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Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. Elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s dark-skinned daughter, Bird, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.

Week of March 2, 2015

Releases for the week of March 2nd include CHINA DOLLS by Lisa See, in which the lives of three friends are threatened by paranoia and suspicion after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything; BOY, SNOW, BIRD, the widely acclaimed novel from Helen Oyeyemi that recasts the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty and vanity; and THE NOBLE HUSTLE, Pulitzer finalist Colson Whitehead’s memoir of his search for meaning at high stakes poker tables, which he describes as “EAT, PRAY, LOVE for depressed shut-ins.”