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Three New York writers. Three new books. Which will be our Readers' Choice?
A woman living with motion blindness believes her neighbor is going to be murdered.
A woman who wakes from a coma with amnesia must rely on her identical twin to to provide answers, only to fear that her sister is lying to her.
A woman running from tragedy searches for her father who she believes to be Ernest Hemingway.
The CBS New York Book Club is kicking off a new year with its latest, thrilling Top 3 FicPicks: "The Silence in Her Eyes" by Armando Lucas Correa, "Where You End" by Abbott Kahler, and "The Wildest Sun" by Asha Lemmie.
Which book should the club read next?
We focus on fiction with plots and/or authors based in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. Read the excerpts below and cast your vote! These books may have adult themes.
Voting closes Sunday, January 21. We will reveal the Readers' Choice on Tuesday, January 23.
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"The Silence in Her Eyes" by Armando Lucas Correa
From the publisher: Leah has been living with akinetopsia, or motion blindness, since she was a child. For the last twenty years, she hasn't been able to see movement. As she walks around her upper Manhattan neighborhood with her white stick tapping in front, most people assume she's blind. But the truth is Leah sees a good deal, and with her acute senses of smell and hearing, very little escapes her notice.
She has a quiet, orderly life, with little human contact beyond her longtime housekeeper, her doctor, and her elderly neighbor. That all changes when Alice moves into the apartment next door and Leah can immediately smell the anxiety wafting off her. Worse, Leah can't help but hear Alice and a late-night visitor engage in a violent fight. Worried, she befriends her neighbor and discovers that Alice is in the middle of a messy divorce from an abusive husband.
Then one night, Leah wakes up to someone in her apartment. She blacks out and in the morning is left wondering if she dreamt the episode. And yet the scent of the intruder follows her everywhere. And when she hears Alice through the wall pleading for her help, Leah makes a decision that will test her courage, her strength, and ultimately her sanity.
Armando Lucas Correa lives in New York City.
"The Silence In Her Eyes" By Armando Lucas Correa (Hardcover) $25
"The Silence In Her Eyes" By Armando Lucas Correa (Kindle) $13
"Where You End" By Abbott Kahler
From the publisher: When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma, she sees her mirror image: Jude, her twin sister. Jude's face and name are the only memories Kat has from before her accident. As Kat tries to make sense of things, she believes Jude will provide all the answers to her most pressing questions:
Who am I?
Where am I?
What actually happened?
Amid this tragedy, Jude sees an irresistible opportunity: she can give her sister a brand-new past, one worlds away from the lives they actually led. She spins tales of an idyllic childhood, exotic travels, and a bright future.
But if everything was so perfect, who are the mysterious people following Kat? And what explains her uncontrollable flashes of violent anger, which begin to jeopardize a sweet new romance?
Duped by the one person she trusted, Kat must try to untangle fact from fiction. Yet as she pulls at the threads of Jude's elaborate tapestry, she has no idea of the catastrophe she's inviting. At stake is not just the twins' relationship, but their very survival.
Abbott Kahler lives in New York City and Greenport, New York
"Where You End" by Abbott Kahler (Hardcover) $24
"Where You End" by Abbott Kahler (Kindle) $15
"The Wildest Sun" by Asha Lemmie
From the publisher: When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never known. But her quest—spanning from Paris to New York's Harlem, to Havana and Key West—is complicated by the fact that she believes him to be famed luminary Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she's truly meant to be. But what will happen if she is wrong, or if her real story falls outside of the legend of her parentage that she's revered all her life?
Asha Lemmie lives in New York City.
"The Wildest Sun" by Asha Lemmie (Hardcover) $22
"The Wildest Sun" by Asha Lemmie (Kindle) $15
Excerpt: "The Silence in Her Eyes " by Armando Lucas Correa
When he's in front of my door, I keep my eyes wide open, because I know that if I close them, he will disappear, leaving behind only the aura of sun and sweat he greets me with each day. I want to keep his image.
"Miss Leah, here's your order," he says.
Even though I can't see his lips moving, every one of his words is like a caress. I stretch out my right hand and he places the bag over my wrist, making sure it doesn't slip. I can feel his warm fingers linger on my forearm.
I mustn't shut my eyes. If I do, he'll disappear, like he always does, I tell myself as a gust of air stings my pupils, the need to blink filling my eyes with tears.
"Call if you need anything else. Have a good evening," the boy says.
I listen to his parting words and hear his voice moving off toward the elevator. Its doors open and close, and it begins to descend; I hear the bell as it reaches the lobby. Then I hear the automatic front door swing closed and the boy's footsteps as he hurries away—but according to my eyes, he is still at my front door, enveloping me with his cheer. Until I blink, and when I open my eyes once more, he is gone.
Walking back to the kitchen, I leave the food on the white stone draining board and go back to the glass doors but don't look out. I think of him staring up at me from the sidewalk, still smiling at me, an orphan now.
And that's when it sinks in. For the first time in my life, I am alone. In this apartment, full of memories. Some of them, I am sure, are better off forgotten.
Mom! I want to call out but find myself unable to. It was time for her to get some rest. That's what I've been telling myself since leaving the cemetery.
I move away from the window, dreaming that the boy is still down below, waiting for an invitation to call on me again.
I lay my supper out on the table: tomato soup, a dinner roll, a pear, and a bar of dark chocolate, half of which I will take to bed with me, saving the rest for tomorrow. On Fridays I usually eat with Mrs. Elman and Olivia, the elderly ladies on the fifth floor, who are as good as grandmothers to me, but this time I made my excuses beforehand, knowing I would be exhausted after the cemetery. Mom had made it crystal clear that she wanted only Antonia and me at her send-off. She didn't want a funeral full of weeping and prayers. And so there were none.
My mother's bedroom is mine now. Tonight, I plan to sleep there for the first time, despite a vague feeling of apprehension that is bubbling up inside me. I worry the hallucinations, which began when I was a teenager, will start up again. In preparation, I've turned the bedroom into a fortress, with walls of books to shield me from noises coming from the adjoining apartment and the voices that tend to float up from the building's interior courtyard. I enjoy my acute sense of hearing in the daytime, but at night it is torture and has grown only more pronounced over the years. That is why, even when the temperature outside is below freezing, I turn the air-conditioning on to block out any hint of sound.
When the sun comes out, the sounds calm down. Daylight softens not only other people's voices, the cries of babies, dogs barking, and the sirens of ambulances going to and from the hospital on the corner but also the sounds of arms slipping into coats, muffled footsteps, and the jagged breathing of the first-floor tenant, who is destined to die of a heart attack if his sleep apnea is any indication.
My sense of smell is another superpower, if you can call it that (I live in New York City, after all). Each of my neighbors has a distinct scent I am able to detect from afar. Whenever I enter the elevator, I can tell if Mr. Hoffman, who smells of mothballs, has recently come or gone, or if the kids from the fifth floor have been messing with the buttons again. I also know if Mrs. Segal's shih tzu has lately wiped its wet muzzle on the rug, or if Mrs. Stein's teenage daughter smoked marijuana the night before.
I go to bed clutching my book and stare at the towering stack Mom left behind for me to conquer on my own. I am currently engrossed in a novel called A Blind Man's Tale, by a Japanese author she introduced me to. Mom ordered an English edition from some obscure website, and it took more than two months to arrive. It's about a sightless masseur in medieval Japan who becomes the confidant of a beautiful, lonely noblewoman.
I focus on the words and close my eyes before turning each page. When I open them again, there is the next one. For me reading is a constant process of blinking. It is past midnight by the time I close the book, and I consider turning on some music. Perhaps "Blue in Green," my mother's favorite melody, which my parents used to play every year on their anniversary—they danced to it on their wedding day—but sleep comes quickly tonight.
I wake up in the early hours to the subtle, masculine fragrance of bergamot—a combination of citrus and Earl Grey tea. The smell reminds me of something, but I don't know what. A scent that takes me back to my childhood and terrifies me. I feel like I'm being watched. I think I can hear someone breathing. Am I dreaming?
Still half-asleep, I gather my thoughts and try to piece together a face. The scent is somehow familiar, and yet it doesn't belong to any of my neighbors. This is someone I don't know.
The someone's heart is beating fast. What should I do? Scream? Turn on the light? It must be a nightmare.
In my mind, I go over my bedtime routine. No, I didn't leave the fire escape window open. I'm convinced I locked the front door. There is no cash in the apartment.
So, what could they want? Mom's jewelry? Maybe the laptop? Let them take the laptop. All the possibilities I can think of flash through my mind. Someone could have followed me home, traced my footsteps, but in that case, I would have noticed right away. That strange smell I still can't place, a mixture of bergamot . . .
I shudder. A draft of cold air creeps beneath the sheets, sweeps over my body, and settles on my shoulders. I can't stop shivering. Slowly opening my eyes, I confirm that yes, I am awake. This presence—who or whatever it is—isn't a nightmare. I stay completely still, facedown, and pretend to be asleep.
There is a stranger in the room.
Excerpted from THE SILENCE IN HER EYES by Armando Lucas Correa. Copyright © 2024 by Armando Lucas Correa. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpt: "Where You End" By Abbott Kahler
KAT: NOW
The Night of the Accident
MARCH 1983
It was just like me to go ahead and die, leaving her behind. That's what I'd hear her say, if I could hear her at all. Foolish, careless, typical. Expected, even. Another instance in which she was forced to clean up my mess, tend to my mistakes. Her guillotine voice would curse me in the sweetest tones. She would softly rake her bloody fingernails against my lifeless arm. She would say all the right things to lure me back, and keep all the wrong things to herself.
On that night we left the old neighborhood just as the rain began to fall. I ran first—I've always gone first—leading her back the way we came: through a colony of dusty relics, across a lush runway of grass, down a street where the homes are crowded with ghosts. I was not right. There was a pulsing inside my head, the tempo and weight of a thousand percussive drums, but I convinced myself otherwise, let my mind talk me into believing my own lies.
As we set off, me behind the wheel and my twin sister by my side, the rain stopped and I felt a shivery relief. The clouds cleared and the full moon shot its light through the craggy branches, illuminating the road ahead.
I saw the deer's body right before I swerved hard right, its long neck snapped unnaturally back. Then came a tree and a sheet of glass and the feeling that my head had launched away from my body, soaring into the sky, too far for me to retrieve it. I had time to form one last thought before my mind emptied itself of all things: She will know how to fix me.
JUDE: NOW
Hours after the Accident
MARCH 1983
Jude sits in the hospital waiting room, folding and unfolding her hands, her fingernails still stained with her sister's blood. Kat has been wheeled off to some distant room but Jude can see her perfectly—a tangle of wires on her chest and a tube stabbing her throat and the nurses fluttering about like a flock of poisoned birds. A drop of sweat falls onto Kat's cheek. Machines blink and hiss. Instruments maneuver and gleam. Her long, taut body is hidden beneath a sheet. She has lost all sense of herself. The light begins to dim behind her closed eyes and Jude watches it happen, an excruciating descent, a darkening by degrees.
Kat is leaving her.
Against Jude's will, her body holds itself absolutely still; the only moving part is a ticker in her mind, tallying Kat's absence. One second, two, ten. Jude's brain pulses and her heart grows quiet, as though the two organs are trading places, confusing their functions. Thirty seconds, thirty-five. Her lips collapse into a severe blue slash, trapping her breath behind them. Eighty-nine, ninety. Her ears register a strident voice, telling her to come back and stay with him, stay with him, stay with him, that's it, steady, steady, good . . .
"Miss," the doctor says, grasping Jude's arm. "Are you okay?" Those interminable ninety seconds rewind. Her body frees itself.
Her mind resumes being a mind and her heart a heart, racing and pounding as minds and hearts do. Her lips part and allow greedy gulps of breath. The waiting room shakes itself out and returns to its proper form: four dingy beige walls, a fake plant with dusty leaves, a tidy line of stackable fabric chairs, the sounds of coughing and weeping and the nightly news predicting nuclear war. The doctor squeezes Jude's arm again and confirms what she already knows: Kat had been gone but now she is halfway back, alive but in a coma. He whispers a series of chilling words: traumatic brain injury, intercranial pressure, damaged axons. She will live but might never be the same. Jude should expect the worst. She should prepare.
—————
All their lives they've compensated for each other, and now, with Kat lying still and silent and swathed in bloody ribbons, Jude begins to do the work of her twin's brain. Kat must be wondering why it's so dark behind her eyes, a dark deeper than sleep, and why the voices she hears seem so slushy and far away. Her arms itch where the needle has impaled her skin and she's dying to scratch, but her other arm is weighted by something unseen. She is frustrated and scared and, above all, angry—why is she flattened and immobile instead of out in the world, raising a glass and toasting everything to come? She tries to rescue her voice, but the words stick in the grooves of her tongue.
She is counting on Jude to bring her around, to restore her so that they are again a perfect whole.
"Kat," Jude says, her mouth clamped to her sister's ear, her lips fitting perfectly in the curves and folds, her voice aimed deep into the canal. "I know you hear me. You are not allowed to die. I will kill you if you die, and then where will we be? Do you want us to spend all of eternity haunting each other's ghosts?"
Even under the bandages, Kat still looks like Jude—an opposite replica of her. Mirror image twins, they're called. A heightened, italicized version of identical, when the embryo splits later than usual. Jude is right-handed and Kat favors her left. Their hair whorls push in different directions, Kat's clockwise and Jude's counter. Their voices, too, establish balance: Kat's is frenzied and rushed, a freight train in danger of careening offtrack; Jude's is measured and parsed, doled out in careful servings, as though in danger of drying up. The same purple vein snakes along opposing temples, pulsing when they are excited or angry or shocked. A birthmark on either shoulder, a deepened dimple on either cheek, one slightly elongated incisor on either side of their mouths.
Excerpted from WHERE YOU END: A Novel by Abbott Kahler. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2024 by Abbott Kahler. All rights reserved.
Excerpt: "The Wildest Sun" by Asha Lemmie
Paris, France
September 1945
The heat from the hundred flames washes over me, and in this moment I am purified like true gold. I keep my eyes tightly closed and my head bowed. Here, in this little chapel, I kneel before the altar covered in candles. It is one of the long gray hours between midnight and dawn, and Paris is sleeping peacefully, her lights shining once more, now that the war is won.
I would be asleep too if I had not killed a woman.
Mother Bernadette— formerly known as Louise de Valence—says that only passionate prayer and true repentance can save my soul. She urges humility. Easy for her to say— this is a woman who was born with notable beauty and wealth, and threw both into the gutter to become a bride of Christ. But humility is not something that comes to me naturally. I am the daughter of a proud father and a delightfully vain mother. I am a girl who has always known that her destiny must lead to greatness, and that I must achieve it whatever it costs me.
I fiddle with the borrowed rosary in my hands. Maman wanted me to have a good education, and so she entrusted me at a young age to the care of the nuns at the Académie de Sainte Geneviève, under the watchful eye of their Mother Superior, her dearest childhood friend, Louise. It did not matter that we could not afford the fees, that all of Maman's family money had trickled away over the years, that all we had was the roof over our heads, heirlooms she was too proud to sell, and a good name tarnished by the rumors about my begetting.
Louise insisted that I be given an opportunity to learn. Christian charity, she called it. She was kind, patient, and attentive towards me, and I hated her nearly as much as I loved her. It was childish of me, but I did. My pride could not bear it. My temper, quick and lethal, simmered every time she fixed her serene smile on me.
I dig the sharp edge of the rosary's ivory crucifix into my palm, and I know without a doubt that my rage has finally destroyed me.
There is no possibility of forgiveness for what I have done. Not this time.
I cannot look into Maman's cornflower blue eyes and tell her that I am sorry. I cannot go to school in the coming weeks to doze through Latin and mingle with my classmates who don't like me much but are too polite to say so. I cannot walk on the Left Bank of the Seine and buy books from the peddlers and then read them on the very same day with my feet dangling above the water.
My native city is more alive than ever before, delirious with joy, bursting through the ashes like a phoenix taking flight, but she is lost to me forever. I have had her all my life, and even through these harsh, joyless years of war, I was grateful. I don't know who I will be without Paris.
When I rise from the floor, I will leave the girl that I was behind. I lay my head on the cold floor and I whisper my final confession.
"Mon Dieu," I say piteously. My voice is full of tears, but my eyes have run dry. "I was jealous. I was foolish, and prideful, and I hated her for her weakness, and for her beauty, and for being so unceasingly charming." I dig the crucifix deeper. "I wanted so much," I whisper, dropping my voice so low that I can barely hear myself. "I wanted people to love me as they always loved her, no matter her failings. I wanted her to love me."
The darkness swims before me. I can feel my face burning with the last remnants of my shame.
"I didn't want to be second," I whimper. "Eternally silver."
I shove my fist into my mouth to muffle my desperate cries. I can't unravel. Not again. I spent more than a week bedridden, sobbing as if I would tear myself in two, refusing food, refusing water, refusing even sleep because it was a respite from grief.
I have no right to do that again.
I will have to move forward now with only enough confidence to get me from one day to the next. I must keep moving forward. I am damned, but I am free now too, and I have to find him.
I rise slowly from the floor, my limbs aching, my head heavy. I light a candle for her soul, and I hope that the God I have never given much thought to at all is indeed real, so that she may find the peace that so cruelly escaped her on earth.
I drop the rosary, and I turn my back on the dancing lights and walk slowly back to my room.
In a few hours, the sisters will awaken for morning prayers. I gather my few belongings, and then I sit down at the small desk to write a note.
My hand shakes, though I have known for days now what I must say. Even as I write, my mind has already flown away, slipped through the cracked window like a freewheeling sparrow. I can see the ocean that I will cross, shimmering beneath the moonlight, and the towering buildings of America. I can see his warm brown eyes, and his laughing mouth. If I try very hard, I can just barely imagine the spark of recognition that will pass between us, and I feel, once more, the fleeting joy of a fool flying too close to the sun.
Dearest Mother Bernadette,
Or Louise, as I know my darling mother would call you. I am so sorry to leave you like this, but I didn't have the courage to do it any other way. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I'm so sorry to fail you, but there is something I must do.
You need not trouble yourself with worry for my soul. It is past your power.
I will write to you, but I can never come back. You know why. I love you, and I wish I could stay, but that is not my destiny. I took the money Maman entrusted you with from your room. You told me that she gave it to you for safekeeping when I was a baby, the last of her inheritance, so that she could never squander it and leave me destitute. I know you didn't want me to have it yet, but I need it now.
You said once that you thought God had a great plan for me, but I cannot trust His ways, and so I have made a great plan for myself.
I'm going to find Papa.
All my love,
Delphine Violette Auber Hemingway
Excerpted from THE WILDEST SUN by Asha Lemmie (© 2023 A L Creative Works, LLC) and published by arrangement with Dutton an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
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