Archives par étiquette : DeFiore and Company

IN HER BOOTS de KJ Dell’Antonia

The new novel by New York Times bestselling author of The Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick The Chicken Sisters.

IN HER BOOTS
by KJ Dell’Antonia
Putnam, July 2022
(via Defiore & Company)

What if her mother was right about her all along? Rhett Smith fled the woman who taught her to protect her heart, hide her feelings and trust no one except herself for two decades of adventurous work, travel and reinvention, relying on her tougher alter ego, The Modern Pioneer Girl, for support and guidance, then wrote a popular book about it.
Now the MPG (aka Maggie Strong, Rhett’s pen name) is in hot demand while Rhett’s bold ex-pat life implodes with the end of her relationship and the death of her beloved grandmother. When the opportunity to step into her new fame arises, Rhett falters—and then, with her mother’s voice literally in her ear, shoves her best friend Jasmine on stage in her place.
But what seemed like a good idea at the time snowballs into chaos when the farm turns out to be headed for the auction block. Suddenly, Rhett’s mother is again in charge of her destiny, and nothing goads Rhett into impulsive action like feeling out of control—or possibly the re-appearance of her first love, now in the role of her mother’s henchman. She’ll do anything to take back her inheritance, and Jasmine, trying to escape her own disappointments, is more than willing to continue their ruse for as long as it takes. Together they concoct a scheme that will help them both recover all they’ve lost—but not exactly in the way they expect.

KJ Dell’Antonia is a writer and a regular contributor to the New York Times, where she wrote and edited the Motherlode blog from 2011 until 2016 and was a contributing editor to the Well Family section from 2016-2017. Prior to this, she was one of Slate’s XX Factor bloggers and a contributor to Slate, where she covered parenting and a broad range of subjects, from legal issues to pop culture. KJ lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, with her husband and four children.

THE SKIN AND ITS GIRL de Sarah Cypher

A girl is born with cobalt-blue skin to a Palestinian American family on the night their ancestral soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike; the family’s matriarch believes the girl embodies their sacred family history, but as she looks back from her auntie’s graveside, she recognizes a hidden queer history speaking through the folktales, echoing her fears as she faces a decision to emigrate with the woman she loves and continue the family’s cycle of exile.

THE SKIN AND ITS GIRL
by Sarah Cypher
Ballantine, April 2023
(via Defiore & Company)

On an early-April dawn in 2003, in a Portland hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, a stillborn baby girl comes back to life and turns a vibrant cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rumanni’s beloved soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in a bombing. To Nuha, the girl’s great-aunt, there’s no question that this inexplicable child somehow embodies their sacred family history, when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a famous, unlikely love.
Decades later, still impossibly blue, Elspeth returns to the gravestone of her aunt to weave together her own story, the family legends, and the thread of Nuha’s twisting life as a queer woman who hid her identity to help the family emigrate to the US. Now, Elspeth is faced with an impossible decision of her own – whether she should stay where it’s safe or leave for the woman she loves and continue the family’s cycle of exile. Elspeth navigates this choice the only way her aunt taught her how – through lies and fables braided with the truth – looking for a path forward in the words underneath the words.
Filled with stunning images and poetic repetitions inspired by Arabic ghazals that grow like a rising tide as the plot circles in on itself, THE SKIN AND ITS GIRL is about the fictions we create to explain away the magic that surrounds us, as well as the stories that can create new magic in the world. It’s about the pressure to hide in someone else’s more conventional narrative, when finally telling your own story may be the only true survival.

Sarah Cypher is from a Lebanese American Christian family that traces its history to the Kanaan soap factory in Palestine, much like the novel’s characters. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson, and her writing has appeared in the North American Review, LEON, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. She works as a freelance editor and lives in Washington, DC with her wife. THE SKIN AND ITS GIRL is her debut novel.

PRETEND IT’S MY BODY de Luke Dani Blue

In a vivid debut story collection, Luke Dani Blue asks: is there such a thing as a real self? If so, how do you find it?

PRETEND IT’S MY BODY
by Luke Dani Blue
The Feminist Press, Fall 2022
(via Defiore & Company)

In the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Daniel Lavery, and born of the author’s experience in and between genders, these stories blur the line between fantasy and reality, between the lives we wish for and the ones we actually lead, excavating new meanings from our varied dysphorias. Ranging from a tornado survivor grappling with a new identity, to a trans teen psychic that can only read undecided minds, from a woman telling her family of her plans to upload her consciousness and abandon her body, to con artists, runaways, and lost souls returning home, Blue’s characters all share an insistence on forging their own realities. Surreal, darkly funny, and always tender, PRETEND IT’S MY BODY is a collection bound together by the act of searching – for a story of one’s own, for a glimpse of certainty, and for a spark of recognition in others.

