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The heaven & earth grocery store: A novel
By James McBride. 2023
Named a Must Read for the Summer The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe •…
Time • AARP • Town & Country • St. Louis Post-Dispatch "We all need—we all deserve— this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird , a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store , James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird
Kukum
By Michel Jean. 2023
A Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean’s great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in…
an Innu community. Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women. Unfolding over the course of a century, the novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu, as Almanda and her family face the loss of their land and confinement to reserves, and the enduring violence of residential schools. Kukum intimately expresses the importance of Innu ancestral values and the need for freedom nomadic peoples feel to this day.
The Adversary
By Michael Crummey. 2023
From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents, a dark, enthralling novel about love and its limitations, the corruption of…
power and the power of corruption.In an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the shore when the Widow Caines arrives to throw the wedding and Abe's plans into chaos. That ruthless act of sabotage is the opening salvo in a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar's largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world. As their unshakeable animosity spirals further each year into vendettas and violence, the community is increasingly divided and even the innocents in Mockbeggar find themselves forced to take sides, with devastating consequences. Through merciless seasons of uncertainty and want, through predatory storms and pandemics and marauding privateers, it is the human heart that reveals itself to be the most formidable and unpredictable adversary for each person drawn, inevitably and helplessly, into that endless feud. Compulsively readable and uncompromising, The Adversary is a pitch-perfect evocation of a lost time, and a shadowed mirror to our modern politics of grievance and retribution. It is Michael Crummey's finest novel to date.
Study for obedience: A novel
By Sarah Bernstein. 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Longlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize. Included in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists…
2023. For readers of Shirley Jackson, Iain Reid, and Claire-Louise Bennett, a haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction. A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing. With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation
Blackouts: A novel
By Justin Torres. 2023
From the bestselling author of We the Animals , Blackouts mines lost histories—personal and collective. Out in the desert in…
a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns , which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories—moments of joy and oblivion—and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures? Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman , Pedro Páramo , Voodoo Macbeth , the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made—a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
North woods: A novel
By Daniel Mason. 2023
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New…
England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries— "a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic" ( The Washington Post ) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier . "With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction ( Cloud Atlas ), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders."— San Francisco Chronicle ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST ’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we’re gone?
The Future (Biblioasis International Translation Series #44)
By Catherine Leroux, Susan Ouriou. 2023
Longlisted for Canada Reads 2023 • One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC…
Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees. In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance. When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
The fox wife: A novel
By Yangsze Choo. 2024
This program is read by the author. "Choo narrates this richly complex novel herself, her gorgeous writing delivered in a…
voice that is deep and precise and lovely. . . . Her tone and words transport us." — San Francisco Chronicle on The Night Tiger Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi , but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking . . . Manchuria, 1908. In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out of reach—until, perhaps, now. Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can't escape the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family's luck seems to change—or does it? Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she's a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur. New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company
The future
By Catherine Leroux. 2024
Longlisted for Canada Reads 2023 One of Tor.com 's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 Listed in CBC Books…
Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 One of Kirkus Reviews ' Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees. In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance. When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city's orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can't imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together
Wild Houses: A Novel
By Colin Barrett. 2024
One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024From the award-winning writer of Homesickness and Young Skins, a…
darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and small-town secrets that won’t stay buried.As Ballina in the west of Ireland prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo's fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum.When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night, he finds Doll—Cillian's bruised, sullen, teenage brother—in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother's dog, and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy.Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can't shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night, and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.The beautifully crafted, thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence, Wild Houses is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically-acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett.
The women: A novel
By Kristin Hannah. 2024
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's T he Women —at once an…
intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided. Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era
Welcome to the hyunam-dong bookshop
By Hwang Bo-Reum. 2024
The Korean smash hit available for the first time in English, a slice-of-life novel for readers of Matt Haig's The…
Midnight Library and Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of AJ Fikry. Yeongju is burned out. With her high-flying career, demanding marriage, and busy life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful, but all she feels is drained. Yet an abandoned dream nags at her, and in a leap of faith, she leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a small residential neighborhood outside the city, where she opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. For the first few months, all Yeongju does is cry, deterring visitors. But the long hours in the shop give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and store, and as she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she begins to ease into her new setting. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that connect them all, she finds her new story as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop transforms into an inviting space for lost souls to rest, heal, and remember that it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again
Long Island: A Novel
By Colm Toibin. 2024
One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024The sequel to the prize-winning, bestselling novel Brooklyn.A man with…
an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn—perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future. And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path? Long Island is Colm Tóibín’s masterpiece: an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever.
