Gillian McAllister

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Virginia

A Novel

"From the author of Reese's Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time! An addictive thriller about a new mother's world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime-and then disappears. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie? It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla's life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But after she arrives at the office, police officers storm the foyer: in the city, just near her work, a man has taken three hostages and is now in a tense standoff with law enforcement. And Luke, the person she's loved for more than a decade, the father of her child, is involved. But he is not a hostage. He is the kidnapper. All she has is a half-written cryptic note that Luke left for her. Seven years after the crime that shocked the nation, and her husband's subsequent disappearance, Camilla has slowly accepted that she will never have answers about what really happened that day. But just as she prepares to let Luke go for good, an anonymous location, sent to her by text message, reignites her suspicions about the kidnapping and sends her on a dangerous search for the truth. What follows is a propulsive, twisty story of motherhood, marriage, and the secrets at the heart of our closest relationships. Famous Last Words cements Gillian McAllister's reputation as "the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations" (Emily Henry)"--

Famous Last Words

07f7f8f7-a89c-4df1-94ed-ea5ecc569ada-0

Elspeth Barker

Maggie O'Farrell

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

In the tradition of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-19th century--featuring a new introduction by Maggie O'Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother's black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw...

Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker's ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family's motto--Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)--is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.

O Caledonia

34188465-905f-4fc3-a4e8-0afa78146fe4-1

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black, about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. * "A new and necessary American voice." --Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.    

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a "new and necessary American voice" (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).

Chain Gang All Stars

a574da44-8182-4541-84ea-6d5a93306287-1

Kate Alice Marshall

A Killing Cold

1155458a-e09a-4adf-ba9a-cb6be5d7e475-0

Essie Chambers

A tender and irreverently funny debut novel about the complicated bond between mothers and daughters, the disappearance of a father, and the long-hidden history of a declining New England mill town. “A powerful novel about how our family history shapes us. Swift River broke my heart, and then offered me hope.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and the fact that since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on. But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, spanning the 20th century and revealing a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future? A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us that heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.

Swift River

a615ba22-5e39-4be1-9cf3-35a316537c5a-0

Jacquie Walters

A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estranged mother--only to invite something much darker inside--in this "fast-paced and frightening debut" (Rachel Harrison) about the long shadows cast by family secrets, perfect for readers of Grady Hendrix or Ashley Audrain. Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, who has arrived a few weeks early. But with her husband still deployed, Flora must navigate the newborn stage alone. As the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur. Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up to help: Flora's own mother, to whom she hasn't spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more that Flora's mother isn't telling her about the events that led to their estrangement? As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to fear that her mother's secrets have allowed something truly evil to enter her home. She must decide: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby?

Dearest

d02787aa-584b-4e26-a513-7d28c2bff52e-0

Caroline Blackwood

Honor Moore

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A “shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny” novel that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of eccentric aristocrats (Jonathan Raban, author of Bad Land) Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer. This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.

Great Granny Webster

779d663d-f658-4b2b-9a72-44a7fcafe738-0

Rochelle Alers

In an arrestingly vivid novel spanning seven decades and two continents - from a cloistered 1950s Mississippi town founded by freed slaves to the striking diversity of Paris and Rome in the 1960s and 70s, through the glamor of 1980s Wall Street, to present day New York - bestselling author Rochelle Alers chronicles one woman's remarkable journey through some of history's most turbulent eras--and the four men who impact her life along the way. Perfect for fans of Angela Flournoy, Zora Neale Hurston, Sue Monk Kidd and Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Freedom fighter, brilliant businessperson, devoted wife, master of languages, and ultimately, savior of a European dynasty. Claudia Patterson would become all of these--spurred on by the fiercely powerful loves and losses along the way... Denny Clark. An abused thirteen-year-old white boy whose life twelve-year-old Claudia saves--complicating her own life for years to come. Robert Moore. A young Black lawyer who becomes Claudia's beloved husband and partner on the explosive front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. Amid the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, Claudia has a shocking personal encounter--with unimaginable consequences. Ashley Booth. A Wall Street executive who brings the glamour of New York alive for the now-widowed Claudia, introducing her to an elite circle of Black peers. But their long yet uncommitted romance leads Claudia to move on--to an overseas assignment at an Italian bank. Giancarlo Pasquale Fortenza. An Italian automobile industrialist, once enamored of a young Claudia--handsome, worldly, and twelve years her senior. A man with whom Claudia reconnects, bringing her life full circle in the boldest, bravest, and most unexpected ways... Rich with history and timeless emotion, here is an epic tale of rising through poverty, racism, and heartbreak--and the awesome role of our most significant relationships throughout our lives.

Take the Long Way Home

52cb823a-e314-4a40-a878-316a83ec2b4f-1

A young librarian and an old curmudgeon forge the unlikeliest of friendships in this charming uplit novel about one misfit book club and the lives it changed along the way.

Because books have a way of bringing even the loneliest of souls together...

Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks of herself as lonely...but still she looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. Their sparring is such a highlight of Sloane's day that when Arthur doesn't show up one morning, she's instantly concerned. And then another day passes, and another.

