Library Love Fest

An Interview with Etaf Rum, Author of A WOMAN IS NO MAN

"Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.”

In Etaf Rum's debut novel, A Woman Is No Man, three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture. Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect. It is a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.

In this week's podcast episode, Etaf discusses her upcoming book, writing about a closed community and the potential pushback she may receive, and what she wants readers to take away from the book. Check out some of the amazing reviews of A Woman Is No Man and be sure to listen to the episode below!

“First-time novelist Rum’s setting...is rare: a Brooklyn Palestinian enclave in which reputation matters above all else….The daughter of Brooklyn Palestinian immigrants, Rum was often told ‘a woman is no man.’ Overcoming her fear of community reprisal, she alchemizes that limiting warning into a celebration of ‘the strength and power of our women.’”
—Booklist

“Etaf Rum’s A Woman is No Man is a shattering, revelatory tale of immigration, womanhood, and the cyclical impact of violence and oppression. An unflinchingly written story of both loss and hope, strewn with enthralling, vibrant characters, Rum has accomplished the extraordinary: a tale that bridges the domestic and global, memory and future, the old world and the new. A spectacular debut.”
—Hala Alyan, author of Salt Houses

A Woman Is No Man will be available on March 5, 2019. You can download an egalley on Edelweiss now.

-Lainey

LLF Staff Suggestions for the February LibraryReads List (and Beyond!)

Hello, librarian friends!

'Tis the holiday season and we're thrilled to bring you good book-tidings and cheer, alongside a hefty dose of flannel. If you're looking for new reads to warm you up as the days grow cold, we're here to help!

To begin, we have an incredible line-up of reading suggestions for the February LibraryReads list (and beyond), including new novels from librarian-favorites Kate Quinn, Tara Conklin, and Elizabeth McCracken, as well as Nickolas Butler, Peter Swanson, and Lissa Evans. We also have some wonderful debuts, including When You Read This by Mary Adkins and American Pop by Snowden Wright.

Keep reading for more details on all of the books we're currently loving. We can't wait for you to dip in and let us know what you think!

Enjoy!

P.S. We've also put together a helpful guide to voting for LibraryReads on Edelweiss, available as a podcast, video, and handout!

We hope you find these resources helpful! Remember: be heard, vote early and often, and if you have questions, email us!

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The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
For fans of: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin and The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
The New York Times bestselling author of The House Girl explores the lives of four siblings in this ambitious and absorbing novel in the vein of Ann Patchett's Commonwealth.
"Despite spanning almost a century, The Last Romantics never feels rushed. Conklin places readers in the center of the Skinner family, moving back and forth in time and allowing waves of emotion to slowly uncurl. Perfectly paced, affecting fiction."  
—Booklist

Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads voting deadline: January 1st

The Huntress by Kate Quinn
For fans of: The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel The Alice Network, comes another fascinating historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America.
"An impressive historical novel sure to harness WWII-fiction fans’ attention.... Laced with Russian folklore allusions and deliciously witty banter, Quinn’s tale refreshingly avoids contrived situations while portraying three touching, unpredictable love stories; the suspenseful quest for justice; and the courage involved in confronting one’s greatest fears."
—Booklist  review

Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads voting deadline: January 1st

Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
For fans of: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan and Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo
A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author of The Giant's House about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley.
"McCracken writes with exuberant precision, ingenious lyricism, satirical humor, and warmhearted mischief and delight.... This compassionate and rambunctious saga about love, grief, prejudice, and the courage to be one’s self chimes with novels by John Irving, Audrey Niffenegger, and Alice Hoffman." 
—Booklist  review

Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads voting deadline: January 1st



American Pop by Snowden Wright
For fans of: News of the World by Paulette Jiles and Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, an epic saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty—the Forsters, founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company—against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history.
"This spectacular novel blends history and lore....This is an American saga of one man’s ambition, the woman who stoked it, and the family whose complex identity it became. Snowden Wright takes us into the heart of the deep south with insight, sophistication, and humor. What a ride!" 
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of Kiss Carlo

Click here to download the egalley from Edelweiss
LibraryReads voting deadline: January 1st

LIBRARY JOURNAL’s 'Best Books of 2018' is Here! Congratulations to Our Authors!

