Vote now on Club Calvi's top 3 FicPicks to turn up the heat on your summer reading
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Three books. Your choice. Which one will be next for Club Calvi?
Three mothers, a corporate fixer, a test subject in an artificial intelligence experiment and a private investigator are the main characters facing tough choices in our Top 3 FicPicks. We have a mystery, a work of speculative fiction and a thriller. Which book should Club Calvi read next?
Your choices are "Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight, "Hum" by Helen Phillips, and "Trouble in Queenstown" by Delia Pitts. You can read more about these books, including excerpts, below. Voting has now closed. Check back soon for the winner.
We focus on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
"Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight
From the publisher: When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom's bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.
But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose "out of control" emotions and "unsafe" behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.
Kat has been lying. She's not just a lawyer; she's her firm's fixer. She's damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that's far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she's kept hidden from Cleo.
Kimberly McCreight lives in Brooklyn.
"Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight (ThriftBooks) $21
"Hum" by Helen Phillips
From the publisher: In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family's debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights' respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.
Helen Phillips lives in Brooklyn.
"Hum" by Helen Phillips (ThriftBooks) $21
"Trouble in Queenstown" by Delia Pitts
From the publisher: Evander "Vandy" Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father's expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It's a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in "Q-Town," and worth guarding.
For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They're nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor's nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.
At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there's trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy's sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She's a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn't her strong suit. Vandy won't back off.
Delia Pitts lives in New Jersey.
"Trouble In Queenstown" by Delia Pitts (ThriftBooks) $21
Excerpt: "Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight
As soon as you begin to show, the lies start. They will be well- meaning, all of them. Friends, family, doctors, total strangers— pretty much anyone who spies your pregnant belly will tell you:
Don't worry, you'll know what to do when the time comes. Don't worry, your maternal instincts will kick right in.
Don't worry, your body will bounce right back. Don't worry, you're going to be an amazing mother. Don't worry, it's not as hard as it looks.
Don't worry, being a mother is the most rewarding job in the world.
Don't worry, you will love them more than you ever thought possible.
The last one is true, if dangerously oversimplified.
It is indeed a ferocious love you feel the second you hold your child, hot and wriggling, against your naked chest. You will die to protect that child. You suspect, uncomfortably, that you could also kill. You have never thought of yourself as this person before—wild, animalistic. It will make you feel both powerful and afraid.
This is your first true introduction to motherhood, this study in contradictions.
And then there is the cost of this boundless love that no one warns you about: the worry and sleepless nights. The fear that they will get sick or grow up sad or be forever lonely. And that it will be your fault. Or that someday they might stop returning your calls. After all, just because you love them without condition does not obligate them to love you back.
Oh, and you will get so much of it wrong. Partly because there is no right answer, to any of it. And on that rare occasion when you do knock it out of the park? That will only make you believe that other mothers must be doing it right all the time. You will commit to trying harder.
You will try until your eyes burn and your arms ache. Until your heart crumbles to dust.
You will do whatever it takes. Even when you don't know what that is. Especially then. And get ready, because this will be your job forever, this fixing of everything, including the things that cannot be fixed.
For as long as you both shall live.
THE DAY OF
Our brownstone looks beautiful, lit up a warm gold in the fading April light. Homey and pristine Park Slope perfection, thanks to my mom, of course. God forbid anything she does ever be less than perfect. Except here I am, frozen on the corner, half a block from the house where I grew up, consumed by dread. And this is not exactly a new feeling.
I could turn around right now and get on the subway. Head back to NYU, to that party in my dorm that will probably start soon. To Will. But there was something about the way my mom reached out this time. She insisted she needed to talk to me in person, right now. That's not new. But then she said that she understood why I wouldn't want to come, that she was asking me, begging me, to please come anyway. And she sounded so . . . sincere—and that was new. Of course, it went downhill from there. In the past twenty-four hours, she's fallen back on her tried-and-true method: brute force. Take the messages I got on the train a little while ago—Are you on your way? Are you on the train? Are you almost here? Texting with my mom can be like fac- ing a firing squad.
A car horn blasts on Prospect Park West, and I dart across the street. At the top of the steps, I ring the bell and wait. If my mom is in her office at the back, she might not hear it. And of course I've forgotten my keys.
My phone buzzes in my hand: And?
