Featured Guide

Florence Knapp, author of The Names

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates. Spanning 35 years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. THE NAMES explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

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Mary Alice Monroe, author of Where the Rivers Merge

1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. But the Great War, coastal storms and family turmoil bring unexpected challenges to Eliza, putting her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era. 1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She has fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family --- or watch them both be split apart.

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Ocean Vuong, author of The Emperor of Gladness

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family and a community on the brink.

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Jeanine Cummins, author of Speak to Me of Home

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to San Juan that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.

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Colleen Cambridge, author of A Fashionably French Murder: An American in Paris Mystery

Fashion is returning to the forefront in Paris, as the somber hues of wartime are replaced by vibrant colors and ultra-feminine silhouettes, influenced by Christian Dior’s “New Look.” American expat Tabitha Knight and aspiring chef Julia Child join a friend for a private showing at an exclusive fashion atelier, Maison Lannet. The event goes well, but when Tabitha returns later that evening to search for a lost glove, she finds the lights still on --- and the couturier dead, strangled by a length of lace. The shop manager suspects that a jealous rival --- perhaps Dior himself --- committed the crime. Tabitha dismisses that idea, but when another body is found, it’s apparent that someone is targeting employees of Maison Lannet. It’s up to Tabitha to don her investigative hat and find answers before someone commits another fatal fashion faux pas.

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Tina Knowles, author of Matriarch: A Memoir

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. MATRIARCH begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston. As the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of a more grandiose world. Her life’s journey --- through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts --- is the remarkable story she shares with readers here.

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Kristen Perrin, author of How to Seal Your Own Fate

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Jon Hickey, author of Big Chief

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and an aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation and the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship. But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has.

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Sarah Penner, author of The Amalfi Curse

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But she also is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon her arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work? As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever.

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Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Happy Land

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen. The more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills.

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