Read with Jenna 2023

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need tracks the aftermath of a long estrangement between a stepmother and daughter. Leah is a web editor and young mother who's sought an urban life and clean break from her rural childhood. But with her stepmother Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left behind.What Leah discovers is astonishing: Jean has filled the house with giant sculptures she's welded from scraps of the area's industrial history. There's also a young man now living in the house who's played an unknown role in Jean's last years and in her art.With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeroes in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.Passionate and resonant, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, and what can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self.Endorsements"astonishing and singular" — Rumaan Alam

On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university—and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems.Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake—and, perhaps, their futures, together.The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter, by Malka Older.

“Mothers never die. Children love to resurrect us in their stories.”Folktales and spirits animate this lively and unforgettable coming-of-age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother’s illness, their father's infidelity, and the truth of their family's past.Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father’s violence and their mother’s worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home.But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know—and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake.Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking, what happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s.

'All of you are cursed, you hear me? An ugly death for the ones with whom you fall in love'For generations, the Montrose women have lived alone with their secrets, their delicate peace depending on the unspoken bond that underpins their family life — voodoo and hoodoo magic, and a decades-old curse that will kill anyone they fall for.When seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, this careful balance is thrown into disarray. The other women have been keeping the curse from Nickie, and revealing it means that they must reckon with their own choices and mistakes.As new truths emerge, the Montrose women are set on a collision course that echoes back to New Orleans' French Quarter, where a crumbling book of spells may hold the answers that all of them have been looking for...Rich in its sense of character and place, Black Candle Women is a haunting and magical debut from a talented new storyteller.

Carmen and Grace have been inseparable since they were little girls, more like sisters than cousins, survivors of a childhood marked by neglect and addiction, and a system that never valued them—for too long all they had was each other. That is until Doña Durka swept into their lives and changed everything, taking Grace into her home, providing stability and support, and playing an outsized role in Carmen’s upbringing too.Durka is more than a beneficent force in their Bronx neighborhood though. She’s also the leader of an underground drug empire, a larger-than-life matriarch who understands the vital importance of taking what power she can in a world too often ruled by violent men. So, when Durka dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Carmen and Grace’s lives are thrown into chaos. Grace has been primed to take over and has grand plans to expand the business. While Carmen is ready to move on—from the shadow of Durka and her high expectations, and most of all, from always looking over her shoulder in fear. She’s also harboring a secret: she’s pregnant and starting to show, and desperate to build a new life before the baby arrives.But how can Carmen leave the only family she’s ever known, this tight sisterhood of women known as the D.O.D, a group of lost girls turned skilled professionals under Durka’s guiding hand, all tightly bonded in their spirituality and merciless support for one another—especially now, when outside threats are circling, and Grace’s plans are speeding recklessly forward.As tough and tender as its main characters, Carmen and Grace will grab readers from the first page with its raw beauty, depth of feeling, and heart-pounding plot. A moving meditation on the choices of women and the legacy of violence, it’s a devastatingly wise and intimate story about the bonds of female friendship, ambition, and found family.An emotionally riveting coming-of-age drama, the story of two cousins lured into the underground drug trade at a young age, and the inextricable ties that bind them, as one woman seeks power and the other seeks a way out — the debut of a vibrant and stunningly original new voice in fiction.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith’s lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children’s lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up—through the changing world of which we are all a part.A remarkable poetry collection.Endorsements"inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom" — Monica Youn.Clint Smith is a #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award–winning author.

In the far north of Canada sits Camp Zero, an American building project hiding many secrets.Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant who is determined to flee his wealthy family’s dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the surface of the camp. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who is leading them?In a near-future northern settlement, a handful of climate change survivors find their fates intertwined in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power. An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.In "The White Cat's Divorce," an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In "Skinder's Veil," a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers—or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable—these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world.

