September 18, 2026
This was a week of bookish nights. It kicked off on Monday night when I went to Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ to see Amanda Peters, author of THE BIRTHING TREE, in conversation with Alice Elliott Dark, who was a brilliant interviewer. Amanda discussed her Mi'kmaq ancestry; she is a member of Glooscap First Nation, an indigenous community located in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. She was inspired to write the novel after hearing stories about a tree where women gave birth. She also talked about a custom where the first voices a baby hears when he or she is born should be that of the mother or father so he or she is united with them, which sounds like a lovely tradition.
Editorial Content for The Amateur
Book
Teaser
When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddie with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men and a teenager on trial.
Promo
When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddie with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men and a teenager on trial.
About the Book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of MIDWIVES and THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT: When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddie with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men and a teenager on trial.
1978: It is the first Thursday in August, and temperatures are flirting with 90 when 18-year-old Mira Winston drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives.
In the wake of this terrible accident --- and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident --- Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddie’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman.
A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, THE AMATEUR asks: What happens when one small moment --- a swing, a ball, a piece of string --- changes the course of an entire life?
Editorial Content for Etna
Book
Teaser
Beloved author Paul Yoon, winner of The Story Prize, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
Promo
Beloved author Paul Yoon, winner of The Story Prize, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
About the Book
Beloved author Paul Yoon, winner of The Story Prize, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home --- to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.
Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?
This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times.
Editorial Content for Majestic Hills
Book
Teaser
A Black couple leaves their downtown Chicago condo for a new suburban subdivision, only to find themselves at the center of a maelstrom.
Promo
A Black couple leaves their downtown Chicago condo for a new suburban subdivision, only to find themselves at the center of a maelstrom.
About the Book
A Black couple leaves their downtown Chicago condo for a new suburban subdivision, only to find themselves at the center of a maelstrom, in this gripping page-turner from the award-winning author of THREE GIRLS FROM BRONZEVILLE.
Tired of the daily drama in his emergency room, Dr. Langdon Blaque is in search of a place where he can leave the world behind. He loves his job, and has no delusions about the suburbs being perfect, but he wants peace and quiet. His wife Josephine, a lawyer, grew up listening to her father’s stories about the Jim Crow South and sundown towns. She prefers the city. Still, she agrees to move with the caveat that they stay for a year and reassess.
The tight-knit, predominantly white group of neighbors in Majestic Hills initially welcomes them with open arms. But beneath the veneer of privileged harmony, tensions simmer. When a horrifying crime rocks the community, the illusion of safety is shattered, and Josephine and Langdon find themselves at the heart of a brewing storm that pits neighbor against neighbor, exposes deeply ingrained prejudices, and threatens to implode into violence.
As their experiment in suburban living ticks toward the one-year mark, the Blaques are pushed to a breaking point. Can they find a way to make a home in Majestic Hills? Or has the move put their future, their marriage and even their safety in jeopardy?

















