New Edelweiss E-galleys (1/26/22)

Hello e-galley readers! Check out some of the exciting e-galleys that were recently added to Edelweiss for your downloading pleasure:

THE LAST KARANKAWAS by Kimberly Garza
ISBN 9781250819857 | on sale 8/9/22

Welcome to Galveston, Texas. Population 50,241.

Carly Castillo has only ever known Galveston. For as far back as she can remember, her grandmother Magdalena has claimed that they descend from the Karankawas, an extinct Texan tribe, thereby tethering them to the island. But as Carly ages, she begins to imagine a life elsewhere, away from the legacy of her parents’ abandonment. Meanwhile, Jess Rivera, her boyfriend and all-star shortstop turned seaman, treasures the salty, familiar air. He’s gotten chances to leave Galveston for bigger citites with more possibilities. But he didn’t take them then, and he sure as hell won’t now.

Moving through these characters’ lives and those of the individuals who circle them—Mercedes, Jess’s undocumented cousin; Kristin, Magdalena’s daytime nurse; Luz, the wife of Carly’s best friend; Schafer, Jess’s coworker out on the gulf—Kimberly Garza presents a mosaic depiction of everyday survival in Southern Texas. When word spreads of a storm gathering strength offshore, building into Hurricane Ike, they each must make a difficult decision: board up the windows and hunker down, or flee inland and abandon their hard-won homes.

Unflinching, lyrical, and singular, THE LAST KARANKAWAS is a portrait of America rarely witnessed, where browning palm trees and oily waters mark the forefront of ecological change. It is a deeply imagined exploration of familial inheritance, human perseverance, and the histories we assign to ourselves, establishing Kimberly Garza as a brilliant new literary voice.

THE SIZZLE PARADOX by Lily Menon
ISBN 9781250801234 | on sale 6/14/22

Lyric Bishop and Kian Montgomery, both graduate students, are best friends and roommates. When Lyric needs help cracking the Sizzle Paradox for her doctoral thesis on sexual chemistry–it seems the more attractive she finds a guy, the less “sizzle” there is when they actually have sex; but why?–Kian, who never has trouble in the bedroom, offers to tutor her on dating tactics. Lyric, being a self-proclaimed awkward potato, accepts the help she desperately needs.

But once the two progress with their “tutoring sessions,” they find that the solution to the Sizzle Paradox might actually be having sex with each other. Which is a problem, because they’re best friends and absolutely, irrefutably nothing else… Right?

LAST CALL AT THE NIGHTINGALE by Katharine Schellman
ISBN 9781250831828 | on sale 6/7/22

New York, 1924. Vivian Kelly’s days are filled with drudgery, from the tenement lodging she shares with her sister to the dress shop where she sews for hours every day.

But at night, she escapes to The Nightingale, an underground dance hall where illegal liquor flows and the band plays the Charleston with reckless excitement. With a bartender willing to slip her a free glass of champagne and friends who know the owner, Vivian can lose herself in the music. No one asks where she came from or how much money she has. No one bats an eye if she flirts with men or women as long as she can keep up on the dance floor. At The Nightingale, Vivian forgets the dangers of Prohibition-era New York and finds a place that feels like home.

But then she discovers a body behind the club, and those dangers come knocking.

Caught in a police raid at the Nightingale, Vivian discovers that the dead man wasn’t the nameless bootlegger he first appeared. With too many people assuming she knows more about the crime than she does, Vivian finds herself caught between the dangers of New York’s underground and the world of the city’s wealthy and careless, where money can hide any sin and the lives of the poor are considered disposable…including Vivian’s own.

DAUGHTER OF REDWINTER by Ed McDonald
ISBN 9781250811714 | on sale 6/28/22

Those who see the dead soon join them.

Raine can see—and speak—to the dead, a gift that comes with a death sentence. All her life she has hidden, lied, and run to save her skin, and she’s made some spectacularly bad choices along the way.

But it is a rare act of kindness—rescuing an injured woman in the snow—that becomes the most dangerous decision Raine has ever made.

Because the woman is fleeing from Redwinter, the fortress-monastery of the Draoihn, warrior magicians who answer to no king, and who will stop at nothing to reclaim what she’s stolen. A battle, a betrayal, and a horrific revelation force Raine to enter the citadel and live among the Draoihn. She soon finds that that her secret ability could be the key to saving an entire nation.

Though she might have to die to make it happen . . .

THE WAY SPRING ARRIVES AND OTHER STORIES: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators edited and collected by Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang
ISBN 9781250768919 | on sale 3/8/22

In THE WAY SPRING ARRIVES AND OTHER STORIES, you can dine at a restaurant at the end of the universe, cultivate to immortality in the high mountains, watch roses perform Shakespeare, or arrive at the island of the gods on the backs of giant fish to ensure that the world can bloom.

Written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team, these stories have never before been published in English and represent both the richly complicated past and the vivid future of Chinese science fiction and fantasy.

Time travel to a winter’s day on the West Lake, explore the very boundaries of death itself, and meet old gods and new heroes in this stunning new collection.

MA AND ME: A Memoir by Putsata Reang
ISBN 9780374279264 | on sale 5/17/22

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child’s life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put’s adoration and efforts are no match for Ma’s expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it’s just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it’s because she’s not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married—to a woman—it breaks their bond in two.

In her startling memoir, Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, MA AND ME is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty.