One of the great mysteries of the early years of North America’s settlement by Europeans is the lost Roanoke colony. In 1587, 118 people, including children, settled there but later disappeared without a trace. Just a few cryptic clues remained that hinted at their possible fate. What drove them from their settlement? Illness? Native attack? Internal strife?

Essayist and founding editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal Ed Gray dreams up a few possible answers in his first novel, Left in the Wind: The Roanoke Journal of Emme Merrimoth. Gray chooses Emme, an actual Roanoke colonist, as the narrator for his tale. Through her eyes, we experience the new colonists’ distress as they make the difficult crossing from England, their struggle to establish a new home in the wilderness of North Carolina, the dramas and jealousies between families and the disintegration of a community. 

Is Gray correct in his explanation of Roanoke’s demise? It’s impossible to say, but his idea is as good as any. Part historical novel, part detective story, Left in the Wind is filled with fascinating details of colonial settlement life and Native-American culture. It’s a gripping story that readers will have trouble putting down.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When a protagonist spends 90 percent of a book making awful choices, the reader can be in for a slog. Yet despite main character Cassie Sunday’s penchant for self-destructive behavior, Lisa Beazley’s winning Keep Me Posted is pure pleasure to read.

During Christmas at their grandparents’ house in Ohio—and over many glasses of wine—Cassie, who lives in Manhattan, and her sister, Sid, who lives in Singapore, bemoan how out of touch they’ve become. Sid eschews social media, and the time difference makes phone calls nearly impossible. The tipsy sisters pledge to spend a year writing each other good old-fashioned letters.

By the time Cassie returns to New York with her husband Leo and their young son, she already has a letter from Sid. Bored and lonely since quitting her job to be a fulltime mom, Cassie throws herself into the letter-writing project. Soon the sisters are divulging their deepest secrets, including Cassie’s drunken kiss with her ex-boyfriend, who is now a rising-star chef, and Sid’s suspicions that her husband is being unfaithful.

Inspired to preserve the letters, Cassie sets up a private blog and scans their letters in. But a glitch in the blog’s system makes all their letters public, and soon #slownewssisters is trending online. Cassie has to decide whether she should tell Leo and let him read about her bad choices, or hope it blows over.

Despite Cassie’s reckless behavior, she is a character with heart and brains, and the rich back-and-forth between the sisters is poignant. Keep Me Posted is a wonderfully modern epistolary novel, in which the letter-writing tradition collides head-on with the perils of technology.

Readers who devour quirky family dramas like Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Be Frank With Me won’t want to miss this anticipated debut about a dysfunctional New York City family. In The Nest, the four adult Plumb children have been counting on their inheritance: Melody has two daughters to send to college, Jack needs some cash to keep his struggling business afloat, and Beatrice is years overdue with her second novel. But when their fresh-out-of-rehab oldest brother, Leo, loses it all, the siblings must reshape their futures. 

Author Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney worked as a marketing copywriter before turning to fiction. She’s at her best when describing the fluctuating sibling bonds within a large family—the uneasy alliances, the simmering resentments, the unspoken secrets and the fierce love. She also nails the ways the money can affect relationships, in ways large and small. Smart, moving and warm-hearted, The Nest is a debut to savor.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For folks who were there, the New City York of 1980 was the best of times and the worst of times. The city was a cauldron of energy, creativity and wonderful freakishness. It was the city of Basquiat and Keith Haring’s hit-and-run works of art—and even a place where rents were cheap if you lived in Greenwich Village or Alphabet City. AIDS had not yet ravaged the city like a daikaiju from outer space. It was a place where a girl from Ketchum, Idaho, or an orphan from Argentina could come and dream big, make it big and yes, fail big.

