Mohrbooks Highlights Fiction Frankfurt 2024

When her grandmother dies, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a mystery girl who turns out to be her aunt, Carol. Carol was one of six local North Carolina Black girls who had gone missing in the 1960s. Nobody has talked about her or what happened to her for several decades. Now, with her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt and the sinister silence surrounding her.

This is familiar territory for Sydney. Several years ago, she worked on the crime beat as a journalist in the case of a missing girl. Her obsession eventually led to a psychotic breakdown. Now, in the grip of fertility treatments and a marriage that's beginning to crumble, Sydney's relentless pursuit might lead her down the same path of destruction.

As she delves deeper into Carol's fate, her troubled past resurfaces, clawing its way to the surface with a vengeance. The web of secrets and lies entangling her family leaves Sydney questioning everything -- her fixation on the missing girls, her future as a mom, and everyone she's come to trust.

Delving into family, community, secrets, and motherhood, WE DON'T TALK ABOUT CAROL is a gripping and deeply emotional story about overcoming the rotten roots of your family tree and what we'll do for those we love.

Kristen L. Berry is a writer and communications executive. She graduated from the University of Michigan and has provided PR and communications expertise to leading consumer brands for nearly twenty years. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner. WE DON'T TALK ABOUT CAROL is her debut novel.

The story "Why Don't Pilgrims Return?" paints a future where 'perfect' gene selection is possible, and those who do not belong in the category of perfection are pushed out of bounds.

In "Spectrum", a grandmother scientist struggles to reunite with her family in a distant universe.

"If We Cannot Move at the Speed of Light" tells the story of hate toward unreasonable boundaries and longing for a family beyond the vast universe.

Each story in this collection introduces a unique world and a new set of characters and conflicts. They are emphatic and scientifically brilliant.

Kim Cho-yeop has an M.A. in biochemistry from Pohang University. She burst onto the Korean literary scene and won the grand prize at the Korean Science Fiction Awards in 2017. IF WE CANNOT MOVE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT has sold over 200,000 copies in Korea alone. Her first novel, GREENHOUSE AT THE END OF THE EARTH, has become one of the top-selling novels of 2021 in South Korea. Film rights have been sold.

Thirteen-year-old Ida was born with a hole in her heart. At school, she spends most of her time alone, reading and memorizing geography. Everyone treats her like she's broken, but she secretly goes swimming in a private spot at Needle Lake.

Her mother, who never left tiny town of Mineral, Washington, works at the general store. One day late Fall, her cousin Elna walks in after a long absence. Elna is everything Ida is not: mature, self-assured, charismatic, and daring. For Elna, Ida like isn't the fragile kid. She makes her cousin feel alive. But as Elna's ideas of fun become darker, a man drowns in the lake before their eyes.

The two cousins share a secret beyond the scope of anything they have dealt with before.

This novel is for fans of character- and relationship-driven suspense, like Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.

Justine Champine was diagnosed with autism as an adult. Her short fiction has been published widely. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a founding staff member of No Tokens Journal. She lives in New York City.

This is the story of a Black church in Dominion, Mississippi, its community, and a family.

The novel is told through the perspectives of two women who love the pastor's son, Wonderboy. It shows their blindness towards the danger and darkness that men can bring to the world.

DOMINION examines how communities unwittingly protect the predators in their midst and the legacies of evil men's doing.

The Winfrey family stands at the top of the local society. Reverend Sabre Winfrey heads Seven Seals Baptist Church, and owns a house in the White neighborhood. His wife Priscilla, daughter of one of Dominion's finest families, is one of the most beautiful first ladies in the Delta. They have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy - no one sings prettier, runs faster, or turns more heads. When, after an encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy is confronted with unimaginable questions, his response shocks the community.

Women who love their husbands need to recognize their part in enabling everyday violence and casual sin.

Addie Kitchens was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and lived in New Orleans. She studied in the Florida State Writing Program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, Oxford American's "Best of the South" issue, and other publications. Her work on the history of Blues features prominently in Mississippi Folklife. She was the inaugural recipient of the FSG Writer's Fellowship. Dominion is her first novel.

