My reading list this week are all advanced copies of books not yet out! One of my favorite things about operating a literary blog is getting to preview great new titles before they go on sale.
The first book is Our Lying Kin, a new release from Claudia Hagadus Long. I’ve previously reviewed Long’s work and am very much looking forward to enjoying this new book.
The second is an upcoming release from Elizabeth Graver called Kantika. The tile of the book means song in Ladino and follows a Sephardic family. Ladino is becoming something of a lost language and I’m pleased to see it being featured in this book.
Finally, I’ll be enjoying Birthright by Charles Lambert. His new thriller explores the story of two young women, each yearning for a different life.
Join the conversation! Tell me what’s on your reading list this week in the comments.
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“Hello? I knew your father…better than you did.”
Zara and Lilly are back, but their relationship has some cracks in it. Through the long pandemic isolation, Zara’s gone from straight-laced to rigid, while Lilly, true to form, has indulged in some dubious — and not-particularly-legal — adventures. But they’re still sisters, and sisters are special.
While Zara is visiting New York to help Lilly testify against the thief and murderer Walter Rosen, a surprise phone call rocks their view of their
family: a woman claims a shocking relationship to their deceased father, and now to them. Zara and Lilly turn their considerable sleuthing talents toward unraveling a series of family mysteries…but their quest begins in earnest when they learn that Rosen, who nearly killed Lilly the last time they met, has escaped from custody.
Can Zara and Lilly discover the truth about their new-found — possibly ersatz — relative, while keeping themselves and their loved ones safe from a Nazi’s vengeance?
Laced with verbal photographs of a family’s secrets, and filled with humor, sibling rivalry, and love, Our Lying Kin tells a human, haunting and rollicking story of the ravages of the pandemic and the power of family.
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Sixteen-year-old Fiona inhabits a privileged world of English affluence, though her relationship with her widowed mother is strained. When she discovers an old newspaper clipping of a woman and her daughter – the little girl a mirror image of her own younger self – she becomes convinced she has a true family elsewhere. Four years later, with the help of charming fraudster Patrick, Fiona drops everything to seek out her doppelgänger in Italy.
Fiona arrives in Rome to find Maddy living hand to mouth with her alcoholic mother. Spooked by the appearance of this strange girl wearing her face and stalking her every move, Maddy wants nothing to do with her. Caught in a surreal push-and-pull, the two are both fascinated and repulsed by the oddly familiar other, each coveting a different life. But they aren’t the only ones trying to control their fate, and the two women will soon learn that people aren’t always what they seem – though blood may still prove thicker than water.
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino―follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way―a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge―her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.
Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body―in work, art and love―serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.
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