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Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread

Perdita Lee and her mother, Harriet, might not be as normal as you think. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there's the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it's very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee's early youth.

Week of March 2, 2020

LILAC GIRLS, Martha Hall Kelly's runaway bestseller, introduced the real-life heroine Caroline Ferriday. LOST ROSES, set a generation earlier and also inspired by true events, features Caroline's mother, Eliza, and follows three equally indomitable women from St. Petersburg to Paris under the shadow of World War I. Other paperback releases for the week of March 2nd include Preston & Child's OLD BONES, which brings the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party to new life in a thrilling novel of archaeology, history, murder and suspense; MACHINES LIKE ME by Ian McEwan, a powerful portrayal of two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding, set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London --- where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence; and WOMEN TALKING, in which Miriam Toews envisions a small community of women, scarred by trauma but tentatively daring to imagine a new kind of future.