June 30, 2022
Summer is often a time when we find ourselves spending long stretches of time away from home. It may be weekends at a beach or lake house...or, if you are really lucky, the whole summer season. It also may be days at a swim club, or weekends. Or you may be getting together with family. Bring on the “One-Book” Book Club. Think about ONE book that would be fun for the group to read and would make for a great discussion. Give it a vote if multiple suggestions are out there. Plot a date and time to talk, and enjoy the discussion. See this as a great opportunity to talk books with people you normally do not chat about books with. We’d love to hear your thoughts on ideas like this, as well as if you pull together a “One-Book” Book Club.
Editorial Content for Clark and Division
Book
Teaser
Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery --- the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death --- brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.
Promo
Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery --- the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death --- brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.
About the Book
Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.
Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled 2,000 miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.
Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.
Inspired by historical events, CLARK AND DIVISION infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime fiction plot with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from 30 years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.
Editorial Content for Counterfeit
Book
Teaser
For fans of Hustlers and HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA comes the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise.
Promo
For fans of Hustlers and HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA comes the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise.
About the Book
For fans of Hustlers and HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise --- an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime and friendship from the author of BURY WHAT WE CANNOT TAKE and SOY SAUCE FOR BEGINNERS.
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake.
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son and a beautiful home, she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, 20 years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags, and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business --- someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Swift, surprising and sharply comic, COUNTERFEIT is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
Editorial Content for Half-Blown Rose
Book
Teaser
From the award-winning author of THIS CLOSE TO OKAY comes an irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art and passion in Paris.
Promo
From the award-winning author of THIS CLOSE TO OKAY comes an irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art and passion in Paris.
About the Book
An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art and passion in Paris, from the award-winning author of THIS CLOSE TO OKAY.
Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At 44, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin --- before he moved to California and never returned.
Now estranged from her husband, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son’s wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, cigarettes smoked in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs, and long, starry walks along the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming.
In a journey that is both transportive and intimate, HALF-BLOWN ROSE traverses Paris, art, travel, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships and romance, with excerpts from Cillian’s novel, playlists and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back, Vincent must decide what she wants...and who she will be.
Editorial Content for Horse
Book
Teaser
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. From these strands, Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history.
Promo
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. From these strands, Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history.
About the Book
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. From these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history.
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamour of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a 19th-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse --- one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, HORSE is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.