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In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret Life
By Sadiya Ansari. 2024
In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she…
seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations? Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.
Guide Me Home (A Highway 59 Novel)
By Attica Locke. 2024
The case of a missing Black college student who has disappeared from her all-white sorority pulls Darren out of an…
early retirement; the third and final novel in the "timely and evocative" (NPR) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning New York Times-Bestselling author Attica Locke. Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn&’t sure he&’s been a good cop, but believes he&’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It&’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn&’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who&’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn&’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate. Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera&’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he&’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother. In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, Darren reckons with his life&’s purpose as he&’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.
Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Novel (Jackson Brodie Ser. #6)
By Kate Atkinson. 2024
WELCOME TO ROOK HALL. THE STAGE IS SET. THE PLAYERS ARE READY. BY NIGHT&’S END, A MURDERER WILL BE REVEALED.Ex-detective…
Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting.But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted to a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson&’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building. Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson&’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie&’s most outrageous and memorable case yet.
Entitlement: A Novel
By Rumaan Alam. 2024
"A brilliant exploration of extreme wealth and how it bends the lives of those close to it... Alam keeps things…
crystal clear and speedway fast." —The Boston Globe&“Should come with an undertow warning.&”—Louise Erdrich"Like having a vise slowly tightened around my heart." —Charles YuA novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World BehindBrooke wants. She isn&’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.
Intermezzo: A Novel
By Sally Rooney. 2024
An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.Aside from the fact that they…
are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father&’s death, he&’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
Playground: A Novel
By Richard Powers. 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 BOOKER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 KIRKUS PRIZEFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 internationally bestselling author of…
The Overstory comes an epic tale of love, friendship and humanity&’s next great adventure.When two brilliant misfits bond at an elite Chicago private school—one a white legacy kid named Todd Keane and the other, Rafi Young, a Black scholarship student from the South Side—their friendship seems as boundary-breaking and limitless as the 3,000-year-old board game that brings them together. For a time, not even simultaneously falling in love with Ina Aroita, who grew up in naval bases across the Pacific, shakes them. Until finally it does, with a betrayal that launches all three of them on radically different paths. Rafi disappears into literature, and Ina into art. Todd, who once dreamed of escape into the world beneath the surface of the ocean, revealed to him by the legendary Canadian diver and marine biologist Evie Beaulieu, becomes instead one of the most powerful tech billionaires on the planet whose social media empire, Playground, is remaking the global order with its AI breakthroughs. But not even wild success can insulate Todd from mortality. As illness eats away at the brain that built it all, he dreams of the life that could&’ve been and the relationships he should never have let go.Before Todd&’s final act is up, past loves and present ambitions collide on the ravaged Polynesian island of Makatea, where an unnamed corporation hopes to build the first floating, autonomous city on the open sea. Traversing borders and oceans, connection and loss, ingenuity and transcendence, Playground brings to light the systems of competition, cooperation, commerce, exploration and love that tie the fates of unlikely humans together, in Richard Powers&’ most transporting work of fiction yet.
Invisible Prisons: Jack Whalen's Tireless Fight for Justice
By Lisa Moore, Jack Whalen. 2024
Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse…
and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love.Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John&’s, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing—and Jack's case is part of a lawsuit currently before the courts.The story has parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and with the many horrific stories about residential schools—all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and a larger society looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes vividly real every moment and character in these pages.