Molly Prentiss’ Tuesday Nights in 1980 follows several linked characters during the year in question. There’s Lucy, the innocent girl from Ketchum and her lover, Engales, the ambitious painter from Argentina, who has escaped that country’s encroaching fascism as well as a quasi-incestuous relationship with his sister. James is an art critic noted for incorporating his synesthesia into his reviews. To him art, people and things are jumbles of vibrant sensations and colors. He is drawn to Lucy because she’s as fluorescent yellow as a squash blossom. Engales, who he meets after the artist suffers a disfiguring accident, fascinates him with his blueness. James’ wife, Marge, is red.

Because James knows all these people with varying degrees of intense intimacy, everything in the book will get very, very complicated. How can it not? It was 1980.

The book is such an accomplished and surefooted work that it’s amazing to learn that it’s a debut. Prentiss’ descriptions of New York and its fractious art scene will make those who were there almost nostalgic, and her deep empathy for her characters, messed up as some of them are, is moving. She pulls off the difficult feat of making dialogue sound like conversations overheard in the next room. Tuesday Nights in 1980 is a discerning, passionate and humane work.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

You may not be familiar with the name Manuel Gonzales, but once you’ve had the pleasure of delving into one of his out-of-the-ordinary literary creations, you won’t forget it. A graduate of Columbia University’s creative writing program, Gonzales has previously shared his unique brand of storytelling via publications such as Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and The Believer. His first collection of short stories, The Miniature Wife (2013), received much acclaim, including the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction.

In his debut novel, The Regional Office Is Under Attack!, Gonzales conjures a futuristic world of super-powered female assassins—part of an organization called the Regional Office. Two women are at the heart of the conflict: ardently loyal Sarah and defector Rose. While Sarah (and her curious mechanical arm) looked to the Regional Office as her savior after the disappearance of her mother, Rose sees corruption and betrayal within the organization’s leadership. Filling out the cast are their fellow agents; their recruiter and mentor Henry; and, of course, the secretive individuals behind the scenes pulling all the strings. Backstory on each character and the Regional Office itself is delicately spliced between action-packed scenes, making this a wonderfully choreographed narrative. The moment you think you have a grasp on the truth about the Regional Office, Gonzales tosses in a twist that will have you questioning your understanding all over again. 

The amount of detail Gonzales infuses into this world makes it come alive in an engaging, quirky and delightful way, creating a perfect backdrop to a page-turning plot. Gonzales’ tale has something for every reader: Double agents! Secret romantic trysts! Conspiracy! Fight scenes! Friendships gone awry! At its core, however, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is ultimately a tale of vengeance—one during which you’ll find yourself struggling to choose a side.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Richard Baumbach is technically a Hollywood producer, but at 29, he has yet to actually produce anything noteworthy. So when he gets a mysterious proposal via a lawyer—spend two hours a week for a year with a woman he’s never heard of and get half a million dollars—Richard jumps at the chance.

Elizabeth Santiago, however, is much less sure. A successful attorney with no social life—her co-workers call her La Máquina, or The Machine, for her billable hours—Elizabeth wonders why anyone would pay her to spend time with the handsome, aimless Richard. But she reluctantly agrees. 

The first few meetings are awkwardness incarnate. Richard’s exuberance and Elizabeth’s bookish reserve are like oil and water. To make the time pass, they agree to discuss books (her choice) and movies (his) each week. As they get to know each other, the forced dates become something they both look forward to, but they each have reasons to be hesitant about admitting any attraction. Instead, they team up to discover who has set them up, with a million dollars on the line.

In addition to being a smart, funny rom-com, The Decent Proposal is also a love letter to one of America’s strangest and most singular cities. “To love L.A. is to love a mess,” Donovan writes. “A jumble of sand, concrete, sunsets, and strip malls; a snake’s nest of highways on top of which the full emotional spectrum, from rage to carelessness, may be witnessed inside every single hour of the day.”

