Hello e-galley readers! Check out some of the exciting e-galleys that were recently added to Edelweiss for your downloading pleasure:
THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA by Stephen Buoro
ISBN 9781635577778 | on sale 4/18/23
Andrew Aziza is a fifteen-year-old boy living in Kontagora in Northern Nigeria. He lives with his secretive mother, Gloria, and spends his days about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, he’s contemplating the larger questions with his teacher Zahrah and his equally brilliant friend Fatima, a Hausa-Fulani girl who clearly has feelings for him. Together they discuss mathematical theorems, Black power, and what Andy has deemed the curse of Africa.
Inevitably, Andy falls hopelessly in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on: Eileen, Father McMahon’s niece. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. The first is that an unfamiliar man there claims to be Andy’s father. The second is that an anti-Christian mob has gathered, headed for the church. In the ensuing havoc and its aftermath, Andy is forced to reckon with his identity and desires and determine how to live on the so-called Cursed Continent.
THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Crackling with energy, this tragicomic novel provides a stunning lens into contemporary African life, the complicity of the West, and the impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.
WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
ISBN 9780374602291 | on sale 3/14/23
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families. Behind the family’s loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country—with fateful consequences.
In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s RANDOM FAMILY and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian’s WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children.
PIÑATA by Leopoldo Gout
ISBN 9781250781178 | on sale 3/14/23
It was supposed to be the perfect summer.
Carmen Sanchez is back in Mexico, supervising the renovation of an ancient abbey. Her daughters Izel and Luna, too young to be left alone in New York, join her in what Carmen hopes is a chance for them to connect with their roots.
Then, an accident at the worksite unearths a stash of rare, centuries-old artifacts. The disaster costs Carmen her job, cutting the family trip short.
But something malevolent and unexplainable follows them home to New York, stalking the Sanchez family and heralding a coming catastrophe. And it may already be too late to escape what’s been awakened…
GONE TONIGHT by Sarah Pekkanen
ISBN 9781250283979 | on sale 8/1/23
Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it’s been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening.
Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother’s past or background. But when Ruth’s desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth’s carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.
No one can know Ruth’s history. There is a reason why Ruth kept them moving every few years, and why she was ready—in a moment’s notice—to be gone in the night.
But danger is closing in. Is it coming from the outside, from Ruth’s past? Is Ruth reaching a breaking point? Or is the danger coming from the darkness that may live in Catherine, herself?
Propulsive, brilliant, layered, and provocative, GONE TONIGHT is a thriller that showcases Sarah Pekkanen at the top of her game.
WHAT HAVE WE DONE by Alex Finlay
ISBN 9781250863720 | on sale 3/7/23
A stay-at-home yoga mom with a past.
A has-been rock star with a habit.
A reality TV showrunner with a crushing gambling debt.
Three disparate lives.
One big secret.
Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, Nico, Arty, and Ben were the best of friends, a bond forged as residents of Savior House, an abusive group home for wayward teens. When the home was shut down—after the disappearance of several residents—the group was disbanded.
Though the trauma from Savior House has never left them, each went on to successful, if troubled, lives. They haven’t seen each other since they were teens, but now are reunited for a single haunting reason: someone is killing them one by one.
It’s a reunion none of them asked for or wanted. But one that may be the only way to save all their lives.
HOUSE OF COTTON by Monica Brashears
ISBN 9781250851918 | on sale 4/4/23
Nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan, Magnolia doesn’t have much to look forward to. She feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, by her predatory landlord, by the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown.
One night while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia’s luck around. He offers her a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home. Magnolia accepts. But despite things looking up, Magnolia’s problems fatten along with her wallet. When Cotton’s requests become increasingly weird, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.
Sharp as a belted knife, this sly social commentary cuts straight to the bone, revealing the aftermath of the American plantation and what it means to be poor, Black, and a woman in the God fearing south. Impossible to put down, Brashears’s HOUSE OF COTTON will keep you mesmerized until the very last page.