Desperate to obliterate her past, a young widow flees California for the French Riviera in this compelling debut, a tale of loss, rebirth, modern friendship, and romance that blends Sally Rooney’s wryness and psychological insight with Emma Straub’s gorgeous scene-setting and rich relationships.
YOU CAN’T STAY HERE FOREVER
by Katherine Lin
HarperCollins, June 2023
(via Sterling Lord Lieristic)
Just days after her young, handsome husband dies in a car accident, Ellie Huang discovers that he had a mistress—one of own her colleagues at a prestigious San Francisco law firm. Acting on impulse—or is it grief? rage? Probably all three—Ellie cashes in Ian’s life insurance policy for an extended stay at the luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France. Accompanying her is her free-spirited best friend, Mable Chou.
Ellie hopes that the five-star resort on the French Riviera, with its stunning clientele and floral-scented cocktails, will be a heady escape from the real world. And at first it is. She and Mable meet an intriguing couple, Fauna and Robbie, and as their poolside chats roll into wine-soaked dinners, the four become increasingly intimate. But the sunlit getaway soon turns into a reckoning for Ellie, as long-simmering tensions and uncomfortable truths swirl to the surface.
Taking the reader from San Francisco to the gilded luxury of the south of France, YOU CAN’T STAY HERE FOREVER is a sharply funny and exciting debut that explores the slippery nature of marriage, the push and pull between friends, and the interplay of race and privilege, seen through the eyes of a young Asian American woman.
Named a must-read book of summer by: Good Morning America, People, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Katherine Lin is a Bay Area attorney and writer. A graduate of Northwestern University (2011) and Stanford Law School (2014), Katherine currently represents low-income tenants as a staff attorney and clinical supervisor at a clinic at Berkeley Law School. You Can’t Stay Here Forever is her debut novel.
Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug-dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—becomes a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer. As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after graduating, a viral essay transforms Javi from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his “unique perspective.” But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once he’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down? A sendup of virtue signaling and tear-jerking trauma plots, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.
Kate Riley wrote MIRIAM about eight years ago as a series of micro-dispatches (on an iPod Touch) to her heroically patient, encouraging friend, Molly Young (also 
Bolivian-Argentinian Inez Olivera belongs to the glittering upper society of nineteenth century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten. Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns the most: her globetrotting parents―who frequently leave her behind.