“He fixes everything that’s wrong with you in three days.” This is what hooks Sam when he first overhears it: the story of a globe-trotting shaman who claims to perform “open-soul surgery” on emotionally damaged people. For neurotic, depressed Sam, new to Los Angeles after his life in New York imploded, the possibility of total transformation is utterly tantalizing. The shaman—who promises ancient rituals, plant medicine and encounters with the divine—seems convincing, enough for Sam to sign up for a weekend under his care. But are the great spirits the shaman says he’s summoning real? Or are the ghosts in Sam’s memory more powerful than any magic? At turns tender and acid, funny and wise, Broken People is a journey into the nature of truth and fiction—a story of discovering hope amid cynicism, intimacy within chaos and freedom in our own bodies.
Archives
The Book of Longings
“I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus.” So begins the new novel from the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings, an extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny in a time of great despair and great hope.
The Death of Vivek Oji
A dramatic and deeply moving novel of three generations coping with secrets, violence, and grief, against a backdrop of political and social unrest.
They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover the lifeless body of her son wrapped in fabric on the welcome mat. The story of that child, Vivek Oji, is the story of two families from disparate cultures who came together in a time of upheaval, and of Vivek’s struggle to be true to a self whose spirit and longings defy conventional expectations. Raised by a privileged, distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, fugue states that disrupt all connection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women resettled in the area. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand his friend’s escalating crisis—the mystery of Vivek’s behavior gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of transcendent freedom.
Propulsively readable, teeming with vivid and unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a story of family and friendship that challenges expectations at every turn. It is a major step forward from a writer of rare insight into the porous barriers between body and identity, spirit, and self.
Chosen Ones
Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice—catastrophic events known as Drains—leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him. After the Dark One fell, the world went back to normal . . . for everyone but them. After all, what do you do when you’re the most famous people on Earth, your only education was in magical destruction, and your purpose in life is now fulfilled? Of the five, Sloane has had the hardest time adjusting. Everyone else blames the PTSD—and her huge attitude problem—but really, she’s hiding secrets from them . . . secrets that keep her tied to the past and alienate her from the only four people in the world who understand her. On the tenth anniversary of the Dark One’s defeat, something unthinkable happens: one of the Chosen Ones dies. When the others gather for the funeral, they discover the Dark One’s ultimate goal was much bigger than they, the government, or even prophecy could have foretold—bigger than the world itself. And this time, fighting back might take more than Sloane has to give.
Migrations
For readers of Station Eleven and Everything I Never Told You, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds and her own final chance for redemption.
Fraternity
In a Massachusetts college town, ancient letters inscribe a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Cross the litter-strewn lawn and follow the sound of virtual gunfire to find a group of friends shooting the breeze. Among them stands Nutella, the Apollonian Chapter president; Oprah, the effeminate reader; Five-Hour, Buckhunter, Pizza Hut, and the girl they call God. The house might appear cramped, but the brothers know that to be inside is everything.
Fraternity celebrates the debauched kinship of boys straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, elaborate posturing, and solemn confessions that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each tender episode lies the dread of exclusion. The closeted Oprah’s hero worship gives way to real longing. A navy veteran advises on new initiation strategies, revealing an uneasy kinship between hazing and torture. And the shadow of assault hovers over every sexual encounter.
Voiced by an off-kilter chorus of the young and desperate to belong, Benjamin Nugent’s provocative collection yanks the fraternity door off its hinges, daring us to peer inside with amusement, horror, and also with love.
The Ghost Factory
The Ghost Factory is a powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles, ideal for fans of Roddy Doyle and Jezz Butterworth’s The Ferryman. The Troubles turned Northern Ireland into a ghost factory: as the manufacturing industry withered, the death business boomed. In trying to come to terms with his father’s sudden death, and the attack on his harmless best friend Titch, Jacky is forced to face the bullies who still menace a city scarred by conflict. After he himself is attacked, he flees to London to build a new life. But even in the midst of a burgeoning love affair he hears the ghosts of his past echoing, pulling him back to Belfast, crying out for retribution and justice. Written with verve and flair, and spiked with humor, The Ghost Factory marks the arrival of an auspicious new talent.
All My Mother’s Lovers
Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris’s will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter’s sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall? Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother’s Lovers is the exciting debut novel from fiction writer and book critic Ilana Masad. A unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, All My Mother’s Lovers challenges us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.
The June Boys
From award-winning and highly acclaimed author Court Stevens comes a heart-wrenching story of small towns, rumors, and thirteen missing boys. The Gemini Thief is a serial kidnapper, who takes three boys and holds them captive from June 1st to June 30th of the following year. The June Boys endure thirteen months of being stolen, hidden, observed, and fed before they are released, unharmed, by their masked captor. The Thief is a pro, having eluded authorities for nearly a decade and taken at least twelve boys. Now Thea Delacroix has reason to believe the Gemini Thief took a thirteenth victim: her cousin, Aulus McClaghen. But the game changes when one of the kidnapped boys turns up dead. The Gemini Thief could be anyone. Your father, your mother, your best friend’s crazy uncle. Some country music star’s deranged sister. Anyone. Someone is stealing Tennessee’s boys. Report suspicious behavior.
This is My America
Dear Martin meets Just Mercy in this unflinching yet uplifting YA novel that explores the racist inequalities in the American justice system. Every week, seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time—her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy’s older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a “thug” on the run, accused of killing a white girl. Determined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive as the racist history of their town is unearthed?