The magic in [the short story] “Bad Things That Happen to Girls,” is so subtle and slow-building and so unprepossessing that, while reading it, I understood I was holding my breath only when the story started to swim before me…It’s a story that aches with truth and desperation, and I marvel at the way Blue ratchets up the motion, breath by breath, to the story’s logical but stunning end.” —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida

Luke Dani Blue’s stories have appeared in the Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, and have been included on the list of the year’s most distinguished stories in Best American Short Stories 2016. They have an MFA from San Francisco State University and currently live in Alberta, Canada.

MY MONTICELLO, novella de Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, paraîtra chez Harvill Secker au Royaume-Uni

Les éditions Harvill Secker au Royaume-Uni ont fait l’acquisition du premier recueil de nouvelles de Jocelyn Nicole Johnson intitulé MY MONTICELLO. Ils publieront d’abord la novella éponyme dans une édition reliée en novembre 2021, puis le recueil entier dans un deuxième temps. Aux États-Unis, c’est Henry Holt qui publiera le recueil en octobre 2021. Une négociation est en cours pour les droits d’adaptation audiovisuelle. (Lire l’article du Bookseller)

Dans la novella d’anticipation, un groupe de voisins d’horizons divers vivant à Charlottesville en Virginie cherchent à se réfugier à Monticello, la plantation historique de Thomas Jefferson, après de violentes émeutes provoquées par des suprémacistes blancs. (Lire la présentation complète)

L’éditeur chez Harvill Secker a déclaré : « Families, lovers and near-strangers care for and sustain one another over 19 heart-stopping days on the mountain, finding ways to hope, to resist, and to live, as the town burns below them. Their story is told by Da’Naisha Love, an imagined young Black descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Love must reckon with her own relationship to the house and its enslaved former inhabitants, as the present threat draws ever closer ».

Le livre a déjà reçu d’excellentes avant-critiques :

“A badass debut by any measure―nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” ―Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys, Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle

“It is a rare breed of writer who can tell any kind of story and do so with exquisite deftness. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is one such writer. Her debut collection, MY MONTICELLO, is comprised of six stories of astonishing range and each one explores what it means to live in a world that is at once home and not. She dissects the unbearable burdens of such displacement. The crowning glory of this collection is the title story, a novella about a world that has fallen apart and a small band of people who take refuge in Monticello, among the old ghosts of the former plantation, how they become family, and how they try to make a stand for their lives, for the world the way it once was. This collection is absolutely unforgettable and Johnson’s prose soars to remarkable heights.” ―Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger and Ayiti

“There is a special pleasure in discovering a voice that is vital and unlike anything else you’ve known before. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is such a voice. One that is necessary and brimming with both heart and imagination, Johnson’s My Monticello is a beautiful debut work of art.” ―Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black

“Johnson crafts a fine-grained character study that also harrowingly reveals how racist violence repeats. . . . Johnson has a knack for irony and inventive conceits. . . . A sharp debut by a writer with wit and confidence.” ―Kirkus starred review

Voir la vidéo de présentation par l’auteure :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ezjpcp52yuayffy/My%20Monticello%20-%20Jocelyn%20Johnson.mp4?dl=0

Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

TALK WITH HER de Kimberly Wolf

TALK WITH HER:
A Dad’s Essential Guide to Raising Empowered Girls
by Kimberly Wolf
Penguin Life, May 2022

As an entrepreneur launching a girls’ health and wellness company, Kimberly Wolf found herself talking to many high-powered male investors, creatives, and advisors. But what they wanted to talk about took her by surprise. They all wanted to ask questions about their teenage daughters—what they should say to them, what they should do for them, or whether they should step aside and leave it to mom (or just wait it out).
Wolf realized dads needed real guidance, and that she could help. Daughters who have healthy communication with their dads are known to have more a more positive sense of self, better nutritional habits, and more successful careers. In TALK WITH HER, she gives dads a toolbox filled with insights into girlhood, proven communication methods, and anecdotes and advice based on interviews with more than 100 dads and daughters. More importantly, she offers straight talk about what teenage girls are going through and dozens of actionable strategies and scripts to help dads get through to their girls even if their girls won’t give them the time of day. It all adds up to a framework that will give dads the confidence they need to communicate with their daughters and raise empowered women.

Kimberly Wolf is a wellness educator and the founder of Girlmentum Labs, a web-based educational media consulting company supporting girls’ health and wellness. She is a graduate of Brown (BA, 2006, women’s studies) and Harvard (M.Ed., 2009, human development and psychology) where she worked closely with Richard Weissbourd, director of Human Development & Psychology Program.