“Make your life more about letting in the good things than preventing the bad things.” – Margarita Montimore, Oona Out of Order
Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore
Fiction / Mystery.
Nearly a decade ago, iconic magician Violet Volk performed her greatest trick yet: vanishing mid-act. Though she hasn’t been seen since, her hold on the public hasn’t wavered. While Violet sought out the spotlight, her sister Sasha, ever the responsible one, took over their mother’s salon and built a quiet life for her daughter, Quinn. But Sasha can never seem to escape her sister’s orbit or her memories of their unresolved, tumultuous relationship. Then there’s Cameron Frank, determined to finally get his big break hosting a podcast devoted to all things Violet—though keeping his job hinges on an exclusive interview with Sasha, the last person who wants to talk to him.
As the ten-year anniversary approaches, the podcast picks up steam, and Cameron’s pursuit of Sasha becomes increasingly intrusive. He isn’t the only one wondering what secrets she might be keeping: Quinn, loyal to the aunt she always idolized, is doing her own investigating. Meanwhile, Sasha begins to experience an unsettling series of sleepwalking episodes and coincidences, which all lead back to Violet. Pushed to her emotional limits, Sasha must finally confront the most painful truths about her sister, and herself, even at the risk of losing everything.
Alternating between Sasha’s narration and Cameron’s podcast transcripts, interspersed with documents that offer a tantalizing peek at Violet herself, Acts of Violet is an utterly original, propulsive story of fame, deception, and forgiveness that will make you believe in magic.
Description from Goodreads.
“Mesmerizing… Montimore achieves a thoughtful, panoramic portrait of larger-than-life Violet while underscoring Sasha’s pain as she tries to grieve under an unforgiving public eye. This spellbinding effort delivers its fair share of magic.” – Publishers Weekly
“Fans of Nicole Baart and Kelly Harms will enjoy Sasha’s and Violet’s sisterly contrasts: the shared frustrations between a pragmatic people-pleaser and an audacious extrovert. Like an enthralling magic trick itself, Acts of Violet asks readers to suspend their disbelief and rewards them for the effort.” – Booklist
“Montimore has written a layered story told in fragments of documents, emails, podcast transcripts, and narrated segments that jump through time, place, and voice. It’s a whirlwind of information and characters, much like a magic show with smoke, mirrors, and misdirection consuming the viewer’s attention before the final big reveal… A story of the lifetime bonds of sisterhood.” – Kirkus Reviews
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit by Ron Shelton
Nonfiction / film / Sports.
Bull Durham, the breakthrough 1988 film about a minor league baseball team, is widely revered as the best sports movie of all time. But back in 1987, Ron Shelton was a first-time director and no one was willing to finance a movie about baseball–especially a story set in the minors. The jury was still out on Kevin Costner’s leading-man potential, while Susan Sarandon was already a has-been. There were doubts. But something miraculous happened, and The Church of Baseball attempts to capture why.
From organizing a baseball camp for the actors and rewriting key scenes while on set, to dealing with a short production schedule and overcoming the challenge of filming the sport, Shelton brings to life the making of this beloved American movie. Shelton explains the rarely revealed ins and outs of moviemaking, from a film’s inception and financing, screenwriting, casting, the nuts and bolts of directing, the postproduction process, and even through its release. But this is also a book about baseball and its singular romance in the world of sports. Shelton spent six years in the minor leagues before making this film, and his experiences resonate throughout this book.
Full of wry humor and insight, The Church of Baseball tells the remarkable story behind an iconic film.
Description from Goodreads.
“Rookie of the Year. A brilliant first book details the author’s first movie, Bull Durham… It’s a remarkable account of how the Hollywood sausage is made, but it’s also a touching account of the author’s relationship with baseball… The movie, of course, ultimately became a classic. This book? Every bit as good.” – Sports Illustrated
“It’s a detailed, nostalgic and, at times, uproarious inside story of the making of Bull Durham, and an account of Shelton’s life in and out of baseball, which led him to write and direct the movie.” – Parade
“A marvelous book about a classic movie that is guaranteed to send fans back to the Church of Baseball to hear their favorite sermon one more time” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Confidence by Denise Mina
Fiction / Suspense / Mystery.