Donovan’s debut novel shimmers like a Los Angeles sunset. The characters are unforgettable, the dialogue crackles, and the ending is an absolute killer. The Decent Proposal is a story about taking chances and finding love in the most unlikely ways.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At a crowded outdoor book fair, a mother and daughter are separated. In the I-turned-around-and-she-was-gone of a parent’s nightmares, 8-year-old Carmel vanishes. Did Carmel, whose teacher calls her “dreamy,” try to get lost? Or did the fears of her recently divorced mother, Beth, cause it to happen? These questions tear at mother and daughter as they navigate unfamiliar, foreboding territory. 

In The Girl in the Red Coat, which made the shortlist for the Costa First Novel Award after its publication in the U.K., Welsh writer Kate Hamer seamlessly alternates between the perspectives of mother and daughter, capturing the ongoing effects of a tragedy in stark detail. Struggling to describe her daughter’s hair to police, Beth finally settles on the exact color of a brown paper envelope, believing that if she can just be detailed and precise enough, that will bring Carmel back. Hamer pinpoints the moments that take on a painful poignancy after a loss: Beth walking past Carmel’s school; seeing the red shoes Carmel wanted in a shop window; realizing the first time she went a minute without thinking of her daughter. 

Hamer also thoroughly inhabits the voice of young Carmel, who is at once both childlike and preternaturally endowed. Taken by a man with a fanatical agenda, she is a pawn in a game she doesn’t understand. The author lets the reader linger in uncertainty and frustration as Carmel’s rescue seems further and further away. The tension builds, making the book one you want to finish, but also can’t bear to keep reading. As Beth marks the time—day 1, day 7, day 51, day 100—we hope, worry, fear, trust and doubt with her and Carmel. The Girl in the Red Coat is an engrossing, smart, well-paced read that surprises until the end.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Charlotte’s family is starting over, and she isn’t sure what to make of it. Charlotte and her sister, Callie, have long been considered the weird ones in their Boston neighborhood. They speak in sign language as often as anything, a skill acquired from their mother, Laurel. But now that skill is setting them apart in another way: The Toneybee Institute for Ape Research has hired Laurel to teach sign language to a chimpanzee, Charlie—and the rest of the family is expected to treat him as one of their own. 

The family reacts in different ways, though. Laurel and Charlie easily bond. Callie aims to do the same, but the chimp doesn’t return her affections. He quickly becomes a point of division in Laurel and her husband Charles’ marriage. Charlotte, meanwhile, struggles to understand why her mother is so quick to embrace Charlie.

As Charlotte studies the institute’s past, her feelings grow increasingly conflicted. Seventy years prior to the Freeman family’s arrival, researchers at the Toneybee conducted studies comparing African-American people with apes. Charlotte is determined to reveal the link to her family and unveil the story they may now unwittingly be participating in.

In her debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge addresses race with a knowing, deft hand. And there’s far more at work here, as Charlotte and Callie face their teenage years and wrestle with the line between what their parents want and what they desire for themselves. The result is a story about identity, both self-determined and dictated by outsides sources, and a family’s aim to settle into who they are.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Jung Yun’s debut novel, Shelter, opens with a scene all too familiar in every parent’s life: a child out of bed way too early. We meet main character Kyung Cho, a first-generation Korean American, as he, annoyed and blurry eyed, tries to gratify the demands of his 4-year-old son, Ethan. Through this mundane encounter, the reader gets a sense of Kyung’s unhappy state of mind. The young professor is broke, and things get worse when he learns that his parents have become victims of a violent crime.

With each page, Yun takes us deeper into Kyung’s troubles, caused not only by the criminal acts of strangers but also by his own ineptitude, which he blames on his sadistic and loveless childhood. Gillian, his understanding, supportive, non-Korean wife, and Mae, his traditional, religious and artistic Korean mother, provide a juxtaposition of female influences in Kyung’s life, while his father, the elder Mr. Cho, questions whether Kyung is to blame for his own problems. 

