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p a ge 3 A b r a m s
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An edgy and ambitious debut by a powerful new voice in contemporary literary fiction
THE REVELATIONS
by Erik Hoel
The Overlook Press, November 2020
Monday, Kierk wakes up. Once a rising star in neuroscience, Kierk Suren is now homeless,
broken by his all-consuming quest to find a scientific theory of consciousness. But when
he’s offered a spot in a prestigious postdoctoral program, he decides to rejoin society and
vows not to self-destruct again. Instead of focusing on his work, however, Kierk becomes
obsessed with another project—investigating the sudden and suspicious death of a
colleague. As his search for truth brings him closer to Carmen Green, another postdoc,
their list of suspects grows, along with the sense that something sinister may be
happening all around them. The Revelations, not unlike its main character, is ambitious
and abrasive, challenging and disarming. Bursting with ideas, ranging from Greek
mythology to the dark realities of animal testing, to some of the biggest unanswered
questions facing scientists today, The Revelations is written in muscular, hypnotic prose, and its cyclically
dreamlike structure pushes the boundaries of literary fiction. Erik Hoel has crafted a stunning debut of rare
power—an intense look at cutting-edge science, consciousness, and human connection.
Erik Hoel received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Madison-Wisconsin. He is a research assistant
professor at Tufts University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the
NeuroTechnology Lab, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Hoel is a 2018
Forbes “30 under 30” for his neuroscientific research on consciousness and a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer
Fellow. The Revelations is his debut novel. He lives in Massachusetts.
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A brilliant, hilarious, and ultimately devastating debut novel about how racial discord grows in America.
HOW I LEARNED TO HATE IN OHIO
by David Stuart MacLean
The Overlook Press, October 2020
In late-1980s rural Ohio, bright but mostly friendless Barry Nadler begins his freshman
year of high school with the goal of going unnoticed as much as possible. But his world is
upended by the arrival of Gurbaksh, Gary for short, a Sikh teenager who moves to his
small town and instantly befriends Barry and, in Gatsby-esque fashion, pulls him into a
series of increasingly unlikely adventures. As their friendship deepens, Barry’s world
begins to unravel, and his classmates and neighbors react to the presence of a family so
different from theirs. Through darkly comic and bitingly intelligent asides and wry
observations, Barry reveals how the seeds of xenophobia and racism find fertile soil in
this insular community, and in an easy, graceless, unintentional slide, tragedy unfolds.
How I Learned to Hate in Ohio shines an uncomfortable light on the roots of white middle-
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American discontent and the beginnings of the current cultural war. It is at once bracingly funny, dark, and
surprisingly moving, an undeniably resonant debut novel for our divided world.
David MacLean is a winner of the PEN Emerging Writer Award for Non fiction and author of the award-winning
memoir The Answer to the Riddle Is Me. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Ploughshares, Guernica,
and on This American Life. He has taught creative writing at the University of Chicago, Columbia College, and the
School of the Art Institute; is co-founder of the Poison Pen Reading Series in Houston; and was a Fulbright Scholar
to India. Raised in central Ohio, he now lives in Chicago. How I Learned to Hate in Ohio is his debut novel.
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Hilarious and relatable comics about one young woman's life, relationships, and day-to-day humorous
musings on why it's good to leave the house sometimes—and when it's better to stay home.
I LEFT THE HOUSE TODAY!
by Cassandra Calin
AndrewsMcMeel, June 2020
Cassandra Calin’s ability to document the hilarity of relatable everyday events in a
series of webcomics has generated a huge following on social media. This beautifully
illustrated compendium of first-person comics about the trials of the single life,
school, stress, junk food, shaving, and maintaining a healthy self-image. Cassandra
Calin's comics frequently highlight the humorous gap between expectations and
reality, especially when it comes to appearance and how much she can accomplish
in one day. This book is funny, lighthearted, introspective, and artistically stunning—
the perfect gift for young women, recent graduates, and anyone who might need a
little comedic incentive to leave the house today.
Cassandra Calin began posting comics about her daily life online and has built up a following of over 3.5 million
followers on social media. A recent graduate in design, Cassandra plans to continue writing comics about her life,
relationships, and whatever happens after graduation. She lives in Montreal.
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A new edition of a National Book Award finalist follows a black faith healer whose shrewd observations
about human nature are told with the rich lyricism of the oral storytelling tradition.
THE HEALING
by Gayl Jones
Beacon Press, December 2019
Harlan Jane Eagleton is a faith healer, traveling by bus to small towns, converting skeptics,
restoring minds and bodies. But before that she was a minor rock star’s manager, and
before that a beautician. Harlan tells her story from the end backwards, drawing us
constantly deeper into her world and the mystery at the heart of her tale-the story of her
first healing.
Gayl Jones attended Connecticut College and Brown University; her books include
Corregidora, Eva’s Man, White Rat, Song for Anninho, and Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition
in African American Literature.
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lorella belli literary agency
A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them.
LITTLE WHITE SECRETS
by Carol Mason
Lake Union/Amazon Publishing, May 2020
For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a
house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis
superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter
brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out
of control. Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And
just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job
in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again. When a dark secret from the
past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she
loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…
Carol Mason is the women's fiction author After You Left, a Kindle #1 and Amazon Charts Bestseller, The Secrets
of Married Women, The Last Time We Met, and Send Me A Lover. She was born in the North East of England and
moved to Canada when she was twenty-one and met her now husband. They live in British Columbia. Her novels
are translated into more than 10 languages.
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Based on the terrifying and tragic true story of Gareth Jones, the Welsh journalist who first told the world
about the famine in the Soviet Union in 1933.
THE USEFUL IDIOT
by John Sweeney
Silvertail Books, January 2020
Moscow, 1932. Gareth Jones, a young Welsh reporter, arrives in the Soviet Union excited to see for himself how
Josef Stalin is forging a new civilisation. He meets American and British journalists who acclaim Stalin’s great
experiment—but when Jones witnesses people starving to death in Ukraine, his belief in the Soviet revolution is
shattered. He must decide whether to report the truth or become just another useful idiot, saying only what the
Communist secret police allow and smothering the evidence of his own eyes. In this special kind of hell, anyone
could be an informer, and Jones knows his life will be at risk if he is even thought to be defying Stalin. And when
the woman he loves falls under the suspicion of the secret police, everything Jones values is in danger. Can he
reveal the terrible truth about the Ukrainian famine to the world, or will he be silenced forever? THE USEFUL
IDIOT is the secret history of the first great Soviet lie—wrapped up in an electrifying novel perfect for readers of
Robert Harris, Ken Follett and Kate Atkinson. As Vladimir Putin rewrites the Nazi-Soviet pact and with the horrors
of Chernobyl and the Cold War so recent, this thriller of fake news in 1932 is real storytelling of enormous
significance.
John Sweeney is an award-winning journalist and a former long-serving BBC reporter. He is the author of ten
books, including three novels: the 200,000-copy bestseller Elephant Moon (Silvertail Books), another historical
thriller based on true events, and two modern-day political thrillers, Cold and Road (Amazon Publishing). He also
wrote an investigation into the Church of Scientology, The Church of Fear (Silvertail Books), and an account of his
time spent undercover in North Korea, North Korea Undercover (Transworld).
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A glamorous sea-side hotel, an influential family, and a well-kept secret … The first volume of an opulent
Family Saga.
DAS GRAND HOTEL – DIE NACH DEN STERNEN GREIFEN
[The Grand Hotel – Reaching for the Stars]
by Caren Benedikt
Blanvalet/Bertelsmann, March 2020
Rügen 1924. There it is on the promenade of Binz, white and magnificent – the impressive
Grand Hotel belonging to the von Plesow family. A lot has happened here, and things have
not always been easy, but Bernadette is proud of her hotel, the best in town. It was here
that she brought up her children: the quiet Alexander, who one day will inherit the Grand
Hotel; Josephine, the rebellious artist who is still trying to find her place in life; Constantin,
always on the go, who already has his own hotel in Berlin, the Astor.
Things could hardly be better. Of course, there is the odd quarrel with her daughter, and
something seems to be not quite right with the otherwise cheerful maid Marie – but all
this is nothing compared to what the unannounced visit of a man could lead to who
threatens Bernadette he will disclose her darkest secret …
Caren Benedikt is the pseudonym of author Petra Mattfeldt. After legal training she freelanced as a journalist
and now mainly works as a novelist.
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A modern story of heroism: about the loneliness of being different and salvation through love
NAGEL IM HIMMEL
[Nail in the Sky]
by Patrick Hofmann
Penguin Germany/Bertelsmann, March 2020
Numbers are Oliver's refuge. His mother ran away from the small town in Saxony shortly
after his birth in the summer of 1989, and his father couldn't care less about him. When
he is seventeen, Oliver receives his first acclaim ever when is awarded a distinction at the
Mathematical Olympiad in Montreal. After that, everything is different – but nothing is
better. Sure, the most reputable companies want him to come and work for them, and he
can make his biggest wish come true: to work on the big mathematical problem, the
mystery of prime numbers. Yet this task drives him to the deepest depths of his very
existence. Until physicist Ina rescues him from his loneliness. Nail in the Sky tells the story
of failure and success, dark and light, longing and love. It is a bildungsroman about brilliant
science, ecstatic imagination and human greatness – astute, gripping and unforgettable.
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Patrick Hofmann, born in 1971, studied philosophy, German and history in Berlin, Leipzig, Moscow and
Strasbourg and wrote his PhD thesis on the philosopher Edmund Husserl. For his highly acclaimed debut, The
Last Sow, he was awarded the Robert Walser Prize in 2010. Nail in the Sky is his second novel.
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Four girlfriends and an unforgettable summer that changed everything
UNSERE GLÜCKLICHEN TAGE
[Our Happy Days]
by Julia Holbe
Penguin Germany/Bertelsmann, March 2020
Lenica, Marie, Fanny and Elsa – four friends spending a never-ending summer on the
Atlantic coast in France. The future lies ahead of them like a promise; they are so carefree
and full of the joys of their very existence that they don't notice life laying down its path
forward. When they meet again many years later they realise that their dreams and
longings still join them together like some invisible power – in spite of everything that has
happened since that evening when Lenica brought Sean along. Julia Holbe's narrative is
breathtakingly emotional – the tale of the really important things in life: love and
friendship, coincidence and fate, guilt and betrayal – and that we only remember the past
as we want it to be.
Julia Holbe was born in 1969 and lives in Frankfurt am Main but spends part of the year in Brittany. She spent
twenty years working as an editor of international literature at the S. Fischer Verlag. UNSERE GLÜCKLICHEN TAGE
is her first novel.
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The colours of the south, crystal-clear water and a summer that binds two young women together forever …
RIVIERA—DER TRAUM VOM MEER
[Riviera—Dream of the Sea]
by Julia Kröhn
Blanvalet/Bertelsmann, April 2020
Frankfurt 1922: Salome has always wanted to swim in the sea, and one day her dream
comes true when her father, the owner of a travel agency, decides to extend tourism to
down south and the Italian sun – to San Remo on the picturesque Riviera. In order to
break into the market he goes into cooperation with hotel owner Renzo Barbera. Before
long, the two families have close ties on a level that is more than merely professional, for
Salome makes friends with Renzo's daughter, Ornella. But soon the first signs of fascism
start looming over this little paradise and make further travel difficult. Events come thick
and fast when Ornella falls in love with a French businessman's son with whom Salome
also has a closer relationship …
Julia Kröhn studied history. Her big passion is not only telling stories but also delving down into history. To date
she has published more than thirty largely historical novels, some of them under a pseudonym. Her latest popular
book, The Fashion House, which was in the Spiegel top 20 list, is now being followed by her opulent two-volume
family saga set on the sparkling Italian Riviera.
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An inspiring new novel by the inter-nationally bestselling author of Hector
ES WAR EINMAL EIN BLAUER PLANET
[Once Upon a Time There Was a Blue Planet]
by François Lelord
Penguin Germany/Bertelsmann, July 2020
Young Robin is overwhelmed when he climbs out of his space capsule. The warm sand under his feet, the gentle
wind and the play of colours on the sea are so much better than any virtual reality, no matter how perfect. He is
on Earth, that distant blue planet he has hitherto only known from films and hearsay. Yet his mission is not an
easy one: Will human beings be able to return to the home planet they needed to leave after a catastrophe?
How should they live if happiness is to be made possible for everyone? And will Robin manage to save his big
love? An inspiring story of discovery, a thought-provoking utopia and a reflection about what we will need in the
future to be happy. For all readers of John Strelecky and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
François Lelord, born in 1953, studied medicine and psychology in France and California. One day he closed his
practice in Paris in order to travel and find answers for himself and his readers to the really big questions of life.
