First, I was intrigued by the second-person narrative. I don't remember reading one before. I actually couldn't imagine writing in second person, much less enjoying reading an entire novel. But as soon as I started reading Plum, I realized that it can be done so that the reader is at least as immersed as in first-person. And then there is the story: it haunts me. Read the first two pages and see if it draws you in as it did me.
Winner of ALA's 2026 Alex AwardsGold Medal Winner for the 2025 Foreword Indies in Literary FictionFinalist for the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First FictionLonglisted for the Crook's Corner Book PrizeA Debutiful Most Anticipated & a Best Debut Book of 2025“You wish to never see a plum again in your life… You think: When I am an adult, I will never have a fruit tree. I will never be like this.”For fans of Sarah Rose Etter and Scott McClanahan, Plum is a darkly beautiful, unflinching novel about modern girlhood in the internet age, the daily toll of…
I don't always like novels, that skip around in time and place and POV. But this one drew me in and kept me turning the pages. It's about marriage and family and religions, and a mix of history and fiction. It deals with the messiness of life and relationships without dragging the reader down.
Dina and Julia first meet at a surgical convention and bond over frustrations with their husbands’ demanding schedules. But geography, time, and growing families make maintaining their friendship difficult and their relationship eventually falls apart. One of them is left to wonder why; the other has a secret. But neither of them knows that decisions made by family members decades earlier have set them on a collision course.
Years after their friendship ends, Julia gets word that her daughter has suddenly become seriously ill—and she and Dina must decide whether they can face the history that now unites them and…
My book group chose this book, and I procrastinated. I read a lot, but 500 pages in four days? And historical fiction can go either way with me. Plus, there have been sooo many books lately about WWII. But. Book club. Okay. All it took was the prologue to draw me in, and I read it in two days. It's not about the war after all, it's about Frances Perkins -- why is she not a household name? The most astonishing part: it is so relevant to this moment in history, which didn't even begin until after it was written.
She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it…
New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins.
Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.
When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists,…
Marianne gets the call while attending a conference in San Francisco: laid off, department dissolved. Two days later, she’s back home in the dicey Kansas City neighborhood she moved to after a reversal of fortune two years ago. After all this time rebuilding her life, it’s all collapsed.
The daily grind is just that—a grind. Until it isn’t, until it’s gone and taken health insurance, retirement contributions, and the currency to buy food and shelter, never mind the free coffee at the office, along with it. In the aftermath of her layoff, Marianne tries all the usual routes to re-employment, but a middle-aged woman, regardless of experience, has little job cred in the tech world, especially with an address in the heartland. A contract job at a Chicago startup morphs through two acquisitions in eight weeks. And then she’s mugged in her own neighborhood, which frightens her enough to consider a permanent move away.
An irreverent look at the alien denizens of the tech world, the fraught business of mergers and acquisitions, and the parallel universe of job openings, Still Needs Work is a contemporary story of the working world wrapped around a very human story of one person, her dog, and her community.