Will. My breath catches.
Not sure what time yet. I check my phone. It's already six-thirty.
I'll text on my way back?
We're hanging out, that's all. Hooking up. Simple.
OFC, he replies after a beat. And there is that flutter in my chest again. Okay, so maybe it is a little more than hooking up.
I ring the bell again and again. Still nothing.
I send a text: HELLO? Been here for 15 minutes.
It's only been five minutes, but seeing as my mom got me back to Brooklyn under duress—emotional extortion—the least she could do is answer the door. Also, I'm freezing here on the stoop in my white ribbed tank top and low-rise jeans. Of course, that'll be a whole thing—Where's your jacket? Where are the rest of your clothes? Forget about it when she spots my new eyebrow piercing.
I pound on the door, which pops open the second my knuckles meet the wood.
"Mom?" I call, stepping inside the big open space. Living room and dining room to the left, kitchen to the right. "You left the door—"
Something's burning. A saucepan is on the stove, the front burner blazing, the outside of the pot blackened from the flame. I rush over to turn it off, grab a dish towel to toss the pot into the sink, and turn on the faucet. A cloud of steam rises as tap water sizzles into the now-empty pot.
There's an open box of couscous on the counter, next to a neat pile of chopped green beans. A half-empty glass of water on the island. "Mom!" I shout.
Popping and hissing noises are coming from the oven. When I open the door, I'm blasted by a wall of heat and gray smoke. The baking pan I yank out is filled with blackened rocks that I'm guessing used to be chicken.
"The food is burning!" The smoke alarm starts to screech. "Shit."
I'm about to climb up on a stool to shut it off, when I hear a loud noise—thump, thump, thump. It's coming from the direction of my mom's office. S***.
"Mom!"
The thumping stops.
I press my body against the wall as I make my way down the hall. But when I poke my head into the office doorway, it's empty. My mom's laptop, I think her work one, is on the floor near the door, which is weird. But otherwise, it's immaculate as always.
The thumping starts up again. I realize it's coming through the wall, from the adjacent brownstone. George and Geraldine's house—or just George's now, since Geraldine died. George was once a famous doctor, a neurosurgeon, but he has Alzheimer's now. My mom tries to keep an eye on him, brings him groceries sometimes, that kind of thing. For sure, George does some weird stuff over in that house all alone. Right now, it sounds like he's pounding on the walls. He used to do that sometimes when I was in high school and he wanted me and my friends to keep it down.
The smoke alarm is still going off. That's probably it.
I return to the kitchen, jump up on the stool to hit the reset button. The alarm finally stops. A second later, so does George's pounding.
I look past the kitchen island to the long dining room table, the living room beyond. Spotless.
"What the hell is going on?" I whisper. My mom is many aggravating things, but she's not the kind of person to disappear. I spy something under the sofa, then jump down from the stool for a closer look. It's one of my mom's standard-issue light gray canvas flats—very plain, very expensive. When I pull it out, I see that the side of the shoe is smeared with a reddish brown streak, a few fingers wide. Turning back toward the kitchen, I notice the broken glass on the floor, the shards fanned out, glittering in a pool of what looks to be water. There's also another shiny circle on the hardwood floor. Closer to the end of the island, it's about
the size of a dinner plate, the liquid a thicker consistency than what's under the glass. When I head over and crouch down, I can see that it's a similar reddish brown to what's on the shoe. Oh my God. It's blood.
I drop the shoe. My hand trembles as I tug my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans.
"Hey!" my dad answers. "Walking off the plane!"
And for a split second I think, Oh, good, Mom and I won't have to eat alone after all. Like the world hasn't just exploded. I look over at the puddle again. Blood. That's definitely what that is.
"Dad, I think something's happened to Mom."
Excerpted From LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER by Kimberly McCreight, published by Knopf, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Bear One Holdings, LLC.
Excerpt: "Hum" by Helen Phillips
The needle inched closer to her eye, and she tried not to flinch.
Above her, the hum hovered, immaculate and precise. The steadiness of metal, the peace of a nonbiological body. She had heard of elderly people who, at the end, chose hum company over human company.
The hum paused to dip its needle-finger in antiseptic yet again, then re-extended its arm, a meticulous surgeon. Its labor was calm, deft, as hum labor always was.
