Narrative theme: coming of age

Book SynopsisIt's a warm summer's afternoon when young Alice first tumbles down the rabbit hole and into the adventures in Wonderland that have kept readers spellbound for more than 150 years. Collected here are Lewis Carroll's two classics - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - in which Alice encounters the laconic Cheshire Cat, the anxious White Rabbit and the terrifying Red Queen, as well as a host of other outlandish and charming characters.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is brought to life by Sir John Tenniel's legendary illustrations in colour, and with an afterword by Anna South.Trade ReviewI revelled in all the logical games, and the wordplay. It made me laugh till my sides hurt -- Richard Cohen * Independent *‘Alice’ makes the logic of the everyday world appear nonsensical and the absurd make glorious sense -- Mark Hudson * The Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisI am Eve. Collector of words. I look them up. I write them down. I knead them into sentences. I am the story. When her mum rescues a book from a garbage can, Eve's life changes. She reads her way into the stories, into a place in the world, worlds she never knew existed. Eve becomes the story. Everything is possible. But with adulthood comes deception and betrayal; to survive Eve strips life bare. No stories, no people, no connection. But the stories are determined to win her back.

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Book SynopsisTwenty-four-year-old Billy is beautiful and sexy. Albert—The Pharmacist—is a compelling but damaged older man, and a veteran of London’s late 90s club scene. After a chance meeting in the heart of the London’s East End, Billy is seduced into the sphere of Albert. An unconventional friendship develops, fuelled by Albert's queer narratives and an endless supply of narcotics. Alive with the twilight times between day and night, consciousness and unconsciousness, the foundations of Billy's life begin to irrevocably shift and crack, as he fast-tracks toward manhood. This story of lust, love and loss is homoerotic bildungsroman at its finest. 'At the heart of David's The Pharmacist is an oddly touching and bizarre love story, a modern day Harold and Maude set in the drugged-up world of pre-gentrification Shoreditch. The dialogue, especially, bristles with glorious life.' -JONATHAN KEMP, author of London Triptych "An exploration of love and loss in the deathly hallows of twenty-first century London. Justin David's prose is as sharp as a hypodermic needle. Unflinching, uncomfortable but always compelling, The Pharmacist finds the true meaning of love in the most unlikely places." -NEIL McKENNA, author of Fanny and Stella.Trade Review"'There they are in the dark, men standing in circles … while the rest of London goes about its business.' Much crucial action takes place in a club's toilets in Justin David’s The Pharmacist, now republished as a standalone novella after having gained cult success when it was released digitally in 2014. It is here that the twenty-four-year-old artist Billy Monroe – the novel's narrator – finds himself with his lover Jamie, both 'dewy eyed and loose-limbed' on MDMA; only Billy is secretly seeing another man, one three times his age, the Polari-speaking drug dealer Albert Power – a louche veteran of the club scene, still in possession of a jawline reminiscent of Marlon Brando's.; It is Albert – the pharmacist of the book's title – who first introduces Billy to ecstasy. Meeting by chance on a London street, Billy and Albert are instantly attracted to one another. 'Billy feels a knowledge pass between them … the kind of cruisy look he only gets from young guys'. It is only later that Billy discovers that Albert is a neighbour in the block of Victorian maisonettes in Shoreditch where he lives. Their first encounter is described with a nuanced sensitivity, alive to the pathos of a vigorous and innocent young man beginning an affair with someone more experienced. When Billy asks Albert about his life, he’s told: 'I am all your failed expectations in a man'. Yet the panama hat-wearing septuagenarian is more adventurous than his young lover. 'I’ve done some acting. Used to be a singer', he confesses. An eccentric and an aesthete, Albert tells Billy that his 'favourite authors are Genet and Proust, and that he never eats red meat on a Sunday and that he once had dinner with Dusty Springfield'. When Albert confesses to losing the love of his life after a thirty-year relationship, Billy begins to paint the man’s portrait from Albert's description of him. When he unveils this picture for Albert, Albert’s lies begin to unravel, leading to the book's tragic conclusion. ; A novella, as many great nineteenth-century European writers knew, is the perfect vehicle for depicting a love affair, and The Pharmacist's concise portrayal of Albert and Billy's doomed love recalls both Turgenev's First Love and Benjamin Constant's Adolphe. But the book is sharply contemporary. David has a painterly eye for the urban landscape of east London: 'Above the flats, a texture-less bruise of luminous grey-yellow spreads itself across the sky, like a patch of backlit vellum … The cobblestones look like rivets in brown PVC'. The galleries, artists' studios and pre-gentrification pubs of Shoreditch are brought vividly to life. As lubricious as early Alan Hollinghurst, The Pharmacist is a welcome reissue from Inkandescent, and the perfect introduction to a singular voice in gay literature." – Jude Cook, The Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisAs a boy growing up in the Black Country—drained grey by Mrs Thatcher’s steely policies—Jamie dreams of escape to a magical metropolis where he can rub shoulders with the mythical creatures who inhabit the pages of his Smash Hits. Though his hometown is not without characters and Jamie’s life not without dramas—courtesy of a cast of West Midlands divas led by his mother, Gloria. Her one-liners are as colourful as the mohair cardies she carries off with the panache of a television landlady. We follow Jamie through secondary school, teenage troubles and away to art school; there he experiences the flush of first love with Billy, and the rush of the big city. But what then? Will he return to the safety of Welston, or risk everything on a new life in London? These flamboyantly funny stories of self-discovery, set against the shifting social scenery of the 80s and 90s, are for everybody who’s ever decided to be the person they are meant to be.

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Book SynopsisThe Perseids brought it all out of the past, with a force like a blow that leaves you winded. The night lurched and seemed to swoop suddenly down. The boy still lay on his back, but when I sat up, gasping, I glimpsed the pale disc of his face as he turned to see what had startled me. 'It's all right,' I said, though it wasn't. It is the summer of 1954. Four young men, on a summer vacation buy an old car from a farmer and drive it from the hills of Wales all the way to the mountains of Spain. It is only a few years since the war, Europe is still in ruins. They are innocent and war-scarred, dreamers and realists, men but not much more than boys. They have their whole lives ahead of them. This will be their summer to remember. A beautiful, elegiac rumination on youth, friendship and the dreams that we hold. "A haunting meditation on memory and loss that takes the reader on a summer road trip to a vanished Spain. In this well-crafted, wistful novella, Sam Adams weaves his tapestry from fragments of a remembered friendship in a coming of age tale written with sixty years' bitter hindsight." - Richard Gwyn Sam Adams has created a rare novel in The Road to Zarauz, both timeless and very much of a time and a place, a past of hope and expectation erased in a moment, and what remains when hope is gone.