Congratulations to our authors who made Library Journal’s Best Books of 2018 list!

November Road by Lou Berney

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay 

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam

How to Be Famous by Caitlin Moran

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

Too Wilde to Wed by Eloisa James

Diamond Fire by Ilona Andrews

Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

Planetside by Michael Mammay

Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine by Kevin Wilson

The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Famous Father Girl by Jamie Bernstein

Grateful by Diana Butler Bass

A Call for Revolution by the Dalai Lama and Sofia Stril-Rever

Fatal Discord by Michael Massing

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

The Making of a Dream by Laura Wides-Muñoz

Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery

To see the full list, click here. 

-Virginia

Editors Unedited: Editor Carrie Feron in Conversation with Author Sally Thorne

On this very special episode of Editors Unedited, Executive Editor Carrie Feron called author Sally Thorne—from New York to Sally's home in Australia—to discuss her much anticipated second novel, 99 Percent Mine. Sally is the USA Today bestselling author of the smash hit debut novel, The Hating Game—which sold in over 20 countries. Now she’s back with a new unforgettable romantic comedy!

In 99 Percent Mine, we meet Darcy Barrett—who has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend. Despite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to her brother, 99%.

When Darcy and Jamie inherit a tumble-down cottage from their grandmother, they’re left with strict instructions to bring it back to its former glory and sell the property. Darcy plans to be in an aisle seat halfway across the ocean as soon as the renovations start, but before she can cut and run, she finds a familiar face on her porch: house-flipper extraordinaire Tom’s arrived, he’s bearing power tools, and he’s single for the first time in almost a decade. This time around, she’s switching things up. She’s going to make Tom Valeska 99 percent hers.

Be sure to listen to the episode below; wait until the end to hear Sally answer questions submitted by her fans!

Sally also shared a Spotify playlist of songs that inspired her while writing 99 Percent Mine! 

99 Percent Mine will be available on January 29, 2019. Be sure to download an egalley on Edelweiss now!

-Lainey

November Facebook Live Book List

Season's Greetings! If you missed our Facebook Live video today, you can find the archived video on Facebook and Youtube.

Here's your TBR list from this month's episode:

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

• Be sure to listen to the conversation between Jean and her editor on our podcast here.

No Happy Endings by Nora McInerny

41 Reasons I'm Staying In by Hallie Heald

The Good Lie by Tom Rosenstiel

The Night Agent by Matthew Quirk

Dressing Barbie by Carol Spencer

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

The Huntress by Kate Quinn

A Thousand Sisters by Elizabeth Wein

How the Bible Actually Works by Peter Enns

Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson

American Pop by Snowden Wright

• Be sure to listen to Lainey's interview with Snowden on our podcast here.
  
  

Finished Books Available Now:

It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny

The Little Book of Sloth Philosophy by Jennifer McCartney

GuRu by RuPaul

How to Slay the Buffy Way by Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Shining City by Tom Rosenstiel

The Wife by Alafair Burke

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Silver Stars by Michael Grant

All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

Hindsight by Justin Timberlake

Have a wonderful weekend! 

-Lainey

BOOKLIST's 2018 Editors' Choice List Includes Some LLF Favorites!

Exciting news! Our friends at Booklist have compiled their 2018 Editors' Choice list and we are thrilled to share that they've included the following HarperCollins titles:

Visionary Women by Andrea Barnet  
High-Risers by Ben Austen  
The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester  
Fascism by Madeleine Albright  
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver  
Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern  
Don't Skip Out on Me by Willy Vlautin  
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim  
November Road by Lou Berney

The full list will be included in Booklist's January ALA issue, so keep your eyes peeled! Congratulations to all of the authors!

-Chris

 

Editors Unedited: Editor Emily Griffin in Conversation with Author Mary Adkins

On this week's episode of Editors Unedited, Mary Adkins, debut author of When You Read This, stopped by the HarperCollins office for a chat with her editor, Emily Griffin. When You Read This is a comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, a haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss.

Enjoy the episode below:

In the interview, Mary said that she loved to draw horses when she was a kid. We couldn't leave the interview without asking Mary to draw a horse for us!

