Sadeqa Johnson, author of Yellow Wife

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her 18th birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured and sold every day. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit her Jailer, and soon she faces the ultimate sacrifice.

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Melanie Benjamin, author of The Children's Blizzard

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats --- leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as 16 were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm.

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Gregg Hurwitz, author of Prodigal Son: An Orphan X Novel

The highest power in the country has made Evan Smoak a tempting offer --- in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. But then he gets a call for help from a woman claiming to have given him up for adoption. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran, a man whose life has gone off the rails and who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother and sister assassination team are after him. With no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he has fought for is on the line --- including his own life.

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The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

January 2021

Marie Benedict’s THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE takes readers down the rabbit hole with the real-life adventure of Agatha Christie. Many of us are familiar with Marie’s previous works, all of which looked at the woman who was “beside the man.” Here she takes a woman who we all think we know well as a writer, and walks us through the paces of an event that many of us may not know about --- the 11 days in December 1926 when she went missing. I know this is something I was never aware of. What happened and why?

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Melanie Benjamin, author of The Children's Blizzard

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats --- leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as 16 were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm.

Read more »