Leo and Viv's Friday night starts out like any other: A bottle of wine, a takeaway from their favorite Chinese restaurant, and a movie.

When Leo wakes up, he finds himself in an unfamiliar bed, hotel room, and city. Down in the hotel lobby, the front desk confirms Leo's fears: He's woken up on the other side of the world, in Australia.

Viv wakes up to an empty bed and a ringing phone. First, she believes her husband has suffered a mental breakdown, but then the US consulate in Australia confirms that Leo is in Australia.

Before Leo can take the next plane home, he wakes up in yet another bed, hotel, and country.

Leo is not alone. Someone with access to groundbreaking technology and an axe to grind is beaming a group of individuals around the globe - and hunting them down, one by one.

As Leo struggles to stay alive, Viv must understand what's happening. As she digs deeper into Leo's past, she realizes that her mild-mannered husband has kept dark secrets from her that explain why he's being hunted. She must ask herself if her husband is worth saving.

Rowan Dale is the pseudonym for the bestselling writer of two critically acclaimed psychological thrillers, one of which has been optioned by a major American producer. With TRANSFERENCE, she starts moving in an exciting new direction in her writing.

East Berlin, 1964: 22-year-old Friederike 'Rike' Beck is a student at the University of Potsdam and the mother of a seven-year-old girl from an affair with Klaus, her first husband, a violent and dangerous man.

When she meets Alexander Onyemo, a Nigerian engineering student, the two could not be more different. Against all social conventions, Rike and Alex start dating, and their love affair leads to the birth of a girl.

They decide to get married and, once they finish their studies, to move to Enugu, Nigeria, where Alex will hold a prestigious position with the country's most important mining company.

It is traumatic at first when they arrive in Africa, but after a few months, Rike becomes part of the local White Western elite: businessmen with their wives, diplomats, and spies. Rike realizes that the country is on the verge of civil war: the Biafra tragedy has just started.

This great epic love story ranges from East Germany in the 1950s to Nigeria in the 1970s.

Francesco Ferracin was born in Venice in 1973. His literary debut was Una vasca di troppo (Fanucci, 2008). In 2009 he co-wrote the film Handel and staged the melodrama L'incubo della Farfalla, among many other publications. He lives between Italy and Berlin.

LA LEONESSA is based on the diaries of Christel Onyewenjo-Schroeder.

Alexander "Sander" Cooke is the most celebrated "boy player" in the Chamberlain's Men, William Shakespeare's theatre company. Indeed, Sander's androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. And yet, now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

Joan Buckler, Sander's best friend, also has a dream. Though unschooled, she is whip-smart and fascinated by the snippets of natural philosophy to which she's been exposed. And while she senses that Sander's admiration for her is more than mere friendship, Joan's true passion is knowledge, something that is nearly impossible for her to attain. As a woman, she has no place in the intellectual salons and cultural community of the day; only in disguise can she learn to her heart's content.

Joan's covert intellectual endeavors, coupled with Sander's theatrical triumphs, attract the attention of none other than Francis Bacon: natural philosopher and trusted adviser to Queen Elizabeth. It is through their connection with Baconone of the greatest minds of their timethat their lives will be changed forever as they become embroiled in an intricate game of political intrigue that threatens their very survival.

Brimming with heart, curiosity, and rich historical detail, Boy offers an intimate glimpse of the moral complexities of a singular artistic era, and the roles we all choose to play on the world's stage.

Nicole (N.D.) Galland's novels span the spectrum from historical (The Fool's Tale, Revenge of the Rose, Crossed, Godiva) to Shakespearean (I, Iago) to contemporary rom-com (Stepdog, On The Same Page) to speculative fiction (New York Times bestselling The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. co-written with Neal Stephenson). She has a MFA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, and loves teaching workshops on world creation. She has also worked as a stage director, dramaturg, and X-wing fighter pilot.

