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Three new books by bestselling authors are finalists for Club Calvi's next read
Club Calvi needs a new book and it's asking you to vote on which Top 3 FicPick should be the Readers' Choice.
"Didn't You Used To Be Queenie B?" by Terri-Lynne DeFino is a story of second chances for a disgraced celebrity chef and a young cook who meet in a soup kitchen.
"Zeal" by Morgan Jerkins explores how the power of love unites star-crossed lovers during slavery in the south to a young couple in modern-day New York.
"The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits" by Jennifer Weiner is about pop-star sisters, the secret that drove them apart, and how the separation affects their family decades later.
You can read excerpts and buy the books below. Voting closed on Sunday.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?" by Terri-Lynne DeFino
From the publisher: Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn't.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she'd fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale's future dreams don't hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn't recognize Regina, the soup kitchen's cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It's been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale's talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina's passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it's a turning point for them both.
It's Gale's time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…
Terri-Lynne DeFino lives in Connecticut.
"Didn't You Used To Be Queenie B?" by Terri-Lynne DeFino (ThriftBooks) $23
"Zeal" by Morgan Jerkins
From the publisher: Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .
Natchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war's end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen's Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who's determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her.
Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at a freedmen's school, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.
Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins's extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.
When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family's history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?
Morgan Jerkins lives in Brooklyn.
"Zeal" By Morgan Jerkins (ThriftBooks) $23
"The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits" by Jennifer Weiner
From the publisher: Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were thrust into the spotlight as The Griffin Sisters, a pop duo that defined the aughts. Together, they skyrocketed to the top, gracing MTV, SNL, and the cover of Rolling Stone. Cassie, a musical genius who never felt at ease in her own skin, preferred to stay in the shadows. Zoe, full of confidence and craving fame, lived for the stage. But fame has a price, and after one turbulent year, the band abruptly broke up.
Now, two decades later, the sisters couldn't be further apart. Zoe is a suburban mom warning her daughter Cherry to avoid the spotlight, while Cassie has disappeared from public life entirely. But when Cherry begins unearthing the truth behind their breathtaking rise and infamous breakup, long-buried secrets surface, forcing all three women to confront their choices, their desires, and their complicated bonds.
Jennifer Weiner lives in Philadelphia.
"The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits" by Jennifer Weiner (ThriftBooks) $23
Excerpt: "Didn't You Used to Be Queenie B?" by Terri-Lynne DeFino
Osvaldo is an a******. She's done as he asked; not a drink or a snort or a pill all week. This week, of all weeks! Just so he and Julian would be at her side in her triumph. Didn't that count for anything? It was only three shots. Maybe four. If he can't cut her a small break, then f*** him. How the hell is she supposed to cope when every moment, from opening ceremony to the awards, rides on her shoulders. She has to be witty and sage and beautiful, all at the same time. Everyone wants a piece of her, and she has to give it to them or fade away like every other has-been in this business. This festival is everything. Everything! A new, more dignified stage of her career. The great Queenie B is back on her game. With the success of the festival, after last year's horror, she can slow down, maybe even let go of one of her shows. PBS has been trying to make changes she is unhappy with, anyway. Co-host? No way.
Osvaldo doesn't have to take Julian and go, her beautiful boy crying, arms outstretched, right there in front of everyone. But he does, just to spite her. To punish her. Their friends, colleagues, all those wannabees pretending to be thrilled at seeing the two of them together again are now snickering as she stands on the steps of the stage. Waiting for her cue. No Oz. No Julian. Just Queenie B.
She doesn't make a scene. Queenie blows a kiss, as if Osvaldo is only taking their over-tired, special needs child out of a stressful situation. He'll go along with the story, once he hears it. He doesn't want the bad publicity any more than she does. But he won't let her see Julian again, damn him. As if he has the right to keep her from her child.
Which he does, according to the court orders.
"Queenie?"
She shakes herself out of it, shoulders back and chin up. Her heels are high, the steps are wobbly, and she's not exactly sober, but she nods to the kid wearing the headset and holding the clipboard. He points to the woman on the stage. Linda? No, Lydia. The woman PBS wants as her co-host. Lydia steps closer to the microphone.
"Few of us in the culinary world are recognized outside of it. We are big fish in small ponds, but!" She raises a finger. "Our pond is getting bigger." Laughter. A few whoops. Applause. Lydia waits. She knows how to work an audience, Queenie will give her that. "We all owe a huge debt to our keynote speaker. Not only a brilliant chef, but a charismatic woman who has been instrumental in elevating our art to celebrity status. The two-thousands will usher in amazing things for the culinary world, for all of us. And we owe it in great part to our own, our magnificent, Queenie B!"
