Spotlight Pick: Codename Helene
By Ariel Lawhorn (Author of I was Anastasia)
Pub Date: March 31, 2020
In 2015, a friend informed Ariel Lawhon, author of I Am Anastasia, that if she didn’t write about Nancy Wake, said friend would no longer speak to her. Lawhon resisted, and wrote I Am Anastasia instead. But she did start to read about Nancy Wake and her extraordinary life, fell in love with her, and realized that this was a woman whose name should be known. Her admiration for Wake comes through on every page of Code Name Hélène, so named for one of the four code names under which Wake operated as one of the most fearless and effective leaders of the French Resistance. With the same brio with which the Australian Wake talked her way into a job as a journalist for the Hearst Corporation, Lawhon interweaves four timelines, each one corresponding to the code name Nancy was using at the time. Armed with a code name, her signature red lipstick, an ability to negotiate arms deals over a bottle of brandy without ever losing out—or passing out—and a willingness to take to the battlefield while her husband held down the fort at home, Nancy Wake made the kinds of sacrifices that made heroes of other soldiers. That Code Name Hélène is also a wartime love story that can hold its own with such novels as The Nightingale is icing on a delicious gâteau. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
Featured Debut: Sigh, Gone
By Phuc Tran
Pub Date: April 21, 2020
Sigh, Gone is a stunning memoir about refugees, racism, displacement, the lifeline of literature, fitting in—and fighting to do so. When Phuc Tran was just a boy, he and 11 family members survived the Viet Cong, fled Vietnam, and landed in their new home: the small town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which “seemed like a slice of American pie a la mode.” As his parents struggled with English and used violence for discipline, Tran wrestled with fitting in at school. Thankfully he developed the plan, a self-described “war of assimilation.” Operation one: be smart, learn perfect English. Operation two: “look punk. You know one way to show that you fit in? By not fitting in.” And that’s exactly what he did. With a measured, comedic voice saturated with introspection, Tran bravely lays his life (the beatings, the poverty, the vicious taunting) on the page without judgment and without rose-colored glasses. Literally fortified by literature (which he fell in love with), he uses the classics to explain his own childhood and adolescence to great effect. Read this book; it’s an important story of immigration, America, and the disconnect between generations, cultures, and how to find connection. And, if you’re like me, you will be in awe of his words, humor, insight, and dedication to sharing his experience in all of its glory and hurt. Plus, even though you might cry, you will definitely laugh out loud. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
Hidden Valley Road
Oprah’s April Book Club Pick
By Robert Kohler
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
Early in Hidden Valley Road, Robert Kolker observes that, “For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member.” There is no greater testament to the truth of that observation than Don and Mimi Galvin’s twelve children: six of their sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia, starting with their eldest son who was diagnosed in his late teens, by which time five of his brothers were also breaking down. With six family members mentally ill with a disease about which medical opinion shifted every few years, the foundation of the Galvin family didn’t so much tilt as tip over. Kolker does an outstanding job of reportage on all fronts: the chronology of the Galvin boys’ breakdowns, the effects on their parents, and critically, on the siblings who did not become mentally ill, growing up in a household utterly defined, internally and externally, by the mental illness that rampaged through the family. Kolker also deftly weaves the history of diagnosing and treating schizophrenia into the narrative; it’s cold comfort that the Galvin family became “a monumental case study in humanity’s most perplexing disease.” Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road takes an astonishing, heartrending story and elevates it with empathy and superb storytelling. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
Conjure Women
By Afia Atakora
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
Rue has secrets. The young midwife and all-around healer in a town of freed black slaves, Rue knows the personal stories hidden inside her neighbors’ walls, and the townspeople trust her discretion. But Rue also holds darker knowledge about the burned-out plantation that enslaved them and about Varina, the planation’s dead heiress. As Afia Atakora’s historical novel slides forward and backward in time in episodes labeled Slaverytime, Wartime, Freedomtime, or the Ravaging, Atakora juggles the puzzle pieces of Rue’s life, revealing portions here and there until finally the last few—and very dramatic—pieces click into place. Evocative and sometimes dreamlike writing, hollowing moments of crisis, and an iron-spined young woman who ignites the page make this debut novel one to savor and then pass to your favorite fellow reader. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review
Valentine
Reading with Jenna April Book Club Pick
By Elizabeth Wetmore
Pub Date: March 31, 2020
When a young Mexican girl is viciously raped and beaten by a brooding oil-slick cowboy, the small town of Odessa, Texas, must decide where the law lies and who they believe. Narrated by five women, Valentine is the story of how they survive amidst the 1970s violence, poverty, and racism that surrounds them. Despite their wounds, each of these women—whether victims or bystanders, young or old, lost or found, directly connected to the violence or not—are sunbaked strong and have been fighting for their lives as long as they can remember. Desperation, loneliness, and fear abound in this novel, but so too does care, compassion, and hope. Elizabeth Wetmore’s debut calls to mind Western greats like Larry McMurtry but supplants the hardened cowboys with fierce and courageous women. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written, Valentine will linger with you long after you’ve finished the last page. —Al Woodworth
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
