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Debut Authors in 2023 January, 2024 |
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Not that kind of ever after
by Luci Adams
Newly empowered after she stops looking for“the one,” Bella Marble unexpectedly becomes a viral sensation when she posts a fairytale retelling of a disastrous one-night-stand under the name of @B.Enchanted and soon seeks out new fairytales to live through and share with her fans.
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Chain-Gang All-Stars
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
"Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences"
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The three of us : a novel
by Ore Agbaje-Williams
Told from three different viewpoints over the course of one day, this domestic comedy follows a wife, her husband and her best friend as long-standing tensions between all of them come to a breaking point, throwing everyone's integrity into question and their relationships into chaos.
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The writing retreat : a novel
by Julia Bartz
While attending a month-long writing retreat at the estate of a feminist horror writer who issues a life-changing challenge, Alex, determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, ignores the strange happenings around her until the disappearance of a fellow writer leads her on a desperate search for the truth.
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Temple folk
by Aaliyah Bilal
Ten stories portray the lived experiences of black Muslims grappling with faith, family and freedom in America, presenting moral failures with compassion, nuance and humor to remind us that it's the errors that make us human.
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The girls of summer
by Katie Bishop
Increasingly obsessed with reliving the events of a long-ago love affair with a man 20 years older on a remote, sun-soaked Greek Island when she was seventeen, Rachel reconnects with the other girls she knew on the island and is forced to reconsider the story she's been telling herself about their relationship.
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The art of scandal
by Regina Black
After discovering her husband is having an affair, Rachel Abbott agrees to keep playing the ideal Black trophy wife until after his reelection campaign but finds it hard to keep her side of the bargain when she falls in love with an artist whose secrets blow everything wide open.
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Dirty laundry : a novel
by Disha Bose
"Ciara Dunphy has it all--a loving husband, well-behaved children, and a beautiful home. Her circle of friends in their small Irish village go to her for tips about mothering, style, and influencer success--a picture-perfect life is easy money on Instagram. But behind the filters, reality is less polished. Enter Mishti Guha: Ciara's best friend. Ciara welcomed Mishti into her inner circle for being . . . unlike the other mothers in the group. Discontent in a marriage arranged for her by her parents back in Calcutta, Mishti now raises her young daughter in a country that is too cold, among children who look nothing like her. She wants what Ciara has--the ease with which she moves through the world--and, in that sense, Mishti might be exactly like the other mothers. And there's earth mother Lauren Doyle: born, bred, and the butt of jokes in their village. With her disheveled partner and children who run naked in the yard, they're mostly a happy lot, though ostracized for being the singular dysfunction in Ciara's immaculate world. When Lauren finds an unlikely ally in Mishti, she decides that her days of ridicule are over. Then Ciara is found murdered in her own pristine home, and the house of cards she'd worked so hard to build comes crumbling down. Everyone seems to have something to gain from Ciara's death, so if they don't want the blame, it may be the perfect time to air their enemies' dirty laundry."
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House of cotton
by Monica Brashears
A broke and effectively orphaned nineteen-year-old, Magnolia Brown, accepts an offer from a mysterious, slick stranger for a lucrative“modeling” job at his family's funeral home and becomes concerned as the job requests become increasingly weird. 250,000 first printing.
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Black candle women : a novel
by Diane Marie Brown
Follows four generations of the Montrose family, who have been living with a curse that leaves any person they fall in love with dead, stemming back to a Voodoo sorceress in 1950s New Orleans' French Quarter
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Nineteen steps : a novel
by Millie Bobby Brown
It's 1942, and air raid sirens continue to wail around London. Eighteen-year-old Nellie Morris counts every day lucky that she emerges from the underground shelters unharmed, her loving family still surrounding her.
After a chance encounter with Ray, an American airman stationed nearby, Nellie becomes enchanted with the idea of a broader world. Just when Nellie begins to embrace an exciting new life with Ray, a terrible incident occurs during an air raid one evening, tearing Nellie's world is torn apart. But just when it seems all hope is lost, Nellie finds that, against all odds, love and happiness can triumph. Nineteen Steps is a deeply affecting, mesmerizing page-turner inspired by the author's family history. An epic story of longing, loss, and secrets, Millie Bobby Brown's propulsive debut introduces an unforgettable, brave young woman and boldly portrays the strength in the power of love.
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Clytemnestra : a novel
by Costanza Casati
After her husband starts the Trojan War to bring her sister back, Clytemnestra begins an affair with Aegisthus and plots to kill her husband for sacrificing their daughter in this retelling of the classic Greek tragedy.
