“’Just remember you’re not alone here.’ I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.” – Martha Wells, Network Effect
Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott ★
fiction / mystery / suspense / horror.
Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That’s what Jacy’s mom always told her.
And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy and her new husband Jed embark on their first road trip together to visit his father, Doctor Ash, in Michigan’s far-flung Upper Peninsula. The moment they arrive in the cozy cottage in the lush woods, Jacy feels bathed in love by the warm and hospitable Doctor Ash, if less so by his house manager, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt.
But their Edenic first days take a turn when Jacy has a health scare. Swiftly, vacation activities are scrapped, and all eyes are on Jacy’s condition. At the same time, whispers about Jed’s long-dead mother and complicated family history seem eerily to be impeding upon the present. As the days pass, Jacy begins to feel trapped in the cottage, her every move surveilled, her body under the looking glass. But are her fears founded or is it paranoia, or cabin fever, or—as is suggested to her—a stubborn refusal to take necessary precautions? The dense woods surrounding the cottage are full of dangers, but are the greater ones inside?
“Megan Abbott, master of crime fiction told through the female lens, has written another novel brimming with suspense… Abbott spins an enigmatic web of foreboding and unease as she delves into family secrets and gender politics.” – Laura Zornosa, Time
“[Abbott] delivers another knockout performance with her new thriller… one of her most compelling and well-constructed novels. A real treat for the author’s many fans and for everyone who treasures that sense of Gothic-tinged trouble both within and without.” – David Pitt, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“With this bewitchingly creepy tale, thriller queen Megan Abbott keeps readers questioning whether this family getaway is the stuff of anxiety dreams or Bluebeard nightmares.” – Oprah Daily
“[A] spine-tingling suspense yarn… Manipulating the sense of menace like a virtuoso violinist, Abbott expertly foreshadows the wrenching family secrets that are exposed in a ferocious finale. Sinewy prose and note-perfect pacing make this a masterful and provocative deep dive into desire, love, and gender politics. Readers will be left breathless.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
The Celebrants by Steven Rowley ★
fiction.
It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.
But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.
A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley’s signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.
“[A] delightful poolside or beachfront vacation. Funny, tender and achingly nostalgic…” – Leandra Beabout, Reader’s Digest
“This heartwarming coming of age story follows a group of five college friends all about to enter their 50s… Alternating between the present day gathering and previous ‘funerals’ from past years, you’ll grow attached to these characters… and when you finish, you’ll want to go hug your BFFs.” – theSkimm
“Rowley’s novels deftly oscillate between tear-jerker and knee-slapper, books that brim with all of life’s big and small emotions, and his latest is no exception. It might just be his best yet.” – Electric Lit
“[A] superbly crafted narrative… Beautifully written and culminating in a phenomenally wellrealized resonant set-piece, Rowley’s tale wonderfully captures how deeply important friendships are… this is a lifeaffirming work, one that is both hilarious and richly affecting, with an unforgettable cast of engaging characters that readers will wish they could spend more time with.” – Alexander Moran, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig ★
fiction / historical fiction / FANTASY.
When Shek Yeung sees a Portuguese sailor slay her husband, a feared pirate, she knows she must act swiftly or die. Instead of mourning, Shek Yeung launches a new plan: immediately marrying her husband’s second-in-command, and agreeing to bear him a son and heir, in order to retain power over her half of the fleet.
But as Shek Yeung vies for control over the army she knows she was born to lead, larger threats loom. The Chinese Emperor has charged a brutal, crafty nobleman with ridding the South China Seas of pirates, and the Europeans-tired of losing ships, men, and money to Shek Yeung’s alliance-have new plans for the area. Even worse, Shek Yeung’s cutthroat retributions create problems all their own. As Shek Yeung navigates new motherhood and the crises of leadership, she must decide how long she is willing to fight, and at what price, or risk losing her fleet, her new family, and even her life.
A book of salt and grit, blood and sweat, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is an unmissable portrait of a woman who leads with the courage and ruthlessness of our darkest and most beloved heroes.