When Lisa Lee, a vulnerable young woman, vanishes from a pretty Scottish seaside town Anna and Fin find themselves at the center of an internet frenzy to find her.
But Lisa may not be the hapless victim her father thinks. She had an unsuccessful YouTube channel and her last film showed her breaking into an abandoned French Chateau with other UrbExers and stumbling across a priceless Roman silver casket. One day after Lisa vanishes that casket gets listed for auction in Paris, reserve price fifty million euro and a catalogue entry that could challenge the fundamental principles of a major world religion.
On a thrilling chase across Europe, Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry.
Description from Goodreads.
“Another mind-bending, wise-cracking adventure across Europe and beyond… Mina packs in a dizzying array of surprises.” – Los Angeles Times
“Even for true-crime podcasters, the truth is tough to find in this brisk, entertaining thriller.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“A dizzying swirl of activity, all relayed with Mina’s signature blend of dry humor, creeping darkness, and sharp character observation.” – CrimeReads
Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark ★
Fiction / historical Fiction.
Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.
Polly Wister has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, and philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She exalts in creating beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?
Agnes’s designs are further muddied when an enterprising young book editor named Maud Silver sets out to convince Agnes to write her memoirs. Agnes’s resistance cannot prevent long-buried memories and secrets from coming to light with far-reaching repercussions for all.
Fellowship Point reads like a classic 19th-century novel in its beautifully woven, multilayered narrative, but it is entirely contemporary in the themes it explores; a deep and empathic interest in women’s lives, the class differences that divided us, the struggle to protect the natural world, and, above all, a reckoning with intimacy, history, and posterity. It is a masterwork from Alice Elliott Dark.
Description from Goodreads.
“An engrossing, relatable tale about female friendship and the growing pains of long relationships.” – Real Simple
“Marvelous… Reading this novel is a transportive experience, similar to spending a long, luxurious summer on the shores of a picturesque Maine peninsula. It’s full of memorable adventures, tense moments of family drama, and opportunities for restorative contemplation. Through it all, Fellowship Point harkens back to one of Howard’s End‘s big messages: ‘Only connect.’” – BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
“Dark celebrates women’s friendships and artistic mentorship in this expansive yet intimate novel. The families and their grudges and grievances fill a broad canvas, and within it Dark delves deeply into the relationships between Agnes and her work, humans and the land, mothers and children, and, most indelibly, the sustenance and joy provided by a long-held female friendship. It’s a remarkable achievement.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Florida Woman by Deb Rogers
Fiction / Mystery / Suspense / Horror.
Jamie is a Florida Woman. She grew up on the beach, thrives in humidity, has weathered more hurricanes than she can count, and now, after going viral for an outrageous crime she never meant to commit in the first place, she has the requisite headline to her name. But when the chance comes for her to escape viral infamy and imminent jail time by taking a community service placement at Atlas, a shelter for rescued monkeys, it seems like just the fresh start Jamie needs to finally get her life back on track — until it’s not.
Something sinister stirs in the palmetto woods surrounding her cabin, and secrets lurk among the three beguiling women who run the shelter and affectionately take Jamie under their wing for the summer. She hears the distant screams of monkeys each night; the staff perform cryptic, lakeside sacrifices to honor Atlas; and the land, which has long been abandoned by citrus farmers and theme park developers alike, now proves to be dangerously, relentlessly untamed.
As Jamie ventures deeper into the offbeat world and rituals of Atlas, her summer is soon set to inspire an even stranger Florida headline than she ever could’ve imagined.
Description from Goodreads.
