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Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper --- and cousin by marriage --- of a once-famous novelist, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for 30 years. Mrs. Touchet suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. The “Tichborne Trial” --- wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title --- captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud?

Week of September 2, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 2nd include HOLLY, a thrilling novel that marks the return of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, Holly Gibney, who must uncover the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town; THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story --- and who gets to be believed; Jesmyn Ward's LET US DESCEND, a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War; GOOD BAD GIRL, a drama-filled and surprising thriller from Alice Feeney in which nobody can be trusted and the twists come fast and furious; and WHILE YOU WERE OUT, Meg Kissinger's searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.