Fascinating World War-era historical novels for your spring reading pleasure

March brought the release of two fascinating World War-era historical novels that have received stellar praise: The Empire of the Senses by Alexis Landau, a novel about passion and family in volatile Berlin, and Mademoiselle Chanel by C.W. Gortner, chronicling the turbulent life of the iconic fashion designer.

The Empire of the Senses (Pantheon) was one of Booklist's Top 10 Historical Fiction titles for 2015. In a starred review, Booklist called the novel a "top-notch literary saga with a gripping plotline" and wrote, "the characters’ actions and thoughts are so three-dimensionally human that readers may forget they’re reading fiction and not experiencing their real lives alongside them."

The book also received a full-page feature spread in Jewish Book World, complete with an interview with Landau and a glowing review.  Reviewer Becca Kantor called The Empire of the Senses a “riveting debut,” a “sweeping yet intimate portrait of pre-World War II Berlin,” full of “evocative prose, attention to detail, and meticulous research." She ended with the assertion, “The Empire of the Senses is sure to establish Alexis Landau as a masterful new literary voice.”

In her interview with Jewish Book World, Landau discusses the influence of art and Jewish identity on the book. She also offers some writerly tips. Below is a brief excerpt of Landau discussing how she honed the time period details so they were just right; read the full interview here.

One of my best friends, who is an editor, told me, "The most important thing is tone, and getting the tone right, and not having your contemporary voice barge in." When I was writing, especially in the beginning, I was really conscious of that. I can't write well unless I understand every aspect of a person. Not just what they're experiencing psychologically, but also their body in time and space."

Internationally bestselling author C.W. Gortner's Mademoiselle Chanel (William Morrow) recently made the ABA National Indie Bestseller list!

Gortner was also featured in Glamour as a Best New Novel out in March. The Glamour book editor offered glowing praise, saying, “Mademoiselle Chanel sucked me in by the pearls and never let go. Gortner’s imagining of the ultimate fashion icon is equal parts grit and glamour, painting a portrait of a woman who was hugely inspiring but by no means perfect. Oh, and if you can’t afford to visit Paris in peak springtime season, reading this book with a glass of wine is a decent substitute.”

Mademoiselle Chanel was also...

...featured in USA Today (#1 under “New and Noteworthy”)...

...named a March Book Club pick in Style Bistro (the editors paired the book with a little black dress as an inspired fashion find, and they assert that “Mademoiselle Chanel isn't like other things you've read” about Chanel; it “tell[s] Gabrielle Chanel's history in her own imagined voice and perspective”)...

...and chosen as the Editor's Choice Title from the Historical Novel Society (their review is brimming with praise: “Gortner giv[es] us a complex story in which Chanel shines through as human, understandably prideful, blind when it served her purpose, vulnerable, and always chic and elegant. Beyond the effortless and easy flow of the narrative, there's a lot to love about this story...This novel...breathes Chanel's style and panache in every sentence”).

Don't miss these amazing books for your spring reading!

2014's "Top Ten"s and "Best Of"s, a NYT bestseller, and a winner of the most "Best Of"s prize!

This year, JVNLA had seven books on a huge breadth of year-end “Top Ten” and “Best Of” lists! Including one book that topped lists ABOUT the top lists of the year: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.

Below is the round-up of these phenomenal books:

Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders (Ten Speed Press, September 2014)

Amazon chose this gorgeous book of illustrations that depict untranslatable words for its Best Books of the Year: Art and Photography list!

Lost in Translation also recently hit the New York Times bestseller list in the Travel section! It reached #6 in December and climbed to #4 in January. Congrats, Ella!

Songs Only You Know by Sean Madigan Hoen (Soho Press, April 2014)

In its list of 10 Best Music Books of 2014, Rolling Stones spotlighted Hoen's “gritty, gripping punk-rock memoir” (as they called it), and heaped praise on it: "It's funny at times, always brutally honest; a half-healed bruise, tender and multi-colored. Few books convey the fever-pitch intensity of youth with such vividness and so little glamorization, or as deeply explore the heartbreaking complexity of family—both those we're born into and the ones we choose."

This Is a Moose written by Richard Morris and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, May 2014)

Morris and Lichtenheld's picture book collaboration is about a moose being filmed in a nature documentary who just wants to be an astronaut (to the chagrin of the director). Kirkus named it to its Best Children's Books of 2014 list, calling it “a humorous—make that hysterical—homage to movies and big dreams.”