“A refreshingly vivid adventure tale, perfect for long days by the ocean’s edge.” – Lauren Pucket-Pope, Elle
“A hold-onto-your-seat ode to an unforgettable woman.” – Real Simple
“[A] rollicking 19th-century adventure on the South China Sea… The prose is lyrical (‘Typhoons and cannonballs cared nothing for the complicated little folded cranes of feeling that beat their wings in the heart’) and the plot is clever and serpentine, exploring questions of power, violence, gender, and fate. This is not to be missed.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“It is the year of lady pirates and outlaws, friends! You’ll get no complaints from me, and with Rita Chang-Eppig’s debut, it’s definitely *Lizzo Voice* Bad Bitch O’Clock… It’s refreshing to see not only a mixed-gender crew but also a woman with a complicated relationship to motherhood, her intended place in the world, and her ambitions. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is a non-stop adventure with danger at every turn, and Shek Yeung is forced to make decisions to ensure her survival. But she remains ruthless throughout, and her adventures will make you want to take up the sword and learn to sail.” – Christina Orlando, Tor.com
Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 by T.J. Newman
fiction / suspense.
Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.
More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.
Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.
There’s not much time.
There’s even less air.
With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them—against impossible odds.
“…taut, pulse-pounding—and best read on dry land.” – Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
“The world of airline thrillers belongs to Newman in this follow-up to Falling, which is even better. The story has the beats for the perfect summer action film, let alone a beach read. Expect Newman to be drowning in sales and accolades.” – Jeff Ayers, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“T. J. Newman is back with another blockbuster, proving that Falling, her lights-out debut, was no fluke… riveting… Drowning is the book that everyone will be talking about in 2023… Each page is dripping with a plethora of emotions—ranging from fear to claustrophobia—all of them palpable and real, creating a reading experience that is truly unlike anything else in print today. And as you experience that rising crescendo of tension and suspense, two things become crystal clear: T. J. Newman is for real, and she’s here to stay.” – The Real Book Spy
Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko
fiction / young adult / romance.
It’s summertime and 17-year-old Coley has found herself alone, again. Forced to move to rural Oregon after just losing her mother, she is in no position to risk her already fragile heart. But when she meets Sonya, the attraction is immediate.
Coley worries she isn’t worthy of love. Up until now, everyone she’s loved has left her. And Sonya’s never been with a girl before. What if she’s too afraid to show up for Coley? What if by opening her heart, Coley’s risking it all?
They both realize that when things are pushed down, and feelings are forced to shrivel away, Coley and Sonya will be the ones to shrink. It’s not until they accept the love they fear and deserve most, that suddenly the song makes sense.
Based on the Billboard-charting smash hit song and viral music video “Girls Like Girls,” Hayley Kiyoko’s debut novel is about embracing your truth and realizing we are all worthy of being loved back.
“…Girls Like Girls will embolden you to embrace yourself and accept love.” – Brittany Bunzey, B&N Reads
“Sharp, poetic prose heightens the emotional and romantic drama… A searing romance.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Musician Kiyoko crafts a pitch-perfect tale about a grieving teen in 2006 grappling with first love in this touching debut… [a] powerfully romantic read.” – Publishers Weekly
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea ★
fiction / historical fiction.
In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military buses called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.
After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a gallant American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.
Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea’s “gifts as a storyteller are prodigious” (NPR).
“This is a powerfully written novel. Through the experiences of Irene and her small group of women comrades, the larger historical picture is brought to light.” – Jon G. Bradley, Historical Novel Society
“In the story of the Clubmobile Corps… Urrea finds the historical novelist’s gold: an empty space within a well-trodden time period in which to invent a story. He wears his extensive research lightly, but his immersion in the existing documentation is clear… a master storyteller.” – Nell Freudenberger, New York Times
“…stunning… a moving and graceful tribute to friendship and to heroic women who have shouldered the burdens of war.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“For soldiers mired in despair and scarred, both emotionally and physically, the sounds of these women’s American voices, the silly talent shows they sometimes led and the casual conversations they initiated lent a sense of normalcy and offered a brief respite from the surreal nightmare they were living… The magic of these brief encounters is captured beautifully in Good Night, Irene… With each turn of the page, a feeling builds that Urrea is on his own quest, a decades-long journey to fill in the blanks of a period in his family history that his mother — struggling with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder — did not want to revisit… Urrea has a gift for writing heart-pounding action scenes that are also lyrical.” – Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs ★
fiction / fantasy.
For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements–books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.
All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna’s isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they’ll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries…
In the great tradition of Ninth House, The Magicians, and Practical Magic, this is a suspenseful and richly atmospheric novel that draws readers into a vast world filled with mystery and magic, romance, and intrigue–and marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in speculative fiction.
