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Gary Shteyngart, author of Vera, or Faith

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart as the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of 21st-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean and wholly original. Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; for Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who at last will tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.

Week of June 29, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of June 29th include Meg Waite Clayton's TYPEWRITER BEACH, an unforgettable story of the unlikely friendship between an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a young actress hoping to be Alfred Hitchcock's new star; VERA, OR FAITH by Gary Shteyngart, a poignant, sharp-eyed and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous 10-year-old daughter; THE KING'S RANSOM, the action-packed and steamy sequel to THE RECOVERY AGENT, in which Janet Evanovich takes readers on a global hunt to track down missing masterpieces; and A MARRIAGE AT SEA by Sophie Elmhirst, the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea --- a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival and partnership stretched to its limits.