Hector and the Search for Happiness and the following seven volumes featuring psychiatrist Hector conquered
the hearts of millions of readers far beyond the borders of Germany and France. Lelord lives with his family in
Paris.
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"What starts out as a dark fairytale soon turns into a fast-paced thriller. Intense!" –Emotion
DIE WÄLDER
[The Woods]
by Melanie Raabe
btb/Bertelsmann, December 2019
When Nina gets the news that Tim, her best friend since childhood days, has suddenly
died, the world collapses around her. It's made all the worse when she finds out that
shortly before his death he had desperately been trying to get hold of her.
And she is not the only one he had contacted. Tim not only left her one last enigmatic
message but also an urgent request – to find his sister who has disappeared in the well-
nigh endless woods surrounding the village that they had all grown up in. But does Nina
really want to do this? Does she really want to go back to the village and the woods she
had never wanted to set foot in again – ever?
Melanie Raabe was born in 1981. After her studies she worked as a journalist during the day and secretly wrote
books at night. The Trap was published in 2015, followed by The Truth in 2016. Melanie Raabe's novels are
published in over 20 countries. The Trap was one of the most fiercely contested books of recent years.
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A dazzling debut novel that gives voice to the woman vilified by history as the “wicked elder seductress” who
allegedly brought down the entire Brontë family.
BRONTË’S MISTRESS
by Finola Austin
Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Summer 2020
Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson—mistress of Thorp Green Hall—has lost her precious
young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home,
grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-
law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and
yearning for something more. All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor,
Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë and those other
writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Handsome and romantic, a painter and a poet,
Branwell is also twenty five to Lydia’s forty three. Colorful tales of his sisters’ elaborate
playacting and made up worlds form the backdrop for seduction, and soon Branwell’s
intensity and Lydia’s loneliness find a dangerous match in each other. Meanwhile, Mr.
Brontë has his own demons to contend with, and grave consequences for Lydia’s impudence loom. Her prying
servants blackmail her for their silence, her husband becomes suspicious as his health declines, and Branwell’s
behavior grows increasingly erratic while whispers of the affair reach his bookish sisters. With this swirling vortex
of passion and peril threatening to consume everything she has built, the canny Mrs. Robinson must find the
means to save her way of life, and quickly, before clever Charlotte, Emily, and Anne reveal all of her secrets in
their deceptively domestic novels. That is, unless she dares to write her own story first.
Finola Austin, also known as the Secret Victorianist on her award-winning blog, is an England-born, Northern
Ireland-raised, Brooklyn-based historical novelist and lover of the 19th century. By day, she works in digital
advertising.
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A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the
bestselling author of Ordinary Grace.
THIS TENDER LAND
by William Kent Krueger
Atria Books, Fall 2019
1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native
American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is
also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the
superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose,
and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty
Mississippi and a place to call their own. Over the course of one unforgettable summer,
these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are
adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost
souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-
hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts
our dreams, and makes us whole.
William Kent Krueger is the New York Times best-selling author of Ordinary Grace (2013) winner of the Edgar
Award for Best Novel, as well as the author of the long running Cork O’Connor mystery series. He lives in
Minnesota with his family.
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London 1958 and Berlin 1945 - a story of love and trust, of fear and betrayal, guilt and retribution
THE DISCOVERY
by Mary Chamberlain
Oneworld (UK), publication date TBD
When Betty and John meet in London at a rally for nuclear disarmament, both are living
with secrets about what that war did to them. After fleeing from Germany with her father
in 1945, Betty lives with her memories of the Russian occupation, a young Russian officer,
and the mysterious disappearance of her sister. John too, is plagued by flashbacks to his
time as a translator for the top-secret T-force which uncovered Nazi scientific secrets, and
to a young German woman who was brutally murdered, and for whose murder he was
framed unless he talked... As their relationship develops, their lives unfold, unravel and
entwine. But when a man from the past surfaces, he threatens to reveal secrets. Secrets
which will embroil them in the Cold War and threaten their very existence.
Mary Chamberlain is a historian and novelist. Her debut novel The Dressmaker of Dachau was an international
bestseller, and sold to 19 countries. Her highly acclaimed second novel, The Hidden was a Sunday Times Must
Read choice of 2019. She is the author of six non-fiction titles including Fenwomen: a portrait of women in an
English village, the first book published by Virago Press and the inspiration behind Caryl Churchill’s award winning
play, Fen.
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Would you say no to the job of a lifetime?
FATHER FIGURE
by Ross Armstrong
HQ (UK), 2021
When out-of-work actor Ben Bowman is offered the job a lifetime, playing father
figure to a delinquent child of an aged multi-millionaire, he thinks he’s the one pulling
the wool over the family’s eyes. After all, he’s unqualified, about to be overpaid, and
may have told a few lies to get through the door. But when the family and their
entourage head to the remote Greek Island of Anafi for a long hot summer, and an
uninvited guest ends up dead, Ben starts to wonder what he’s been dragged into. The
inhabitants of the grand house must keep the police at bay, turning their sights on
each other as they fight to stay alive. And Ben can’t help thinking of that age-old
saying: last one in, first one out. But then, given the secret he brought with him to the island, maybe it’s everyone
else that needs to watch out.
Ross Armstrong’s first novel The Watcher was a Sunday Times Top 20 Best Seller, sold in several territories and
was long-listed for the New Blood Dagger award. His second book Head Case was long listed for the Gold Dagger
for Crime Book of the Year and the rights were purchased for television by Red. He attended Warwick University
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and RADA, and as an actor he has recently appeared in Chernobyl, Ripper Street and upcoming shows for Netflix
and DC Comics.
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When a popular true crime podcast investigates her late husband’s old murder case, a woman’s world starts
to unravel.
CONVICTION
by Katie Lowe
St. Martins Press (US) | HarperCollins (UK), July 2021
Hannah is a psychiatrist, living in the village of Hawkwood with her teenage daughter Evie,
and her journalist boyfriend Dan. Ten years earlier, Hannah’s husband was stabbed to
death in their marital bed, and a local teenager with prior convictions was found guilty of
the crime, and sentenced to life in prison. But a popular true crime podcast turns its
attentions to her husband's case - highlighting numerous flaws in the investigation and
prosecution of the boy charged with the crime. With increasing attention on Hannah, and
her past, she takes a new job opportunity at what used to be Hawkwood House asylum –
a place she has always been drawn to as her grandmother was kept there. The site of
tragedy, and allegedly haunted, she’s determined to build it into a force for good. But
with the podcast continuing to unpick her relationship with her late husband, mysterious
threats arriving on her doorstep, and the police reopening the old case, her world starts to unravel. Hawkwood
House is full of ghosts: but the ghosts we carry with us of our past decisions can prove be the most haunting of
all.
Katie Lowe is a writer living in Worcester, UK, whose debut novel The Furies is published by Harperfiction (UK),
St Martin's Press (US) and eight other territories worldwide. A graduate of the University of Birmingham, Katie
has a BA(Hons) in English and an MPhil in Literature & Modernity. She returned to Birmingham in 2019 to
complete a PhD in English Literature, with her thesis on female rage in literary modernism and the #MeToo era.
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#1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas launches her brand-new CRESCENT CITY series with
House of Earth and Blood: the story of half-Fae and half-human Bryce Quinlan as she seeks revenge in a
contemporary fantasy world of magic, danger, and searing romance.
CRESCENT CITY: HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD
by Sarah J. Maas
Bloomsbury, March 2020
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life-working hard all day and partying all night-until a
demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the
accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of
the investigation. She'll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths. Hunt Athalar is a
notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow.
His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his
boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's
offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within
reach. As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark
power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each
other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it. With unforgettable characters,
sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times
bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom-and the power of love.
Sarah J. Maas is the #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the young adult series Throne
of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses. Her books are published in thirty-seven languages. A New York native,
Sarah lives near Philadelphia with her husband, son, and dog.
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Given unmatched power in New York society as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle daCosta Greene’s
carefree and privileged lifestyle belies the carefully hidden secret that she is passing as a white woman.
THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN
by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
Berkley/Penguin Random House, June 2021
THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN is the stunning story of Belle da Costa Greene, a young woman who is hired by J.
Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly-built Morgan
Library. In this position, Belle becomes a fixture in New York society and the most influential woman in the art
and book world. But Belle has a secret. She was not born Belle da Costa Greene, but Belle Marion Greener. She
is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of
her alleged Portuguese heritage, but because she is African-American. This riveting novel shares the life of a
woman, famous for her bohemian lifestyle and for bold statements like “just because I’m a librarian doesn’t
mean I have to dress like one” — and how far she will go to protect her carefully crafted white identity from a
racist world. It also explores the irony that the world-famous Morgan Library was due to the expertise and
prowess of a woman of color.
Marie Benedict is the author of the USA Today bestselling The Other Einstein, Carnegie’s Maid, and The Only
Woman in the Room, which spent 4 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list earlier this year.
With over one million books in print, Marie’s co-author, Victoria Christopher Murray is one of the country's top
African American contemporary authors. She has written more than twenty novels and is also a four-time NAACP
Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Fiction.
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Stunning and fearless, literary but with thriller-like stakes, Jessamine Chan’s debut is part a work refracting
the realities of mothers and children caught by the existing child protective system, part a brilliant
philosophical exploration of both desire and whether a ‘bad mother’ can ever be redeemed.
THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS
by Jessamine Chan
37 Ink, Summer 2021
Frida Liu is an anxiety-prone, Chinese-American single mother living in a Philadelphia
much like ours. When she is reported for leaving her young daughter home alone, the
state’s increasingly empowered Child Protective Services judge Frida temporarily unfit
and sentence her to 12 months at an isolated government-run reform school. Frida’s only
hope of getting her daughter back is to pass the exams designed to show that she has
learned to become a good parent. Her re-education will be aided by an eerily life-like
robot child, programmed to measure and record the depths of her devotion. Having these
robots will be so much like having their own children back, the school promises, the
mothers will love them — to graduate successfully, they will have to. Chan’s debut at
times, as increasingly feels necessary to reflect the experience of a person, let alone a
woman, living in the world, invokes horror and the speculative to create profound emotional resonance. It was
inspired by books, among others, including Never Let Me Go and 1984.
Jessamine Chan is a former Publishers Weekly editor and Columbia MFA graduate. Her short fiction has appeared
in Tin House and Epoch. In 2017, she received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation to fund the
completion of this novel. Her work has also received support from Bread Loaf, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel,
the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Philadelphia, with her
husband and daughter. This is her first novel.
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A bold, riveting debut novel of desire, betrayal, and loss, centering on three teenage girls, a horse ranch, and
the tragic accident that changes everything.
KEPT ANIMALS
by Kate Milliken
Scribner, April 2020
It’s 1993, and Rory Ramos works as a ranch hand at the stable her stepfather manages in
Topanga Canyon, California, a dry, dusty place reliant on horses and hierarchies. There
she rides for the rich clientele, including twins June and Wade Fisk. While Rory draws the
interest of out-and-proud June, she’s more intrigued by Vivian Price, the beautiful girl
with the movie-star father who lives down the hill. Rory keeps largely separate from the
likes of the Prices—but, perched on her bedroom windowsill, Rory steals glimpses of
Vivian swimming in her pool nearly every night. After Rory’s stepfather is involved in a
tragic car accident, the lives of Rory, June, and Vivian become inextricably bound
together. Rory discovers photography, begins riding more competitively, and grows
closer to gorgeous, mercurial Vivian, but despite her newfound sense of self, disaster
lurks all around her: in the parched landscape, in her unruly desires, in her stepfather’s wrecked body and guilty
Agence Eliane Benisti - 18
conscience.One night, as the relationships among these teenagers come to a head, a forest fire tears through
the canyon, and Rory’s life is changed forever. Kept Animals is narrated by Rory’s daughter, Charlie, in 2015,
more than twenty years after that fateful fire. Realizing that the key to her own existence lies in the secret of
what really happened that unseasonably warm fall, Charlie is finally ready to ask questions about her mother’s
past. But with Rory away on assignment, Charlie knows she must unravel the truth for herself.
Kate Milliken’s stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Fiction, New Orleans Review, and Santa Monica Review, among
others. A graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, she has received fellowships from the Vermont
Studio Center, Yaddo, the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her
debut collection of stories, If I'd Known You Were Coming, was chosen for the 2013 Iowa Short Fiction Award by
author Julie Orringer. She lives in Mill Valley, California with her husband and two children.
