Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian (on sale 4/6): The gold rush, the fountain of youth, folklore, and magical realism combine in a refreshingly modern and original novel that gifts its readers with an incredibly relatable portrayal of American teen life in G.W. Bush era’s Georgia suburbs, before plunging us into Silicon Valley ten years later for a subtle but powerful exploration of what the American dream is to children of immigrants. Gold Diggers is a feast of a story that swings from teen angst and laugh out loud humor to tragedy, from folklore to hard reality, and finally culminates in a heist that would make the Rat Pack proud. It breaks apart the mythology of monolithic culture with the perfect alchemy of humor, magic, and irresistible albeit flawed people. Let it sweep you off your feet. -Karen

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas: Myths of race, the “problems” that keep people poor and without a path out, the idea that this comes from within rather than from a system poised to strip people of all they have strived for – meet your Kryptonite. In the masterful hands of Angie Thomas, we delve into the life of Maverick Carter: a senior in high school whose father is in prison but whose legacy as the leader of the King Lords follows Mav in the streets of his neighborhood. But life truly twists when he fathers two babies. Myth detectors are going off all over right now, because if you point to that fact and dismiss the humanity, struggle, love, and pain that goes into Maverick's story and how he emerges from all this as amazing father, the loss is absolutely yours.

-Linda

Lobizona by Romina Garber: According to Argentine legend, the seventh consecutive daughter is a bruja, the seventh consecutive son, a Lobizono, but step into the world of Manu Azul and watch the old barriers, the old ways that deemed some abominations, some illegal, crack open. Manu has lived a sheltered life in a small apartment in Miami. Her mother is undocumented and Manu’s unusual eyes draw far too much attention to her, but when her mother is taken by ICE and her surrogate grandmother is attacked, Manu discovers a world she thought existed only in dreams and a family history straight out of myth. Adventure, magic and folklore, romance and a powerful story of identity. I love this book and the next one is coming in August!

-Linda

The Tradition by Jericho Brown: Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, and 100 Notable Books of the Year, The New York Times Book Review. "... rich with music and spirituality—of Jericho Brown’s own making. Here, in received and new forms, the language is plainspoken and concise; the voice(s) self-aware, self-reliant, seasoned. The Tradition is a lesson in the power of craft." - David Eye, Lambda Literary

Hybrida by Tina Chang: Named a Best Book of 2019 by NPR and Publishers Weekly. "Hybrida reminds us of a shared responsibility to protect the most vulnerable and to cherish bodies as fragile and wondrous. Many of the poems grieve relatively recent and high-profile losses of somebody’s child, including Michael Brown in the poems 'Creation Myth' and 'Timeline for a Body: 4 Hours, 6 Bullets.'." - Rachel Carroll from Los Angeles Review of Books

Dearly by Margaret Atwood: "Atwood’s...first collection of poems in over a decade is a good reminder of her mastery of the craft. In Dearly, Atwood’s inspirations run the gamut from the intoxicating pleasures of nature to the fantastical goings-on of zombies, but the themes are grounded in the familiar: love, loss, desire, and the inevitability of time passing. Atwood blurs the lines of what we know and asks us instead to give credence to what we feel." - Time