Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

THE WHARTON PLOT de Mariah Fredericks

Mariah Fredericks’ mesmerizing novel follows renowned novelist Edith Wharton in the twilight years of the Gilded Age in New York as she tracks a killer.

THE WHARTON PLOT
by Mariah Fredericks
Minotaur Books, January 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

New York City, 1911. Edith Wharton, almost equally famed for her novels and her sharp tongue, is bone-tired of Manhattan. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, she makes the decision to leave America, her publisher, and her loveless marriage.

And then, dashing novelist David Graham Phillips―a writer with often notorious ideas about society and women’s place in it―is shot to death outside the Princeton Club. Edith herself met the man only once, when the two formed a mutual distaste over tea in the Palm Court of the Belmont hotel. When Phillips is killed, Edith’s life takes another turn. His sister is convinced Graham was killed by someone determined to stop the publication of his next book, which promised to uncover secrets that powerful people would rather stayed hidden. Though unconvinced, Edith is curious. What kind of book could push someone to kill?

Inspired by a true story, THE WHARTON PLOT follows Edith Wharton through the fading years of the Gilded Age in a city she once loved so well, telling a taut tale of fame, love, and murder, as she becomes obsessed with solving a crime.

“Superb . . . Thanks to a literary plot laced with arch wit and precise put-downs, appearances by Wharton’s famous friends (including Henry James and the Vanderbilts), and an eclectic assortment of the upper crust in the waning days of a varnished era, Fredericks hits this one out of the park.”―Library Journal (Starred Review)

“THE WHARTON PLOT a vivid, fascinating, entertaining mystery. Readers looking for a bit of history with their suspense will be gripped.”―Publishers Weekly

« Fredericks’ elegantly written narrative gives a lively look at an author way ahead of her time. »―Kirkus Reviews

« Written with grace and wit, THE WHARTON PLOT is a pleasure to read. »―Wall Street Journal

« Based on the real murder of Phillips, Fredericks’ latest will especially appeal to bibliophiles, who will enjoy reading tidbits about the real-life authors who appear. »―Booklist

Mariah Fredericks was born, raised, and still lives in New York City. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history. She is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, which has twice been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, as well as several YA novels.

THE OTHER SIDE OF NOW de Paige Harbison

A hilarious and heartfelt novel about how loves and lives are never truly lost, for fans of Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

THE OTHER SIDE OF NOW
by Paige Harbison
St. Martin’s Press, June 2025

With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip where she knows the grass is greener: Ireland. Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving―a dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee’s life a decade ago.

When Meg arrives, the people in town are so nice, treating her not as a stranger, but a friend. Except for the (extremely hot) bartender giving her the cold shoulder. Meg writes it all off as jetlag until she looks in the mirror. Her hair is no longer bleached within an inch of its life, her skin has a few natural fine lines, and her nose looks like… well, her old nose. Her real nose.

Her phone reveals hundreds of pictures of her life in this little town: with an adorable dog she doesn’t know; with the bartender who might be her (ex?) boyfriend; and at a retail job unrelated to acting. Eventually, she comes to accept that she somehow made a quantum slide into an alternate version of her life. But the most shocking realization of all? In this life, her best friend Aimee is alive and well…but wants nothing to do with Meg.

Despite her bewilderment, Meg is clear-eyed about one thing: this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reconnect with her friend and repair what she broke. She finagles an opportunity to act in the play Aimee is writing and directing and as the project unfolds, Meg realizes that events as she remembers them may not be the only truth, and that an impossible choice looms before her.

Paige Harbison is the author of three YA novels, the first of which was published in 2011 when she was just nineteen years old. More recently, she’s worked on several celebrity projects as a ghostwriter. The Other Side of Now is her adult debut. A woman of many talents, she’s also a beautiful artist (check out the pet portraits on her website) and has a solid social media presence, amassing millions of views on her one-minute-movies. She lives in L.A. with her boyfriend and their dog Tarot.