Hi, It's Me: A Novel
By Fawn Parker. 2024
One of Indigo&’s Most Anticipated Canadian Books • One of the CBC&’s Canadian Fiction Books to Read in Fall 2024…
Women Talking meets Study for Obedience in this stunning depiction of fresh grief by Fawn Parker, the Scotiabank Giller Prize–longlisted author of What We Both Know.Shortly after her mother&’s death, Fawn arrives at the farmhouse. While there, she will stay in her mother&’s bedroom in the house that is also occupied by four other women who live by an unusual set of beliefs.Wrestling with longstanding compulsive and harmful behaviours, as well as severe self-doubt, Fawn is confronted with the reality of her mother&’s death. It is her responsibility to catalogue the furniture and possessions in the room, then sell or dispose of them. Instead, Fawn becomes fixated on archiving her mother&’s writing and documents, searching for signs, and drawing tenuous connections to help her understand more about the enigmatic woman in the pages.I am surrounded by mocking evidence of her inhabitancy of this room. Quickly, it is expiring. Today she was alive. When the day runs out that will no longer be true. Tomorrow I will be able to say that yesterday she was alive, at least. The next day, nothing. She will just be dead. The fact seems to be at its smallest now, growing with time. For now she is many things, and there are many places left to find her.In Hi, It&’s Me, Fawn Parker is unafraid to explore the bewildering relationship between the living and the dead. Strikingly original, provocative, and engrossing Hi, It&’s Me takes us into the furthest corners of grief, invoking the physicality and painful embodiment of terminal illness with astonishing precision and emotional force. This mesmerizing, devastating novel asks: Why must it be this way?
What I Know About You
By Éric Chacour. 2023
CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2024 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 GILLER PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE 2024 DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE…
FOR LGBTQ2S+ EMERGING WRITERSA heartbreaking tale of a family and an impossible love, torn apart by secrets and traditions in late-twentieth-century Cairo.In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek’s entire life is written in advance. He’ll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family’s strong women, he starts to do just that – until a patient’s son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men’s unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.The turn of the millennium finds Tarek living as a doctor in Montreal. Someone is writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will Tarek figure it out in time? From Cairo’s grand boulevards and hidden alleys to Montreal’s grim winter, from the reign of Nasser to the early 2000s, What I Know About You tells the heartbreaking story of a family torn apart by an epic love.A bestseller in its original Quebec edition, and the recipient of several awards, including the Prix Femina des Lycéens, What I Know About You is poised to be an international sensation."This novel is a searing love story that moves between Egypt and Montréal, that shifts between hearts, highlighting the sacrifices the characters feel they have to make for the ones they love. Romantic, surprising, mesmerizing, and so devastating, What I Know About You examines the terrible costs of family secrets and toxic shame." – Suzette Mayr, author of The Sleeping Car Porter
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Stories
By Shashi Bhat. 2024
From the Governor General&’s Award-shortlisted author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth comes a breathtaking and sharply funny collection about the everyday…
trials and impossible expectations that come with being a woman.What would have happened if she&’d met him at a different time in her life, when she was older, more confident, less lonely, and less afraid? She wonders not whether they would have stayed together, but whether she would have known to stay away. A writer discovers that her ex has published a novel about their breakup. An immunocompromised woman falls in love, only to have her body betray her. After her boyfriend makes an insensitive comment, a college student finds an experimental procedure that promises to turn her brown eyes blue. A Reddit post about a man&’s habit of grabbing his girlfriend&’s breasts prompts a shocking confession. An unsettling second date leads to the testing of boundaries. And when a woman begins to lose her hair, she embarks on an increasingly nightmarish search for answers. With honesty, tenderness, and a skewering wit, these stories boldly wrestle with rage, longing, illness, and bodily autonomy, and their inescapable impacts on a woman&’s relationships with others and with herself.
Little Moons
By Jen Storm. 2024
In this moving graphic novel, thirteen-year-old Reanna grieves the loss of her older sister. Can she find comfort through her…
family&’s Ojibwe traditions? It&’s been a year since Reanna&’s sister, Chelsea, went missing on her way home from school. Without any idea of what happened, Reanna and her family struggle to find closure. Driven from her home by memories, Reanna&’s mom moves to the big city. Left behind on the reserve, Reanna and her little brother go to live with their dad. Reanna is hurt and angry that her mom has run away. She feels lonely and abandoned…but she is not alone. Lights turn on in empty rooms, and objects move without being touched. There are little moons everywhere.
