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The Sorrows of an American is a soaring feat of storytelling about the immigrant experience and the ghosts that haunt families from one generation to anotherWhen Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga, find a disturbing note from an unknown woman among their dead father's papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister uncover its secrets and unbandage its wounds in the year following their father's funeral.Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erik's fascination with his new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connected to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfolds, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden father's history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husband's double life.A novel about fathers and children, listening and deafness, recognition and blindness; the pain of speaking and the pain of keeping silent, the ambiguities of memory, loneliness, illness, and recovery. Siri Hustvedt's exquisitely moving prose reveals one family's hidden sorrows through an extraordinary mosaic of secrets and stories that reflect the fragmented nature of identity itself.

WINNER OF THE GOLD IPPY AWARD FOR BEST NORTHEAST FICTION Michael Quinn is not well equipped for his odyssey through New England's dangerous underworld. In fact, he isn't well equipped for much. Michael's only goal was to become an editorial writer at the Portland Daily, a milestone he achieved just as the paper was picking up momentum toward irrelevance. Middle-aged, romantically unattached, distant from his only child, and in search of love through the missed connections classifieds, Michael thinks these are his only problems. Returning to Boston after his father dies unexpectedly, Michael's journey home forces him into conflict with unresolved family issues, denial, and the revelation that his father had ties to organized crime. Michael inherits some unfinished family business that places him as the unwitting linchpin in a major criminal conspiracy. His journey brings danger and betrayal, but also self-discovery and the possibility of a windfall of cash.

Winner of the 2018 Best Translated Book AwardA dying father in the grip of fever and delirium recounts his youth, his Grand Tour, the Venetian palaces populated by fascinating and evil figures, his ruin, and his most beautiful journey—the crossing on foot of the frozen Hudson River. His son, still a child, sits at the foot of the bed, attentively collecting these final, hallucinated words.Could the work of Herman Melville—masterful author, misunderstood, far too ahead of his time, and considered crazy and dangerous by some critics—have as its source this ultimate paternal legacy?Questioning the intricacies of fiction, which constantly oscillatates between reality and imagination, Rodrigo Fresán's approaches the enigma of the literary vocation in a new light. An invented biography, a gothic novel populated by ghosts, and an evocation of a filial love, Melvill contains all the talent, humor, and immense culture found in the other great works from one of Spanish literature's most ambitious writers..

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR BY VOGUE, HARPER'S BAZAAR, W MAGAZINE, AND VANITY FAIR! • MEET THE MILANIS. FAST-FOOD HEIRESSES, L.A. ROYALTY, AND YOUR NEWEST REALITY TV OBSESSION •'Think the Kardashians meet Little Women and Crazy Rich Asians…An indelible, uproarious snapshot of young womanhood.'—Vogue “Delightfully twisted and heartfelt...Khakpour is a satirist extraordinaire.'—Kevin Kwan • “Funny, devastating, and filled with dazzlingly accurate observations about the absurdities of our age, this is a story and family that will stay with you long after you finish.'—Marjan KamaliIranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all—a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There's Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll.Each of the Milanis—even their aloof Persian cat Pari—has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever. Dramatic, biting yet full of heart, Tehrangeles is a tragicomic saga about high-functioning family dysfunction and the ever-present struggle to accept one's true self.

A “mesmerizing...wildly entertaining” (The Boston Globe) magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to rob a train, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul. In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico's most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio's timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors'crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower. A family saga that's epic in scope and loosely based on the author's own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower is “rich in lyrical language, gripping action, and enchanting magical realism” (Esquire). It tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting with stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors and whether it is possible to be better than our forebearers.