Be sure to check out When You Read This, out on February 5, 2019. You can also download an egalley on Edelweiss now.

Best,

-Lainey

Chicago Public Library's 2018 Best of the Best Book Selections Include the Following HarperCollins Titles...

Still catching up with all of the incredible books that came out in 2018? We're with you! While end-of-the-year best-of lists are helpful guides to all of the great books you might have missed this past year, there's an intimidating amount of these lists to sift through. So who should you trust with your reading future? The answer, as always, is to trust a librarian! Our friends at the Chicago Public Library have released a brilliant and comprehensive list of their choices for the year's most outstanding titles. Keep reading to find out which HarperCollins titles they've selected.

To begin, we're thrilled that Chicago Public Library has chosen I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara as one of their top 10 books of 2018! Click here to see the full list.

Chicago Public Library also selected 20 additional HarperCollins titles for their 2018 Best of the Best list, which highlights their choices for the top 100 adult titles published in 2018.

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam 

The Big Fella by Jane Leavy

High-Risers by Ben Austen

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester

The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

Temper by Nicky Drayden

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay 

November Road by Lou Berney

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte 

Scarface and the Untouchable by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn  

For the full list of Chicago Public Library's 2018 Best of the Best picks, click here. 

Congratulations to all of the selections!

-Chris

Editors Unedited: Editor Jessica Williams in Conversation with Author Jean Kwok

Jean Kwok is the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation. Her new novel, Searching for Sylvie Lee is a poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women—two sisters and their mother—in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge.

It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother—and then vanishes.

Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn’t rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.

Here are only a couple of the many fabulous reviews that have already arrived for Searching for Sylvie Lee:

“Like all most compelling mysteries, Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee has a powerful emotional drama at its heart. A twisting tale of love, loss, and dark family secrets.”
—Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water

“Searching for Sylvie Lee had me in its grip from the very first page and didn’t set me loose till the last. Apart from a moving portrait of two sisters, so very different in character, it also showed me my own country—The Netherlands—and its people from a perspective in which we Dutch seldom see it. Jean Kwok has the sharp and intelligent eye of the newcomer who has lived here long enough to know perfectly well what she does and doesn’t like about her second country. A wonderful portrait of an immigrant family life and one of the best ‘unputdownable’ suspense novels I’ve read in a long time.”
—Herman Koch, New York Times bestselling author of The Dinner

The LLF team was fortunate enough to meet Jean last week when she came into the New York office—bringing along some delicious chocolate from The Netherlands to share! After meeting Jean, we knew that she had to make a guest appearance on our podcast. Jean was so genuine and heartfelt in her conversation with her Editor, Jessica Williams, on this week's episode of Editors Unedited. Libraries were beacons of hope during Jean's childhood; it was important to have a safe, warm place to go as a young immigrant. This interview is truly beautiful and one that you don't want to miss. Hear the interview below:

 In the interview, Jean mentions her brother, Kwan. Jean was kind enough to share a picture of Kwan and herself as kids. See the picture below:

What an adorable photo! Find out more about the book in Jean's Behind the Book Essay. We can't wait for you to read Searching for Sylvie Lee; you can download an egalley on Edelweiss now.

-Lainey

Matt Gutman on the publication of THE BOYS IN THE CAVE

The Boys in the Cave is the definitive account of the dramatic story that gripped the world: the miracle rescue of twelve boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave miles underground for nearly three weeks—a pulse-pounding page-turner by award-winning ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman. Matt covered the story intensively, going deep inside the caves himself, interviewing dozens of rescuers, experts, and eye-witnesses around the world. This book tells little-known facts about the rescue like how the boys survived by licking condensation off of the cave walls and how four Thai pump workers were marooned and rescued a little over a week before this incident. You don't want to miss this heart-pumping look into the rescue that made the world stop in their tracks and cheer as the boys were finally rescued.

Watch Matt Gutman talk about The Boys in the Cave on ABC News below.

The LLF team had the pleasure of celebrating the book's publication with Matt this week.

Matt with Lisa Sharkey, Senior Vice President and Director of Creative Development, who initiated this project.


Congratulations, Matt! Be sure to pick up a copy of The Boys in the Cave, available now.

-Lainey