“Don’t let the white man take the house.”
These are the last words King Solomon says to his son before he dies. Now all four Solomon siblings must return to North Carolina to save the Kingdom, their ancestral home and 200 acres of land, from a development company, who has their sights set on turning the valuable waterfront property into a luxury resort. While fighting to save the Kingdom, the siblings must also save themselves from the secrets they’ve been holding onto. Told in alternating viewpoints, Long After We Are Gone is a searing portrait on the power of family and letting go of things that no longer serve you, exploring the burden of familial expectations, the detriment of miscommunication, and the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children.
Archives
THE WEDDING PEOPLE
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe—which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other. In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
A DAUGHTER OF FAIR VERONA
Knives Out meets Bridgerton in Fair Verona, as New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd kicks off a frothy, irreverent, witty new series with an irresistible premise— told from the delightfully engaging point of view of Romeo and Juliet’s clever, rebellious, fiercely independent daughter, Rosie Montague…
I’m the eldest daughter of Romeo and Juliet. Yes, *that* Romeo and Juliet. No, they didn’t die in the tomb. They’re alive and well and living in fair Verona with their six wildly impetuous children and me, their nineteen-year-old daughter Rosaline —a certified spinster at twenty and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out—it’s exhausting.
BOUND TO THE SHADOW PRINCE
To protect her people from their goddess’s wrath, Princess Candra must remain locked inside a tower for seven long years. The only other living being in the tower with her is a winged, fanged beast: a warrior named Nemeth. He’s terrifying, cruel, and disturbingly magnetic. Candra should kill him for his supplies, but she’s desperate for his company—and his touch. When their tenure hits an unexpected snag, Candra and Nemeth are forced to make a difficult choice to face an outside world they no longer recognize.
AND SO I ROAR
A stunning, heartwrenching new novel from Abi Daré, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with the Louding Voice.
SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana. When Izzy’s efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are—permeating everything from Miami’s sinking streets to Izzy’s memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzy’s story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguana’s claws, and as menacing as a killer whale’s teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzy’s boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Wildly narrated and expertly rendered, Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Capó Crucet’s most daring, heart-breaking, and fearless book yet.
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
(Putnam)
SUMMARY
A propulsive and piercing debut, set ten years before the events of Shakespeare’s historic play, about the ambition, power, and fate that define one of literature’s most notorious figures: Lady Macbeth.
Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother’s death and the weight of an unknowable prophecy. When she is married, at fifteen, to the Mormaer of Moray, she experiences firsthand the violence of a sadistic husband and a kingdom constantly at war. To survive with her young son in a superstitious realm, she must rely on her own cunning and wit, especially when her husband’s downfall inadvertently sets them free.
Suspicious of the dark devices that may have led to his father’s death, her son watches as his mother falls in love with the enigmatic thane Macbeth. Now a woman of stature, Lady Macbeth confronts a world of masculine power and secures the protection of her family. But the coronation of King Duncan and the political maneuvering of her cousin Macduff set her on a tragic course, one where her own success might mean embracing the very curse that haunts her and risking the child she loves.
THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART
My Sister, The Serial Killer meets Crying in H-Mart in this debut psychological horror novel by Korean-American author, Monika Kim. Ji-Won’s life falls apart in the wake of her Appa’s affair and subsequent departure from the family. When the obnoxious, womanizing George enters her life, courting her Umma and pushing into the family, Ji-Won begins to dream of eyes, brilliant blue eyes, eyes just like his. And along with those eyes, a terrible hunger. A brilliantly inventive, subversively feminist novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.
A PAIR OF WINGS
A riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation, and found freedom in the air. A few years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields when an airplane flew right over their heads. Without even thinking, she spread her arms out and pretended she was flying. She knew there was freedom in those wings. The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the great migration, moving to Chicago as a single woman. But in 1920, no one in the U.S. will train a Black woman to fly, so 26-year-old Bessie learns to speak French and bets it all on an epic journey to Europe as she begins a quest to defy the odds and gravity itself. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie is molded by battle-hardened French and German combat pilots, who teach her death-defying stunts. Bessie’s signature majestic loops, spiky barrel rolls, and hairpin turns, just like her hardscrabble journey, are spellbinding. While she finds there is no prejudice in the air, Bessie must wrestle with many challenges: She nearly dies in a plane crash, one of her brothers seems to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and as she grapples with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds is the air means she must otherwise fly solo.
THE UNWEDDING
The ‘White Lotus’ meets Agatha Christie in The Unwedding, the adult fiction debut from #1 New York Times’s bestselling YA author Ally Condie, about a recent divorcee whose vacation at an exclusive Big Sur resort unravels when she discovers a dead body on the day a wedding was set to occur.