Yet the pain grew crisp as the needle moved across her skin toward the edge of her eye. A slender and relentless line of penetration. The numbing gel must be wearing off.
She had twice endured childbirth by imagining her way out of her body, into a forest, the forest of her childhood, a faint path weaving among evergreens. But now the forest of her childhood was receding even in her memory. She needed to picture some other forest, not that particular forest, which was gone, burned.
A forest. She tried to force her mind into a forest.
The hum retracted the needle and, with the fingers of its other hand, carefully reapplied numbing gel to the area around her eyes.
She felt that the hum had read her mind, though she realized it was simply reacting to the mathematically dictated decrease in the gel's effectiveness over time.
"Please let me know," the hum said, such a soothing voice, "when it is numb again, May."
Long before hums existed, she was one of many hired to help refine and deepen the communicative abilities of artificial intelligence. She had taken satisfaction in the process, in the network's increasing conversational sophistication and nuance, and her small but meaningful role in that progress, until the network exceeded human training and no longer needed their input. But despite all those years of hours spent at her desk, in dialogue with the network, it was very different to be speaking to a hum in person, to have a hum's actual body near her actual body, each of them taking up a similar amount of space in the room. She had never before been this close to a hum for this length of time, for this intimate a procedure. Back when she still had dental insurance, her dentist proudly introduced his new colleague, a hum with dental tools in place of finger attachments. She was tense the whole twenty minutes, her toes clenched inside her shoes, but her teeth had never felt so fresh.
The hum passed her a plastic cup of water. It was not wearied by the hours of labor. Probably there would be someone else after her, another guinea pig, and another, and another, for the hum could go on and on and on, charging remotely, its grace unyielding, while she frayed more by the minute, her body sweating and growing thirsty. The first time she had seen a hum, standing at a bus stop on a sunny day last year, she had mistaken it for a sculpture, clean silver lines of arms and legs and neck linking oblong head and torso and feet, small spheres at elbow and wrist and knee and ankle joints, polished plastic and brushed aluminum, a gleaming thing.
A week later, she saw another hum on the subway, and soon enough, she saw them on a regular basis, dispensing medications at the pharmacy, taking the kids' blood pressure at the pediatrician, patrolling the streets alongside human police officers, in such high demand by government institutions and private corporations that the company who had figured out how to so elegantly embody the expansive brain of the network had a waitlist months long.
"Thank you," she said, accepting the plastic cup of water from the hum.
She sat up in the operating chair to drink the water.
"Do you want to see yourself, May?" the hum said.
"No," she said, "thank you."
She would wait until the end, until the alteration was complete.
Sitting up, momentarily free of the needle, she was overwhelmed by dread.
What if Jem was right.
He had cradled her face in his hands in bed last night, his eyes damp in the lamplight, it had been a long time since he had touched her with such care.
"It's not like I'm going to die," she had said, closing her eyes.
He moved his fingers over her eyelids, her nose and cheeks.
"Money honey," she said, opening her eyes, straining for levity.
"Blood money," he said. "Skin money," he corrected.
"Rent money," she corrected, a flash of rage. "Grocery money. Dental bill money."
He took his hands off her face, turned away from her with a pained sigh, reminding her of other middle-of-the-night conversations that had ended with a pained sigh. Staying up too late, exchanging panic about the children's futures, what will this planet hold for them by the time they're our age.
Deliberately, she placed her hands on top of the knot in her stomach.
In exchange for the use of her face she was being given the equivalent of ten months' worth of her salary at her bread-and-butter job, the solid stabilizing middle-class job that had brought them to the city a decade before, the job that provided certain comforts to which she had become overly, shamefully attached (buying daffodils at the bodega, dropping sixty dollars on dinner out at the diner with the kids for no reason), the job she had lost—because now the network could teach itself, because Nova in HR could only convince May's boss to keep her on for so long once her irrelevance became irrefutable—three months before. As soon as she was released from this room, she would catch up on the overdue rent. And even after she beelined to the ticket booth, did the outrageous thing, the splurge (but it wasn't a splurge, not really—more like a reset button for their entire lives), still there would be a big cushion, eight months maybe, or nine if they could be frugal. She would find another job. Never mind that she hadn't found a job these past three months, the humiliation of her head bobbing on the screen, the unforgiving sheen of her own overhead light on her face, trying to impress someone far away, trying to spin it that it was because she was so excellent at her job that she had lost her job, rendered herself obsolete. She would find another job. Keep the apartment. Have insurance again, or at least be able to pay out of pocket for Lu's dental care, the relentless cavities, and take Sy back to the specialist to help with his fine-motor skills. Buy groceries. Buy the things the kids kept needing: fluoride rinse, rain boots, a birthday gift for a friend. She would take care of it all. And maybe in the meantime Jem would get more gigs. And gigs he liked better. He could do more each day, five or six rather than three or four, if she did mornings and school drop-offs and school pickups and homework and dinner and bedtime with the kids on her own. That would be fine. She could handle that. Maybe he'd get more art-hanging and furniture-arranging than pest disposal. More weird shopping requests than sewage-backup cleanup. You never knew, with the app. Anyway, his ratings were high, unusually high, though he did fret endlessly over the rare negative ones.