Booklist named it to its Editors' Choice: Books for Youth 2014 list, raving that “this rambunctious picture book is stuffed with delightfully absurd chaos.”

This Is a Moose was also featured in ABC's Best Books for Children 2014 catalog!

And Amazon picked it for its Best Books of the Year: Ages 3-5 list!

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert (Riverhead, February 2014)

The Kansas City Star named The Swan Gondola, a "love story set at a steampunk carnival in turn-of-the-century Omaha, with a clever take on The Wizard of Oz" to their Best Books of 2014 list!

Archetype by M.D. Waters (Dutton, February 2014 hardcover, June 2014 paperback)

Pop Sugar featured this futuristic suspense novel reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale on its Best Books for Women 2014 list!

The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson (Knopf Books for Young Readers, February 2014)

Kirkus named The Tyrant's Daughter to its Best Teen Books of 2014 list, calling this YA about a girl whose family relocates to the US after her father is killed in a coup "smart, relevant, required reading."

Amazon also named it to its Best Books of the Year: Teen and Young Adult list!

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (Riverhead, September 2014)

In a unique “Top Ten” approach, The Wall Street Journal decided to look at ten “Best Of” lists to find the books most often at the top. They named the “suspenseful and sensual” The Paying Guests as the winner who appeared most often! The Paying Guests is about a widow and her spinster daughter who must take in lodgers in 1922--though things are not nearly as simple as they seem. It won by appearing on the six below lists:

The New York Times's Notable Books of 2014

The Washington Post's Best Books of 2014

The Guardian's Best Books of 2014, chosen by various writers; Ruth Rendell chose The Paying Guests.

Kirkus's Best Fiction Books of 2014; The Paying Guests was also a finalist for 2014's Kirkus Prize.

The Telegraph's Best Books of 2014

Barnes and Noble's Words of the Year: The Best Things They Read in 2014, chosen by various writers; Michael Dirda chose The Paying Guests. Barnes and Noble also included The Paying Guests among its Top Fiction Books for the Holiday list.

Beyond these, there is an incredibly lengthy list of places that included The Paying Guests as one of their “top ten” or “best of” books! Below is just a very brief sampling of some of the rest:

People Magazine's Ten Best Books of 2014

Pop Sugar's Best Books for Women 2014, the #1 pick!

Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Fiction Books of 2014

NPR Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan's Favorite Books of 2014; The Paying Guests was also front and center on NPR's Book Concierge, their Guide to 2014's Great Reads.

Slate's Best Books of 2014

The Seattle Times's Best Books of 2014

The Kansas City Star's Best Books of 2014

Amazon's Best Books of the Year: Literature and Fiction

Congrats to all!

Newly minted NYT bestseller Sarah Waters's THE PAYING GUESTS is a "tour de force"

We are so excited that Sarah Waters's The Paying Guests (Riverhead, October 2014) is a New York Times bestseller! It debuted at #12 last week, hits #7 this week, and will be #9 next week! This marks the first time one of Waters's novels--perennial bestsellers in the UK--has hit the US bestseller lists. Congratulations, Sarah!

The Paying Guests is also a finalist for the inaugural Kirkus Prize (winners to be announced October 23) and is an Indie Next and Library Reads pick. It's hit #8 on the Indie Bestseller List and debuted at #3 on the UK Sunday Times bestseller list. The regional US has been taken by storm as well, with The Paying Guests recently reaching #4 on the New England list, #8 on the Southern list, #13 on the Mountains and Plains, #7 on the Pacific NW, #7 on the Heartland, #6 for SoCal, #8 for NoCA, and #9 for New Atlantic.

So just how did The Paying Guests explode across the literary scene?

Part of its success has had to do with Riverhead's publishing team, which garnered extensive national coverage (see below) and completely repackaged Waters's five-book backlist to echo The Paying Guests's gorgeous cover. But, really, their efforts have only served to illuminate for the nation something anyone who reads Waters's books already knows: Sarah Waters is immensely talented and writes amazing, haunting, heart-stoppingly good novels.

Slate's review describes Waters's particular talent perfectly:

Her six novels, beginning with Tipping the Velvet in 1998, could be called historical fiction, but that doesn’t begin to capture their appeal. It is closer to say that she is creating pitch-perfect popular fiction of an earlier time, but swapping out its original moral engine for a sensibility that is distinctly queer and contemporary, as if retrofitting a classic car.

While Waters's previous books have taken place in Victorian- or 1940s-era England, The Paying Guests marks her first foray into the 1920s. It was a particularly rich and complex time in England, as Waters explains in her New York Times interview:

“It’s that shift, that moment of modernity," Ms. Waters said. "The impact of the First World War was to shake things up enormously, loosening up old mores, fashions and behaviors. The early ’20s were like the waist of an hourglass. Lots of things were hurtling toward it and squeezing through it and then hurtling out the other side.”

In The Paying Guests, as with all her books, Waters captures historical details so precisely it feels like you're living and breathing the 1920s the moment you open the book. Waters describes how she achieves this in a recent Out Magazine interview:

“Just as we’re sitting here, the way our clothes feel, the things we can hear, all the food we’re eating—we don’t notice because it’s just a part of the fabric of our lives,” she says. “You have to think about those things that are so much a part of the fabric of your characters’ lives that they cease to notice them, and yet try to convey them to a reader quietly.”

While a central plot point in The Paying Guests revolves around a crime, the book is about so much more. “I wanted to write a love story that’s complicated by a crime, not a crime story complicated by love,” Waters told Vogue in her recent interview.

It's smart choices like this, combined with her retrofitting talent, historical precision, and more that have contributed to a simply must-read book. For a taste, check out the Wall Street Journal excerpt.

And if, somehow, you still need convincing, here are only a portion of the glowing reviews:

"Some novels are so good, so gripping or shattering that they leave you uncertain whether you should have ever started them. You open The Paying Guests and immediately surrender to the smooth assuredness of Waters’s silken prose. Nothing jars. You relax. You turn more pages. You start turning them faster. Before long, you resemble Coleridge’s Wedding-Guest: You cannot choose but read. The book has you in thrall. You will follow Waters and her story anywhere. Yet when that story ends, you find yourself emotionally sucked dry, as much stunned as exhilarated by the power of art." --The Washington Post

“Will keep you sleepless for three nights straight and leave you grasping for another book that can sustain that high.” --Entertainment Weekly, "A" rating

The Paying Guests was also ranked #3 on Entertainment Weekly's “Must” list; they called it “one of the year’s most engrossing and suspenseful novels…a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending."

“The Paying Guests is a knockout… As alert as Waters is to historical detail, she's also a superb storyteller with a gift for capturing the layered nuances of character and mood….Spellbinding…The Paying Guests is one of those big novels you hate to see end.” --NPR

"Perhaps Waters’s most impressive accomplishment is the authentic feel she achieves, that the telling—whether in its serious, exciting, comic or sexy passages—has no modern tinge. ..The story appears not merely to be about the novel’s time but to have been written by someone living in that time, thumping out the whole thing on a manual typewriter." --The New York Times Book Review

“[A] tour de force of precisely observed period detail and hidden passions.” --Wall Street Journal

“An exquisitely tuned exploration of class in post-Edwardian Britain—with really hot sex...Waters is a master of pacing, and her metaphor-laced prose is a delight...As life-and-death questions are answered, new ones come up, and until the last page, the reader will have no idea what’s going to happen. Waters keeps getting better, if that’s even possible after the sheer perfection of her earlier novels.” --Kirkus, starred review

“Dazzling. [Waters] can, it seems, do everything: the madness of love; the squalor of desire; the coexistence of devotion and annoyance; 'the tangle of it all'...At her greatest, Waters transcends genre...The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent.” --The Financial Times

“Waters seems to revel in 19th and 20th century British history as a dolphin does in water: Her literary depictions of domestic life, manners, architecture, class structure, the weight of war and the volatility of love all appear as effortless as they are beautifully executed…Moving and delicately wrought.”--Los Angeles Times

“Waters turns to the 1920s and delivers what feels like three novels for the price of one…a meticulously observed comedy of awkward manners… a story of torrid, forbidden trysts conducted behind a facade of conventional feminine respectability…[and] a tense tale of crime, mystery and suspense that culminates in a nail-biting courtroom drama…Exceedingly difficult to put down, The Paying Guests should scratch the same big-novel itch that Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch satisfied last year.” --Salon

“[A] delicious hothouse of a novel…There's palpable tension from page one, so buckle up and prepare for a wild ride--one that's under perfect authorial control…Somehow, Waters pulls off this improbable feat with fine-tuned prose that's by turns crisply cool and pressure-cooker hot. The Paying Guests channels the past via E.M. Forster, Dickens and Tolstoy, quickened with a dollop of contemporary Dennis Lehane noir…This is a fever dream of a novel—Waters' best—that will leave you all wrung out.” --USA Today

