Hot Pursuit

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post–9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

At once powerful and tender, Americanah is a remarkable novel that is “dazzling…funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Life in Glory, Wyoming, population fifty-one, isn’t exactly exciting. The dusty old town isn’t even on the map. And for rancher Luke McCallister, that’s just fine. Broken by tragedy, the stoic cowboy spends his time at his Ten Bar Ranch or down at Ima Jane’s Rimrock Bar, trying to avoid the gossip being served along with the food and drink. But the everyday quiet of his life is shattered when he finds a human skull–and possibly the key to Glory’s oldest mystery.

It was one hundred years ago that a band of outlaws were said to have buried their gold in Glory. The one surviving bandit took the secret of the treasure’s hiding place with him to the gallows. Angie Sommers knows the story cold: that man was her great-great-grandfather. She’s come to Glory to see if the old legend of the gold is true, and she wants Luke to help her find it. She even has incentive: a possible clue written by the dead man himself.

Luke has no interest in chasing after pipe dreams. He’s seen the damage too much hope can bring. Still, he can’t deny that Angie makes him feel things he hasn’t allowed himself to feel in years. Something about her sweet, trusting nature, her honest eyes, and unshakable belief makes him feel alive again–and that could be dangerous. For someone else is determined to stop Angie, someone who would do anything for the outlaws’gold. Now, bound by the thinnest of ties and shadowed by danger, Luke and Angie set off in search of a mystery as romantic as the west itself on a journey of faith that will take them into Wyoming’s rugged, treacherous terrain and even deeper into the heart’s tender graces…

“The passion, spirit and strength readers expect from a Calder story–and a Calder hero–shine through.  .  .”
—Publishers Weekly on Lone Calder Star
“Dailey’s pacing, narrative, characterization and dialogue are all handled with verve and grace.”
—Publishers Weekly on Calder Promise

A mesmerizing tale of family secrets, a mysterious circus, and a cursed book—The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler blends magic, mystery, and historical fiction beautifully.

Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls. On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon’s grandmother. The book tells the story of two doomed lovers who were part of a travelling circus more than two hundred years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes and sketches. He is fascinated, yet as he reads Simon becomes increasingly unnerved. Why do so many women in his family drown on 24th July? And could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in years, risk the same terrible fate? As 24th July draws ever closer, Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book, and decode his family history, before it’s too late.