Archives de catégorie : London 2024 Fiction

THE INFLUENCERS d’Anna-Marie McLemore

When May “Mother May I” Iverson’s mansion burns down with her newlywed husband inside, friends, neighbors, media, and the Iversons’ fans and enemies alike begin speculating and investigating faster than detectives.

THE INFLUENCERS
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Dial Press, March 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

May is a social media sensation, glamorous-yet-relatable, but the key to her enduring fame is her daughters, who featured in videos from their births through adorable childhoods, difficult adolescences, and terrible teens. But the girls are all grown up now, and their lingering anger and resentment from childhoods stolen by the camera have started to spill over into public view. April is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; June and July are influencers themselves, possibly threatening May’s dominance; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and March…well, March has somehow completely disappeared.

Could it be one of the girls who murdered May’s less-than-charming new groom? Or could online sweetheart Mother May I have killed the man she’d just recently married and then burned down her dream home to cover it up? Or could it be one of us, the fawning yet fickle mob of media consumers?

THE INFLUENCERS is award-winning (including recently Printz-winning) YA author Anna-Marie McLemore’s first novel for adults, told in multiple points of view, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides, and in the vein of other compulsively readable family dramas, like The Family Fang and Dava Shastri’s Last Day.

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark And Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; and Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore. Most recently, they contributed to the 2023 Printz-winning anthology The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King.

RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER de Kate Grenville

The international bestselling author of The Secret River and A Room Made of Leaves returns with an exquisite portrait of her complex, conflicted grandmother—a woman Kate Grenville feared as a child, and only came to understand in adulthood.

RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER
by Kate Grenville
Text Publishing (Australia), July 2023

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, Dolly spent her restless life pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family photo albums as remote figures in impossible clothes, or maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe handed down through the generations. RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER brings one of these women to life as someone we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.

In this compelling new novel, Kate Grenville uses family memories to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother. This is the story of a woman, working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who was able-if at a cost-to make a life she could call her own. Her battles and triumphs helped to open doors for the women who came after. A subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman determined to make a life to call her own.

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes, has been adapted for the stage and as an acclaimed television miniseries, and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Dark Places and the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection. Her recent non-fiction includes One Life: My Mother’s Story, The Case Against Fragrance and Elizabeth Macarthur’s Letters. Her most recent novel is the bestselling A Room Made of Leaves. She has also written three books about the writing process. In 2017 Grenville was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

THE WITCH’S ORCHARD d’Archer Sullivan

Wonderfully atmospheric, with vivid characters, and a dose of superstition and folklore, this novel stands out.

THE WITCH’S ORCHARD
by Archer Sullivan
Minotaur Books, Summer 2025

Former Air Force Special Investigator Annie Gore joined the military right after high school to escape the fraught homelife of her childhood. Now, she’s getting by as a private investigator and her latest case takes her to a small mountain town, not unlike the one where she grew up.

Ten years ago, three little girls went missing from their small town. One was returned, but the others were never seen again. After all this time without answers, the brother of one of the girls wants to hire Annie to see if she can find any new leads—anything that might help give him closure to the event that tore his family apart. Annie knows that a case this old might be a fool’s errand, but the bills are piling up and she can’t turn down a job—not even one that dredges up her own painful past.

In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Annie begins to track the truth, navigating a decade’s worth of secrets, folklore of witches and crows, and a whole town that prefers to forget. But while the case may have been buried, echoes of the past linger. And Annie’s arrival stirs someone into action.

Archer Sullivan is a ninth generation Appalachian. She’s moved thirty-seven times and has lived everywhere from Monticello, Kentucky to Manhattan, New York and from Black Mountain, North Carolina to Beverly Hills, California. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, Rock and a Hard Place and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER

Set in London in 1968, follows the lives of the inhabitants of a suburban London street. But this is no ordinary street.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER
by Gay Marris
Bedford Square (Ed. Carolyn Mays), June 2024
(via Randle Editorial & Literary Consultancy)

Ask anyone on Atbara Avenue how well they know their neighbours, and they’ll answer ‘well’.

After all, they see each other across the vast distance afforded by close proximity, and that is probably for the best…

For the best, because Atbara Avenue is a street where, all too often, murder feels like the solution.

With a delicious cast of characters, dazzling plotting, and an utterly unique voice, Gay Marris’ first book is remarkably accomplished. If you’ve been longing for a fresh and compelling new voice in the world of crime fiction, your wait is over.

Gay Marris is a retired research scientist. Her career focused on insect ecology, parasites and honey bee health. A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER is her first novel, set in the suburbs of the deceptively dangerous suburbs of 1960s London, where she grew up. Gay now lives in York with her husband, a cat and a tortoise.

A DAZZLING GREETING de Baik Sou-linne

A tender heart will save us countless times.

A DAZZLING GREETING
by Baik Sou-linne
Munhakdogne, May 2023
(via Randle Editorial & Literary Consultancy)

Haeni’s family falls apart after her older sister dies in a gas explosion accident in 1994. Unable to salvage the marriage, Haeni’s mother decides to separate from her father, and immigrates to Germany with Haeni and her younger sister.

In Germany, she meets new people who make her feel at home. Her aunt, Haengja, is a nurse who was dispatched to Germany in the 1960s. She is part of a community of dispatch nurses that include Aunt Maria and Aunt Seonja.

Haeni befriends Aunt Maria’s daughter, Lena, and Aunt Seonja’s son, Hansu. The three grow close and Hansu eventually asks for a favour: he wants his friends to help him find his mother’s first love. They start by reading Seonja’s diary and finds out that her first love’s initials are K.H.

Time flies by, and Haeni finds herself having to return to South Korea due to the IMF Crisis in 1997. Uprooted from a place she’s just started to call home, Haeni is once again seized by the fear of losing those she cares about. As such, she spends her adult life setting distances between her and whoever she meets.

One day, she bumps into Woojae, a friend from university. He starts pursuing her, and touched by his earnestness, Haeni finds herself willing to open her heart to others again. Her newfound love inspires her to try to solve the mystery of Aunt Seonja’s first love again. On her second attempt, she realizes that she’s seeing things from a new perspective, and picks up on clues she’d missed before.

As she embarks on this new mission as a new person, the people around her are just as eager to reach out to help her. This novel is proof that the smallest gestures of kindness can change lives.

Baik Sou-linne is one of South Korea’s most prolific and popular authors. She was named one of five Best Young Writers in 2021. Given her unique background as a French Literature major, Baik writes heartwarming stories about young women that are often set in unfamiliar countries, taking readers romantic adventures across the globe.

She debuted as a writer after her short story ‘Lying Practice’ was awarded the Spring Literary Contest in 2011. Since then, she has released multiple short story collections including Falling in Paul and Summer Villa. A DAZZLING GREETING is her first novel. Upon its release, it immediately claimed its spot on bestsellers lists across online bookstores in South Korea.