CBS New York Book Club with Mary Calvi reveals next round of book options
Join our Facebook group by CLICKING HERE.
Editor's note 4/23/23 6:37 p.m.: The voting period has now closed. Thank you for voting! Your choice will be revealed soon.
Find out more about the books below.
CBS New York Book Club, you have voted!
The CBS New York Book Club team has selected three new fiction books. These "FicPicks" have plots and/or authors connected to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.
Which book will #ClubCalvi read for the next month?
Below you will find information on our "FicPicks," including excerpts. The books may contain adult themes. Voting closed Sunday, April 23.
Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz
From the publisher: When Emma Jansen discovers that the grand Long Island estate where she grew up is set to be demolished, she can't help but return for one last visit. After all, it was a place filled with firsts: learning to ride a bike, sneaking a glass of champagne, falling in love.
But once Emma arrives at the storied mansion, she can't ignore the more complicated memories. Because that's not exactly where Emma grew up. Her mother and father worked for the family that owned the estate, and they lived over the garage like Audrey Hepburn's character in the film Sabrina. Emma never felt fully accepted, except by the family's grandson, Henry—a former love—and by the driver's son, Leo—her best friend.
As plans for the property are put into motion and the three are together for the first time in over a decade, Emma finds herself caught between two worlds and two loves.
Brenda Janowitz lives in New York.
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz (paperback), $16
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz (Kindle), $12
"The Lost Wife" by Susanna Moore
From the publisher: In the summer of 1855, Sarah Brinton abandons her husband and child to make the long and difficult journey from Rhode Island to Minnesota Territory, where she plans to reunite with a childhood friend. When she arrives at a small frontier post on the edge of the prairie without family or friends and with no prospect of work or money, she quickly remarries and has two children. Anticipating unease and hardship at the Indian Agency, where her husband Dr. John Brinton is the new resident physician, Sarah instead finds acceptance and kinship among the Sioux women at a nearby reservation.
The Sioux tribes, however, are wary of the white settlers and resent the rampant theft of their land. Promised payments by the federal government are never made, and starvation and disease soon begin to decimate their community. Tragically and inevitably, this leads to the Sioux Uprising of 1862. During the conflict, Sarah and her children are abducted by the Sioux, who protect her, but because she sympathizes with her captors, Sarah becomes an outcast to the white settlers. In the end, she is lost to both worlds.
Susanna Moore lives in New York City.
"The Lost Wife" by Susanna Moore (hardcover), $21
"The Lost Wife" by Susanna Moore (Kindle), $14
"Symphony Of Secrets" by Brendan Slocumb
From the publisher: Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world's preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern's help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance. With the help of his tech-savvy acquaintance Eboni, Bern soon discovers that the truth is far more complicated than history would have them believe.
In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed is living on the streets and frequenting jazz clubs when she meets the struggling musician Fred Delaney. But where young Delaney struggles, Josephine soars. She's a natural prodigy who hears beautiful music in the sounds of the world around her. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney's career takes off—but who is the real genius here?
Brendan Slocumb lives in Washington, D.C.
"Symphony of Secrets" By Brendan Slocumb (hardcover) $25
"Symphony of Secrets" By Brendan Slocumb (Kindle) $14
Excerpt: "The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz
They say lots of things about going home. Home is where the heart is. There's no place like home.
You can never go home again.
But Emma Jansen was, in fact, going home again. Well, not home, exactly, because the place she grew up wasn't really hers, never really belonged to her.
Still, she had lived there. She had lived there and loved there and had a life there. And that meant something to her.
The train slid into the station at Glen Cove three minutes late. Every time she walked off the train at the Glen Cove station, she imagined herself as Audrey Hepburn, in that scene from Sabrina. She would simply walk to the curb and the dashing David Larrabee would drive up, as if on cue, in his Nash Healey Spider.
Was that why she hadn't taken one of the catering vans out to Long Island? An attempt to live out the plot of one of her favorite childhood movies? She'd watched and rewatched Sabrina so many times with her father as a kid that she had practically every line, every scene memorized. Sabrina may have been a chef, like Emma was now, but Sabrina Fairchild certainly did not drive around in a catering van like Emma Jansen usually did.
Emma walked to the cab stand. No David Larrabee in sight. She adjusted her tote bag on her shoulder as she got in line for a taxi. Moments later, she was in the back of a cab, windows down.