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From the author of the "raw, ingenious, and utterly fearless" (USA Today bestselling author Wendy Walker)
Temper comes an addictive psychological thriller about two women who give bad men exactly what they
deserve.
THEY NEVER LEARN
by Layne Fargo
Scout Press, October 2020
Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away
with murder. Every year, she finds the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-
deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided suspicion so far, but
as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school appoints her alluring colleague Dr.
Mina Pierce to probe into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her
enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation (and Mina's bed).
Everything’s going according to her master plan—until she loses control with her latest
victim, putting her secret life at serious risk of exposure. Meanwhile, Gorman student
Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally
abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background.
Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—
and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. When Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes
obsessed with making the attacker pay . . . and turning her violent revenge fantasies into a reality. With Layne
Fargo’s signature “propulsive writing style” (Kirkus) and “violently sensuous suspense” (BookPage), THEY NEVER
LEARN is a feminist serial killer story perfect for fans of Killing Eve and Chelsea Cain.
Layne Fargo is the author of the thrillers Temper and They Never Learn. She’s a Pitch Wars mentor, Vice President
of the Chicagoland chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the cocreator of the podcast Unlikeable Female Characters.
Layne lives in Chicago with her partner and their pets.
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A husband, a father, a son, a business owner…And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.
BLACKTOP WASTELAND
by S. A. Cosby
Flatiron, July 2020
A gritty, voice-driven crime novel about a former getaway driver who thought he had
escaped the criminal life—but is pulled back in with the promise of one last score.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working
dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North
Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast. But as his
carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a
world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a
can’t-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver’s
seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he
needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying. S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop
Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of
crime.
S. A. Cosby is a writer from Southeastern Virginia. He recently won an Anthony Award for Best Short Story. He
resides in Gloucester, VA. When not writing he is an avid hiker and chess player.
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For readers of Flight Behavior and Station Eleven, a novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman
chases the world’s last birds—and her own final chance for redemption.
MIGRATIONS
by Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron, August 2020
Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds
that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild
she loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She
arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns
and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the
Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds
she is tracking will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new
shipmates begin to realize that she is full of dark secrets: night terrors, an unsent pile of
letters, and an obsession with pursuing the terns at any cost. When the story of her past
begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running
toward—and running from. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations
is both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the
people we love.
Charlotte McConaghy is an author and screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia. Migrations is her U.S. debut.
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A story of violence and tenderness about the healing power of nature and the rewilding of our spirits in a
world that has lost so much.
CREATURES, ALL
by Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron, August 2021
In the next novel from Charlotte McConaghy, young scientist Inti Flynn has a singular
purpose: to reintroduce wolves into the Scottish Highlands. But her efforts to rewild the
dying landscape are met with fierce opposition from the locals who fear for their safety
and way of life. When a farmer is mauled to death, Inti decides to bury the evidence,
unable to believe her wolves could be responsible. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill
is something more sinister at play? And will it happen again? Over the course of a cold
year, Inti will take desperate action to save the creatures she loves, and, perhaps, save
herself along the way—if she isn’t first consumed by a wild that was once her refuge.
Charlotte McConaghy is an author and screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia. Her U.S
debut Migrations will be published by Flatiron in August 2020.
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A novel about the families we choose for ourselves, by masterful storyteller Eileen Garvin
BEE MUSIC
by Eileen Garvin
Dutton, publication date TBD
Alice Holtzman is demographically unfashionable: middle-aged, childless, introverted, and more concerned with
a job well done than how she looks doing it. After the sudden death of her husband, she starts having panic
attacks. It’s in the grips of one of these attacks that she hits Jake—a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest
mohawk in the Pacific Northwest—with her pickup truck. Oh, and did we mention that truck was full of 120,000
restless honeybees? Everyone is surprised when Alice lets Jake move onto her farm, and even more surprised
when she hires Harry, a bumbling twenty-something with a sketchy past, to help her with her apiary. When a
nefarious pesticide company threatens the local honeybee population, this unlikely trio unites to defend the
bees, and, in the process, forge a path out of their respective griefs.
Eileen Garvin was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She completed her B.A. in English at Seattle
University, and her M.A. in English at the University of New Mexico. She writes for newspapers, magazines, and
websites from Hood River, Oregon, where she lives with her husband.
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A timeless story of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan
countryside from bestselling novelist Valerie Martin.
I GIVE IT TO YOU
by Valerie Martin
Nan A. Talese, August 2020
“‘Do you like it?’ she said. ‘I give it to you.’”
When Jan, an American academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer,
she plans to spend her break writing a biography of Mussolini. Instead, she finds herself
captivated by her hostess, the elegant, acerbic Beatrice. Beatrice's family ties to Villa
Chiara and the land on which it stands extend back generations, although the family has
fallen on hard times since WWII and the fate of the property is uncertain. But it is rich in
stories, and Jan becomes intrigued by an account of Beatrice's uncle, who was
mysteriously killed on the grounds at the conclusion of the war. Did he die at the hands
of the invading Americans, or was he murdered by his countrymen for his political
opinions? Beatrice, a student of American literature, proves to be a beguiling storyteller and a sharp critic; she
and Jan keep in touch after that summer, and a fierce friendship forms. As the years go on, Jan finds she can't
help but write Beatrice's story, a decision that opens up questions of ownership and loyalty and leads to a major
betrayal. Thrumming with tension, informed by history, and exploring themes of duty, destiny, art, and
friendship, I Give It to You is Valerie Martin at the top of her game.
Valerie Martin is the author of twelve novels, including Trespass, Mary Reilly (a major motion picture starring
Julia Roberts), and Property, four collections of short fiction, and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi . She has
been awarded numerous prizes for her work, including the Kafka Prize (for Mary Reilly) and Britain’s Orange Prize
(for Property.) She resides in Connecticut and is currently Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College.
Agence Eliane Benisti - 23
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last
Hundred Years trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals-and a little
boy-whose lives intersect in Paris.
IN PARIS
by Jane Smiley
Knopf, Fall 2020
Paras is a spirited young racehorse living at a stable in the French countryside. One afternoon she pushes open
the gate of her stall—she’s a curious filly—and, after traveling through the night, arrives by chance in Paris. She's
dazzled, and often mystified, by the sights, sounds and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets
an elegant dog, a German shorthair pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by in the city without attracting
the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city’s lush green spaces, nourished
by Frida's strategic trips to the butchery and the bakery. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks, and
by an opinionated crow. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of
Paris: the secluded, ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great grandmother
live, quietly and unto themselves. As the cold weather and Christmas near, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom
among humans and animals alike. But how long can a runaway horse live undiscovered in Paris? And how long
can a boy keep her hidden, and all his own? Jane Smiley’s beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that
celebrates curiosity and ingenuity, and expresses the desire of all creatures for true friendship, love, and
freedom.
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize,
and most recently, Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of
nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also
received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.
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Through baseball (although not too much!), finance, media, and religion, Christopher Beha traces the passing
of the torch from the old establishment to the new meritocracy, exploring how each generation’s failure
helped land us where we are today.
THE INDEX OF SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ACTS
by Christopher Beha
Tin House, May 2020
The day Sam Waxworth arrives in New York to write for the Interviewer, a street-corner
preacher declares that the world is coming to an end. A data journalist and recent media
celebrity―he correctly forecasted every outcome of the 2008 elecon―Sam knows a few
things about predicting the future. But when projection meets reality, things turn
complicated. Sam’s assigned a profile of disgraced political columnist Frank Doyle, a liberal
lion turned neocon Iraq-war apologist and author of the great works of baseball lore that
first sparked Sam’s love of the game (books he now views as childish myth-making to be
crushed with his empirical hammer). But Doyle is convincing in person, charming and
intelligent. Sam takes a liking to him, and to his daughter, Margo, with whom Sam
becomes involved―just as his wife, Lucy, arrives from Wisconsin. It’s a precarious
moment for the Doyle family. Kit, the matriarch, lost her investment bank to the financial crisis; Eddie, their son,
hasn’t been the same since his second combat tour in Iraq; Eddie’s best friend from childhood, the fantastically
successful hedge funder Justin Price, is starting to see cracks in his spotless public image. So while the end of the
world might not be arriving, Beha’s characters appear to be headed for apocalypses of their own making.
Christopher Beha is the Executive Editor of Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of a memoir, The Whole Five
Feet, and the novels Arts & Entertainments and What Happened to Sophie Wilder. His writing has appeared in
the New Yorker, Esquire, the New York Times Book Review, and the London Review of Books, among other
publications.
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An electrifying debut novel that unfolds in the course of a single day inside one genteel New York City
apartment building, as tensions between the building's super and his grown-up daughter spark a crisis that
will, by day's end, have changed everything.
THE PARTY UPSTAIRS
by Lee Conell
Penguin Press, July 2020
Ruby has a strange relationship to privilege, having grown up the super's daughter in the
basement of an Upper West Side co-op that is full-on gentrified, and getting more so with
each passing year. She wasn't economically privileged herself, but her close childhood
friendship with the daughter of wealthy tenants named Caroline, and the mere fact of
living in a lovely neighborhood, close to her beloved Natural History Museum and just
across the park from the Met, brought with them certain real advantages, even
expectations. Naturally Ruby followed her dreams and took out large student loans to
attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and explore her interest in art. But now, out
of school for a while, she is no closer to her dream job, or anything resembling it, and
she's been forced by circumstances to do the last thing she wanted to do: move back in
with her parents, back in the basement apartment of the building. And Caroline is throwing one of her parties
tonight, in her father's glorious penthouse apartment, a party Ruby looks forward to and dreads in equal
measure. With exquisite narrative control, The Party Upstairs distills down worlds of wisdom about families,
great expectations, and the hidden violence of class into the gripping, darkly witty story of a single fateful day
inside a single Manhattan co-op.
Lee Conell is the author of the story collection Subcortical, which was awarded The Story Prize's Spotlight Award.
Her short fiction has received the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award and appears in the Oxford American,
Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of creative writing
fellowships from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.
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Helen Phillips meets Miranda July in this daring and imaginative debut novel that explores a moving mother-
daughter relationship in a world ravaged by climate change and overpopulation, a suspenseful second book
from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Nature.
THE NEW WILDERNESS
by Diane Cook
HarperCollins, August 2020
Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. The smog and pollution of
the City—an over-populated, over-built metropolis where most of the population lives—
is destroying her lungs. But what can Bea do? No one leaves the City anymore, because
there is nowhere else to go. But across the country lies the Wilderness State, the last
swath of open, protected land left. Here forests and desert plains are inhabited solely by
wildlife. People are forbidden. Until now. Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to
live in the Wilderness State as part of a study to see if humans can co-exist with nature.
Can they be part of the wilderness and not destroy it? Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers,
this new community wanders through the grand country, trying to adhere to the strict
rules laid down by the Rangers, whose job it is to remind them they must Leave No Trace.
Agence Eliane Benisti - 26
As the group slowly learns to live and survive on the unpredictable and often dangerous land, its members battle
for power and control and betray and save each other. The farther they roam, the closer they come to their
animal soul. To her dismay, Bea discovers that, in fleeing to the Wilderness State to save Agnes, she is losing her
in a different way. Agnes is growing wilder and closer to the land, while Bea cannot shake her urban past. As she
and Agnes grow further apart, the bonds between mother and daughter are tested in surprising and
heartbreaking ways. Yet just as these modern nomads come to think of the Wilderness State as home, its future
is threatened when the Government discovers a new use for the land. Now the migrants must choose to stay
and fight for their place in the wilderness, their home, or trust the Rangers and their promises of a better
tomorrow elsewhere.
Diane Cook is the author of the story collection, Man v. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book
Award, the Believer Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing
has appeared in Harper's, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the
anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio
program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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A searing coming-of-age novel about a young woman’s affair with an older woman.
WE DO WHAT WE DO IN THE DARK
by Michelle Hart
Riverhead, Summer 2021
When aspiring artist Mallory Green arrives at college in the fall of 2008, she’s grieving
the recent loss of her mother. At the university’s gym, she spies an older woman —
who she discovers is a professor, an acclaimed children’s book author, and married —
with whom she ultimately has a life-altering affair. The woman is brilliant and aloof,
and Mallory is wholly absorbed in trying to impress her, pulling away from the world
she shares with her peers, solidifying a sense of aloneness that has both haunted and
soothed her since childhood and the onset of her mother’s illness. This penchant for
solitude will continue for many years after the affair has ended, until she must decide
whether to stay safely in isolation or fully step into the world. Part Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You, part
Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, WE DO WHAT WE DO IN THE DARK delineates the deeply moving journey of a
complicated woman whose desires and identity have been formed in the shadows as she struggles into an
uncertain future.
