Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2021 Adult Fiction

HELLO, TRANSCRIBER de Hannah Morrissey

A captivating mystery suspense debut featuring a female police transcriber who goes beyond the limits to solve a harrowing case.

HELLO, TRANSCRIBER
by Hannah Morrissey
Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s Press, November 2021

Every night, while the street lamps shed the only light on Wisconsin’s most crime-ridden city, police transcriber Hazel Greenlee listens as detectives divulge Black Harbor’s gruesome secrets. As an aspiring writer, Hazel believes that writing a novel could be her only ticket out of this frozen hellscape. And then her neighbor confesses to hiding the body of an overdose victim in a dumpster.
The suspicious death is linked to Candy Man, a notorious drug dealer. Now Hazel has a first row seat to the investigation and becomes captivated by the lead detective, Nikolai Kole. Intrigued by the prospects of gathering eyewitness intel for her book, Hazel joins Kole in exploring Black Harbor’s darkest side. As the investigation unfolds, Hazel will learn just how far she’ll go for a good story—even if it means destroying her marriage and luring the killer to her as she plunges deeper into the city she’s desperate to claw her way out of.

«  HELLO, TRANSCRIBER is a dark, atmospheric, and compelling debut by a unique talent. I was sucked in immediately and could think of little else until the last page.” ―C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Long Range

Hannah Morrissey earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She grew up on a farm in a small northern town and now lives near Milwaukee with her husband and two pugs. Hello, Transcriber is her debut novel, inspired by her work as a police transcriber.

THE UNKEPT WOMAN d’Allison Montclair

The next Sparks & Bainbridge mystery doesn’t slow down as fantastic review attention continues in for this beloved historical mystery series. London, 1946, Miss Iris Sparks – currently co-proprietor of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau – has to deal with aspects of her past exploits during the recent war that have come back around to haunt her…

THE UNKEPT WOMAN
by Allison Montclair
Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s Press, June 2022

The Right Sort Marriage Bureau was founded in 1946 by two disparate individuals—Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge (whose husband was killed in the recent World War) and Miss Iris Sparks, who worked as an intelligence agent during the recent conflict, though this is not discussed. While the agency flourishes in the post-war climate, both founders have to deal with some of the fallout that conflict created in their personal lives. Miss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss, and it seems that Iris’s past may be causing something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances, and her son—a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls. Together these indomitable two are determined and capable—and not just of making the perfect marriage match.

Allison Montclair grew up devouring hand-me-down Agatha Christie paperbacks and James Bond movies. As a result of this deplorable upbringing, Montclair became addicted to tales of crime, intrigue, and espionage. She now spends her spare time poking through the corners, nooks, and crannies of history, searching for the odd mysterious bits and transforming them into novels of her own. She is the author of the Sparks & Bainbridge historical mystery series, which begins with The Right Sort of Man.

AUTOPORTRAIT de Jesse Ball

A literary self-portrait in which the author’s entire life is revealed through the brief moments of accident, absurdity, and loss which have made it.

AUTOPORTRAIT
by Jesse Ball
‎ Catapult, TBD 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Photo by James Foster

Inspired by Édouard Levé’s novel of the same title and format, Jesse Ball haswritten a slim, uninterrupted stream of compact reflections with no obvious order, that brilliantly construct AUTOPORTRAIT. These reflections range from the mundane, the crude, and the crass, to the mysterious, poignant and the brutally beautiful. With spare prose, marked by its humility and precision, Jesse Ball has rendered life, memory, and existence so vividly there are many places where the reader wonders if it is their own existence being described. The novel, which borrows its name from Levé’s, and which preceded Levé’s final work published mere weeks before his tragic suicide, deals with similar themes in a similar register. However, Ball’s voice is entirely his own, and the speaker of this novel is frighteningly honest, while inspiring a deep, tender fondness. Among the many treasures of this piece, Ball includes comments on his difficult upbringing, his marriages, his drug use, his teaching and pedagogy, the things he likes about cats and rats, and the things he adores about gullies and sumps.
Ambitious, serious, witty, and provocative, Jesse Ball’s latest work is a disciplined novel that chronicles the chaos of a life. AUTOPORTRAIT, both through its form and its content, suggests that human beings are made up of contradictions, and encourages us to contradict ourselves more often.

Jesse Ball is the author of fourteen books. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, won the 2018 Gordon Burn Prize, the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and is a 2017 Granta Best Young American Novelist. Ball has also been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

NO ONE DIES YET de Kobby Ben Ben

An unsettling tale of murder in a country whose dead slaves are shackled with stories that must be heard.

NO ONE DIES YET
by Kobby Ben Ben
‎ Europa Editions UK, Fall 2022
(via Neon Literary)

The Year of Return, linked to the 400th anniversary of slaves landing in the US, memorialised the many who died during the slave trade in Ghana, particularly at Elmina Castle, while encouraging members of the African diaspora to visit. As Black diasporans around the world make the pilgrimage to West Africa, three African-American friends join in the festivities to explore Ghana’s colonial past and its underground queer scene. They are thrust into the hands of two guides, Kobby and Nana, whose intentions aren’t clear, yet they are the narrators we have to trust. Kobby, a modern deviant according to Nana’s traditional and religious principles, offers a more upscale and privileged tour of Ghana and also becomes the friends’ link to Accra’s secret gay culture. Nana’s adherence to his pastor’s teachings against sin makes him hate Kobby enough to want to kill.
NO ONE DIES YET is a shocking and unsettling tale of murder that is at times funny, at times erotic, yet always outspoken and iconoclastic. Kobby Ben Ben proves in this his first novel that he is set to become one of the most prominent new voices to emerge in this decade.

Kobby Ben Ben, born in Ghana, spends his time reviewing books as well as curating books for his African Book Club, Ghana Must Read. His eccentric Instagram book blog, @bookworm_man, has caught the attention of Booker Winner Bernardine Evaristo and other celebrated writers such as Maaza Mengiste and Petina Gappah. When he isn’t writing poetry masked as prose or anticipating Michaela Coel’s next project, he’s most passionate about discovering debut writers of colour whose stories shed light on underrepresented languages and cultures. NO ONE DIES YET is his first novel.

BOOK FOUR de Lia Louis

The new novel by the bestselling author of Dear Emmie Blue and Eight Perfect Hours. Perfect for fans of Beth O’Leary, Josie Silver and Cecelia Ahern.

BOOK FOUR (tentative title)
by Lia Louis
Trapeze UK, TBD 2023
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, 32-year old musician Natalie Fincher plays at a busy London train station piano. Since the death of her husband two years ago, it’s the only time she forgets how lonely she is, and the only place she feels comfortable playing music anymore – where she’s anonymous, and nobody’s really listening. Then sheet music starts being left anonymously in the lid of the piano stool – specific songs she played only for her husband when he was sick. Is someone up there looking down on her? Or has someone down here been listening all along? Natalie is about to find out…

‘Lia Louis has become a must-buy author for me!’ –Jodi Picoult

Lia Louis lives in the United Kingdom with her partner and three young children. Before raising a family, she worked as a freelance copywriter and proofreader. She was the 2015 winner of Elle magazine’s annual writing competition and has been a contributor for Bloomsbury’s Writers and Artists blog for aspiring writers.