Chiara becomes a mother and moves with her daughter to a neighbourhood for functional families who follow rules she had always rejected. Used to living like an eternal emotional teenager, eager for excitement and strong feelings, she can no longer stand this calm: soon she is unable to work, love or believe in the future.

When she runs into a friend from high school, she comes up with an idea: to contact all the people she once admired and ask them how they got on with their life.

Chiara tracks down the most popular girl in school, the rebellious school captain and the good guy. With each encounter, her investigation becomes more surprising, as past and present intertwine, until she is confronted with a terrible truth that she has been avoiding for too long.

This is Chiara Gamberale's most touching novel, a hymn to emotions and to the mystery of adulthood.

Chiara Gamberale was born in 1977 and lives in Rome. She published the bestsellers Per dieci minuti (Feltrinelli 2013), L'isola dell'abbandono (Feltrinelli, 2019), Il grembo paterno (2021). Her novels have been translated in many languages. She writes for "La Stampa", "Vanity Fair", "Donna Moderna", "IO Donna" and "Grazia".

Beatrice Barnard doesn't believe in magic. She doesn't believe the predictions of the celebrity psychic at her husband's holiday party who claims to sense three things about her: that her husband is cheating, that she will experience seven miracles in the next year, and that after she experiences said miracles, she will die.

The predictions seem woo-woo and mean. But it turns out, her husband actually is cheating on her.

Bea, now needing solitude and reflection, flees to Skerry Island where she encounters her identical twin sister, Cordelia, whom Beatrice has long believed dead in a car accident.

Their mother Astrid, who has successfully kept Beatrice and Cordelia away from each other all these years, reveals to her daughters that they are powerful witches.

The twins, furious at their mother's lie, decide to stick together despite an old curse.

As the seven predicted miracles occur, Beatrice fears that her death is imminent and will separate her away from Reno, the woman she's falling in love with.

Bea must learn everything about her powers to save herself. But then her niece, Minna, goes missing, and her life is less important. Together, the two sisters fight to save Minna, even if Bea's life is at stake.

Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of over two dozen novels. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with her wife.

Korero's people are refugees from Aoteoroa who have endured generational hardship. Now, at the margin of the world, they've found shelter on an island so remote and impoverished that no one will trouble them. They live in an equal society, one without violence, but as resources dwindle, they must seek out new pastures and confront the outside world.

Their counterpoint are the Tu'itonga of Tonga. Here, the king of Tonga struggles to find balance between his warring people.

He introduces them to poetry, navigation, and birding to shield them from the horrors of war, but he can only protect them for so long.

Adam Johnson is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Orphan Master's Son" and the National Book Award winner "Fortune Smiles." He has won a Whiting Award and Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy in Berlin. His stories have appeared widely and won many prizes. He was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

Jane Crowe is an ordinary peasant girl who never dreamed she would work for the infamous Lord of the Greenwood. But when she's forced out of her home, she has no choice but to turn to Robin Hood for help and he makes her an irresistible offer: He needs a pair of eyes in the King's Houses. So, quiet, unassuming Jane, who has spent her whole life going unnoticed, will be the perfect spy.

At first, Jane's work for Robin seems straightforward. She whispers to him about the nobles at King's Houses and all their secrets, including the new Sheriff of Nottingham, who would like nothing more than to see Robin Hood's head on a spike. But the more Jane is drawn into Robin's world, the more she's drawn to Robin himself, a man as charismatic as he is cunning, capable of plucking at her heart as quickly as he notches an arrow.

As Robin's tricks grow increasingly dangerous and shockingly violent, Jane starts to suspect that her hero cares more about his legacy than helping the common people and that, despite his declarations of affection, he sees her as just another object to be stolen.

When Robin's schemes implicate Jane in a brutal murder, she must decide: Is she the prize to be won, a pawn to be used and discarded, or an equal player in the game between nobles and thieves?

Amy S. Kaufman has a Ph.D. in medieval literature and writes about medieval history, myths, and legends. She currently resides in Vancouver, Canada. A scholar of medieval studies, she draws from her expertise to craft a powerful novel that honors the original ballads while being fresh.

