Girls, Gods, and Friends

Lisa Howorth is a former librarian and the author of the novel Flying Shoes. She has written on art, travel, dogs, and music for the Oxford American and Garden & Gun, among other publications. Howorth and her husband, Richard, founded Square Books in 1979. John Grisham writes of her latest book, “Summerlings (Doubleday) is a story rich in local color, humor, outrageous characters, and with a wicked plot." It's the summer of 1959. For the families who live on Connors Lane in Washington DC, life is still defined by what one did during WWII. Behind each door lives a possible spy or Nazi sympathizer, the family of a foreign diplomat, or someone who escaped the conflagration in Europe just in time. But it is also the summer of an inexplicable spider infestation--surely evidence of "insect warfare" by the Russians, thinks our young narrator John, and his best friends, Ivan and Max. When a rare, scorpion-like vinegaroon is discovered and sequestered for museum study, the boys, along with their tomboy accomplice, Beatriz, hatch a risky midnight plan to steal the poisonous creature for their own devious purposes. What happens next will change John's life forever.

Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of the short story collection An Unrestored Woman. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2015. Poornima and Savitha, the main characters in Shobha Rao´s debut novel Girls Burn Brighter (Flatiron Books), have three strikes against them: they are poor, they are ambitious, and they are girls. After her mother’s death, Poornima is left to care for her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. Then Savitha enters their household, and Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly, Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond arranged marriage. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. What follows is a journey into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Regardless the obstacles, these two friends never lose the hope that burns within. The New York Times Book Review called it “Engrossing…The pages keep turning, the language is lyrical and lovely, and many phrases call for pause and appreciation…Rao is a capable and confident writer, able to handle a vast and ambitious story line.”

Tupelo Hassman’s debut novel, Girlchild, was the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, Imaginary Oklahoma, the Independent, Portland Review, and ZYZZYVA, among other publications. She is the recipient of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award and the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, and is the first American to have won London’s Literary Death Match. She earned her MFA at Columbia University. Her latest novel is gods with a little g (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). For Helen and her gang of misfits, the tire yard, sex, and beer help pass the days until they turn eighteen and leave Rosary, California, a town named by Catholics, but run by evangelicals. Watching over them is Aunt Bev, an outcast like the kids, who runs the barely tolerated Psychic Encounter Shoppe and tries to keep Helen connected to her own psychic talents―a gift passed down from her mother. Threats against the Psychic Encounter Shoppe become serious actions. One of the kids gets in trouble, and then another. And Helen can see some things before they happen, but somehow can't see the most important things happening right in front of her. Tupelo Hassman's gods with a little g bursts and splinters with flawed, lovable characters whose haphazard investigations into each other’s hearts will reshape your understanding of trust, how to build a family, and how to make a future you can see.