An unexpected act of violence brings together a Chinese-American family and a wealthy white lawyer in this propulsive and sweeping story of family, identity, and the American experience. Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret and who lives in the building where Tony works. A violent attack causes their lives to intertwine in ways that will change them forever. Taut, panoramic and powerful, debut novelist Susie Luo’s Paper Names is an unforgettable story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effect of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference.
Archives
The Golden Spoon
Only Murders in the Building meets The Maid in this darkly beguiling locked-room mystery where someone turns up dead on the set of TV’s hottest baking competition—perfect for fans of Nita Prose, Richard Osman, and Anthony Horowitz.
Sisters of a Lost Nation
A young Native girl’s hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe’s reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut.
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step—an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole.
With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past.
When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation—both ancient and new—are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
Part gripping thriller and part mythological horror, author Nick Medina spins an incisive and timely novel of life as an outcast, the cost of forgetting tradition, and the courage it takes to become who you were always meant to be.
Wednesdays at One
A compulsively readable psychological thriller about a life upended when a mysterious woman arrives from nowhere and blurs the lines between one man’s current reality and his buried memories. A renowned clinical psychologist, Gregory Weber, has a seemingly idyllic life—a lovely wife, two kids, a thriving therapy practice, and a country club membership in an affluent Boston suburb. But lately, Gregory is starting to feel increasingly disconnected, retreating to his backyard shed and rebuffing any attempts of closeness with his wife and family. When a mysterious woman begins appearing in his office each week, Gregory’s life is upended and what was once clear is now thrown out of focus. Just who is this mysterious patient and how can Greg stop the lines between memory and reality from blurring completely?
Burst
Award-winning author Mary Otis of Yes, Yes, Cherries (“Amazing”—Lorrie Moore) delivers an arresting debut novel that explores the complexities between mothers and daughters, and the conflicting desires for connection and escape. Told from interwoven perspectives with writing as deft as a choreographed dance, this story delves into a mother-daughter relationship filled with immense heart in the face of heartbreak.
A HISTORY OF BURNING
At the turn of the twentieth century, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor on the East African Railway for the British. One day Pirbhai commits an act to ensure his survival that will haunt him forever and reverberate across his family’s future for years to come. Pirbhai’s children are born and raised under the jacaranda trees and searing sun of Kampala during the waning days of British colonial rule. As Uganda moves towards independence and military dictatorship, Pirbhai’s granddaughters, Latika, Mayuri, and Kiya, are three sisters coming of age in a divided nation. As they each forge their own path for a future, they must carry the silence of the history they’ve inherited. In 1972, under Idi Amin’s brutal regime and the South Asian expulsion, the family has no choice but to flee, and in the chaos, they leave something devastating behind. As Pirbhai’s grandchildren, scattered across the world, find their way back to each other in exile in Toronto, a letter arrives that stokes the flames of the fire that haunts the family. It makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy to secure their own place in the world. A History of Burning is an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
A multigenerational saga that traverses the Jim Crow South, the glamour of old Hollywood, and the seductive draw of present-day showbiz as secrets split a family tree into Black, white, and something in between. When white silver screen icon Kitty Karr Tate dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the three Black St. John sisters, it prompts questions. A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press but when the discovery that her longtime neighbor and mentor was her grandmother, a Black woman who had been passing for white for over sixty years, it threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of her sisters and those closest to them.
EVERYTHING’S FINE
(Simon & Schuster)
SUMMARY
The novel follows polar opposites Jess and Josh. Jess is Black and liberal. Josh is white and conservative. She thinks he’s an uptight jerk, and he finds her highly emotional and highly immature. But they slowly build a friendship in the years after college when they find themselves on the same team at Goldman Sachs. Jess, feeling increasingly underappreciated and overlooked as the sole Black woman on her floor, is surprised to find both comfort and support from Josh. Eventually these former enemies become friends and soon, they embark on a heart-pounding romance. But then the 2016 election cycle begins, and the cultural and political landscape shines a light on their glaring differences. Jess
Go as a River
A riveting and deeply moving debut—a love story in the spirit of Where the Crawdads Sing—that is both a stunning exploration of the natural world and an unforgettable coming-of-age novel.
Victoria Nash is just a teenager in the 1940s, but she runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land in the Four Corners region, who wants to believe one place is just like another. When Victoria encounters Wil on a street corner, their unexpected connection ignites as much passion as danger and as many revelations as secrets. Victoria flees into the beautiful but harsh wilderness of the nearby mountains when tragedy strikes. Living in a small shack, she struggles to survive with no clear notion of what her future will be. What happens afterward is her quest to regain all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River rises to submerge her homeland and the only life she has ever known. Go as a River is a story of love and
Berlin
A wickedly insightful, darkly funny novel in which a young woman in the grip of an existential malaise moves to a new city for a fresh start but her attempt at reinvention doesn’t quite go to plan.