When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she's last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.Back in Florida, Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann's childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.Running parallel to this is Minh's story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House's attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life—and beyond.Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories.EndorsementsA TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick"A riveting mother-daughter tale." — Elle"A celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read." — Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles

There is a girl, and her name is Sam. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother, Courtney, struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind her daughter that her life should be different. Sam doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. Sam doesn’t care about jeans or rules. She just loves to climb—trees, fences, walls, the side of a building. When she’s climbing, she discovers a place she belongs: she can turn off her brain, pain has a purpose, and it’s okay if you want to win.As Sam grows into her teens, she grapples with self-doubt and insecurity. She yearns for her climbing coach to notice her, but his attention crosses boundaries she doesn't know how to resist. She wishes her father would leave for good, instead of always coming and going, but once he’s gone, she realizes how much she’s lost. She rages against her mother’s constant pressure to plan for a more secure future. Wrestling with who she wants to be in the face of what she’s expected to do, Sam comes to understand that she alone can make her dreams come true.Allegra Goodman’s beautiful and wise novel Sam is deceptively simple: it is about a girl who becomes a woman. But underneath its straightforward chronology and spare sentences lie layers of extraordinary depth, sensitivity, and tenderness. This unforgettable ode to girlhood asks, What happens to a child's sense of joy and belonging--her belief in herself--as she grows up? The answer will break your heart, but will also leave you full of hope.What happens to a girl’s exuberance and wonder as she becomes a woman? This unforgettable portrait of coming-of-age offers a powerful reflection on class, addiction, parenthood, longing, and ambition.

Basking in Singapore’s nonstop sunshine, Dara, Amaka, and Lillian are living the glamorous expat dream—until a mysterious (not to mention handsome) new arrival infiltrates their tight-knit community and ruins everything.The Lion City has gone by many names and is famous for many things—its decadent street food, its world-class shopping, its lush gardens that burst with tropical blooms. But paradise is always hiding a snake.For Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK, Singapore is opportunity. Every day, brokering deals for her firm’s wealthy clientele, she gets closer to making partner. For Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker from Nigeria, Singapore is extravagance. Gucci, Prada, Hermès—she loves nothing more than to luxuriate in the major department stores that call her name on Orchard Road. And for Lillian, a former pianist turned “trailing spouse” from the U.S., Singapore is reinvention. In a stunning apartment with 360° views, the island seems to glitter as far as the eye can see.But complications are looming in the form of an enigmatic stranger, whose presence exposes cracks in Singapore’s beguiling façade. Dara’s ambitions mean she has no life outside the firm, and her insecurities are threatening to derail the promotion she’s spent the last six years striving for. Amaka is desperate to escape the chaos she left behind at home and is hiding a spiraling shopping addiction that’s endangering her very sense of self. And while Lillian’s life may be the envy of outsiders, a new obsession is imperiling everything—and everyone—around her.In The Sun Sets in Singapore, Kehinde Fadipe captures the richness of this metropolis through the eyes of three tenacious women, who are about to learn that unfinished history can follow you anywhere, no matter how far you run from home.Endorsements"Wanderlust-inducing" — Lola Akinmade ÅkerströmA Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick

The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic.In “Midtown-West Side Story,” Álvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, and the restaurant’s regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs.“The Man in 512” tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings and goings of an affluent co-op building, all the while teaching the children Spanish through Selena’s music catalog.“Comrades” follows a queer man with radical politics who just ended a long-term relationship and is now on the hunt for a life partner. With little tolerance for political moderates, his series of speed dates devolve into awkward confrontations that leave him wondering if his approach is the correct one.A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict, The People Who Report More Stress deftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society’s inequities but being unable to do anything about them.

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends.These intimate and panoramic stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.EndorsementsA New York Times Editors’ Choice.“Rich and compelling.” — The Washington Post“If you’re looking for a collection that will touch your heart and make you look at your fellow humans more generously, this one’s a can’t-miss.” — Good Housekeeping“A wonder.” — Lauren Groff

A young woman's rootless past and uncertain future collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents, toppling her carefully constructed life in this vibrant, insightful debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny town in central Illinois where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé, Ben. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.But returning to Hickory Grove is... complicated. Audrey's relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother's astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she's shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there's Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?