"First time in Glen Cove?" the driver asked when she told him the address.
"No, I grew up here," she said, forcing a smile as she looked out the open window.
In the city, thirty-two-year-old Emma usually took the subway. She hated when cabdrivers tried to make conversation. She never knew what to say. She chastised herself for not ordering a rideshare. At least with the press of a button she could request a quiet ride.
It wasn't that Emma was unkind. She simply wasn't good at small talk. Emma usually jumped right to the big talk.
"In that case, welcome home," the cabdriver said, his smile as wide as the length of Long Island.
Emma didn't know how to respond.
The longer they drove through Glen Cove, the larger the houses became. When they drove up to the address Emma had given him, it looked like an abandoned parcel, not the formerly grand estate it once was: Rolling Hill. A huge construction gate circled the property, with a small opening off the main road.
"This it?" the cabdriver asked. A tiny sign on the gate read, Sales Center, with an arrow directing cars to drive through.
"Yes," Emma said, staring out the window up the long, sweeping driveway. Even in its disarray, she'd know this place anywhere. "That's it."
As they pulled up the drive, Emma felt as if she were in a dream. The sort of dream where you know exactly where you are, but everything is different somehow. The property seemed smaller than she'd remembered. Was that because now, as an adult, she was bigger herself? Or had her mind made things grander in her memory, made every pathway wider, made every structure more imposing?
The estate was in shambles. The grass was brown, dried-up, all over. The bricks on the main driveway were falling apart, breaking away at the edges in some spots, completely missing in others. Gone were the beautiful rows of boxwood shrubs, lined up neatly with nary a leaf out of place, that Linwood would tend to with care. He would spend hours each day meticulously cutting back the greenery, making sure the garden looked polished, manicured. But now there were no flowers in sight, no hydrangea bushes or peonies. Things that made the estate look alive, happy. Lived-in.
It looked abandoned. Which was what it was, really. When the family left, it had been bought by a real estate developer who'd planned to flip the house and the property. But then the recession hit, and there were no buyers for the house and its surrounding eight acres. It soon went into foreclosure and sat empty for years. As the estate deteriorated, it became harder and harder to sell, because even though the property had value, it was a fixer-upper. The amount of money it would take to get the estate back to its former glory seemed infinite. No other developer would touch it.
Until now.
The cab drove past the main house. Emma squinted—surely that wasn't it. The house she knew was stately, and stood proudly among the tall pine trees. One of the pines had fallen over and had taken permanent residence in the left wing of the house, in what used to be the formal living room. The rest of the house hadn't fared much better: the Juliet balconies on the front windows were in various stages of disrepair, and there were broken windows throughout the first floor. The grand lighting fixture that used to hang under the porte cochere was missing, and Emma noticed some faint spray paint marks across the front door.
The house wasn't her house anymore. It had been damaged and vandalized. It wasn't cared for, loved, like in its heyday. Emma felt it in the pit of her belly. Coming back had been a mistake.
"Up here?" the cabdriver asked, stopping at a clearing with a lonely construction trailer standing in the middle. A few luxury cars—one Mercedes and two BMWs—were parked in front. There was a small sign next to the door marked Sales Center.
"Thank you," Emma said, and paid the driver.
She stepped out of the cab and took a deep breath. Whenever she'd come home, the smell of the pine trees would always calm Emma down. She'd forgotten that, the way the pine trees greeted you. The smell of the place was such a huge part of her memory. Walking into the kitchen, the warm perfume of roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and bread baking in the oven. Every spring, the faint smell of the lilacs, which would tell her that summer was coming. When the lilacs bloomed, they'd sleep with the windows open, the lovely scent seeping into her dreams, making them sweet. Even the back shed, which housed the bikes, had a particular aroma. Dirt and sweat and nectar. It smelled like an adventure to come.
From The Audrey Hepburn Estate by Brenda Janowitz. Copyright © 2023 by Brenda Janowitz. Published by arrangement with HTP Books, a division of HarperCollins.