Behind you: A novel
By Catherine Hernandez. 2024
As terror grips a city, a young girl faces danger closer to home and chilling memories that last a lifetime.…
Catherine Hernandez's most gripping and affecting novel yet, Behind You is inspired by a horrifying chapter in Canadian history and follows fictional characters terrorized by a fictional perpetrator. Alma is a Filipina woman who works as a film editor for a cheesy True Crime series featuring the most notorious killers of the 20th century called Infamous. On the surface she seems to live a good life with her wife Nira and teenage son, Mateo. But there is so much left unsaid. It's not until Infamous' last episode features the Scarborough Stalker that she remembers coming of age while the serial rapist and killer was attacking women and girls in Scarborough in the late 80s and early 90s. What unfolds are two storylines: In the past, young Alma watches an entire city become consumed with a manhunt for an elusive, terrifying suspect, while she herself is in jeopardy from closer corners. In the present, adult Alma must come to terms with her own ideas of consent to stop her son's dangerous behaviour towards his girlfriend. Weaving back and forth in time, Behind You, is a moving story of one girl's resilience into adulthood and a chilling portrayal of the insidiousness if rape culture. It daringly turns the Whodunit genre on its head by asking the question ""Who hasn't done it?"" As in, who has not been complicit in sexual harm?
River east, river west: A novel
By Aube Rey Lescure. 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE Set against the backdrop of developing modern China, this mesmerizing literary debut is part coming-of-age…
tale, part family and social drama, as it follows two generations searching for belonging and opportunity in a rapidly changing world—perfect for readers of Behold the Dreamers, White Ivy, and The Leavers. Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she's never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva's hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai. Upon admission, though, Alva is surprised to discover an institution run by an exclusive community of expats and the ever-wilder thrills of a city where foreigners can ostensibly act as they please. 1985: In the seaside city of Qingdao, Lu Fang is a young, married man and a lowly clerk in a shipping yard. Though he once dreamed of a bright future, he is one of many casualties in his country's harsh political reforms. So when China opens its doors to the first wave of foreigners in decades, Lu Fang's world is split wide open after he meets an American woman who makes him confront difficult questions about his current status in life, and how much will ever be enough. In a stunning reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative and set against China's political history and economic rise, River East, River West is an intimate family drama and a sharp social novel. Alternating between Alva and Lu Fang's points of view, this is a profoundly moving exploration of race and class, cultural identity and belonging, and the often-false promise of the American Dream
City in ruins: A novel (Danny Ryan Trilogy #3)
By Don Winslow. 2024
"The Godfather for our generation." - Adrian McKinty "City in Ruins is Don Winslow showing the rest of us how…
it's done. Winslow has saved the best for last." - James Patterson From New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow comes City in Ruins - his epic, genre-defining crime masterpiece . . . and the final novel of Winslow's extraordinary career. Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich. The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman - a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with. Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own. Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything - not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son. To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was - and never wanted to be again. Ranging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion
Fire Exit: A novel
By Morgan Talty. 2024
"Fire Exit, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, is utterly consuming. The novel absolutely smolders." —Tommy OrangeDoes she remember this day? Does…
she remember it at all? Does she know this history—this story—her body holds secret from her?From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.Now it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on and care for what he can: his home and property, his alcoholic, quick-tempered and big-hearted friend Bobby, and his mother, Louise, who is slipping ever-deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, in a hunting accident—a death that he and Louise cannot agree where to lay the blame—Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is it his secret to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth? From award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.
James: A novel
By Percival Everett. 2024
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man…
in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” ( Oprah Daily ), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
Caledonian Road: A Novel
By Andrew O'Hagan. 2024
One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel—the…
story of one man’s epic fall from grace.Campbell Flynn, art historian and biographer of Vermeer, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public―yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. Entangled with a brilliant student, he begins to see trouble brewing for his family and friends. All his worlds collide―the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet―as dangerous forces enter his life and Caledonian Road gives up its secrets. Andrew O’Hagan has written a social novel in the Victorian style, drawing a whole cast of characters into company with each other and revealing the inner energies of the way we live now.
The frozen river: A novel
By Ariel Lawhon. 2023
GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the New York Times bestselling author of…
I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène comes a gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. "Fans of Outlander ’s Claire Fraser will enjoy Lawhon’s Martha, who is brave and outspoken when it comes to protecting the innocent. . . impressive." —The Washington Post "Once again, Lawhon works storytelling magic with a real-life heroine." —People Magazine Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own. Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie. Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day