Mohrbooks LBF 2024 Fiction Highlights

It's 1999 in New York City, where 20-something Nikki Rose is a rising star at fashion magazine StyleList. But as the only Black editor on staff, Nikki's never had it easy.

Determined to find a place for young Black women in the magazine world, Nikki hustles her way into a job as Editor-in-Chief at Sugar, a floundering hip-hop music and lifestyle publication with untapped potential, and finds herself in an entirely new world of wealth, decadence, and debauchery.

Soon, Nikki must deal with a whole new set of responsibilities and challenges as she fights to save Sugar, including facing off with its vindictive former leader, winning over her skeptical staff, learning to navigate the urban music industry while staving off its influential bad boys and power players and perhaps the most difficult, evading the Alonzo Griffin: her very married, very powerful ex-boyfriend, former boss, publishing powerhouse, and well-known womanizer, who is on a mission to take Nikki (and Sugar) down.

As Nikki struggles to make her way in the media and music industries during one of the most dynamic eras in pop culture history, she needs to game the system to win. But what happens when winning means sacrificing everything you hold dear?

Amy DuBois Barnett garnered national acclaim for her roles as the editor-in-chief of Ebony, Teen People (where she made history as the first Black woman to run a major mainstream magazine in the country), and Honey Magazine, and as deputy editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. An award-winning media executive, author, and television commentator, Barnett has held senior leadership roles at Paramount, Hearst, Disney, and Time Inc., and has also successfully grown several independently owned media brands.

Barnett is the author of the NAACP Image Award-nominated non-fiction book, Get Yours: How to Have Everything You Ever Dreamed of and More (Doubleday/Broadway Books). Her short fiction won an award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and has appeared in several journals and anthologies. Barnett has a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her seventeen-year-old music producer son, Max.

Translation rights: Park & Fine

Ilse Erlund is a translator who lives in a remote house along the coast of Greenland. Isolated in her world by the sea, and restless, she convinces her publisher to pay for a trip to the country whose language she translates but has never visited - France. Her mission: to translate the verses of Geoffrey Labaye, an elderly poet known as "the last living troubadour of Provence."

Upon arrival in the medieval hilltop village of Beau Rivière, Ilse falls under the spell of the Provençal way of life - and the charming French poet. She becomes captive to the air, the sun, the vibrant spring colors, and the dulcet sounds of the Provençal dialect. And soon enough, Ilse is captive to the poet, too, as she and Labaye develop a daily rhythm, about words and much else. Their warm camaraderie is disturbed, however, when the poet's son Frey shows up. Though he has a fiancée back in Paris, Frey turns his attention on Ilse, and suddenly she is forced to learn another language, one her translation skills have not prepared her to decode. With whom and where does her future lie?

With an eye and ear attuned to the sensibilities of French life, Elizabeth Birkelund has created a love story about a woman forced to choose between the security of her quiet northern home and possibly the life of her dreams.

Elizabeth Birkelund is the author of two previous novels, The Runaway Wife and The Dress- maker. She started her career in the editorial department at European Travel and Life magazine, then turned to freelance writing as a monthly personal finance columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine. She has written for numerous national publications, including Glamour, Self, Working Woman, and Victoria.

Translation rights: Inkwell Management

THIS USED TO BE US introduces a once young and crazy-in-love couple, that after twenty-two years together, are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, Danielle and Alex can now barely stand the sound of each other's voice. They had many wonderful years together raising their two sons, until their resentment hit the boiling point ... how did this happen? They decide to have an amicable split and co-parent as a team. The distance of the divorce provides Dani and Alex a chance to get to know their autonomous selves again. Dani's hard word as a writer pays off and she finds major success at work as a showrunner on her own TV project, and Alex starts dating a much younger woman.

But somehow they can't stay away from each other - for the first time in years they remember what it was they used to love about one another. And a family crisis suddenly draws them back into each other's orbit, which leads to a dramatic conclusion that will undoubtedly have you grappling for tissues.

Renée Carlino is a screenwriter and the bestselling author of SWEET THING, NOWHERE BUT HERE, AFTER THE RAIN, BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS, SWEAR ON THIS LIFE, and WISH YOU WERE HERE, which was optioned for film with Julia Stiles directing. Her books have been featured in national publications, including Cosmopolitan Magazine, InStyle Magazine, USA TODAY, Huffington Post, Latina magazine, Publisher's Weekly, Redbook. Renee is also well-connected in Hollywood and her books have a cinematic quality that makes them "honey for the bees" for BookTok fans who aim to bring the characters, settings, and mood to life with their videos. Her profile has been climbing - Carlino currently has 2.9 million views on the hashtag #reneecarliino; 158,000 views on #reneecarlinobooks; 4.4 million views on #beforewewerestrangers; 1.5 million views on #swearonthislife.