“Rogers keeps the story moving with a brisk hand… Florida Woman ushers in a new talent who knows the quirkiness of the Sunshine State.” – Sun Sentinel
“[A] betwitching debut… Rogers relishes Florida’s oddities and extremes, yet she makes Jamie quietly if quirkily sympathetic, lending the rollicking story a vulnerable heart. Readers will fall in love with this one.” – Publishers Weekly
The Hidden One by Linda Castillo
Fiction / Suspense / Mystery.
Over a decade ago, beloved Amish bishop Ananias Stoltzfus disappeared without a trace. When skeletal remains showing evidence of foul play are unearthed, his disappearance becomes even more sinister.
The town’s elders arrive in Painters Mill to ask chief of police Kate Burkholder for help, but she quickly realizes she has a personal connection to the crime. The handsome Amish man who stands accused of the murder, Jonas Bowman, was Kate’s first love. Forced to confront a painful episode from her past, Kate travels to Pennsylvania’s Kishacoquillas Valley, where the Amish culture differs dramatically from the traditions she knows. Though Bishop Stoltzfus was highly respected, she soon hears about a dark side to this complex man. What was he hiding that resulted in his own brutal death?
Someone doesn’t want Kate asking questions. But even after being accosted and threatened in the dead of night, she refuses to back down. Is she too close to the case―and to Jonas―to see clearly? There’s a killer in the Valley who will stop at nothing to keep the past buried. Will they get to Kate before she can expose the truth? Or will the bishop’s secrets remain hidden forever?
Description from Goodreads.
“With great suspense, well-drawn characters and a totally unexpected ending, The Hidden One is a standout installment in a rightfully beloved series.” – BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
“Captivating… memorable characters help keep the pages turning.” – Publishers Weekly
“Another impressive entry in this always-entertaining series, which continues to combine a fascinating look at the Amish community with pacy action and a tenacious, thoughtful heroine.” – Booklist
Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola ★
Fiction / Romance.
Sweet like plantain, hot like pepper. They taste the best when together…
Sharp-tongued (and secretly soft-hearted) Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake. As an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show Brown Sugar, she’s made it her mission to make sure the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of “situationships”, players, and heartbreak. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell,” in front of every Blackwellian on campus, she finds her show on the brink.
They’re soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures. Kiki has never surrendered her heart before, and a player like Malakai won’t be the one to change that, no matter how charming he is or how electric their connection feels. But surprisingly entertaining study sessions and intimate, late-night talks at old-fashioned diners force Kiki to look beyond her own presumptions. Is she ready to open herself up to something deeper?
A gloriously funny and sparkling debut novel, Honey & Spice is full of delicious tension and romantic intrigue that will make you weak at the knees.
Description from Goodreads.
“Vibrant… Babalola is incisively funny, capturing the kick and sweetness of her title with her words.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Clever, confident Kiki is a romantic heroine for the ages, while the witty repartée and pop culture passion between these young lovers make for a vivacious romp.” – Esquire
“Just in time to quench the thirst for a much-needed swoony summer read, Bablola’s debut novel Honey & Spice is here…. [A] terrific rom-com.” – Thrillist
Joan by Katherine J. Chen
Fiction / Historical Fiction.
1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries.
In Katherine J. Chen’s hands, the myth and legend of Joan of Arc is transformed into a flesh-and-blood young woman: reckless, steel-willed, and brilliant. This deeply researched novel is a sweeping narrative of her life, from a childhood steeped in both joy and violence to her meteoric rise to fame at the head of the French army, where she navigates both the perils of the battlefield and the equally treacherous politics of the royal court. Many are threatened by a woman who leads, and Joan draws wrath and suspicion from all corners, even as her first taste of fame and glory leave her vulnerable to her own powerful ambition.
With unforgettably vivid characters, transporting settings, and action-packed storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, as well as a feminist celebration of one remarkable—and remarkably real—woman who left an indelible mark on history.
Description from Goodreads.
