An epistolary novel about a man who has been hailed a small-town hero in the wake of a devastating tragedy and his struggle to help heal a broken community while grieving the loss of his wife, who he insists visits him every night in the form of an angel.
WE ARE THE LIGHT
by Matthew Quick
Avid Reader Press, November 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)
Lucas Goodgame lives in a small town in Pennsylvania, a community that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy at the local movie house. Everyone in town sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst Karl, and he insists that his deceased wife Darcy visits him every night in the form of an angel. It is only when 18-year-old Eli, a young man who the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance forms and the two begin a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.
Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film. His young adult novel, Sorta Like a Rock Star, was made into a Netflix movie called All Together Now and was the most popular streaming film there for several weeks. Quick has also published three other adult novels, The Good Luck of Right Now, Love May Fail, and The Reason You’re Alive. In addition to Sorta Like a Rock Star, he has published the young adult novels Boy21, Forgive me Leonard Peacock and Every Exquisite Thing. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He has received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, and The Hollywood Reporter named Quick one of Hollywood’s “25 Most Powerful Authors.” All of his books not yet made into films are currently in development. Matthew lives with his wife, novelist Alicia Bessette, in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Eighteen-year-old Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and daughter of the most famous Dragonador in Hispalia. People come for miles to see him fight in their arena, La Giralda. And one day La Giralda will be hers to run. During their five hundredth anniversary show, the family’s dragons mysteriously break free from their pens, causing death and destruction in the ring, and in the carnage, Zarela’s father is horribly injured. Facing punishment from the Dragon Guild, Zarela must keep the arena—her ancestral home and inheritance —safe from their greedy hands. She has no choice but to take her father’s place as the Dragonador of La Giralda. Seeking the help of Arturo Diaz de Montserrat, an infuriatingly handsome former Dragonador with his own secrets, she trains for the role of her life.
When teenager Kimberly Denise Jones—better known as Lil’ Kim—burst on the hip-hop scene in the mid-nineties, no one was prepared for how she would shake-up the entire music industry. As the sole female member of the Notorious B.I.G.’s rap collective, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and an affiliate of Puff Daddy and the Bad Boy family, Lil’ Kim always stood out from the pack. But she was determined to make an even greater name for herself and emerged as a solo superstar. In 1996, she dropped her solo debut album, Hard Core, which topped the Billboard charts, went double-platinum, and is now widely considered to be one of the most influential rap albums of all-time. With her dynamic lyricism, her unflappable no-nonsense attitude, her iconic looks both on and off the red carpet, and her unapologetic sexuality, Lil’ Kim quickly established herself as a force to be reckoned with—and was crowned the Original Queen Bee.
Craig McNamara is “the son of the war’s architect,” Robert McNamara, who served as John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and was responsible for the continuation of the Vietnam War. This memoir reflects on Craig’s adolescent struggles to discern right from wrong amidst a flurry of political escalation from his own father and anti-war sentiments from his peers, and eventually, what led him to embark on a lifelong journey of anti-war protest.