“[A] pulse-pounder of a novel that feels…personal and raw…even while it delivers the genre goods…Waters remains a master of her genre, the historical novel rewritten as a dissection of the individual conscience…Undeniably fascinating.” --The Chicago Tribune

“The new Sarah Waters novel, which finds the author at the height of her powers, weaves her characteristic threads of historical melodrama, lesbian romance, class tension, and sinister doings into a fabric of fictional delight that alternately has the reader flipping pages as quickly as possible, to find out what happens next, and hesitating to turn the page, for fear of what will happen next.” --Boston Globe

“If you haven’t already embraced the novels of Sarah Waters, now is the moment. Don’t think twice. Collect all six and devour them with the same feverish abandon of the lovers who can be found between their covers…[The Paying Guests]  is no romance novel or mere thriller, but a well-wrought, closely observed drama of a tumultuous period in British history… Herein lies the deliciousness of this book, and the others Waters has written: As much as Frances longs to give her heart to someone who will cherish it, we can never be sure, when she opens the final door, whether she will find the lady or the gallows.” --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“It's been a while since a book kept me up until 3:30 a.m., but The Paying Guests grabbed me and would not let me go until I turned page 566 and closed the cover with a sigh. The wonderfully melodramatic plot, the brilliant characterization of protagonist Frances Wray, the vivid depiction of the zeitgeist in post-WWI London--each of these elements was equally responsible for the kidnapping of this unsuspecting reader.” --Newsday

“A singular novel of psychological tension, emotional depth and historical detail.” --BookPage

“An absorbing character study [and] expertly paced and gripping psychological narrative...Readers of Water’s previous novels know that she brings historical eras to life with consummate skill, rendering authentic details into layered portraits of particular times and places...Breathtaking.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review

“So brilliantly unexpected, and so nerve-shreddingly tense, that it keeps the reader guessing until the very last paragraph.” --The Bookseller

“A beautiful and turbulent novel about the complexity, and often futility, of personal and social change…With The Paying Guests, Waters has not only crafted a vivid portrait of class dissolution in post-WWI London, but also a look at the achingly human need for a sense of purpose and, if we’re lucky, a little intimacy.” --AV Club

Phenomenal praise for THE MAN WHO WALKED AWAY

Maud Casey's The Man Who Walked Away has received phenomenal praise. The novel, published by Bloomsbury in March, is about a man who walks across Europe in a trance-like state and the doctor from whom he seeks help.

Check out our publicity round-up below!

The New York Times Book Review published a rave review from Geraldine Brooks!  Brooks called The Man Who Walked Away "richly engaged with language...Poignant, touching." 

The book also appeared in the Editor's Choice column in The New York Times Book Review.

The Washington Post published a glowing review, praising Casey for "evok[ing]--with no shortage of verve and gusto--the romance of 19th-century Europe."

National Public Radio (NPR) called Casey's handling of her story "a feat as graceful as it is clever" in its stellar review!

The Washington Independent Review of Books released another rave review, calling the novel "intelligent, superb...a beautiful, poignant story worth considering and reconsidering."

Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a starred review, too, and listed it in their "Most Overlooked Books" and "9 Novels Based on Extraordinary True Stories" lists!

The Washingtonian named The Man Who Walked Away a "Top Ten Book for March"!

The Man Who Walked Away was named a Publishers Weekly Book of the Week and received a starred review!

And here are excerpts of the amazing reviews:

“Lyrical in its style and fascinating in its psychology, Casey’s narrative provokes a host of intriguing questions beyond those the Doctor raises, and Casey is wise enough as an author not to provide easy answers.” --Kirkus, starred review

“Haunting...unconventional and engaging...Though her plot is solidly rooted in the history of medicine...Casey’s true focus is human rather than clinical. Our need for stories, our relationship with time, the inevitability of loss, and our startling endurance all resonate through her beautifully crafted interweaving of image and observation, fairy tale and fact.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review

“If I were blurbing Maud Casey’s The Man Who Walked Away, I’d be hard pressed to avoid labeling it ‘luminous’ and ‘liminal,’ and maybe even ‘lyrical’ and ‘plangent.’ Casey is a consummate stylist, and her new book is so richly engaged with language, so profligate with glorious sentences, that at times the prose ascends to the level of poetry. This is a writer who pays a deep, sensual attention to the world...Poignant and touching.” --Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Book Review

