Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011
An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café.

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"Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long...

When a scheming lord tears Jess's family apart, she must rely on her unlikely friendship with Kal, a high-ranking Patron boy, and her skill at Fives, an intricate, multi-level athletic competition that offers a chance for glory, to protect her Commoner mother and mixed-race sisters and save her father's reputation.

"My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black -- black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking...

"Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries...When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she's never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death, only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy"--

"After her sister is raped and murdered, Lily Wong dedicates her life and ninja skills to the protection of women. But her mission is complicated. Not only does she live above the Chinese restaurant owned by her Norwegian father and inspired by the recipes of her Chinese mother, but she has to hide her true self from her Hong Kong tiger mom who is already disappointed in her daughter's less than feminine ways... But when a woman and her son she escorted...

"In 1210 AD, Uma, a Healer raised by a tribe of people native to Wilde Island, must complete an impossible task for the English queen or be burned alive, and her only ally is the part dragon, part fairy Pendragon prince who is struggling with a secret of his own"--

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths. Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, either in her hometown or on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of college, but when her family is struck by tragedy she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, a...

Erin Powers navigates growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee being raised by a white, closeted lesbian mother. Based on the author's experience. Two girls on different timelines-- each growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee-- find their lives bridged by a mysterious portal. Part memoir, part speculative fiction, Gibney examines the absurdities of the adoptee experience through her own adoption experiences. -- adapted from jacket....

"Quito Cruz might be a composing and piano genius, but he's a few notes short of success. Broadway, here I don't come. But Quito knows what the problem is. Or rather who. Because ever since that night in college-with pretty-boy jock Emmett Aoki--his inspiration has been completely MIA ... Now Quito's beloved dad wants him to put on a charity performance in his hometown. And there's one hella big string attached: convince Emmett--now one of Hollywood's...