Anxious, Sloane tracks the old man down only to discover him all but bedridden...and desperately struggling to hide how happy he is to see her. Wanting to bring more cheer into Arthur's gloomy life, Sloane creates an impromptu book club. Slowly, the lonely misfits of their sleepy town begin to find each other, and in their book club, find the joy of unlikely friendship. Because as it turns out, everyone has a special book in their heart--and a reason to get lost (and eventually found) within the pages.

The Lonely Hearts Book Club

5165a6e7-c137-405c-8bb3-205e9cdc7e63-1

A "gripping" new novel (PEOPLE) from the best-selling author of Inheritance: On a  summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes.

"A haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets." --Meg Wolitzer

ONE OF MOST EAGERLY ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: L.A. Times, TIME, LitHub, BookPage, Library Journal, The Millions

Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.

On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive--a young couple expecting a baby boy--it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans' brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife's decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.

In Dani Shapiro's first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together--and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.

Signal Fires

7cf0bf67-c4f2-41bc-ab50-edd7d927c85b-1

In a hypnotic tale of sisterhood, first love, and hauntings, a wedding in a small English village stirs up unsettling magic and forces a troubled family's secrets out into the open.

"A twisting gothic tale of darkness, intrigue, heartbreak, and revenge."--Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne

The woods are stirring again. . . . 

Lucia and her sisters grew up on the edge of Mockbeggar Woods. They knew it well--its danger, but also its beauty. As a lonely teenager, Kate was drawn to these sisters, who were unlike anyone she'd ever met. But when they brought her into the woods, something dark was awakened, and Kate has never been able to escape the terrible truth of what happened there. 

Chloe has been planning her dream wedding for months. She has the dress, the flowers, and the perfect venue: Small Angels, a charming old church set alongside dense, green woods in the village that her fiancé, Sam, and his sister, Kate, grew up in. But days before the ceremony, Chloe starts to learn of unsettling stories about Small Angels and Mockbeggar Woods. And worse, she begins to see, smell, and hear things that couldn't possibly be real. 

Now, Kate is returning home for the first time in years--for Sam and Chloe's wedding. But the woods are stirring again, and Kate must reconnect with Lucia, her first love, to protect Chloe, the village, and herself. An unforgettable novel about the memories that hold us back and those that show us the way forward, this is storytelling at its most magical. Enter Small Angels, if you dare.

Small Angels

977187de-6559-4b83-bb98-226adffb635d-1

From one of America's most renowned storytellers--the best-selling author of Blonde--comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a backdrop of shocking murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.

"Hannah's unreliable, elliptical narrative is seductive and compelling, like following someone into a fever dream ... [Oates] is in no hurry to trigger the action, dropping tiny morsels of foreshadowing to keep us on our toes." --The New York Times Book Review

"Unsettling, mysterious, deft, sinister, eerily plausible." --Margaret Atwood, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, via Twitter

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved child-killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together with tragic consequences.

There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on a chilling mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of abductions and killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.

Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated, and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.

Babysitter

48211799-0a73-48a3-9156-e6148ce22a5b-1

"A powerfully expansive novel...Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor." New York Times Book Review

Do Not Say We Have Nothing

85caeb94-7a39-4ecf-b908-035bff0c2d59-1

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.

Send for Me

e998a8d8-1082-4d07-ae28-2bf154d6ebcb-1

Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many more America is broken. You don’t need a fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is systemic injustice, the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American Dream but our very lives. In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world’s most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.

Tales of Two Americas

c5d0cfc0-e81f-4c55-a4b5-0daf575b5485-1

From the bestselling author of The Outcast, The Snakes is a shocking story of family secrets which holds the reader in its grip from start to unforgettable finish


READ THE TENSE TWIST-FILLED RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK FOR SPRING 2020 FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE OUTCAST.

Family secrets can be deadly.

Newly-weds Dan and Bea decide to escape London. Driving through France in their beaten-up car they anticipate a long lazy summer, worlds away from their ordinary lives.

But their idyll cannot last. Stopping off to see Bea's brother at his crumbling hotel, the trio are joined unexpectedly by Bea's ultra-wealthy parents. Dan has never understood Bea's deep discomfort around them but living together in such close proximity he begins to sense something is very wrong.

Just as tensions reach breaking point, brutal tragedy strikes, exposing decades of secrets and silence that threaten to destroy them all.

'A suspenseful, beautifully written thriller about the corruption of money and abuse within a dysfunctional family' Guardian

The Snakes

bca56305-3e27-4a19-b06d-17acd9ea740b-1

What Animals Think and Feel

I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so-close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that for a scientist was forbidden fruit: Who are you?

Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, readers travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, and finally plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in the crystalline waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy calls us to re-evaluate how we interact with animals. Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world.

Beyond Words

1f238c85-4b91-4621-9a24-03f3edfdb65c-1

Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us about Who We Really Are

Foreword by Steven Pinker Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world—provided we ask the right questions. By the end of an average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable. Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women? Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.