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Book SynopsisA Man Who Is Not A Man recounts the personal trauma of a young Xhosa initiate after a rite-of-passage circumcision goes wrong. With frankness and courage, this powerful novel details the pain and lifelong shame this protagonist experiences as a result not only of the physical trauma, but the social ostracism from being labeled 'a failed man.' He decodes the mysteries of this long-standing cultural tradition and calls to account the elders for the disintegrating support systems that allow such tragic outcomes. But it is also through this life-changing experience that the protagonist is forced to find his strength and humanity, and reassess what it really means to be a man.Trade Review"Highly original." - Nadine Gordimer "His straightforward no-frills prose tells an effective story of a botched circumcision and its consequences." - Zakes Mda, Sunday Independent "A brave book, triumphant and a testament to the indefatigable will to live." - Mail & Guardian

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Book SynopsisSingle-mother Fran returns to her sleepy hometown to care for her dying father when a devastating bush fire breaks out. A heartbreaking, nail-biting disaster-noir thriller from the bestselling author of The Cry and Worst Case Scenario. ‘Urgent, angry, absolutely terrifying, yet suffused with the humanity and humour you expect from a Helen Fitzgerald novel’ Erin Kelly ‘Tantalisingly powerful’ The Times ‘Ash Mountain is the author at her masterly best … I loved it!’ Louise Candlish ________________ Fran hates her hometown, and she thought she’d escaped. But her father is ill, and needs care. Her relationship is over, and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway. She returns home to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the weekends. There, in the sleepy town of Ash Mountain, childhood memories prick at her fragile self-esteem, she falls in love for the first time, and her demanding dad tests her patience, all in the unbearable heat of an Australian summer. As past friendships and rivalries are renewed, and new ones forged, Fran’s tumultuous home life is the least of her worries, when old crimes rear their heads and a devastating bushfire ravages the town and all of its inhabitants… Simultaneously a warm, darkly funny portrait of small-town life – and a woman and a land in crisis – and a shocking and truly distressing account of a catastrophic event that changes things forever, Ash Mountain is a heart-breaking slice of domestic noir, and a disturbing disaster thriller that you will never forget… ________________ ‘A new novel from Helen Fitzgerald is always a major event, and Ash Mountain is magnificent’ Mark Billingham ‘There is plenty of human depravity in the plot but none of that is as terrifyingly overmastering as the fire’ Literary Review ‘Domestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this – but that only makes you hungry for more’ The Sun ‘Dark, atmospheric and terrifying’ Ambrose Parry ‘Compelling’ Independent ‘A hugely entertaining writer, with lovingly constructed landscapes and so-real-you-can-actually-hear-it dialogue but the thing she does best of all is create a little warm and cosy microcosm of life, then throw in a bloody great firecracker of a detail that sends the whole thing off into a completely different direction’ Crime Fiction Lover Praise for Helen FitzGerald ***Worst Case Scenario was Shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2020*** ‘The plotting is intricate and beautifully handled, and the narrative pace is absolutely breakneck … a wonderful, energetic, hard-hitting and deeply funny novel’ The Big Issue ‘The main character is one of the most extraordinary you’ll meet between the pages of a book’ Ian Rankin ‘A dark, comic masterpiece which manages to be both excruciatingly tense and laugh out loud funny at the same time’ Mark Edwards ‘The classic thriller gets a hell of a twist’ Heat ‘FitzGerald writes like a more focused Irvine Welsh or a less misogynist Philip Roth’ Daily Telegraph ‘Domestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this – but that only makes you hungry for more’ The SunTrade Review'The plotting is intricate and beautifully handled, and the narrative pace is absolutely breakneck ... a wonderful, energetic, hard-hitting and deeply funny novel' The Big Issue;'Shocking, gripping and laugh-out-loud hilarious' Erin Kelly;'The main character is one of the most extraordinary you'll meet between the pages of a book' Ian Rankin;'A dark, comic masterpiece which manages to be both excruciatingly tense and laugh out loud funny at the same time' Mark Edwards;'Outrageous, extremely funny and ultimately devastating' Ambrose Parry;'Fabulously transgressive and completely unique' Mark Billingham;'The classic thriller gets a hell of a twist' Heat;'FitzGerald writes like a more focused Irvine Welsh or a less misogynist Philip Roth' Daily Telegraph

