A captivating psychological suspense debut about a young woman still haunted by her teenage best friend’s death who learns of an eerily similar death and must find her way back to a cabin in the New England woods, armed only with hazy memories, to finally find out the truth that has eluded her.
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In the Upper Country
Two unforgettable women—one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life’s last vital act—find their fates intertwined in this intricately plotted and deeply researched debut novel, set at terminus of the Underground Railroad.
In the 1800s in Dunmore, a Canadian town populated by refugees fleeing slavery at the height of the Underground Railroad, young Lensinda works as a maid for a veteran of the War of 1812 and founder of one of the first Black newspapers—with aspirations to become a journalist herself. One night, a neighboring farmer summons Lensinda when a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by Cash, an old refugee woman. The farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from Cash before the woman is condemned.
Eager to prove her skill, sure of her worldliness and her instincts, and confident she can tackle such a sensitive task under pressure, Lensinda slips into the jail where Cash is being held. But the old woman doesn’t want to confess—instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. Lensinda agrees and in swapping life stories learns the interwoven history of America and Canada; of the Indigenous people from both places and the enslaved Black men and women brought to North America; of the patriots and the outlaws equally cast as second-class citizens.
As Cash’s time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed—not just about the complicated tapestry of her people’s ancestry but about her family history as well. Moving along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Kentucky, to the backroom Black militias of Detroit, through the territory of the Ojibwe nation, and north into the Owen Sound, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
Night, Forgotten
A dramatic and undeniably addictive psychological thriller about a young woman whose life changes in an instant, and nothing is ever the same.
Before…Life is idyllic for Julie Dolan and her husband Owen. They’ve bought their dream house in the Berkshires; their careers are on the upswing; and they have the world at their fingertips. They’ve never been so in love. They’ve never been happier. The only thing that’s missing is a baby—but Julie’s got a plan, and they’re right on schedule.
Until Owen falls ill with food poisoning, leaving Julie to attend a neighborhood holiday party alone. When she wakes up, half-naked in her neighbor’s bathtub, Julie doesn’t know how to tell Owen, the police, her friends—anyone—that she has been sexually assaulted. So she keeps it secret until she realizes that she’s pregnant with her assailant’s baby.
After…Life is unmanageable for Julie. She can’t function in the world with a newborn, and she’s unable to be present for her husband, her family, her friends. Desperate to solve the mystery of what happened to her, Julie’s driven to more and more erratic behavior, until the truth about that night is revealed. Afterward, no one will be the same ever again. Not Owen. Not the baby. And especially not Julie.
Daughters of the New Year
A captivating debut novel about five generations of Vietnamese mothers and daughters, drawing on Vietnamese zodiac astrology to chart the fateful events of their lives
In present day New Orleans, Xuan Trung, former beauty queen-turned-refugee after the Fall of Saigon, is obsessed with divining her daughters’ fates through their Vietnamese zodiac signs. But Trac, Nhi and Trieu diverge completely from their immigrant parents’ expectations. Successful lawyer Trac hides her sexuality from her family; Nhi competes as the only woman of color on a Bachelor-esque reality TV show; and Trieu, a budding writer, is determined to learn more about her familial and cultural past.
As the three sisters begin to encounter strange glimpses of long-buried secrets from the ancestors they never knew, the story of the Trung women unfurls to reveal the dramatic events that brought them to America. Moving backwards in time, E.M. Tran takes us into the high school classrooms of New Orleans, to Saigon beauty pageants, to twentieth century rubber plantations, traversing a century as the Trungs are both estranged and united by the ghosts of their tumultuous history.
A “haunted story of resilience and survival” (Meng Jin, Little Gods), Daughters of the New Year is an addictive, high-wire act of storytelling that illuminates an entire lineage of extraordinary women fighting to reclaim the power they’ve been stripped of for centuries.
Perish
From a stunning new voice, Perish is a powerful debut novel about a Black Texan family, exploring the effects of inherited trauma and intergenerational violence as the family comes together to say goodbye to their matriarch on her deathbed. Told in alternating chapters that follow four members of the Turner family: Julie B., a woman who regrets her wasted youth and the time spent under Helen Jean’s thumb; Alex, a police officer grappling with a dark and twisted past; Jan, a mother of two, who yearns to go to school and leave Jerusalem, Texas, and all of its trauma behind for good; and Lydia, a woman whose marriage is falling apart because her body can’t seem to stay pregnant, as they’re called home to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother. This family’s “reunion” unearths long-kept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame. Tackling themes like family, trauma, legacy, home, class, race, and more, this beautiful yet heart-wrenching novel, will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of family and the ways bonds can be made, maintained, or irrevocably broken.
City Under One Roof
A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone winters in the same high-rise building, in this gripping debut by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Iris Yamashita.
Mother Ocean Father Nation
A riveting, tender debut novel, following a brother and sister whose paths diverge—one forced to leave, one left behind—in the wake of a nationalist coup in the South Pacific.
The Mutual Friend
From the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, a hilarious and thought-provoking comedy of manners set in New York City, following a sprawling cast of characters as they navigate life, love, loss, ambition, and spirituality—without ever looking up from their phones. It’s the summer of 2015, and Alice Quick needs to get to work. She’s twenty-eight years old, grieving her mother, barely scraping by as a nanny, and freshly kicked out of her apartment. If she can just get her act together and sign up for the MCAT, she can start chasing her dream of becoming a doctor . . . but in the Age of Distraction, the distractions are so distracting. There’s her tech millionaire brother’s religious awakening. His picture-perfect wife’s emotional breakdown. Her chaotic new roommate’s thirst for adventure. And, of course, there’s the biggest distraction of all: Love. From within the story of one summer in one young woman’s life, an epic tale is unearthed, spanning continents and featuring a tapestry of characters tied to one another by threads both seen and unseen. Filled with all the warmth, humor, and heart that gained How I Met Your Mother its cult following, The Mutual Friend captures in sparkling detail the chaos of contemporary life, a life lived simultaneously in two different worlds—the physical one and the one behind our screens—and reveals how connected we all truly are.
Cat Brushing
A rousing and original debut story collection that probes the erotic, emotional, and intellectual lives of elder women, Cat Brushing will be published in the author’s 80th year. Written in spikey, incisive prose, this alluring cast of characters overcomes the notion that elder women’s behavior must be in some way monitored and controlled. The timeless wisdom and dark wit of debut writer Jane Campbell inspires and challenges, shocks and comforts as she examines the inner lives of women who fight to lead the rest of their lives on their own terms.
The Hacienda
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…