Coming Soon

Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega’s daughter that forces the novel’s central question: What does it mean to make a home?

Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in jail on suspicion of raping a white woman --- only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. Years later, Hale revisited this story. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South --- because Johnson's death was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.

On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black --- black clothes, black mask --- rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is "the last great civil rights fight." A college English instructor, Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah’s Witness upbringing as a teenager. Made impotent in the university classroom, she’s also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children’s spirits in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes.

At a gathering for her cousin’s wedding party, newly licensed PI Annie McIntyre gets asked an age-old question: What really makes us who we are, nature or nurture? Clint Marshall, an up-and-coming musician and an adoptee at a personal crossroads, wants to hire Annie to find his biological parents, and that question is on his mind. When Annie discovers that her client's father is a bank robber who her granddad, Leroy, arrested back when he was sheriff, reverberations sound between the past and the present, igniting old flames and rivalries. When the brother of her client dies suddenly, his death ruled a suicide, Annie questions whether or not it was in fact a homicide --- and who in this family of outlaws would rather some secrets stay buried.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Dorothy Thom joins the Women’s Army Corps. Women from all levels of society work together to navigate a military segregated by race and gender. In early 1945, Dorothy and 800 African American WACs cross the turbulent North Atlantic to their post in England. Their orders are to process the mail sent to GIs from their loved ones back home. They arrive to find mail stockpiled for over two years in warehouses and airplane hangars. Many pieces are in poor condition, and the names are illegible. In England and France, the WACs traverse a landscape of unimagined possibilities. With their outlooks changed forever, they return to the United States as the catalysts for change in America and build lives that transcend anything their ancestors ever dreamed of.

Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how one of Towles’ most beloved characters, the indomitable Evelyn Ross from RULES OF CIVILITY, crafts a new future for herself --- and others --- in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows and dive bars of 1930s Los Angeles.

It’s 1980s California, and everyone is dreaming of the endless summer. For the Merrick siblings, this idyllic vision is their reality, as they travel up and down the coast with their parents in a van year-round, surfing and swimming their days away. But when a photographer secretly snaps a stunning photo of the family with their boards in the sand, and the image ripples across the country, the only life they’ve ever known is put at risk. Decades after, the now-distant siblings gather on a gorgeous, wild island to honor their late father. But their reunion is complicated when a journalist, eager for the truth behind the famous photo, discovers their identity and tracks them down. As the siblings reckon with the possibility that more of their lives could be shared, a revelation about their past forces them to confront long-held heartaches.

In 1948, Irene Willard, who’s had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to “rectify the maternal environment,” both physical and psychological. In the meantime, she also discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls. As the doctors’ plans begin to crumble, Irene and her fellow patients make a desperate bid to harness the power of the garden for themselves --- and must face the incalculable risks associated with such incalculable rewards.

Tess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in the city to the English countryside, where predatory birds hover over fields, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider, and no one looks like her. As Tess and Richard settle in, the dramatic arrival of their fraternal twins --- one who presents as Black and the other as white --- recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging. Tess yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was, instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen where cooking Caribbean food becomes her sole comfort. And Richard obsesses over getting his crops planted rather than deal with the conversation he cannot bear to have.

When aspiring musician Twyla Higgins arrives in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1977, the 19-year-old Texan is dazzled by the fringe-and-rhinestones country music scene. Live music flows from bars, open mic nights tempt with the chance of stardom, and record label execs seek the next hot new act. With nothing but the songs in her head and her daddy's guitar, Twyla finds her way in the vibrant but cutthroat music business. A chance meeting with a rakish singer and son of blue-blooded Nashvillians veers Twyla off path and into a dizzying romance. Caught between the dream she’s always wanted and the affection she's always craved, Twyla must decide what future she wants for herself. But when her song is stolen by a rival and hits the country music charts, how much will she sacrifice to take back what's hers?

Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading “north,” where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day. But when the final train is loaded, Nico sees his family being herded into a boxcar. Only then does he discover that he has helped send them --- and everyone he knows and loves --- to their doom at Auschwitz. Nico escapes, but he never tells the truth again.

