Miranda Brand might have been in the spotlight as a famous photographer but who was she really? And how did she die? Did her handsome son have anything to do with it? Archivist Kate Aitken has moved to Callinas, a plush California beachside town to take on the work of archiving her subject’s personal belongings. But as Kate digs deeper the story she finds tends to tear her own fragile self apart. Sligar’s debut is a rewarding mystery centered on obsession, womanhood and fragility told through the lens of an increasingly unreliable narrator. Sure to be a smash summer hit.
Brit Bennett does it again. Her brilliant compulsively readable novel explores the everlasting bond between twins Desiree and Stella Vignes who grow up under the shadow of a vicious hate crime. The Black girls come of age in a fictional Louisiana town populated with people who look like them: they can pass off as white. Bennett explores the fluidity of identity through various angles: “Being anyone else was the thrill. To transform into a different person in plain sight, nobody around her even able to tell,” remembers Stella as she slips into a life unrecognizable even to her own self.
