As I read this Jersey-Italian family’s story, it brought me back to my childhood. What readers should expect is not a singular romantic story but a series of different kinds of love between people of all ages.
DeFino’s characters come with their own baggage and mistakes within the family drama. It’s brilliant!
"Varina Palladino's Jersey Italian Love Story is fun and funny, wonderfully exuberant, and incredibly wise. These endearing characters-their voices and stories- will be with me for a long time to come. I didn't want to say good-bye." -Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Hieroglyphics
An utterly delightful and surprising family drama-think Moonstruck and My Big Fat Greek Wedding set in New Jersey-about a boisterous, complicated Italian family determined to help their widowed mother find a new boyfriend.
Lively widow Varina Paladino has lived in the same house in Wyldale, New Jersey, her entire life. The town might be…
I’m easily scared and have to choose horror stories carefully. The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro was not only scary with a Big Bad Monster, but the main character also struggles with suicidal ideations.
Castro makes horror feminist and inclusive in a way that is unexpected. The Mexican and Mexican-American legends of La Llorona are already primed as ghost stories, yet Castro twists the myth into something brand new.
A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona in this “utterly terrifying and wholly immersive . . . story about generational trauma, colonization, systemic oppression, and the horror at the heart of motherhood” (Library Journal, starred review).
“Castro is one of the most exciting genre authors on the scene right now, and this might be her most powerful book yet.”—Paste
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become:…
Ruth Emmie Lang's novel about two daughters searching for their mother brought me to a surprising place in the natural world. Zadie and Finn's mother was obsessed with birds. This story came at the exact right time. Like many people during the pandemic, I took up casual backyard bird watching.
Lang's main characters end up meeting people with all kinds of connections to the universe, not only birds. It's quite magical.
Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning.
Zadie's estranged younger sister, Finn, can't see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an "echo" more powerful than anything she's experienced before: a woman…
No one knew volkolaks lived among them. Certainly not Ursula Applegate, a social media volunteer for an animal rights group trying to end the New Jersey bear hunt. Ursula thought protests and social media would be the extent of her animal rights activism. Then she learns her friends are volkolaks, human-bear shapeshifters. Laws are broken, spells are attempted.
The story behind Bear Roots is about the true story of Pedals the Bear. Pedals walked upright and fooled a lot of people, myself included, who first believed it was a person in a bear suit. Pedals’ front limbs were most likely injured by a collision with a car, according to statements in the newspapers. This bear became a common sight in the Denville and Rockaway areas of New Jersey and garnered national news attention. People grew accustomed to the sight of the bipedal bear and were happy to coexist. Pedals was killed during one of the bear hunts. His murderer’s name will not be released by the state.