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Book SynopsisEstranged brothers are reunited over plans to develop the tower block where they grew up, but the desolate estate becomes a stage for reliving the events of one life-changing summer, forty years earlier … the exquisitely written, moving new novel from West Camel.‘Unfolds like a spell’ Carol Lovekin, author of Ghostbird‘A deceptively complex and layered story; beautiful, traumatic and ultimately uplifting’ Louise Beech, author of This Is How We Are Human'A mesmerising portrait of toxic family relationships: one that perfectly captures a turbulent era in a changing Britain. I was gripped' Caroline Wyatt_____________________________Twins Aaron and Clive have been estranged for forty years. Aaron still lives in the empty, crumbling tower block on the riverside in Deptford where they grew up. Clive is a successful property developer, determined to turn the tower into luxury flats.But Aaron is blocking the plan and their petty squabble becomes something much greater when two ghosts from the past – twins Annette and Christine – appear in the tower. At once, the desolate estate becomes a stage on which the events of one scorching summer are relived – a summer that shattered their lives, and changed everything forever…Grim, evocative and exquisitely rendered, Fall is a story of friendship and family – of perception, fear and prejudice, the events that punctuate our journeys into adulthood, and the indelible scars they leave – a triumph of a novel that will affect you long after the final page has been turned.Illustrations by David F. Ross–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––**Shortlisted for the POLARI Prize**‘Fall’s characters will haunt me, its story will stay with me and I will return again and again’ Katie Allen‘Beautifully written, perfectly executed, a drama that captures your heart and mind’ Anne Coates'Architecture and morality: the only subjects worth writing about, and West Camel does so exquisitely through the eyes of people profoundly affected by both' David F. Ross‘A book about families, racism and the differences that bind us or push us apart …all bound up in West Camel's elegant prose’ Michael J. Malone‘Suspense and twists keep you turning the pages, while the unfolding of complex characters and relationships draws you in’ Valeria Vescina‘Both charming and conflicting … the author’s enticing storytelling has totally, utterly hooked me’ Sarah Sansom‘A page-turner and a literary delight, a book you devour’ Liz Loves Books‘Immersive, beautiful, and haunting … I adored it’ Live & Deadly‘A novel of mystic style and sensibility. West Camel tackles timeless themes of truth, power, family and justice … an extraordinary read’ Richard Fernandez‘A book to be embraced, a book to be kept in your heart … West Camel writes beautifully’ The Reading ClosetPraise for West Camel’s debut novel Attend‘From its opening gambit to its final line, Attend demands and rewards attention’ Foreword Reviews’With its blend of dark, gritty themes and gorgeous imagery, this is a book to make you believe there’s still magic in the world’ Heat ‘I’ve fallen in love with this absolutely glorious, spell-binding tale’ LoveReading‘It’s a genuinely pleasurable experience to encounter something couched in such alert and transparent language as West Camel’s Attend … In three hundred finely judged pages, West Camel leaves the reader eager for more from his pen’ Barry Forshaw, CrimeTime For fans of Sarah Moss, Bernadine Evaristo, Colm Toibin and Selina Godde

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Book Synopsis'I’d always known that I was Brown. Black was different though; it came announced. Black came with expectations, of rhythm and other things that might trip me up.' Imani is a foundling. Rescued as a baby and raised by nuns on a remote Northumbrian island, she grows up with an ever-increasing feeling of displacement. Full of questions, Imani turns to her shadow, Amarie, and her friend, Harold. When Harold can’t find the answers, she puts it down to what the nuns call her “greater purpose”. At nineteen, Imani answers a phone call that will change her life: she is being called to Accra after the sudden death of her biological mother. Past, present, faith and reality are spun together in this enthralling debut. Following her transition from innocence to understanding, Imani's experience illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.Trade Review‘From start to finish, I was spellbound by the characters (especially Imani), the narrative voice, and the vivid imagery. Mensah intricately weaves complex characters, vivid descriptions, universal topics of love, loss, identity, religion, with themes like the search for a place to belong, into a well spun tapestry, a mind-spinning tale, a heart-pounding novel – and I'm hooked. I absolutely love this book.’ * Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2019 *Real beauty and clarity in the prose … powerful and unique.' * Chitra Ramaswamy *‘A compelling exploration of memory, race, mothers and the fractured self, Mensah questions the frameworks through which we understand the world and interrogates how to put disparate parts of our identities together to become the most true version of ourselves.' * Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater, winner of the Portico Prize 2020 *'[An] extraordinary debut … changes with every reading, like the sea, deep and light, or the flicker of spidersilk … a book to be cherished and shared.' * Vahni Capildeo *'Lyrical and magical … a powerful and very readable novel.' * Louise Maskill *'Mensah doesn’t shy away from tough subjects … a well-crafted debut … an extraordinary literary talent and … a thoroughly recommended read.' -- Emma Yates-Badley * Northern Soul *'A strong debut.' * The Feminist Nook *'Brilliance and beauty … The writing is exquisite, the plot is thoughtful and complex, and the characters are deeply lovable. This story will be told like folklore, passed on from person to person. And this is me passing it onto you.' * Kate Baguley *'A sensitive ear for language and observational detail … offers a unique blend of magical realism and social commentary – the past and the present intermingle with colonial history, displacement and family ties to form a rich narrative tapestry.' -- Reshma Ruia * Words of Colour *‘Strong storytelling crafted from a fine delicate web of themes … wonderfully vivid.’ * Busy Mama Book Club *'In … Castles from Cobwebs, we gain insight into how identity is not necessarily set in stone, nor is it straightforward or well defined. But rather how it can be complex, ever evolving and and simultaneously painful yet liberating to piece together.' * Blackbooksandnotes *'A stunning debut … immersive and captivating … all the threads come together to form the perfect cobweb.' * Literary Lucie blog *

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Book Synopsis'A beautifully written book with a charming, young narrator, combined with a surprisingly dark and unusual whodunnit. It's a touching, powerful and twisty read, packed with intrigue. Will appeal to fans of Joanna Cannon's The Trouble With Goats and Sheep.' S.J. Harris, author of The Colour of Bee Larkham's Murder'Powerful writing...' Woman's Way Magazine'With devastating purity and clarity, nine year old Frankie Appleton is likely to enter your hearts in this poignant and emotional read.' Love Reading Nine-year-old Frankie Appleton likes to count gates.One day she hopes to design the perfect gate - a gate to keep the bad things out.Little does she know that the bad things have already got in.Now her mother is dead, and the only other person with a house key has disappeared.Frankie thinks she knows who it is. But first she has to prove it.A delicately brutal exploration of what lies behind closed doors, and of the secrets and lies that form the fabric of every family, The Weight of Small Things is as charming as it is chilling.Trade Review'A beautifully written book with a charming, young narrator, combined with a surprisingly dark and unusual whodunnit. It's a touching, powerful and twisty read, packed with intrigue. Will appeal to fans of Joanna Cannon's The Trouble With Goats and Sheep.' S.J. Harris, author of The Colour of Bee Larkham's Murder'One of the best books I've read this year' Dave, 5 stars'Extremely current and highly readable' Beverley, 5 stars'Brutally honest, frank and beautiful' Natalie, 5 stars