“Joan brings one of history’s most iconic heroines to life.” – Daily Beast
“Revolutionary… Chen masterfully transforms the two-dimensional martyr into a multifaceted woman and warrior.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“For readers who love Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, Joan offers… an immersive evocation of a character whose name everyone knows, all these centuries later, but whom, perhaps, none of us knows at all.” – BookPage
Kaleidoscope by Cecily Wong
Fiction.
Everybody’s heard of The Brightons.
From rags to riches, sleepy Oregon to haute New York, they are the biracial Chinese American family that built Kaleidoscope, a glittering, ‘global bohemian’ shopping empire sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Statuesque, design savant, and family pet–eldest daughter Morgan Brighton is most celebrated of all. Yet despite her favored status, both within the family and in the press, nobody loves her more than Riley. Smart and nervy Riley Brighton — whose existence is forever eclipsed by her older sister’s presence. When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons’ world, it is Riley who’s left with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity, and loyalty. She sets off across the globe with an unlikely companion to seek truths about the people she thought she knew best –herself included.
Using the brightly colored, shifting mosaic patterns of a kaleidoscope as its guide, and told in arresting, addictive fragments, Kaleidoscope is at once a reckoning with one family’s flawed American Dream, and an examination of the precious bond between sisters. It reveals, too, the different kinds of love left to grow when tightly held stories are finally let go. At turns devastating and funny, warm and wise, sexy and transportive, Riley’s journey confronts the meaning of freedom and travel, youth and innocence, and what it looks like to belong, grieve, and love on one’s own terms.
Description from Goodreads.
“The author balances her characters’ palpable emotions with whip-smart commentary on cultural commodification… It’s a smash.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Told in beautiful detail with quippy dialogue… A deftly written family saga that explores—and challenges—the contemporary American dream and the meaning of home and family.” – Kirkus Reviews
“True to its title, Wong’s overarching account of one family’s business is told with beautiful imagery but reveals individual pieces that show how things are not what they appear to be. This story of people, culture, and lifestyles will be appreciated by readers who enjoy novels involving families and their secrets, like Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
Life Ceremony: Stories by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapely Takemori
Fiction.
With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material”, Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.
In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.
Description from Goodreads.
“Murata’s prose is deadpan, as clear as cellophane… Chilly and transgressive at the same time… Murata’s prose, in this translation from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is generally so cool you could chill a bottle of wine in it.” – New York Times
“With Life Ceremony, Sayaka Murata has created a series of funhouse mirrors, each story in the collection pushing readers to reconsider what is true, distorting the image so completely as to open the viewer to new and unexpected perspectives… Each story displays a fine-boned architecture, a careful curation of details and paring away of the extraneous. The result is remarkable, the lean force of Murata’s imagination rippling through each piece.” – Shelf Awareness
“Once more, internationally bestselling Murata confronts unspeakable topics with quotidian calm, shockingly convincing logic, and creepy humor in a dozen genre-defying stories… Murata groupies will appreciate a glimpse of characters from Earthlings, while readers seeking the undefinable will enjoy these tales immensely.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Lore Olympus: Volume Two by Rachel Smythe
Fiction / Graphic Novel / Fantasy / Romance.
Persephone was ready to start a new life when she left the mortal realm for Olympus. However, she quickly discovered the dark side of her glamorous new home—from the relatively minor gossip threatening her reputation to a realm-shattering violation of her safety by the conceited Apollo—and she’s struggling to find her footing in the fast-moving realm of the gods. Hades is also off-balance, fighting against his burgeoning feelings for the young goddess of spring while maintaining his lonely rule of the Underworld. As the pair are drawn ever closer, they must untangle the twisted webs of their past and present to build toward a new future.
This full-color edition of Smythe’s original Eisner-nominated webcomic Lore Olympus features a brand-new, exclusive short story, and brings Greek mythology into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.
Description from Goodreads.
