An epic love story, dark comedy, and synesthetic adventure through food and grief, THE AFTERTASTE will delight readers of Alice Hoffman and Sweetbitter.
THE AFTERTASTE
by Daria Lavelle
Bloomsbury, TBD
(via The Friedrich Agency)
Konstantin “Kostya” Duhhovny is a haunted man. His father passed shortly after they immigrated to Brooklyn from Ukraine, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. He can’t see them, but his mouth will often flood with the tastes of meals he’s never consumed, and Kostya understands that this is how they haunt him.
Keeping to himself has served him well for most of his life, but on the night when Kostya decides to let the phantom flavors guide his hand, everything changes. Could this be his true purpose, offering real closure to grieving strangers? He sets out to learn everything he can by taking on the New York culinary scene. As his kitchen skills begin to catch up with his ambitions, Kostya cannot see the catastrophe that looms. The one person who knows Kostya must be stopped… also happens to be falling in love with him.
Daria Lavelle is a debut novelist who earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She was born in Kyiv before immigrating to the US as a child, and currently lives in New Jersey with her family.
Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding guests, but she’s the only one who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s alone, at the lowest moment of her life.
Before Jodie Rattler became a folk sensation, she was just a little girl who struck lucky at a racetrack. That roll of two-dollar bills she won has never left her side since. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing.
1460: Ismay Deacon, caught between sides in the War of the Roses, tries to hide away in her ancestral home, Havencross. But when word gets out that she has a child, Ismay has to make a terrible choice to protect her son. The Deacon family disappears, but there are rumors of a young ghost haunting the halls of Havencross.
Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets. She’s reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela’s latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire, it’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast.