Page 13 - Real Style Summer 2019

NEW RELEASES
Culture News
THE NEED
Helen Phillips’ latest thriller follows the story of a paleobotanist who faces off with a masked intruder in her home after unearthing a controversial Bible
at work. In order to keep her children safe, she gives in to their demands, but the true terror doesn’t come until she discovers the identity of the intruder.
CITY OF GIRLS
Author Elizabeth
Grant is best known
for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love. For her latest novel, Grant
tells the story of a young woman in 1940s New York, who joins
a flamboyant theatre after being kicked out of college. It’s there she makes a mistake that ultimately changes the course of her life.
THE NICKEL BOYS
Colson Whitehead
won the Pulitzer prize for fiction for his last novel The Underground Railroad, and for his latest he takes us to 1960s Florida where
a young black man winds up in a juvenile reformatory where the staff beat and sexually abuse the students, while the boys fear disappearing if they resist. The novel, while a work of fiction, is based on true events.
Sara Collins may not be a household name as of yet, but after word of mouth spreads about her debut novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton, that is sure to change. The novel follows the story of Frannie Langton, an 18th century Jamaican slave who is brought to London by her Master as a gift to his research partner and who watches her life change drastically over the months of living there. Her story
is told through her eyes from prison, where she is being held on suspicion of murdering her employer and his wife. The question is, though, did she commit the crime, or is there
more to the story than the evidence suggests?
Frannie’s story is a complicated one, and in order to understand how she ended up in prison she tells you her story from the very beginning. From working in the big house
on a plantation in Jamaica, to assisting a mad scientist of sorts with questionable ethics, and finally being given as a gift to another scientist in London, Frannie finds her life to be different than most women in her time period. Her story draws you in, and keeps you wanting more from start to finish.
Collins does an incredible job weaving a story that at times seems like something you’ve read before, and yet with each page you discover it’s unlike any novel that has come before it. Collins could have veered off in many different directions, but she manages to keep the story on track. Overall it’s a gothic-inspired tale that is part romance, part murder mystery and part historical fiction. It’s a page- turner that you will find you just can’t put down, and a debut that you won’t want to miss.
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