“Casey’s book is a vivid chronicle of the time, bringing alive the mysteries and joys of a fledgling science...Shucking the theme of contemporary angst, Casey evokes — with no shortage of verve and gusto — the romance of 19th-century Europe...The Man Who Walked Away is as compelling a portrait as you will find of the co-dependence between psychiatrist and patient.” --The Washington Post

“Intelligent, superb...Casey’s spectacular third novel...is a meditation on the elusive nature of time and life, the way they approach and leave us...Casey’s capable hands have elevated these ideas into a beautiful, poignant story worth considering and reconsidering...Her prose leaves rich morsels on almost every page, satisfying in both beauty and complexity of thought...Casey’s characters find companionship and anchors in one another, and we are fortunate to find such company in this treasure of a book.” --Washington Independent Review of Books

“If you're listening closely enough, you might just hear [Casey] pull off a feat as graceful as it is clever...Casey handles the story expertly.” --National Public Radio

“Maud Casey's The Man Who Walked Away is a haunting, deeply empathetic, and rigorously intelligent novel. It is also seamless marvel of construction and language. The Man Who Walked Away cast a spell from which I never wished to wake.” --Alice Sebold, internationally bestselling author of The Lovely Bones

“Pay attention, this lovely novel urges. As Maud Casey spins this mysteriously urgent tale of patient and doctor entwining, her quicksilver prose yields one astonishing image after another: each moment fleetingly beautiful, each character here—here!—and nowhere else. As this novel is like nothing else. Reading it is a singularly moving experience.” --Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever and Archangel

“The Man Who Walked Away is a book of enchantments of an extremely intelligent kind. Dreamlike and sharply real, the novel unfolds in a nineteenth-century asylum where all the inmates have their own poetry of delusion, fear turned to metaphor. Wildly original fiction, with a particular melancholy magic.” --Joan Silber, bestselling author of Ideas of Heaven and The Size of the World

Celebrate Children's Book Week with some stellar recent releases!

Happy Children's Book Week!

Children's Book Week has been celebrated every year in May since 1919, making it the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. The movement is run by Every Child a Reader, an organization “dedicated to instilling a lifelong love of reading in children,” and is sponsored by the Children's Book Council (CBC), the association of children's book publishers. According to the CBC site, 2013 saw over 150 Children's Book Week events held in 58 cities across the US. This year, they've been aiming for even more!

In celebration of Children's Book Week, we decided to highlight some of our exciting recent (and some upcoming) kids' books!

This Is a Moose by Richard T. Morris, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, May)  

In a recent Publishers Weekly podcast, Morris talks about how the picture book came to publishing light—with some coercion from Morris's wife and agent, Alice Tasman, along the way! Lichtenheld joins the podcast to discuss how he helped the surprise ending evolve, and more. Listen to it here!

Morris has also been doing a number of readings since the book's release, accompanied by none other than the book's star moose himself! Mum's the word on who's actually inside that moose suit, but feel free to take a guess... :)

Searching for Sky by Jillian Cantor (Bloomsbury, May)

A glowing review from Booklist noted, “In this 'reverse dystopian' novel, Cantor skillfully invites the reader to see our world and all its shortcomings and idiosyncrasies through Sky's questioning gaze.”

Count on the Subway by Paul DuBois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino (Knopf Books for Young Readers, May)

Count on the Subway was spotlighted in The New York Times Book Review's Children's Books section! It was also named an Editors' Choice pick!

Now and for Never by Lesley Livingston (Penguin Canada, May)

This will be the third in Livingston's Once Every Never trilogy, which began with Once Every Never in 2011 and was followed by Every Never After in 2013. Livingston is hosting a fab launch party for anyone in the Toronto area! Details are below if you happen to live nearby.

Burn Out by Kristi Helvig (Egmont, April)

A rave from Kirkus said of Burn Out, "Helvig builds a rock-solid future world and provides enough staggering plot twists and turns to keep pages flying to the gut-wrenching cliffhanger. A scorching series opener not to be missed”!

Gabe and Izzy: Standing Up for America's Bullied by Gabrielle Ford with Sarah Thomson (Puffin, March)

Publishers Weekly praised this book in a big article on bullying several months ago. You can find out more about the book and the PW article via our blog piece about National Bullying Prevention Month here.

Otis Dooda: Downright Dangerous by Ellen Potter, illustrated by David Heatley (Feiwel and Friends, March)

This is the hilarious sequel to Otis Dooda: Strange but True (2013). Otis has his own website, which simply should not be missed by any kids' book lovers! There you can download original songs based on the books, as well as super fun activities--such as How to Make Fart Goop or How to Make a Ninja Mask. So go check it out!

