Featured Literary Fiction
INDIAN BURIAL GROUND
by Nick Medina
A CALAMITY OF SOULS
by David Baldacci
Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.
Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.
Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.
TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS
by Molly X. Chang
She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war . . . or ignite one?
“A thrilling tale of magic and murder, intrigue and betrayal.”—Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sword Catcher
The gorgeous first edition hardcover of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods will feature a poster, color endpapers, a custom-stamped case, and a foil jacket!
Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen.
Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull the life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe.
When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.
Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most?
HONEY
by Victor Lodato
Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer’s Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past.
As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew Michael bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it’s hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants—to forgive or to avenge.
This electrifying literary breakout from PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato is a masterful and deeply moving portrait of love in all its forms, of moral ambiguity, and of inspiring change—a story of female rage that asks the question: What are the limits of compassion in a world gone mad?
NOTHING BUT THE BONES
by Brian Panowich
With lyrical prose and hard-hitting depictions of the hardscrabble life in the rural south, Brian Panowich, author of Bull Mountain, Like Lions, and Hard Cash Valley, delivers a gripping new chapter in his tales of McFalls County in Nothing But the Bones.
In McFalls County, local crime boss Gareth Burroughs runs everything on the mountain. And Nelson “Nails” McKenna has been his enforcer since he was a teenager, though his heart’s not really in the dirty work. Then one night in a local roadhouse, Nails goes too far, defending a woman, and even Burroughs’s reach can’t get him out of this one. With a dead body and countless witnesses, Nails and the woman become fugitives on the run, and unlikely partners.
But on the road to Jacksonville, where a possible escape awaits, there’s more than one interested party on the pair’s trail, and the glimpse they had of getting away scot free suddenly seems elusive. In the end, Nails must make one final stand for his freedom―or pay with both of their lives.
ON THE TOBACCO COAST
by Christopher Tilghman
The culmination of Christopher Tilghman’s great Chesapeake saga, a story spanning four centuries of an American family.
It is the Fourth of July 2019, and the Mason family is gathering at their historic Chesapeake farm, Mason’s Retreat. It isn’t everyone’s favorite party, but Harry Mason has once again goaded his wife, Kate, and their children into hosting a celebratory dinner. Their oldest, Rosalie, is having trouble with her marriage; the youngest, Ethan, is in the throes of a fitful first relationship. In between, Eleanor despairs over her stalled novel, a fictionalized memoir of the wife of the first Mason settler who landed there in 1659.
Kate, recovering from a second round of chemotherapy, is at the center of this ritual of remembrance. Tart and candid, she asks her husband, “What crime against humanity did your family not commit on that land?” And so it is more or less inevitable that when the clan, joined by a cast of neighbors and cousins from France, sits down for dinner, the question of how they should think and feel about their past comes to the fore.
Told with irony and deep insight, On the Tobacco Coast is Christopher Tilghman’s concluding meditation on the themes of his novels about this ancestral monument: the pride and shame in its long history, the persistence of family stories, race and privilege, the enigmas and customs of regions. It is a reflects on the state of America today, with its battles with its own history and efforts to reckon with the wrongs of the past while looking forward to an uncertain, more just future.
THE ALTERNATIVES
by Caoilinn Hughes
“A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species, The Alternatives unfolds in a prose full of gorgeous surprises and glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty.” —Hernan Diaz
From the writer Anthony Doerr calls “a massive talent,” the story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside
The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London’s Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth’s future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search of a sister who doesn’t want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, confronting both old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland’s most gifted storytellers.
THE EVOLUTION OF ANNABEL CRAIG
by Lisa Grunwald
A young Southern woman sets out on a journey of self-discovery as the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial tests her faith and her marriage in this moving novel from the author of Time After Time and The Irresistible Henry House.
“Lisa Grunwald is a national treasure. . . . An essential American story from a master craftsman.”—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
I had never questioned a miracle, witnessed a gunfight, or seen a dead body. . . . I had thought I knew exactly what I wanted and what I didn’t. Before the summer was over, all that and much more would change.
Annabel Hayes—born, baptized, and orphaned in the sleepy conservative town of Dayton, Tennessee—is thrilled to find herself falling quickly and deeply in love with George Craig, a sophisticated attorney newly arrived from Knoxville. But before the end of their first year of marriage, their lives are beset by losses. The strain on their relationship is only intensified when John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution at the local high school.
Foreshadowing today’s culture wars, the trial against Scopes is a spectacle unlike any the country has seen. William Jennings Bryan—a revered Southern politician—joins the prosecution, pitting himself and his faith against the renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Journalists descend in a frenzy, thrusting the town and its citizens into the national spotlight. And when George joins the team defending Scopes, Annabel begins to question both her beliefs and her vows.
As the ongoing trial divides neighbor against neighbor, it also divides the Craigs in unexpected ways. But in the midst of these conflicts—one waged in an open courtroom, the other behind closed doors—Annabel will discover that the path to her own evolution begins with the courage to think for herself.
THE FINDERS KEEPERS LIBRARY
by Annie Rains
This heart-warming second chance love story about hope and healing from USA Today bestselling author Annie Rains is perfect for fans of Raeanne Thayne and Jenny Hale!
For a gardener blessed with a green thumb, Savannah Collins’s life sure seems like it’s all thorns, zero roses. She has no job, no relationship, and no place to live. With nothing but a car full of plants and her new rescue kitten, Savannah heads to Bloom, North Carolina, to spend the summer with her beloved Aunt Eleanor, a retired librarian.
Her aunt shares her love of literature with the Finders Keepers Library, located in her beautiful garden, where anyone can stop by to pick a book or leave a book. When a sudden summer storm destroys the library and many of the roses, it will take a village to get everything ready for the garden wedding that is planned there in just three weeks.
As the entire town joins in to make the necessary repairs, Savannah bonds with their neighbor Evan Sanders over the books that Eleanor has handpicked for each of them, helping them both find healing and self-discovery. Savannah only intends to stay through the summer, but when an unexpected job offer, a sudden health crisis, and a wayward pre-teen push her future in new directions, she has to wonder whether this is the place that she is meant to be—and the family she’s meant to be with.
Still Hot in Literary Fiction
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah
A #1 bestseller on The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times!
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women―at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE
by James McBride
THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
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