Leisure Reading: New Fiction

The Cold came.
And something new to the city--unseen and hungry--was delighted.
Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that's ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that's passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there's Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book.
What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone—or something—is hunting them all.
Taking tropes from the murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror genres, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh. (Back Cover)

The future of storytelling is here.
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it. (Publisher)

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved?
A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape. (Publisher)

2024 Toronto Book Awards Longlist

The scene is Toronto, the early 1990s, and at a house party Aubrey McKee falls in love with a bewitching stranger who talks him into stealing a piece of cake. This woman--a poet named Gudrun Peel--rapidly becomes the person for whom he would do anything at all. Together, Aubrey and Gudrun make a life of delirious idiosyncrasy. Surrounded by friends, frenemies, lovers, and rivals in the underground arts scene, the possibilities of their destiny remain radically open. But as their relationship deepens, and their creative and professional lives stumble, stall, and then suddenly blow up, Aubrey and Gudrun struggle against their own inexperience . . . as well as each other.
The much-anticipated follow-up to Alex Pugsley's Aubrey McKee, The Education of Aubrey McKee is a campus novel in which the city of Toronto is the institute of higher education and the setting for a glittering story about the incandescence of first love. (Book Cover, Inside Flap)

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying . . . yet enticing.
In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.
For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.
A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more. (Publisher)

Nyla has an affinity to fire. A neglected teen in a small northern town—trying to escape a mother battling her own terrors—she is kicked out and struggles through life on the streets. Desperate for love, Nyla accidentally sets fire to her ex’s building and is then incarcerated for arson. Through community-led diversion, Nyla finds herself on a reserve as their firekeeper. But when climate change–induced wildfires threaten her new home, she knows intimately how to fight back.
The fourth book from acclaimed writer Katłıà brings a Northern Indigenous perspective to the destructive effects of ongoing colonialism. Displaying Katłıà’s enthralling storytelling style, Firekeeper is a coming-of-age tale that addresses intergenerational trauma by reclaiming culture, belonging and identity.
Join Nyla on her healing journey through the fire to sacred waters. (Publisher)

Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, FOURTEEN DAYS is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbors. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming, and ultimately surprising narrative, FOURTEEN DAYS reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger. (Publisher)

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life, and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. He knows that the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.
The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task…
Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of “other people.” (Publisher)

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it...right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend, Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children's librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra's ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic--with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads--Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her, they have a running bet that she's either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it's all just for show, of course, because there's no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex...right? (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.
Add two children. And a horse.
From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data--something easily categorizable and predictable--Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Sometimes the only way forward is to look back.
When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. When she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a treasured heirloom, her life felt shattered as well.
The crime was never solved. Ever since, the Freemans, one of the only Black families in a well-to-do enclave in New England, have dreaded becoming the center of another media frenzy. But when now-grown Ebby’s high-profile romance falls apart, that’s exactly what happens.
Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow. As she processes the shock, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered that day—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. Soon Ebby realizes that the handcrafted piece held more than just her family’s history—it might also be the key to claiming a new future.
Wilkerson traces the reverberations of a crime, the fracturing of a family, and the myriad choices we face when we try to ease the wounds of the past and grapple with the fragments of a fraught inheritance. With its weaving of voices and deft movement through time and place, Good Dirt showcases Wilkerson's signature style and mastery of her craft, confirming her place as one of the most exciting novelists writing today. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best? (Author's Website)

She found the literary voices that would inspire the world…. The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Personal Librarian.
In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all.
W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives…every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater, and the arts. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success. (Author's Website)

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.
The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.
The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.
But at what cost?
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion. (Publisher)

Helen Zhang hasn't seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.
Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She's even scored a coveted spot in the writers room of the TV adaptation of her young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except...
Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he's well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn't have taken the job on Helen's show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can't pass up.
Grant's exactly as Helen remembers him--charming, popular, and lovable in ways that she's never been. And Helen's exactly as Grant remembers too--brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen's parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he's in the picture at all.
When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet... the key to making peace with their past--and themselves--might just lie in holding on to each other in the present. (Back Cover)

Lamesa, Texas, July 1989.
It's the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They're not in the marching band, they're not in the FFA--they don't really count. Amber's the only native student in town, and Tolly's only on the radar due to his father's recent death.
This is all about to change.
Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.
This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself--from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.
The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything's turned around for Tolly, for Amber--for all of Lamesa, Texas.
Be happy you weren't there.
Be happy you're only reading about it.
(Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking. (Publisher)

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a book inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

A witty, atmospheric, and brilliantly told novel that offers compelling portraits of womanhood, motherhood and female friendship, along with the irresistible intrigue surrounding an extraordinary British family
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents’ secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .
As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward. (Publisher)

