Great Black Hope opens on Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons, when police officers descend and arrest a young Black man named Smith for cocaine possession. In the blink of an eye, his life transforms from charmed to a nightmare. As he struggles to adjust to his changed reality, while also mourning the loss of his best friend from an overdose, he confronts issues of race, class, addiction, and much more, in this propulsive, beautifully written debut novel.

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Kostya has a truly unique gourmet talent – he experiences vivid aftertastes, which he identifies (with some help from a ghost and a psychic) as tastes that are coming from the dead. Aftertaste, the buzzy debut novel by author Daria Lavelle, is like a mashup of the food-centric magical realism in Like Water For Chocolate and a restaurant memoir like Sweetbitter.

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My Friends, the highly anticipated new book from beloved Swedish novelist Fredrik Backman, delivers on all you’d expect from a Backman novel – richly drawn characters, poignant emotions, and clever turns of phrase. The book consists of two parallel narratives, united by a painting, and features a vivid set of teenage characters that bring to life the power of transformative friendships.

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