New Edelweiss E-galleys (3/21/22)

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

OTHER BIRDS by Sarah Addison Allen
ISBN 9781250019868 | on sale 9/13/22

Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits—a stunning cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.

When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment on Mallow Island, she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a girl on the run, two estranged middle-aged sisters, a lonely chef, a legendary writer, and three ghosts. Each with their own story. Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t written yet.

MEET US BY THE ROARING SEA by Akil Kumarasamy
ISBN 9780374177706 | on sale 8/23/22

In the near future, a young woman finds her mother’s body starfished on the kitchen floor in Queens and sets on a journey through language, archives, artificial intelligence, TV for a way back into herself. Along the way, she translates an old manuscript about a group of female medical students—living through a drought and at the edge of the war—as they create a new way of existence to help the people around them. In the process, the translator’s life and the manuscript begin to become entangled.

Soon, the arrival of a childhood friend, a stranger, and an unusual AI project will force her to question her own moral compass and sense of goodness. How involved are we in the suffering of others? What does real compassion look like? How do you make a better world?

Written in vivid and pulsating prose, alternating between her present life and passages of the translated manuscript, MEET US BY THE ROARING SEA is a remarkable, genre-bending exploration of memory, technology, friendship, love, consciousness, and the costs of caring for others in an age where we are so often lost in the swamps of our own minds.

JASMINE ZUMIDEH NEEDS A WIN by Susan Azim Boyer
ISBN 9781250833686 | on sale 11/1/22

It’s 1979, and Jasmine Zumideh is ready to get the heck out of her stale, Southern California suburb and into her dream school, NYU, where she’ll major in journalism and cover New York City’s exploding music scene.

There’s just one teeny problem: Due to a deadline snafu, she maaaaaaybe said she was Senior Class President-Elect on her application—before the election takes place. But honestly, she’s running against Gerald Thomas, a rigid rule-follower whose platform includes reinstating a dress code—there’s no way she can lose. And she better not, or NYU will rescind her application.

But then, an international incident turns the election upside down: a group of students in Iran, fed up with the U.S.’s interference in Iranian politics, takes the American Embassy in Tehran—and the people within it—hostage. And, as the Iran Hostage Crisis dominates the nightly news, her opponent seizes the opportunity to stir up anti-Iranian sentiment at school and turn the electorate against her—with the help of her outspoken brother, who never stops talking about it.

Now, as the white lie she told snowballs into an avalanche, Jasmine is stuck between claiming her heritage or hiding it, standing by her outspoken brother or turning her back on him, winning the election or abandoning her dreams for good.

Told with biting insight and fierce humor, JASMINE ZUMIDEH NEEDS A WIN is a fresh, unforgettable story of one Iranian-American young woman’s experience navigating her identity, a budding romance, friendship, family, and her future, all set against life-changing historical events with present-day relevance.

HESTER by Laurie Lico Albanese
ISBN 9781250278555 | on sale 10/4/22

Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Edinburgh for a fresh start in the New World. But only days after they’ve arrived in Salem, Edward abruptly joins a departing ship as a medic––leaving Isobel penniless and alone in a strange country, forced to make her way by any means possible.

When she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two are instantly drawn to each other: he is a man haunted by his ancestors, who sent innocent women to the gallows––while she is an unusually gifted needleworker, troubled by her own strange talents. As the weeks pass and Edward’s safe return grows increasingly unlikely, Nathaniel and Isobel grow closer and closer. Together, they are a muse and a dark storyteller; the enchanter and the enchanted. But which is which?

In this sensuous and hypnotizing tale, a young immigrant woman grapples with our country’s complicated past, and learns that America’s ideas of freedom and liberty often fall short of their promise. Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, HESTER is a timeless tale of art, ambition, and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men who try to shut it down.

THE KINGDOMS OF SAVANNAH by George Dawes Green
ISBN 9781250767448 | on sale 7/19/22

When matriarch Morgana Musgrove calls upon her prodigal son Ransom to help her with a case, the defunct M. Musgrove & Family Detective Agency is back in business, albeit reluctantly. Tensions rise between the Musgroves as Morgana’s granddaughter, Jaq, becomes entangled in the case. Whispers of a mysterious lost “Kingdom”—a community of descendants of the African-American soldiers who fought for King George in the Revolutionary War, and afterwards formed a secret community, refusing to return to slavery—float in the sultry Savannah night. The family of investigators creeps closer and closer to exposing the city’s seedy underbelly, and a depraved history that a powerful few are determined to keep hidden, no matter the cost…

THE KINDGOMS OF SAVANNAH is a return to Green’s roots as a sophisticated, atmospheric suspense novelist, whose deeply human characters draw us into their world from the very first page.

A MIRROR MENDED by Alix E. Harrow
ISBN 9781250766649 | on sale 6/14/22

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can’t handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White’s Evil Queen has found out how her story ends from what might be Zinnia’s own book of fairy tales and she’s desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her and she needs to do it before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen’s poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?