PREMIO ALFAGUARA DE NOVELA 2024 UNO DE LOS 50 MEJORES LIBROS DE 2024 SEGÚN BABELIA Un acontecimiento poco conocido de la reciente historia de España. Una historia sobre la familia, la traición y la culpa. «Oscuros secretos familiares encierran un pasado amenazador capaz de destruir el presente. ¿Heredan los hijos la culpa de los padres? Una novela apasionante que pone a prueba la conciencia de los personajes y que sacude la del lector». Del acta del jurado En 1916, en plena Primera Guerra Mundial, llegan a Cádiz dos barcos con más de seiscientos alemanes provenientes de Camerún. Se han entregado en la frontera guineana a las autoridades coloniales por ser España país neutral. Se instalarán, entre otros sitios, en Zaragoza y formarán allí una pequeña comunidad que ya no volverá a Alemania. Entre ellos estaba el bisabuelo de Eva y Fede, quienes, casi un siglo después, se encuentran en el cementerio alemán de Zaragoza en el entierro de Gabi, su hermano mayor. Junto con su padre, son los últimos supervivientes de los Schuster, una familia que llegó a formar un importante negocio de alimentación. Pero en los tiempos que corren el pasado siempre puede regresar para levantar ampollas. Con una intriga que crece página a página, Los alemanes trata uno de los episodios más vergonzosos y menos pulgados de la historia de España: cómo los nazis refugiados aquí en un retiro dorado activaron el neonazismo en Alemania. Con sutileza alumbra el infierno que puede llegar a ser, en ocasiones, la familia, y deja en el aire dos preguntas incómodas: ¿Cuándo caducan las culpas de los padres? ¿Llega hasta los hijos la obligación de redimirlas? La crítica ha dicho sobre el autor: «Sergio del Molino mira donde nadie mira y por eso ve lo que nadie ve. Y lo cuenta con trazo de escritor grande». Iñaki Gabilondo «Del Molino usa la primera persona del singular de una manera que no es muy habitual en español, y menos todavía en España: no para hacer un personaje de sí mismo, ni para dar doctrina, ni para ejercer una halagadora impostura, sino para contar lo que es, lo que hace, lo que le gusta, lo que se le pasa por la cabeza, lo que le provoca sarcasmo o ternura, el tono de su vida, su amor por su familia y por su ocio». Antonio Muñoz Molina, Babelia «En el caso de Del Molino la escritura siempre es un trampolín sobre la anécdota para alcanzar a trascenderla». Elena Hevia, El Periódico «El ensayista más original e imprevisible de España». Carlos Alsina «Sergio del Molino es un escritor excelente, me parece que es uno de los escritores más brillantes de mi generación y que realiza unas indagaciones de una honestidad brutal, con una mezcla de crudeza y de ternura que me interesa mucho». Andrés Neuman «Una sensibilidad que traspasa. De lo mejor que ha sucedido en literatura en los últimos tiempos». Montero Glez «Del Molino ha conseguido el arte de provocar extrañeza que toda obra literaria debe tener. Un libro impecable cuya claridad procede de una exigencia moral muy elevada». Ángeles López, La Razón ••libro de la semana•• «Excelente prosista, capaz de hacer relevante lo trivial con el solo poder de la palabra exacta y la formulación imaginativa». Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural «Un escritor agudo y versátil con una capacidad literaria todoterreno». Raúl Conde, El Mundo «Pronto se comprueba que Del Molino lo hace todo bien. […] Magistral. […] Los alemanes tiene todo para encandilar». Juan Marqué, La Lectura - El Mundo

An enthralling novel about three generations of strong-willed women, unknowingly shaped by the secrets buried in their family's past.“What a delight! Like Mother, Like Mother is sharp, fun, and witty.”—Ann Napolitano, bestselling author of Hello Beautiful“A sprawling family saga, briskly told with the lightest of touches and an often-surprising sense of humor.”—Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World BehindA VOGUE BEST BOOK OF THE YEARDetroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, having mustered everything she has—brains, charm, talent, blond hair—Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe. Lila unapologetically prioritizes her career, leaving the rearing of her daughters to her generous husband, Joe. He doesn't mind—until he does.But Grace, their youngest daughter, feels abandoned. She wishes her mother would attend PTA meetings, not White House correspondents'dinners. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila's shadow, yet the more she resists, the more Lila seems to shape her life. Grace becomes a successful reporter, even publishing a bestselling book about her mother. In the process of writing it, she realizes how little she knows about her own family. Did Lila's mother, Grace's grandmother, die in that asylum? Is refusal to look back the only way to create a future? How can you ever be yourself, Grace wonders, if you don't know where you came from?Spanning generations, and populated by complex, unforgettable characters, Like Mother, Like Mother is an exhilarating, portrait of family, marriage, ambition, power, the stories we inherit, and the lies we tell to become the people we believe we're meant to be.

A freaky tale of isolation and the porous membranes between us, Rebecca Gisler's slim novel renders a collapsing world with equal parts aversion, fascination, and tenderness—for readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sayaka Murata.At a time when she'd rather be making her own way in the world, an unnamed young woman finds herself moving to a small town at the seaside to care for her uncle. He's a disabled veteran with questionable habits, prone to drinking, gorging, and hoarding—not to mention the occasional excursion down into the plumbing, where he might disappear for days at a time. When the world begins to shut down, Uncle and his niece are forced even closer still. She knows his every move—every bathroom break he takes, every pill he swallows—and she finds herself relying on this man who is the last one person occupying an empty world with her. But then Uncle's health takes a final turn for the worse, he's sent to a hospital that cares for cats, dogs, and Uncles, and any way for her to make sense of this eerie new reality, and her place in it, falls apart.Poet-novelist Rebecca Gisler's debut novel, set against our increasingly disjointed world, welcomes readers into a home of shut-ins as cozy as it is claustrophobic. Gisler's bright, winding prose, masterfully translated from French by Jordan Stump, offers a rare witness to the complex ways in which we order our lives, for better or worse, inside and out.

From the author of Indie Next Pick and New York Times Editors'Choice Goodnight, Beautiful Women comes a transportive and chilling debut novel of two sisters growing up on an isolated Northern European island in the shadow of their late mother and the DevilIt's 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island's women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island's dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of.As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen. Ever capable Ulrika shoulders the burden of keeping house, while Bea, alone with unsettling visions and impulses, hungers for companionship and attention. When an enigmatic outsider arrives at their door, his presence threatens their family bond and unearths – piece by piece – a buried history to shocking ends. All the while Berggrund's neighboring island The Blue Maiden beckons, storied home of the Witches'Sabbath and Satan's realm, its misted shore veiling truths the sisters have spent their lives searching for.A Nordic Gothic laced with the horrors of life in a patriarchy both hostile to and reliant on its women, The Blue Maiden is a starkly beautiful depiction of lost lineage and resilience.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family and the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in TroubleNew York Times Book Review Editors'Choice • New York Magazine's Beach Read Book Club Pick • Belletrist Book Club PickA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, Town & Country, New York Post, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Parade, Kirkus Reviews“Joins the pantheon of great American novels.”—Los Angeles Times“Exuberant and absorbing... a big old-fashioned social novel.”—The Atlantic“Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.But now, nearly forty years later, it's clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband's emotional health. Their three grown children aren't doing much better: Nathan's chronic fear won't allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she's not a product of her family's pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives'successes and failures.Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family's history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives'tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.

LONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE The slow-burning, deeply felt story of a social outcast reckoning with the wounds of her past Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez—a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak—upending Regina's quiet life. It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through plains and mountains that forces Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it. Rife with gothic tension and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeA riveting debut novel, based on real events, about a World War II veteran with a secret that could land him in the Gulag, and his family who are forced to live in the shadow of all he has not told them.Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family. Spanning seven decades between World War II and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, Your Presence Is Mandatory traces the effect Yefim's coverup had on the lives of Nina, their two children and grandchildren. In the process, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light on one family caught between two totalitarian regimes, and the grace they find in the course of their survival.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home.After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush's stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel's life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America's most prodigiously gifted novelists.

“A heart-wrenching story of love, family, and spirituality.” —People MagazineFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England.Cana, Massachusetts: a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language.As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies, and judgments which threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves which has no name. Their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual.Set during the turbulent historical upheavals which shaped America's destiny and following in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief. Bestselling author Garrard Conley has created a page-turning, vividly imagined historical tale that is both a love story and a crucible.

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets from “huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard). FINALIST FOR THE FALLON BOOK CLUB SELECTION It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the'peasants'-- ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and “bad apples”: the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

“A touching, inventive novel about belonging and loss” (People) from the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland“I marveled at the subtle beauty and precision of Obreht's prose... Read in the context of today's conflicts and injustices, climate emergencies, and political and racial divisions—together more dystopian than any dystopian novel—the book surprised me most with its undercurrent of hope.”—Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers, in The New York Times (Editors'Choice)A LIT HUB AND CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEARThere's the world you can see. And then there's the one you can't. Welcome to the Morningside.After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia's aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.Enchanted by Ena's stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

A “propulsive and moving story of a family torn asunder by their mother's disappearance” (Bookreporter) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee. 1999: At the end of the millennium, the Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children than ever before. One evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of an unhoused stranger in the backyard with a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever. 1977: Newly married, Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her hardworking and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter with a veteran at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans decades and echoes into the family's lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk. Both “an intricately crafted mystery and a heart-wrenching family saga” (Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author), set against the backdrop of social unrest and Y2K, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores memory, storytelling, forgiveness, and what it means to dream in America.

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt's secrets in this “enchanting, memorable” (Bustle) debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. “As beautifully detailed as a piece of Palestinian embroidery, this bold, vivid novel will speak to readers across genders, cultures, and identities.”—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Fencing with the King A THEM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • SHORTLISTED FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARDIn a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis'centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us—and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

CBS New York Book Club with Mary Calvi and Belletrist Book Club Pick “Raw, complex, and utterly unforgettable.” —Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author The only child of a famous American novelist discovers a shocking family secret that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career in this standout debut, perfect for fans of Pineapple Street and The Plot.Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city's intellectual It couple. Ward's glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with love. Now an adult, all Isabelle wants is to be a successful writer like her father but after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown. Her anxiety only skyrockets when she uncovers some shocking truths about her parents and begins wondering if everything she knew about her family was all based on an elaborate lie. This “literary page-turner” (KJ Dell'Antonia, New York Times bestselling author) is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about a woman determined to steal back the spotlight from a man who has cheated his way to the top. The characters seem eerily familiar but is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who is the author?

The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard is a contemporary story of obsessive love, sexual transgression and tragic loss. Bachelor and professional accountant Joseph Blanchard has led a socially active though emotionally cautious life into his late thirties. When he discovers that his beautiful nineteen-year-old cousin Sophie, a talented concert pianist, is in love with him, he finds he is helpless to resist her youthful charms, and against his better judgment embarks upon a passionate affair. As a safeguard against causing pain to her parents, the two lovers conspire to keep their relationship secret. For a while they are happy. But Sophie's performing career compels her to spend time in the company of other musicians, many of them young men. Consumed by jealousy, Joseph allows rage to seize control, with tragic results. Grieving, he sets about to destroy all evidence of the affair. But when a family secret is exposed, it reveals the past in a new light. In the end, his health in decline and with nothing left but memories, he discloses his secret to a confidant.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek. OPRAH DAILY'S #1 NOVEL OF THE YEAR • ONE OF PEOPLE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A WASHINGTON POST, BOOKPAGE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, NEW YORK POST, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, REAL SIMPLE, CRIMEREADS, AND SHE READS BEST BOOK OF THE YEARBelletrist Book Club Pick • Finalist for the New American Voices Award • Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult“A brilliant, satisfying, compassionate mystery that is as much about language and storytelling as it is about a missing father. I loved this book.”—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow“I fell in love with the fascinating, brilliant family at the center of this riveting book.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful“We didn't call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut, Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

From an early age, Yabar listened to Aunt Rosa's story of the commander of the river. Somali legend tells of how two wise men were entrusted with creating a river, because their country had none and had no drinking water. But when crocodiles found their way into the water, the people elected a commander of the river to control the beasts and allow access to the water. To know Good, you must live with necessary Evil. After his father abandoned him, Yabar sets out on a journey to discover what became of him. Sent from his home in Rome to his aunt's house in London, Yabar will discover a terrible family secret, which he may want to forget.Commander of the River is a timeless and compelling coming-of-age story set in contemporary Italy. The second novel by acclaimed Somali Italian writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, it explores themes of racism, trauma, adolescent angst, and the rebellious torments of the young.

