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Spring Preview 2021

The arrival of spring signals the end of our Spring Preview contests. Many thanks to all who entered --- and a big congratulations to all our winners! You can see the winners here, and below are the books that we believe you’ll be talking about over the next few months.

Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks: A Memoir

Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, he would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. After her father’s passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo. Nadia arrived in New York feeling uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.

Week of August 2, 2021

Paperback releases for the week of August 2nd include THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley, a deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of Agatha Christie about a wedding celebration that turns dark and deadly; AFTERSHOCKS, a deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through; C. J. Box's DARK SKY, which finds Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett accompanying a Silicon Valley CEO on a hunting trip --- but he soon learns that he himself may be the hunted; V2, Robert Harris' WWII thriller about a German rocket engineer, a former actress turned British spy, and the Nazi rocket program; and THE SMALLEST LIGHTS IN THE UNIVERSE, a probing and invigoratingly honest book from Sara Seager, an MIT astrophysicist who must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth.