CASCADIA de Colin Meloy

A dual timeline narrative with deep roots in current global crises, CASCADIA is an absurdist yet all too relatable vision of a future where unchecked capitalism, advanced technology, and climate emergencies have come to a head.

CASCADIA
by Colin Meloy
Little, Brown, Summer 2027
(via Writers House)

Barnaby Chambers is no hero. He’s just another bio broker in Cascadia trying to scrape out a living in an already scraped-thin world. Plummeting birth rates mean the market is rising for anything people believe will promote fertility, especially cauls (the membrane that can cover a newborn’s head). But when a lead on a new caul saddles Barnaby with an abandoned baby, instead, he must navigate the dangerous road home and a difficult AI-run government system in search of someone to care for his unex­pected ward.

A decade earlier, in 2043, civilization as we know it is careening towards the cliff of no return. Cascadia is newly formed, having just separated from the United States. Its people are searching for a better method of government to combat climate change and guard against the pitfalls of governance tainted by human self-interest. Two computer scientists meet for the first time: Dr. Emil Franke and nine-year-old prodigy Gershwin Datta. They will change everything.

As the story moves back and forth in time, it becomes clear that Barnaby’s troubles—and the baby he’s rescued—are inextricably linked to Emil and Gershwin’s work. They are all connected. Not just to the fate of Cascadia, but the world.

Colin Meloy is the author of the middle grade novels The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid, The Stars Did Wander Darkling, and the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles, as well as two picture books, The Golden Thread: A Song for Pete Seeger and Everyone’s Awake! He is also the singer and songwriter for the indie rock band the Decemberists. Colin lives in Oregon with his wife and frequent collaborator, illustrator Carson Ellis, and their sons.

GOOD LOOKS AND BAD MANNERS de Joanna Scutts

A narrative history of American women’s love affair with Paris, from the Belle Epoque to the gritty and glamorous jazz age, through WWII and the cultural transformations beyond.

GOOD LOOKS AND BAD MANNERS:
American Women Who Shook Up Paris, from the Belle Epoque to the New Wave
by Joanna Scutts
St. Martin’s Press, April 2027
(via Wolf Literary Services)

Starting in the late-19th century, the era of ocean liners and Impressionism, young American women followed their ambitions across the Atlantic to make a home in the irresistible city of Paris. Long before Emily in Paris, or even the advent of mass tourism, these plucky Americans fell in love with Paris and the freedoms it offered.

GOOD LOOKS AND BAD MANNERS, a deeply researched and character-driven cultural history, tells the story of seismic change―from the 1870s to the 1960s―and the American women whose creativity, boundary-pushing, and dauntless spirit shaped, and in turn were shaped by, the city of Paris.

Famous figures like Edith Wharton, Julia Child, and Angela Davis take their place among a riotous assembly of lesser-known artists and adventurers. The book invites us into the art scene of the 1870s, where Americans like Mary Cassatt and May Alcott (sister of Louisa) made a home for themselves outside the male-only Ecole de Beaux Arts, to the 1920s, where Isadora Duncan and Josephine Baker captivated audiences, to the hardships of WWII, shouldered by writers like Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein, and the ensuing cultural transformations beyond.

Often on their own for the first time, unsupervised by parents and rarely married, these women flaunted their talents and navigated limited budgets with thriftiness and good humor. Facing less (or at least different kinds of) sexism and racism than back home, the Americans cultivated a vibrant expat sisterhood―one that could withstand wars, epidemics, and financial crashes, as well as uplift extraordinary successes.

At its heart, this book is a love story, a celebration of a Paris both mythologized and realized by the daring American women who chose to call it home.

Joanna Scutts is a professor at the American University of Paris, a literary critic, and a feminist historian. She is the author of several books, including Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Washington Post, Guardian, and New Yorker online, among many others. Scutts holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She lives in Paris.

IN RESIDENCE de Jessica Widner

A literary ghost story in the vein of Pola Oloixarac’s Mona with a Shirley Jackson twist, for fans of Jordan Peele.

IN RESIDENCE
by Jessica Widner
Mariner, Fall 2027
(via Wolf Literary Services)

When Eva and Elliot receive a vast inheritance from Elliot’s mother, it is as welcome as it is troubling. Middle aged, without children and already leading a comfortable middle-class life in Edinburgh, they decide to use the money to launch a fully funded residency for emerging artists.