A heart-wrenching story of love and defiance set in the Warsaw Ghetto, based on the actual archives kept by those determined to have their stories survive World War IIOn a November day in 1940, Adam Paskow becomes a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of the city are cut off from their former lives and held captive by Nazi guards, and await an uncertain fate. Weeks later, he is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Will he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls? Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. He learns about their childhoods and their daydreams, their passions and their fears, their desperate strategies for safety and survival. The stories form a portrait of endurance in a world where no choices are good ones.One of the people Adam interviews is his flatmate Sala Wiskoff, who is stoic, determined, and funny—and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement, in the presence of her family, Adam and Sala fall in love. As they desperately carve out intimacy, their relationship feels both impossible and vital, their connection keeping them alive. But when Adam discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice: Whom can he save, and at what cost?Inspired by the testimony-gathering project with the code name Oneg Shabbat, Lauren Grodstein draws readers into the lives of people living on the edge.Told with immediacy and heart, We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a piercing story of love, determination, and sacrifice for the many fans of literary World War II fiction such as Kristin Harmel’s The Book of Lost Names and Lauren Fox’s Send for Me.Endorsements— New York Times bestselling author Lauren Grodstein

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explode in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.

In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan” to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness” she sees all around her.When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost.Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon, they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped and stunted by Charlene’s pursuit of “inconsequential good.”A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War. With a narrative impact that recalls Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Alice McDermott confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously entangled. Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire.Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters’ connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption.It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend and his doomsday-prepping roommates in a novel that's packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials.In the wake of her parents’ death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life—success—until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy–traumatized, illegal-gun–stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein–eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world of selling guns and training for a doomsday that’s maybe just around the corner.For readers of Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris’s The Other Black Girl. The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it’s nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive?Endorsements“A great and engrossing read, Kashana humanizes a way of life that is often made fun of and makes the reader understand why someone would go to such great lengths to prepare for the future, so much so she almost sold me on those Life Preserver soy bars!” — Trevor Noah

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling and how their lives would play out from that point on.For Harry, this is that story at last.Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness, and, because he blamed the press for his mother's death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn't find true love.Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple's cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother...For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty.A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi, but in my case, it means woman.Meet Maddie Wright.All her life, she's been told who she is. To her Ghanaian parents, she's Maame: the one who takes care of the family. Her mum's stand-in. The primary carer for her father, who suffers from Parkinson's. The one who keeps the peace — and the secrets.It's time for her to speak up.When she finally gets the chance to leave home, Maddie is determined to become the kind of woman she wants to be. One who wears a bright yellow suit, dates men who definitely aren't on her mum's list of prospective husbands, and stands up to her boss's microaggressions. Someone who doesn't have to google all her life choices.But when tragedy strikes, Maddie is forced to face the risks — and rewards — of putting her heart on the line.But will it take losing everything to find her voice?Hilarious, honest and heartbreaking, MAAME is the most moving debut of 2023 — and a heroine you'll never forget. As blisteringly funny and achingly relatable as its heroine, MAAME is an unforgettable coming-of-age story about finally becoming the heroine of your own life.EndorsementsThe instant New York Times bestseller.Read with Jenna Today Book Club pick.Apple Book of the Month.A 2023 Debut of the Year as chosen by: Sunday Times; Stylist; Vogue; Red Magazine; Independent; Belfast Telegraph; Huffington Post UK; PopSugar; Harper's Bazaar; My Weekly; Evening Standard; Cosmopolitan; Bustle."Lively, funny, poignant... Prepare to fall in love with Maddie. I did!" — Bonnie Garmus, Sunday Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry"Utterly charming and deeply moving... Maddie's journey will resonate with anyone who's had to grow up — or who's still trying to." — Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere"I loved every page of this beautiful, heartwarming, empowering book. An exceptional debut from an incredibly exciting new talent." — Beth O'Leary, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare"One of the must-reads of the year." — Sunday Times"Tender and compelling from the word go, Maame is one of the year's most anticipated books." — Stylist"A poignant and heart-warming coming-of-age story." — Red"George's novel is a deeply moving one, packed with heart and sparkling prose." — Harper's Bazaar"Moving, funny, poignant and completely unforgettable — you'll love this beautiful coming-of-age tale." — My Weekly"Funny, resonating and uplifting, Maame is going to be big in 2023." — Evening Standard"An accomplished debut from a talented writer." — Prima

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletics coach, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers—needs to let sleeping dogs lie.But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.