As the crime drama unfolds in the background, Yun expertly explores what it means to be an immigrant in America, the true value of tradition, the parent-child bond, what makes a good marriage and the need for forgiveness. Yun introduces us to a man riddled with anger and self-doubt, leaving the reader to judge whether time can truly mend what’s broken. The story of Shelter is more than just about having a home; it is about finding a refuge in one’s own skin.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

From John Wray’s Lowboy to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, contemporary authors have boldly chronicled the minds, trials and tribulations of characters facing a range of cognitive and neurological challenges. Michelle Adelman’s debut, Piece of Mind, fits neatly into this genre.

Adelman’s protagonist, Lucy, was struck by a car when she was 3, leaving her with a traumatic brain injury "before it was trendy," as Lucy wryly offers in the novel’s blackly comic opening line. There’s a dash of Silver Linings Playbook in this portrait of an entire family confronting these challenges, as well as in the book’s unlikely romance.

Strong coffee, art (many pencil sketches are actually included in the book) and the Central Park Zoo have lent a semblance of structure to Lucy’s life, but she still struggles mightily. As if her physical injury weren’t enough, Lucy and her younger brother, Nate, lost their mother at a young age. This leaves Lucy seeing ghosts and relying on her father, who attempts to nudge his now 27-year-old daughter into the real world. These efforts are sometimes practical, occasionally hapless, but always loving. Which is why it is such a blow when Lucy’s father is felled by a heart attack, forcing Nate to assume a parental role he is not ready for. Strong coffee, art (many pencil sketches are actually included in the book) and the Central Park Zoo have lent a semblance of structure to Lucy’s life, but she still struggles mightily.

Piece of Mind lightens up when Lucy meets Frank at a Manhattan coffee shop. Frank’s got familial and social problems of his own, and as he and Lucy (quite awkwardly) grow closer, they have to figure out if they are the solutions to their respective troubles or, instead, just a new set of very complex problems. Adelman’s spare prose ably captures Lucy’s inner workings, though the book’s flashes of black comedy may make some readers hungry for more to lighten up the more somber proceedings. In the end, a colorful minor character named Enid pushes Lucy to fulfill the promise implicit in the Moliere quote that serves as this often touching novel’s epigraph: “The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”

There may be animals, an imminent flood and a guy named Noah, but Noah’s Wife is not the familiar Genesis account. Imagine not a wind-tossed ark on rough waters but a town where the rains began and never stopped. Never a break in the gray clouds, never a feeling besides damp, no change in the forecast. The town at the center of Noah’s Wife is such a place—a place where the weather is the topic of conversation. The town’s inhabitants, who have stayed and watched their town slowly contract and the waters rise, are embittered, doggedly optimistic or simply resigned. First-time author Lindsay Starck excels at detailing her characters’ emotional and physical responses to this bizarre meteorological situation.

Into this near-ghost town arrive Noah and his wife. He, an energetic pastor with salvation on his mind, brings her, a quieter participant, skeptical but supportive. As the rain continues and the town’s once-lauded zoo floods, the townspeople begrudgingly rally to shelter the remaining animals. It’s the stuff of slapstick comedy: tortoises tucked into car trunks and monkeys buckled into passenger seats. Mauro, the happy-go-lucky Italian general store owner, becomes enamored with the brilliant peacocks he almost runs over. Mrs. McGinn, head of the town council, tries to maintain normalcy as she runs her diner and penguins bed beside the dairy in her cooler. But years of rain have made the people hard, and their rescue effort only adds to the feelings of despair and falls short of reuniting them.

Noah is especially floored by the town’s somber state and, as his eagerness cracks and doubts blossom, his wife finds herself without the man she put all her faith in. Noah, the man who “walked with God,” may have gotten the call, but it is his wife who ends up being the one to answer, to lead.

Starck writes thoughtfully, with a real ear for the rhythm of language and talent for finding surprising moments of humor amidst the dark nights of the soul her characters face. How do they hold onto hope in this rain-drenched place, where they have become experts at noticing different shades of gray? With wisdom and insight, Starck captures all their losing, leaving behind and longing. It takes one last defiant stand, one last tenacious grasp at hope, for this community to become one.