Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.
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FREEDOM IS A FEAST
In the tradition of Isabel Allende’s career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause—and receives a late-life chance at redemption: “a tour de force” from “the new master” (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene).
Venezuela, 1964. Stanislavo, a zealous young man whose vision is clouded by his high ideals, turns his back on his family and privilege to join an underground communist movement. During his first mission, Stanislavo meets Emiliana, a fellow revolutionary. Though it seems to be love at first sight, their budding romance is cut short by a single mistake with disastrous consequences.
Forty years later, the landscape of Venezuelan politics is drastically changed, as well as the trajectories of Stanislavo’s and Emiliana’s lives. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of President Chavez’s re-election, Stanislavo is forced to confront his past missteps and the ways those actions have ricocheted into the present. With epic scope and unflinching intimacy, Freedom is a Feast is a story about sticking to one’s beliefs even at the expense of pain and chaos in one’s personal life, about how the generations below us can suffer for our misdeeds, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.
IF THE TIDE TURNS
Set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the shadowy aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials, Rachel Rueckert’s vivid literary debut is an alchemical blend of high-seas adventure, star-crossed longing, the captivating real life of pirate Sam Bellamy, and timeless questions about social justice and freedom, stirred into the emotionally satisfying tale of a young woman’s determination to charter her own course . . .
1715, Eastham, Massachusetts: As the daughter of a wealthy family, Maria Brown has a secure future mapped out for her, yet it is not the future she wants. Young, headstrong, and restless, Maria has no desire to marry the aging, mean-spirited John Hallett, regardless of his fortune and her parents’ wishes. As for what Maria does want—only one person has ever asked her that question.
Samuel Bellamy, an orphaned sailor searching for work, meets Maria by chance, enthralling her with talk of far-flung places and blasphemous ideals. But neither is free from the social order into which they were born. When Sam is banished from Maria’s parents’ home after asking for her hand, he vows to return a wealthy man, and Maria promises to keep the faith until then.
Sam is drawn into piracy and discovers a brotherhood more equal and fulfilling than any on land, despite its dangers. Beguiled by the chance to both fight for justice and make a fortune to bring home to Maria, Sam is torn between duty to his crew and his desire to return. Maria is determined to stay strong in her conviction in Sam, but as rumors swirl and her position in Eastham turns perilous, Maria is forced into an impossible decision—
If The Tide Turns strips away kitschy, whitewashed portrayals of pirates and Colonial America while yanking Maria from the shadow of Sam Bellamy’s famed history to give her voice and agency. Its meticulously researched, authentic historical details fully bring the past into the present, as do the questions it demands we confront: How do we support—or suppress—women’s intuition? What does freedom mean? How rigid is economic mobility in reality? What does it look like to stand up to oppression? Is change really possible? Where does treasure truly lie for us at the end of the day?
THE SWITCH
Two couples. One twisted game of love and obsession. A dark domestic thriller about the dangerous secrets that come to light when a wild fantasy turns sinister. . .
THE HUNTER’S DAUGHTER
A hypnotic, sinister debut mystery about a seemingly good cop who is secretly the daughter of a notorious serial killer. Anna Koray escaped her father’s darkness long ago. When she was a girl, her childhood memories were sealed away from her conscious mind by a controversial hypnosis treatment. She’s now a decorated sheriff’s lieutenant serving a rural county, conducting an ordinary life far from her father’s shadow. When Anna kills a man in the line of duty, her suppressed memories return. She dreams of her beloved father, his hands red with blood, surrounded by flower-decked corpses he had sacrificed to the god of the forest. To Anna’s horror, a serial killer emerges who is copying her father and who knows who she really is. Is her father still alive, or is this the work of another? Will the killer expose her, destroying everything she has built for herself? Does she want him to? But as she haunts the forest, using her father’s tricks to hunt the killer, will she find what she needs most—or lose herself in the gathering darkness?
PEARCE OYSTERS
PEARCE OYSTERS (Zibby Books)
SUMMARY
Pearce Oysters, a family drama set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearces, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.
Eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best, Pearce Oysters highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South. Diving deep into the bonds of family, culture, class, and industry, the novel elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters: Jordan, the reluctant head of his family’s storied oyster company; May, his distressed, widowed mother; and Benny, his beatnik musician brother, who returns from New Orleans in their time of crisis.
BRIGHT OBJECTS
A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands. Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye. As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives. A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.
MOTIVATION MYTH BUSTERS
What does science tell us about motivation? This book challenges common myths about motivation and offers readers strategies for successfully motivating themselves and others. Readers will learn to identify and debunk ten persistent myths about motivation—for example, that visualizing success leads to success, that competition increases motivation for everyone, and that rewards are the best way to enhance motivation—and replace those myths with accurate knowledge that will help them take positive steps toward their goals.
THE BEAUTY OF FALLING
Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body’s buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth’s pull. And as a physicist, discovering new sides to gravity’s irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In The Beauty of Falling, de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity, to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life’s pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics.
AMERICAN FLYGIRL
One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies.
Her singular story of patriotism, barrier breaking, and fearless sacrifice is told for the first time in full for readers of The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, The Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown and all Asian American, women’s and WWII history books.
In 1932, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend’s flight lesson. It changed her life. In less than a year, a girl with a wicked sense of humor, a newfound love of flying, and a tough can-do attitude earned her pilot’s license and headed for China to help against invading Japanese forces. In time, Hazel would become the first Asian American to fly with the Women Airforce Service Pilots. As thrilling as it may have been, it wasn’t easy.
In America, Hazel felt the oppression and discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In China’s field of male-dominated aviation she was dismissed for being a woman, and for being an American. But in service to her country, Hazel refused to be limited by gender, race, and impossible dreams. Frustrated but undeterred she forged ahead, married Clifford Louie, a devoted and unconventional husband who cheered his wife on, and gave her all for the cause achieving more in her short remarkable life than even she imagined possible.
American Flygirl is the untold account of a spirted fighter and an indomitable hidden figure in American history. She broke every common belief about women. She challenged every social restriction to endure and to succeed. And against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hazel Ying Lee reached for the skies and made her mark as a universal and unsung hero whose time has come.