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Leipzig Book Fair Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger Shortlisted for the 2022 Prix Femina etranger #1 on the Spiegel Bestseller List November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they've harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father's car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations. And it's with them that Carl, trained as a bricklayer, finds himself an initiate of anarchy, of love, and above all of poetry. Winner of the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize and a bestseller in German already with 150,000 copies sold, Star 111, musical and incantatory, tells of the search for authentic existence and also of a family exploded by political change which must find its way back together.Trade Review‘There aren’t many books that can be cited as the missing link between Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries and Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, and still fewer that could live up to the comparison, but Lutz Seiler (with impeccable assistance from Tess Lewis) makes it look easy. Star 111 is a brilliant, immersive, sometimes funny, slyly moving book with a main character who walks through the new reality he finds himself in like an astronaut exploring alone beneath a strange, harsh, beautiful sun. A stellar achievement.’ Will Ashon ---- 'It took Lutz Seiler, born in East Germany, thirty years to give to the moment [of the Fall of the Berlin Wall] the full richness of fertile and ambiguous human experience. With its ample narrative and powerful imagination, Star 111 is the "Wenderoman" par excellence, the great novel of the "turn", as German reunification is called.' Christine Lecerf, Le Monde des livres ---- 'The Berlin of Star 111 wakes a longing for a city like no other. You want to linger there in the squatted Assel bar where workers, hookers and departing Soviet soldiers cross paths with anarchists full of ideas.' Frederique Fanchette, Liberation ---- 'The presence of objects have is no doubt one of the most extraordinary things about Star 111. Everything is unique, everything has a price, everything is respected because it is the fruit of work or of making. Nothing is thrown away, everything kept. What if the objects have a soul? Read Star 111 (the title is the name of an East German transistor radio) and understand the real value of an object.' Cecile Dutheil de la Rochere, AOC ---- 'Lutz Seiler reaches the level of a Thomas Pynchon here. [...] This is atmospherically rich, true world literature. World literature is, after all, that which lets me see the world with different eyes, which shows me a part of the world I have not seen before. And this is what Seiler manages to do in Star 111.' Denis Scheck, SWR lesenswert ---- 'Star 111 reveals the fiery nucleus of everything political, its dual nature: the unity of poetic rapture and the mysticism of the revolution. [...] Lutz Seiler has the ability to describe the ridiculous, overheated and even the unconscionable of that political romanticism without having to denounce the original impulse. That's what makes Star 111 great literature.' Ijoma Mangold, Die Zeit ---- 'Star 111 is a novel full of hard-hitting, deeply moving psychology, full of scenes in which people shake the foundations of a reality that is in the process of creating new laws for itself.' Paul Jandl, Neue Zurcher Zeitung ---- 'The [goat in the novel], the reader understands, knows neither longing nor nostalgia. The fact that the novel shares, in this regard, the view of a goat, is its last and biggest virtue.' Thomas Steinfeld, Suddeutsche Zeitung ---- 'For the second time now Lutz Seiler has achieved something rather extraordinary: to talk about how one actually leads a poetic existence, a matter that is as euphoric as it is cruel, in a novel that is "accessible" in the best sense of the word.' Jan Wiele, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ---- 'Lutz Seiler talks about a city and a time that seemed to have been exhausted in fiction. But he creates a new fascination.' Jona Nietfeld, Der Tagesspiegel ---- 'It has been a long time since anyone has talked about those foggy years, glossed over with garish colours by other writers scores of times, more movingly than Lutz Seiler.' Anja Maier, die tageszeitung ---- 'Seiler tells a story of freedom in a poetically-precise style.' Der Spiegel ---- 'This is much more than a historical novel. It condenses an era and invokes the great panoramas of consciousness of modernity in a highly independent way.' Helmut Boettiger, Deutschlandfunk Kultur ---- 'This unexpected novel about post-reunification from the partially decayed, far from gentrified Berlin convinces with its unique atmospheric density, its gentle irony and the devotion to the matter at hand.' Bayerischer Rundfunk ---- 'With Star 111, Lutz Seiler presents a great novel that talks enchantingly about departures and downfalls, about social utopias and societal realities, about humiliation and pride. Fascinating.' Katja Weise, NDR Kultur ---- 'What distinguishes it from the many Berlin-Reunification-books is that there is not a trace of caricature, no manipulative narrative, but still captivating entertainment.' Roland Gutsch, Nordkurier ---- ‘Drawing on a history at once recent and ever more distant, Seiler's dazzling novel recounts just what must be lost for an artist to be made.’ Roland Bates, Kirkdale Books

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Book SynopsisRecently bereaved Jamie is staying at a rural steading in the heart of Scotland with his actor boyfriend Alex. The sudden loss of both of Jamie’s parents hangs like a shadow over the trip. In his grief, Jamie finds himself sifting through bittersweet memories, from his working-class upbringing in Edinburgh to his bohemian twenties in London, with a growing awareness of his sexuality threaded through these formative years. In the present, when Alex is called away to an audition, Jamie can no longer avoid the pull of the past: haunted by an inescapable failure to share his full self with his parents, he must confront his unresolved feelings towards them. In spare, evocative prose, Allan Radcliffe tells a wistful coming-of-age story and paints a tender portrait of grief in all its complexities.Trade Review'Equally heart-warming and sorrowful. Each and every sentence has been so elegantly penned' -The Scots Magazine; 'Written with an honesty and understanding that is rare, it's a novel full of love, kindness, and compassion' -Skinny Magazine; 'A rippling, multifaceted jewel of a novel - Poignant and compelling, it is resonant with vivid images' -Kevin MacNeil, author of 'The Brilliant & Forever'; 'Allan Radcliffe's debut touched my heart. Both insightful and observant, warm and infinitely relatable' -Henry Fry, author of 'First Time for Everything'; 'This poignant Bildungsroman is at once a tender tale of queer awakening in the Edinburgh of the 80s and 90s and a heartbreaking love letter' -Mary Paulson-Ellis, bestselling author of 'The Other Mrs Walker', 'The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing' and 'Emily Noble's Disgrace'

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Book SynopsisThis gorgeous, funny novel paints a picture of a bygone era, depicting the changing society in Ceylon after Independence from the British in 1948. Three Tamil girl cousins, Gowry, Saratha and Buvana, grow up in the old-fashioned village of Kolavil in Eastern Sri Lanka near the beautiful River Thillai. As they approach womanhood, they each struggle in their own way to assert themselves in opposition to the strict traditions of Tamil culture and their powerful Grandma. Their idyllic village life is threatened by people and by events beyond their control. Meanwhile, the reader can get lost in a colourful world of flamingos, temple bells and coconut prawn curry.