The applause. It is dizzying. Queenie climbs the steps, the headset-kid giving her a hand. She looks amazing in her Zac Posen gown; her long hair drapes like an accessory. Her signature smile, the one made into a logo for both her shows, on cookbooks, menus, and personal stationary, sparkles in the spotlights more brilliantly than diamonds. It feeds her, this adulation. It proves them all wrong. Every relative and foster family who gave her back. Every smack and kick and curse aimed to break her. This moment validates everything. Almost everything.
Queenie takes her place center stage, waiting. Basking. A pair of attractive, young men approach from the left. Unfolding the crisp, black chef coat they carry between them, they wait on either side of her. To slip her arms into the sleeves. To cover the designer gown with the one item of clothing worn by every chef, from the prep cooks to Queenie B herself.
Arms raised over her head, she listens to the roar. Then she lowers her arms, lowers her head, and takes the bow they're all waiting for. The bow she has f****** earned.
From DIDN'T YOU USE TO BE QUEENIE B? by Terri-Lynne DeFino. Copyright © 2025 by Terri-Lynne DeFino. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt: "Zeal" by Morgan Jerkins
She was gone.
Harrison returned to Natchez after the war, and she was gone, breaking her promise. Tirzah, the love of his life and the ember in the dark nights of his soul.
Two years and twelve days before, Harrison and his beloved had stood within a grove of magnolia trees on the grounds of the Phoenician Estate to say their goodbyes. She was crying so hard that Harrison had to hold her waist so she wouldn't collapse. And he, sweaty with a dirt-caked face, had asked her to wait for him until the war was over. No matter if they were free people or still slaves, he would be coming back for her. She shook her head until her curls flopped over her face and wondered aloud why he wanted to fight a battle they would never win. Before he could answer, one of the Union officers called for him to get moving and Harrison had to let her go. He had never felt a pain so deeply wedged in his chest as in the moment he left the Phoenician. But he had to get away. He hated being who he was now that he was in love. He hated how he could not defend his beloved from the danger of being in the main house under the lustful eye of their owner's son, Spencer. Going off to war, he resolved, he would defend her, himself, and all slaves, and come back to Natchez with pride.
But the Natchez he left, with all its stunning wealth, was not the same one to which he returned. As he and his fellow soldiers rode their horses on a trail alongside the Mississippi approaching the city, they saw that all the levees had been destroyed. With each step closer to their destination, the smell of festering animal carcasses became stronger. Weeds and swampland had swallowed up fields upon fields of cotton.
When his regiment arrived at the area underneath the bluffs, they found it eerily still. They passed by a well-known wood mill and a large plantation and garden—the only one of its kind below the hill. Before he'd left, at least a half dozen negroes would be tending to the property at a given time, and now there were none. Hardly anyone was mixing in the street, besides a few negroes here and there. There were no steamboats. No sound of foghorns or carriage wheels bumping along the principal street. The relative quietness bothered him. Harrison had to fight to smother the thoughts of the absences of many people being a bad omen.
"You still thinkin' 'bout dat lady, ain't ya?" a fellow soldier asked, catching Harrison's line of sight to a trail where one could ascend the hill to the city proper.
"Still thinkin'," Harrison replied. "I finna take my horse up dere right nah so dat I don' waste anotha second."
"You needa give dat horse a rest first. 'N by de way, what makes you think dat she gon' even be dere? Look around you."
Harrison made a soft noise of disapproval and steered his horse away from the rest of the group, embarking on his own path.
"You needa go 'n get you a nice one to lay up wit for all dat hard work you put in!" another soldier yelled out.
Harrison squeezed his thighs around his horse until he couldn't hear his comrades any longer. The horse's trot widened into a full-speed gallop as they scaled the bluffs and made their way to Natchez proper, where all the most spectacular plantations sat high. Cows and pigs decomposed along the trodden path, but Harrison was undeterred by the carnage. He knew his way. The Phoenician was only about three miles west of the town cemetery and a hospital, two structures that were still intact when he passed, but what Harrison saw next made him instruct his horse to slow. The plantation next to the Phoenician had been desecrated. Weeds grew like outstretched hands over columns and window panels. Acres of azaleas, wildflowers, crape myrtles, and roses had wilted, been trampled upon, or shriveled up and died.
When he finally arrived at the Phoenician's entrance gates, which appeared to have been broken, he slowly dismounted from his horse and took off his hat when his boots touched soil. He stood in front of the grand expanse of his former home and closed his eyes. A cacophony of noise overtook his mind—overseers barking orders, mournful cries, music, laughter, exhausted panting. He allowed his lids to flutter open, expecting to see what he'd dreamt more than once, tossing in his disease-ridden barracks: Spencer Ambrose kneeling in agony over his lost labor, slaves dropping their cotton to dance, Tirzah running out of the main house and into his arms. But there was no one in sight. Unconvinced that he was truly alone, Harrison walked farther into the property. Flowers that slaves had maintained so beautifully lay limp on the brown patches of grass. The roof that Harrison had worked in the blistering heat to maintain was showing signs of rot, which also explained the faint smells of animal droppings and urine; the Phoenician must be overrun with pests. Everyone really was gone, Harrison thought, because there could be no other reason why the grand estate, once home to more than a hundred slaves at a time, had reached this level of devastation.