“If eyes could eat, [Lore Olympus] would be a feast. Smythe’s artistic style features bright washes of color and bold, suggestive lines… It’s paced as a soap opera, all drawn-out tensions and long-simmering secrets, and I, for one, am thrilled to be along for the ride.” – New York Times
“Sensitive and elegant… Beautiful artwork and compelling characters [take] the forefront of this romantic, tech-savvy retelling of Greek mythology.” – Booklist
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
Fiction / Mystery / Historical Fiction.
The glittering RMS Queen Mary. A nightclub singer on the run. An aristocratic family with secrets worth killing for.
London, 1936. Lena Aldridge wonders if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho, and her married lover has just left her. But Lena has always had a complicated life, one shrouded in mystery as a mixed-race girl passing for white in a city unforgiving of her true racial heritage.
She’s feeling utterly hopeless until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better, and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. But death follows her onboard when an obscenely wealthy family draws her into their fold just as one among them is killed in a chillingly familiar way. As Lena navigates the Abernathy’s increasingly bizarre family dynamic, she realizes that her greatest performance won’t be for an audience, but for her life.
With seductive glamor, simmering family drama, and dizzying twists, Louise Hare makes her beguiling US debut.
Description from Goodreads.
“…well-crafted… oozes glamour… Did someone mention Agatha Christie? Yes, but with the welcome bonus of subtle reflections on race and class.” – The Guardian
“A solid thriller, with twists and turns, that plays nicely with the setting on the ship.” – Red Carpet Crash
“[A] lovingly-told yarn. She creates a likeable main character in a mystery which does not airbrush uncomfortable truths about the past. Instead, race and class are well integrated into the plot… There is a lot to recommend in this homage to the Golden Age of mystery writing…” – Historical Novel Society
The Missing Word by Concita de Gregorie, translated by Clarissa Botsford
fiction / Suspense / True Crime / Biography.
Irina’s life with her husband and her twin daughters is orderly. An Italian living in Switzerland, she works as a lawyer. One day, something breaks. The marriage ends without apparent trauma, but on a weekend seemingly like any other, the girls’ father takes Alessia and Livia away with him. They disappear. A few days later the man takes his own life. Of the girls, there is no trace.
Concita De Gregorio takes the unadorned, terrible facts of this true story and embodies the protagonist’s voice. In a narrative that is fast and urgent, she unravels these traumatic events to tell the story of a mother bereft of her children – a state for which there is no word.
An urgently told psychological thriller and the fierce portrait of a woman in all her frailty and courage, The Missing Word delves deep into Irina’s thoughts and memories as she grasps at the shreds of truth and, piece by piece, stitches her life back together.
Description from Goodreads.
“Moving and intense.” – Il Piccolo
“There’s a great deal of intrigue… which builds on an unsettling theme of horror churning beneath the surface. This will transfix readers.” – Publishers Weekly
“Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, De Gregorio takes a true story and reveals what life cannot. Extraordinary.” – Grazia
Original Sins: A Memoir by Matt Rowland Hill
Nonfiction / Memoir / RELIGION / SUBSTANCE ABUSE.
Matt Rowland Hill had two great loves in his life: Jesus and heroin. The son of an evangelical minister, Hill grew up with an unwavering devotion to the tenets of his parents’ Baptist church. But by high school, he began to experience a crisis of faith. To fill the void, he turned to literature, and then to heroin and cocaine. By his twenties, Hill’s substance abuse escalated into a full-on addiction. As he grew increasingly suicidal, he knew he had to come to terms with both religion and drugs to survive.
Hill’s debut is an extraordinary, gorgeously crafted memoir of faith, family, loss, shame and addiction. But ultimately, Original Sins is a raw portrait of survival—of growing up and learning how to live.
Description from Goodreads.
“[An] exquisite and unflinching debut… Combined with his stunning prose, his clever use of biblical metaphors… makes his story of salvation all the more affecting. In a sea of addiction memoirs, this stands out.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Remarkable—beautifully written and wonderfully insightful. Doubt and faith are twin themes that inform the captivating story and, without doubt, will also captivate readers of this extraordinary memoir.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay ★
Fiction / Suspense / Horror / Mystery.