Morocco, 1928. Marie-Madeleine Méric Polyglot is a woman of many skills. Her unconventional interests earn her a daredevil reputation. But dabbling in intelligence work to assist her military officer husband and the French government helps her recognize who she is at heart: an adventurer. Paris, 1936. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, Marie-Madeleine is living in France, her marriage now in shambles, when a chance encounter with an enigmatic spy turns her life upside down. He recruits her to help build a resistance network, and she conceals her identity --- and gender --- as she navigates a perilous double life. Eventually, she steps into the role of leader of what is now known as Alliance. She achieves seemingly impossible feats of espionage that help turn the tide of the war. But the most impossible, and dangerous, feat of them all? Falling in love.

Business has never been better for Nura Khan. While a single 31-year-old matchmaker normally would raise some perfectly threaded eyebrows in the community, Nura’s childhood best friend, Azar, is willing to double as her pretend fiancé at her clients’ weddings --- even though Nura’s feelings for him might not be so pretend. While it’s not uncommon to get the occasional hate mail from rejected prospective clients, Nura is blindsided after a couple’s carefully constructed wedding implodes, the first in a cascading chain of suspicious and increasingly terrifying events. Someone is taking things too far, and with Azar and her matchmaking team by her side, Nura embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that threatens not only her safety but everything she has worked so hard to build.

Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe that fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream. Her sister, Jess, is a powerful social media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel. Hiding her own romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry.

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail, he was left stranded at the dock. After the ship’s sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties. But with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store.

Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet 20 years ago. His father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the City of Angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles. Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun and ID are stolen. She works the burglary alone, but her mission draws her into unexpected danger. So she knocks on the door of Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit: Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, now a patrol officer. But Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls --- a case that may be the most iconic in the city’s history.

For the first time in his life, journalist Jack Fiorello is out of work. The 65-year-old music critic is adrift; not even his wife, Molly, can lift him from his funk. Then a reader calls with a tip, and Jack is thrust into a story involving Katy Shayne, a long-dead singer-songwriter, and what very well might be her murder. Traveling across Greenwich Village and down to Nashville, Jack unravels long-forgotten facts that led to Katy's death. In doing so, he puts himself at mortal risk for the first time in his career. Is it worth the effort? All this for an unknown singer and her songs? Though beaten and battered, Jack answers with a resounding "yes."

Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen. After surviving a series of catastrophic accidents and assassination attempts, Blite realizes that whenever he dies, the dark diamond reverses time to a moment before his death. He must go through the traumatic experience again and again until he escapes. Every encounter Blite survives generates a time flash that reveals potential futures. This extraordinary phenomenon attracts the attention of Polity agents and the crab-like p-Prador who wish to acquire this power for themselves. Hunted across space and time, Blite must uncover the true nature of the dark diamond before it causes his destruction.

When Kate Summerlin was 11 years old, she climbed out her bedroom window looking for a taste of freedom. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her --- the killer’s voice --- saying: “Don’t turn around.” Now, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim, a college student, Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over.

When Ella Fitzgerald’s mother dies at the height of the Depression, the 15-year-old goes to work for the mob to support herself and her family. When the law finally catches up, the “ungovernable” adolescent is incarcerated in the New York Training School for Girls in upstate New York --- a wicked prison infamous for its harsh treatment of inmates, especially Black ones. Determined to be free, Ella escapes and makes her way back to Harlem, where she is forced to dance for pennies on the street. Looking for a break into show business, Ella draws straws to appear at the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night. Rather than perform a dance routine directly after “The World Famous Edwards Sisters” number, the homeless Ella risks everything when she decides to sing Judy instead. Four years later, at barely 21, Ella Fitzgerald has become the bestselling female vocalist in America.

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's wrenching debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonization. This is a Hawaii where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth. A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase.

HELLIONS is an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal. In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.

As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew, Michael, bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it’s hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants --- to forgive or to avenge.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne’s 10-year-old son, Sam, suffered acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom. Now, searching for a donor kidney, Mallory is forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption and her romance with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams, which was cut short by a devastating betrayal. Cairo, 1951. Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has married a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men --- and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.