An epistolary novel about a man who has been hailed a small-town hero in the wake of a devastating tragedy and his struggle to help heal a broken community while grieving the loss of his wife, who he insists visits him every night in the form of an angel.
WE ARE THE LIGHT
by Matthew Quick
Avid Reader Press, November 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)
Lucas Goodgame lives in a small town in Pennsylvania, a community that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy at the local movie house. Everyone in town sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst Karl, and he insists that his deceased wife Darcy visits him every night in the form of an angel. It is only when 18-year-old Eli, a young man who the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance forms and the two begin a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.
Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film. His young adult novel, Sorta Like a Rock Star, was made into a Netflix movie called All Together Now and was the most popular streaming film there for several weeks. Quick has also published three other adult novels, The Good Luck of Right Now, Love May Fail, and The Reason You’re Alive. In addition to Sorta Like a Rock Star, he has published the young adult novels Boy21, Forgive me Leonard Peacock and Every Exquisite Thing. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He has received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, and The Hollywood Reporter named Quick one of Hollywood’s “25 Most Powerful Authors.” All of his books not yet made into films are currently in development. Matthew lives with his wife, novelist Alicia Bessette, in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
When former piano prodigy Saskia Kreis returns home to Milwaukee after her mother’s unexpected death, she expects to inherit the family estate, the Elf House. But with the discovery that her mother’s will bequeathed the Elf House to a man that Saskia shares a complicated history with, she is forced to reexamine her own past—and the romantic relationship that changed the course of her life—for answers. Can she find a way to claim her heritage while keeping her secrets buried, or will the fallout from digging too deep destroy her?
It’s New Year’s Eve of 1999 when four teenagers working late are attacked at a Blockbuster video store in New Jersey. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, four more teenagers are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre, who is forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who is convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller, who must delve into the secrets of both nights to uncover the truth about the Night Shift Murders…
Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family’s former glory – of what was had, and what was lost.
APHRODITE AND THE DUKE, described as