Interview: A Country You Can Leave, Asale Angel-Ajani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux – Lara and her mother, Yevgenia, never stay in one place for long. Yevgenia is a Russian immigrant with strong opinions about life. Sixteen-year-old Lara’s absent father was a Black musician.
River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer, Berkley – Britain’s emancipation of its Caribbean slaves made little difference in Rachel’s life. She had no choice but to continue working at the plantation where she had been enslaved.
Interview: The Bandit Queens, Parini Shroff, Ballantine Books – Geeta’s husband, Ramesh, disappeared. Rumor is she killed him.
Interview: Angels of the Resistance, Noelle Salazar, Mira – Sisters Lien and Elif Vinke are typical teenagers in the Netherlands in 1940, except for two great tragedies that struck their family.
Interview: Twelve-year-old Dikembe is taken from his home in Africa during desperate times in the early 1900s to live in London as a ward of Sir Richard Babbington, a famous explorer.
A Map for the Missing, Belinda Huijuan Tang, Penguin Press – Yitian is teaching mathematics in America when he receives word that his father has gone missing in China.
The Catch, Alison Fairbrother, Random House – Ellie’s father had four children by three wives, but she always knew she was his favorite. At least, until he died and left her a gaudy tie rack instead of his cherished baseball.
Women Could Fly, Megan Giddings, Harper Collins – Josephine’s mother disappeared when she was 14. No one knew what happened, but the conjectures ranged from suspicions that she was murdered to that she was a witch.
Interview: Greenland, David Santos Donaldson – Kipling Starling has three weeks to rewrite his novel about E.M. Forester and his lover, Mohammed Ed Adl into Mohammed’s point of view so he boards himself up in his basement vowing not to come out until he is finished.
Interview: The Patron Saints of Second Chances, Christine Simon, Atria Books – If the plumbing in the tiny village of Prometto, Italy, isn’t fixed, all the residents will have to move out. The cost of the repairs is enormous.