PERFECT SUMMER ESCAPISM: THE TIME-TRAVELLING LOVE STORY YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT DOWN HOW FAR WOULD YOU TRAVEL TO FIND A LOVE LOST IN TIME?'A beautiful exploration of family, love and loss across the generations. Fresh, fun... I didn't want it to end.'Gemma Chan This is the story of Joshua, Lily, Tommy and Eva: one family with an extraordinary gift – they can all travel through time. But when their parents disappear, Tommy and Eva must work out how to move on. Tommy takes refuge in the past, and a love affair with a woman from a different era keeps him there. Escaping his unhappy life in contemporary London feels like a relief at first. But no one can live two stories. Eventually, Tommy will have to decide where his heart – and his future – really belong. The Moon Represents My Heart is a stunning debut about grief, resilience, and the courage it takes to face an uncertain future, from an outstanding new literary talent.'An immediately compelling, unusual story with a totally fresh voice.'Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne • A Prima Book of the Year •

Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a close-knit, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep.After suffering a trauma aged nineteen that causes her to lose three days of her memory and spiral into a deep depression, Mallika must find a way out of the abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community.In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters'intertwining lives emerges. For Mallika's family, childhood friends and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contending with their own struggles, secrets and silences shatter.As irreverent and funny as it is serious and anguished, Fear and Lovely is a tender, character-driven story of love, longing, terror and healing that will keep you turning pages, and won't let you go.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and an “absorbing, powerful” (BuzzFeed) new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling.“Propulsive... LaValle combines chills with deep insights into our country's divides.”—Los Angeles TimesONE OF BOOKPAGE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND LOCUS AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARDA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Vulture, Paste, Tordotcom, Book Riot, Polygon, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Library JournalAdelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It's locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you've never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.

•LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE•'Pearl, an exceptional debut novel, is both a mystery story and a meditation on grief, abandonment and consolation, evoking the profundities of the haunting medieval poem. The degree of difficulty in writing a book of this sort – at once quiet and hugely ambitious – is very high. It's a book that will be passed from hand to hand for a long time to come.'—Booker Prize judges A haunting debut novel inspired by the medieval poem of the same nameMarianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing.Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother's love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood.As time passes, Marianne struggles to adjust, fixated on her mother's disappearance and the secrets she's sure her father is keeping from her. Discovering a medieval poem called Pearl and trusting in its promise of consolation, Marianne sets out to make a visual illustration of it, a task that she returns to over and over but somehow never manages to complete.Tormented by an unmarked gravestone in an abandoned chapel and the tidal pull of the river, her childhood home begins to crumble as the past leads her down a path of self-destruction. But can art heal Marianne? And will her own future as a mother help her find peace?

Old secrets are brought to light when a family matriarch returns to Brazil after years away in this “original and highly immersive” (Good Morning America) debut that explores the heartbreak and hope of what it means to be from two homes, two peoples, and two worlds.Daniel Cunha has a lot on his mind. He got dumped by his pregnant girlfriend, his grandfather just dropped dead, and on the anniversary of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle, his mother makes her unwanted return, years after she fled to marry another American fool like his father. Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel's grandfather João—poor João—born to a prostitute and forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not João's wife, Marta, branded as a bruxa, reviled by her mother, and dragged from her Ilha paradise by her scheming daughter, Maria. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister's beauty and benevolence that she took her vicious revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children: Daniel and Lucia, both tainted now by their half-Americanness and their mother's greedy absence. There's poison in the Cunha blood. They are a family cursed, condemned to the pain of deprivation, betrayal, violence, and, worst of all, love. But now Maria has returned to grieve her father and finally make peace with Daniel and Lucia, or so she says. As New Year's Eve nears, the Cunha family hurtles toward an irrevocable breaking point: a fire, a knife, and a death on the sands of Copacabana Beach. Amid the cacophony of Rio's tumult—rampant poverty, political unrest, the ever-present threat of violence—a fierce chorus of voices rises above the din to ask whether we can ever truly repair the damage we do to those we love in this “fiery debut novel” (The Washington Post).

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction​ • A sweeping and beautifully rendered exploration of home and yearning, following the fracturing of a family upon the demise of its patriarch'Each character here is richly and deeply drawn...This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life's burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through.”—New York TimesIn the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Grenfell Tower and many of the lives within it. Across town, an earlier spark has caught fire. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt—estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch—takes his final breaths alone.These twin tragedies open Diana Evans's A House for Alice, an aching portrait of a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure. At the novel's center is Alice herself, the Pitt matriarch who, after fifty years in England, now longs to live out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria. Her three daughters are torn on the issue of whether she stays or goes, and while youngest sibling Melissa also grapples with the embers of her own failed relationship, the Pitt family's foundational pillars—of trust, love, and cultural identity—begin to crack.Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, yet equally full of hope, humor, and humanity, A House for Alice traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us.

