Members-Only Book Club

The ongoing story of the battle between roots and desire in the sequel to Acts of Assumption

Serach Gottesman — soft-spoken, golden-haired renegade from Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn, and Paloma Rodriguez — headstrong, drop-dead gorgeous trailblazer from the Latina South Bronx, have been partners for ten years. The two women have sacrificed family relationships, cherished beliefs and communal ties for the sake of their audacious romance. In return, they've gained a circle of accepting friends, entrée into the diverse riches of New York — and love. Until an unexpected death, a seductive offer, and an arrest bring their supremely difficult families and indomitable cultures roaring back into their lives with devastating results.

A spellbinding literary thriller packed with psychological suspense and profound questions about motherhood, trauma and how death illuminates life.” — Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins

A seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing 22-year-old musician in this psychological thriller

Helen Bird will stop at nothing to find Henry, her musician son who has mysteriously disappeared in upstate New York. Though the cops believe Henry’s absence is voluntary, Helen knows better. While she searches for him — joined finally by police — Jonah is born to Lucie and Matt Pressman of Manhattan. Lucie does all she can to be the kind of loving, attentive mother she never had, but can’t stop Jonah’s night terrors or his obsession with the imaginary “other mom and dog” he insists are real.

Whether Jonah’s anxiety is caused by nature or nurture — or something else entirely — is the propulsive mystery at the heart of the novel.

All hell breaks loose when the Pressmans rent a summer cottage in Aurora Falls, where Helen lives. How does Jonah, at seven, know so much about Henry, Helen’s still-missing son? Is it just a bizarre coincidence? An expression of Jonah’s collective unconscious? Or could Jonah be the reincarnation of Henry?

Faced with more questions than answers, Helen and Lucie set out to make sense of the insensible, a heart-stopping quest that forces them to redefine not just what it is to be a mother or a human being, but the very nature of life — and death — because of what Jonah knows.

“I loved David Biro’s emotional and moving novel, And The Bridge Is Love, which is the heartfelt story of three older women ― Gertie, Maria, and Corinna ― who have been friends for decades. But when one of them learns a long-hidden secret, everything changes. This novel resonates with friendship, love, and the power of forgiveness. If you haven’t read Biro before, start now!” ― Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author

Three friends, two secrets, one love―and the journey of a lifetime.

Every week for twenty years, three friends meet in a leafy enclosure under the Verrazzano Bridge: Gertie, a feisty Norwegian divorcée and former athlete; Maria, a family-obsessed Italian American widow; and Corinna, a book-loving, hash-smoking eccentric. Together they sit and watch the sea as the ships―and the last years of their lives―sail by. On the eve of Gertie’s eightieth birthday, they realize that time is running out. Gertie decides she wants to travel the world. Maria secretly plots to reunite Gertie and Corinna with their estranged families. And Corinna falls in love.

“I have never found use for the word rollicking until I dove into Thistlefoot. This is a genuinely rollicking adventure. It rollicks very hard. It is skillfully stuffed with startling rollickers. Pick up this book and prepare to be thoroughly, comprehensively, joyfully rollicked.”— Lemony Snicket

In the tradition of modern fairy tales like Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver comes an immersive fantasy saga, a debut novel about estranged siblings who are reunited after receiving a mysterious inheritance.

The Yaga siblings — Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist — have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet — only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.

Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas’ ancestral home outside Kyiv — but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine’s blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide — erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is a sweeping epic rich in Eastern European folklore: a powerful and poignant exploration of healing from multi-generational trauma told by a bold new talent.