in Venice

by Victor Lana

Release Date: June 16, 2025

Robert (Bobby) Valenti is a New Yorker who moves to Venice to start over. He begins dating Mireille, a French girl with emotional issues. Bobby meets Elena in a bar but discovers she is a prostitute with an abusive pimp. He continues seeing both women, creating an odd love triangle. Can he find peace and happiness, or does fate have other plans?

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Spectacular Things

by Beck Dorey-Stein

Release Date: July 1, 2025

Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: The responsible and academically minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young, while Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.

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We Both Have Secrets

by Emma Robinson

Release Date: June 18, 2025

When my long-lost friend Lucy invites us to her Spanish villa, I jump at the chance for my husband Robert to have some time together. Our daughters have flown the nest, and it’s a chance for us to reconnect. But when we arrive, Robert slowly pulls away from me. His conversation is muted, and he refuses to meet my eye at dinner. When I see him chatting to Lucy’s grown-up daughter, I know something strange is going on…

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Cove City

by Tatiana Timmons

Release Date: June 27, 2025

Welcome back to Toussaint. Seven to Da Cove rules over Parkside Cove and Lake Hill. Now that the aftermath of the Princes and the Kings has settled, the world they thought would simmer down is still boiling now that the Zoo has arrived.

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I’ll Be Right Here

by Amy Bloom

Release Date: June 24, 2025

Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, young Gazala becomes friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s lost, beloved brother, Samir, joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome makes their way into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family.

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American Sky

by Carolyn Dasher

Release Date: July 1, 2025

It’s 1943. The war rages. The newly launched WASP program is recruiting. And barnstormer fan Georgeanne “George” Ector’s dream is to take to the skies. Grit is what she inherited from her mother, an Oklahoma farm girl at the turn of the century who preferred taking apart an engine to stitching linens for a hope chest. She taught her daughter well. George isn’t the only woman about to follow her calling.

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