The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson (Knopf Books for Young Readers, February)

School Library Journal named this their top Recommended Summer Read! But it's also gotten heaps of accolades and praise since its release, which you should check out in our previous post on the book here!

Neverwas by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed (Arthur A. Levine Books, January)

Kirkus named Neverwas to its "Smart Reads for Teens" list!  In a separate rave review, it said, “In this sequel to Amber House (2012), the creepy atmosphere of its predecessor segues into full-blown terror...A wild ride that leaves its readers breathless.”

So now go out and celebrate Children's Book Week with some great reads!

"Eye-opening and insightful," THE TYRANT'S DAUGHTER is a must read

The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson has been having a great release month this February! It was named to the YA Movers and Shakers list on Goodreads where, according to Goodreads, it's been “racing up [their] popularity charts.” It was selected to the coveted position of “Amazon Best of the Month” in the teen category, one of only four total books. And it was named to Book Riot's list of hot new books to read in 2014.

Written by a former CIA officer, The Tyrant's Daughter tells the story of fifteen-year-old Laila, who has fled with her family from an unnamed Middle Eastern country after her father was killed in a coup. In Washington, D.C., Laila must adjust to a completely new life and new school, where she is shocked by girls who wear tank tops and shorts and where newspapers refer to her father as a “dictator.” Just as Laila's life begins to precariously balance amidst new friends, her mother's refusal to let go of the past threatens to upend everything in a new international crisis.

Central Ohio NPR's Shelf Discovery program recently spotlighted The Tyrant's Daughter.  They highly recommended the book, saying, “Although it was written for teens, The Tyrant's Daughter is an eye-opening and insightful short novel that has something to say to readers of all ages.” You can listen to the full review here.

Nearly every reviewer has praised Carleson's “beautifully written” prose (Booklist) and the complexity of Laila as a character. The strength of Carleson's writing is immediately evident when you pick up The Tyrant's Daughter. Take a look for yourself via the excerpt made available by Knopf Books for Young Readers here.

Below are some of the excellent reviews that have come in for The Tyrant's Daughter:

“Filled with political intrigue and emotional tension...Riveting...Raising as many questions as answers about Laila’s fate, the novel challenges social values close to home and abroad.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Absorbing, character-driven...Carleson shrewdly makes what has become a sadly familiar story on the evening news accessible by focusing on the experiences of one innocent girl at the center of it. Laila is a complex and layered character whose nuanced observations will help readers better understand the divide between American and Middle Eastern cultures. Smart, relevant, required reading.” --Kirkus, starred review

“This is more than just Laila’s story; rather, it is a story of context, beautifully written, and stirring in its questions and eloquent observations about our society and that of the Middle East.” --Booklist

“An amazingly gripping and honest tale. Carleson keeps her readers feeling as though they have just returned from traveling in a foreign land, making those faraway issues feel a little more personal—a feat few can achieve with words alone.” --BookPage

“Timely, relevant, and fascinating, Laila’s story offers readers an accessible understanding of the seemingly intractable nature of Middle East politics.” --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

“Some books are entertaining, some books are eye opening, but it's a special book that's both...Insightful and honest, this book also delivers a powerful ending worthy of Homeland.” --Justine Magazine

“A touching, suspenseful story...Every American should read this book. It’s an eye-opener.” --Suzanne Fisher Staples, New York Times bestselling author of Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind

Knopf Books for Young Readers, February 2014

Non-stop buzz for some phenomenal January/February releases

The past two weeks have seen quite a few of our books released, and this coming week will see even more! While book releases are always exciting, there's been nearly non-stop buzz for each of the below over the past few weeks. We decided to highlight some of our favorite promotions, publicity, reviews, and more.

Archetype by M.D. Waters (Dutton, February 6, 2014)

Archetype was named an Indie Next Pick for February by the American Booksellers Association (ABA)!  In the Indie Next write-up, Melissa Oates from Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC, wrote, "This is a great futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions."

Dutton has also created amazing swag for the book, which was featured at ComicCon, the ABA Winter Institute, and the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. Below is an image of the t-shirts that made an appearance. There were also tattoos and tote bags!

http://ow.ly/i/3dXjV

The back of the t-shirt says...

ARCHETYPE

 The original pattern from which all things of the same type are copies.

What's yours?

