We’re nearly through with January, but the New Releases keep coming in hotter and hotter. This week we debut a few thrilling titles, namely a new novel from the godfather of Cyberpunk, William Gibson, and a searing true crime page-turner from a debut author. Read up on the titles we’re most excited for this week below!
The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg
The Third Rainbow Girl, the debut from Emma Copley Eisenberg, presents a stunningly written investigation of the murder of two young women — showing how a violent crime casts a shadow over an entire community.
In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the “Rainbow Murders,” though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. With the passage of time, as the truth seemed to slip away, the investigation itself caused its own traumas-turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming a fear of the violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.
Using the past and the present, Eisenberg shows how this mysterious act of violence has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and the stories they tell about themselves. Partly a history of Appalachia, The Third Rainbow Girl also forms a searing and wide-ranging portrait of America – its divisions of gender and class, and of its violence.
This all-encompassing read has been praised by Ron Rash and Carmen Maria Machado, as well as Events Coordinator Uriel, he calls it “A great piece of investigative journalism that moves at breakneck speed.” Order your copy today and join us on March 11th at 7PM when Eisenberg stops by the store to discuss The Third Rainbow Girl alongside Adeena Reitberger of American Short Fiction.
Agency by William Gibson
ATTENTION ALL WILLIAM GIBSON FANS. Have you heard? The godfather of cyber-punk has a new title out today and it follows the events of his previous bestseller, The Peripheral.
Agency gives us a twisty-turny narrative that spans a century and several timelines. In one, Verity Jane, a gifted “app-whisperer” becomes a beta tester for a dodgy San Francisco start-up for their latest product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. Connecting with the disarmingly human AI, “Eunice,” Verity witnesses the system’s rapid growth: it manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and an unnervingly canny grasp of combat strategy.
Meanwhile, a century ahead, in London, in a different timeline entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His employer, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and “Eunice” have become her current project.
Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner. And something else too: the roles they both may play in it.
Get the full scoop on Saturday, January 25th at 5PM when William Gibson returns to BookPeople to read from and sign this stellar
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
American Dirt has probably been the most talked about book this month. Garnering praise from the likes of Sandra Cisneros, Stephen King, and Julia Alvarez, to a now famous critical take-down that has spurred a conversation over the ownership of this type of story, the novel’s polemic publication seems crucial to the social discourse going on in this country today.
It centers on a mother and son — Lydia and Luca — fleeing their home in Mexico in the wake of a violent attack from an infamous drug cartel. Forced to flee the danger that took the lives of countless friends and family, Lydia’s husband and Luca’s father included, they soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, joining the thousands of people trying to reach American dirt.
Touted as a literary page-turner and “A Grapes of Wrath for our times” (Don Winslow), Cummins’ book reckons with the crisis at the Southern border and places many readers, some for the first time, at the center of what’s happening there. Order now to reserve a signed copy of one of the buzziest books of the still very young year.
A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits comes an epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents, following two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a new place to call home.
In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them wants, and together are sponsored by poet Pablo Neruda to embark on the SS Winnipeg along with 2,200 other refugees in search of a new life. As unlikely partners, they embrace exile and emigrate to Chile as the rest of Europe erupts in World War.
Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning. Over the course of their lives, they will face test after test. But they will also find joy as they wait patiently for a day when they are exiles no more, and will find friends in the most unlikely of places. Through it all, it is that hope of being reunited with their home that keeps them going. And in the end, they will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.
Act quickly to reserve a signed copy of this brand new title from a literary luminary!
Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright
Heart of Junk by Luke Geddes
In Heart of Junk, Luke Geddes debuts a hilarious novel about an eclectic group of merchants at a Kansas antique mall who become implicated in the kidnapping of a local beauty pageant star — toddler pageant princess, Lindy Bobo.
However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Postcards, perfume bottles, Barbies, vinyl records, kitschy neon beer signs—they collect and sell it all.
Rather than focus on Lindy, this colorful cast of characters is consumed by another drama: the impending arrival of Mark and Grant from the famed antiques television show Pickin’ Fortunes, who are planning to film an episode at The Heart of America and secretly may be the last best hope of saving the mall from bankruptcy. Yet the mall and the missing beauty queen have more to do with each other than these vendors might think, and before long, the group sets in motion a series of events that lead to surprising revelations about Lindy’s whereabouts. As the mall becomes implicated in her disappearance, will Mark and Grant be scared away from all of the drama or will they arrive in time to save The Heart of America from going under?
Equally comical and suspenseful, Heart of Junk is also a biting commentary on our current Marie Kondo era. It examines why certain objects resonate with us so deeply, rebukes Kondo’s philosophy of wholesale purging, and argues that “junk” can have great value—connecting us not only to our personal pasts but to our shared human history.
Grab a copy of Heart of Junk now!
That’s it for this week! Stop by the store to check out the rest of our new releases and shop for them all with us online anytime.
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