An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman's efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets.Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father only appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father's past and reconstructs her own family history. Consumed with her own grief, Hon had been blind to her father's vulnerability and her family's fragility. Unraveling secret after secret and thanks to conversations with loving family and friends, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father's life was once vibrant and ambitious, but spiraled during the postwar years. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father's affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her own siblings, to her family's financial hardships. What Hon uncovers about her father builds towards her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation as a whole. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Went to See My Father opens a window onto humankind, family, loss, and war. With this long-awaited follow-up to Please Look After Mom—flawlessly rendered by award-winning translator Anton Hur—Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted an ambitious, global, epic, and lasting novel.

A Michelle Obama's Reach Higher Summer Reading List Pick • An NPR Critics Summer Pick • A Good Morning America Pick of the Month • A Good Reads Big Buzz Debut • A Tertulia Staff Pick of the Month • An Electric Literature Best Novel of 2023“Compelling... Studded with sublime wit.” —New York Times Book Review“A glorious, pondering, heartbreaking, extremely funny, very special book.” —Sarah Jessica ParkerIn A Quitter's Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother's death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own.Eleanor knows she's been acting strangely. She's dropped out of her PhD program and is ignoring calls from her husband. Lately, she finds herself walking circles in the park, leaving a trail of nuts and raisins in her wake. It's all, in some sense, a response to her mother's recent death. This she knows. But Eleanor can't understand how you are supposed to grieve a mother you never understood. How do you love a person who refused to make herself known? As Eleanor wends her way forward, we catch glimpses of the past. Eleanor's parents emigrate from Taiwan to Queens in 1979. The couple thrives in business, importing Taiwanese-made trinkets and managing a growing number of workers at their warehouse. But Rita and Jing Liu remain confounded by the process of raising their two daughters. How do you dole out affection, discipline, protection, and care in a strange place, in a foreign tongue? Deliciously provocative and exquisitely crafted, A Quitter's Paradise is an intimate, intergenerational saga of American immigrant ambition, and a profound contemplation of its long afterlife. With a deft hand and a humor distinctly her own, Elysha Chang explores the extent to which we unwittingly guard the hearts of our loved ones, even from ourselves.

CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023Peter Greenaway meets Angela Carter: a Gothic tale of secrets and revenge When the curtain rises on Malmaison, it reveals a once-enchanting estate, quietly falling into darkness and ruin, and at the heart of it, a father, one of a long line of fathers who have flourished at the expense of those around them. The silence seems peaceful, but lurking under it is a deep malevolence, scores of ugly and violent secrets kept by cast-off mistresses and abandoned daughters. Ever-greedy, the father brings in Aliénor, a woman who promises to make the lands give even more of themselves; the plants will flourish, the animals will multiply, each feast will be more sumptuous than the last. The father thinks the stage is set to satisfy his every desire, but Aliénor will bring a new script, one in which the hunters are hunted and a new reign will begin.

Joey is young, indifferent. He's drifting around Western Sydney unaware that his passivity is leading him astray. And then one day he is involved in a violent crime, one that threatens to upend his life entirely. Elaine, his grandmother, is a proud Lebanese woman with problems of her own. When Joey is arrested, she is desperate to save face and hold herself together. In her family, history repeats itself, vices come and go, and uncovering long-buried secrets isn't always cathartic. This gripping and hard-hitting novel reveals the richness and complexity of contemporary Australian life and tests the idea that facing consequences will make us better people.

Compelling, compassionate and profoundly moving, this new novel by the acclaimed author of The Everlasting Sunday confirms Robert Lukins as one of our finest writers.Two women stand in the shallows, a man dead at their feet, while around them buildings burn.Amid the ruins of a fire-ravaged amusement park and destroyed waterfront dwellings, one boarded-up building still stands. May has come from Australia to Loveland, Nebraska, to claim the house on the poisoned lake as part of her grandmother's will. Escaping the control of her husband, will she find refuge or danger?As she starts repairing the old house, May is drawn to discover more about her silent, emotionally distant grandmother and unravel the secrets that Casey had moved halfway around the world to keep hidden. How she and Casey's lives interconnect, and the price they both must pay for their courage, is gradually revealed as this mesmerising and lyrical novel unfolds.Compelling, compassionate and profoundly moving, this new novel by the acclaimed author of The Everlasting Sunday confirms Robert Lukins as one of our finest writers.'Gripping, insightful and absolutely searing.'-Emily Maguire, author of Love Objects'A book of such tenderness and precision: it is radiant.'-Stephanie Bishop, author of Man Out of Time'Heartbreaking in its emotional reach.'-Gail Jones, author of Our Shadows'A novel that is as gloriously satisfying as it is achingly beautiful. A must-read.'-Paige Clark, author of She Is Haunted'It takes a masterful writer to tell an ugly story so beautifully. I couldn't stop reading it.'-Allee Richards, author of Small Joys of Real Life

Chosen as one of New York Post's Best Books of 2022 People were forever telling her how lucky she was. But what did people know?'Dublin 1966. When Joan Quinn, a factory girl from the Cranmore Estate, marries Martin Egan, it looks like her dreams have come true. But Joan lives in the shadow of a secret – the couple's decision to give up their first daughter for adoption only months before. Then one day in 1996, a letter arrives from their eldest daughter. Emma needs her birth parents'help; it's a matter of life and death. And the fragile facade of Joan's life finally begins to crack. Spanning the nineties and the sixties, with Dublin as its backdrop, The Making of Her is the tender and page-turning story of marriage, motherhood, a culture that would not allow a woman to find true happiness—and her journey to finally claim it.