A powerful novel of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island who discovers their long-missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show, and they set out to bring her home.The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen-year-old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling.One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister. This woman's hair is dyed red, and she calls herself Ruby, but the beauty mark under her left eye is instantly recognizable.Could it be Ruthy, after all this time? The years since Ruthy's disappearance haven't been easy on the Ramirez family.It’s 2008, and their mother, Dolores, still struggles with the loss. Jessica juggles a newborn baby with her hospital job, and Nina, after four successful years at college, has returned home to medical school rejections and is forced to work in the mall folding tiny bedazzled thongs at the lingerie store.After seeing maybe-Ruthy on their screen, Jessica and Nina hatch a plan to drive to where the show is filmed in search of their long-lost sister. When Dolores catches wind of their scheme, she insists on joining, along with her pot-stirring holy roller best friend, Irene. What follows is a family road trip and reckoning that forces the Ramirez women to finally face the past and look toward a future—with or without Ruthy in it.What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a vivid family portrait, in all its shattered reality, exploring the familial bonds between women and cycles of generational violence, colonialism, race, and silence, replete with snark, resentment, tenderness, and, of course, love.Endorsements"Hilarious, heartbreaking, and ass-kicking" — Jamie FordLonglisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Faulkner AwardMarch Indie Next Pick; Belletrist, Phenomenal, and Readers Digest book club pickA Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Elle; USA Today; Today.com; Ms. Magazine; Good Housekeeping; Bustle; The Week; Goodreads; BookRiot; PopCulturely; SheReads; Litreactor; Electric Lit; The Mary Sue; People Español; Zibby Mag; Debutiful; Her CampusBest Books of March by Shondaland; Ms. Magazine; PopSugar; BookRiot; Debutiful; Powell’s Book BlogTIME 100 must-read book of 2023; Booklist Top 10 debut of 2023; Library Journal Best Pop Fiction of 2023; The Latinidad List Best Debut Novel of 2023; Chicago Public Library Favorite Book of 2023; Good Housekeeping Must-Read Book of 2023; Today.com Standout Book of 2023

Meet the Padvano girls. Best friends and sisters, they are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood. Julia, the eldest, is the "rocket" of the family — she always has a destination in mind and clear plans for how to get there. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother. Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other, expecting that their family will always be intact.When Julia falls in love with William Walters, a history student and college sports star, she's delighted by the way her plans for adulthood are coming together. A husband, a house, a family. But when darkness from William's past begins to block the light of his future, it is Sylvie, not Julia, who steps in to help. Suddenly, things shift. Dynamics and relationships, priorities and secrets — everything that was once a given no longer is.Rich and vivid, heartbreaking and heart-mending, Hello Beautiful captures the joy, tragedy, trust, and betrayal to ask: what does it mean to be a family? And once shattered, can it be pieced back together?

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital, she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused. It is even more alarming to hear from Nora's housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident and had fallen on the steps to the attic—the one place Jess was forbidden from playing in when she was small.At loose ends in Nora's house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora's bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime—a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find…An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth.

In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in — where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations — looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets.When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens — less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another — and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.A searing memoir of family, class, and grief — a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost.EndorsementsA New York Times notable book.Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Booklist, USA Today, Elle, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times, Electric Literature, and Today.

Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist — a chance encounter that spiralled into a daylong city adventure. The timing was wrong, but their connection was that they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn't.At thirty-two, Fern's life hasn't turned out how she imagined it. She's back home, running her mother's lakeside resort, which is in disarray — and her ex-boyfriend is the manager. She needs a lifeline.To Fern's surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives — nine years too late — with an offer to help. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. Yet how can she possibly trust this expensive suit-wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago.But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?One day. One promise. Two lives changed. A random connection sends two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects.Endorsements"A beautiful, heart-tugging love story about secrets, lies, missed connections and second chances." — Jill Santopolo"A breathtaking tale of star-crossed lovers that gripped me from page one." — Elena Armas"A perfect summery blend of sexy romance and second chances." — Ashley Poston"A tender, sweet story that captures the joy and sorrow of growing up." — Elissa Sussman"Carley Fortune is the master of the love story." — Annabel Monaghan"The quintessential book of summer." — Amy Lea"Radiant." — Emily Henry"A sweet story about second chances, and how the future we imagine for ourselves is never quite what it turns out to be." — Jodi Picoult"A quintessential summer novel, full of longing and lost love, and hits on so many beloved tropes." — BuzzFeed

