A down-on-his-luck Broadway playwright is marooned in rural Illinois in this sharply funny queer rom-com. Noah Adams’s career as a playwright is circling the drain, thanks to a scorching review of his first Broadway musical. So when a family emergency sends him back to his Podunk hometown of Plainview, Illinois, he figures he’ll hide out for a bit. But to Noah’s horror, his agent has secretly arranged for him to stage an amateur version of the career-ruining musical at the local community theater. As if trying to work with a bunch of artless amateurs wasn’t enough, Noah runs into Luke, the jerk from his high school years, everywhere he goes. Luke somehow grew up to be beloved by everyone in town…and undeniably gorgeous. As rehearsals begin, Noah is surprised by his cast’s insights, the warmth of the town he’d dismissed, and the reality of what happened with Luke all those years ago. Just how much has Noah misjudged?
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PASSION PROJECT
A compassionate and hopeful romantic comedy, Passion Project is a reminder that love is waiting for us to let it in. If your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, Bennet Taylor is failing miserably…with a big emphasis on the miserable. Where’s that zest she keeps hearing about? She’s a temp worker in New York City with no direction, no future, and no social life. And at the painful center of this listlessness is grief over the death of her first love. When Bennet runs into Henry Adams just hours after standing him up for a first date, she makes an alcohol-fueled confession: She’s not ready to date. In fact, it’s been years since she felt passion for something. Not even pottery, or organized sports—not anything. Rather than leaving her to ruminate, Henry jumps at the opportunity for adventure: Bennet needs to find a passion for life, and Henry will help her find it. Every Saturday, they’ll try something new in New York City. As friends, of course. As their “passion project” continues, the pair tackle everything from carpentry to tattooing to rappelling off skyscrapers, and Bennet feels her guarded exterior ebbing away. But as secrets surface, Bennet has to decide what she wants, and if she’s truly ready to move on. With emotional resonance and sparkling banter, Passion Project is a fun, flirty, thoughtful story of finding a spark—and igniting happiness.
CLEVER LITTLE THING
A taut, powerful mom-noir psychological thriller following a mother who must confront a sudden and terrifying change in her daughter after the abrupt death of their babysitter.
Charlotte’s daughter Stella is sensitive and brilliant, perhaps even a genius, but a recent change in her behavior has alarmed her parents. Following the sudden death of Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, the once disruptive and anti-social child has become docile and agreeable. But what’s unsettling is that she has begun to mirror Blanka’s personality, from Blanka’s repetitive phrases to her accent, to fierce cravings for Armenian meat stew after being raised a vegetarian.
Charlotte is pregnant with her second child, and depleted and sick with the pregnancy. She is convinced that Blanka herself is somehow responsible for Stella’s transformation. But how could Blanka, dead, still be entwined in their lives? Has Blanka somehow possessed Stella? Has Stella become Blanka? As Charlotte becomes increasingly obsessed, she is sure that only she can save her daughter… even though it’s soon clear that her husband believes this is all in Charlotte’s head.
Helena Echlin’s singular, chilling voice holds light to the blurred lines of diagnosis in children and to the vital power of maternal instinct. Kaleidoscopic and tense, pulse-pounding and genuinely creepy, and infused with shades of the supernatural, Clever Little Thing is an ode to motherhood and a nuanced critique of the caretaking industry, a page-turner that will haunt readers long after its epic, surprising finale.
HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL, MAGDA EKLUND?
For fans of Less and Remarkably Bright Creatures comes a funny and moving novel about love, loss, and new beginnings found on an unlikely road trip. Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara’s prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara’s possessions. She’s fine. But in going through Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers her friend’s last directive: plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda’s upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara’s urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters—including her sister, from whom she’s been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women’s retreat meant to “unleash one’s divine feminine energy” in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself—and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara. As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it’s never too late to start your next journey.
I’LL GET BACK TO YOU
A charming home run of a queer holiday romance where two former classmates’ plan to fake-date their way to freedom goes immediately awry—but, perhaps, exactly the way they need it to
Murphy was supposed to be settling into her junior year at the University of Illinois with her best friend, Kat. Instead, she’s stuck in a hellish suburban holding pattern: living with her parents, failing the same class that kept her from graduating the first time around, and making minimum wage at the same coffee shop she’s worked at since she was sixteen. It doesn’t help that the dating pool for a twenty-one-year-old lesbian in the tiny town of Geneva, Illinois, is anemic at best.
When her and Kat’s long-awaited reunion is plagued by stuttering conversation and uninvited guests, Murphy’s resentment threatens to boil over. That is, until a miracle appears in the form of Ellie Meyers, a former classmate who is way cuter and not nearly as straight as Murphy remembers. Their heavy flirting holds the promise of something more… until Murphy learns that Ellie’s mom is the very professor preparing to flunk Murphy for a second semester in a row. Talk about killing the vibe.
Romance might be off the table, but Ellie could be Murphy’s key to getting into Professor Meyers’ good graces and finally getting out of Geneva. And Murphy—well-versed in defying parental expectations—might be Ellie’s chance to get her mother onboard with her own dreams. Together, they hatch a plot: fake a relationship for a holiday weekend at the Meyers’ house. If everything goes according to plan, Ellie will be living her dream halfway across the country, and Murphy will finally be able to graduate community college and start her life in earnest. So, the fact that Murphy can’t stop thinking about Ellie’s lips on hers isn’t relevant. It’s just a part played well.
Right?
A story about opening your heart to possibility, I’ll Get Back To You is a giddy love letter to anyone in need of a bit of bravery to step up to the plate—and to the unending process of finding yourself.
LIBBY LOST AND FOUND
Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-best-selling fantasy series, The Falling Children. When the last manuscript is already months overdue to her publisher and rabid fans around the world are growing impatient, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Already suffering from crippling anxiety, Libby’s symptoms quickly accelerate, and she has to admit she needs help finishing the latest book. Desperately, she turns to eleven-year-old superfan Peanut Bixton, who knows the books even better than Libby does. Tensions mount as Libby’s dementia deepens—until both Peanut and Libby swirl into an inevitable but bone-shocking conclusion.
LOVE ADVICE FROM THE GREAT DUKE OF HELL
The girl of your dreams barely knows you exist. Your friends can’t help. Your family is clueless. So where do you turn for love advice? Who can provide you with that essential assistance for the lovelorn? If you’re an average everyday teenager like Paul, you summon a powerful demon from the deep recesses of Hell, and frankly, hope for the best.
Volume 1 collects Season 1, Part 1 of the devilishly funny WEBTOON comic.
PENITENCE
For readers of Ann Patchett and Celeste Ng, Penitence is a poignant exploration of love and forgiveness. It’s a suspenseful, addictive page-turner filled with literary insight that compels readers to consider whether each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.
When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.
Spanning decades, from the ski slopes of rural Colorado to the streets of post-9/11 New York City and back again, Kristin Koval’s debut novel Penitence is an examination of the complexities of familial loyalty, the journey of redemption, and the profound experience of true forgiveness.
SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS
In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.
Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
THE LOTUS SHOES
For fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and Pachinko, a sweeping historical fiction debut that follows a young woman from a prominent family and her maidservant as they navigate their limited realities of love, marriage, and circumstance in 19th century China.