Michelle Hart is the Assistant Books Editor at O, the Oprah Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in Joyland and
Electric Literature, and she has written nonfiction for Catapult, Nylon, the Rumpus, and The New Yorker online.
She received her M.F.A. in Fiction from Rutgers University-Newark.
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The third installment in the "Lady Astronaut" sci-fi series, about the sole female astronaut on an
international team assembled to colonize space after a meteor strike threatens to make Earth inhabitable.
The first book, The Calculating Star, won the Nebula, Locus and Hugo Awards for Best Novel.
THE RELENTLESS MOON
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor Books, July 2020
The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike
becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and
sabotage plague the space program. The IAC’s goal of getting as many people as possible
off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened. Elma York is on her way to
Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut
Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight
and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband,
the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the historical fantasy novels Ghost Talkers and the
five books in The Glamourist Histories series. She is also a multiple Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction has
appeared in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago with her husband
Robert and over a dozen manual typewriters.
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From the bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays comes a captivating new novel about a priceless
inheritance that leads one family on a life-altering pursuit of the truth.
THE IMPERFECTS
by Amy Meyerson
Park Row Books, May 2020
The Millers are far from perfect. Estranged siblings Beck, Ashley and Jake find themselves
under one roof for the first time in years, forced to confront old resentments and
betrayals, when their mysterious, eccentric matriarch, Helen, passes away. But their lives
are about to change when they find a secret inheritance hidden among her possessions—
the Florentine Diamond, a 137-carat yellow gemstone that went missing from the
Austrian Empire a century ago. Desperate to learn how one of the world’s most elusive
diamonds ended up in Helen’s bedroom, they begin investigating her past only to realize
how little they know about their brave, resilient grandmother. As the Millers race to
determine whether they are the rightful heirs to the diamond and the fortune it promises,
they uncover a past more tragic and powerful than they ever could have imagined, forever
changing their connection to their heritage and each other. Inspired by the true story of the real, still-missing
Florentine Diamond, The Imperfects illuminates the sacrifices we make for family and how sometimes discovering
the truth of the past is the only way to better the future.
Amy Meyerson is the bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays, which will be translated into 11
languages. She has been published in numerous literary magazines and teaches in the writing department at the
University of Southern California, where she completed her graduate work in creative writing. Originally from
Philadelphia, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
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An original and ambitious novel about three characters reincarnated over two thousand years, from the
collapse of the ancient Maya to a post-apocalyptic utopia, centered on the disappearance of one teenage
tourist in a cave deep in the Belizean jungle in the year 2012.
THE ACTUAL STAR
by Monica Byrne
Harper Voyager, Fall 2021
A large, multi-layered speculative work, with three interwoven parts, one set in the
world of the ancient Maya a thousand years ago (in which teen-age twins prepare to
ascend the throne of their city-state, only to be toppled in a coup), one set in the present
day (in which a young woman named Leah becomes fascinated by a cave complex in
Belize), and one set a thousand years in the future (in which a new world religion has
grown up, worshiping the memory of Leah’s disappearance in the cave). Each of the
three stories is powerful in its own way. The world view of the pre-conquest Maya is
persuasively evoked in vibrant, sensuous colors, in chapters that are based on extensive
research. In the present-day story, Leah is a compelling mystic figure, a surprising yet
satisfying first saint for a new world religion. And the future story is a magnificent feat
of world-building, with a genuinely original vision of a post-climate-apocalypse, post-capitalist society of
wanderers. Braided together, the three stories create profound resonances, with a cast of complex characters
who we come to realize are reincarnations of earlier selves; with echoes of Christian theology and history; and
with themes of human sacrifice, bloodletting, utopias, and parallel worlds. THE ACTUAL STAR is a rich, complex,
challenging and satisfying work.
Monica Byrne graduated from the Clarion Workshop in 2008, where she studied with Neil Gaiman, Nalo
Hopkinson, and Kelly Link. Her debut novel, The Girl in the Road, was published in 2014. It won the Tiptree Award
and was listed for the Kitschie, Locus, and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. She has performed original
monologues twice at TED, hosted a technology series for ViceUK, and spoken across the US on futurism and
science fiction. Her short stories and essays have been published in The Baffler, The Atlantic, The Washington
Post, Wired, Tor.com, Electric Velocipede, Fantasy Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
Electric Literature, and Glimmer Train. She has written five plays produced in Durham, NC, one of which, What
Every Girl Should Know, has been performed from Berkeley to Dublin.
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Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, THE REMOVED is a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of
stories on both a personal and ancestral level.
THE REMOVED
by Brandon Hobson
ecco/HarperCollins, Winter 2021
It’s been twenty-five years since the Echota’s teenaged son Ray-Ray was
killed in a car accident, but his death has left each surviving member of the
Cherokee family suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly
struggles to manage the onset of her husband Ernest’s Alzheimer’s and tries
to organize her heartache through writing. Their daughter, Sonja, lives in
isolation close to her parents, her solitude punctuated only by spells of
dizzying romantic obsession. Their son, Edgar, having fled home along ago,
increasingly mutes his feelings of alienation with drugs and alcohol. The family
has a tradition of coming together over a bonfire to celebrate Ray-Ray’s birthday—one of the few moments in
which they openly talk about his death—though Edgar hasn’t returned for the occasion in years. As Ray-Ray’s
birthday again approaches and Maria attempts to call the family together from their physical and emotional
distances, each family member separately begins to experience a strange unraveling of the boundary between
the world of the living and the spirit world. Maria and Ernest take in a foster child named Wyatt, who seems to
almost miraculously keep Ernest’s mental fog at bay, and who Maria increasingly suspects may have a spiritual
connection to their lost Ray-Ray. Sonja becomes dangerously fixated on a man named Vin, despite—or perhaps
because of—his ties to traumas both in her lifetime and lifetimes before. And Edgar, having attempted suicide
after his girlfriend’s sudden departure, finds himself stuck in the Darkening Land: a place between the living and
the dead, and a land where old atrocities echo. Watching over the family is their ancestor, Tsala, who died along
with his son on the Trail of Tears, and who has his own narrative of grief and attempted healing. Through stories
and images he steers Maria, Sonja, and Edgar as each walks the blurring edge between reality and myth.
Ultimately, it is their own family, both living and dead, who will guide the Echotas back from private and
generational darkness and light the path to home.
Brandon Hobson is the author of four books including Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a finalist for the
National Book Award. He has won a Pushcart Prize, and his stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions,
The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, NOON, and elsewhere. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation
Tribe of Oklahoma.
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For readers of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes a twisty, thrilling suspense novel about a woman with
dissociative identity disorder who is suspected of murdering her father
ALL OF US
by A.F. Carter
The Mysterious Press, June 2020
All of Us is a riveting thriller with six compelling protagonists—who all share one body.
Though legally she is Carolyn Grand, in practice she is Martha, a homemaker who cooks
and cleans for her “family,” Victoria, a put-together people person, Serena, a free spirit,
Kirk, a heterosexual man, Eleni, a promiscuous risk-taker, and Tina, a manifestation of
what is left of Carolyn after years of childhood sexual abuse. As they jockey for control of
their body, all the personalities also work together to avoid being committed to a
psychiatric facility. But Carolyn’s tenuous normal is shattered when Hank Grand, the man
who abused her and leased her out to pedophiles, is released from prison. Soon he begins
stalking her, bringing back painful memories for all of the personalities. When Hank is
murdered in a seedy hotel room, Carolyn is immediately a prime suspect. But the man has
other shady dealings, and the burden of proof weighs heavy on the police—especially when, propelled by
demons of his own, one of the detectives assigned to the case finds his way into Carolyn’s very solitary life. The
police and the reader are left wondering: are any of Carolyn’s personalities capable of murder? A deeply
suspenseful novel, with a truly unique cast of characters.
A.F. Carter lives, works and writes in New York City. The author is an established writer in another genre who
has written more than 20 books, including several best-sellers. They are writing under a pseudonym in order to
keep their crime fiction separate from the rest of their body of work. We will not be disclosing their identity.
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From the Sue Kaufman and Prix Femina Étranger-winning writer Francisco Goldman comes his long-awaited
new novel, MONKEY BOY, an autobiographically-inspired but richly imagined story of the life and times of 49-
year-old novelist and journalist Francisco Goldberg.
MONKEY BOY
by Francisco Goldman
Grove Press, Spring 2021
MONKEY BOY is a lively, tragicomic tale in which our narrator, the
autobiographical figure Francisco Goldberg, attempts to “go home again.”
Goldberg (aka Frank, aka Paco, aka Frankie Gee) has been living in Mexico City
for over a decade but now has returned to New York, fleeing threats on his life
provoked by his reporting on a murder in Guatemala. It’s been five years since
the devastating end of his last relationship in Mexico City and he has recently
started dating again, a young immigrant nanny he met while volunteering at
an elementary school in Brooklyn. Francisco is drawn back for a weeklong visit
to his hometown, a suburb of Boston, by two women—the high school
girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations, and his
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charming but mysterious mother, Yolanda, around whom the novel orbits like a dark star. If Francisco can unspool
her secrets and make sense of her life, will he finally understand his own?
Francisco Goldman has published four previous novels and two books of non-fiction. The Long Night of White
Chickens was awarded the American Academy’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. His novels have been finalists
for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Believer Book Award. The Art
of Political Murder won the Index on Censorship T.R. Fyvel Book Award and the WOLA/Duke Human Rights Book
Award. The Interior Circuit was named by the Los Angeles Times one of 10 best books of the year. His most recent
novel, Say Her Name, won the Prix Femina Étranger. His books have been published in 16 languages.
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The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally
resonant historical novel that captures the hardship, oppression, opportunity and hope of a trio of women’s
lives—two English convicts and an orphaned Aboriginal girl — in untamed nineteenth-century Australia.
THE EXILES
by Cristina Baker Kline
William Morrow, September 2020
Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess, is discharged
when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to London’s notorious Newgate Prison.
After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is being sent to Tasmania,
a penal colony established by Great Britain in the early nineteenth century. Though
she is uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline does know one thing: the child she carries
will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on a
repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl
little older than her former pupils, who has been sentenced to seven years transport
for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel—a skilled midwife and herbalist – is soon
offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors. Though Australia has been
home to native peoples for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling
colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the Aboriginals as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea
arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated
people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the
new governor of Tasmania. In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a
new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through
the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna.
Christina Baker Kline is the author of seven novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train. Her
other novels include Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines, and Sweet Water, as well as Orphan Train
Girl, a middle-grade adaptation of Orphan Train. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the New York
Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Money, More, and Psychology Today, among other publications. She lives in
New York City and the on the coast of Maine.
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JABberwocky Literary Agency
In this brilliant debut fantasy, a story of secrets, rebellion, and murder are shattering the Hollows, where
magic costs memory to use, and only the son of the kingdom’s despised traitor holds the truth.
THE KINGDOM OF LIARS
The Mercenary King Series, Book 1
by Nick Martell
Saga, May 2020
Michael is branded a traitor as a child because of the murder of the king’s nine-year-old
son, by his father David Kingman. Ten years later on Michael lives a hardscrabble life, with
his sister Gwen, performing crimes with his friends against minor royals in a weak attempt
at striking back at the world that rejects him and his family. In a world where memory is
the coin that pays for magic, Michael knows something is there in the hot white emptiness
of his mind. So when the opportunity arrives to get folded back into court, via the most
politically dangerous member of the kingdom’s royal council, Michael takes it, desperate
to find a way back to his past. He discovers a royal family that is spiraling into a self-serving
dictatorship as gun-wielding rebels clash against magically trained militia. What the truth
holds is a set of shocking revelations that will completely change the Hollows, if Michael
and his friends and family can survive long enough to see it.
Nick Martell was born in Ontario, Canada before moving to the United States at age 7. He started writing novels
regularly in fifth grade and later graduated university with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a minor in
French. His debut novel, The Kingdom of Liars, sold when he was 23 years old.
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Renowned author Silvia Moreno-Garcia's first thriller, UNTAMED SHORE, is a coming-of-age story set in
Mexico which quickly turns dark when a young woman meets three enigmatic tourists.