THE 1619 PROJECT: A VISUAL EXPERIENCE

An illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine‘s award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.

THE 1619 PROJECT: A VISUAL EXPERIENCE
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
and The New York Times Magazine
Clarkson Potter, October 2024

Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act. –Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of enslaved people from Africa arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.

Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.

The 1619 Project began in 2019 as a special project from in The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It is led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, along with New York Times editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and New York Times Magazine editors Ilena Silverman and Caitlin Roper.

THE POET EMPRESS de Shen X. Tao

In the declining Azalea Dynasty, where poetry magic is forbidden to women, rice farmer Wei tricks her way into being selected as imperial concubine to a cruel tyrant and must harden her heart and learn to wield literomancy in secret in order to change the fate of an empire.

THE POET EMPRESS
by Shen X. Tao
on submission
(via Mushens Entertainment)

In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land is consumed by a famine, and poetry magic is lost to all except the powerful. After the fifth death of a sibling, young rice farmer Wei Yin is determined to save her family from desperate hunger, a difficult feat when women are forbidden from education, and crucially, literacy.

Wei finds her chance to improve the conditions of her family and her village when Prince Terren, the cruel, unkillable heir to the throne, begins a search for concubines to bear him a son. Wei tricks her way into the inner court, but little does she know, life in the lush and enchanted Azalea Palace is rife with danger and brutality she wasn’t ready for. For one, there is a covert succession war; Terren’s influential eldest brother, the one who should have been heir, has long been eyeing the crown. For another, Terren’s thirty concubines are fighting a war of their own, for the position of future empress. They know to whisper sweet words and deliver pretty smiles in public, but when nobody is looking, they are not afraid to sabotage each other with rumours or poison.

But most terrifying of all is the prince himself. Terren turns out to be just as sadistic as the rumours, willing to torture even the most powerful of those who cross him, let alone a peasant girl with no status. To survive in court, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself, even if it means learning the forbidden art of poetry magic and wielding the most powerful spell of all—a heart spirit poem that requires the wielder to love the target in order to kill them.

Chinese-Canadian author Sophia Tao (writing as Shen X. Tao) has dreamed of publishing fantasy stories since she was seven. Though her roots lie in Nanchang and Toronto, she later moved to Seattle to be closer to the mountains and the ocean, where she currently resides with her partner, her piano, and her menagerie of stuffed critters. When not working as an engineer, she can be spotted hiking, taking long walks in the city, or feeding the local park geese. Sophia is a finalist for the Mike Resnick Memorial Award for science fiction and a two-time finalist for the PNWA unpublished novel contest, and a graduate of the 2023 Taos Toolbox and Viable Paradise speculative fiction workshops.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK HOLES de Becky Smethurst

Award-winning University of Oxford researcher Dr Becky Smethurst charts five hundred years of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK HOLES
by Becky Smethurst
Macmillan UK, September 2022
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Right now, you are orbiting a black hole.

The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole, the strangest and most misunderstood phenomenon in the galaxy.

In this cosmic tale of discovery, Dr Becky Smethurst takes us from the earliest observations of the universe and the collapse of massive stars, to the iconic first photographs of a black hole and her own published findings.

She explains why black holes aren’t really ‘black’, that you never ever want to be ‘spaghettified’, how black holes are more like sofa cushions than hoovers and why, beyond the event horizon, the future is a direction in space rather than in time.

Told with humour and wisdom, this captivating book describes the secrets behind the most profound questions about our universe – all hidden inside black holes.

Becky Smethurst is based at the University of Oxford, where her specialism is in how galaxies evolve together with their supermassive black holes. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Research Fellowship. Her YouTube channel, Dr Becky, has over 750,000 subscribers and engages 2 million viewers each month with her videos on weird objects in space, the history of science and monthly recaps of space news. She also has 128k followers on Instagram and 40k on TikTok.