By Grady Hendrix
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
Pitching a novel as ‘Steel Magnolias meets Dracula’ is a bold move, but The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires lives up to the comparison. Patricia is a Charleston housewife whose husband Carter spends more time traveling for work than he does at home. Her two teenage kids don’t appreciate her, and much of her time is spent caring for her senile mother-in-law. The only thing giving her life is her book club. So what if their typical picks, like Cry, the Beloved Country are less her speed than the true crime titles they actually discuss? One night after book club, an elderly neighbor attacks Patricia, which brings the woman’s handsome nephew into Patricia’s life, and just like that, her life takes a turn for the more interesting. James is smart, well-read, well-traveled, and attentive. But as time goes on, Patricia realizes that she is not the only one James is interested in; that she, her family, and even her beloved book club are being groomed by a man who may be a monster. The big draw here is a portrayal of the 90s—both hilarious and spot-on accurate—that manages to be both gentle satire and affectionate homage all in one, while touching on social issues like racism, sexism, classism, and feminism. Watching these friends put the steel in steel magnolias may be the funniest horror story you read all year. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
Pretty Things
By Janelle Brown (author of Watch Me Disappear)
Available April 21, 2020
It’s hard to tell the marks from the con artists in Pretty Things. Everyone has an angle, and everyone has a façade behind which they hide the wounds of their past. Nina’s mother Lily hustled Nina’s entire childhood to get her an education, so she wouldn’t have to turn to crime as Lily had done. Yet here’s Nina and her shady boyfriend Lachlan fleeing L.A. just one step ahead of the law, who are onto the scams Nina has pulled in order to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments. When Lachlan suggests they hide out in Lake Tahoe, Nina agrees. Her next mark, and former foe, heiress and Instagram influencer Vanessa Liebling, is in residence at her family’s Tahoe estate, Stonehaven, and Nina sees an opportunity to settle an old score. Pretty Things packs a lot of story into what should be a straightforward revenge tale. Dual narrators—Vanessa and Nina—have the same effect on the many twists and reveals as a funhouse mirror, warping the reader’s ability to know who to root for, because both woman are likable. But both come from families that make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch, so you know it’s going to be last man standing as class warfare, social media, money, and old history square off in this complex and riveting thriller. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
How Much of These Hills is Gold
By C. Pam Zhang
Available April 7, 2020
In this captivating and memorable debut, Lucy and Sam are Chinese siblings let loose into the American west. Ambition led their Ma and their father, whom they call Ba, to a western mining town. But the only thing to be mined there was coal. Once their Ma passed, it was just a matter of time before life ground down their Ba. Eventually, Lucy and Sam leave their home with Ba’s corpse and a stolen horse. They enter a splintered, raw, and sometimes dreamlike landscape—a new myth of the west and one just as viable as the myth so many generations of Americans have embraced. C Pam Zhang’s language is deft and poetic: the moon is “the rib in the sky,” and as night creeps in, the children face the jackal’s hour “when edges disappear and the line softens between the real and the not.” In How Much of These Hills is Gold, Zhang has achieved a fine balance between poetry and grit, casting two siblings out on a journey of transformation, drawing on their family’s past and present to set Lucy and Sam on a course that—they hope—will deliver them to the place where they belong. –Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review
Three Hours in Paris
By Cara Black
Available April 7, 2020
Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris is a highly entertaining historical thriller of espionage and political double-dealing set in the unique atmosphere of Paris during the Nazi occupation. It’s 1940, and Kate Rees is an American living with her husband and young daughter in the U.K. When tragedy strikes, the war becomes personal for this former ranch girl from Oregon, and Kate—a champion markswoman—is recruited by the British government for a clandestine mission in Paris: assassinate Hitler. With revenge on her mind, Kate is dropped into the City of Light to carry out her assignment, but things go awry and she’s suddenly on her own and on the run. A cat-and-mouse chase ensues over the next 36 hours as Kate tries to get out of the country before she’s caught by Gunter Hoffman, a methodical former policeman tasked by Hitler himself to find the would-be assassin. Black’s thriller gives readers a delightful fictional answer to the mystery of Hitler’s real-life three-hour visit to Paris in June 1940 that ended abruptly for reasons still unknown. Three Hours in Paris is an exciting page-turner that will be particularly enjoyable for readers who appreciate a heroine who defies all odds and expectations. —Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review
Chosen Ones
By Veronica Roth (Author of Divergent)
Available April 7, 2020
The author behind critical and commercially successful Divergent series doesn’t disappoint with her first adult novel. The premise hooked me immediately: what happens fifteen years after a group of teens save the world? It feels too good to be true: for once, the epilogue gets to languorously extend itself into a full series. While the book evokes the real world ennui of The Magicians, the political thriller element of The Themis Files, and the quantum tang of Dark Matter, the core of this relentlessly paced adventure novel is the journey of a damaged person learning she’s still capable of loving and being loved. The uncertainty threaded through each plot element and character more than the visceral violence are what make the book decidedly adult. This unique twist on the quarter-life crisis also includes clever steampunk- inspired magical technology and powerful mythical objects. A welcome diversion indeed. —Katy Ball