A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco. At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore. Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine. The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, another yearns to make her own voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family. Warm, gripping, and wise, with echoes of Fiddler on the Roof, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s latest novel is a moving family portrait from “a writer of uncommon nerve and talent” (New York Times Book Review).
Archives
Anne of Greenville
This is the story of how I became Anne of Greenville. It’s also the story of how I found my true true, and how I needed to maybe come to Greenville, of all places, to make that happen. In this modern reimagining of Anne of Green Gables, Anne is an ABBA-loving singer/actor/writer of disco-operas, queer, Japanese-American who longs to be understood for her artistic genius. Recently relocated to middle-of-nowhere Greenville and starting at a new school, Anne has a tendency to A) fall in love quickly, deeply, and effervescently and B) fly off the handle in the face of jerks. Both personality quirks quickly come into play when the soccer team boos the premiere of her disco performance, which—in a roundabout way—introduces her to her new BFF, Berry, and she soon after meets the girl of her dreams, Gilly. Falling quickly into that age-old trap of ignoring the best friend for the new crush, Anne soon becomes embroiled in a series of dramatic and unfortunate events, and quickly finds herself wrapped up in a love triangle she never expected. Is she MTB with Gilly? Or is Berry her true soul mate? Only time (or 304 pages) will tell. In this coming-of-age novel by fan-favorite author Mariko Tamaki, see the classic tale in a whole new light. Refreshingly bold and unapologetically unique, Anne of Greenville will make you want to stand up and sing!
The Light Pirate
From the author of Good Morning, Midnight comes a hopeful, sweeping story of survival and resilience spanning one extraordinary woman’s lifetime as she navigates the uncertainty, brutality, and arresting beauty of a rapidly changing world.
The Storyteller’s Death
Isla Larsen Sanchez’s life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage. When Isla turns eighteen, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family’s cuentistas. At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can’t solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.
A Place to Land
Written in Lauren Denton’s signature Southern style, A Place to Land tells a story of sisterhood, healing, and the meaning of home.
The Enigma of Room 622
A burnt-out writers’ retreat at a grand hotel is interrupted by a murder mystery in this metafictional, meticulously crafted whodunit from internationally bestselling author Joël Dicker. One night in December, a corpse is discovered in Room 622 of the Hotel Verbier, a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps. The murder is never solved. Years later, Joël Dicker, Switzerland’s most famous writer, flees to Verbier to recover from a breakup, mourn the death of his longtime publisher, and begin his next novel. Little does Joël know that his page-turning expertise will prove essential when he assumes a new role: detective. Meanwhile, Macaire Ebezner is set to succeed as president of the largest private bank in Switzerland. The succession captivates the media, but the bank’s board, including a certain Lev Levovitch “Geneva’s Gatsby” are not as charmed by the heir apparent, and Macaire’s race to the top soon becomes a race against time…A European phenomenon, The Enigma of Room 622 is a matryoshka doll of intrigue, built with the precision of a Swiss watch. Joël Dicker presents a diabolically addictive thriller whose twists and turns no reader will see coming.
Unleashed
By award-winning author Cai Emmons, an ambitious and transcendent novel set against the backdrop of California’s wildfire season in which a family in crisis is thrust on a collision course with the world around them that has an outcome beyond their wildest imaginings.
Daisy Darker
The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists returns with a family reunion that leads to murder. After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows. Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed. With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.
Bliss Montage
Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.
Confidence
Confidence is a thrilling, brainy caper about scams and a viciously funny takedown of the American Dream. Lifelong friends, sometimes lovers and constant con men Ezra and Orson find themselves on top of the world after founding NuLife, a company that promises instant enlightenment to its users. They launch NuLife, which is essentially a global new-age pyramid scheme and a total sham, with Orson at its center. As the two men con their way from the street, from selling weed at reform camp, to the C-suite, by convincing rich investors they’ve found a way to adjust the internal human happiness thermometer, their company goes public and they become too big to fail—until the FBI closes in on them. Confidence is an exploration of all sorts of cons, from the con of love—the way we put our blind trust into someone else’s hands—to the cons inherent to capitalism and the American Dream. This is, above all else, a story of a deep and all-consuming friendship between two men. Our narrator, Ezra, is deeply in love with the magnetic and charming Orson. However, Orson may be unknowable, and Ezra may be unwittingly conning himself.