This was a solution. So he shouldn't give her a hard time about it. No one should give her a hard time about it. Nova shouldn't give her a hard time about it. Nova shouldn't have texted, seconds after Jem turned away from her with that pained sigh, Are you sure you're sure about this?
Excerpted from HUM: A NOVEL by Helen Phillips. Copyright © 2024 by Helen Phillips. Reprinted by permission of Marysue Rucci Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
Excerpt: "Trouble In Queenstown" by Delia Pitts
CHAPTER ONE
I was horny. After a week-long dry spell, the itch was nagging again. A pesky throb teasing my gut. I knew just where to go for a scratch.
Queenstown men were plentiful and lonely at the Kings Cross Tavern, so I quit my office at ten P.M. to navigate Center Street in search of a fresh one.
Private investigator was a new line for me. No sergeant with daily assignments anymore; no academic dean setting my agenda. Now I made my own hours, worked my own cases. Small-bore stuff: divorces, employment backgrounders, process serving. Skimpy dough for measly jobs. A monthly retainer from my partner eased finances, but I was my own boss.
Evander Myrick, Investigations. The tag looked slick on business cards, snappy on the front door. Bearing my father's name gave an advantage to me. Until they met me, most clients assumed I was a man. I lost a few bigots who couldn't swallow the shock, but most people stuck.
Gusts skidded from the frozen surface of Lake Trask, whipping my calves as I trotted against the red light. Snow glare lit the street, mocking the flicker of leftover Christmas decorations dangling from lampposts.
I'd worked late every night this week. I deserved my prize. The tavern promised easy rewards.
At the bar's entrance, I planted my boots on the mat and scraped until little Matterhorns of snow gathered in the treads of the rubber carpet. Icicles lined the roof overhang, their drips seeping inside the collar of my wool coat.
Before I could jerk the handle, a patron barreled out. I recoiled, arms spread to regain my balance. The man pushed a plaid cap off his nose and peered at me.
He slurped, "Baby." More gargles. A leer exposed his tongue. "Oh, baby."
White guy, my height, five-nine, maybe thirty pounds heavier. I stepped right; he followed, arms stiff. The lunge carried his hand to my breast.
He squeezed. "Oooo, yeah, baby." The growl slathered my face with fumes of rye whiskey and salted peanuts.
I chopped the edge of my hand to his throat. His eyes bulged. A fat tear dripped. Jaw wobbling, he swiped his lids.
He swung a fist and grazed my coat button.
I shot a left jab to the point of his chin. No body weight, just a burst of energy from shoulder to wrist. His teeth clicked like castanets as his neck twisted. His head flew sideways, body following. The face-plant was highlight-reel-worthy. In the gray snow, blood dotted a halo around his cap.
I tramped his shoulder with my boot. No groans or twitches. I didn't want him to smother. Of course I did. But January was for new beginnings, so I grabbed his jacket collar and pulled him to a sitting position.
Orange stripes of hair slanted across his brow. His lids shivered like mice were running under them. Saliva bubbled at the crack of his lips. Propped against the cement foundation of the tavern, my sparring partner looked like a puppet with his strings cut.
The fight was a nice warm-up round. I rolled my shoulders and shook my hands to release the tension. Now for the main event. I jerked open the green door and stepped across the threshold. I'd shed the icicle water inside, where the bartender, Mavis Jenkins, could rebuke me.