Coming 2/6/2014

www.mdwatersauthor.com

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert (Riverhead, February 6, 2014)

Tattered Cover Bookstore named The Swan Gondola a V.I.B.--Very Impressive Book!

They say about their V.I.B.'s, "Every now and then we encounter a new book that we're so excited about we want to shout it from the rooftops, so we've created a special tag to distinguish it from the rest: TC VIB (very impressive book)! That means it’s a true stand-out in a season of many excellent and compelling new books."

The Swan Gondola was also named a "Most Anticipated Book of 2014" by The Millions, among great company like Lorrie Moore and Haruki Murakami. Check out The Millions's blurb below:

Worthy Brown's Daughter by Phillip Margolin (Harper, January 21, 2014)

Publishers Weekly featured New York Times-bestselling author Phillip Margolin's latest in a huge, two-page spread! They also interviewed him about the writing process. Check out the first page below:

Worthy Brown's Daughter was also named to USA Today's Hottest Books List! The article said, "This departure for best-selling thriller writer Margolin might appeal to fans of the acclaimed movie 12 Years a Slave."

Dominion by C.J. Sansom (Mulholland Books, January 28, 2014)

The boon of all boons came the day before Dominion's release, when the great Stephen King himself tweeted about how much he loved the book!

 
Someone must have thought his first tweet was a gimmick, because he followed it up with another tweet:

As Stephen King explained above, Dominion is an alternate history of what might have happened had the Nazis won World War II and occupied Great Britain. To play up this idea, Mulholland Books created fantastic mock-ups of the British newspapers The Evening Standard, The Daily Express, and The Times of London as they might have looked had this alternate history really occurred. The papers were giveaways at Bourchercon and went into publicity mailings as well. Check out The Evening Standard below:

The Vanishing by Wendy Webb (Hyperion, January 21, 2014)

The Vanishing was named a Midwest Connections Pick by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association! In its write-up, the booksellers association called the book "another escapist bit of commercial fiction with a mysterious edge that remains popular with readers."

Webb has also been in the midst of a whirlwind book tour throughout Georgia, North Carolina, and New Orleans, themed "the Southern gothic meets the Northern gothic"--since Webb's books are contemporary gothic novels set in the Midwest and the South is so famous for their own gothic novels.  Unfortunately, given the recent weather that's shut down places like Atlanta, some of Webb's book signings were put in jeopardy.  She tweeted about it below:

A Life in Men by Gina Frangello (Algonquin Books, February 4, 2014)

  
Like The Swan Gondola, A Life in Men was also named to The Millions's list of "Most Anticipated Books of 2014"!  The Los Angeles Times picked up The Millions's list too and gave a great shout-out to Frangello. Check out The Millions's blurb below:

Book Riot also named A Life in Men to its list of "The Best Books We Read in January"!  Contributor Marisa Atkinson wrote, "Frangello has given us one of the most authentic depictions of female friendship that I've ever read...A Life in Men is an important and powerful novel, and one I won't soon forget."

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

OUR PICNICS IN THE SUN is "a psychological dazzler," "a stunner," "transcendent"

Award-winning mystery author Morag Joss's latest, Our Picnics in the Sun, came out from Delacorte Press/Random House a few weeks ago. Already it's been receiving simply stellar reviews!

Entertainment Weekly called Our Picnics in the Sun a “psychological dazzler” and named it to their “Must Read” list.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently featured the book in a glowing review. The below excerpt gives you a taste of the book, as well as a sense of how stunning it is:

Told in multiple voices, Joss' novel is a stunner. It's crime fiction the way Kate Atkinson is crime fiction — a novel cleverly plotted around a single event that reaches out across the story in mysterious and menacing ways. Set in an isolated farm in the English moors, Picnics in the Sun examines the lives of Howard and Deborah after Howard has had a debilitating stroke. Their marriage is in decay; their lives, like their farmhouse, are crumbling. The plot becomes increasingly suspenseful as a festering event in their past infects their present and a stranger inserts himself cruelly into their lives.

Don't miss the full review here.

NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan featured Our Picnics in the Sun on Fresh Air. She said, “In addition to her uncanny powers of storytelling, Joss can capture a world in the space of a few charged words.”

You can listen to the full review below, in which Joss's book is paired up with some other recent reads that came out around the time of that one-in-every-78,000-years holiday, Thanksgivukkah.



Last but certainly not least, WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, featured Joss and Our Picnics in the Sun in its arts column, The Artery. Other books praised in the same article were Ruth Rendell's No Man's Nightingale and Jayne Anne Phillips's Quiet Dell.

