When Ahamed arrived in suburban Boston in 1970, she felt “an acute sense of disappointment,” she writes. “What were these quaint, old-fashioned houses doing in the land that had sent men and rocket ships to the moon?” The silence of her new home made her long for the noise and liveliness of her native India. […]
Grace Hastings feels as if she’s clawed her way to the role of marketing manager for a London dating app called Fate, struggling with imposter syndrome every step of the way. Meanwhile, she writes off her workplace rival Eric Bancroft’s effortless rise as a result of his popularity, family name, and good looks. When the […]
The family waits for the full moon that signals the beginning of Holi. To prepare, they collect wood for a bonfire, clean the house, and gather flower petals, fruits, and tea to make natural dyes. Later, the family tells stories around the fire; the next day, joined by friends and family, they playfully spray each […]
Sal and Charo, both in their early 20s, are relative newcomers to the city. Charo arrived first, after an uncle living in the United States agreed to adopt her so she could immigrate more easily. As if repaying her debt to him and sending money to her parents back home weren’t hard enough, she’s now […]
The narrator’s initial reasons for visiting the abbey are vague: She’s tired; she wants to escape; her marriage is falling apart; she’s still grieving her parents, dead for more than 35 years; she’s disillusioned with her work in the environmental conservation movement. The predictability of the nuns’ rituals turns out to be profoundly restorative. When […]
Glimmering with foreboding, Bamford’s debut is an eerie consideration of family secrets in a sun-dappled setting. The action is confined to a late-1980s summer day in the life of a group of relatives, accompanied by their partners and children, but the novel also reaches to the backstory as everyone gathers in Frankie’s house to celebrate […]
Alone in the gym, 10-year-old Zack hears a curious scratching sound as he’s putting away the floor hockey equipment. Zack’s used to odd noises—St. Joseph’s is more than a century old, after all—but this one is different. His best friend, Henry, agrees that the sound is definitely not normal, but gym teacher Mrs. Clark and […]
O’Neill, a University of Southern California historian, excavates the story of two East African princes who boarded a British ship with the intention of traveling to London, only to be sold into slavery in Jamaica. After years of enslavement, the princes persuaded a lawyer to help them regain their freedom, setting up the next stage […]
It’s certainly her most sharply focused. Alarmed that a series of anonymous threats she’s been receiving have escalated, London magazine editor Sarah Lampson asks Nancy Graham, her old roommate and colleague at Diagonal Press, to help figure out which of her former lovers is intent on killing her. But it’s already too late, for one […]
Lila Kennedy thought she had the perfect family—a loving mother, a doting stepfather, two wonderful daughters, and a great husband. She even wrote a self-help book about repairing a marriage, which was published a mere two weeks before her husband left her. After her own mother’s sudden death, Lila finds herself an unexpected single mom […]