Fiction

January 22, 2013 “We get what we’re given. Nothing more, nothing less,” writes Marjorie Celona in her debut novel, Y. This terse, stoic observation captures Celona’s ethos as a storyteller. Y limns the lives of Shannon, an infant abandoned on the steps of the YMCA, and Yula, the abused and traumatized teenage mother who leaves her there. Moving back and forth in time, the novel follows the events leading up to the birth and Shannon’s frequently harrowing journey through the foster-care system. Through it all, Shannon waits for the chance to find her birth parents and ask the titular question, “Why?” Celona will discuss and sign copies of Y at Parnassus Books on January 24 at 6:30 p.m.

January 10, 2013 In Alana White’s debut novel, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, Guid’Antonio Vespucci and his nephew Amerigo return from a two-year diplomatic mission to Paris only to find their native Florence in disarray. A young woman has been kidnapped, supposedly by the infidel Turks, and a painting of the Virgin Mary is weeping in the Vespucci home church. In fifteenth-century Italy, these events are equally disturbing. Many in Florence believe the Virgin is weeping over Lorenzo Medici’s long argument with Pope Sixtus IV. Rebellion and mutiny are in the air.