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Save what's left
by Elizabeth Castellano
Starting over in a small beach community on the east coast, Kathleen Deane discovers this picturesque town is not what it seems but just what she needs as she finds herself in an all-out war with her neighbors who are building a huge monstrosity next to her tiny cottage.
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A good house for children : a novel
by Kate Collins
Leaving their city apartment for the promise of more space for their children, Nick and Orla move to an antiquated Georgian mansion on the Dorset cliffs, where strange and ghostly things start to happen.
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Bellies : a novel
by Nicola Dinan
Two queer men who hit it off during their university's drag night begin a relationship and eventually plan a life together face a momentous challenge when one of them announces an intention to transition.
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The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories
by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia
A girl born a small, unnamed pueblo is blessed - or cursed - with the abilities to produce valuable gems from her bodily fluids. A tired wife and mother escapes the confines of her oppressive life and body by shapeshifting into a cloud. A girl reckons with the death of her father and her changing familial dynamics while slowly, mysteriously losing her physical senses. Infused with keen insight and presented in startling prose, the stories in this dark, magnetic collection by newcomer Rebecca Hirsch Garcia invite the reader into an uncanny and interpersonal in a way that is undeniably, distincty human.
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The Carnivale of Curiosities
by Amiee Gibbs
Forced to sign an insidious contract with one of the most notorious men in Victorian London, Aurelius Ashe, the proprietor of Ashe and Pretorius's Carnivale of Curiosities, the most coveted ticket in town, sets in motion a perilous chain of events with the lives of all involved suspended in the balance.
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The hurricane wars : a novel
by Thea Guanzon
Tasked with obliterating any threats to the Night Empire's rule, Prince Alaric, the emperor's only son and heir, tries to kill Talasyn, a girl burning brightly on the battlefield with the magic that ignited the Hurricane Wars, but instead, in a clash of light and dark, creates a force the likes of which has never been seen.
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The Jasad heir
by Sara Hashem
"At ten years old, the Heir of Jasad fled a massacre that takes her entire family. At fifteen, she buried her first body. At twenty, the clock is ticking on Sylvia's third attempt at home. Nizahl's armies have laid waste to Jasad and banned magic across the four remaining kingdoms. Fortunately, Sylvia's magic is as good at playing dead as she is. When the Nizahl Heir tracks a group of Jasadis to Sylvia's village, the quiet life she's crafted unravels. Calculating and cold, Arin's tactical brilliance is surpassed only by his hatred for magic. When a mistake exposes Sylvia's magic, Arin offers her an escape: compete as Nizahl's Champion in the Alcalah tournament and win immunity from persecution. To win the deadly Alcalah, Sylvia must work with Arin to free her trapped magic, all while staying a step ahead of his efforts to uncover her identity. But as the two grow closer, Sylvia realizes winning her freedom means destroying any chance of reuniting Jasad under her banner. The scorched kingdom is rising again, and Sylvia will have to choose between the life she's earned and the one she left behind"
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Good women
by Halle Hill
"In twelve stories, Good Women follows the lives of Black women through Appalachia and the Deep South, examining what forces shape their realities and what force they carry with them. A darkly funny and deeply human collection, Hill observes how place, blood-ties, generational trauma, desperation, obsessions, and boundaries (or lack thereof) all influence how people navigate their worlds-in the most intimate and most coincidental of relationships. A woman on the Greyhound bus barreling toward a Florida retirement community prepares to lie to her online boyfriend's mother; a teenager joins Weight Watchers at church as her father's illness overwhelms their home; a young woman working at the state fair considers revenge against a man who's harmed her mother. As these women wrestle with what they need, with what they want, Hill captures what's mundane in moments of absurdity and what isn't in painfully ordinary moments, and how any moment could be life changing"
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Our best intentions : a novel
by Vibhuti Jain
Caught in the middle of a criminal investigation after finding her classmate stabbed and bleeding, Angie, an introverted teenager, must navigate conflicting narratives while her father attempts to shield her and protect his hard-earned efforts to assimilate, which overshadows his ability to see right from wrong.
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Small town sins : a novel
by Ken Jaworowski
In a down-and-out Pennsylvania town, Nathan, a volunteer fireman who finds a secret stash of money; Callie, a nurse who risks her career to grant her young patient a final wish; and Andy, a recovering heroin addict who doles out vigilante justice, must face their troubled pasts—and their crimes—to have a future.