Excerpt: "The Lost Wife" by Susanna Moore
I pretended to be asleep until Ank left the room. Florence was with Ank's sister Viola in Kingstown, and the house was quiet. When I could hear Ank in the shop, I jumped from bed and dressed, stuffing two books, a penknife, a dress, a salami, a moth–eaten tartan cape, and Maddie's letters into a cardboard suitcase. The letters are two years old, but I have read them so many times, I know every word by heart. She says there is work to be had in the West, not just saloon–girl work like in the penny weeklies but work you wouldn't be ashamed to do. I wonder if she will be surprised to see me. Surprised to see I am alone. She never believed I would do it. I counted the money I'd saved, which came to forty–two dollars. I kept thirty dollars for myself and wrapped the rest in a piece of butcher's paper, sealed it in an envelope, and addressed it.
When I heard Mr. Lombardi in the alley, I invited him into the kitchen for coffee. He delivers a supply of colored glass stones to the shop on the last Monday of the month and I was expecting him. I told him I needed to get to Boston, where my sister was ill. I have no sister, but he did not know that. If he would take me to the Fox Point station when he left, I could catch the afternoon train to Boston. When he agreed, I asked him not to tell Ank. I said I had been forbidden to see my sister as she lived in sin with another woman. It was the worst lie I could devise.
My wrist is bandaged where my husband burned me with the soldering flame, and I saw Mr. Lombardi glance at it, but he said nothing. He knew Ank did it. Everyone in our street knows Ank likes to hurt me. Viola knows. My mother knew, although she never did anything to stop it. "It is only what you deserve," she said. "Anyone with the name Aniketos cannot be a proper Christian, and has to be a foreigner, maybe even a Greek. Or worse, a Turk." How she determined that Greeks are not Christians is a mystery, but there is a long list of mysteries where my mother is concerned. Who, for instance, is my father? She refused to tell me. Maybe he, too, is Greek, which would account for my black eyes and hair, and the faint line of hair above my lip. She believed that during conception, the partner who had the strongest orgasm determined the looks of the child, which suggests that my father is Greek, after all. Or a Turk. And that she was is as cold as ice, but I knew that.
I met Mr. Lombardi on Eddy Street as we had planned. It was raining and we didn't talk much, perhaps because we had nothing to say, and we were soon wet through, despite the tarp he threw over us. He had a pint of whiskey in his pocket and now and then took a drink, but he did not offer me any. He dropped me at the Fox Point station and I again reminded him that he was not to tell anyone he had seen me. When he handed down my bag, he slipped a half–dollar into my hand, which caused me to wonder if he believed my story, after all. As I watched him turn the corner, I told myself that everything that happened from then on would be a sign. Even the rain was a sign. It would erase my footprints.
I mailed the envelope and ran into the station. I arrived too late to catch the train to Albany, and spent the night in the waiting room. I thought the porters who wandered in and out might not like it if I sat on one of their benches in wet clothes, so I walked in circles to keep warm, eating the salami and shaking with cold. Every time a man came through the door, I was certain it was Ank and hid my face in my sleeve, but no one bothered me, except for one man who asked if I was free for the evening.
I read Maddie's instructions for the hundredth time. Once I reach Boston, I am to take a train to Albany, where I will board an Erie Canal packet boat which will get me as far as Buffalo. In Buffalo, I am to board a lake steamer to Chicago. The fare in steerage will be three dollars. In Chicago, I am to find a place on a wagon traveling to a port on the Mississippi River called Galena. Then another steamboat from Galena to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I am to find a stagecoach that will carry me to the town of Shakopee, where Maddie will be waiting for me.
***
I must have fallen asleep on the train to Albany, as I don't remember leaving Boston. I was nudged awake four hours later by the conductor, surprised to see wheat fields and cows and barns. I asked him if he knew how I might find the Erie Canal Navigation Company in Albany, which turned out to be a fifteen minute walk from the station.
I bought a ticket on what is called a line boat, departing in an hour. It is sixty feet long and ten feet wide, and used mainly for freight which, the clerk warned me, meant not as select a company as I would find on a packet boat. As it is drawn by mules rather than horses, it is slower, but it is also cheaper. I am paying one cent a mile, which comes to three dollars and ninety cents. It will take five days to reach Buffalo.
I bought some peanuts and a ham sandwich and cider with Mr. Lombardi's half–dollar, reckoning it an unexpected treat, and ate the peanuts while I waited on the landing. Alongside me was an elderly woman holding a small, gilded cage with a rabbit in it. Also a minister who asked if he might preach to us from the Bible. I didn't know how I could refuse and said nothing, but the woman with the rabbit said, "I'd prefer not. I'm given to seizures."
