June 26, 2020
Thanks to the readers who wrote last week to note that the flowers in the newsletter were petunias, not pansies. I am not sure what I was thinking, but thanks to Myrna, Molly, Bonnie and Jane for catching this. I was amused by those who told me that “in their part of the country,” they were petunias. They are in ours, too. For humor, Tom Donadio, our Editorial Director --- who triple-checks the newsletter every week, but by his own admission knows nothing about flowers --- actually Googled pansies and thought the petunias looked like them! Which made me feel better. But they ARE petunias.
Editorial Content for The Beauty of Broken Things
Teaser
United by tragedy, can two broken souls make each other whole? That is the question Victoria Connelly poses to the readers of her latest novel, THE BEAUTY OF BROKEN THINGS.
Promo
United by tragedy, can two broken souls make each other whole? That is the question Victoria Connelly poses to the readers of her latest novel, THE BEAUTY OF BROKEN THINGS.
About the Book
United by tragedy, can two broken souls make each other whole?
After the tragic loss of his wife, Helen, Luke Hansard is desperate to keep her memory alive. In an effort to stay close to her, he reaches out to an online friend Helen often mentioned: a reclusive photographer with a curious interest in beautiful but broken objects. But first he must find her --- and she doesn’t want to be found.
Orla Kendrick lives alone in the ruins of a remote Suffolk castle, hiding from the haunting past that has left her physically and emotionally scarred. In her fortress, she can keep a safe distance from prying eyes, surrounded by her broken treasures and insulated from the world outside.
When Luke tracks Orla down, he is determined to help her in the way Helen wanted to: by encouraging her out of her isolation and back into the world. But Orla has never seen her refuge as a prison, and when painful secrets and dangerous threats begin to resurface, Luke’s good deed is turned on its head.
As they work through their grief for Helen in very different ways, will these two broken souls be able to heal?
Editorial Content for A Burning
Book
Teaser
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi and Jhumpa Lahiri, A BURNING is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise --- to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies --- and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
Promo
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi and Jhumpa Lahiri, A BURNING is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise --- to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies --- and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
About the Book
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi and Jhumpa Lahiri, A BURNING is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise --- to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies --- and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely --- an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth, hope and humor --- has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
Taut, symphonic, propulsive and riveting from its opening lines, A BURNING has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut.
Editorial Content for Evvie Drake Starts Over
Teaser
This heartfelt debut is about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who has lost her husband and a major league pitcher who has lost his game.
Promo
This heartfelt debut is about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who has lost her husband and a major league pitcher who has lost his game.
About the Book
A heartfelt debut about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who's lost her husband and a major league pitcher who’s lost his game.
In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.
When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken --- and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts --- the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept. But in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance --- up until the last out.
A joyful, hilarious and hope-filled debut, EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER will have you cheering for the two most unlikely comebacks of the year --- and will leave you wanting more from Linda Holmes.
Editorial Content for Hannah's War
Book
Teaser
A "mesmerizing" reimagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of THE ALICE NETWORK), HANNAH'S WAR is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.
Promo
A "mesmerizing" reimagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of THE ALICE NETWORK), HANNAH'S WAR is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.
About the Book
A "mesmerizing" reimagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of THE ALICE NETWORK), HANNAH'S WAR is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.
Berlin, 1938. Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon's creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science's greatest achievement.
New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler's scientists. Chief among Jack's suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for.
HANNAH'S WAR is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.
Editorial Content for Montauk
Book
Teaser
An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, MONTAUK captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.
Promo
An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, MONTAUK captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.
About the Book
An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, MONTAUK captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.
Montauk, Long Island, 1938.
For three months, this humble fishing village will serve as the playground for New York City’s wealthy elite. Beatrice Bordeaux was looking forward to a summer of reigniting the passion between her and her husband, Harry. Instead, tasked with furthering his investment interest in Montauk as a resort destination, she learns she’ll be spending 12 weeks sequestered with the high society wives at The Montauk Manor --- a 200-room seaside hotel --- while Harry pursues other interests in the city.
College educated, but raised a modest country girl in Pennsylvania, Bea has never felt fully comfortable among these privileged women, whose days are devoted not to their children but to leisure activities and charities that seemingly benefit no one but themselves. She longs to be a mother herself, as well as a loving wife, but after five years of marriage she remains childless while Harry is increasingly remote and distracted. Despite lavish parties at the Manor and the Yacht Club, Bea is lost and lonely and befriends the manor’s laundress whose work ethic and family life stir memories of who she once was.
As she drifts further from the society women and their preoccupations and closer toward Montauk’s natural beauty and community spirit, Bea finds herself drawn to a man nothing like her husband --- stoic, plain spoken and enigmatic. Inspiring a strength and courage she had almost forgotten, his presence forces her to face a haunting tragedy of her past and question her future.
Desperate to embrace moments of happiness, no matter how fleeting, she soon discovers that such moments may be all she has, when fates conspire to tear her world apart.