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You know her
by Meagan Jennett
Becoming friends with Sophie Braam, Officer Nora Martin, new to the unwelcoming Bellair Police Department, begins to suspect something's not quite right with the unnerving, enigmatic bartender and discovers she's the serial killer terrorizing their small town, but wonders if anyone will believe her.
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Lunar love : a novel
by Lauren Kung Jessen
Endeavoring to take over her grandmother's matchmaking business, Olivia Huang Christenson is outraged when she learns a new dating app has made her Pó Po's traditional Chinese zodiac approach all about lust and“animal attraction.”
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What happened to Ruthy Ramirez
by Claire Jimenez
When she spots her missing sister, Ruthy, who disappeared when she was 13, on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show, Jessica, along with her younger sister, mother, and her mother's holy roller best friend, set out on a family road trip to find the truth.
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The secret diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho : a novel
by Paterson Joseph
In 1746 Georgian London, Charles Ignatius Sancho, a young Black man and escaped slave, after an unexpected twist of fate, meets the king, writes and plays highly acclaimed music, becomes the first Black person to vote in Britain and leads the fight to end slavery.
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Flipping boxcars : a novel
by Cedric
Struggling to get by during the Great Depression and World War II, Babe, a gambler with a heart of gold and the gift of gab, when he endangers the little security his family has, risks everything for one big score—a make-or-break scheme involving railroad boxcars.
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Amazing Grace Adams
by Fran Littlewood
"A funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink--who finally pushes back. Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled--the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace sets off across London, armed with a ¹200 cake, to win back her estrangedteenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she'll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. EvenGrace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them...and, most important, remind herself"
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Do tell : a novel
by Lindsay Lynch
A contract actress moonlighting as Hollywood's reigning gossip columnist publishes an accusation from a rising starlet that an A-list actor assaulted her, changing the trajectories of all involved and forcing her to make an impossible choice about her lucrative career.
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The Centre
by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
Dreaming of one day translating“great works of literature,” Anisa Ellahi, who spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies, enrolls in an elite, invite-only program at The Centre, where she, seduced by all that it's made possible, soon realizes the hidden cost of its services.
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Only the Dead Know Peace
by Alberto Mansur
In the spirit of The Cartel, The Little Drummer Girl, and I Am Pilgrim, Alberto Mansur's debut thriller offers a bracing, wide-angle portrait of the fence dividing Israel and Palestine, the most controversial border on earth. It follows a diverse cast of characters as they fight for love, belief, country, and power. In Israel and Palestine, religious and political tensions are boiling, threatening to explode an untenable status quo. A renowned baker and his son are at odds, one turning his back on Allah, the other determined to prove himself worthy of God's love. A rich playboy shatters his life in the States and joins Israel's special forces searching for purpose and meaning. An Israeli vixen with a tragic past and a penchant for violence finds herself torn between her work for the Russian mob and the people she loves. And a charismatic Jewish leader starts a movement with the most surprising goal of all. In Only the Dead Know Peace, these characters and more touch each other's lives as they weave a tangled web of passion, violence, intrigue, and political and religious manipulation.
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West heart kill
by Dann McDorman
Attending the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, PI Adam McAnnis, when a major storm hits, is faced with three corpses within four days and a cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful members.
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Moonrise over New Jessup
by Jamila Minnicks
In 1957, Alice Young arrives in the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, a place of opposing viewpoints on desegregation at the beginning of the civil rights movement, where she falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities could expel them from the home they love.
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Curves for days
by Laura Moher
A plus-size woman has a disastrous meeting with the gruff contractor working on her home, but the more time they spend together, the more they appreciate one another and their friendship blooms into a beautiful, small-town romance.
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Murder by degrees : a mystery
by Ritu Mukerji
In 1875 Philadelphia, Dr. Lydia Weston, a professor and anatomist at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, investigates the death of her patient Anna, a young woman who seemingly committed suicide, and discovers a terrible, long hidden secret that makes her the target of those who wished to silence Anna.
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Welcome me to the kingdom : stories
by Mai Nardone
Set across the temples, slums and gated estates of late 20th-century Bangkok, three families—a Thai Elvis impersonator and his only daughter, a family abandoned by their white American patriarch and an adopted brotherhood of orphaned boys—search for reinvention in a city unmade by a financial crisis.
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Sunshine Nails : a novel
by Mai Nguyãäen
When an ultra-glam chain salon opens across the street from their family nail salon, Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran devise some good old-fashioned sabotage, but when the line between right and wrong gets blurred, they must choose between keeping their family together or fighting for their salon.
