Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Illinois

A Novel

The New York Times bestselling author of the “timely, important” (PopSugar) The Last Story of Mina Lee returns with a propulsive and suspenseful new novel about a family that unravels when a stranger—who may hold the key to their missing mother—is found dead in their backyard. 1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on with their lives after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John discovers the body of a dead stranger in the backyard. The tragedy seems random until it’s revealed that the dead man was carrying a letter to Sunny, sparking a desperate investigation into the stranger’s history and possible connections to Sunny—only to discover that someone has been watching them. 1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her work-obsessed husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation is broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother at risk, but their very lives as well. Both a riveting page-turner and moving family story, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores the consequences of secrets between parents and children, husbands and wives, the search for home when all seems lost, and what it means to dream in America.

What We Kept to Ourselves

be81aa9a-d958-46eb-affb-55e1da52b3e0-1

Gabriel Bump

Paperback ARC

For readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Percival Everett's The Trees, a moving and darkly funny novel about an attempt to found a Black Utopia, from the award-winning author of Everywhere You Don't Belong, one of the most exciting new voices on the literary landscape. Drive by the abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts, and it doesn't look like much. Definitely not a destination. But that's exactly what it becomes, after a young Black Boston woman sees the country--in fact, the whole world--as an increasingly dangerous place. After losing their child and looking hard for a safe place, she and her husband begin to construct a separate society: somewhere nurturing, where everyone can feel loved and wanted, where all the Spike Lee movies play, where the children learn actual history--and somewhere underground, where they won't need anything or anyone from the world above ground to make it work. She locates a Benefactor and soon it all begins to take shape. Two homeless men are told about the place and begin their journey by bus to get there. A young and disillusioned journalist stumbles upon it and wants in. And a former soccer player, having lost his footing in society, is persuaded to check out this place too. But it doesn't take long for problems to develop, for conflicts to surface, for food to become scarce, for the children to crave life beyond this place. In a disarmingly original and perceptive novel, Gabriel Bump peels back the layers of lives lived all over the country today and asks, what if there was a a safe place for Black people, a kind of contemporary Quilombo? A remarkable feat of the imagination, The New Naturals is a fresh and timely story about the importance of community, for although their utopia cannot survive, the ties that bind these people to each other do. Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us.

The New Naturals

b8f2b22c-cea5-4df8-8afb-f0c1218631f9-1

Steve Stern

Award-winning novelist Steve Stern's exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.


"Packed to bursting with epic adventure and hysterical comedy, with grim poignancy and pointed satire, as Stern repeatedly shifts time and tone to craft a wildly entertaining tale." --The Washington Post Book World



Award-winning novelist Steve Stern's exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.

The Frozen Rabbi

02020a3c-d789-4ab0-893d-9fea56e031b1-1

Vibhuti Jain

A pulsating debut about an immigrant family that gets caught in the middle of a criminal investigation, perfect for readers of Everything I Never Told You and Ask Again, Yes.

Babur "Bobby" Singh, single parent and owner of fledging Uber business "Move with Bobby," remains ever hopeful about ascending the ladder of American success. He lives in an affluent suburb of New York with his daughter Angie, an introverted teenager who is uncomfortable in her own skin unless she's swimming.

During summer break, Angie is walking home after training at the high school pool when she finds Henry McCleary, a classmate from a wealthy, prominent family, stabbed and bleeding on the football field. The police immediately focus their investigation on Chiara Thompkins, a runaway Black girl who disappears after the stabbing and--it's later discovered--wasn't properly enrolled in the public high school.

The incident sends shock waves through the community and reveals jarring truths about the lengths to which families will go to protect themselves. As the town fractures, Angie must navigate conflicting narratives and wrestle with her own moral culpability. Meanwhile, Babur's painstaking efforts to shield Angie and protect his hard-earned efforts to assimilate overshadow his ability to see right from wrong.

Alternating between multiple perspectives, Our Best Intentions is a suspenseful drama about a father and daughter re-examining their familial bonds and place in the community. Both a gripping page-turner and an intimate portrait of an immigrant family, Vibhuti Jain's provocative debut explores how easily friendships, careers, communities, and individual lives can unravel when the toxicity of privilege and racial bias are exposed.

Our Best Intentions

37b542a8-a7b8-4880-8183-551c598a1117-1

Kate Spencer

After being laid off from her job, Franny Doyle's day gets worse. On the way home, the subway doors rips her favourite silk dress. On the plus side, a dashing stranger came to her rescue. Suddenly, Franny and her knight-in-couture, Hayes Montgomery III, are the newest social media sensation. Only Franny and Hayes couldn't be a more disastrous match. In a city of eight million people, they somehow keep running into each other. But when Franny's whole world is turned upside down (again!), can she find the courage to trust in herself and finally have the life - and love - she's always wanted? Author of memoir "The Dead Moms Club." Print run 50,000.

In a New York Minute

12096d32-efe9-4f5a-a26f-0370b0d13779-1

Ernest Cline

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Immersing himself in a mid-21st-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's super-wealthy creator, who has promised that the winner will be his heir. (This book was previously listed in Forecast.)

Ready Player One

aaf035f2-fb33-41eb-92f7-60e69f5cd2bd-1

Clare Mackintosh

I See You

f9031f20-ad09-49d4-9320-10b38833ae2a-1

Karen Joy Fowler

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A book club discuss the works of Jane Austen and experience their own affairs of the heart in this charming “tribute to Austen that manages to capture her spirit” (The Boston Globe). In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships. Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

Debbie

@debbie57835

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Nancy Jooyoun Kim

What We Kept to Ourselves

Gabriel Bump

The New Naturals

Steve Stern

The Frozen Rabbi

Vibhuti Jain

Our Best Intentions

Kate Spencer

In a New York Minute

Ernest Cline

Ready Player One

Clare Mackintosh

I See You

Karen Joy Fowler

The Jane Austen Book Club

Get The App

Browse by categories

Nancy Jooyoun Kim

What We Kept to Ourselves

Gabriel Bump

The New Naturals

Steve Stern

The Frozen Rabbi

Vibhuti Jain

Our Best Intentions

Kate Spencer

In a New York Minute

Ernest Cline

Ready Player One

Clare Mackintosh

I See You

Karen Joy Fowler

The Jane Austen Book Club

Get The App