Paige has always led a picture-perfect life, which is now documented on her social media. The world she has curated exudes an old-fashioned, wholesome lifestyle. Her page is littered with breakfasts lakeside with her daughter, sunny afternoons in the family van, and romantic picnics with her husband. So when she posts an ominous, brooding image and the next day is discovered drowned, everyone wonders - suicide or foul play?

Jane Masters, a journalist and one of Paige's childhood best friends, left her behind to pursue a bigger life in Sydney. When Paige's death makes national news, she reluctantly travels home. Struggling with the morality of covering her friend's death, Jane will confront the town she left behind and the dark undercurrents that she's always known to run underneath.

Vanessa McCausland has been a news, medical, entertainment, and arts journalist for over twenty years and has published seven commercial novels. She's happy to finally be creating fictional characters. She is an alumna of Sydney University, where she studied Literature. She lives in Sydney with her husband and daughter.

June McFlynn is a biologist and forensic entomologist living in Sicily. Her mother is an elderly woman, her father is a former general of the US army, no longer in sight. He has given her the funds to open a high-tech laboratory for scientific investigations in an inland Sicilian village.

June is an independent woman, dedicated to her work, living in a small community while defying its conventions. It's almost Summer: the heat is oppressive, and private investigator Emanuel Zagati, a friend since they were teenagers, calls June about a complicated case.

The police has found the body of Liuba, a woman who disappeared two weeks earlier with her eight-year-old daughter Olimpia, who is still missing. Suicide is the first hypothesis, and then the police move on to investigating the woman's husband. But, the most important and desperate question for everybody is: what happened to the little girl?

June's talent for forensic analysis, her intuition, and stubbornness will be crucial in the different phases of the investigation until a surprising conclusion. The case reopens an old wound for her, a painful and carefully hidden episode from her recent past. By finding Olivia she can finally start to come to terms with it.

L'EREMO DEI FOLLI is June McFlynn's first investigation. It's a fast-paced story set in small-town Sicily with colorful characters, featuring a couple that shares a chemistry and finds itself entangled in a complicated relationship (Emanuel, the PM, has a girlfriend, but he and June argue, quarrel, make up, call and text and open their hearts to each other, and are "friends with benefits" from the start). June is a strong female lead with a troubled soul.

Agnese Messina is a biologist specializing in forensic entomology. She lives in Catania and this is her first novel.

The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room.

From an early age, she and her best friend -a poet-turned-marketer named Adam- have turned their noses up at other peoples' riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised by the prestige of her fancy education and the successes of her immigrant parents.

Adam jokes that she could marry rich. However, our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of arranged marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester.

What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a "socialist" trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County.

Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator's increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles.

As doubts begin to creep in about her project, it seems possible that the eligible prospect she's been looking for has been under her nose the entire time.

This is a modern dating tale like no other, a gorgeous high-wire satire that explodes off the page with verve and originality, a riveting inversion of a classic romantic comedy.

Mariam Rahmani is a writer and translator. Her first book-length translation, of the contemporary Iranian cult hit novel In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker. Her awards include an American Council for Learned Societies fellowship and a US Fulbright grant. She holds a PhD from UCLA and an MFA from Columbia, as well as degrees from Princeton and Oxford. She currently serves on the faculty of Bennington College.

Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married: Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern woman who works for an organization in India that helps street children. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction.

He is the least favorite son, and his parents are never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. So, he seeks refuge in his daydreams.

Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage that neither wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.

Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister, whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.

When a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death, one in a long history of women of color, paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism?

Complicated, fearless, and provocative, this is perfect for readers of books like Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half or Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife.

Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at seven. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story "Kavitha and Mustafa" was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015. She is the author of the short story collection, An Unrestored Woman, and the novel, Girls Burn Brighter (Flatiron; Fleet/Little, Brown: UK; Neri Pozza: Italy), was published in 2018 to wonderful critical praise. Named a "Best Book of the Year" by The Washington Post and NPR, it was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She lives in San Francisco.