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The berry pickers : a novel
by Amanda Peters
Growing up as the only child of affluent and overprotective parents, Norma, troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination, searches for the truth, leading her to the blueberry fields of Maine, where a family secret is finally revealed.
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Tropicâalia : a novel
by Harold Rogers
When the mother who abandoned them returns to grieve her father, Daniel and Lucia, whose family is cursed, condemned to the pain of deprivation, betrayal, violence and love, find themselves hurtling toward an irrevocable breaking point that results in the unthinkable.
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Monstrilio
by Gerardo Sâamano Câordova
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased 11-year-old son's lung, nurturing it until in gains sentience, and hides this carnivorous little Monstrilio in the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate, but his innate impulses threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
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Company : stories
by Shannon Sanders
Told in 13 stories, this multigenerational saga follows an African-American family and their friends as they navigate the challenges and joys of life—from the 1960s to the 2000s, from Atlantic City to Washington D.C.
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A most agreeable murder : a novel
by Julia Seales
"Feisty, passionate Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township--she is terrible at needlework, has absolutely no musical ability, and her artwork is so bad it frightens people. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father, and two younger sisters--beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. If anyone in her etiquette-obsessed community found out, she'd be deemed a morbid creep and banished from respectable society forever. For her family's sake, she's vowed to put her obsession behind her. Because eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. If not, Martin Grub, their disgusting cousin, will inherit the family's estate, and they will be ruined or, even worse, forced to move to France. So Beatrice must be on her best behavior . . . which is made difficult when a disgraced yet alluring detective inexplicably shows up to the ball. Beatrice is just holding things together when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet. As a storm rages outside, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear, and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer. Contending with competitive card games, tricky tonics, and Swampshire's infamous squelch holes, Beatrice must rise above decorum and decency to pursue justice and her own desires--before anyone else is murdered"
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One summer in Savannah : a novel
by Terah Shelton Harris
Returning to the Georgia home she fled after she was raped eight years earlier, 26-year-old Sara, while caring for her ailing father and running his bookstore, hides her daughter from the Wylers, the powerful family of the man who assaulted her, until her world collides with her attacker's identical twin brother.
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Camp zero : a novel
by Michelle Min Sterling
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp--but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero's inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo. Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.
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He said he would be late
by Justine Sullivan
The loving wife of a rising Boston banker takes a deep dive down a dangerous rabbit hole after she intercepts a text with a kissy-face emoji on her husband's phone while everyone around her becomes convinced she's losing her mind.
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Banyan Moon : a novel
by Thao Thai
Three Vietnamese American women mourning the death of the family matriarch recount their lives and childhoods at a crumbling, gothic manor called Banyan House, where the secrets of her grandmother's past come to light.
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Here in the night : stories
by Rebecca Turkewitz
"With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential. After dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, boundaries loosen, expectations fall away, and even the greatest skeptics believe--at least fleetingly--that anything could happen"
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My husband : a novel
by Maud Ventura
Obsessing over her perfect husband, a beautiful 40-year-old Parisian woman, who has an enviable life, watches him attentively and sets traps to make sure he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met until one day she realizes she may have gone too far.
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The Nigerwife : a novel
by Vanessa Walters
"Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband; a palatial house in the heart of glittering Lagos, Nigeria; and a glamorous group of friends. She left gloomy London and a troubled family past behind for sunny, moneyed Lagos, becoming part of the Nigerwives--a community of foreign women married to Nigerian men. But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her so-called perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her auntie Claudine decides to take matters into her own hands. Armed with only a cell phone and a plane ticket to Nigeria, she digs into her niece's life and uncovers a hidden side filled with dark secrets, isolation, and even violence. But the more she discovers about Nicole, the more Claudine's own buried history threatens to come to light"
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Speak of the devil : a novel
by Rose Wilding
On New Year's Eve, 1999, seven women, gathered together in a hotel room on midnight with a man's head sitting in the center of the floor, must figure out which one killed Jamie Spellman in order to protect each other.
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Holding pattern
by Jenny Xie
Searching for direction after a humiliating breakup, a young woman returns to her Oakland home and finds herself planning her own mother's wedding to a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.
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Dearborn : stories
by Ghassan Zeineddine
"Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans. By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces readers to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community,and how it is that we help one another survive"
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The fraud squad
by Kyla Zhao
Infiltrating Singapore's socialite scene to realize her dream of writing for a high-society magazine, Samantha Song, fearing being exposed as an imposter, especially with a mysterious gossip columnist on the prowl, must reconcile her pretense with who she really is before she loses it all.
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