He stood underneath the main house's now-cracked pillars and inhaled deeply, hoping to detect a whiff of Tirzah's cooking, only to have the smell of gunpowder and blood irritate his nose. He circled around to the slave cabins, where a single chair rocked mysteriously on one of the small porches. Thinking that one of his old friends must still be around, Harrison put his fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle.
"Hey! C'mon out dere! Did ya hear de news? We free!"
Not a single door swung open. No quick pacing of feet racing to see what was going on. No jubilant cries out to the Lord for finally bringing them out of their Egypt.
He made his way back around to the main house, planning another circle. While he was reminding himself that the possibility of seeing Tirzah again was worth returning to the place he had dreamt so often of leaving, he felt something small and smooth underneath his right foot. He lifted his heel to see an oxblood-colored wallet with the letter T emblazoned upon it, and dropped to his knees. Seven and a half by three and a half inches with a bunch of pockets to stow whatever her heart desired. A guttural wail climbed out from the depths of his belly and shook the birds clean from their nests in the trees. The wallet was a gift he had given to Tirzah one Christmas Eve. That T, in a golden garland motif, was the first letter he had learned to write, the first letter he requested that she teach him in their secret nightly meetings. Had he taken too long, or had she given up too soon? Either way, she really was gone.
From ZEAL by Morgan Jerkins. Copyright © 2025 by Morgan Jerkins. Excerpted by permission of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt: "The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits" by Jennifer Weiner
Prologue
DETROIT, 2004
I never should have touched you," Russell D'Angelo says to the empty room.
He twists the lock, toes off his cowboy boots, and leans his fore- head against the hotel-room door, against the framed placard. He's too close to read the emergency evacuation routes it details, even if his eyes weren't blurry with tears. He pinches the bridge of his nose, hard. This is an emergency, the worst he's ever been in, and knowing how to exit the building safely won't help.
He is thinking about how she looked, about what he'd said.
I never meant for this to happen, he'd told her as she'd glared at him from the hallway, her face shocked and pale and heartbroken. He'd kept talking, hating the pleading sound of his voice. I'm sorry.
Russell shakes his head to stop the thoughts. Three paces bring him to the bar cart. He unscrews the cap of the whiskey bottle and lifts it to his mouth, welcoming the burn of the liquor. His eyes are closed, but he can still see them both. Two sets of eyes, two faces, turned toward his. Different faces, but with the same shape to their lips, the same slope of their cheeks. Two women, waiting for an answer Russell didn't have.
"I'm an idiot," he tells the room. And it's true. He hadn't even no- ticed what was happening until it was too late. It wasn't until he was standing in front of an officiant, thirty of their closest friends, three hundred fellow celebrities, and a photographer from People magazine that he'd looked over his bride's shoulder and caught her sister's eyes, and the knowledge of the mistake that he was making hit him like a punch to the breastbone, rattling his heart. "I do," he'd said. I'm fucked, he'd thought. And from that moment on, a part of him has been wait- ing, counting down toward this place and this night.
You have to choose, she'd told him. Except there isn't a choice here.
Not really. Not at all.
Twenty minutes later, half the whiskey is gone, and Russell's lean- ing heavily against the wall, looking blearily around the room. His eyes move from object to object without seeing. There's the bed, still made. His suitcase, open on the luggage stand, clothes spilling out from its unzipped top—his jeans and tee shirt, the silly leather pants the stylist insists on because he's the lead guitar player in what is, currently, one of the most successful bands in the country, and leather pants are what cute boys in hot bands are required to wear. There might even be a law about it.
"I never should have touched you," Russell says again. He hums a handful of notes in a minor key and decides to write the words down. Moving carefully, deliberately in his inebriation, he locates the tiny pad of hotel stationery and a pen, and writes with care, imagining piano chords, a mournful twangy guitar. Maybe the words will be the backbone of a chorus, the way into a song, he thinks. And then remembers what he's done, and how that door is closed. There will be no more songs for him.
He bends to collect his boots, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull them on before walking out into the hall. It's the middle of the night. It's quiet, and all the doors are closed. Nobody sees him as he walks through the lobby, bootheels clicking. Nobody sees as he pushes the heavy glass doors open and steps out into the cold and the dark.
Excerpted from the book THE GRIFFIN SISTERS GREATEST HITS by Jennifer Weiner. Copyright © 2025 by Jennifer Weiner. From William Morrow books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
