In My Mailbox... Advanced Reading Copies that Came My Way This Week and You'll Want to Know About!

I'm so excited about these two soon-to-be-published books! It's been a few years since we've heard from Richard Russo and Chang-Rae Lee. Both wonderful writers whose books I've devoured in the past...

Under The Falls by Richard Russo...
A spellbinding page-turner about a crime in a small town that exposes long-held secrets and betrayals among a group of lifelong friends.When Tyler Sinclair left Stone Mountain at eighteen, he had no plans of returning. With only a duffel bag full of clothes, a few bucks stolen from his father’s dresser, and a guitar, his most prized possession, Tyler disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Eighteen years later, Tyler, now the frontman of a famous band aptly named Stone Mountain, finds himself returning to his hometown for a one-night-only benefit concert to support his old friend, Doc, who lost feeling in his legs following a childhood accident. As Tyler ascends the mountain, memories of his childhood come rushing back—memories of his abusive father and despondent mother, of the friends he left behind—and he quickly learns that, for many people on Stone Mountain, the past does not feel like so long ago, and not everyone has been eagerly awaiting Tyler’s return.

At the concert, resentment simmers just beneath the surface, and Tyler finds himself confronted with faces new and old: there’s Curt, Tyler’s childhood best friend, now Stone Mountain’s chief of police, and his star officer, Deb, an out-of-towner who may have bitten off more than she can chew by accepting a job in Stone Mountain. And then there’s Freddi, Curt’s wife and Tyler’s former lover, a woman whose questionable dealings and fraught history with Tyler will become the catalyst for a tragedy that will upend each of their lives and threaten to validate Tyler’s worst fear: that “Stone Mountain is the kind of place you might escape from once, if you’re lucky, but not twice.”

Under the Falls is at once a propulsive thriller, a gut-wrenching portrait of a tight-knit rural community undone by the sins of its past, and an unflinchingly honest depiction of how porous the line between right and wrong, good versus evil, can become. This is a stunning, deeply empathetic novel, one that takes Russo’s penchant for character-driven drama to thrilling new heights. 

Richard Russo is a master storyteller and I've enjoyed all of his novels. When I heard he was coming out with a new standalong novel, I was excited and even more excited when I received an advanced digital copy of Under The Falls from the publisher, Knopf. Just add this to your TBR list. It will be published on August 11th.

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A Tender Age by Chang-Rae Lee... A story of guilt, innocence, and a boy on the cusp of adolescence. A spellbinding exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants, A Tender Age joins the rich tradition of the American *bildungsroman (*a literary genre that focuses on the psychological, moral, and emotional growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood.) The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caufield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.

Devastating in its emotional precision, A Tender Age captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away—then thinking about it for the rest of his life.

Another great storyteller, Chang-Rae Lee has dived deep into his character's soul to share their lives. This sounds like a great coming-of-age story, and then some. I am excited to read this new novel from Chang-Rae Lee and was happy to received an advanced digital copy from the publisher, Riverhead. A Tender Age will also be published on August 11th!