Before You Were Anne: A Novel

Emiko Jean

After a woman is killed and her daughter vanishes, detective Chelsey Calhoun uncovers a legacy of violence and survival that spans from Japan to Seattle in the new novel by the author of The Return of Ellie Black.A murdered woman. A missing daughter. A truth buried across two continents. Married, pregnant, and thriving in her career, Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life finally feels whole, until an explosive new case shatters everything. A mother is dead. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Naomi, has disappeared. And the search will awaken questions about Chelsey’s own origins—questions she’s spent a lifetime afraid to ask. The victim called herself Anne Walker. But she was born Rika Takahashi, and her journey from a remote Japanese farm to suburban Seattle conceals decades of deception. Across Tokyo’s shadowed underworld, an isolated Idaho town, and years of carefully constructed lies, Rika reinvented herself at every turn. But she was always running—from someone, or something. Now, Chelsey must find Naomi before she becomes the next victim. But the deeper she delves into Rika’s hidden life, the more she some secrets are worth killing for. And the most dangerous truths may be the ones closest to home. Told in three interwoven voices, Before You Were Anne is a gripping suspense novel about the lies that bind families and the sins that echo across generations.

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The Half Life: A Novel

Rachel Beanland

From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island, about a navy wife’s reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O’Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn’t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen’s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender. In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of Navy wives, who are hell bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from. Still, it doesn’t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the US government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island—not to mention all of Italy—doesn’t go communist in the next election. When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the US Navy. Soon, Eileen’s marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets—and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she’s been handed. Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakening—of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.

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The Half Life: A Novel

Rachel Beanland

From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island, about a navy wife’s reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O’Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn’t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen’s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender. In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of Navy wives, who are hell bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from. Still, it doesn’t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the US government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island—not to mention all of Italy—doesn’t go communist in the next election. When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the US Navy. Soon, Eileen’s marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets—and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she’s been handed. Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakening—of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.

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The Burning Side

Sarah Damoff

From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging. When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication. As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here. A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.

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Artifacts

Natalie Lemle

For readers of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle’s debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger. Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later. Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back. Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth. Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.

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Artifacts

Natalie Lemle

For readers of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle’s debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger. Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later. Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back. Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth. Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.

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The Burning Side

Sarah Damoff

From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging. When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication. As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here. A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.

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Like This, But Funnier

Hallie Cantor

For fans of Dolly Alderton and HBO’s Hacks, a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about faking it (and “making it”) as a writer in Hollywood. TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children. When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry—Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher. Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

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Livonia Chow Mein

Abigail Savitch-Lew

In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn and its impact on the neighborhood’s Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century. In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong. Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed. Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust. A stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.

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Livonia Chow Mein

Abigail Savitch-Lew

In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn and its impact on the neighborhood’s Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century. In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong. Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed. Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust. A stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.

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Like This, But Funnier

Hallie Cantor

For fans of Dolly Alderton and HBO’s Hacks, a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about faking it (and “making it”) as a writer in Hollywood. TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children. When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry—Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher. Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

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The Plans I Have for You

Lai Sanders

Feminine rage, cancel culture, and suffocating societal pressure—a cutting and brazen thriller about two Asian American women on a quest for revenge after a public shaming pushes them to the limit, for fans of Yellowface and Counterfeit. When a conflict with a fellow passenger on the subway spirals into a humiliating breakdown, Shelley Hu’s life is over. The incident goes viral, costing Shelley her prestigious Manhattan law firm internship, her spot at Columbia Law, and her plan to build a better life for herself and her mother. Months later, Shelley is back in Kissimmee, Florida, working the night shift at a kitschy motel near Disney World—the very same job she held in high school. Shelley’s life is a black hole until, one night, the beautiful, enigmatic Sophia Moon checks in with her husband and young son. But Sophia’s appearance is far from random. It turns out that, once upon a time, Sophia suffered her own episode of public shaming. Since then, Sophia has rebuilt a new life, and she promises to help Shelley do the same. More importantly, Sophia vows to help Shelley enact revenge on the three people responsible for the worst day of her life with a precise set of plans. Shelley returns to New York with a new identity and plans that start off well. But when the situation soon spirals out of control, Shelley is forced to reckon with Sophia’s unspeakably dark side—though it may be too late.

set status

The Plans I Have for You

Lai Sanders

Feminine rage, cancel culture, and suffocating societal pressure—a cutting and brazen thriller about two Asian American women on a quest for revenge after a public shaming pushes them to the limit, for fans of Yellowface and Counterfeit. When a conflict with a fellow passenger on the subway spirals into a humiliating breakdown, Shelley Hu’s life is over. The incident goes viral, costing Shelley her prestigious Manhattan law firm internship, her spot at Columbia Law, and her plan to build a better life for herself and her mother. Months later, Shelley is back in Kissimmee, Florida, working the night shift at a kitschy motel near Disney World—the very same job she held in high school. Shelley’s life is a black hole until, one night, the beautiful, enigmatic Sophia Moon checks in with her husband and young son. But Sophia’s appearance is far from random. It turns out that, once upon a time, Sophia suffered her own episode of public shaming. Since then, Sophia has rebuilt a new life, and she promises to help Shelley do the same. More importantly, Sophia vows to help Shelley enact revenge on the three people responsible for the worst day of her life with a precise set of plans. Shelley returns to New York with a new identity and plans that start off well. But when the situation soon spirals out of control, Shelley is forced to reckon with Sophia’s unspeakably dark side—though it may be too late.

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Family Drama

Rebecca Fallon

A vibrant debut and powerful meditation on family, motherhood, and the cost of holding on to your dreams, reminiscent of Ann Napolitano. It’s 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled seven-year-olds watch as their mother’s body is tipped overboard a crumbling boat. A Viking funeral, followed by a raucous wake. A send-off fit for soap opera star Susan Bliss. Fifteen years earlier, Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does—hopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susan’s two-paneled life, an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her home in New England as a wife and mother to young twins, and the bright lights of soapy Los Angeles. In the present, Susan’s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mother’s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother’s old costar Orson Grey—now a renowned Hollywood star—she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew. Sharp, assured, and beautifully written, Family Drama is a story told in double-helix, with intertwined timelines that explore the different versions of ourselves we share with the world and with each other.

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