Everybody Lies

6a681a1f-8a59-428e-aac6-d40154d1f6a9-1

Magpie Lane

7e6a7981-78a2-47e0-a7ff-5dadb7f3838e-1

In this "eloquent debut," a young Australian woman unable to find her footing in the world begins to break down when the emergencies she hears working as a 911 operator and the troubles within her own life gradually blur together, forcing her to grapple with how the past has shaped her present (Publishers Weekly). Drifting after her final year in college, a young writer begins working part-time as an emergency dispatch operator in Sydney. Over the course of an eight-hour shift, she is dropped into hundreds of crises, hearing only pieces of each. Callers report car accidents and violent spouses and homes caught up in flame. The work becomes monotonous: answer, transfer, repeat. And yet the stress of listening to far-off disasters seeps into her personal life, and she begins walking home with keys in hand, ready to fight off men disappointed by what they find in neighboring bars. During her free time, she gets black-out drunk, hooks up with strangers, and navigates an affair with an ex-lover whose girlfriend is in their circle of friends. Two centuries earlier, her great-great-great-great-grandfather--the British explorer John Oxley--traversed the wilderness of Australia in search of water. Oxley never found the inland sea, but the myth was taken up by other men, and over the years, search parties walked out into the desert, dying as they tried to find it. Interweaving a woman's self-destructive unraveling with the gradual worsening of the climate crisis, The Inland Sea is charged with unflinching insight into our age of anxiety. At a time when wildfires have swept an entire continent, this novel asks what refuge and comfort looks like in a constant state of emergency.

The Inland Sea

d14833d8-a3d9-47e6-8f30-c86c1664552b

Friends Hetty, Byatt, and Reece go to extremes trying to uncover the dark truth about the mysterious disease that has had them quarantined at their boarding school on a Maine island.

Wilder Girls

8e48a449-73e6-4ed2-a511-a31eed42fa3f-1

Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae (Man Booker Prize Finalist 2016)

Man Booker Prize Finalist, LA Times Book Prize Finalist, New York Times Editor’s Choice, and an American Booksellers Association National Indie Bestseller! Named a Best Book of 2016 by Newsweek, NPR, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Sunday Times! In the smash hit historical thriller that the New York Times Book Review calls “thought provoking fiction,” a brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae. There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? And will he hang for his crime? Presented as a collection of documents discovered by the author, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers of Culdie, Ross-shire. They offer conflicting impressions of the accused; one interviewee recalls Macrae as a gentle and quiet child, while another details him as evil and wicked. Chief among the papers is Roderick Macrae’s own memoirs where he outlines the series of events leading up to the murder in eloquent and affectless prose. There follow medical reports, psychological evaluations, a courtroom transcript from the trial, and other documents that throw both Macrae’s motive and his sanity into question. Graeme Macrae Burnet’s multilayered narrative—centered around an unreliable narrator—will keep the reader guessing to the very end. His Bloody Project is a deeply imagined crime novel that is both thrilling and luridly entertaining from an exceptional new voice.

His Bloody Project

9b0160b1-e402-494a-9f2f-3c796cad7efb-1

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK AND INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A knockout of a novel…we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021’s best.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, GMA, New York Post, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, Electric Literature, LitHub, AARP, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, She Reads, Alma, and more. I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country. Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since. Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America? Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.

Infinite Country

35bdad8f-b6b3-4eb5-ad4a-ca307a2d937b-1

A sharp and prescient novel about women in the workplace, the power of Big Tech, and the looming threat of foreign espionage from Kathy Wang, "a skilled satirist of the northern California dream" (Harper's Bazaar) In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she's recruited by Russia's largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she's in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America's most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia's getting nervous. Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she's working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she's slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial "founder's girlfriend". One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she's burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine's privacy settings aren't as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself. The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn't she entitled to protect the lifestyle she's earned? Part page-turning cat-and-mouse chase, part sharp and hilarious satire, Impostor Syndrome is a shrewdly-observed examination of women in tech, Silicon Valley hubris, and the rarely fulfilled but ever-attractive promise of the American Dream.

Browse by categories

Gillian McAllister

Famous Last Words

Elspeth Barker; Maggie O'Farrell

O Caledonia

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Chain Gang All Stars

Kate Alice Marshall

A Killing Cold

Essie Chambers

Swift River

Jacquie Walters

Dearest

Caroline Blackwood; Honor Moore

Great Granny Webster

Rochelle Alers

Take the Long Way Home

Lucy Gilmore

The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires

Lauren Owen

Small Angels

Joyce Carol Oates

Babysitter

Madeleine Thien

Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Lauren Fox

Send for Me

John Freeman (Editor)

Tales of Two Americas

Sadie Jones

The Snakes

Carl Safina

Beyond Words

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Everybody Lies

Lucy Atkins

Magpie Lane

Madeleine Watts

The Inland Sea

Rory Power

Wilder Girls

Graeme Macrae Burnet

His Bloody Project

Patricia Engel

Infinite Country

Kathy Wang

Impostor Syndrome

Get The App