Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

THE END OF ROMANCE de Lily Meyer

A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant novel about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance—only to find a love that could change her life forever.

THE END OF ROMANCE
by Lily Meyer
Viking, February 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

Sylvie Broder was taught early to embrace joy. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors whose greatest priority was enjoying the life they’d snatched back from Hitler, Sylvie believes in the tenacious pursuit of pleasure—yet, somehow, finds herself trapped in a suffocating, emotionally abusive marriage. With enormous fortitude, Sylvie frees herself and turns to graduate school, where she develops a new philosophy: Straight women will find true liberation and happiness only once romance is eradicated.

Now, Sylvie prides herself in separating sex from tenderness—having fun with men, but never committing to one. Then she meets Robbie and Abie, and finds her philosophy sorely tested. A warm and gentle man, Robbie treats Sylvie with patience and enormous kindness, offering her comfort she hasn’t had since childhood. Abie is passionate and dynamic, a man who challenges Sylvie, and with whom she finds herself constantly disarmed. With both men, she feels a deep desire that looks, worryingly, a lot like love.

Cleverly constructed, delightfully funny, and beautifully written, THE END OF ROMANCE is an anti-romance romance novel that charts its fallible heroine’s tumultuous journey to love and happiness with erudition and deep feeling—a story for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love, and wondered why.

Lily Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

THE MOODY MORTICIAN de Samantha Jay

A grouchy goth mortician with a heart of gold gets embroiled in the murder investigation of the man she embalmed with the infuriating help of the handsome son of her town’s rival funeral home. The Maid meets « Six Feet Under » with a dash of Dial A For Aunties in this funny, clever debut mystery.

THE MOODY MORTICIAN
by Samantha Jay
Dutton, Spring 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

« I’m telling you, dude. The living. They are the worst. »

For Riley Peluso, a 28-year-old funeral director, death isn’t scary, gross, or annoying—it’s the living who are a problem. She loves her job at the century-old family-run Italian-American funeral home where she works, as she doesn’t have to talk to anyone and besides, she’s the best embalmer in quaint Dorchester, Connecticut. When she notices what someone else might have overlooked – something is amiss about a decedent she’s embalming which might indicate foul play – Riley finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation.

While her nosy, overbearing Italian family is constantly on her case about her introverted lifestyle, and the funeral home is so overbooked she’s working 70 hours a week, Riley finds herself mixed up with Flynn Gallagher, the obnoxiously competitive scion of the rival Irish-American funeral home, who is as dogged as the golden retriever he resembles. In the middle of this mess of the drama of the living, can Riley figure out the truth and restore her faith in her own profession?

Gloriously gory and laugh-out-loud funny, THE MOODY MORTICIAN is a delectable puzzle featuring one of the most endearing amateur sleuths to grace the pages of a mystery in years. This debut establishes Samantha Jay as one to watch.

Samantha Jay is the pen name of first-cousin writing duo Samantha Cusano and Juliet Grames. Samantha is a licensed funeral director in Connecticut. A graduate of the New England Institute of Applied Funeral Arts and Sciences at Mount Ida College, Samantha has earned certificates in specialized embalming and reconstruction and has served as a forensic autopsy tech, working high-profile crime cases and performing eviscerations under the direction of the Medical Examiner to help determine cause of death. Juliet is the international bestselling author of two novels, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna and The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. Her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery & Suspense, People, Real Simple, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Parade, and many other places. Juliet is Editorial Director at Soho Press, where she has curated the Soho Crime imprint since 2010. She’s the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Ellery Queen Award as well as of Italy’s Premio Cetraro for Contributions to Southern Italian Literature. Both cousins live in New England, where they juggle the professional obligations they take very seriously with the social demands of their loving Italian family.

LOCALS de Jared Jackson

In the vein of Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Bryan Washington’s Lot, and Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, this debut, in the form of a strongly linked story collection, brings to brash and tender life a cast of young, working-class characters navigating love, grief, survival, and the pursuit of something more in Hartford, Connecticut in the aughts.

LOCALS
by Jared Jackson
Viking, Spring 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

Mikey becomes a man too early when he begs for emotional scraps from his uncle’s girlfriend. Collin reveals his cowardice when he fails to show up for Bebo, an outsider far braver than Collin will ever be. Enis, a refugee on the local baseball team along with Collin, Bebo, and Mikey, wants more than he can ever get from his neighborhood or his girlfriend. Minnie wants redemption. Suit Man wants a warm place to sleep. Ms. Ana wants a daughter. And Andrews wants his white fraternity brothers to accept him despite being a “local,” while all his cousin Ant wants is for Andrews to remember he already has a family—that Hartford has always been his family.