Medical interventions become an exercise in patience, desire, and delirium in this intimate account of bodily transformation and disruption. In candid, graceful prose, Isabel Zapata gives voice to the strangeness and complexities of conception and motherhood that are rarely discussed publicly. Zapata frankly addresses the misogyny she experienced during fertility treatments, explores the force of grief in imagining possible futures, and confronts the societal expectations around maternity. In the tradition of Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, In Vitro draws from diary and essay forms to create a new kind of literary companion and open up space for nuanced conversations about pregnancy.A meditation on in vitro fertilization that expands and complicates the stories we tell about pregnancy.

Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, all that festers behind the glitter and glam.The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But behind all that newfound glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had.Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, goes to therapy and tries Lexapro, is healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.

In a university town in the American Midwest, a circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to work out what they want, and who they are.As they test their own desires in a series of relationships they are confronted by volatile figures in town, from unruly, vulnerable young poets to a local landlord harbouring a lifetime of resentment.Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima ask themselves and each other: what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? Is love possible without harm? And what does true connection look like in an age of precarity?

It's been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation, when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Not for lack of trying. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact: to throw each other living "funerals" — celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living, that their lives mean something to one another, if not to themselves. But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact. A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley's signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises—especially to ourselves.

When the nouveau riche Parker family moves to an exclusive community in the heart of Southern California, they believe it’s their chance at a fresh start. Heather Parker is determined to give her daughters the life she never had—starting with horses.She signs them up for riding lessons at Rancho Santa Fe Equestrian, where horses are a lifestyle. Heather becomes a “Barn Mom,” part of a group of wealthy women who hang at the stables, drink wine, and prepare their daughters for competition.It’s not long before the Parker family is fully enmeshed in the horse world—from mean girl cliques to barn romance and dark secrets. With the end of summer horse show fast approaching, the pressure is on, and these mothers will stop at nothing to give their daughters everything they deserve.Before the summer is over, lies will turn lethal, accidents will happen, and someone will end up dead.Set in the glamorous, competitive world of showjumping, a novel about the girls who ride, their cutthroat mothers, and a suspicious death at a horse show…

When Kathleen Deane's husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage, Kathleen is confused. They live in Kansas. They've been married thirty years. Who said anything about being happy? But with Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thoughts lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year.It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie's letters. Kathleen's new neighbor, Rosemary, is cantankerous, and the town's supervisor won't return Kathleen's emails, but worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen's absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in the fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairytale, but it just might be exactly what she needed.Save What's Left pulls back the curtain on life in a beach town, revealing the true cost of a pretty view. Told from the candid and irreverent perspective of a newcomer turned local, this is a story of forgiveness, fortitude, and second chances.An outrageously funny debut novel about a woman who moves to a small beach town looking for peace, only to find herself in an all-out war with her neighbors. Save What's Left can best be described as the "un-beach read."EndorsementsGMA Book Club pick.One of People magazine's Best Books of Summer."Irreverent and unexpectedly tender, this story takes neighborhood feuding to new heights and finds beauty and reinvention in unlikely places." — Oprah Daily"Brings a tongue-in-cheek tone to the beach read genre." — Time

