Strangers in the Night

October 1, 2022

Following Hargrave's adult debut, the Betty Trask honoree The Mercies, The Dance Tree spins off from real-life events as it visits 1518 Strasbourg, France, where women have begun dancing wildly in the town square and provoked a state of emergency (40,000-copy first printing). Opening in a fishing village in British colonial--ruled Singapore, Suicide Club author Heng's The Great Reclamation features a sweet boy with an extraordinary gift--he sees shifting islands no one else can--who comes of age during the Japanese occupation and, with a neighborhood girl, ends up remapping the future (75,000-copy first printing). Following the multi-best-booked Yellow Wind, Johnson's The House of Eve intertwines the stories of two young Black women--15-year-old Ruby, whose college ambitions are threatened by an ill-advised affair, and Howard University student Eleanor, looking for acceptance from her boyfriend's elite Black family. In Loesch's debut, The Last Russian Doll, a Russian �migr� studying at Oxford returns to Moscow after her mother's death and uncovers a family tragedy stretching back to the 1917 Revolution. A prize winner in Germany and a publishing phenomenon there and in the UK, where Berlin-based British-Ghanian Otoo is a Cambridge writer in residence, Ada's Room features four Adas: a 15th-century West African woman who confronts a Portuguese slave trader, Victorian England's Ada Lovelace, a Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp inmate, and a contemporary resident of Berlin, connected to them all in spirit. Following The Yellow Bird Sings, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Rosner's Once We Were Home builds on real-life events to tell the stories of Jewish children wrenched from their families during World War II--like Ana, who remembers the mother who smuggled her out of a Polish ghetto, and Ana's brother, who knows only the family who raised him. In Spence-Ash's Beyond That, the Sea, Bea Thompson is sent from bomb-blasted World War II London to live in safety with a family in Boston, MA, and becomes so contented with her new life that she is reluctant to return home (150,000-copy first printing). From the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Walls, Hang the Moon follows the life of feisty young Sallie Kincaid, daughter of the big man about town in Prohibition-era Virginia, who's back home to reclaim her place nine years after being ejected from the family. The USA Today best-selling Webb's Strangers in the Night replays the romance between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Two Wars and a Wedding, the New York Times best-selling Willig follows aspiring archaeologist Betsy Hayes from 1896 Greece, where she ends up tending the wounded as fighting breaks out with Turkey, and 1898 Cuba, where she serves with the Red Cross during the Spanish American War, hoping to find a lost friend (75,000-copy first printing).

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January 23, 2023
Webb (The Next Ship Home) turns to the glamour, passion, and competitiveness of Golden Age Hollywood with a stilted reimagining of the stormy relationship between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. The leads take turns, in remarkably similar narrative voices, recounting their love story’s twists and turns. The first time Frank sets eyes on Ava at the Hollywood Palladium in the early 1940s, he wants her, despite already being married to Nancy, his childhood sweetheart. Ava is, for him, “The kind of woman that knocked the air from your lungs.” The feeling isn’t mutual. Ava is married to Mickey Rooney and is focused on her career, determined to move from being one of MGM’s “love goddesses” to a serious actor. After five years of acting classes and studio publicity gigs, and two divorces, she’s finally on the brink of stardom. Ava and Frank have a series of chance encounters during those years, and despite her reservations, she senses a “tender and passionate” side to Frank. Webb stuffs in all the highlights of Frank and Ava’s Hollywood lives but offers no new insights or meaningful character development. As the couple’s on-and-off relationship brings tumult to their lives, readers, too, will wonder if it’s worth going the distance. For a story about two oversized and magnetic personalities, this is surprisingly flat. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House.

January 6, 2023
While Ava Gardner's star is rising, Frank Sinatra's career is tanking, and it causes a lot of tension in their relationship. As Frank is losing faith (and acting out on the paparazzi), Ava is becoming the most wanted starlet in Hollywood. She wants to ride high on her success but is brought crashing down when dealing with Frank. They fight, they make up, they cheat, and they make up, and it goes on like a roller coaster. But at the end of the day, they are always devoted to each other. The emotions are tumultuous throughout the novel, and readers will be turning pages to find out how the couple handles their latest controversy. Frank and Ava were there for each other's successes as well as setbacks. Even when they ultimately ended their marriage, they still were close and never totally gave up on each another. Webb's snapshot of this stormy relationship, one of the most famous in Hollywood, will draw readers in with its romance and emotional highs and lows.

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