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Book SynopsisIt's 1992 in Portland, Oregon. Fifteen-year-old Julie Winter moves through her days as if underwater - watching skaters through the constant rain, detached from her best friend's crushes, listening to the same B-side REM song on repeat. The rest of the world is caught up in the AIDS crisis, the war in Yugoslavia, and grunge. But to Julie it's all background. No one at home talks about her older brother, a once-champion swimmer who could be living in Berlin, or could be anywhere. And although she spends her time searching for pictures of him in the pages of Swimmer's World magazine, she'd never considered swimming herself. Until Alexis, captain of the swimming team, tries to recruit her. What starts as a flirtation and an infatuation becomes a chance to join in with the world, find out what really happened to her brother, or finally let him go. Yearning, stifled, and sharp, Dryland is an anti-coming out novel that captures gauzy queer exploration at its quietest and its most loud.Trade Review"Be still my gay grunge heart" - Beth Ditto “Sara Jaffe’s Dryland is the perfect indie-rock love song, an anthem for lonely 90s queer kids—a little melancholy, a little surly, a little dirty." - Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl "Remarkable. It's realism, but its realism brushes ever so deftly against the allegorical, making the novel shimmer, part diary, part dream" - Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts "A brilliant, beautiful, and evocative first novel, full of historical and experiential details that I had never quite articulated to myself and was so grateful and happy to find written down. Sara Jaffe is a treasure." - Elif Batuman, The Idiot "A gorgeous, layered, meticulous, clamoring, beating heart of a thing." - Sara Marcus, Girls to the Front "Moving sideways with its weight of secrets, this novel never strikes a false note"- Kirkus

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Book SynopsisA New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA radiant first novel. . . . [Neon in Daylight] has antecedents in the great novels of the 1970s: Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights, Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. . . . Precision—of observation, of language—is Hoby’s gift. Her sentences are sleek and tailored. Language molds snugly to thought. —Parul Sehgal, The New York TimesNew York City in 2012, the sweltering summer before Hurricane Sandy hits. Kate, a young woman newly arrived from England, is staying in a Manhattan apartment while she tries to figure out her future. She has two unfortunate responsibilities during her time in America: to make regular Skype calls to her miserable boyfriend back home, and to cat–sit an indifferent feline named Joni Mitchell.The city has other plans for her. In New York's parks and bodegas, its galleries and performance spaces, its bars and clubs crowded with bodies, Kate encounters two strangers who will transform her stay: Bill, a charismatic but embittered writer made famous by the movie version of his only novel; and Inez, his daughter, a recent high school graduate who supplements her Bushwick cafe salary by enacting the fantasies of men she meets on Craigslist. Unmoored from her old life, Kate falls into an infatuation with both of them.Set in a heatwave that feels like it will never break, Neon In Daylight marries deep intelligence with captivating characters to offer us a joyful, unflinching exploration of desire, solitude, and the thin line between life and art.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, this intoxicating story of a teenage girl who trades her a middle–class upbringing for a quest for meaning in 1980s Mexico is “a surreal, captivating tale about the power of a youthful imagination, the lure of teenage transgression, and its inevitable disappointments” (Los Angeles Review of Books).One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, seventeen–year–old Luisa does not return home from school. Instead, she boards a bus to the Pacific coast with Tomás, a boy she barely knows. He seems to represent everything her life is lacking―recklessness, impulse, independence.Tomás may also help Luisa fulfill an unusual obsession: she wants to track down a traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs. According to newspaper reports, the dwarfs recently escaped a Soviet circus touring Mexico. The imagined fates of these performers fill Luisa’s surreal dreams as she settles in a beach community in Oaxaca. Surrounded by hippies, nudists, beachcombers, and eccentric storytellers, Luisa searches for someone, anyone, who will “promise, no matter what, to remain a mystery.” It is a quest more easily envisioned than accomplished. As she wanders the shoreline and visits the local bar, Luisa begins to disappear dangerously into the lives of strangers on Zipolite, the “Beach of the Dead.”Meanwhile, her father has set out to find his missing daughter. A mesmeric portrait of transgression and disenchantment unfolds. Set to a pulsing soundtrack of Joy Division, Nick Cave, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sea Monsters is a brilliantly playful and supple novel about the moments and mysteries that shape us.Aridjis is deft at conjuring the teenage swooniness that apprehends meaning below every surface. Like Sebald’s or Cusk’s, her haunted writing patrols its own omissions . . . The figure of the shipwreck looms large for Aridjis. It becomes a useful lens through which to see this book, which is self–contained, inscrutable, and weirdly captivating, like a salvaged object that wants to return to the sea. ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

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Book SynopsisA child swipes her mother's ring, snatches her sister's nightgown, and runs outside to play "bride." She soon loses the ring, rips the gown, correctly assumes it's about to rain daggers, and runs away from home to find a better family. What happens next is a summer-long journey in which Grace Townsend rides shotgun in a Plymouth Belvedere, and hunkers in the back of a rattletrap vegetable truck, crawls into a crumbling tunnel, dresses up with a prom queen, and keeps vigil in the bedroom of a molestation victim. There are reasons why Grace remembers the summer of 1956 for the rest of her life. Those are just a few. Through the eyes of a child and the mature woman she becomes, we make the journey with Grace and discover important truths about life, equality, family, and the soul-searching quest for belonging.