Liz Dawson is the perfect con artist: she weaves through a crowd with the ease of a tropical breeze, moving seamlessly through elite circles, sparking instant connections, and making every new acquaintance feel like an intimate friend. She's clever, smooth, and confident.

Isabelle Beresford is Liz' perfect mark: strikingly beautiful, obscenely wealthy, and the new owner of Casa Esmerelda, a fabulous villa on the Mexican coast.

When Isabelle offers Liz a job handling the installation of a piece of art in her vacant home, Liz can't resist the chance to finally shed the grip of her addiction to the conning game. But when Liz, with her lush dark hair and intense green eyes, is mistaken for Isabelle, Liz can't help effortlessly slip into the socialite's identity. The transition is so easy that it almost feels like fate.

But who is Isabelle Beresford, and why does she seem to have abandoned this stunning life of hers? As Liz insinuates herself deeper into the dazzling and deceptive world of the Punta Mita resort community, she draws closer to the dangers surrounding the real Isabelle. Dangers that may have already ensnared Liz, too.

This might not be the con of her life, but the con that ends it.

Krysten Ritter is an actress, director, and author of the internationally bestselling novel BONFIRE, which received a PW starred review and which Gillian Flynn called "a beautiful, haunting debut." She's best known for starring in Marvel's JESSICA JONES, and as Jane Margolis in BREAKING BAD. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Murder either bonds you or breaks you. Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She's seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing WITH someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel's got real experience with it.

No one's heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper's sweet sixteen party because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one will ever find him. Mel loses little sleep over it. Toby had been terrorizing them.

What she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn't been seen in more than six years.

Tasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can't resist the call of a good chase or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder).

When Mel finds Chloe armed and vigilant, living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realizes that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. What keeps Chloe going for years is that she's kept Mel safe by running. The truth must come out as they run for their lives again.

Because when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They'll do anything to get it back.

Twisty and razor-sharp, this is a heart-pounding thriller teeming with secrets, betrayals, and a star-crossed romance for the ages.

Tess Sharpe was born in a mountain cabin to a punk-rocker mother and grew up in rural Northern California. She lives deep in the backwoods with a pack of dogs and a growing colony of formerly feral cats. She is the author of Barbed Wire Heart and several critically acclaimed YA novels, including the wildly successful The Girls I've Been and Six Times We Almost Kissed. She is also the co-editor of Toil & Trouble, a feminist anthology about witches. Her short fiction has been featured in All Out, an anthology edited by Saundra Mitchell.

On the eve of their college graduation, best friends Javier Báez and Marisol Campos swore never to date someone the other doesn't approve of.

Now, ten years later, Javi has a problem: Mari, the woman he's secretly pined for since sophomore year, is planning to marry, and Javi doesn't even get the chance to vet this Pedro Pascal knockoff.

Mari, a successful entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, is no longer seeking Javi's dating advice or waiting for him to declare his love for her. Instead, she's made a different pact with herself. To succeed, she'll need to build a future with someone else.

Javi, with his life and theater career finally on track, is ready to confess his feelings.

Except Mari's changed the script and moved on without him. He has eight weeks to convince her this marriage is a flop. If Javi has to ruffle some feathers to help Mari avert a disaster, he's up for the challenge. After all, isn't that what best friends are for?

Mia Sosa is a USA Today bestselling author of romantic comedies and contemporary romances celebrating our multicultural world. She has received praise from The Washington Post, Bustle, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Popsugar, Buzzfeed, Oprah Daily, and many more. A New York City native, she now lives in Maryland with her college sweetheart, their two book-obsessed daughters, a gentle Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and one adorable rescue cat that rules them all.

It's 2011 and Irish thirty-something Esther is living the best life, according to her Facebook posts. She lives in London, works in finance and is married to easy-going Johnny. What's not to like?

There's only one problem: it's all an illusion. The job in high finance involves inputting code in a dank basement with brown walls and listening to her colleague, Francesa, drone on about her children. Her relationship with Johnny wanes, and life in London isn't as exciting as she makes out. Even her stand-up comedy act is falling flat.