It was our standard game: I'd commit an outrage; Mavis would tut-tut. The moral balance kept us both sharp.
I flapped my arms against my flanks. I took a census of the dimly lit room. Mid-January dragged down the numbers. Five white men sat at tables arrayed along the perimeter; three white men hunkered at the horseshoe-shaped bar. Four Black men and three Latinos clustered at tables near the swinging kitchen doors at the rear.
I polled the racial math of every room I entered. In case I needed allies. Or witnesses. Or alibis.
The bartender and I were the only Black women on the premises. She owned the tavern. I was a private detective. Grit, if not math, was in our favor tonight.
I smiled at my friend and flicked water from my ears. Mavis Jenkins was short, round-hipped, and light-skinned. Lanky and slim, I was her dark foil. I shrugged off the coat, pinched my knit beret, and hung both on pegs to the left of the door.
"I knew your mamá from way back, Vandy Myrick." The bartender's voice rumbled toward me. "And Alma Myrick didn't raise her child in no barn. Stop messing my floor."
"Got it," I said. Not an apology, but close.
I crossed the wide-planked floor at a measured pace. I flexed my left hand, checking for pain. The knuckles stung; tomorrow I'd feel the ache in my rotator cuff. But I rolled easy, arms still, head high. I heard breaths drawn, held, then spewed as I passed. I looked fine for forty-seven, so I gave my audience a good eyeful.
I reached the barstool opposite Mavis and tossed her a wink. I tugged my sweater, smoothing its hem over my hips.
Leaning close, I delivered the news: "You've got a spill on your front stoop." I balled my left fist on the bar top, rolling the knuckles.
Mavis glanced at the scratched skin. "Need to call the cleanup crew?"
"Nah, you're good. He'll find his way home."
"Tidy Sutton was drunk on his ass when I refused him another round. He called me every name, but a child of God. So when Tidy stumbled out, I figured he'd meet some kind of trouble."
"That boozehound was Tidy Sutton?" Surprise tweaked my voice. "He anchored the defensive front line for the Panthers' varsity team."
"Always cleaned up, hunh?" Mavis got the old nickname's simpleminded joke. "Well, those high school glory days are long gone." She swiped her cloth over a nonexistent smudge. "For all y'all."
I settled into the green leather cushion, grinning. "When you're right, you're right." My head tilt subbed for regret in our little play. "As usual."
"'Bout time you learned that. You been back seven months and still thick as a side of beef."
Queenstown was my childhood home. Land of skinned knees, Jheri curls, and coke-bottle eyeglasses; science contests and track meets; fried perms and prom snubs. After Q-High, I'd escaped to Temple University in Philadelphia. Seven months ago, I'd returned in pain. When I left at seventeen, I couldn't sneak into the tavern. I'd had to find boys and booze elsewhere. Since returning, I'd made up for thirty years of lost opportunities.
I watched Mavis rummage below the counter: she retrieved an aluminum bowl filled with lemons and limes, a paring knife, and a bamboo slab. Under her pale fingers the fruit fell into neat quarters. "And 'bout time you showed up this evening."
This was Thursday. I'd already hit the bar Monday and Tuesday this week, so the gap was negligible. But I played along. "You missed me? I'm flattered."
"Don't be." Narrowed eyes didn't screen her amused glint. "I got a new job for you. Big bucks this time."
"What's up?" I always wanted fresh clients.
I didn't need to place my order. Mavis knew the drill: simple syrup spiced with finely ground black pepper; a shot of lemon juice, three ice cubes, club soda. A swipe of lime around the rim and a sliver of celery plopped into the drink completed the work. No gin, no vodka, nothing but fizz. A mocktail minus the ironic name. She set the glass on a coaster between my forearms.
I sipped and sighed. "This virgin Tom Collins is the best you've made so far."
"You say that every time," she growled. "And every time I ask you to skip calling it virgin."
Dry for a year, I'd quit cold turkey. There were times when my tongue curled with longing and doubts clanged through my head. But I'd made a promise to my daughter. Sticking to that pledge held my life together, like a staple clamped in the corner of a frayed letter. Shredded or ripped, I was going to keep my promise to Monica.
Excerpted from TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN by Delia Pitts. Copyright © 2024 by Delia Pitts. Reprinted by permission of Minotaur Books, an imprint St. Martin's Publishing Group.