A father's sudden disappearance sends shock waves through his family as they discover all they didn't know about the man they love. . . .
It’s a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah, and daughter, Trinity, prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother, Tommy, waves goodbye as Oz heads back to his office after a birthday lunch.
But Oz won’t make it to the party or even to his briefcase at his desk. He is about to disappear.
Deborah--a gifted singer, once just a hit away from Motown stardom--is devastated, especially as she discovers how little she knew of her husband. Trinity, a writer, refuses to accept that her doting father is truly gone. She believes that he'll return at any moment. But it is Oz's beloved brother, himself still burdened by secrets from their shared past, who may hold the key to understanding what happened to Oz.
Told in interlocking narratives, moving backward and forward in time, Life and Other Love Songs is a gripping story about history and how it can haunt us--husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, and the closest of brothers. It is about the vagaries of life and the ways in which, through it all, love endures. (Back Cover)

Red Rising Saga, Book 6

Darrow returns as Pierce Brown's New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.
The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains. But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.
Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror--Lysander.
Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions.
The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow, and Darrow needs the people he loves--Virginia, Cassius, Sevro--in order to defend the Republic.
So begins Darrow's long voyage home, an interplanetary adventure where old friends will reunite, new alliances will be forged, and rivals will clash on the battlefield.
Because Eo's dream is still alive--and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope. (Back Cover)

Long Island is a spectacularly moving and intense drama of secrecy, misunderstanding and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic character Colm Tóibín introduced in Brooklyn, his most beloved novel.
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, 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, a huge extended family that lives and works together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town in Ireland where she grew up remain strong, she has not returned in decades.
One day, out of the blue, a man comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child, and that when the baby is born, he will deposit it on Eilis's doorstep. It is what Eilis does in response to this stunning news--and what she refuses to do--that makes Tóibín's novel so extraoridnarily riveting.
Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis's life are thunderous and dangerous, and there's no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest of bonds she rekindles on her return to Enniscorthy, Ireland, to the place and people she left behind, and to ways of living and loving she thought she'd lost. Eilis is Tóibín's most compelling and unforgettable character, and this novel is a masterpiece. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, lovers, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives.
Time apart has done them good. Theo is a bartender and an aspiring sommelier with a long roster of lovers. Kit graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.
It's not until Theo and Kit board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of the most romantic sights and sensuous flavors of France, Spain, and Italy. But it'll be fine, as long as they agree they're absolutely over each other.
So, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is game. In fact, why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?
But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have. (Back Cover)

describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.

In this intimate collection, Amanda Peters, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal,
melds traditional storytelling with beautiful prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. A nervous child dances in her first Mawi'omi. And in the Indigenous Voices Award–winning title story, a man living alone in the woods is visited by a doe who conjures memories of his sister.
At times sad, at times disturbing, but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most important, there is power. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.
In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.
Sometimes, the truth shouldn't stay buried. (Publisher)

Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, The Bad Muslim Discount is an inclusive, comic novel about Muslim immigrants finding their way in modern America.
It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar’s deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can’t find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.
At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar and Safwa’s worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core.
The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, poignant, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed M. Masood examines universal questions of identity, faith (or lack thereof), and belonging through the lens of Muslim Americans. (Publisher)

It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel.
Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day, Queen Elizabeth in her gold coach will pass by the hotel’s front door, allowing Edie to charge a fortune for rooms and, barring disaster, save her beloved home from financial ruin. Edie’s luck might just be turning, all thanks to a queen she is unlikely ever to meet.
Stella Donati, a young Italian photographer and Holocaust survivor, has come to live at the Blue Lion while she takes up a coveted position at Picture Weekly magazine. London in celebration mode feels like a different world to her. As she learns the ins and outs of her new profession, Stella discovers a purpose and direction that honor her past and bring hope for her future.
James Geddes, a war hero and gifted artist, has struggled to make his mark in a world that disdains his Indian ancestry. At the Blue Lion, though, he is made to feel welcome and worthy. Yet even as his friendship with Edie deepens, he begins to suspect that something is badly amiss at his new home.
When anonymous threats focused on Coronation Day, the Blue Lion, and even the queen herself disrupt their mood of happy optimism, Edie and her friends must race to uncover the truth, save their home, and expose those who seek to erase the joy and promise of Coronation Year. (Inside Book Flap)

C. L. Polk turns their considerable powers to a fantastical noir with Even Though I Knew the End.
A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.
An exiled auspex who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist--the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.
To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Meet Kitty Collins.
FRIEND. LOVER. KILLER.
He was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn't leave me alone.
I hadn't intended to kill him of course. But I wasn't sorry when I did and, despite the mess I made, I appeared to get away with it.
That's where my addiction started...
I've got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I'm killing it.
A deliciously dark, hilariously twisted story about friendship, love, and murder. (Back Cover)