Translation rights: Dial Press/PRH

For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true - particularly since the PI is investigating the most shocking crime to hit Bloomington, Indiana, in decades.

A local woman has vanished, and the last time anyone saw her, she was in the backseat of a police car driven by a man impersonating an officer.

Marshall Miller's internship puts him at the center of the action, a position he relishes until a terrifying moment that turns public praise for his sharp observations and uncanny memory into accusations of lying and imperiling the case. His detective mentor withdraws, friends and family worry and whisper, and Marshall alone understands that the darkness visiting his town this summer goes far beyond a single crime.

Now his task is to explain it - and himself.

LOST MAN'S LANE is a coming-of-age tale of terror that proves why its author has been hailed as "a master" by Stephen King and one who consistently offers "eerie, gripping storytelling" by Dean Koontz.

Scott Carson is the pen name of Michael Koryta, a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted into major motion pictures, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former private investigator and reporter, his writing has been praised by Stephen King, Michael Connelly, and Dean Koontz, among many others. Raised in Bloomington, Indiana, he now lives in Indiana and Maine.

Translation rights: Inkwell Management

Kembral Thorne is spending a few hours away from her newborn, and she's determined to enjoy herself at this party no matter what. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She is a Hound, after all, and she can't help picking up the scent of trouble.

She's not the only one. Her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is on the prowl. They quickly identify what's causing the mayhem: a mysterious grandfather clock that sends them down an Echo every time it chimes. In each strange new layer of reality, time resets and a sinister figure appears to perform a blood-soaked ritual.

As Kem and Rika fall into increasingly macabre versions of their city, they'll need to rely on their wits - and each other - to unravel the secret of the clock and save their home.

THE LAST HOUR BETWEEN WORLDS is packed with clever banter, high stakes, and dark magic. With a central rivals-to-lovers sapphic romance, Caruso crafts an exciting new world and accompanying magic system that will appeal to fans of fun, propulsive adventure fantasy with a cerebral twist like Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library and V.E. Schwab's A Darker Shade of Magic.

Melissa Caruso was born on the summer solstice and went to school in an old mansion with a secret door, but despite this auspicious beginning has yet to develop any known superpowers. Melissa has spent her whole life creating imaginary worlds and, in addition to writing, is also an avid LARPer and tabletop gamer. She graduated with honors in creative writing from Brown University and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Melissa's first novel, The Tethered Mage, was shortlisted for a Gemmell Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut.

Translation rights: Orbit/Hachette Book Group

Alex Walker has never understood her sister, and after surviving their unstable childhood, Maddie moved away trying to make something of herself, while Alex stayed behind.

When their mother unexpectedly dies, instead of being the perfect older sister Alex expects, Maddie runs off to the Hamptons.

When Maddie misses their sacred birthday tradition, Alex knows something is wrong. Alex taps into her sister's adventurous spirit and follows her footsteps to the Hamptons, where she meets the Blackwell family the last people to have seen Maddie, but the more she learns about her sister's life with the Blackwells, the more danger Alex finds herself in, and where is Maddie?

Stephanie DeCarolis is the USA Today best-selling author of THE GUILTY HUSBAND and DEADLY LITTLE LIES (both by HQ Digital). A graduate of Binghamton University and St. John's University School of Law. Another thriller from Stephanie DeCarolis is scheduled for July 2025.

Translation rights: Ballantine Books/PRH

It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna's new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything - the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury row house in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.

But when Bree comes downstairs on their final morning, Ty is nowhere to be found and there's a stranger dead in the foyer - the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with: Janelle Beckett.

Soon, both the police and an army of Internet sleuths are asking questions Bree doesn't know how to answer. Desperate to find Ty and to keep her secrets buried, Bree realizes there's only one person she can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past.

Fierce, smart, and thrilling to the end, Missing White Woman not only explores "Missing White Woman" syndrome and traveling while Black but deftly inverts the hallmarks of the domestic suspense genre to ask: How well can we truly know the people we love? And what happens to these stories when seen through the eyes of a Black woman?