A Book of The Month Club pick In this beautiful dive into the world of J. M. Barrie's classic, one woman must take on the infamous Peter Pan—who is not the innocent adventurer the fairy tales make him out to be—to save her daughter's life.... Life is looking up for Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy—yes, that Wendy. That is, until she gets a call that her daughter, Eden, who has been in a coma for nearly a decade, has gone missing from the estate where she's been long tucked away. And, worst of all, Holly knows who must be responsible: Peter Pan, who is not only very real, but very dangerous. Holly is desperate to find Eden and protect her son, Jack, from a terrible web of family secrets before she loses both her children. And yet she has no one to turn to—her mother, Jane, is the only other person in the world who knows that Peter is more than a story, but she refuses to accept that he is not the hero she's always imagined. Darling Girl brings all the magic of the classic Peter Pan story to the present, while also exploring the dark underpinnings of fairy tales, grief, aging, sacrifice, motherhood, and just how far we will go to protect those we love.

As the Irvings head into their second decade of marriage, they've mostly abandoned their dreams and are committed to just getting by. There are children to love, jobs to do, and secrets to keep. But on a warm night in October, a falling woman changes everything.When Cassie Irving discovers that her husband Danny is missing, she assumes he has left her for good. But within hours he's on the local news: a gunshot victim, hospitalized after a violent incident on the roof of an apartment building—one that has left a woman dead, her body found on the sidewalk below. Danny, a little too conveniently, has no memory of the incident or the mysterious dead woman. The best way for the family to move on is to embrace silence and Danny's plans for a golden future, but Cassie is haunted by the falling woman and a lingering suspicion that Danny is somehow responsible for her death.As details from Danny's past begin to emerge, Cassie sets out on a journey of discovery, reexamining her own choices while she untangles her husband's years of secrets: youthful mistakes, missing persons, an ill-gotten artifact linked to misfortune—they all lead inevitably to a rooftop on a tragic October night. While Danny tries to patch over the past, Cassie races to avert the consequences of his good intentions, fearing that she will soon be forced to choose between silence and truth.

Winner of the Gold Medal for Independent Publisher Award in the Mystery category.'Intriguing, multi-layered, evocative and carefully crafted. One of my favourite reads for a long while.'Charity Norman, author of the Richard and Judy Book Club pick After The Fall.'A gripping story of the unravelling of a mother's secrets as her daughter searches for answers to a decades-old mystery of a local girl's disappearance. Evocative, suspenseful and beautifully written. I couldn't put it down.'Adrienne Chinn'I was hooked from the very first page. The emotional layers of this beautifully written book are woven together seamlessly. Absolutely superb!'Clare Marchant'An absolutely fascinating tale of a fractured family, and the hurts and secrets that they carry. McCarron's observations and characterizations are sublime.'Jenni KeerA gripping and emotional story of family and the secrets we keep from the ones we love. For fans of Kristin Hannah and Delia Owens.When you're lost sometimes the only way to look forward is to look back...Three women. Two generations apart. One secret they share.Maine, 1997. As the people of Fort Meadow Beach celebrate the Fourth of July, four-year-old Daisy Wright disappears and is never seen again.Maine, Present Day. Fired from her job and heart-broken, Peyton Winchester moves back home for the summer. Bored and aimless, she finds a renewed sense of purpose when an ad for a journalism course reminds her of a path not taken. Returning to life in her hometown brings back all kinds of memories – including Daisy's vanishing when she was a young girl herself.As Peyton begins her search for the truth, new discoveries begin to intertwine Daisy's past and her present with irreversible consequences.Readers love The Shimmer on the Water!'Deftly crafted and memorable characters, a plot replete with unexpected twists and turns... an inherently fascinating blend of a'whodunnit'mystery and a domestic thriller of a read from first page to last.'MidWest Book Review'Magic... I felt like gnawing on my arm to get to the end! And what an ending it was. Loved it... Arresting book. Marina McCarron's writing has me absolutely hooked!'Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars'Wow what a fantastic read... A great story which will keep you gripped from the beginning. I really loved it and highly recommend this book.'NetGalley Reviewer, 5 stars'Mesmerizing... Tons of family drama, and the disappearance of a little girl. Highly recommend!'Tara Leigh Books, 5 stars'Riveting... A young girl who vanished, but it was also about a family with so many secrets... Captured my attention and reeled me in until the end... Amazing... Took me down a path with twist, turns, and unbelievable things happening.'NetGalley Reviewer, 5 stars'An incredible, dual timeline family saga. It kept me gripped the whole time... Eualla's story really pulled at my heart... I thoroughly enjoyed this book.'@thesapphiccelticbookworm, 5 stars'Absolutely loved this book... A great read with strong characters and a fabulous story.'NetGalley Reviewer, 5 stars'Intriguing... Great characters... Brilliantly interwoven. Highly recommended.'NetGalley Reviewer, 5 stars'Loved it and will strongly recommend!'NetGalley Reviewer, 5 stars