In the article, critic Ed Siegel calls Rendell “the greatest living mystery writer,” but he argues that Joss's work is just as good. “Like Rendell,” he writes, “she's more interested in the psychological framing of her characters than in creating and then solving crimes. [Alice] Munro and William Trevor are more her literary heroes than Agatha Christie or P.D. James.”

Here's an excerpt of some of his other praise:

Our Picnics in the Sun is [Joss's] gutsiest book yet as there seemingly isn’t a likable character in it...Yet it turns out to be every bit as much of a pageturner, and a search for grace, as Quiet Dell. Much of that is due to Joss’s artful writing — the psychological depth of her characters, the description of the English countryside and the trust that one has in her, given the richness of her previous books...I’ve been re-reading parts of the book and I’m agape at what Joss pulls off here. These are two books [Our Picnics in the Sun and Quiet Dell] that not only transcend their genres, they’re just plain transcendent.

You can find the full review in The Artery here.

Clearly, this suspenseful, gripping read isn't one to miss!

Delacorte Press/Random House, November 2013

A memoir for World AIDS Day: THIS IS HOW YOU SAY GOODBYE

In Victoria Loustalot's recent interview on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show, she describes herself as part of an “in-between generation,” one that bore witness to the transformation of AIDS from death sentence to survivable disease.

Loustalot is the author of This Is How You Say Goodbye, released by St. Martin's Press this fall. Subtitled “A Daughter's Memoir,” the book is an exploration of Loustalot's relationship with her father, his experience with AIDS, his eventual suicide in the face of deteriorating health, and Loustalot's attempt—years later—to fulfill his promise to her of a trip around the world.

Part of what makes this memoir so “heart-wrenching” (Booklist), “bittersweet” (Kirkus), and “probing” (Publishers Weekly) can likely be traced to Loustalot's membership in this “in-between generation.” Her father was among the last group of people who contracted HIV for whom effective treatment did not yet exist. Only after his death did living with AIDS become a possibility.

In her interview, Loustalot explains how difficult it was to be “in-between” and consequently witness both sides of the AIDS crisis:

I spent the first half of my childhood seeing what the AIDS of dying looked like up close and personal, and then the second half of my childhood, after my father's death, seeing this whole new vision and life of what AIDS and HIV could mean for somebody. And so to have one foot in each, and reconciling myself with that and growing up with that duality....I think...now is the moment for people to be talking about this. Because it wasn't that long ago, and I think we've forgotten what it looked like.

You can listen to Loustalot's full interview below:

December 1 is World AIDS Day. Events surrounding the day have already begun and will continue through the beginning of December. According to WorldAidsCampaign.org, World AIDS Day has been held since 1988 as “an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died.”

In commemorating her father's experience with AIDS and chronicling her own journey to come to terms with his death, Loustalot's memoir does exactly what World AIDS Day sets out to do in its mission. If, as Loustalot says, now is the time to start talking about how AIDS has affected our generation, there is no better way to begin the conversation than with This Is How You Say Goodbye.

 

Below are some of the excellent reviews This Is How You Say Goodbye has received since its release:

“Eloquent...Gently probing, reflective...Loustalot’s careful, deliberative prose delineates a young woman’s arduous passage to self-realization.” --Publishers Weekly

“Moving...By turns sweet...and heart-wrenching...Loustalot writes with courage and candor about bidding her beloved father a final farewell.” --Booklist

“Compelling reading. An intimate portrait of a bittersweet father-daughter relationship.” --Kirkus

"Moves between past and present and is told in frank, detailed narrative marked by irony, heartache and some humor." --Sacramento Bee

“A remarkable accomplishment. A riveting narrative that lays bare how important it is to come to terms with the past, this honest and heartrending memoir is for everybody who has ever tried to find his or her place in their family and in the world.” --Julie Klam, New York Times bestselling author of You Had Me at Woof and Friendkeeping

"Loustalot's memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to resolve the complexities of an enigmatic parent, or plumb what lies at the heart of the filial bond. Her uncommon intelligence, wit, and compassion shine through in this beautifully realized memoir...A beguiling writer...a smashing debut." --Alexandra Styron, bestselling author of Reading My Father

“Lyrical, thoughtful, often humorous prose...What Loustalot has written is a love story—a moving, aching love story to the father she never knew. It will resonate for all who have loved and lost, and who wish to heal.” --Kerry Cohen, bestselling author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

St. Martin's Press, September 2013