Kellye Garrett is the author of Like a Sister an Edgar nominee and Anthony award winner for Best Novel and a Lefty Award winner for Best Mystery - as well as Hollywood Homicide, which won Agatha, Anthony, Lefty, and Independent Publisher "IPPY" awards for Best First Novel and was named one of BookBub's Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, and Hollywood Ending, which was nominated for both Anthony and Lefty awards. Prior to writing novels, Garrett spent eight years working in Hollywood, including a stint writing for Cold Case. She is a New Jersey native, a cofounder of Crime Writers of Color, and a former board member of Sisters in Crime.

Translation rights: Little, Brown US (Hachette Book Group)

One fateful summer, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, six lives intersect in the most unexpected ways.

Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the "crazy cat lady" label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group that takes care of the neighborhood's stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray black cat is named Cat.

Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless. Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega?

When Cat suddenly falls ill, these six strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for.

This feel-good book full of kindness, warmth, humor, and a cast full of quirky characters is perfect for fans of Emma Straub, Shelby van Pelt, and Clare Pooley.

Tanya Guerrero is Filipino and Spanish by birth but has been fortunate enough to call three countries home: the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. Currently, she lives in a shipping container home in the suburbs of Manila with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of rescued cats and dogs. She has volunteered for animal welfare organizations since 2008, focusing on Trap/Neuter/Return and Rescue/Foster/Adopt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers have published three of her middle-grade books, How to Make Friends with the Sea (2020), All You Knead is Love (2021), and Adrift (2022), which have been nominated for awards, selected by the Junior Library Guild, and awarded the Gourmand Award for Best Food Fiction.

Translation rights: Dystel & Goderich

Jules Clement is back in Blue Deer, working as an archaeologist and private investigator. He's a mostly happy man: he's a new father, and he and his wife Caroline are building their dream house on an idyllic patch of river bottomland.

But everything that can go wrong will, in terms of money, love, and murder.

The horrible neighbors enlist Jules to spy on each other. The county hires him to find out if a road runs over some misplaced bodies in a long-abandoned potter's field. A former priest with a side hustle in extortion ends up very dead. A crew of Russians in fast cars is running amok through the Montana landscape. All this as an old nemesis returns, pulling Jules back to confront what he's been avoiding his entire life: the death of his father.

Published alongside newly reissued editions of the entire series, The River View is further proof that "you haven't been west in any meaningful sense until you've been to Blue Deer" (The New York Times).

JAMIE HARRISON has lived in Montana for more than thirty years. She is the author of the Jules Clement novels as well as the novels The Center of Everything and The Widow Nash, a Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award winner and a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

Translation rights:: Hill Nadell

Kenna Heron is best known in her village for being a little wildsome say "half feral"but she'll need every ounce of that ferocity to survive captivity in the cruel Fae court.

Trapped as a servant in the faeries' underground kingdom of Mistei, Kenna must help her new mistress undertake six deadly trials, one for each branch of magic: Fire, Earth, Light, Void, Illusion, and Blood. If she succeeds, her mistress will gain immortality and become the heir to Earth House. If she doesn't, the punishment is death for both mistress and servant.

With no ally but a sentient dagger of mysterious origins, Kenna must face monsters, magic, and grueling physical tests. But worse dangers wait underground, and soon Kenna gets caught up in a secret rebellion against the inventively sadistic faerie king.

When her feelings for the rebellion's leader turn passionate, Kenna must decide if she's willing to risk her life for a better world and a chance at happiness. Surviving the trials and overthrowing a tyrant king will take cunning, courage, and an iron will. but even that may not be enough.

Sarah Hawley is the author of A Witch's Guide to Fake-Dating a Demon and A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch. She has an MA in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats.

Translation rights: Berkley Books, PRH

Grace is broke, living in a tiny apartment in Washington DC, telling friends and family back in Ireland that she's having the time of her life.

Then she discovers that she can donate her eggs in exchange for money, a lifeline that she grasps without thought for the future. But this small action takes on huge proportions in the years that follow, plunging her headlong into the front lines of reproduction.

As her twenties take shape and people come and go in her life, Grace flits between Washington DC and small-town Ireland, wondering where she fits in and whether that one small act means that she is now a mother.

Sharply observed, funny, and deeply modern, The Egg looks at our contradictory and complex attitudes to reproduction: from something we desperately keep at bay to the only thing we want in the space of a decade, from those who are child-free by choice, to those who want nothing more than to be mothers.

The novel asks searching questions about who can and cannot have children and the ethics of reproduction in our divided, failing world.

Witty, heartfelt and with its finger firmly on the pulse of modern life, The Egg is a deeply original debut from a vivid new voice in Irish writing.

