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March 31, 2020

Before writing this newsletter, I looked at the last one we did. Though it was written on March 11th, it seems like it was a lifetime ago. I feel like March has had 1,000 days in it!

With huge thanks to our team, we have kept up the pace these past few weeks. In fact, we have been trying to bring you MORE book-related content. I am now shooting two “Bookreporter Talks To” interviews each week, coming to you from my dining room studio. And this week, in addition to the Bookreporter promo video (which will be up by Thursday), we shot a video about great books for book groups --- this time from our family room. Yes, I miss the in-person camaraderie of our team, but I am loving what we are doing from a distance. This week, I am interviewing Diane Chamberlain about BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN and Lisa See about THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN. I had been scheduled to talk to both of them at the Tucson Festival of Books, so I am happy to be doing interviews this way!

Esther Safran Foer, author of I Want You to Know We're Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir

Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation --- that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust --- Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived.

Chris Bohjalian, author of The Red Lotus

The first time Alexis saw Austin, it was a Saturday night. Not in a bar, but in the emergency room where Alexis sutured a bullet wound in Austin's arm. Six months later, on the brink of falling in love, they travel to Vietnam on a bike tour so that Austin can show her his passion for cycling and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But as Alexis sips white wine and waits at the hotel for him to return from his solo ride, two men emerge from the tall grass and Austin vanishes into thin air. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, she uncovers a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in?

Louise Erdrich, author of The Night Watchman

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel-bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953, and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa

2000. Bright, ambitious and yearning for adulthood, 15-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful 42-year-old English teacher. 2017. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager --- and who professed to worship only her --- may be far different from what she has always believed?

Editorial Content for A Good Neighborhood

Teaser

A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD asks big questions about life in America today as it explores the effects of class, race and heartrending love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

Promo

A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD asks big questions about life in America today as it explores the effects of class, race and heartrending love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

About the Book

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who’s headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans --- a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter --- raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace.

With little in common except a property line, these two families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD asks big questions about life in America today --- What does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don't see eye to eye? --- as it explores the effects of class, race and heartrending love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

Editorial Content for In Five Years

Teaser

Perfect for fans of ME BEFORE YOU and ONE DAY, Rebecca Serle's unforgettable novel is a striking, powerful and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Promo

Perfect for fans of ME BEFORE YOU and ONE DAY, Rebecca Serle's unforgettable novel is a striking, powerful and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

About the Book

Perfect for fans of ME BEFORE YOU and ONE DAY --- a striking, powerful and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night --- December 15 --- but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Brimming with joy and heartbreak, IN FIVE YEARS is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship and the unpredictable nature of destiny.

Editorial Content for The Island of Sea Women

Teaser

Lisa See, the bestselling author of THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE, has written a beautiful, thoughtful novel about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island.

Promo

Lisa See, the bestselling author of THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE, has written a beautiful, thoughtful novel about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island.

About the Book

“A mesmerizing new historical novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island.

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

“This vivid…thoughtful and empathetic” novel (The New York Times Book Review) illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge and the men take care of the children. “A wonderful ode to a truly singular group of women” (Publishers Weekly), THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN is a “beautiful story…about the endurance of friendship when it’s pushed to its limits, and you…will love it” (Cosmopolitan).

Editorial Content for The Jetsetters

Teaser

In the vein of THE NEST and THE VACATIONERS, THE JETSETTERS is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

Promo

In the vein of THE NEST and THE VACATIONERS, THE JETSETTERS is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

About the Book

When 70-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the “Become a Jetsetter” contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can’t seem to find a partner; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them.

When she wins the contest, the family packs their baggage --- both literal and figurative --- and spends 10 days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

Can four lost adults find the peace they’ve been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together? In the vein of THE NEST and THE VACATIONERS, THE JETSETTERS is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

Editorial Content for Writers & Lovers

Teaser

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel, EUPHORIA, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Promo

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel, EUPHORIA, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

About the Book

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel, EUPHORIA, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

WRITERS & LOVERS follows Casey --- a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist --- in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart and intelligence, WRITERS & LOVERS is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.