From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft that will capture the national imagination.'This is a story-a great story-with all the tragedy and lies that is colonial Australia. Our circle of tragedy.'Thomas Mayor, author of Finding the Heart of the Nation'Poignant and powerful; the best book I've read this year.'Chris Hammer, author of Scrublands'A challenging statement about the mythology of Australian colonial history. It confronts the hard questions with intense sensitivity and a smattering of humour.'Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University'At long last, here is a novel that looks Australia's brutal, murky frontier-one that left generations traumatised-straight in the eye.'Mark McKenna, author of Return to UluruMorally bereft popular historian Patrick Renmark flees London in disgrace after the accidental death of his infant son. With one card left to play, he reluctantly takes a commission to write the biography of his legendary pioneering adventurer-anthropologist grandfather. With no enthusiasm and even less integrity, Patrick travels to Jesustown, the former mission town in remote Australia where his grandfather infamously brokered'peace'between the Indigenous custodians of the area and the white constabulary. He hasn't been back there since he was a teenager when a terrible confrontation with his grandfather made him vow never to return.Of course nothing is as it seems or as Patrick wants it to be. Unable to lay his own son to rest, Patrick must re-examine the legacy of his renowned grandfather and face the repercussions of his actions on subsequent generations. Will what he finds bring him redemption or add to the vault of family secrets and terrible guilt he keeps uncovering?From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft, and the myths that stand between us and history's unpalatable truths.'An unflinching examination of the truths white Australia refuses to acknowledge.'Jock Serong, author of Preservation'A searing dissection of the arrogance of white history and generations of moral failure.'Michael Brissenden, author of Dead Letters'Asks challenging-and important-questions about the stories families tell themselves, and about the myths, lies and half-truths that form the core of Australia's'official history'.'Nigel Featherstone, author of Bodies of Men'Jesustown is nothing less than the story of Australia, but with the distance between its'story-ist'myths and harsh and human reality laid bare. A brilliant novel.'David Whish-Wilson, author of True West

24 MUST-READ 2022 BOOKS IN TRANSLATION as selected by BOOK RIOT'Lebanese German author Jarawan (The Storyteller) movingly evokes life in Lebanon in his affecting and complex latest. This is a gripping, human look at a tragedy that still haunts an entire nation.'—Publishers Weekly It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is in full bloom when the discovery of two bodies in Beirut sows the first seeds of unrest in Lebanon. With houses already burning, Amin sets out to write down his memories of the country: Of the year 1994, when he returned as a teenager with his grandmother, twelve years after his parents'deaths. Of his friendship with Jafar, the boy who explored the desolate postwar landscape with him. And of the painful discovery that there will never be certainty—neither about his friend's past nor his family's history. In this novel full of mystery and suspense, friendship and loss, searches and secrets, Jarawan skillfully interweaves a deeply personal story with the tumultuous history of the Middle East.

A deeply felt family narrative that examines the fine line between selfishness and what passes for love.After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. Ella's aging parents have requested that she be returned to her childhood home, much to the distress of Ella's siblings, but more so to Lynetta, her beloved caretaker who has been by her side for decades. The five adult Jules children, haunted by their early memories of their sister, and each dealing with the trauma of her banishment in their own flawed way, are converging on the family home, arriving from the far corners of the country—secrets in tow—to talk some sense into their aging parents and get to the root of this inexplicable change of heart.The Precious Jules examines the thin line between selfishness and what passes for love. This family story asks what is best for one child in light of what is perceived as the greater good, and just what is the collective legacy of buried family secrets, shame, and helplessness. The Precious Jules is a deeply felt family narrative that will make you fall in love with these flawed and imperfect characters standing on the threshold of an awakening they never expected.

From a rising literary star, an epic historical novel, set against the tense backdrop of the Long March and Mao's rise to power, that tells a powerful and moving story of two ordinary peopleChina, 1934: A naive orphan and shy gunsmith, Ping, has fallen in love with Yong, who is a sophisticated veteran, a skilled marksman, and a true believer in Marxist ideology. Winning her affections will take an ideological battle—something he does not understand. To make matters worse, Yong has shown interest in Ping's best friend, Luo. On the eve of a great Communist defeat, Ping sabotages Luo's rifle, causing the bullet to backfire into his friend's head. The army begins its year-long retreat, known as The Long March, and Yong turns to Ping for comfort and companionship. Ping deeply regrets killing his friend, and as his relationship with Yong blossoms, he is saddened that it will always be colored by guilt. Yong soon becomes pregnant. She hates the way the baby inside is changing her, both physically and emotionally. The Red Army can't retreat with a crying infant, so they need to find someone close to take the baby in. Ping and Yong leave their son with a woman, promising to return once the war is won. When World War II breaks out and Japanese soldiers arrive, their 12-year-old son decides to enlist in the Japanese army to find his parents, though he quickly begins to fear for his life... Deeply moving and brilliantly written, Michael X. Wang's Lost in the Long March is an exploration of how the history of a country is always its people, though their stories are often the first to be lost.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Alternatingly heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily's journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require.”—The Washington Post Look for Jodi Picoult's new novel, By Any Other Name, available now!GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • PEOPLE'S BOOK OF THE WEEK • A POPSUGAR BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAROlivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can't help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet she wonders if she can trust him completely.... Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn't acknowledge the flashes of his father's temper in Ash, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he's hidden more than he's shared with her. Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