UNTAMED SHORE
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Agora/Polis Books, February 2020
Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the
seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to
watch, under the harsh sun. She’s bored. Terribly bored. Yet her head is filled with dreams
of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option
is to marry and have children. Three wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer,
and Viridiana is magnetized. She immediately becomes entwined in the glamorous
foreigners’ lives. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape from the promise of a
humdrum future. When one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon
enough, someone’s asking questions, and Viridiana has some of her own about the
identity of her new acquaintances. Sharks may be dangerous, but there are worse
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predators nearby, ready to devour a naïve young woman who is quickly being tangled in a web of deceit.A blazing
novel of suspense with an eerie seaside setting and a literary edge that proves her a master of the genre.
Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's first novel Signal to Noise won a Copper
Cylinder Award and was nominated for the British Fantasy, Locus, Sunburst and Aurora awards. Her second novel,
Certain Dark Things was selected as one of NPR's best books of 2016 and was a finalist for the Locus and Sunburst
awards. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in
Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu's Daughters). Gods of Jade and Shadow is her latest novel, and Untamed Shore is her
first thriller. She lives in Vancouver.
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The first in an adult fantasy trilogy with strong crossover appeal, SON OF THE SOIL is a happy marriage of
strong literary writing with deft plotting.
SON OF THE SOIL
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Orbit, publication date TBBD
Danso, a brainy but disillusioned novitiate scholar, is betrothed to a councilhand’s
daughter and destined for Bassa’s elite, despite being a mixed-race shashi—half-Bassai
and half of an extinct island tribe. Although his place in society is nearly made, he longs
for something beyond the stifling obligations of family and state. A way out presents itself
when Lilong, a skin-changing warrior-assassin, shows up wounded in his barn. She comes
from Namge–which, according to Bassa lore, doesn’t exist–and neither should the
mythical magic of ibor she wields. But the biggest questions her arrival raises are what
really happened to Danso’s mother, and what became of her “extinct” tribe?
Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a Nigerian author of speculative fiction inspired by his West-
African origins. He is the author of David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, July 2019), and his fiction and nonfiction
have appeared in publications including Tor.com, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, and anthologies like
Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. He lives between Lagos, Nigeria and Tucson, Arizona where he teaches
undergraduate writing while completing his MFA in Creative Writing.
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A masterfully written breathtaking and deeply humane debut novel that reveals not only the trauma of a life
lived on the front line of medicine, but also the essential, binding friendships that make such a life possible.
THE APPLICATION OF PRESSURE
by Rachael Mead
Affirm Press, May 2020
Tash and Joel are career paramedics, coming to the rescue of Adelaide residents of
every class, culture and age. In a job where every day can bring death and violence, they
maintain their sanity through a friendship built on black humour. But as the daily
exposure to trauma begins to take its toll, both, in different ways, must fight to preserve
their mental health and relationships – even with one another. How much pressure can
Tash and Joel handle, and what happens when they finally crack? With each chapter
revolving around an emergency – some frightening, some moving, some simply funny
– The Application of Pressure is as tense as it is engaging. Digging beneath the shocking surface of gore and grit,
Rachael Mead lays bare the humanity of emergency services personnel and their patients.
Rachael Mead is a poet, writer, and arts reviewer living in South Australia. She has an Honours degree in Classical
Archaeology, a Masters in Environmental Studies, and a PhD in Creative Writing. She is the author of four
collections of poetry. Rachael has published widely with her work appearing in Best Australian Poems, Meanjin,
Westerly, Cordite, Island, Southerly and many other publications. In 2019 she was awarded a residency in
northern Italy, as part of an AP/NAHR Eco-Poetry Fellowship.
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An ex-Spitfire pilot is dragged into a race against a shadowy government agency to unlock the secrets of the
lost empire of Atlantis...
CAPTAIN MOXLEY AND THE EMBERS OF THE EMPIRE
by Dan Hanks
Angry Robot, October 2020
In post-war 1952, the good guys are supposed to have won. But not everything is as
it seems when ex-Spitfire pilot Captain Samantha Moxley is dragged into a fight
against the shadowy US government agency she used to work for. Now, with former
Nazis and otherworldly monsters on her trail, Captain Moxley is forced into protecting
her ,archaeologist sister in a race to retrieve two ancient keys that will unlock the
secrets of a long-lost empire – to ensure a civilisation-destroying weapon doesn't fall
into the wrong hands. But what will she have to sacrifice to save the world?
Dan Hanks is a writer and editor based in the rolling green hills of the Peak District, UK.
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that
puts a queer spin on Kate & Leopold.
ONE LAST STOP
by Casey McQuiston
St. Martins Griffin, May 2021
Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She
doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind
of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe that
her childhood obsession with Say Anything in all its romantic, hopeful,
blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” glory counts as believing in
something. But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane. All hard
edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when
she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on her
subway commute every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to
fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t
quite let her go. Except, something about Jane doesn't add up. And when August realizes her subway crush is
impossible in more ways than one and displaced from 1970s Brooklyn, she thinks, maybe it’s time to start
believing. An epic, big-hearted novel where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her
power to save the girl lost in time—all while trying not to fall in love.
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A priest, a dominatrix, and a private detective walk into the Big Easy. It's no joke. The long-awaited 9th book
in international bestselling Original Sinners series.
THE PRIEST
by Tiffany Reisz
April 2020
Søren has been suspended from the Jesuits for a minimum of one year after confessing to
fathering a child. To say he's struggling with his newfound freedom is an understatement.
Kingsley is about to be a father again and is convinced something very bad is about to
happen. Nerves? Or is he right that the time has come for the Sinners to pay for their sins?
And if things couldn't get worse, a handsome private detective shows up and tells Mistress
Nora that a priest has just committed suicide, and she was the last person he tried to call.
He would like to know why. . .
Tiffany Reisz graduated from Centre College with a B.A. in English. She began her writing
career while studying theology in Kentucky. After leaving seminary to focus on her fiction,
she wrote The Siren, which has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Tiffany also writes mainstream
women's suspense fiction, including The Bourbon Thief and The Night Mark. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky with
her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats.
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One small island, six troubled lives, and the storm of the century is on its way.
THE COLOUR OF THUNDER
by Suzanne Harrison
Legend Press, October 2020
In one of the world’s most vibrant international cities, present day Hong Kong, the lives
of six people become irreversibly intertwined. The past is catching up with those running
from it, while the futures of others hangs dangerously in the balance. But who knows the
most? And what will they do to get it?
Suzanne Harrison is an Australian journalist and Editor who has lived in Hong Kong since
1999. She currently works freelance writing lifestyle and news features for the South
China Morning Post.
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April 1579: When two ships meet off the Pacific coast of New Spain, an enslaved woman seizes the chance to
escape…
ON WILDER SEAS - THE WOMAN ON THE GOLDEN HIND
by Nikki Marmery
Legend Press, March 2020
April 1579: When two ships meet off the Pacific coast of New Spain, an enslaved woman
seizes the chance to escape. But Maria has unwittingly joined Francis Drake’s
circumnavigation voyage and he’s about to set sail on a secret detour to find the fabled
Anian Straits in the far north. Sailing into danger, fog and ice on the Golden Hind, a lone
woman among eighty men, Maria will be tested to the very limits of her endurance. It will
take all her wits to survive – and courage to cut the ties that bind her to Drake to pursue
her own journey. How far will Maria go to be truly free? Inspired by a true story, this is the
tale of one woman’s uncharted voyage of survival.
Nikki Marmery has been shortlisted for the Myriad Editions First Draft Competition and
the Historical Novel Society's New Novel Award. Nikki lives in Amersham with her husband and three children.
She previously worked as a journalist at Incisive Media.
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A literary novel about the impact of a tragic bus crash on the people left behind, shortlisted for the Luke
Bitmead Bursary and longlisted for both the Lucy Cavendish Prize and the Mslexia Novel Award
WHERE THE EDGE IS
by Gráinne Murphy
Legend Press, September 2020
As a sleepy town in rural Ireland starts to wake, a road subsides, trapping an early-morning
bus and five passengers inside. Rescue teams struggle and as two are eventually saved,
the bus falls deeper into the hole. Under the watchful eyes of the media, the lives of three
people are teetering on the edge. And for those on the outside, from Nina, the reporter
covering the story, to rescue liaison, Tim, and Richie, the driver pulled from the wreckage,
each are made to look at themselves under the glare of the spotlight. When their world
crumbles beneath their feet, they are forced to choose between what they cling to and
what they must let go of.
Gráinne Murphy grew up in rural west Cork, Ireland. At university she studied Applied
Psychology and forensic research, then worked for a number of years in Human Resources. In 2011 she moved
with her family to Brussels, where she lived for 5 years. She has now returned to West Cork, working as a self-
employed language editor specialising in human rights and environmental issues. Gráinne has received a number
of award shortlistings and longlistings for her writing including the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair Award 2019,
Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2019, Caledonia Novel Award 2019, Virginia Prize for Fiction 2013 and the
Bath Novel Award 2015.
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A gripping story about secrets, fear, longing, lies and the power of being true to yourself, even when the
price is higher than you could have imagined.
SOLDIER BOY
by Cassandra Parkin
Legend Press, October 2020
Under the shadow of trauma, Liam has been discharged from the army. As night terrors
torment him and he struggles to keep his anger intact, he finds himself in his car, his
daughter Alannah asleep in the back, while his wife Emma has gone AWOL. With no idea
where to go for shelter, his only goal is to hold onto his daughter at all costs. But Alannah
is on a journey of her own. As the consequences of Alannah’s choices unfold, nothing will
ever be the same again.
Cassandra Parkin grew up in Hull, and now lives in East Yorkshire. Her short story
collection, New World Fairy Tales (Salt Publishing, 2011), won the 2011 Scott Prize for
Short Stories.
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Amid the chaos, he’d fled on foot from the crime scene. He ran under the cover of night, his escape aided by a
series of broken street lamps. He’d come away with nothing save the clothes on his back – and now his son.
THE EYES OF THE NAKED
by Litha Hermanus
Penguin Random House South Africa, October 2019
After becoming embroiled in a robbery, Nakedi Solomon flees to Mthatha, taking his boy
with him – without his ex-wife’s knowledge. But the Eastern Cape offers no refuge: his
young brother has run away from home, possibly to a suspicious circumcision school.
Drawn into the hunt for his sibling while he evades the law, Nakedi will smash into his
history, and the norms of society and culture, to ask: What does it mean to be a man? To
be a father? On this unexpected journey, a new consciousness awakens inside him.
Litha Hermanus has worked as an international cabin attendant, a language teacher, and
a radio producer and co-presenter. He is currently a development consultant at the
Embassy of Japan. Hermanus achieved his MFA at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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From celebrated South African novelist and playwright Craig Higginson, an international literary tale of loss
and love.
THE WHITE ROOM
by Craig Higginson
Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2018
When her new play about an English teacher in Paris opens at the Royal Court Theatre in
London, playwright Hannah Meade breaks her vow never to return to Europe. She is
finally ready to face the girl she was when she lived there, as well as to meet with Pierre
himself, the French student of Congolese descent with whom she had an intoxicating but
disastrous relationship. During their time together in Paris, they lied their way towards
truths they were too young and inexperienced to overcome. Now they might have a
second chance. A powerful allegory about the enduring divisions between Europe and
Africa and the so-called first and Third Worlds—Ovid’s Echo and Narcissus myth provides
a starting point for the politics, psychology, and power relationship between the two
lovers.
Craig Higginson is an internationally acclaimed playwright and novelist. His plays have been performed and
produced in many theatres and festivals around the world, including the National Theatre in London, the Royal
Shakespeare Company, the Traverse Theatre, and the Trafalgar Studios in London’s West End. His novels include
Last Summer, The Landscape Painter, and The Dream House. Higginson has won several awards, including the
Sony Gold Award for the Best Radio Drama in the UK, an Edinburgh Fringe First, the UJ Award for South African
Literature in English (twice) and the Naledi Award for Best South African play.
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We all know our final destination but we have no idea what will cross our path as we journey there.
THE GOLDDIGGERS
by Sue Nyathi
Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2018 | The Ishmael Tree, North America, 2020
It’s 2008 and the height of Zimbabwe’s economic demise. A group of passengers is
huddled in a Toyota Quantum about to embark on a treacherous expedition to the City of
Gold. Amongst them is Gugulethu, who is hoping to be reconciled with her mother;
Dumisani, an ambitious young man who believes he will strike it rich; Chamunorwa and
Chenai, twins running from their troubled past; and Portia and Nkosi, a mother and son
desperate to be reunited with a husband and father they see once a year. They have paid
a high price for the dangerous passage to what they believe is a better life; an escape from
the vicious vagaries of their present life in Bulawayo. In their minds, the streets of
Johannesburg are paved with gold but they will have to dig deep to get close to any gold,
dirtying themselves in the process. Told with brave honesty and bold description, the
stories of the individual immigrants are simultaneously heart-breaking and heart-warming.
