In this gleefully strange and sinister debut novel for fans of Kevin Wilson and Karen Russell, readers meet Jamie. She is a Florida Woman; she wears cut-offs, thrives in humidity, has been slapped by palm frond more times than she can count, and now, after going viral for an outrageous crime she never meant to commit in the first place, she has the requisite headline to her name. So when the chance comes for her to escape viral infamy and impending jail time through a community service placement at Atlas, a wildlife refuge for exotic monkeys, it seems like just the fresh start Jamie needs to finally get her life back on track — until it’s not, because secrets lurk among the three beguiling women who run the refuge and affectionately take Jamie under their wing for the summer. She hears the distant screams of monkeys each night, the staff forgo food in the name of sacrifice, and the land, which has long been abandoned by indigenous farmers and Disney developers, now proves to be dangerously, relentlessly untamed, and her summer is soon set to become material for an even stranger Florida headline than she ever could’ve imagined.
Archives
Remarkably Bright Creatures
For fans of A Man Called Ove, a luminous debut novel about a widow’s unlikely friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium—and the truths she finally uncovers about her son’s disappearance 30 years ago.
The Town of Babylon
When his father falls ill, Andres, a gay Latinx professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his father’s recovery. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband’s infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth. During this short stay, Andres confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices his parents made to offer him a better life. A novel about the essential nature of community in maintaining one’s own health, The Town of Babylon is an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity, a call to reevaluate the ties of societal bonds and the systems in which they are forged.
The Teller of Secrets
In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women.
The School for Good Mothers
In The School For Good Mothers, the main character, Frida Liu, is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.
Until Frida has a very bad day.
The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
A searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School For Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
Damnation Spring
For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California’s rugged coast. Now, his wife Colleen is wondering if the herbicides used by the logging company are causing all of the miscarriages in their community—hers included. Is this even a safe place to raise their young son Chub? As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, her search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich’s livelihood, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber along the way. Told from the perspectives of Rich, Colleen, and Chub, in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, this intimate, compassionate portrait of a community clinging to a vanishing way of life amid the perils of environmental degradation makes Damnation Spring an essential novel for our time.
Olga Dies Dreaming
A blazing new talent debuts with the story of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her absent mother, her glittering career amongst New York’s elite and her Puerto Rican roots in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Out of Love
A novel for anyone who has loved and lost, and lived to tell the tale, this gorgeously written debut is a love story told in reverse, starting with the heart-rending breakup, and weaving back together an already unraveled tapestry, from tragic break-up to magical first kiss.
My Sweet Girl
Paloma thought her perfect life would begin once she was adopted and made it to America, but she’s about to find out that no matter how far you run, your past always catches up to you.
My Monticello
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, My Monticello, tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.