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Book SynopsisRamiza Shamoun Koya reveals the devastating cost of anti-Muslim sentiment in The Royal Abduls, her debut novel about a secular Indian-America family. Evolutionary biologist Amina Abdul accepts a post-doc in Washington, DC, choosing her career studying hybrid zones over a faltering West Coast romance. Her brother and sister-in-law welcome her to the city, but their marriage is crumbling, and they soon rely on her to keep their son company. Omar, hungry to understand his roots, fakes an Indian accent, invents a royal past, and peppers his aunt with questions about their cultural heritage. When he brings an ornamental knife to school, his expulsion triggers a downward spiral for his family, even as Amina struggles to find her own place in an America now at war with people who look like her. With The Royal Abduls, Koya ignites the canon of post-9/11 literature with a deft portrait of second-generation American identity.Trade Review“Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s The Royal Abduls is filled with wonderfully flawed, yet deeply sympathetic characters who occupy utterly convincing and beautifully drawn narrative and emotional situations. Is independence freedom or isolation? How can we balance our own needs with those of our loved ones? How can we both protect ourselves and connect with others? Koya’s novel reminds us that the answers to these questions are, of course, both deeply personal and deeply political, and in answering them, Koya performs the marvelous alchemy of dropping us into a story world that dismantles and then reassembles our sense of who we are.” —Karen Shepard, author of The Celestials “The Royal Abduls is a novel for our times. It is a novel of struggle and a reminder of the hope that we once felt and that, hopefully, we will feel again soon.” —Carol Zoref, author of Barren Island “Koya has crafted a tender-hearted story with a sharp knife edge. She's cut to the heart of the devastating effects of colonialism and white supremacy on multi-generational American immigrant families.” —Jenny Forrester, author of Narrow River, Wide Sky "After reading Ramiza Shamoun Koya's warm and wise debut novel, you will not soon forget the Abdul family, especially the tenderness between Amina and her young nephew, Omar, as both struggle to find happiness amid family turmoil and hostility towards Muslims in post-9/11 America. Koya imbues each page of The Royal Abduls with lessons of the heart and what it means to save yourself while protecting the ones you love." —Mo Daviau, author of Every Anxious Wave “A beautiful and messy family story set in the tumultuous post 9/11 world of Washington, DC, The Royal Abduls digs deep into the hearts of a small boy and his academic auntie as they struggle to define themselves and stay connected to the ones they love. It’s a story of an immigrant experience of our times, full of hope and tender human wisdom.” —Joanna Rose, author of A Small Crowd of Strangers “The Royal Abduls is a propulsive and absorbing story of the tensions that reside between career and love, personal desires and family expectations. Upping the power of this book, Ramiza Shamoun Koya deftly reveals how these tensions are made more complicated by political, cultural and social forces. Especially unique in this story is the complex and beautifully drawn relationship between the two point of view characters: a childless aunt and her adolescent nephew. We need more stories like this.” —Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

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Book SynopsisWhen Halley Faust is handed the opportunity to move two steps up the corporate ladder, she laces up her shoes and starts climbing. But her covert battles with coworkers – equal parts funny and cringe-worthy – leave everyone wondering: how far do you have to go to achieve success?Trade Review"A young woman hustles to climb the corporate ladder in this darkly comedic, deeply insightful workplace drama . . . A humorous and thought-provoking tale about searching for the ever elusive brass ring." -- Kirkus Reviews

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Book SynopsisEvery year, it comes. And every year, it reminds Grace that someone knows her deepest secret—the secret whose silence has tormented Grace over the years. That secret began with an innocent gang of teenage friends who called themselves The Kitty Committee. The Kitty Committee of Grace's youth was ostensibly a group of friendship and support. But the friends fell victim to the ringleader's manipulative personality and recklessness, which set the girls on a course of vigilante justice, culminating in an act that will forever change their lives, an act that becomes their shared secret.Grace's silence and guilt has led to over twenty years of disappointing relationships, an inability to commit, and a crisis of morality. And no matter how much Grace has suffered and lost, still it comes every year. The reminder that someone out there wants The Kitty Committee to suffer--someone who won't forget and won't forgive.

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Book SynopsisReligious and ethnic conflict may be the Horn of Africa's most enduring recent legacy. But beneath its recent history of war and displacement lies human stories—families, clans, lovers, neighbors, and friends, all bound together through common cultural, religious, and historical ties. The Lion's Binding Oath, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf's collection of short stories, introduces readers to the people of Somalia and their struggles: their humanity, faith, identity, friendship, and family bonds, as whispers of war grow louder around them. Through stories that span the years before and during Somali's civil war, Yusuf weaves together Somalia's political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country's love of poetry, music, and soccer. Yusuf's collection is a powerful examination of love and resilience in a country torn apart by war, and written with deep compassion for the lives of its characters. Ahmed Ismail Yusuf has lived in Minneapolis since fleeing Somalia in the late 80s. He did not speak English when he arrived, he was a high-school dropout, and he was not sure what his actual age was. Today he has two college degrees and is the author of Somalis in Minnesota, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. In 2017, The History Theatre of St. Paul, Minnesota produced his short play, “A Crack in the Sky,” a memoir about how Yusuf found inspiration in Maya Angelou and Muhammad Ali during his early days as an immigrant to the U.S.Trade Review"While Yusuf’s book is fiction, he incorporates significant facts into his storytelling. In this way, The Lion’s Binding Oath becomes not just entertainment, but also a creative disclosure about Somalia’s people, culture, and history." —New Pages"Yusuf draws us in with descriptions that bring beauty to minute details....In tone recalling Maya Angelou's Gather Together in My Name, this work will appeal to readers of literary and African fiction." — Library Journal"[...]Yusuf is unquestionably talented, with a knack for stories focused on injustice and the anxiety of separation, be it over time or distance. [...] Informative and direct storytelling from a corner of Africa that's poorly understood in the West." Kirkus"This mature debut is graphic...as it reveals how children grow up around violence and war. They still play, learn, tell stories, and try to get along despite threats and the police presence in their everyday lives. For readers interested in soccer and international affairs, this thin volume will enhance fiction collections." — School Library JournalWith their focus on youthful soccer stars or childhood friendships, as well as their simple language and pastoral settings, the tales that begin the loosely linked stories of “Lion’s Binding Oath” lull readers into a false sense of security. But by the end of the collection, it is clear that being young or living in a rural area can’t protect Somalians from more than three decades of civil war. Man or woman, adult or child, teacher or reluctant soldier, no one in “Lion’s Binding Oath” is safe. Many stories suggest that if members of Somalia’s various factions could learn to live together as its animals have, the world would be a better place. The most arresting example of that is the title story. Reminiscent of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi,” it’s the last and best story in Yusuf’s collection."...compelling tales covering many recent experiences of [Yusuf's] beleaguered people..." — Minnesota Alumni MagazineTable of ContentsTABLE OF CONTENTS A Slow Moving Night 1-19 The Mayxaano Chronicles 1. A Man of Means 2. Don’t Lose 3. A Thorn in the Sole 4. A Whip of Words 21-50 5. Dissonance 51-71 A Delicate Hope 73-97 The Vulture Has Landed The Lion’s Binding Oath 99-125

