November 2018

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

On this episode of Editors Unedited, William Morrow Executive Editor Rachel Kahan places an international call to her author Balli Kaur Jaswal. Since Rachel is based in New York and Balli in Singapore, they had to time a phone call that would work well with their twelve-hour time difference. Balli starts off the interview talking to Rachel about her last novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. In this book, we get to know Nikki, the daughter of Indian immigrants, who impulsively takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community center in the beating heart of London’s close-knit Punjabi community. Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up to take the course are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories.

In the interview, Balli speaks about how the Punjabi community received the book, her experience growing up attending a westernized high school, and her upcoming book, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters.

In The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, we meet the British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia. They were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives—and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago—a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.

Powerful, emotionally evocative, and wonderfully atmospheric, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a charming and thoughtful story that illuminates the bonds of family, sisterhood, and heritage that tether us despite our differences. Funny and heartbreaking, it is a reminder of the truly important things we must treasure in our lives.

Check out Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, available now, and look out for The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, coming out on April 30, 2019. Listen to the podcast episode below.

Be sure to listen until the end for a few of Balli's ideas for upcoming books! We are so excited to see what story she will bring to life next.

-Lainey

Patricia Harman's Once a Midwife follows Patience Murphy. Patience has a young family with her new husband Daniel and a thriving practice as a midwife in her beloved Appalachian town. But Patience and Daniel's happy existence is thrown into chaos when the U.S. enters World War II. Daniel, a staunch pacifist after fighting in World War I, refuses to serve as a soldier again. When he's called in to fight, Daniel dodges the draft and ends up imprisoned during a brutal and difficult winter. Alone and struggling, Patience must support their family and fight for her husband's release, all the while continuing her midwifery practice in one of the most tumultuous times in U.S. history.

Today, we welcome a guest post by Patricia Harman!

***

When we first moved to our farm near rural Spencer, West Virginia in the 1970's, we were a bunch of rag-tag hippies bent on saving the world from war, racism, sexism, capitalism, the depletion of natural resources, and just about every other evil we could think of. Our goal was nothing short of revolutionary. We wanted to find a way to live simply on the earth as a non-violent community and to do whatever we could to help a region known for its poverty.

I wasn’t a midwife or an author then, but I was almost a children’s librarian. Off and on for years in Spencer I was the story lady on Wednesday afternoons. Partly, I just enjoyed reading aloud. Partly, I love kids. Partly, I wanted to encourage children to care about books the way I do.

It was books that inspired our movement: Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, George Orwell’s 1984, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America.

It was books that showed us how to survive: Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing, Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe, The Owner-Built Home by Ken Kern, The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening by Rodale Press. 

It was books that taught us to care about others; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

And it was books, on winter evenings, reading aloud to our kids by kerosene light, that gave us comfort in troubled times: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.

And where did all these books come from? In Spencer, there was no bookstore on Main Street and no online bookseller, either—because there was no “on-line.”

It was the local library. 

And where did we meet with other hippie homesteaders when we had our potlucks to discuss the natural food co-op that we’d started? 

It was in the basement of the local library. 

And where did I teach the first natural childbirth classes in the county?

You guessed it—sitting in a circle of folding chairs at the local library.

Community center, repository of knowledge, fountain of inspiration, home of children’s programs…in every city and small town, we need such sanctuaries. As a former “story lady,” I remind everyone to celebrate and protect your library and remember to thank a librarian today!  

***

Thanks, Patricia! Be sure to check out Once a Midwife, out today!

-Lainey

“Year of Wonder is an absolute treat—the most enlightening way to be guided through the year.”
—Eddie Redmayne

Year of Wonder introduces readers to one piece of music each day of the year, artfully selected from across genres, time periods, and composers. Clemency Burton-Hill offers short introductions to contextualize each piece, and makes the music come alive in modern and playful ways. From Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Puccini to George Gershwin, Clara Schumann, Philip Glass, Duke Ellington, and many remarkable yet often overlooked voices, Burton-Hill takes us on a dazzling journey through our most treasured musical landscape.

Classical music has a reputation for being stuffy, boring, and largely inaccessible, but Burton-Hill is here to change that. She is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and musician with a deep love of the art form, wanting everyone to feel welcome at the classical party. As she says, “The only requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open mind.”

Here's a wonderful video of author Clemency Burton-Hill discussing the inspiration behind the book.

You can also find music listed in the book on this Spotify playlist:

Be sure to check out Year of Wonder, available now!

-Lainey

"I can't help that my music shows who I am in this moment, what I'm drawn to, what I'm wondering about. I don't want to help it. What you hear in the words, what you feel in those songs—that's what I was feeling when I wrote them. I want you to see me, just like I want to see you."
—Justin Timberlake

In Hindsight, Justin Timberlake has moved from triple threat to quadruple threat, creating a characteristically dynamic experience, one that combines an intimate, remarkable collection of anecdotes, reflections, and observations on his life and work. The book includes hundreds of candid images from his personal archives that range from his early years to the present day, in locations around the world, both on and off the stage.

Justin discusses many aspects of his childhood, including his very early love of music and the inspiration behind many of his hit songs and albums. He also reflects on who he is, examining what makes him tick, speaking candidly about fatherhood, family, close relationships, struggles, and his search to find an inner calm and strength.

Everyone is excited to read about Justin's creative process. People Magazine covered his book jacket reveal, linking to his Instagram post with over one million likes! To see spreads from this gorgeous book, check out the Edelweiss page and watch a video Justin posted on Instagram below.

Justin was also interviewed last night by Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. Check out the video below:

Congrats, Justin! Be sure to check out Hindsight by Justin Timberlake, available now!

-Lainey

Sarah McCoy's Marilla of Green Gables is a bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables…before Anne. A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert, and the choices that will open her life to the possibility of heartbreak—and unimaginable greatness. Based on the beloved characters from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series.

On Monday, Sarah McCoy visited the HarperCollins office in New York. If you missed our conversation on Facebook Live, you can watch the video here. In our live video, we reference our podcast interview with Sarah that we recorded during ALA Annual in New Orleans. In this interview, we talk to Sarah about her time spent on Prince Edward Island, researching and getting to know L.M. Montgomery's family. This is a must-listen interview that delves deep into her writing process for Marilla of Green Gables. Be sure to take a listen below!

We ended a perfect Green Gables-filled day with a hug! Be sure to check out Marilla of Green Gables, available now!

-Lainey