Archives par étiquette : David Black Literary Agency

TWICE de Mitch Albom

What if you got to do everything in your life —twice? The heart of Mitch Albom’s newest novel is a stunning love story that dares to explore how our unchecked desires might mean losing what we’ve had all along.

TWICE: A Novel
by Mitch Albom
Harper, October 2025
(via David Black Literary)

When he is eight years old, Alfie Logan discovers the magical ability to get a second chance at everything. He can undo any moment and live it again. The one catch: he must accept the consequences of his second try—for better or worse.

He grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it’s like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety.

Eventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life, studying his crushes and going back to make himself more appealing. In time, he falls deeply in love with Gianna, the woman he believes is the one. He seems to find contentment.

But as the years pass, Alfie’s eye begins to wander. Which is when he learns a lone caveat to his power: once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again. Knowing if he gives into to temptation, he will risk losing what he has with Gianna, Alfie makes a choice that changes his life forever.

The book begins many years later, after an ailing Alfie is arrested for allegedly cheating and winning millions at a casino roulette wheel. As a curious detective interrogates him, he slowly uncovers Alfie’s incredible story, and its most unlikely conclusion.

In TWICE, America’s favorite storyteller, Mitch Albom, is at the top of his powers. A love story that is enchanting, probing, and clairvoyant in matters of the heart, TWICE will make you think, weep, and overflow with love from beginning to end.

Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold forty-two million copies in forty-eight languages worldwide. He has written eight number-one New York Times bestsellers—including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time—award-winning television films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and is the recipient of the 2010 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement. He founded the nonprofit SAY Detroit, which provides pathways to success for Detroiters in need through major health, housing and education initiatives. He also founded a dessert shop and a gourmet popcorn line to help fund it. Albom operates Have Faith Haiti, a home and school for impoverished children and orphans in Port-au-Prince, which he visits monthly. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.

TWICE: A Novel
by Mitch Albom
Harper, October 2025
(via David Black Literary)

LION’S LEGACY de L.C. Rosen

Against the backdrop of a sunlit Greek landscape, author L. C. Rosen masterfully weaves together adventure, romance, and magic in a celebration of the power of claiming your queer legacy.

LION’S LEGACY
(Tennessee Russo Book 1)
by L.C. Rosen
Union Square & Co., May 2023
(via David Black Literary)

Seventeen-year-old Tennessee Russo’s life is imploding. His boyfriend has been cheating on him, and all his friends know about it. Worse, they expect him to just accept his ex’s new relationship and make nice. So when his father, a famous archaeologist and reality show celebrity whom he hasn’t seen in two years, shows up unexpectedly and offers to take him on an adventure, Tennessee only has a few choices:

1. Stay, mope, regret it forever.
2. Go, try to reconcile with Dad, become his sidekick again.
3. Go, but make it his adventure, and Dad will be the sidekick.

The object of his father’s latest quest, the Rings of the Sacred Band of Thebes, is too enticing to say no to. Finding artifacts related to the troop of ancient Greek soldiers, composed of one-hundred-and-fifty gay couples, means navigating ruins, deciphering ancient mysteries, and maybe meeting a cute boy.

But will his dad let Tennessee do the right thing with the rings if they find them? And what is the right thing? Who does queer history belong to?

KING’S LEGACY, Book 2 in the Tennessee Russo series, will be published April 1, 2025.

A New York Public Library Best Book of 2023
Booklist Editors’ Choice 2023: Books for Youth

“Flirtatious friendships and a fun summer romance, Indiana Jones-esque booby traps, and the logistics of filming reality TV mesh seamlessly with heavier discussions of rightful ownership of historical artifacts, erasure of queer history, and the power of an actual apology. Rosen emphasizes the importance between connecting the historical existence and contributions of queer people to the queer community in the present and includes many small tidbits of queer history throughout . . . . [A]ction-packed and illuminative.” —Booklist, starred review

“Rosen has balanced a thrilling adventure with a flirtatious queer romance, while highlighting moments from history most won’t learn about in school and discussing what responsible archeology entails. While the magic rings are not real, the Sacred Band of Thebes was, and readers who enjoy Greek mythology and history will be riveted by this adventure . . . . A page-turning action-adventure that highlights the importance of reclaiming queer history and culture.—School Library Journal

“This action-packed adventure inspired by history and legend engages in a conflict-driven exploration of the ethics of archaeology. Tennessee grapples with tangled emotions about his relationship with his father, his longing for community, and what it means to be in love . . . . An entertaining, emotional rush tackling critical subjects.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[G]ripping series kickoff from Rosen (Lavender House) that’s both thrilling escapade and simmering romance . . . . Through Ten and Leo’s visits to a museum of queer history and culture, and the meticulous detail with which the author recounts underreported events in Grecian history, Rosen makes an insistent case for recognizing and teaching LGBTQ history and understanding legacy.” —Publishers Weekly

Lev AC Rosen writes books for people of all ages, including the Evander Mills series, which began with the Macavity Award winning Lavender House, and continues with The Bell in the Fog. His most recent young adult novels are Emmett, Lion’s Legacy, and Camp. Rosen’s books have been nominated for Anthony and Lambda Awards and have been selected for Best of lists from The Today Show, Amazon, Library Journal, Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Forbes, and many others. He lives in NYC with his husband and a very small cat.

THE BARN de Wright Thompson

A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long.

THE BARN
The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
by Wright Thompson
Penguin Press, September 2024
(via David Black Literary Agency)

Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.

In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.

Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, about white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In THE BARN, Thompson meets the few people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light, people like Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till’s friend, who came down from Chicago with him that summer, and is the last person alive to know him well. Wheeler Parker’s journey to put the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a journey we all need to go on if this country is to heal from its oldest, deepest wound.

Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN and the bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

BLUE HOTEL de Dann McDorman

BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

BLUE HOTEL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, Spring 2025
(via David Black Literary)

A man wakes up in a room with no idea where he is or how he got there. The room has no door nor windows. He has no way to tell the time. He has nothing to eat except for the endless cartons of Cup O’ Noodles (Original flavor) with which he is tormented by his captors. The stubble on his chin doesn’t grow. He loses his mind; he gets his back. Then one day, one hour, one minute, a vintage black typewriter appears on the desk, gleaming like a beetle. He warily taps out his name: J-O-H-N T-H-O-M-A-S. He sits down and begins to write…
Thus begins BLUE HOTEL, during which readers follow John Thomas as he tries to solve the mystery of his imprisonment. His surprising escape, and the discovery of what lies outside his room, launches an exploration during which readers will encounter a strange menagerie of characters: doomsday cultists, a Reality Studies professor, a Big Tech billionaire, an immortal chatbot, a woman who thought she could fly, and two sisters who speak to the dead — plus a few other, rather more surprising personalities…
BLUE HOTEL, Dann McDorman’s follow-up to West Heart Kill, features his trademark mixture of plot twists and philosophical inquiry. It’s a novel filled with bizarre facts and heretical histories, ranging from the origins of artificial intelligence to 19th century revolutionary politics in Canada. BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

THE AMISH WIFE de Gregg Olsen

The bestselling author Gregg Olsen solves a murder among the Amish and reveals the conspiracy to keep it a secret in a heartbreaking and horrifying true-crime story, THE AMISH WIFE.

THE AMISH WIFE
Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free
by Gregg Olsen
Thomas & Mercer, January 2024
(via David Black Literary Agency)

What if the first true crime story you ever wrote (Abandoned Prayers) had loose ends that haunted you for more than thirty years?

What if you had a second chance to right a wrong, solve a murder, and bring justice to a woman who had none?

Would you take a second bite of the apple?

Gregg Olsen didn’t think twice. A call from an Amish farmer brought Olsen back into a story that never left him and gave him the chance to answer the question once and for all.

Who killed Ida Stutzman?

The young, pregnant Ohio Amish woman died in a barn fire. Her death was declared by natural causes. Soon after, her husband, Eli Stutzman, sold the farm, left the faith, and set off on an odyssey of sex, drugs, and erratic behavior that would culminate in the death of his and Ida’s young son, Danny—a mysterious crime (“Little Boy Blue of Chester, Nebraska”) that gained national attention and inspired Olsen’s true crime classic, Abandoned Prayers.

Now, in THE AMISH WIFE: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free, Gregg Olsen revisits the Stutzman story and the niggling questions surrounding the events that took Ida’s life 45 years ago.

Why did the coroner so quickly rule the young mother’s death heart failure? Why didn’t the county sheriff investigate the circumstances behind her death? How come Ida’s relatives repressed their doubts about her death and never publicly expressed their concerns—even after all this time?

The answers were found between the two worlds that Eli Stutzman inhabited—the gay and Amish.

Gaining greater access than most outsiders are afforded, Olsen takes readers deep into the circumscribed world of an Amish community and beyond as he pieces together the puzzle surrounding Ida’s death. The gay men in Eli’s life Olsen met more than three decades ago, like the Amish, were freer in 2022 to speak a truth they’d kept silent out of a fear that has lessened over the years.

Just how much did a conspiracy of silence shared by inhabitants of two very different words become complicit in an Amish wife’s death and, later, her son’s?

#1 New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen has written more than thirty books, including If You Tell, Lying Next to Me, The Last Thing She Ever Did, and two novels in the Nicole Foster series, The Sound of Rain and The Weight of Silence. His last true crime book, If You Tell, found a home on Amazon Charts for more than 180 weeks and was the bestselling Kindle eBook of 2020 (and the second bestselling of 2021). He has appeared on Good Morning America, Dateline, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and MSNBC and been featured in Redbook, People, Salon, the Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, and New York Post. His fiction and nonfiction works have appeared on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller lists. A Seattle native, he lives with his wife in rural Washington State.