What if the coolest girl you’ve ever met decided to be your friend?
Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.
Okay, that part was a little weird.
So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?
Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.
Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship.
Description from Goodreads.
“Melancholy and funny as well as dark and complex, this novel will be the dark hit of the summer. Unique in terms of style and format, The Pallbearers Club occupies a peculiar place between a thriller, a horror novel, and a narrative that will make you question everything.” – Boston Globe
“In his brilliant new novel, Tremblay takes on the well-mined small-town, coming-of-age horror trope, transforming it into something so original, it elevates the entire genre.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“…mysterious and entertaining… Readers keen on parsing enigmas of identity and reality, and those who simply relish quiet terrors and the portrait of a disintegrating mentality, will find that The Pallbearers Club is a welcome casket of chills to shoulder.” – Washington Post
Reputation by Sarah Vaughan
Fiction / suspense / Mystery.
As a politician, Emma has sacrificed a great deal for her career–including her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, Flora. A former teacher, she finds the glare of the spotlight unnerving, particularly when it leads to countless insults, threats, and trolling as she tries to work in the public eye. As a woman, she knows her reputation is worth its weight in gold, but as a politician, she discovers it only takes one slip-up to destroy it completely.
Fourteen-year-old Flora is learning the same hard lessons at school as she encounters heartless bullying. When another teenager takes her own life, Emma lobbies for a new law to protect women and girls from the effects of online abuse. Now, Emma and Flora find their personal lives uncomfortably intersected–but then the unthinkable happens: A man is found dead in Emma’s home, a man she had every reason to be afraid of and to want gone. Fighting to protect her reputation, and determined to protect her family at all costs, Emma is pushed to the limits as the worst happens and her life is torn apart.
Description from Goodreads.
“Vaughan offers a cast of strong characters that are sharply realistic and consummately human. A complex, slow-burning examination of double standards, misogyny, and public image that shares strong appeal with Scott Turow’s literary legal thrillers.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“British writer Vaughan considers the corrosive impact of social media on the lives of girls and women in this timely, twisty story… as thoughtful as it is surprising.” – Publishers Weekly
“[An] expertly plotted thriller that explores power, privilege and public image… Reputation is a fantastic look into the deterioration of someone at the brunt of public backlash. With timely themes and a thrilling mystery, Vaughan has once again shown she’s the queen of high stakes political thrillers.” – Better Reading
Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin
Fiction.
Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories.
Written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming-of-age and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships and surprising moments of connection. Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly endless access to knowledge, and little actual power.
Page-turning, thought-provoking, and wholly unique, Self-Portrait with Ghost further establishes Meng Jin as a writer who “reminds us that possible explanations in our universe are as varied as the beings who populate it” (Paris Review).
Description from Goodreads.
“Provocative… Throughout, there is beauty, wit, and pathos… A testament to Jin’s talent and versatility.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Deftly imaginative and brilliantly interrogative.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Captivating… Jin’s writing is sharp and corrosive – a great follow-up from a talented writer.” – BuzzFeed
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ★
Fiction.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] brilliant tale of identity, human connection, and yes, love in all of its myriad of forms.” – PopSugar
“Zevin… returns with an exhilarating epic of friendship, grief, and computer game development… Zevin layers the narrative with her characters’ wrenching emotional wounds as their relationships wax and wane… Even more impressive are the visionary and transgressive games… This is a one-of-a-kind achievement.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“It’s impossible to predict how, exactly, you’ll fall in love with Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but it’s an eventuality you can’t escape… Her artistic, inclusive world is filled with characters so genuine and endearing that you may start caring for them as if they were real. Above all, her development of Sam and Sadie’s relationship is pure wizardry; it’s deep and complex, transcending anything we might call a love story. Whether you care about video games or not is beside the point. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the novel you’ve been waiting to read.” – BookPage