In this deeply felt memoir of translation, storytelling, and borders, Alexandra Oliva, a Mexican-American translator and immigrant justice activist, offers a chronicle of her experience interpreting at the U.S.-Mexico border.Having worked with asylum seekers since 2016, she knows all too well the gravity of taking someone's trauma and delivering it to the warped demands of the U.S. immigration system. As Oliva's stunning prose recounts the stories of the people she's met through her work, she also traces her family's long and fluid relationship to the border—each generation born on opposite sides of the Rio Grande.In Rivermouth, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different phases of immigration, looking at how language and opportunity move through each of these—from the river as the waterway that separates the U.S. and Mexico, to the table where Oliva prepares asylum seekers for their credible fear interviews, and finally to the wall as the behemoth imposition that runs along America's southern border.With lush prose and perceptive insight, Oliva encourages readers to approach the painful questions that this crisis poses with equal parts critique and compassion. By which metrics are we measuring who "deserves" American citizenship? What is the point of humanitarian systems that distribute aid conditionally? What do we owe to our most disenfranchised?As investigative and analytical as she is meditative and introspective, sharp as she is lyrical, and incisive as she is compassionate, seasoned interpreter Alexandra Oliva argues for a better world while guiding us through the suffering that makes the fight necessary and the joy that makes it worth fighting for.A chronicle of translation, storytelling, and borders as understood through the United States' "immigration crisis"Endorsements"With uncut rage and breathtaking prose, Oliva edifies, infuriates, and moves readers all at once. This is required reading." —Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

From bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults: the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. When she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn't the only one keeping secrets; her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation—cousins Ona and Yadi—face tumult of their own.Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.EndorsementsA Most Anticipated Book of 2023 — Today.com; Time; Electric Literature; Seattle Times; Telemundo; Washington Post; HipLatina; Harper's Bazaar

Seventeen stories traverse borderlines, mythic and real, in the lives of Filipino and Filipino American women and their ancestors.Moving from small Philippine villages of the past to the hurricane-beaten coast of near-future Florida, When the Hibiscus Falls examines the triumphs and sorrows that connect generations of women. Daughters, sisters, mothers, aunties, cousins, and lolas commune with their ancestors and their descendants, mourning what is lost when an older generation dies, celebrating what is gained when we safeguard their legacy for those who come after us. Featuring figures familiar from M. Evelina Galang’s other acclaimed and richly imagined novels and stories, When the Hibiscus Falls dwells within the complexity of family, community, and Filipino American identity. Each story is an offering, a bloom that unfurls its petals and holds space in the sun.

Her blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands of a football game, she was immediately rocket launched into fame, becoming Playboy's favourite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sexuality. But what happens when you lose grip on your own life — and the image the notoriety machine creates for you is not who you really are?Growing up on Vancouver Island, the daughter of young, wild, and unprepared parents, Pamela Anderson's childhood was not easy, but it allowed her to create her own world — surrounded by nature and imaginary friends. When she overcame her deep shyness and grew into herself, she fell into a life on the cover of magazines, the beaches of Malibu, the sets of movies and talk shows, the arms of rockstars, the coveted scene at the Playboy Mansion. And as her star rose, she found herself tabloid fodder, at the height of an era when paparazzi tactics were bent on capturing a celebrity's most intimate, and sometimes weakest moments. This is when Pamela Anderson lost control of her own narrative, hurt by the media and fearful of the public's perception of who she was . . . and who she wasn't.Fighting back with a sense of grace, fuelled by a love of art and literature, and driven by a devotion to her children and the causes she cares about most, Pamela Anderson has now gone back to the island where she grew up, after a memorable run starring as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, reclaiming her free spirit but also standing firm as a strong, creative, confident woman.Actress. Icon. Activist. Her story, in her voice, for the first time. In this honest, layered and unforgettable book that alternates between storytelling and her own poetry, Pamela Anderson breaks the mould of the celebrity memoir while taking back the tale that has been crafted about her.Endorsements"The iconic Anderson uses a mixture of poetry and prose to present an impressionistic view of a fascinating life." — Booklist

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims.But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media.White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences…Endorsements#1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel — R.F. Kuang.New York Times bestseller — The New York Times.

Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled—the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she’ll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.Bernadette, Eleanor Oliphant, Rosie, Ove . . . meet Amazing Grace Adams, the funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink—who finally pushes back.

Enter a world where, watched by millions, prisoners fight like gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Perfect for fans of The Handmaid's Tale, Squid Game and WatchmenWelcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the popular and highly controversial programme inside America's prison system. In packed arenas, watched by millions of live-stream viewers, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom.Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara 'Hurricane Staxxx' Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme's corporate owners stack the odds against her - will the price be simply too high?