Sue Nyathi was born and raised in Bulawayo and currently resides in Johannesburg. An investment analyst by
day and a storyteller to her son at night, she writes to escape the reality of financial markets and economic shop
talk. She made her screenwriting debut on the award-winning e.tv series Matatiele. Her first novel, The
Polygamist, was published in 2012; the film adaptation is due out soon.
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Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s debut is set against four
decades of vibrant Nigeria, and celebrates the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what
remains a man’s world.
THE SON OF THE HOUSE
by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia
Penguin Random House South Africa, 2019 | Dundurn Press, North America, 2020
In the Nigerian city of Enugu in the 1970s, young Nwabulu, a housemaid since the age of
ten, endures her employers’ endless chores. She is tall and beautiful and dreams of
becoming a typist. She is also in love with a rich man’s son. Educated and privileged, Julie
is a modern woman. Living on her own, she is happy to collect the gold jewellery love-
struck Eugene brings her, but has no intention of becoming his second wife. When
dramatic events force Nwabulu and Julie into a dank room years later, the two women
relate the stories of their lives as they await their fate.
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia is a lawyer, academic and writer. She works in the areas
of health, gender, violence against women and children and other social issues. She holds
a doctorate in law from Dalhousie University. She divides her time between Lagos, Nigeria and Halifax, Canada.
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A compulsive novel that is funny and charming and also deeply moving.
THE ACCIDENT
by Gail Schimmel
Pan Macmillan South Africa, March 2019
Twenty-six years is a long time not to be alive. Since The Accident that ruined her life,
Catherine has lived on autopilot, going through the motions of work and motherhood
without being fully present. Trying to fill the gap, her daughter, Julia, is looking for love in
all the wrong places, and wreaking havoc on the lives that she touches along the way.
Now that Julia is an adult, facing her own challenges, it might be time for her and her
mother to unravel the demons that they have lived with since the accident. THE
ACCIDENT is told from four points of view: Julia; her mother, Catherine; her lover, Daniel,
and Daniel’s wife, Claire.
Gail Schimmel is the author of four novels: Marriage Vows (2008), Whatever Happened
to the Cowley Twins? (2013) and The Park (2017). Gail has only ever wanted to be a writer, but she also has a day
job and is trained as an attorney specialising in advertising law. Gail lives in Johannesburg with her family.
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‘A powerful and brilliant critique of both JM Coetzee’s Disgrace and contemporary South Africa. Snyckers
makes the reader ponder deeply one minute and laugh loudly the next. A must read.’ – Zukiswa Wanner
LACUNA: A Novel
by Fiona Snyckers
Picador Africa, April 2019
Lucy Lurie is deeply sunk in PTSD following a gang rape at her father’s farmhouse in the
Western Cape. She becomes obsessed with the author John Coetzee, who has made a
name for himself by writing Disgrace, a celebrated novel that revolves around the attack
on her. Lucy lives the life of a celibate hermit, making periodic forays into the outside
world in her attempts to find and confront Coetzee. The Lucy of Coetzee’s fictional
imaginings is a passive, peaceful creature, almost entirely lacking in agency. She is the
lacuna in Coetzee’s novel – the missing piece of the puzzle. Lucy Lurie is no one’s lacuna.
Her attempts to claw back her life, her voice and her agency may be messy and misguided,
but she won’t be silenced. Her rape is not a metaphor. This is her story.
Fiona Snyckers is the author of the Trinity series of young adult novels, the Eulalie Park series of mystery novels,
and two high-concept thrillers, Now Following You and Spire. She has been long-listed four times for the Sunday
Times Fiction Prize.
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A hilarious and timely illustrated bedtime (fantasy) story for adults (and young adults).
OFF: The Day the Internet Died (A Bedtime Fantasy)
by Chris Colin, illustrated by Rinee Shah
Prestel, Fall 2020
OFF shows us how weird and wonderful it would be if the Internet was
banished from existence, in the Biblical sense, as it probably should be. It’s
GO THE F*CK TO SLEEP for the tech-addicted masses and might possibly save
the world! OFF is for the millions of anxious college kids, parents, and
previously functional people touched by the Internet, all around the world,
ages 18 to 65. It crosses business, psychology, humor, and lifestyle. Basically,
it’s a fantasy priced at the low low price of…a book.
Chris Colin contributes to The New York Times Magazine, Outside Magazine, Pop-Up Magazine, Afar Magazine,
Wired and many other publications. He has a piece in this year’s Best American Science & Nature Writing. He’s
the co-author of What to Talk About, as well as What Really Happened to the Class of ’93 and Blindsight, named
one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011, and This Is Camino which was nominated for a James Beard Award. He lives
in San Francisco with his family.
Rinee Shah is a former art director (The New York Times, Apple) and illustrator in San Francisco, CA. Her
illustration projects have been featured in Dwell, Fast Company, Juxtapoz, Mashable, and the Huffington Post.
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An examination of human nature at our truest, and the inhuman lengths some take for success, some take
for peace, and others, ultimately, take for justice.
BENEFACTION
by Katie Lattari
Sourcebooks, Spring 2021
Coral Dunn struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies. She inflicts self-harm to
crack the tension within, but she also draws, paints, and writes what she’s feeling for
release only as violent as her imagination. When she befriends a fellow artist at the
Lupine Valley Arts Collective in northern Maine, she thinks she may have found true
respite from her pain. But he has a use for her of his own, and it’s far too late, once
he’s mined her deepest vulnerabilities, to escape his plan. Decades later, Audra Colfax
is the star Painting MFA student at the Boston Institute for the Visual Arts. A gifted
artist like Coral, she too is from the wilds of Maine. There, at her remote family home,
she’s put the final touches on her thesis project, “Benefaction.” It’s a vivid collage of Coral’s works found
scattered around the property and her own, enmeshed to tell a story of a dark past that ties the two women
inextricably. It’s ready for her advisor, the esteemed Max Durant, to come up and review. He won’t know Audra
obsessively engineered every last detail of his visit. Or that it had to be him from the start, advising her, so she
could get to him by doing what he does best. She’d use what she’s inherited to lure him back to Maine. He has
no idea she knows his worst secret, and that it’s the sole reason why he’s been invited.
What comes to light, chapter by spellbinding chapter, is that one grand, grotesque act of selfishness
committed by Max as a young man, followed by years of manipulating women for art, has set into motion the
machinery of his own fatal undoing. The man should pay for his crimes, and no one is more deserving of revenge
than the women to whom he owes his career. Audra is well aware he’s a monster, but she doesn’t know
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everything that simmers beneath his surface. Spun in alternative points of view across an electric, twisty few
days, BENEFACTION is a rallying call of feminist fury; a Whisper Network or Big Little Lies for artists; a Gone Girl L
tale of atonement underscored by notes of My Dark Vanessa, set in the woods during hunting season.
Katie Lattari holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Maine and an MFA in Fiction Writing/Prose
from the University of Notre Dame. In 2016 her debut novel American Vaudeville was published by Mammoth
Books, a small literary press; we see BENEFACTION as her commercial breakout.
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An exhilarating, atmospheric tale of female strength and what happens when a young woman learns how to
harness a fierce new power.
DAUGHTERS OF THE WILD
by Natalka Burian
Park Row Books, 2020
What makes a woman seek the wilderness? In rural West Virginia, Joanie and her foster
siblings live on a farm tending a mysterious plant called the vine. The older girls are
responsible for cultivating the vine, performing sacred rituals to make it grow. After
Joanie’s arranged marriage goes horribly wrong, leaving her widowed and with a baby,
she plots her escape with the help of her foster brother, Cello. But before they can get
away, her baby goes missing and Joanie, desperate to find him, turns to the vine,
understanding it to be far more powerful than her siblings realize. She begins performing
generations-old rituals to summon the vine’s power and goes on a perilous journey into
the wild, pushing the boundaries of her strength and sanity to bring her son home.
Daughters of the Wild is an utterly absorbing debut that explores the female mind in
captivity and the ways in which both nature and women fight domination. Like The Bell Jar set in rural Appalachia,
Daughters of the Wild introduces a fierce new heroine and a striking new voice in fiction.
Natalka Burian is the author of the YA novel Welcome to the Slipstream (Simon Pulse), co-author of A Woman’s
Drink (Chronicle) and the co-owner of two Brooklyn bars, Ramona and Elsa. Natalka is also co-founder of The
Freya Project, a monthly reading series that raises money for small non-profits located in communities that are
discouraging of their work, and through which she has connected with writers Iris Martin Cohen, Madeline
Stevens, Danielle Lazarin, Robin Wasserman, Julie Buntin and Jessie Chaffee, who have all offered to support her
novel. She received an MA at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in The Millions, Lit Hub, Catapult,
and Lenny, and her bars and books have been featured in The New Yorker, Elle, Vogue, New York, and elsewhere.
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“My father is a murderer. Six months before I was born, he walked into Ponce de Leon Mall in St. Augustine,
Florida. By the time he walked out, he was a murderer.”
GIRL AT THE EDGE by Karen Dietrich
Grand Central Publishing, 2020
Not a single resident of St. Augustine, Florida, can forget the day that Michael Joshua
Hayes walked into a shopping mall and walked out the mass murderer of eleven people.
He's now spent over a decade on death row, and his daughter Evelyn—who doesn't
remember a time when her father wasn't an infamous killer—is determined to unravel
the mystery and understand what drove her father to shoot those innocent victims.
Evelyn's search brings her to a support group for children of incarcerated parents, where
a fierce friendship develops with another young woman named Clarisse. Soon the girls are
inseparable, and by the beginning of the summer, Evelyn is poised at the edge of her
future and must make a life-defining choice. Whether to believe that a parent's legacy of
violence is escapable or that history will simply keep repeating itself. Whether we choose
it to or not. The writing here is first-rate: edgy, lyrical, suspenseful, insightful, the author always keeping the
reader close to Evelyn. Girl at the Edge is perfect for fans of such writers as William Landay and Megan Abbot.
Karen Dietrich is a writer of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She is the author of The Girl Factory: A Memoir, based
on her coming of age in a small manufacturing town outside of Pittsburgh and published to critical acclaim by
Globe Pequot in 2013.
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In the irresistible new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted and
Something Borrowed, a young woman falls hard for an impossibly perfect man before he disappears without
a trace. . .
THE LIES THAT BIND
by Emily Griffin
Ballantine, June 2020
It’s 2 A.M. on a Saturday night in the spring of 2001, and twenty-eight-year-old Cecily
Gardner sits alone in a dive bar in New York’s East Village, questioning her life. Feeling
lonesome and homesick for the Midwest, she wonders if she’ll ever make it as a reporter
in the big city—and whether she made a terrible mistake in breaking up with her longtime
boyfriend, Matthew. As Cecily reaches for the phone to call him, she hears a guy on the
barstool next to her say, “Don’t do it—you’ll regret it.” Something tells her to listen, and
over the next several hours—and shots of tequila—the two forge an unlikely connection.
That should be it, they both decide the next morning, as Cecily reminds herself of the
perils of a rebound relationship. Moreover, their timing couldn’t be worse—Grant is
preparing to quit his job and move overseas. Yet despite all their obstacles, they can’t
seem to say goodbye, and for the first time in her carefully constructed life, Cecily follows her heart instead of
her head. Then Grant disappears in the chaos of 9/11. Fearing the worst, Cecily spots his face on a missing-person
poster, and realizes she is not the only one searching for him. Her investigative reporting instincts kick into action
as she vows to discover the truth. But the questions pile up fast: How well did she really know Grant? Did he ever
really love her? And is it possible to love a man who wasn’t who he seemed to be? The Lies That Bind is a
mesmerizing and emotionally resonant exploration of the never-ending search for love and truth—in our
relationships, our careers, and deep within our own hearts.
Emily Giffin is the author of nine internationally bestselling novels: Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby
Proof, Love the One You’re With, Heart of the Matter, Where We Belong, The One & Only, First Comes Love, and
All We Ever Wanted. A graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Virginia School of Law, she lives
in Atlanta with her husband and three children.
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When the game is deception, nothing is as it seems in this novel of cunning psychological suspense by the #1
Amazon Charts bestselling author of I’ll Never Tell.
YOU CAN’T CATCH Me
by Catherine McKenzie
Lake Union/Amazon Publishing | Simon & Schuster Canada | June 2020
Do you want to play a game?