Tessa Cordelia appears to have it all—a loving husband who's just opened a dental practice, a beautiful baby girl, a big house in the suburbs, and a large, supportive family. But when her husband's reckless choices resurrect a trauma from her childhood, she must decide which is more costly: keeping his secrets or revealing them. He manipulates Tessa into believing his career and their happiness depend on her silence. She feels like she's losing her mind. Is her husband's habit so awful? In many ways, he's an ideal husband; should she let him have this one thing? Determined to maintain the lie that she's living the perfect life, Tess lies to everyone she knows—except for CeCe, a woman new to the area whom she's just befriended. But after confiding in her, Tessa learns that CeCe has an explosive secret of her own, and her world is further upended. A gripping, nuanced exploration of the havoc addiction can wreak on a family, A Week of Warm Weather is the story of a woman who has to figure out how much she is willing to lose in order to find herself.

John Irving's fifteenth novel is “powerfully cinematic” (The Washington Post) and “eminently readable” (The Boston Globe). The Last Chairlift is part ghost story, part love story, spanning eight decades of sexual politics.In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, he will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren't the first or last ghosts he sees. John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time—among them, The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. A visionary voice on the subject of sexual tolerance, Irving is a bard of alternative families. In the “generously intertextual” (The New York Times) The Last Chairlift, readers will once more be in his thrall.

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the beloved author of Inheritance:'a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets” (Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings) Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever.A TIME Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • A Real Simple Best Book of the YearAn ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn't realize it but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny.Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined.Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers. A luminous meditation on family, memory, and the healing power of interconnectedness.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NPRWINNER OF THE 2023 L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE, ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION“Stunning not only on account of the author's talent, of which there is clearly plenty, but also in its humanity.” —New York Times Book Review (cover)Sent back to his birthplace—Lahore's notorious red-light district—to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past.Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore's walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl.It should be a simple assignment to carry out in a marginalized community, but for the first time in his career, Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails him with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city's labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets—his family's and his own—that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence.Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect, and at what price?

Sofía is thirty-five and her husband has left her. Her father died the year before, and her mother is living in the Canary Islands with a new partner. Sofía flees the city with her young son, seeking refuge in her father's house on the southern coast of Spain, where she spent summers as a girl. Her younger sister, with whom she has a close but uneasy relationship, joins her. Living together again, the sisters face their present as well as their childhood and tangled past.Wolfskin is an intimate meditation on ambivalence and motherhood, eroticism and disappointment, family violence and failure, and ultimately, the possibility—or impossibility—of living with those you love.

A modern-day Wuthering Heights from the author of international bestseller The Eighth Life. Two families, one devastating secret, and an epic story of forbidden love. Eight years have passed since Stella last saw Ivo, but when he returns, the reunion of their unconventional family will change the course of her ordinary life. As children, Stella and Ivo grew close as their parents embarked on an affair that would shatter both families. Later, as teenagers, their own relationship would be the cause of further scandal. Now, as adults, they set out on an odyssey to uncover the truth about another family's past, and to understand their own. My Soul Twin is an intense love story about forbidden desire, the ties that bind us, and whether we can ever truly forget what we leave behind.

Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Quake: A Novel is a haunting novel-in-translation about Saga, a woman who comes to after an epileptic seizure on a sidewalk along busy Miklabraut Street. Her three-year-old son is gone. The last thing she remembers is a double-decker bus that no one else can confirm seeing. Over the following days, Saga's mind is beset by memories and doubts. What happened before her seizure? Who can she trust? And how can she make any sense of her emotions when her memory is so fragmented? Hailed as Auður Jonsdottir's'best-written novel so far,'Quake is a shocking and revelatory exploration of the blurred lines between fact and fiction, reality and imagination, and where mother ends and child begins.

Journey Prize winner Shashi Bhat's'powerful, surprising and terrifying'(Rufi Thorpe) story about a high school student's traumatic experience and how it irrevocably alters her life, for fans of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Girlhood, and Pen15. Bright, hilarious, and sensitive fourteen-year-old Nina spends her spare time reading Beowulf and flirting with an internet predator. She has a vicious crush on her English teacher, and her best friend Amy is slowly drifting away. Meanwhile, Nina's mother tries to match her up with local Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, and Nina's worried father has started reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. Beginning with a disturbing incident at her high school, The Most Precious Substance on Earth tells stories of Nina's life from the ‘90s to present day, when she returns to the classroom as a high school teacher with a haunting secret and discovers that the past is never far behind her. Darkly funny, deeply affecting, unsettling, and at times even shocking, Shashi Bhat's irresistible novel-in-stories examines the relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a sharp-edged and devastating look at how women are conditioned to hide their trauma and suppress their fear, loneliness, and anger, and an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.