Archives de catégorie : Fiction

WEST SIDE HONEY de Claire Christian

A sexy and empowering rom-com from the beloved author of It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake.

WEST SIDE HONEY
by Claire Christian
Text Publishing, April 2023

Cleo has a few things going on. Two beautiful kids and a less beautiful ex-husband, a share house arrangement with her long-term bestie Jude (complete with a third child, also beautiful) and an underperforming florist business. Actually, the shop could be beautiful too, it’s just that Cleo hasn’t got time to think about it.
Her new week-on week-off custody schedule is about to change all that. She can put her own needs first for once—take a dance class, fix up the shop, even think about dating. Not that she’s looking for anything serious, but she’s open to exploring what she wants.
Which, it turns out, is a lot. Maybe too much?
But how can you work out what you really, really want unless you try a bit of everything?

Claire Christian tells stories. She is a writer, theatre-maker and facilitator based in Meanjin/Brisbane in Australia. She has had four plays published by Playlab, including Lysa and the Freeborn Dames, which debuted at La Boite in 2018. She had the great joy of directing Michelle Law’s smash-hit comedy Single Asian Female. Claire’s debut novel, Beautiful Mess, won the Text Prize in 2016. Her second novel, It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake, was released in 2020.

PIECES OF ME de Kate McLaughlin

The next gut-punching, compulsively readable Kate McLaughlin novel, about a girl finding strength in not being alone.

PIECES OF ME
by Kate McLaughlin
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, April 2023

When eighteen-year-old Dylan wakes up, she’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize. The other people there seem to know her, but she doesn’t know them – not even the pretty, chiseled boy who tells her his name is Connor. A voice inside her head keeps saying that everything is okay, but Dylan can’t help but freak out. Especially when she borrows Connor’s phone to call home and realizes she’s been missing for three days.
Dylan has lost time before, but never like this.
Soon after, Dylan is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and must grapple not only with the many people currently crammed inside her head, but that a secret from her past so terrible she’s blocked it out has put them there. Her only distraction is a budding new relationship with Connor. But as she gets closer to finding out the truth, Dylan wonders: will it heal her or fracture her further?
PIECES OF ME is raw, intimate, and surprisingly hopeful.

Kate Mclaughlin grew up in rural Nova Scotia with only her imagination and the Bay of Fundy to keep her entertained. That imagination was encouraged by her mother, and Kate began writing at age eight. She’s published more than 50 books under different pen names, including What Unbreakable Looks Like and Daughter. She, her husband Steve, and her four fur-kids live in Connecticut.

TILLY IN TECHNICOLOR de Mazey Eddings

From the acclaimed author of adult rom-coms like A Brush With Love comes a YA debut about two neurodivergent teens who form a connection on a whirlwind summer trip through Europe.

TILLY IN TECHNICOLOR
by Mazey Eddings
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, August 2023

Tilly Twomley is desperate for change. White-knuckling her way through high school with flawed executive functioning has left her burnt out and ready to start fresh. Working as an intern for her perfect older sister’s start up isn’t exactly how Tilly wants to spend her summer, but the required travel around Europe promises a much-needed change of scenery as she plans for her future. The problem is, Tilly has no idea what she wants.
Oliver Clark knows exactly what he wants. His autism has often made it hard for him to form relationships with others, but his love of color theory and design allows him to feel deeply connected to the world around him. Plus, he has everything he needs: a best friend that gets him, placement into a prestigious design program, and a summer internship to build his resume. Everything is going as planned. That is, of course, until he suffers through the most disastrous international flight of his life, all turmoil stemming from lively and exasperating Tilly. Oliver is forced to spend the summer with a girl that couldn’t be more his opposite―feeling things for her he can’t quite name―and starts to wonder if maybe he doesn’t have everything figured out after all.
As the duo’s neurodiverse connection grows, they learn that some of the best parts of life can’t be planned, and are forced to figure out what that means as their disastrously wonderful summer comes to an end.

Mazey Eddings is a neurodiverse author, dentist, and (most importantly) stage mom to her cats, Yaya and Zadie. She can most often be found reading romance novels under her weighted blanket and asking her boyfriend to bring her snacks. She’s made it her personal mission in life to destigmatize mental health issues and write love stories for every brain. With roots in Ohio and North Carolina, she now calls Philadelphia home.

THE SEVENFOLD HUNTERS de Rose Egal

A genre-bending debut full of cutthroat school politics and the speculative intrigue of alien contact.

THE SEVENFOLD HUNTERS
by Rose Egal
Page Street/St. Martin’s Press, October 2022

There’s nothing hijabi alien hunter Abyan wants more than to graduate from Carlisle Academy and finally rid the Earth of aliens, the Nosaru.
Everything is going to plan until the Nosaru kill one of Abyan’s squad mates. To make matters worse, the school admins replace her elite squad member with a sub-par new recruit, Artemis. Despite Artemis failing every test―and bringing the team down with her―their cutthroat instructors refuse to kick her out.
Together Abyan, Artemis and the rest of the team unravel the mystery of why Artemis is actually there, what the Nosaru really want, and what Carlisle Academy has been hiding from them all.

« A must for teen fans of Ms. Marvel―the graphic novels or the television series. » ―Booklist

« Egal capably combines familiar tropes―academic intrigue, mysterious shadow organizations, and good old-fashioned vampire hunting―with innovative sci-fi elements to deliver an adrenaline-fueled galactic war adventure. » ―Publishers Weekly

« The kick-ass queer characters will appeal to many readers […] Science-fiction action pairs with teen angst in this blood-pumping […] outing. » ―Kirkus Reviews

Rose Egal loves autumn, sad poetry, and cats who humble themselves. THE SEVENFOLD HUNTERS is her first novel in part inspired by her MS in Biochemistry from Queen Mary University of London. She lives in London with her family and their cat, her arch nemesis, Hercules Aethelstan Buni Massimo Pandemicus The not Great.

LIMBERLOST de Robbie Arnott

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, LIMBERLOST is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

LIMBERLOST
by Robbie Arnott
Text Publishing, October 2022

In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.
Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water.
As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

Robbie Arnott’s acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize. His follow-up, The Rain Heron (2020), won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award. He lives in Hobart, Australia.