From THE LOST WIFE © 2023 by Susanna Moore. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpt: "Symphony of Secrets" By Brendan Slocumb
Sixteen hours before his death, Frederic Delaney realized that he'd left his Hutchinson champagne stopper at home. It had always accompanied him to a debut performance. Always. What would its absence, now, mean on this night of all nights?
The rumble of the crowd beat against his dressing room door. A moment ago, he'd welcomed it like a quilt tucked around his shoulders, but now he felt the pressure of the audience's expectations enshrouding him, a white torrent against his chest.
He tried to convince himself that all would be well. He'd order a second bottle of champagne. It would be on hand by the end of the performance.
Besides, this was a brand-new moment in his life, a fresh start. Maybe it was time for a new ritual anyway. A second bottle to symbolize his second chance.
Tonight was, without question, that chance. Finishing this last opera had been an arduous journey (he imagined telling Edward Kastenmeier, the Times's head music critic, "Be sure to use the word arduous."), but now, looking back with perspective and distance, he could admit that the writing, and the rewriting, was well worth the agony. This, he told himself again, was his greatest creation, and it was, in a word, glorious. He knew it in his bones.
He mouthed the word to himself: glorious. He imagined how the word would look in print.
This was the music—this magnificent opera—that would relaunch his career. He would bestow a sardonic smile upon Kastenmeier when they next saw each other. "Has-been," Kastenmeier had called him, along with "washed-up" and "ridiculous." Tomorrow Kastenmeier would be whistling a tune replete with remorse, apology, and just a tiny bit of envy. Frederic only wished he could be there to watch Kastenmeier eat crow.
Frederic patted his trouser pockets again, still hunting for that errant stopper.
Until tonight, the ritual had always been the same: Pour out two glasses of champagne. The toast. Cork the bottle. The performance itself. The applause. The return to his dressing room. Then: Emptying out the final two glasses. The second toast. That was how it had gone for years now, years beyond counting. Beyond what he wanted to count.
He'd always brought a champagne stopper with him; a few years ago, in those heady days that would soon be his again, he used to leave it in his tuxedo pocket, because he'd have premieres several nights of the week, all in different theaters. Tonight a ballet uptown, tomorrow a Broadway musical, the next night a medley in a vaudeville house, and then the premiere for a film score. Champagne every night of the week: pour out two glasses before the performance, two glasses after, and the rest of the bottle—if any drops were left—a sacrifice to the gods.
No stopper in the little basket next to the refrigerator. He patted down his pockets a final time, as if a cork would magically manifest inside one.
So he'd throw away the rest of the champagne. For a moment he considered drinking it—that would be one way of making it gone—but of course that was absurd. He needed to have his wits about him during the performance.
Time to begin the ritual. The beginning of a new life.
He retrieved the two glasses from where they glowed upon a shelf, their wide bowls open to the night.
Then he slid the photograph out of his breast pocket. He propped it on a stack of books.
Uncorking the champagne, he poured out the two glasses, lifted one in a toast. The warmth of the liquor smashed against the back of his throat like a wave of joy, unexpected and familiar.
"Here we go, kiddo," he said, tilting the glass toward the photograph before taking a second sip. He sat back, closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them. If only he could cork up the champagne again, hold the trapped air in its bubbles tight inside the bottle for just a little longer.
The knock came at the door. "Mr. Delaney? Five minutes."
It was time.
He gulped down the rest of the glass's contents, barely tasting it, and set it down empty next to its still-full twin. He stood for a moment, resting the full weight of his palms on the desk, looking down at the glasses and the bottle and the photograph. Then he tucked the photograph back in his breast pocket.
When he opened the door, the crowd's murmur instantly expanded, nearly swallowing him in its roar.
With fewer than sixteen hours to live, Frederic Delaney stepped into the backstage corridor on his way to the lights and the applause and the accolades that he was certain would soon be his.
He passed a colored custodian. "Hattie," he told her, "have a fresh bottle of champagne waiting for me when I come back. And that half bottle on my desk—get rid of it. But leave the champagne in the glass."
Copyright © 2023 by Brendan Slocumb
Credit line: Published by arrangement with Anchor Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
