The Old Place

April 1, 2022

In Other Birds, next from the New York Times best-selling Allen, Zoey encounters a runaway girl, two grumpy middle-aged sisters, a famed writer, an isolated chef, and three ghosts when she returns to her recently deceased mother's apartment in a horseshoe-shaped house on South Carolina's Mallow Island, where tiny turquoise birds called Dellawisps flit (200,000-copy first printing). In Emmons's Unleashed, deep cracks in Lu and George Barnes's marriage become evident once only daughter Pippa goes to college, even as Pippa struggles to retain her budding sense of independence amid loneliness and the California wine country surrounding them all threatens to burn. Cohost of the popular podcast Who? Weekly, Finger sets his debut, The Old Place, in a small Texas town where a reluctantly retired schoolteacher Mary Alice finds her life--especially her friendship with close neighbor Ellie--suddenly in question when a long-buried secret is revealed. In debuter Huynh's The Fortunes of Jaded Women, three estranged Vietnamese American sisters living in Orange County's Little Saigon must find a way to lift a curse placed on their family long ago never to find love or happiness (100,000-copy first printing). Blockbuster author Sparks again takes readers to Dreamland in a book about pursuing one's desires possibly at the cost of abandoning the past.

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July 11, 2022
Finger debuts with an engaging story of a former high school math teacher and the secrets that catch up with her. After 40 years in the Billington, Tex., school district, Mary Alice Roth is forced into retirement. Prickly and adrift, she rekindles a dormant friendship with her neighbor Ellie Hall. Decades earlier, divorcée Ellie moved next door and became fast friends with Mary Alice, by then a widow, as did their same-age sons. Then, after their sons’ high school graduation in 2002, a drunk driver killed Ellie’s son Kenny. News of the death of Mary Alice’s son, Michael, spread through town shortly after, though the cause went “unspoken” by Mary Alice. Now, Mary Alice’s estranged sister, Katherine, arrives, bringing news that Michael is in fact alive, and has shown up drunk at her home in Atlanta. The revelation upends Mary Alice’s exacting plans for the town’s annual picnic. The years of hiding the truth catch up with Mary Alice, as does her husband’s covered-up suicide. Though the narrative tends to meander, and some of the twists are telegraphed early, Finger has a firm handle on Billington’s complex and stifling social dynamics. Fans of small-town yarns will find much to like. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

August 1, 2022
Long-buried secrets lurk everywhere in Billington, the small Texas town of this debut from journalist and Who? Weekly celebrity podcast cohost Finger. Curmudgeonly protagonist Mary Alice, a widow, lost her only son when he was just 18; both her husband's and her son's deaths occurred under bizarre circumstances. Her best friend, Ellie, lost a son, too, just before Mary Alice's son passed. Finally retired from her position teaching math at the local high school, where she had become an institution, Mary Alice is irked by her replacement, Josie. New York City transplant Josie's urbanity triggers something scornful inside Mary Alice, and this is when things really begin to unravel. The return of Mary Alice's estranged sister Katherine further sends Mary Alice's quaint routine into upheaval. The repercussions of spilled secrets and the appearance of town ghosts could mean the rewriting of history . . . something Mary Alice fears she is not built to survive. Cozy, enthralling, and driven by complex, endearing women, The Old Place explores the mysterious act of realizing the worst in oneself and pushing forward anyway.

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Starred review from July 15, 2022
In his first novel, New York-based journalist and podcaster Finger delves into the intricate entanglements of a small Texas town with flinty, sharply observed affection. Yes, everyone knows everybody's business in Billington, where gossip is the currency; yes, much of the town's social life during the week in August 2014 when this novel takes place revolves around the annual church picnic; and yes, outsiders are the exception in Billington, where traditional values hold sway. But do not expect cowboy swagger or cartoonish hayseeds from Finger, who grew up in Texas. At the novel's center, unwillingly retired math teacher Mary Alice Roth is a jigsaw puzzle of a character, as complicated as any Henry James hero. She initially comes across as an overbearing busybody, showing up at the high school to unnerve her successor--a young transplant from Brooklyn refreshingly unafraid to confront urban-bubble prejudices. Mary Alice thinks she intimidates everyone around her, even the principal, but her often obnoxious bristle is a defensive front that doesn't fool anyone. Locals put up with her out of pity. Twenty-four years ago her husband drowned in what she hopes everyone assumes was an accident, not suicide. (They don't.) In 2002 her son, Michael, died suddenly under mysterious circumstances; an obituary appeared, but there was no funeral. Mary Alice has never discussed Michael's death, even with her best friend, Ellie, though they are bound by grief. Ellie's son, Kenny--Michael's best friend--died weeks before Michael in a car crash the morning after their high school graduation. Finger handles the nature of Kenny and Michael's friendship and the town's reaction with unexpected nuance, showing the problematic confusion in how people see themselves, see others, and assume they are seen by others. What could have turned melodramatic becomes an exploration of the danger of unnecessary secrets. A surprising page-turner--homey, funny, yet with dark corners of anger and grief.

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