Vibrating with vivid imagery and characters whose voices alternate between aching frankness and exhilarating swagger, the interlocking pieces of this book tumble one into another like so many expertly laid dominoes. The result is a striking vision for reclamation—of faith in city, and faith in self. Jackson is a generational talent descended from a distinct literary tradition (encompassing everything from Joyce’s Dubliners to Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love; Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street to Barrett’s Young Skins) but blazing a thrilling path all his own.

Jared Jackson is a proud Hartford native and writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator currently living in New York. He has been awarded residencies, fellowships, and grants from MacDowell, Yaddo, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, and several others. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, and VQR, and was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2023 (guest edited by Min Jin Lee). He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was a chair’s fellow, creative writing teaching fellow, and an adjunct assistant professor. Jackson is the director of programs and partnerships at Poets & Writers, Inc. He was previously the program director of literary programs at PEN America.

WILD ASTER d’Anna Hogeland

A powerful portrait of an unforgettable woman with a talent for survival, whose life spans the early twentieth century, from a writer acclaimed for her “unwavering passion and insight” (Jess Walter, NYT bestselling author of The Cold Millions)

WILD ASTER
by Anna Hogeland
Bloomsbury, Fall 2026
(DeFiore and Co.)

Mae Smith starts her life as a stolen good: her biological mother, Ida, kidnaps her from her adoptive parents, and Mae grows up on the run, constantly changing towns and names, never able to find a home. After her mother’s death, Mae is determined to live a different kind of life. But over the next half century, as she reinvents herself against the backdrop of the Depression and Second World War and pursues stability amid the personal upheavals of marriage and motherhood, she must reckon with the choices she’s made and life’s inexorable turns.

For readers of Zorrie by Laird Hunt, The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott, and The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant, Wild Aster explores the price of security, the drive to be a different mother than your own, and the daily gains and losses that define who we become. Ultimately, Mae’s story challenges us to confront the choices we make for personal fulfillment and family obligation and the perseverance that even a seemingly ordinary life demands.

Anna Hogeland is the author of the novel The Long Answer (Riverhead, 2022). She is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work and an MFA from UC Irvine. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Big Issue, Gloss Magazine, Romper, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts.

FOUNDERING de Cameron Yarbrough

A manifesto for anyone who has risked everything, failed, and found the courage to start again. It celebrates the journeys of individuals with mental health conditions who succeeded because of these conditions, not despite them. It inspires those who feel marginalized to turn their weaknesses into strengths.

FOUNDERING:
How Silicon Valley’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Go Deep to Rise High
by Cameron Yarbrough
Grand Central Publishing, November 2026
(via DeFiore and Co.)

Cameron Yarbrough knows the best-kept secret in Silicon Valley: nobody takes that brilliant idea from the proverbial back of the napkin to the stratosphere without enduring painful growth and seismic psychological breakthroughs. As a therapist and coach, he has helped founders of the most successful startups in tech achieve the impossible without sacrificing their well-being in the process. Renowned figures like Garry Tan, the president of the famous startup incubator Y Combinator, Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, and Justin Kan, cofounder of Twitch. Yarbrough not only witnessed their spectacular highs and desperate lows from the sidelines; he walked in their shoes when he himself started his own company. In this book, he offers that unique expertise and guidance to aspiring leaders everywhere.

FOUNDERING is about what happened behind the scenes to this generation of founders and how they learned what it takes to survive and thrive as business leaders and human beings in the brutal world of growth-stage startups. It is about the existential crises, breakdowns, and self-reinventions that turn out to be unavoidable features of the process – the emotional crucible that no entrepreneur can avoid, and that no would-be entrepreneur can afford not to master. It’s about the takeaways–secrets, lessons, and tools to help every leader redefine success on their own terms.

FOUNDERING is a manifesto for anyone who has risked everything, failed, and found the courage to start again. It celebrates the journeys of individuals with mental health conditions who succeeded because of these conditions, not despite them. It inspires those who feel marginalized to turn their weaknesses into strengths. In a world obsessed with success, this book dares to explore psychological crisis as the birthplace of resilience, innovation, and meaning. It is an invitation to anyone who is contemplating a bold move, in the thick of an entrepreneurial crisis, or ready to rise from the ashes to join the ranks of these elite founders.

Cameron Yarbrough is an executive coach, therapist, and entrepreneur who has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s most influential founders and leaders. He was invited to productize his approach by Silicon Valley’s famous tech incubator, Y Combinator. Now, Yarbrough is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Torch, a preferred coaching vendor of LinkedIn, Roche, Alphabet, FICO, AirBnB, Stripe, and many other companies. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Business Insider, Inc, and TechCrunch.