Yet, as soon as the money arrives in Elliot’s account, a strange atmosphere converges around the couple. It follows them to the Yorkshire Dales, where they renovate a large countryside property ahead of the inaugural residency. They each begin dreaming of a presence, a dark and inescapable creature, and whispers seem to linger in the air even after they wake.

When the first batch of guests arrives – a dancer from Busan, a mixed-media artist from Los Angeles and a writer from Toronto – they too are caught up in the increasingly terrifying happenings. Tensions escalate as they all suspect each other of foul play, but the true culprit is a legacy that extends far into the past, surfacing to remind Eva and Elliot of the full extent of their inheritance.

Perceptive and piercing, Widner examines the small compromises we make with ourselves every day, spinning a story of patronage, privilege, class, and complicity until its dark heart emerges.

Jessica Widner is a writer and literary scholar. She is a lecturer in English & Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde.

THE GOD FLOWER de Casey Taylor

Part history, part real-time reporting, and part ethnography, THE GOD FLOWER is a provocative and radical history of cannabis and Western imperialism.

THE GOD FLOWER:
A People’s History of Cannabis and Anti-Colonial Resistance
by Casey Taylor
St. Martin’s Press, April 2027

For nearly as long as there have been people, there has been cannabis. From humanity’s origins in the Horn of Africa to the rural highlands of ancient Japan, the plant has featured in religious sacraments that have been the foundation for whole cultures.

The history and ethnobotany of cannabis reveals a hidden truth: where the plant has thrived, so have radical and anti-imperialist politics. Where cannabis grows, colonialism weakens. In a revolutionary narrative that breaks from the Western propagandized version of world events, Casey Taylor blends together original reporting from Ethiopia to the Caribbean, the latest ethnobotanical research, studies of historical and religious documents, and recently declassified American intelligence materials. The result is an unforgettable people’s history that begins in ancient cultures and carries through to modern times, decentering Western colonial power along the way.

Gripping first-person reporting collides with groundbreaking scholarship in THE GOD FLOWER, producing both an unflinching critique of imperialism—which has always viewed cannabis with at best suspicion and more frequently open hostility—and an ode to a plant that has shaped our lives in more ways than we realize.

Casey Taylor is a writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has written longform features about the history of cannabis and Kissinger’s Jamaican policies, western tattooing, the United States Postal Service, and many other subjects for publications like Defector Media, New York Magazine, The New Republic, WIRED, Vox, and Vice. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Taylor has settled in Pittsburgh after growing up on the other side of the state near Philadelphia.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AND A DAY de Julianne MacLean

From USA Today bestselling author Julianne MacLean comes a sweeping time-bending novel of sisterhood, unrequited love, and the devastating cost of the secrets we carry. For readers of Taylor Jenkins Reid and Audrey Niffenegger.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AND A DAY
by Julianne MacLean
Wildthorn/Tor, October 2027

On the morning of her sister’s wedding, Ivy Calder forces a smile through her heartbreak—because she’s secretly in love with the groom, Everett. But then, the next moment, everything has changed. Ivy is now a hundred years old, her sister Audrey has been missing for decades and presumed dead, and Ivy herself is married to Everett. Just as Ivy begins to grasp this impossible new reality, she snaps back to the present—standing beside Audrey in her wedding dress.

Terrified by the future she’s glimpsed, Ivy supports her sister at the wedding but then flees, determined to change a fate she no longer understands. Years later, when Ivy and Everett cross paths again, the connection between them flares to life, undeniable and dangerous. And Audrey—alive, vibrant, and carrying a secret capable of shattering all three lives—forces Ivy to confront what loyalty truly demands.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AND A DAY is a story about the bonds that define us, the choices that haunt us, and the love we spend lifetimes trying to protect.

Julianne MacLean is a USA Today bestselling author of more than forty novels, including These Tangled Vines, Beyond the Moonlit Sea, A Fire Sparkling, and the popular The Color of Heaven series. Readers have described her work as “breathtaking,” “soulful,” and “uplifting.” She has sold millions of books worldwide in more than a dozen languages. MacLean studied in Nova Scotia, earning a degree in English literature from the University of King’s College in Halifax and a business degree from Acadia University in Wolfville. She loves to travel and has lived in New Zealand, Canada, and England. She currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada. Please visit the author’s website at www.juliannemaclean.com for more information about her books and writing life and to subscribe to her mailing list for all the latest news.