Twelve years ago Jessica Williams escaped a cult. Thanks to the private detective who
rescued her, she reintegrated into society, endured an uncomfortable notoriety, and
tried to put it all behind her. Then, at an airport bar, Jessica meets a woman with an
identical name and birth date. It appears to be just an odd coincidence—until a week
later, when Jessica finds her bank account drained and her personal information stolen.
Following a trail of the grifter’s victims, each with the same name, Jessica gathers
players—one by one—for her own game. According to her plan, they’ll set a trap and wait
for the impostor to strike again. But plans can go awry, and trust can fray, and as Jessica
tries to escape the shadows of her childhood, the risks are greater than she imagined. Now, confronting the
casualties of her past, Jessica can’t help but wonder… Who will pay the price?
Catherine McKenzie is the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of ten novels, including I’ll Never Tell, The Good
Liar, Fractured, and Hidden, which have been translated into numerous languages. Her books are routinely
chosen as best of the month by Goodreads, and Smoke was an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2015. An avid skier and
runner and a graduate of McGill University, the international bestselling author practices law in Montreal, where
she was born and raised.
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The only way to find his wife is to trust a girl with no memory. A strange, quiet girl now bent on revenge.
THE QUIET GIRL
by S. F. Kosa
Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2020
After a tense argument, Alex drops everything to patch things up with his new wife, Mina.
But Mina has vanished, leaving behind her wedding band and a string of secrets in her
wake. Meanwhile, Layla is a mystery in Provincetown. When coworkers start asking
questions about who she is and where she came from, Layla would love to answer
them…but she can’t. All she knows is someone has hurt her and now she has to disappear.
As Alex searches for Mina, and Layla searches for herself, their stories collide, and Alex
realizes Mina’s disappearance is hidden in Layla’s past. In a shocking twist, they must
decide how far they’re willing to go in search of healing—and perhaps revenge.
S. F. Kosa is a long-time clinical psychologist. She was born on the West Coast, raised in
the Midwest, and is now firmly entrenched on the East Coast. This is her debut psychological suspense.
____________________
In this riveting follow-up to A Long Way Down, DeMarco investigates a string of grisly murders in a case that
will shake him to his core.
NO WOODS SO DARK AS THESE: A Ryan DeMarco Mystery
by Randall Silvis
Poisoned Pen Press, August 2020
The fourth book in Randall Silvis’s celebrated mystery series finds DeMarco drawn into
the investigation of a series of gruesome murders as he tries to move forward into a
questionable future. The nightmarish discovery of a body inside a smoldering car is only
made worse when, hours later, a naked man is found nailed to a tree. Two murders in the
small Pennsylvania town is unheard of, so retired sergeant Ryan DeMarco and his partner,
Jayme, are called in once again to untangle a thick web of lies, betrayal, and desperation
that cloaks their corner of the world. As they dig deeper into the investigation, DeMarco
finds that, out of everything he has seen, this case might be the one that breaks him for
good.
Randall Silvis is the internationally acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels, including Two Days Gone and
the other Ryan DeMarco mysteries. His essays, articles, poems, and short stories have appeared in various online
and print magazines. His work has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Pennsylvania.
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A "fixer" in a Polish town during World War II, his betrayal of a Jewish family, and a search for justice 25
years later―by the winner of the Naonal Jewish Book Award.
ELI’S PROMISE
by Ronald H. Balson
St. Martin’s Press, September 2020
From the award-winning author of Once We Were Brothers comes a work of historical
fiction spanning three eras: Nazi-occupied Lublin, Poland; a post-war displaced person’s
camps in Allied-occupied Germany; and twenty years later in a peaceful Chicago
neighborhood where a devoted father and widower seeks to expose the now-powerful
man who betrayed his family two decades ago.
Ronald H. Balson is an attorney, professor, and writer. His novel The Girl From Berlin won
the National Jewish Book Award and was the Illinois Reading Council's adult fiction
selection for their Illinois Reads program. He is also the author of Karolina's Twins, The
Trust, Saving Sophie, and the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers. He has
appeared on many television and radio programs and has lectured nationally and internationally on his writing.
He lives in Chicago.
____________________
A woman, still grieving the death of her fiance, decides to take their planned trip to sail the Caribbean alone,
where she finds a chance at rebuilding her life and the possibility of new love.
FLOAT PLAN
by Trish Doller
St. Martin’s Griffin, March 2021
Anna has spent the last year since her fiancé’s suicide foundering on land, immobilized
by her grief and inability to move on. But as the story begins, she impulsively decides
to take their sailboat and complete the planned voyage Ben had mapped out for them
in the Caribbean—alone. After a treacherous first night’s sail to the Bahamas and a
brush with an ocean tanker, she decides she needs help and hires professional sailor
Keane to help her get to Puerto Rico. As Anna learns how to be more than a fair-
weather sailor from Keane, she finds purpose in going off the map, diverting from her
planned route and finding a way to let go of the grief that was holding her in place.
With Keane's friendship, and the possibility of more, can Anna find a new, meaningful course?
Trish Doller is the author of Something Like Normal and Where the Stars Still Shine. She's a former newspaper
reporter and radio personality who now works as a bookseller. She lives in Fort Myers, Florida, with her two
mostly grown children, two dogs, and a pirate.
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A literary novel set on the coast of Maine during the 1960s, tracing the life of a family and its matriarch—
Margreete Bright, a fiercely intelligent grandmother who has lived on her own terms, and whose mind is
slowly slipping away into dementia—as they negotiate sharing a home.
MARGREETE’S HARBOR
by Eleanor Morse
St. Martin’s Press, April 2021
“Brilliant. Relevant. Bold. Margreete’s Harbor breaks and mends the heart in the way
of all great literature. It’s a collective story, roaring with love in the little moments.
Profound revelations about relationships, emotions, and life in general. Descriptions of
land, place, animals, and the natural world: some of the best I’ve ever read. The
narrative moves with power, grace, and vivid music through history and the characters
simultaneously—and differently. The people Morse writes are so real that I wouldn’t
be surprised to meet them on the street. We all need this book.”—Neela Vaswani,
author of Where the Long Grass Bends and You Have Given Me a Country
Eleanor Morse is the author of An Unexpected Forest, which won the Independent
Publisher’s Gold Medalist Award for the Best Regional Fiction in the Northeast U.S., and was selected winner of
Best Published Fiction by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance at the 2008 Maine Literary Awards. She lives
on Peaks Island, Maine.
____________________
In a series debut for fans of Tana French and Kate Atkinson, set in Dublin and New York, homicide detective
Maggie D'arcy finally tackles the case that changed the course of her life.
THE MOUNTAINS WILD
by Sarah Stewart Taylor
Minotaur Books, June 2020
Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D’Arcy’s family received a call from the Dublin police. Her
cousin Erin was missing. Maggie travelled to Ireland to track Erin’s movements, working
beside the police. But it was to no avail: no trace of Erin was ever found. Now, Maggie is
a detective on Long Island, New York and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the
Dublin police call to say that Erin’s scarf has been found and another young woman has
gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the
first trip. The despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her
attraction to Erin’s coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their
relationship. And her determination to solve the case, once and for all. A lyrical, deeply
drawn portrait of a woman—and a country—over two decades, The Mountains Wild
introduces a compelling new mystery series from a mesmerizing author.
Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. Taylor grew
up on Long Island in New York, was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College in Dublin,
and she lived in Dublin, Ireland in the mid-90s. She now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they
raise sheep and grow blueberries.
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A revisionist (mid)Western with nods to Flannery O'Connor, written in a rigorously stylized voice that evokes
Scripture and the Greek classics.
CUYAHOGA
by Pete Beatty
Scribner, October 2020
Big Son is what you call a spirit of the times—the times being 1837. Behind his broad
shoulders, shining hair, and chuch-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by
himself. The feats of this frontier superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey toasts
but very little in the way of government dollars. And without money, Big cannot become
an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who might not want to be his honest wife). In
pursuit of a steady wage, our hero hits the (dirt) streets of Ohio City and Cleveland. These
two cities are locked in a fierce fight to become the first great metropolis of the West.
Their rivalry has come to a boil over the building of a bridge across the Cuyahoga River—
and Big stumbles right into the kettle. The ensuing misadventure involves elderly
terrorists, infrastructure collapse, steamboat races, dental hygiene, wild pigs and several
ruined weddings. Narrating this screwball picaresque is Medium Son, Meed to acquaintances—apprentice coffin
maker, almanac author, orphan, and the younger brother of Big. Meed finds himself swept into the tumultuous
events too, and he is forced to choose between brotherly love and his own shadowed sense of self. Pete Beatty’s
Cuyahoga considers how “stories feed on us same as we feed on stories,” and spins a revisionist (mid)Western
with nods to Looney Tunes and Flannery O’Connor. The rigorously stylized voice Pete deploys here evokes
Scripture and the Greek classics, mining the best of recent lit’s vernacular-ized canon, from Lincoln in the Bardo,
The Sisters Brothers, The Luminaries, or a Coen brothers prologue, and the adventures of Charles Portis.
Pete Beatty is a Cleveland-area native. He has taught writing at Kent State University and the University of
Alabama. He currently works at the University of Alabama Press. He lives with his wife in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Cuyahoga is his first novel.
____________________
A novel of lifelong reckoning between two women by the award-winning, beloved author.
PAYBACK
by Mary Gordon
Knopf, September 2020
Unbeknownst to her many fans, Quin Archer, the revenge-loving queen of the reality-TV
show "Payback," was once an angry teen named Heidi—and her true story may be known
only to Agnes, who was her art teacher at a private New England girls' school in the 1970s.
Then a young woman herself, Agnes saw a spark of originality in the brooding Heidi. But
when she suggests Heidi visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the girl returns
with a disastrous account of having been picked up at the museum by an older man.
Agnes's stunned, victim-blaming response will haunt both women for decades. Gordon
narrates this tale of #metoo misunderstanding, from a time before there was language
to contain it, with a sharp sense of life's changing tempo, carrying us through Heidi's
disappearance and reinvention as Quin, and Agnes's escape into career and family in
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Italy—until, inevitably, they meet again. A remarkable book about the precise weight of our words and deeds,
from a writer whose moral vision is deeply rewarding in its subtlety.
Mary Gordon is the author of nine novels, including There Your Heart Lies, Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love
of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three
collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has
received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard
College and lives in New York City.
____________________
Set in the Philippines under a Duterte-like leader, The Human Zoo is an insightful, powerful exploration of the
inexorable ties between the past and present, and a woman caught between the two.
THE HUMAN ZOO
by Sabina Murray
Grove Atlantic, Spring 2021
Filipina-American Ting Velosa travels from New York to Manila, both to escape her
imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino
man brought to New York at the start of the twentieth century to be exhibited as part of a
‘human zoo.’ But as she speaks with family and friends, and revisits old haunts, she finds
modern Filipino society languishing under the capricious dictatorship of Procopio ‘Copo’
Gumboc. To make her way, Ting must balance the aristocratic traditions of her family,
seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance; reconnecting with her highschool
friend Inchoy, a gay socialist and professor of philosophy; and beginning a new affair with
her old boyfriend Chet, a businessmen with questionable ties to the regime. All the while,
family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin’s fiancé, who has come to
the Philippines to rediscover his roots, nevermind not speaking a word of Tagalog. As Ting works on her book,
she cannot extricate herself from Laird’s insurgent nationalism, nor from the increasingly repressive regime, even
as she finds ways to remain on the periphery of lurking danger. Shuffled between history and the unfolding
present, Ting finds herself inevitably colliding with the question of whether the country of her birth will ever
change.
Sabina Murray is the author of the novels Forgery, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, Slow Burn, and Valiant Gentlemen, a
New York Times Notable Book for 2016, as well as two short story collections, the Pen/Faulkner Award winning
The Caprices, and Tales of the New World. She grew up in Australia and the Philippines and is currently a member
of the M.F.A. faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has also received a National Endowment
for the Arts Fellowship, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, a UMass Research and Creativity Award, and a
Fred R. Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Bunting
Fellow at Radcliffe, and a Michener Fellow at UT Austin. She is the writer of the screenplay for the film Beautiful
Country, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Norwegian Amanda Award.
____________________
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Manon Steffan Ros’ Wales 2019 Book of the Year, The Blue Book of Nebo, is the tender story of a mother and
son who must come together to shoulder the burden of an unthinkable challenge.
