Archives de catégorie : London 2022 Fiction

PORTRAIT OF A THIEF de Grace D. Li

Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell in this lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.

PORTRAIT OF A THIEF
by Grace D. Li
‎ Tiny Reparations Books, April 2022
(via KT Literary)

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.
Will Chen plans to steal them back.
A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. 
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. 
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, PORTRAIT OF A THIEF is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Marie Claire, Veranda, PopSugar, Paste, The Millions, Medium, Crimereads, Goodreads, Bookbub, Boston.com

Grace D. Li grew up in Pearland, Texas and is a graduate of Duke University, where she studied biology and creative writing. She lives in Northern California and attends medical school at Stanford University. PORTRAIT OF A THIEF is her debut novel and is currently in development at Netflix, with Grace serving as an executive producer for the series.

SUPER BLOOM de Megan Tady

For fans of Emily Henry’s Beach Read and Maria Semple, SUPER BLOOM is a heartwarming and hilarious debut novel about a 30-something massage therapist enlisted by an infamous romance novelist to dish the dirt on the not-so-pristine world of luxury spas.

SUPER BLOOM
by Megan Tady
‎ Zibby Books, Summer 2023
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Icing her hands. Grieving her boyfriend. Trying not to get fired. Each day feels the same for Joan Johnston. Her life gets a boost of excitement when a new massage client—Carmen Bronze, a high-maintenance romance novelist—corners Joan into becoming her research assistant for her next bestseller.
Joan’s notes start off as expected—demanding clients, inane spa rules, wacky colleagues— but she soon finds herself journaling about the sudden death of her boyfriend. What’s more, she starts writing their relationship back into existence through a romance novel of her own. But the longer she spends crafting her own fictional happily ever after, the more she risks losing the possibility of that in real life…

Megan Tady is a writer and editor running the company Word-Lift, and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post and Ms. Magazine, among others. She was a finalist for the 2021 Penguin Random House Student Fiction Award. Megan lives in Western Massachusetts with her family. SUPER BLOOM is her debut novel.

GEMINI FALLS de Sean Wilson

A gripping, sweeping and unforgettable debut from a writer whose talent cannot be contained.

GEMINI FALLS
by Sean Wilson
Affirm Press Australia, October 2022
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

Australia, 1930, at the peak of the Great Depression: Detective Jude Turner is assigned to investigate a murder in his home town of Gemini. With fear and polio swirling through the city and his wife long passed, Jude decides to take his children, Morris and Lottie, with him to the small town he gladly left many years before.
Thoughtful and a little anxious, twelve-year-old Morris Turner sometimes feels more at home gazing at the stars than with his busy father and distant older sister. Arriving at the ancestral farm he meets relations that are strangers to him – an uncle, an aunt and a cousin, Flo, who has an unhealthy obsession with detective novels. The family is drawn into a community reeling from a murder and a financial crash. Without a clear suspect in the murder, the town’s suspicions turn to the downtrodden, huddled in camps outside the town.
But Morris is sure there is more to this case. With the help of new friends, he turns his attention instead to the people around him, confronting his fears and searching for a killer in a town full of mysteries – a search that will bring secrets old and new to the surface, and leave someone else fighting for their life.

Sean Wilson is an emerging writer and playwright from Melbourne. His short stories and plays have been recognized in many awards including a shortlisting for the 2016 Patrick White Playwrights Award (Sydney Theatre Company).

THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO de Pip Williams

The second novel from the international bestselling author of The Dictionary Of Lost Words.

THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO
by Pip Williams
‎ Affirm Press Australia, November 2022
(via via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

Whose truth is lost when knowledge is controlled by men? In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women left behind who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of going to Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has. She is extraordinary but vulnerable. Peggy needs to watch over her.
When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, they send ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back.
THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO is a story about knowledge – who makes it, who can access it, and what truth may be lost in the process. In this beautiful companion to the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams explores another rarely seen slice of history seen through women’s eyes. Intelligent, thoughtful and rich with unforgettable characters.

Pip Williams was born in London and grew up in Sydney. She has spent most of her working life as a social researcher and is the author of The Dictionary of Lost Words and two nonfiction books. This is her first novel. Pip lives in the Adelaide Hills, Australia with her partner, two boys and an assortment of animals.

MALICE HOUSE de Megan Shepherd

New York Times bestselling author Megan Shepherd (The Madman’s Daughter) weaves a complex tale of dark magic and family secrets when a woman attempts to settle the estate of her father, an acclaimed horror novelist. Perfect fans of Lovecraft Country, Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, and The Babadook.

MALICE HOUSE
by Megan Shepherd
‎ Hyperion Avenue, October 2022
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father’s remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not it. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted―clearly just dementia whispering in his ear.
Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father’s obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward 3:00 a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven’s bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, it’s clear she is about to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets―and completely rewrite everything she ever knew about herself.

Megan Shepherd is a New York Times best-selling and Carnegie Medal-nominated author who grew up in her family’s independent bookstore in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is the author of many acclaimed novels and now lives and writes on a historic farm outside Asheville, North Carolina, with her family, an especially scruffy dog, and several ghosts.