The Ingenue

July 1, 2022

Richard Sharpe returns to the mayhem of the early 19th-century Peninsular War in Cornwell's Sharpe's Command (75,000-copy first printing). Following the LJ-starred Big Girl, Small Town, Gallen's Factory Girls features a young woman in Northern Ireland working a grinding summer job made harder by a sleazy boss. In The World We Make, three-time Hugo Award--winning Jemisin returns to New York City, whose six protective avatars must work with the world's other great cities to waylay a populist mayoral candidate threatening the city's very soul (225,000-copy first printing). Following Kapelke-Dale's well-received debut, The Ballerinas, The Ingenue features a former piano prodigy Saskia Kreis, shocked to learn that her recently deceased mother left the family estate to a man with whom Saskia shares a painful past (200,000-copy first printing). In The Book of Everlasting Things, a debut from Delhi-based oral historian Malhotra, two lovers--perfumer's apprentice Samir, who is Hindu, and calligrapher's apprentice Firdaus, who is Muslim--are violently torn apart during India's Partition in 1947. From Silver Linings Playbook author Quick, We Are the Light limns the relationship between a sorrowing widower and an ostracized teenager. The multi-award-winning Rebecca Roanhorse returns with Tread of Angels, set in a late 1800s Colorado mining town where cardsharp Celeste defends a sister accused of murdering a Virtue, one of the town's ruling class. Having successfully entered the adult arena with A River Enchanted, YA author Ross wraps up her duology with A Fire Endless, set on a magical island whose uneasy balance of human and faerie is threatened by the power-hungry spirit of the North Wind (50,000-copy first printing). In debuter Swanson's Things We Found When the Water Went Down, a 16-year-old struggles to find her mother, a crusading environmentalist blamed for a miner's death who vanished in a blizzard. Of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee heritage, Wurth debuts with White Horse, featuring young, Indigenous Kari James, who inadvertently summons both her mother's ghost and a dangerous, blood-eyed creature when she discovers an old bracelet belonging to her mother (100,000-copy first printing). The pseudonymous Zeldis (Not Our Kind) brings together Beatrice, The Dressmaker of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn; her assistant, orphaned teenager Alice; and their newlywed neighbor Catherine, amid shifting relationships and secrets bubbling up from the past (50,000-copy first printing).

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Starred review from October 17, 2022
Saskia Kreis, the 37-year-old heroine of this exceptional psychological thriller from Kapelke-Dale (The Ballerinas), was once a child piano prodigy, but her career petered out in her late teens. She now makes a mediocre living in New York City as a computer coder. Upon the death of her mother, author and illustrator Evelyn Harper Kreis, Saskia returns to Milwaukee, Wis., for the funeral, staying at Elf House, the mansion that had been in her mother’s family for generations and that she hopes to inherit. She’s shocked when she learns that her mother has willed the house to Patrick Kintner, director of development at the University of Wisconsin. The narrative switches between Saskia’s present-day fight to retain what she believes is rightfully hers and sections revealing dark incidents from her adolescence. The plot builds to a conclusion that’s inevitable but still surprising, exhilarating but also disturbing. Chapters often start with excerpts from Evelyn’s 1990s book series, Fairy Tales for Little Feminists. These add substance to Saskia’s own plight and her decision on how to continue her life’s journey, and will resonate with readers in the post-#MeToo era. This suspense-filled tale of revenge and redemption is hard to put down. Agent: Sarah Phair, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.

October 15, 2022
Saskia Kreis has finally returned home, but this isn't the homecoming she had planned. A former piano prodigy, Saskia had a tempestuous relationship with her mother, Evie, now dead before they can reconcile or even say goodbye. At least she will inherit her ancestral home, the once grand Elf House on the Milwaukee lakefront. However, Saskia is shocked to learn that Evie willed the house to her colleague Patrick, a man with whom Saskia shares a secret past. Pursuing legal options, Saskia attends a photographic exhibition that shatters the illusion that she was unique in her relationship to Patrick. She was one of many underage girls Patrick groomed, and the idea of giving him her home is unthinkable. Questioning whether anyone would believe her story, Saskia wrestles with moving forward. Kapelke-Dale's (The Ballerinas, 2021) absorbing novel delves into the repercussions of sexual abuse, interspersing tantalizing extracts from Evie's feminist fairy-tale retellings and fragments of Saskia's teen years with present events that crescendo to a stunning conclusion.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Aptly compared to Kate Elizabeth Russell's much-buzzed-about My Dark Vanessa (2020), The Ingenue is poised to garner similar attention.

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September 1, 2022

What happens when the very things that make you special are taken away? That is the dilemma facing Saskia Kreis when she returns home after the death of her mother to find her legacy has vanished. Saskia used to count on three things that made her special: being a piano prodigy, being heir to the gothic mansion Elf House, and being adored by a man named Patrick. Now she no longer plays piano, and her estranged mother has left Elf House to Patrick. These present events are complemented by the novel's dual narratives of Saskia's life as a child and as a teen. Growing up in a fairy-tale environment, raised by a mother who wrote a series of books titled Fairy Tales for Little Feminists, Saskia traveled the world playing piano and knew that one day Elf House would be hers. But the fairy tale turned dark when at 14 she fell under the spell of Patrick, a colleague of her mother's. In the present, as Saskia begins to realize the truth of her relationship with Patrick, she becomes more determined to keep Elf House from him. It all leads to a shocking ending. VERDICT Kapelke-Dale (The Ballerinas) crafts a twisted suspenseful tale of expectations and identity, of love and vengeance, that will leave readers breathless.--Catherine Coyne

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