THE BLUE BOOK OF NEBO
by Manon Steffan Ros
Deep Vellum, Summer 2021
Dylan was small when the lights started to go out, but his mother Rowenna remembers
everything. These days she clings to the little things: Dylan singing when he thinks she’s
not listening, the sunset over Anglesey, seeing someone ride by on an old bicycle just
when she thought everyone had gone. From their sleepy Welsh town, the world always
seemed so far away. When it comes crashing down around them, they find themselves
alone. These days, when Dylan stands at the bottom of the garden and looks at all the
things he’s made—the plants and the tunnels and the food—he feels like a man, not a
boy. He doesn’t want to change a single thing. He doesn’t want it to stop. This is his world.
He fits here now. The Blue Book of Nebo, a found journal in the voice of mother and son,
is the tender story of an unlikely duo shouldering the burden of an unthinkable challenge.
And when an unexpected baby sister arrives, the family is thrust into unstable waters. Through their eyes, we
see the naked reality of loss and suffering, written in a language that belongs to us all. The Blue Book is their
memory and their sanity, and perhaps most importantly, it is a refuge for their secrets—even the ones they keep
from each other. The Blue Book of Nebo is the 2019 Wales Book of the Year and won the National Eisteddfod
Prose Medal in 2018, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Wales. It has sold over 7,000 copies in Welsh
and has just been added to the Welsh national curriculum studied by all students.
Manon Steffan Ros is a Welsh author, playwright and screenwriter. She has won numerous awards for her work,
including Best Show For Children and Young People at the Theatre in Wales Awards and the Tir Na N’Og prize for
children’s literature four times. Her books Blasu and Llyfr Glas Nebo feature on the national curriculum in Wales,
as well as her play, Dau Wyneb.
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An extraordinary novel which takes as its starting point the story of a young Englishwoman in the late
eighteenth century, and breaks it open into a playful dance of possibilities.
A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES
by Kate Grenville
Text Publishing, July 2020
Intelligent and educated, Elizabeth Macarthur is a farmer’s daughter raised in Devon by
the local clergyman, in a world Jane Austen would have understood. She grows up in
comfort but her prospects are limited. When she finds herself pregnant to the enigmatic
young soldier John Macarthur, her life changes forever. As the first soldier’s wife to arrive
in the infant colony of New South Wales, Elizabeth is unprepared both for its brutal
isolation, and the demands of her difficult and unpredictable husband—but she comes
to learn that her new home offers her opportunities that she could otherwise have
scarcely imagined. A Room Made of Leaves conjures out of the past a woman of spirit,
cunning and wit, who picks apart our received ideas about truth and lies. It may be set
two centuries ago but it is a book for our times, where it is never wise to believe too
quickly.
Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was
shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Man Booker Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah
Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Dark Places and the Orange Prize winner, The Idea of Perfection. Her most recent books
are two works of non-fiction, One Life: My Mother’s Story and The Case Against Fragrance. In 2017 Grenville was
awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
____________________
A multi-generational saga set on the goldfields of Western Australia, Our Shadows is about the frayed but
tenacious bonds of family.
OUR SHADOWS
by Gail Jones
Text Publishing, October 2020
Nell and Frances have always been a team. Inseparable as girls, and close enough in age
to be mistaken for twins, the sisters have now grown apart. Each is struggling to come to
terms with their grandmother Else’s dementia: while Frances does her best to make Else
comfortable, Nell refuses to visit. A lifetime earlier, Else fell in love with Fred, in the tough
mining town of Kalgoorlie. It’s a hard place to raise their daughters, Enid and Mary, and
life on the goldfields in the early 1900s has its horrors. When Mary marries miner Patrick,
he wants to be a good husband, and a good father to Nell and Frances—but then tragedy
strikes. Patrick vanishes, abandoning the girls to the care of their grandparents and their
aunt Enid. But now Frances decides it’s time to find their father, beginning an unexpected
journey that will take her deep into the desert and to a new understanding of the past—
and the present.
Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her work has been translated into twelve languages,
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the IMPAC Award and the Prix
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Femina Étranger. The Death of Noah Glass, won the Prime Minister’s Literay Award and was shortlisted for the
Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction.
____________________
A retelling a maritime history lost at sea that explores the effects of colonialism upon Indigenous people
THE BURNING ISLAND
by Jock Serong
Text Publishing, September 2020
Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney in 1798 when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived
there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she lives by
herself, looking after her reclusive father Joshua, who has become overly fond of a drink.
There is a shadow in his past, she knows. Something obsessive. Something to do with a
man who bested him thirty-three years ago. Then Srinivas, another figure from that dark
past, offers Joshua Grayling the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis. The plan entails
a sea voyage far to the south and an uncertain, possibly violent, outcome. Eliza is horrified.
Out of the question for an elderly man—insanity for a helpless drunkard who also happens
to be blind. Unable to dissuade her father from his mad quest, Eliza begins to understand
she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the ship they will be sailing on. And, in
that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza’s mission too.
Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of
Backyard Cricket, shortlisted in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, finalist in the 2017 MWA Edgar
Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist in the 2017 INDIES Adult Mystery Book of the Year; On the Java
Ridge, shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards; and Preservation, the first of his novels set among Tasmania’s
Furneaux Islands.
____________________
A tender, funny, and heartbreaking story of how we cope with grief.
A MILLION THINGS
by Emily Spurr
Text Publishing, April 2021
Rae is ten years old, and she’s tough. She’s had to be: life with her mother has taught
her the world is not her friend. Now something has happened and her mum is gone
and Rae is alone except for her dog, Splinter. Rae can do a lot of things pretty well for
a kid. She can shop and cook—a little—and take care of Splints and keep the front
yard neat enough that the neighbours won’t get curious. But she is gnawed at by
shadows, anxieties that she cannot put into words. With Lettie, the old woman who
lives next door, the words are not the problem. Lettie’s problem is a house full of
objects that can’t make up for the things she has lost. Their friendship gives them both
an escape, but how long can it last?
Emily Spurr is a past recipient of the NEEF Australia Maurice Saxby Mentorship for Writing for Children and in
2018 was shortlisted for the Text Prize for her manuscript Black Dog, Small Bird. In 2020 she was shortlisted for
the Victorian Premiers Literary Award’s Unpublished Manuscript prize for A Million Things. She lives in
Melbourne with her family and a deaf, geriatric cat.
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Inspired by the true story of Alois Brunner and the Jews on the French Riviera, LANA’S WAR is a story about
how war changes one woman and the way she helps a child come to terms with the cruelty of the Holocaust.
LANA’S WAR
by Anita Abriel
Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Spring 2021
Paris, 1943. Lana Antanova is on her way to see her husband Frederic with news that she
is pregnant. Though she shouldn’t be excited about having a baby while Paris is occupied
by the Germans, she and Frederic are deeply in love and she can’t help being happy. But,
as she arrives at the convent where Frederic teaches piano, she watches, horrified, as
Gestapo officers execute him for hiding a Jewish girl in the piano. In the aftermath of the
tragedy, overcome with grief, Lana loses her baby and her world as she knows it changes
forever, and she can hardly get out of bed; until one day a man arrives who wants to meet
Lana - he knows a way to get revenge on Alois Brunner, the Gestapo officer who killed
Frederic, and save dozens of Jews at the same time. Lana’s cover is being the mistress of
a wealthy Swiss industrialist named Guy Pascal. They attend parties to gather information
on the raids on hotels and Jewish neighborhoods. Then they help the Jews escape on a boat headed to Algiers
and England. The more Lana interacts with Brunner and his men, the more horrified she becomes and the more
determined to do her part. But Lana doesn’t count on becoming attached to a twelve-year old Jewish girl named
Odette who just lost her father. And what will happen when she befriends her neighbor in Cap Ferrat, Giselle,
who is harboring her own secrets?
Anita Abriel was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. She graduated from Bard College and attended UC
Berkeley’s Masters in English and Creative Writing Program. he lives in California with her family.
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From the New York Times bestseller author of The Paris Architect
THE FABERGÉ SECRET
by Charles Belfoure
Severn House, July 2020
Not since the bestselling The Paris Architect, which has sold nearly 400,000 copies to date,
has Charles Belfoure written a book so evocative of such a dazzling, fascinating, and
chilling period of history. From the gilded ballrooms, caviar, and Art Nouveau of Imperial
Russia to the bustling hospital wards of St. Petersburg and the grim violence of the
pogroms, THE FABERGÉ SECRET is as intricate as its title implies. Prince Dimitri
Sergeyevich Markhov adores the magical fairytale world in which he lives—close friends
with Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, Dimitri enjoys special comfort and is
commissioned for important royal architectural projects. But outside of the Imperial
sphere, a revolution to end Russian oppression is stirring, and Doctor Katya
Alexandronova Golitsyn is determined to be a part of it. After a chance encounter
between Dimitri and Katya at the royal ball, an unlikely affair begins between the woman doctor and the married
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prince. As their relationship develops, Katya exposes Dimitri to the horrors of the Tsar’s regime. But with
involvement comes secrets and betrayals, and a risk of exposing themselves to the very real danger of both sides.
Charles Belfoure is the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Architect, House of Thieves, and The Fallen
Architect. An architect by profession, he graduated from the Pratt Institute and Columbia University, and he
taught at Pratt as well as Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. His area of specialty is historic preservation,
and he has published several architectural histories, one of which won a Graham Foundation national grant for
architectural research. He has been a freelance writer for The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times.
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Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable
author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…
WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING: A THRILLER
by Alyssa Cole
HarperCollins, Fall 2020
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but the neighborhood she loves is being erased
before her very eyes. FOR SALE signs are popping up everywhere, and the neighbors she’s
known all her life are disappearing. To preserve the past, Sydney channels her frustration
into a walking tour: “Displaced: A People’s History of Brooklyn,” and finds an unlikely and
unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block – her neighbor Theo. But
Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into
paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the
efforts to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised. When does
coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them
out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other – or themselves – long enough to find out,
before they too disappear – permanently?
Alyssa Cole is an award-winning author of historical, contemporary, and sci-fi romance. Her romantic comedy A
Princess In Theory was a New York Times notable book for 2018. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An
Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018, and also the RT Book
Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award Book of the Year.
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A startling debut about class and race, LAKEWOOD evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—
part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
LAKEWOOD
Megan Giddings
Amistad, March 2020
When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is
revealed, the young black woman drops out of college to support her family and takes a
job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. On paper, her new job is
too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live.
All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family
about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a
medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden pills promised to make all bad
thoughts go away. The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the
world—but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. As the
truths of the program reveal themselves, Lena learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice
for the sake of her family. Provocative and thrilling, LAKEWOOD is a breathtaking novel that takes an unflinching
look at the moral dilemmas many working-class families face, and the horror that has been forced on black bodies
in the name of science.
Megan Giddings is a fiction editor at The Offing, a winner of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, and a features
editor at The Rumpus. She is the recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant for feminist fiction. Her
short stories have been published in Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, and The Iowa Review.
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From the winner of the 2016 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction comes a tender and funny debut
novel, set over one emotionally charged weekend at an animal sanctuary in western Kansas, where
maternal, romantic, and community bonds are tested in the wake of an estranged daughter’s homecoming.
THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS
by Becky Mandelbaum
Simon & Schuster, August 2020
The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals is in trouble. It’s late 2016 when Ariel discovers that
her mother Mona’s animal sanctuary in Western Kansas has not only been the target of
anti-Semitic hate crimes—but that it’s also for sale, due to hidden financial ruin. Ariel,
living a new life in progressive Lawrence, and estranged from her mother for six long
years, knows she has to return to her childhood home—especially since her own past may
have played a role in the attack on the sanctuary. Ariel expects tension, maybe even fury,
but she doesn’t anticipate that her first love, a ranch hand named Gideon, will still be
working at the Bright Side. Back in Lawrence, Ariel’s charming but hapless fiancé, Dex,
grows paranoid about her sudden departure. After uncovering Mona’s address, he sets
out to confront Ariel, but instead finds her grappling with the life she’s abandoned. Amid
the reparations with her mother, it’s clear that Ariel is questioning the meaning of her life in Lawrence, and
whether she belongs with Dex or with someone else, somewhere else. THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR
ANIMALS poignantly explores the unique love and tension between mothers and daughters, and humans and
animals alike. Wise and funny, moving and eloquent, and ultimately buoyant, Mandelbaum offers a panoramic
view of family and forgiveness, and of the meaning of home.
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Becky Mandelbaum is the author of Bad Kansas, winner of the 2016 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
and the 2018 High Plains Book Award for First Book. Her work has appeared in One Story, The Sun, The Missouri
Review, The Georgia Review, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has been featured on
Medium. THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS is her first novel.