The only thing keeping her going is Canadian comedian Ted Levy and the fan site where his adoring superfans parse his every move. On paper, he shouldn't draw such adoration: He's quite short, and his comedy routine doesn't crackle. But, to Esther and thousands like her, he's just perfect. For the Tedettes, his occasional appearances with models an actresses, is a canvas to project all their hopes and fears on. They can peer at his trainers, gawp at his stick-thin girlfriends, and pry into his private life to their hearts' content. For them, fandom offers connection, and the hope that they aren't alone in the world. Except, Esther is mad enough to take the plunge and make her dreams a reality.

When a sudden tragedy strikes, she is on the first plane to Toronto, Ted Levy in her crosshairs. All she has to do is leave her bewildered husband behind, invent an entirely new backstory, move in with his sister, and act like a lunatic to make it happen. Simple. But Esther is about to find out that the gap between dreams and realities is more of a chasm and that, despite the mess she's left in her wake, there are still people who love her and are looking out for her. IRL.

This novel is a thrill ride that gives us a ringside view of the unique appeal of fandom and obsession. It peels off the layers of madness and adoration and reveals its all-too-human side. Deeply painful, incredibly insightful, funny and surprisingly kind.

Tanya Sweeney is one of Ireland's most celebrated journalists. She writes for the Irish Independent and is beloved by her readers for her unique style of storytelling. Originally from Dublin, she lives in Kildare, Ireland with her husband and daughter. Tanya has also a Master's in screenwriting.

Franca left the Netherlands behind to start her new life in England with Andrew, whose parents lived in South Kensington but had a flat their son could 'borrow' nearby.

Andrew is an old-fashioned British gentleman who encourages Franca not to work, but to instead focus on her writing. He suggests a dinner party with his colleagues to celebrate their big upcoming launch. A dinner party that Franca is expected to plan, shop, cook, and clean for. A dinner party during a heatwave, when the fridge breaks, alcohol replaces water, and an unexpected guest joins their ranks. A dinner party where everything she once was and everything she now is comes together, and she feels like she might implode.

Setting the story up as a dual narrative (the main thread of which is set over one afternoon leading up to the dinner party, and the second set five months down the line, reflecting on that one evening and its explosive finish), Viola van de Sandt expertly weaves the past and present, playing with memory and using the mystery of the unfolding dinner party as a clever device to pull the reader through.

Viola van de Sandt has degrees in journalism, comparative literature and English literature from King's College, London. A draft of a previous novel was longlisted in the 2019 Mslexia novel competition. She lives in The Netherlands.

The narrator is seemingly living the dream: A doting husband, two precocious children, a fulfilling career, and all the trappings of a quiet, cushy, bourgeois life. But, when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into the crushing depths of heartbreak for the first time and must face a world that still can't quite wrap its head around polyamorous relationships.

At once the story of a warmhearted but anxiety-ridden middle-aged man's journey through rejection, MIDDLE SPOON is also a daring reimagination of what relationships, marriage, and family life could look like.

Varela audaciously probes at the corners of society in desperate need of change -from taboos around intimacy to the shortcomings of Oscar season, gluten-free food, and pop culture- revealing the internal, interpersonal, and institutional forces that shape us.

Equal parts tear-jerking and laugh-out-loud hilarious, MIDDLE SPOON is a book for anyone who has longed, nursed a broken heart, or grappled with love at its messiest.

Alejandro Varela (he/him) is a writer based in New York. His debut novel, The Town of Babylon (Astra House, 2022), was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in The Point Magazine, Georgia Review, Boston Review, Harper's, and The Offing, among other outlets. Varela is an editor-at-large of Apogee Journal. He has a master's degree in public heal

Thomas R. Weaver is a UK-based serial tech entrepreneur. He sold his first start-up to the world's largest food delivery giant for $29M and is now working on an AI startup with funding from Silicon Valley's top accelerator, Y Combinator.