February 2022

The praise just keeps coming in for What Jonah Knew by Barbara Graham!

What Jonah Knew (on sale: 7/5/22) is a psychological thriller about a seven-year-old boy who inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing twenty-two-year-old musician. Beyond that, this is a story about the fierce love that bonds mothers and sons across lifetimes. Barbara Graham has given us a work of gripping suspense, with a supernatural twist, that will mesmerize fans of Chloe Benjamin and Lisa Jewell!

Check out some of the praise below!

"Profoundly entertaining and entertainingly profound. What Jonah Knew is a celebration of the vital and powerful ties that bind us—to our children, to ourselves, and to each other—across space and time."
—Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

“In this captivating novel, Barbara Graham takes us straight to the heart of devastating human emotion, love, loss, and the mysteries of life and death. What Jonah Knew is a metaphysical journey wrapped up in the breathtaking pages of a psychological thriller.”
—Wendy Walker, bestselling author of All is Not Forgotten

“A spellbinding literary thriller packed with psychological suspense and profound questions about motherhood, trauma, and how death illuminates life.”
—Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins

“Barbara Graham is a literary alchemist. What Jonah Knew not only grabs you from the first page, it makes the mystical believable and the human predicament shine with wit, wisdom, and love.”
—Tara Brach, meditation teacher and bestselling author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion

"Both a riveting mystery and a deep dive into the impact of grief, What Jonah Knew offers us not only hope but a fascinating meditation on the nature of love, identity, and reality itself.”
—JoAnne Tompkins, author of the novel What Comes After

“Barbara Graham’s shimmering novel brings new meaning to the concept of inherited family trauma and the very divide between life and death.”
—Mark Epstein MD, author of The Trauma of Everyday Life and the forthcoming The Zen of Therapy

“Barbara Graham writes with clarity, courage, and heart. What Jonah Knew shines light on complicated issues and brings the reader to a new understanding of what it means to be fully human.”
—Molly Giles, author of Rough Translations and Wife with Knife, and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

"I love What Jonah Knew. As a Buddhist teacher and a reincarnation skeptic I was delighted to find that having read the first page, I read it straight through cheering the book's wit and complexity, and wondering, after all, who knows?”
—Sylvia Boorstein, meditation teacher and author of It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

“Barbara Graham is a rare talent who blends comic brilliance with psychological and spiritual insight. What Jonah Knew plumbs the depths of the human heart while ingeniously tackling life’s hardest questions.”
—Mark Matousek, bestselling author of Sex Death Enlightenment

Phew! So much praise, so little time. All we can say is the reviews about What Jonah Knew are saying what we've known all along—this book is excellent, and we can't wait for you all to read it!

You can download your copy on Edelweiss or NetGalley!  Happy reading!

—The LLF Team

Hello, librarians!

You voted, they counted, and the winners have finally been announced!

This month, we are thrilled to share that we have THREE authors who made the Hall of Fame list: Kate Quinn's The Diamond Eye, Tessa Bailey's Hook, Line, and Sinker, and Peter Swanson's Nine Lives were all selected.

Want to hear how our authors reacted to the big news? Listen to our latest episode of The Library Love Fest Podcast to hear their responses:

Find out more about the titles selected here.

-Lainey

This week's podcast episode brings up a lot of topics for conversation: from women's empowerment during their 40-50's to what strong women can do for the next generation. Rachel Kahan, Executive Editor at William Morrow, interviewed Kirsten Miller to discuss Kirsten's upcoming book The Change. Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick—The Change is a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp feminist revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town. 

Listen to the episode below:

They also mentioned Julie K. Brown's Perversion of Justice.

The Change is on sale May 3, 2022.

LibraryReads votes are due April 1st!

Request an egalley on Edelweiss+
Request an egalley on NetGalley

-Lainey

Hello, librarians!

The time has come to vote for your favorite April reads! Find our staff reading suggestions for the April LibraryReads List here. Reminder: votes for the April LibraryReads List are due March 1st.

Happy reading!

-The LLF Team (Virginia, Lainey, and Essie)

Ever since I read Jennifer Haigh’s first novel, Mrs. Kimble, a story of three women who marry the same man—an opportunist named  Ken Kimble—I’ve been hooked on her writing. Jennifer Haigh’s storytelling draws you in immediately. Her characters are so perfectly  drawn in all their complexities—so intriguing and compelling—that you almost have no choice but to go on the journey with them and  see what unfolds.

This New York Times bestselling author went on to write six more bestselling books. Her sixth, Mercy Street (on sale NOW!), is a tense and compassionate story about the disparate lives that intersect around a woman’s clinic in Boston. And Boston is as much a character in this book as the main characters in the story—starting with Claudia, a long-time abortion counselor whose clinic is under pressure from protesters. The characters swirling around her—including Claudia's pot dealer and a dangerous anti-abortion activist—all come to life with complexity and nuance. 

Mercy Street is a novel for right now, a story of the polarized American present. Jennifer Haigh, “an expert natural storyteller with a keen sense of her characters’ humanity” (New York Times), has written a groundbreaking novel, a fearless examination of one of the most divisive issues of our time.

Here’s just a sampling of the love for this book:

“Abortion, guns, vigilantism, drug dealing, white supremacy, bitter misogyny and online fetishism all figure in the tableau Haigh expertly details…She’s largely not interested in destruction here: These people have seen enough of it already. She’s interested in what makes them human.”
—Janet Maslin, New York Times

Entertainment Weekly includes in its 10 Must Read Books to Heat up February roundup

“Mercy Street was conceived and written before this year's slow-motion dismantling of Roe v. Wade, making it all the more urgent.”
—EW.com

“Mercy Street is a savvy, keen-eyed, witty, wise, and altogether luminous novel."
—Richard Ford

"Jennifer Haigh is the greatest novelist of our generation."
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

"Mercy Street argues, both in form and content, that compassion is a powerful counterpoint to the conflict-driven stories that dominate our news cycles…"
—San Francisco Chronicle

“I was riveted and transported, and want to hand this book to everyone I know."
—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers

"Mercy Street is a bold, important, beautifully written and incredibly timely novel."
—Vendela Vida, author of We Run the Tides

Mercy Street will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page. I envy the reader who gets to read this for the first time.

—Virginia Stanley

Don't forget to check out NPR's "Here & Now" interview with Jennifer Haigh!