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—Katherine Arden, author of THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS

—Publishers Weekly, starred revieW

—Booklist, starred review

—Kirkus, starred review

—Library Journal, starred review

Interview: Sheila Roberts, author of The Best Life Book Club

May 13, 2024

Sheila Roberts is the author of more than 50 novels, including her latest, THE BEST LIFE BOOK CLUB. In this interview, Roberts explains what inspired her to write this story about four women who become close friends as members of a book club. She also talks about her connection to the book’s setting, the role that friends play in her life, her upcoming travel schedule, and how her childhood experiences helped mold her into the warm and outgoing person she is today.

Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

REAL AMERICANS begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when 22-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love. In 2021, 15-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

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Mary Kay Andrews, author of Summers at the Saint

Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn’t rich enough or connected enough to vacation at St. Cecelia. But she could work there. One fateful summer she did, and she married the boss’s son. Now, she’s the widowed owner of the hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days, even as staff shortages and financial troubles threaten to ruin it. Plus, her greedy and unscrupulous brother-in-law wants to make sure she fails. Enlisting a motley crew of recently hired summer help --- including the daughter of her estranged best friend --- Traci has one summer season to turn it around. But new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threatens to come to light, and the tragic death of one of their own brings Traci to the brink of despair.

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Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents. It is the spring of 1976, and Eilis has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that he will not raise the baby but instead deposit it on Eilis’ doorstep. It is what Eilis does --- and what she refuses to do --- in response to this stunning news that makes LONG ISLAND so riveting.

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Editorial Content for A Calamity of Souls

Book

A Calamity of Souls

Teaser

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully accused Black client.

Promo

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully accused Black client.

About the Book

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully accused Black client in this courtroom drama from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci. 

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial. 

Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.  

Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice. 

Over a decade in the writing, A CALAMITY OF SOULS breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.