From a stunning new voice in YA literature comes an epic, utterly unforgettable contemporary novel about a lost shipwreck, a missing piece of family history, and weathering the storms of life.
The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer. But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life. Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece—the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century. She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes—and the bridges she builds along the way—may be the start of something like survival.
Epic, funny, and sweepingly romantic, The Last True Poets of the Sea is an astonishing debut about the strength it takes to swim up from a wreck.
Willie Sutton was driven by two things—a lost love and a fierce vendetta against banks. Among the most notorious criminals in American history, he spent half his life in prison, the other half on the run. Then came Christmas Eve, 1969. Sutton’s surprise parole from Attica sparked a media frenzy. Every journalist and talk show host wanted an interview. Sutton, however, granted only one. Sixty-eight years old, in failing health, he spent all that Christmas with a newspaper reporter and photographer, driving around New York City, visiting the scenes of his many heists, betrayals, heartbreaks and escapes. The result was a strangely cursory front-page article, filled with half-truths and platitudes. Notably missing was any mention of Sutton’s first accomplice, the girl who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart. Sutton, a historical novel based on extensive research, is a comic, moving, gritty imagining of that mysterious Christmas, and the remarkable life that preceded it, a life defined by thrills, follies, unseen bravery and treachery, and the long shadow of a doomed, unforgettable romance.
Strings Attached is the story of a brilliant but ferocious music teacher who came to be known as “Mr. K,” told in the alternating first person perspectives of his former student —award-winning journalist Joanne Lipman—and his daughter—Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Melanie Kupchynsky. Mr. K pushed his students harder than their parents, harder than their other teachers and coaches, and through sheer force of will made them better than they had any right to be. It wasn’t until years later that his students realized how much they loved him for it. At Mr. K’s memorial service, three generations of students flew in from all over the country to play a concert in his memory, having finally understood his tough lessons. Mr. K’s subject was music, but the lessons he taught were universal ones about resilience, the power of a “can do” attitude, and achieving excellence in life.