Dearbhaile Houston was born in Dublin and grew up in Co. Galway. Her short fiction has appeared in Banshee, The Dublin Review, The Irish Times and Tolka. She has a PhD. in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin, where she currently teaches.

Translation rights: Marianne Gunn O'Connor

We begin our journey on the Sunset Strip, following the woes of rock'n'roll drummer Rikki Thunder and his band, Whyte Python, as they take off for an epic tour across Eastern Europe.

It's 1986, and metal rules the world.

Drummer Rikki Thunder thinks he has it all - he's playing in a garage band in West Hollywood with his best buds, and he just met the girl of his dreams. But strange events follow this dream woman, and soon Rikki finds himself stumbling upward into Whyte Python, the hottest band on the Sunset Strip.

Now, Rikki is on tour across America: playing arenas, making money, and unknowingly participating in a CIA experiment - run by his own girlfriend, undercover CIA Officer Amanda Price.

In this satirical work, metal legend Rikki Thunder recounts his humble beginnings, recruitment into the CIA, and his band's little-known mission to use metal music to foment regime change in the Eastern Bloc.

Along the way, Rikki is pulled deeper into his mission on Whyte Python's tour, growing closer to his conflicted handler, Amanda, and navigating the building danger that lurks around every corner...

The Whyte Python World Tour is a satire of two indomitable genres: the rock biography and the spy adventure, exploring the unconventional families that misfits form out of necessity, and the superpowers they unlock when they combine forces.

Travis Kennedy is the grand prize winner of Screencraft's 2021 Cinematic Book Contest for SHARKS IN THE VALLEY, to be published as WELCOME TO REDEMPTION (William Morrow, January 2025) and adapted for television by Netflix and Universal. His work has been recognized in the Best American Mystery Stories anthology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). He has been featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and multiple editions of the Best New England Crime Stories anthology, among other publications. He lives in Scarborough, Maine, with his wife and their two children.

Translation rights: YRPG

The founder of tech's next big startup, with a valuation in the hundreds of billions, has been found shot dead in his office. But the real mystery is that he saw his death coming.

Because just a few days before being killed, he'd added a 'dead money' clause to his will, freezing his billions of assets -- and control of the company -- until his murderer goes to trial.

Mackenzie isn't a cop, or a private investigator. She's a lawyer, working for the venture capitalist who's bet his fortune on this company's future. She finds herself riding a shotgun on the murder investigation. It seems to all that she's an amateur in way over her head. But--that's exactly what she wants us to believe.

And finally, BOOM, just when we think it's all over -- when we are satisfied with the twists and turns, ready to coast in for the ending -- the author hits us with the truth about her, and the REAL reveals.

Jakob Kerr is a lawyer and communications executive who's been immersed in the tech industry for fifteen years. He was one of the first fifty employees at Airbnb and spent over a decade shepherding the company from a tiny startup to a global phenomenon. Today he is an executive at a startup, where he oversees communications.

Translation rights: Ballantine Books, PRH

When May "Mother May I" Iverson's mansion burns down with her newlywed husband inside, friends, neighbors, media, and the Iversons' fans and enemies alike begin speculating and investigating faster than detectives.

May is a social media sensation, glamorous yet relatable, but the key to her enduring fame is her daughters, who are featured in videos from their births through adorable childhoods, difficult adolescences, and terrible teens.

But the girls are all grown up now, and their lingering anger and resentment from childhoods stolen by the camera have started to spill over into public view.

April is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; June and July are influencers themselves, possibly threatening May's dominance; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and March...well, March has somehow completely disappeared.

Could it be one of the girls who murdered May's less-than-charming new groom? Or could online sweetheart Mother May I have killed the man she'd just recently married and then burned down her dream home to cover it up? Or could it be one of us, the fawning yet fickle mob of media consumers?

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark And Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature; and Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore. Most recently, they contributed to the 2023 Printz-winning anthology The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King.

Translation rights: Dystel & Goderich

Diego is the duende, the whimsical spirit protector of an old house named Tebarek Allah in Tangiers, that the narrator buys on the spur of the moment. It becomes the festive refuge of extravagant expats, collectors, decrepit ladies, and weary adventurers.

Before he turned into a spirit the man's name was Don Diego Mullor Heredia. He was an artist with a pen. His story is interwoven with the stories of those who have passed through the house: the beautiful and tragic young people of the beat generation; the poet friend who buys eighty-six pairs of yellow babouches to make them gifts and then abandons them; Mohammed, the deaf-mute gardener with the gift of gratitude.