House of Glass: A Novel
By Sarah Pekkanen. 2024
“Wow, I loved this one so much! I didn’t want it to be over because I was enjoying it so…
much, but I couldn’t stop turning pages! House of Glass is a gripping thriller that was packed with surprises and compelling characters.” -- Freida McFadden The next thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass.On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce - and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help. From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found. As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV
By Emily Nussbaum. 2024
The rollicking saga of reality television, a &“sweeping&” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America&’s most influential, most divisive artistic…
phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—&“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture&” (NPR) &“Passionate, exquisitely told . . . With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail . . . [Nussbaum] knits her talents for sharp analysis and telling reportage well.&”—The New York Times (Editors&’ Choice)Who invented reality television, the world&’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can&’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of &“dirty documentary&”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre&’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor&’s best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality&’s peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script.What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won&’t they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. A shrewd observer who adores television, Nussbaum is the ideal voice for the first substantive history of the genre that, for better or worse, made America what it is today.
What She Said: Conversations About Equality
By Elizabeth Renzetti. 2024
One of Indigo&’s Most Anticipated Canadian Books • One of CBC Books&’ Works of Canadian Nonfiction to Check Out This…
FallA passionate advocate for gender equity, and one of our most respected journalists, explores the most pressing issues facing women in Canada today with humour and heart.The fight for women&’s rights was supposed to have been settled. Or, to put it another way, women were supposed to have settled—for what we were grudgingly given, for the crumbs from the table that we had set. For thirty per cent of the seats in Canada&’s Parliament; for five per cent of the CEO&’s offices; for a tenth of the salary of male athletes; for the tiny per cent of sexual assault cases that result in convictions; for tenuous control over our health and bodies. "Aren&’t we over it yet? No, we&’re not," Elizabeth Renzetti writes. In this book, Renzetti draws upon her own life story and her years as an award-winning journalist at the Globe and Mail, where her columns followed the trajectory of women's rights. Forcefully argued, accessible, and witty, What She Said explores a range of issues: the increasingly hostile world of threats that deter young women from seeking a role in public life; the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and assault; the inadequacy of access to health care and reproductive justice, especially as experienced by Indigenous and racialized women; the ways in which future technologies must be made more inclusive; the disparity in pay, wealth, and savings, and how women are not yet socialized to be the best financial managers they can be; the imbalanced burden of care, from emotional labour to child care.Renzetti explores the nuance of these issues, so often presented as divisive, with humour and sympathy, in order to unite women at a time when women must work together to protect their fundamental right to exist fully and freely in the world. What She Said is a rallying cry for a more just future.
I Love You: Recipes from the Heart (A Cookbook)
By Pamela Anderson. 2024
Join actress, activist, and New York Times bestselling author Pamela Anderson on a deeply personal culinary journey that harmonizes style, compassion, and…
the pleasures of plant-based cooking—"a gift to all families" (Booklist) In a career spanning fame and activism, Pamela Anderson has ventured from a humble upbringing to the forefront of Hollywood—and has always been a passionate cook and gardener. Now, she invites you into her kitchen to share 80 delicious recipes that nourish the soul. This cookbook began as a box of recipe cards: a housewarming gift for her sons inspired by homegrown traditions and world travel. It grew to become her gift to you, showing how romantic, comforting, and indulgent it can be to cook only with vegetables. At Pamela&’s down-to-earth fairy kingdom on Vancouver Island, you&’ll join her on the dock for chicory dandelion coffee and whipped cranberry porridge, for picnics in the forest with a green goddess mason jar salad and tomato galette, and at the dinner table for her anti-inflammatory lentil soup, minty pea-potato pierogis, and more. She also shares her love affair with bread, from maple-glazed cinnamon rolls to rustic sourdough loaves and fougasse dipped in herby pistou, alongside insights into life, love, entertaining guests, and preserving nature&’s bounty.
Colored Television (A GMA Book Club Pick): A Novel
By Danzy Senna. 2024
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERA GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK&“A laugh-out-loud cultural comedy… This is the New Great American Novel, and…
Danzy Senna has set the standard.&” –LA Times &“Funny, foxy and fleet…The jokes are good, the punches land, the dialogue is tart.&” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times A brilliant take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of CaucasiaJane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. After a long, precarious stretch bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets, she and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane&’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel—a centuries-spanning epic her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her &“mulatto War and Peace.&” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp. But things don&’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a &“real writer,&” and together they begin to develop &“the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.&” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong. Funny, piercing, and page turning, Colored Television is Senna&’s most on-the-pulse, ambitious, and rewarding novel yet.
Matty Matheson: A Cookbook
By Matty Matheson. 2024
The acclaimed chef, New York Times bestselling author, and executive producer and actor on The Bear redefines cooking&’s iconic trinity:…
soups, salads, and sandwiches.Chances are you&’ve eaten a soup, salad, or sandwich in the past day (or maybe all three). This trio makes up so many of our meals but is rarely given the attention it deserves–until now. Matty Matheson, known for his bold, innovative flavors, has created a cookbook that will revolutionize how you think of these kitchen basics. This book is for anyone and everyone, offering up Matty&’s signature twists on the classics, delivered with minimal effort for maximum flavor.Find your favorite combination by mixing and matching dishes like:Soups: Giant Meatball Soup; Crab Congee; Creamy Sausage Soup with Rapini and Tortellini; Caldo de PolloSalads: Everyone&’s Mom&’s Macaroni and Tuna Salad; Griddled Salami Panzanella Salad; Peaches with Goat Cheese, Mint, Honeycomb, Olive Oil, and EspelleteSandwiches: Cubano; Italian Combo; Sun Warmed Tomato Sandwich; Banana Bread French Toast with Fried Egg, Peameal Bacon, and Maple SyrupPacked with character, personal stories, scrumptious recipes, and vivid photographs of a day-in-the-life with Matty and his family, Soups, Salads, Sandwiches will have you fearlessly whipping up your own combinations in the kitchen.
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius
By Patchen Barss. 2024
A "beautifully composed and revealing" (Financial Times) biography of the dazzling and painful life of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose—"a…
stunning achievement" (Kai Bird, American Prometheus). When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a &“world behind the world&” of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world&’s most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists. Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries. However, as Patchen Barss documents in The Impossible Man, success came at a price: He was attuned to the secrets of the universe, but struggled to connect with loved ones, especially the women who care for or worked with him. Both erudite and poetic, The Impossible Man draws on years of research and interviews, as well as previously unopened archives to present a moving portrait of Penrose the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Roger the human being. It reveals not just the extraordinary life of Roger Penrose, but asks who gets to be a genius, and who makes the sacrifices that allow one man to be one.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
By Haruki Murakami. 2024
"Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are…
all about?" —Haruki Murakami, from the afterword to The City and Its Uncertain Walls The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his readers will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature&’s most important writers.
The Leap Year Gene: A Novel
By Shelley Wood. 2024
From the author of The Quintland Sisters, a sweeping, imaginative historical epic that follows the remarkable lives of the McKinleys,…
a family forever altered by daughter Kit’s secret. February 29, 1916. A baby girl is born—but as the months and years go by, Kit McKinley inexplicably ages just one year for every four. Her mother Lillian, a fledgling botanist, fears that Kit’s condition will catch the attention of Lillian’s fellow suffragettes, who have embraced the eugenics craze sweeping North America targeting unfit, unwed mothers and “defective” children. For decades, Kit and her family must keep on the move to conceal her secret and protect her from the unwanted attention of Nazi scientists, nosy doctors, Big Pharma and the insatiable news media that is always hunting for the next sensational story.When Kit finally reaches her teens and can pass for an adult, she must decide whether she wants to stay perpetually on the run or stay put and form lasting ties. The only problem is Will Katzen, whose life—first as a baby, then as a boy, and then as a man—keeps intersecting with hers, complicating every instinct she has to flee, or to love.Part medical mystery, part love story, The Leap Year Gene is an unforgettable tour de force that traces the past century’s burgeoning understanding of genetics, eugenics and what constitutes “normal” while exploring the tensions, losses, love and sense of duty that can bind families together or split them apart.