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Book SynopsisThis fiercely original debut novel follows four Nigerian siblings over the course of two decades as they search for agency, love, and meaning in a society rife with hypocrisy. “. . . lush, sharp, and shot through with hope! —Well-Read Black Girl I like the idea of a god who knows what it’s like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone. Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, becomes drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike’s father wagers the family home on a “sure bet” that evaporates like smoke. As their parents’ marriage collapses in the aftermath of this gamble, the twin sisters and their two younger siblings, Andrew and Peter, are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins’ paths diverge once the household shatters. Each girl is left to locate, guard, and hone her own fragile source of power. Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Tola Rotimi Abraham’s Black Sunday takes us into the chaotic heart of family life, tracing a line from the euphoria of kinship to the devastation of estrangement. In the process, it joyfully tells a tale of grace and connection in the midst of daily oppression and the constant incursions of an unremitting patriarchy. This is a novel about two young women slowly finding, over twenty years, in a place rife with hypocrisy but also endless life and love, their own distinct methods of resistance and paths to independence.

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Book Synopsis** Longlisted for The Center for Fiction's best debut novel of 2019 ** With the hypnotic intensity of Emily Fridlund’s The History of Wolves and Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest, Katherine Forbes Riley has created a mesmerizing love story, in lush, gorgeous prose, that examines art, science, and the magic of human chemistry."Teeming with lush imagery and mystical settings, and brimming with alluring magical realism, Riley’s tale is a beguiling journey of discovery and recovery.” — BooklistHaunting and lyrical, The Bobcat is Katherine Forbes Riley’s magical debut novel in which Laurelie, a young art student who suffers in the aftermath of a sexual assault, has grown progressively more isolated and fearful. She transfers from her busy city university to a small college in rural Vermont, where she retreats into her vivid imagination, experiencing the world through her art. Most comfortable in the company of the child for whom she babysits, and most at ease in the woods, Laurelie has shunned any connection with her peers.One day, while exploring the woods, she and her young charge encounter an injured pregnant bobcat – and the hiker who has been following it for hundreds of miles. In the hiker and his feline companion Laurelie recognizes someone as reclusive and wary as herself. The hiker, too, finds human companionship painful to endure, yet he is drawn to wounded Laurelie the way he is drawn to the bobcat. As Laurelie moves toward recovery and reconnection she also finds her voice as an artist, and a sense of purpose, maybe even a future, comes into sight. Then the child goes missing in the woods, threatening the bobcat, the hiker, and the fragile peace Laurelie has constructed.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR THE BOBCAT: A NOVEL "Teeming with lush imagery and mystical settings, and brimming with alluring magical realism, Riley’s tale is a beguiling journey of discovery and recovery.” — Booklist“Many novels feature wild animals as central metaphors, but not many novels achieve the congruity of The Bobcat.” — LitHub "An unpredictable yet lovely exploration into healing trauma and building trust. The story centers art student Laurelie as she attempts to put the pieces of her life back together after surviving a sexual assault. Artists, nature lovers and survivors will find something here to inspire hope and healing.” — Ms. Magazine's 2019 June Reads for the Rest of Us“The Bobcat is a heartfelt, revelatory, and moving novel about how the way back to our humanity and to the humanity of others leads us sometimes through the animal world. Surprising, precise, and full of love for the immeasurable possibilities of the human heart.” — Alexander Chee, PEN award finalist and author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel “It would be easy—and true—to say that Katharine Forbes Riley’s The Bobcat moves the way that beautiful feline does: with sinuous grace, coiled wildness, and ferocious independence. Yet this novel braves more than that. It probes and tests the lines between the animal and the human, safety and threat, art and daily life, health and illness through characters and language of luminous intensity and rare, real power. Haunting, haunted, truly elegant, this novel will stalk your dreams and days in equal measure.” — Charlotte Bacon, PEN award-winning author of A Private State “In The Bobcat, Katherine Forbes Riley has created an honest, unflinching account of the aftermath of a sexual assault. There is profound empathy in the novel’s depiction of the wounded young artist Laurelie, and Riley’s great accomplishment is to show the tortured process by which this courageous woman stumblingly, imperfectly, navigates a hostile world while simultaneously recreating herself. A strange beauty pervades the novel, even in Laurelie's descriptions of her own terror—the sort of beauty born of careful design. This narrative is dead set on bringing the reader face to face with truth. By turns raw, hallucinogenic, redemptive, and always deeply intelligent, it’s a novel of the moment and one that deserves a wide audience.” — Jack Livings, PEN award-winning author of The Dog: Stories “Katherine Forbes Riley's tender artistry and elegant prose exalt one woman's painful tale of violence in a violent world to a memorable novel where people's capacity for humaneness and love pulsate from the center. The Bobcat is graceful, profound assurance of man's perpetual instincts to refuge in nature and commune with the beasts every time our own humanity or our fellowman fails us.” — Kalisha Buckhanon, author of Solemn “This novel is mesmerizing! Completely unpredictable and engaging. I loved the sentences and the descriptions and the characters.”— Sarah Blake, author of Naamah “The Bobcat is an intensely lyrical, deeply involving novel about what it means to be a human animal. Blending gorgeous nature imagery, philosophical curiosity, and a story as insistent as a heartbeat, this book will grab you by the scruff of the neck and won't let go.” — Jennie Yabroff, author of If You Were Here “Saturated with emotion, vivid and sensual, The Bobcat tells the gripping story of a young woman rebuilding her life and self after trauma. Katherine Forbes Riley takes us deep into the Vermont woods to show the power of nature, art, animal companionship, and human connection. An exquisite debut.”— Julia Phillips, author of The Disappearing Earth “Equally intimate and expansive, The Bobcat is one of the most unique books I've ever read. Riley's prose works equally as exquisite storytelling and its own thematic device to capture the isolating nature of trauma -- and the path out. All of this is wrapped in very human relationships and lush descriptions of the wilderness for a fast, distinctive read that will haunt you long after the final page.”