“[A] spellbinding fantasy debut… [with] grimly gorgeous worldbuilding… Törzs’s lyrical, idiosyncratic prose (at one point, the sky is described as ‘so pale it seemed infected’) elevates proceedings. This is a must-read.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“…Törzs pulls off such an expert series of twists that readers would be advised to cancel their plans until they get to the end. A fantastic magical adventure, not to be missed.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“[A]stonishing and pristine, the kind of debut I love to be devastated by, already so assured and sophisticated that it’s difficult to imagine where the author can go from here… Ink Blood Sister Scribe accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion. It’s simply a delight from start to finish.” – Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times
“Confident, compassionate, and incredibly engrossing, Ink Blood Sister Scribe grabbed me with its first pages and put me completely under its spell… Elements of many different genres entwine to form the cleverly paced narrative as we travel from Antarctic station thriller to new England murder mystery to the secret society intrigues of Europe’s magical elite. The characters are all delightfully warm in their own weird ways… and the plot zigs and zags along with just the right amount of twists and reveals. Ink Blood Sister Scribe stands out as a stellar and original debut novel.” – Caitlyn Paxson, NPR
Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives by Amelia Possanza ★
nonfiction / memoir / HISTORY / romance.
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. But these stories rarely featured lesbians who could become her role models, in romance as in life.
This is the story of Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the stories of lesbians in the 20th Century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. Centered around seven love stories for the ages, Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a Drag King show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her own record to the archive.
At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza asks: How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian?
“…warmhearted and sexy…” – Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair
“’Beautiful’ feels like a cliche way to describe a book about love… but this one simply is.” – theSkimm
“The historical gravitas weaved through the author’s personal reflections is balanced by beautiful prose. This is for fans of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers and for people who love damn good writing. The passion leaps off the page.” – Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
“In her impressive debut, Possanza stitches together personal memoir, painstaking research, and fictional imaginings with a fluid style and a sure hand… This is an outstanding work of literary scholarship that also delivers a vulnerable, intimate portrait of its author.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
The Trial of the Century by Gregg Jarrett with Don Yaeger
nonfiction / history.
Nearly a century ago, famed liberal attorney Clarence Darrow defended schoolteacher John Scopes in a blockbuster legal proceeding that brought the attention of the entire country to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Darrow’s seminal defense of freedom of speech helped form the legal bedrock on which our civil liberties depend today.
Expertly researched, eye-opening, and stirring, The Trial of the Century calls upon our past to unite Americans in the defense of the free exchange of ideas, especially in this divided time.
“Jarrett has woven an absorbing story of an epic trial that changed the course of American history, making it is as relevant now as it was nearly a century ago. It presaged today’s bitter culture wars. Insightful and smart.” – Sean Hannity
“[A] satisfying traditional history that celebrates the good guys.” – Kirkus Reviews
“[A] colorful and dramatic retelling. Those new to the case will be especially rewarded by this solid look back at one of the most consequential free speech debates in American history.” – Publishers Weekly
Witch King by Martha Wells ★
fiction / fantasy.
“I didn’t know you were a… demon.”
“You idiot. I’m the demon.”
Kai’s having a long day in Martha Wells’ Witch King…
After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.
But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?
Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.
He’s not going to like the answers.
“The world is wide-open, its peoples are not the usual fantasy suspects, and the power of both friendship and heartbreak pushes the story on at a breathless pace… fantasy readers looking for new worlds and characters to explore will be enthralled.” – Marlene Harris, Library Journal
“As always, Wells writes exciting action scenes that pepper this expansive, vivid plot… the characters are bright and exciting, rooted by Kai, this villainous, pain-powered demon with a soft, loyal center, and the relationships that push and pull between these characters. High-fantasy fans will want to dig into this new, inventive world from one of our sf and fantasy masters.” – Leah von Essen, Booklist
“Witch King, a deeply immersive throwback to a beloved (and for me, foundational) species of 1990s fantasy doorstop, is full of cataclysmic intrigues between mostly immortal families, complete with map and dramatis personae… Wells is working at the height of her powers here, and it’s relaxing to be carried along for a ride in the company of such a phenomenal storyteller.” – Amad El-Mohtar, New York Times
“Kai’s environment is brilliantly layered, not just full of the requisite political intrigue, well-choreographed battles and world-shattering magic that mark a good epic fantasy, but also stuffed with lore from multiple cultures. Within this framework, Wells asks readers to sit with something that is underrepresented in mainstream fantasy: the postcolonial period. Many fantasies feature or deconstruct colonialism, and while plenty of these stories depict revolutions to overthrow tyrannical regimes, they don’t often explore the instability and moral uncertainty of what comes next. The brilliance of Witch King is that it captures the feeling of this tentative peace with emotional depth but also has plenty of nail-biting moments of combat and dazzling magic, too.” – Laura Hubbard, BookPage
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