Tebarek Allah is a magical home, where plants and stones come to life to bring back our roots in history, the spirits, and nature. It becomes the gateway to Tangier, a mythical city between Europe and Africa, East and West, a land without a master, a refuge for poets and smugglers.

Melancholic and ironic, Arabesco takes us to a distant, archaic, and mysterious world, full of ancestral cultures and modern contradictions.

Umberto Pasti, journalist, writer and garden designer, divides his time between Milan and Morocco. He is the author of Giardini e no (Bompiani, 2010), Animali e no (Bompiani 2026), Perduto in Paradiso (Bompiani, 2018) and Un giardino atlantico (Bompiani, 2019), among others.

Translation rights: TILA

Everybody's got good and bad in them. In the end, it just depends which side wins out.

Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Tommy, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always dreamed of being.

But that's proving more difficult than she thought, and Arlene is desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things - and get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.

As the summer gives way to a chilly, lonesome fall, she takes a part-time job bagging evidence at the local police department, where she finds herself reading over old cold cases. One in particular fascinates her: the mysterious death of three young brothers murdered on Deck River, followed by the suicide of the prime suspect.

She becomes obsessed with the case, and with the help of the police department's receptionist and a family friend of the suspect, she sets out to discover the truth. She can't help but feel that if she solves the case, she'll find her footing in her young marriage and maybe find what she's been looking for all along.

Lo Patrick is a former lawyer and current novelist living in the suburbs of Atlanta. The Floating Girls is her debut.

Translation rights: Hodgman

Ammalie Stehno has just lost crucial pieces of her life's purpose: her husband, her job, and, now that her son has departed for college, her parenting role. She's also mystified to find herself in middle-age. How exactly had that happened?

The idea of becoming irrelevant, invisible, of letting her life vaguely slip away... Well, the terror of that has her driving through Nebraska with a fork in her hair. What she does have is this: Three keys. Keys to empty homes she plans on breaking into.

From Chicago to Colorado to Arizona to New Zealand, she embarks upon an adventure-filled journey as she seeks to find a life truly her own.

And that middle-aged business? As someone breaking the law, she finds there's a real benefit to being invisible, which she uses to her advantage as necessary... until she becomes the striking, bold, and very much manifested self she wants to be.

Laura Pritchett's novels have received awards such as the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado Book Awards, and multiple starred reviews. She's also the author of two nonfiction books. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, O Magazine, The Sun, Salon, Lit Hub, The Millions, and Publisher's Weekly, and many other publications. Her novel Stars Go Blue has been optioned for a limited TV series. Pritchett developed and directed the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, one of the few programs in the nation to focus on cutting-edge environmental writing. Related site at https://www.laurapritchett.com/.

Translation rights: Ballantine Books

A black hole consumes the State of Israel, ushering in a time of peril and miracles.

Similar anomalies begin to appear in major cities around the world. As the anomalies begin to spread, the world wonders: will the holes swallow the Jews, or they will swallow the earth?

Against a backdrop of antisemitic paranoia, restrictions on Jewish life, and spasms of violence, Ethan and Ella, Jewish citizens of a nameless American city, meet and fall in love.

Ella, a photojournalist, documents the changes in daily life, particularly among the city's Jewish residents. Some Jews, feeling inexplicably drawn to the anomalies, go underground to an abandoned subway system that seems to connect the entire world. Others leave for the south, forming militias and stockpiling weapons. But most, like Ethan, Ella and her young son Michael, stay.

But then, shortly after Passover, thousands of commercial planes are sucked from the sky. Air travel stops. Borders close. Refugees pour into the capital. Eventually, all Jews in the city are forced to relocate to the Pale, a traditionally Jewish neighborhood sandwiched between a park and a river.

There, under the watchful eye of border guards, drones, and robotic dogs, the city's Jews form a fragile new society. Ethan, Ella, and Michael must now find a way to protect their new blended family.

Eventually, they choose to go underground, hoping to board a train that might take them someplace safe.

Benjamin Resnick serves as the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center in New York. His fiction has appeared in The Portland Review, Clare Magazine, and the online journal Hirschworth, and he has been a finalist for the Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction and the Iowa Review Award for Short Fiction. Resnick's nonfiction and academic writing has appeared in Modern Judaism, the Jewish Daily Forward, Tablet Magazine, and several other publications.

Translation rights: Deborah Harris Literary Agency