— Mike Chen, author of Here and Now and Then “What a beautiful, thoughtful, touching debut. […] The Bobcat had me at turns flipping pages to find out what happens, and re-reading pages to soak in the expansive and lovely prose. Katherine Forbes Riley steps onto the scene like a master storyteller, comfortable in her craft and precise in her presentation. This hauntingly lovely book will be a favorite of book clubs, and people in search of a novel with genuine heart and wonder.” — Meghan Scott Molin, author of The Frame-Up “Poignant and evocative, lyrical and intimate—and above all startlingly original—Katherine Forbes Riley's mesmerizing debut The Bobcat is one of those rare novels that fully embraces the interiority of its characters while never sacrificing in story or pacing. Written in a unique and elegant style full of richly descriptive prose that captures both the physical landscape of rural Vermont and the fraught psychological territory of its protagonist, this is a beautifully crafted book that dares to access the isolation that haunts us in the aftermath of trauma; it is also a redemptive story about the power of human connection to see us through our darkest moments.”— James Charlesworth, author of The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill “Riley's riveting novel, The Bobcat, inexorably pulls readers into a strange world full of possible dangers in which the physical and the psychological are rendered in stunning detail. But she reveals, too, the beauty inherent in this world--if you can bear to let it in, if you can learn to trust again. Intense, surprising and thought-provoking, this story ultimately allows that souls and bodies can in fact heal, and that meaningful human connection is both possible and valuable.”— Katrin Schumann, author of The Forgotten Hours “With its atmospherically picturesque prose and its delicious slow burn of a plot, The Bobcat was a delightful read. Told in gorgeous, crystalline images, etched deeply with detail, the story emerges slowly and satisfyingly. The Bobcat is true literature, and a work of high art.” — Gina Guadagnino, author of The Parting Glass “You'll want to savor this read. […] Riley's prose is engaging and evocative. I absolutely loved her gift for description and imagery. I can't wait to read more from this talented author.” — Juno Rushdan, author of Every Last Breath “The Bobcat is a masterpiece of understated grace, an insightful study of trauma and healing, and a work whose narrative power shines with the strength of its skillful prose. […] This realistic portrayal of recovery is light years from the superficial takes we often see in stories, and it makes the narrative that much stronger and more engaging. An extremely impressive debut, The Bobcat is a compelling and rewarding read.”— Dan Stout, author of Titan Shade “The Bobcat is a mesmerizing lyrical novel that you don’t want to rush through. I savored every beautiful sentence and description of the natural world, the people and animals. Full of empathy and compassion, this is a story about how we heal from trauma and what it takes to begin trusting again.”— Daniela Petrova, author of Her Daughter’s Mother “A mesmerizing novel, […] Riley uses language, both precise and lushly descriptive, to show how true connection does not depend on words. In an age of tell-all stories and healing through talk therapy, it’s a radical act. Though there is plot and mystery enough to drive this novel, what really powers it is Riley’s profound sense of empathy and her gorgeous writing – about people, animals, the natural world, fear, love and hope. This is the kind of novel that makes you turn the pages to discover what becomes of the hiker, Laurelie, the bobcat and the toddler - and then makes you slow down to savor the telling itself.” — Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party “The novel is richly observed, the depth and detail of its description a particular strength. It has been described as ‘immersive’ and I’ll tell you why: you will lose yourself in this book. The words and sentences are enough to keep you turning the pages, even if the story were less than the fascinating tale that it is. […] The ending is perfect.” — Melanie Golding, author of Little Darlings “The Bobcat is deeply evocative, written in lush, delicious prose about a wounded young woman and her journey towards healing. With the help of her artwork and an unusual hiker she meets, the two come together, find love in this mystical tale that will linger with readers like a haunting dream. Highly recommend.” — Marlene Adelstein, author of Sophie Last Seen “In addition to being a moving story of healing, resilience, and love, The Bobcat includes so many lush and exquisite details that make the setting of this novel leap from the page. It also includes a line that, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates the gift and challenge of being a teacher in the arts. As Laurelie steps into teaching duties herself, she muses how “each student was like a puzzle, finding the right artists to show, the right words to deconstruct their art and make it open up, so the student would see it working just like his or her own.”— Megan Collins, author of The Winter Sister “I read this beautiful book with my heart in my throat. The world of The Bobcat is immersive, fully saturated, and deeply interior in the best possible way. A visceral and authentic depiction of the aftermath of trauma, the novel is also a moving exploration of the power of artistic creation and its capacity to make sense of both the light and dark sides of human experience.” — Kate Hope Day, author of If, Then “This book snuck up on me, its quiet fairytale quality perfect for the story of a traumatized young woman’s search for a way out of isolation and fear. Riley’s grasp of nature and art and human psychology are on full display in this spellbinding tale of connection and chemistry. [...] A book to ponder long after the final page.”— Susan Bernhard, author of The Winter Loon

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Book SynopsisA modern-day bildungsroman,featuring a young woman on a quest to discover her family history as she is torn between the US and Spain, the old world and the new. Told with humor, candor, and grit, Madrid Again is a highly original novel, and an homage to the haunting power of history, and how it shapes the identity of two generations of women. Madrid, 1960s. Odilia is a brilliant young student who seems to have it all until she is unexpectedly spirited away on an exciting journey across the Atlantic to the United States by a magnetic professor. But the professor disappears from Odilia’s life as mysteriously as he appeared. Left alone in a new country with a baby girl, Lola, Odilia must decide whether to strike out and raise her daughter alone, or return to her strict, upper-class Catholic family in Spain. Mother and daughter travel to Madrid as often as possible, but Odilia ultimately chooses a life of self-reliance in New England. As Lola grows up, she feels torn between two countries, two cultures, and two languages. She becomes a historian and embarks on a quest to seek out the history of her origins. She wrestles with family secrets, as she struggles to answer questions about her own identity and future. How does she fit in to the United States, Spain, or anywhere else?

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