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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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SPEAKING OF SUMMER

Kalisha Buckhanon

A literary thriller about one woman's desperate search for her missing twin sister, a multi-layered mystery set against the neighborhoods of Harlem.
On a cold December evening, Autumn Spencer's twin sister Summer walks to the roof of their shared Harlem brownstone and is never seen again - the door to the roof is locked, and no footsteps are found. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing woman, Autumn must pursue answers on her own, all while grieving her mother's recent death.

With her friends and neighbors, Autumn pretends to hold up through the crisis. She falls into an affair with Summer's boyfriend to cope with the disappearance of a woman they both loved. But the loss becomes too great, the mystery too inexplicable, and Autumn starts to unravel, all the while becoming obsessed with murdered women and the men who kill them.

In SPEAKING OF SUMMER, critically acclaimed author Kalisha Buckhanon has created a postmodern, fast-paced story of urban peril and victim invisibility, and the fight to discover truth at any cost.

Kalisha Buckhanon is the author of the novels Solemn, Conception, and Upstate. Her honors include a Literary Fiction Audie Award, American Library Association ALEX Award, Friends of American Writers Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Pushcart Prize and Hurston-Wright Awards nominations, and special Young Author award from novelist Terry McMillan. She also appears on ID Channel, BET, and TV One as a true crime expert in cases involving women.
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Book

Published 2019-07-30 by Counterpoint

Book

Published 2019-07-30 by Counterpoint

Comments

Thrilling Read more...

Lyrical and luscious, Speaking of Summer is a literary gift.

Who cares about the disappearance of Summer - a beautiful, broken Black woman? No one but her twin sister, Autumn. Yet things are not always as they appear in this absorbing drama that is equal parts women's fiction and suspense thriller. As it plumbs the ssures of the human psyche, Speaking of Summer endures the devastation of loss and embraces the power of love.

Uses crime ction as a way to magnify issues of racial injustice, focusing on how violence against black women is disproportionately ignored by law enforcement.

Kalisha Buckhanon's book is at once meditative and full of narrative drive. This audacious blend of mystery, family drama, intimate characterization, and sensitive exploration of the personal and social implications of loss is the author's finest work to date. This is a New York story for the ages, the country, the world.

Kalisha Buckhanon's characters are both fearless and haunted, brave and burdened by the past. Speaking of Summer gives us a powerful song about what it means to survive as a woman in America.

Kalisha Buckhanon's Speaking of Summer is a spellbinding masterpiece, a riveting read from a young woman who has become a major American storyteller.

Fiercely astute. Read more...

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Powerful Read more...

Speaking of Summer has everything: beauty, bite, raw truth, nail-biting urgency, and a central mystery that's both timely and timeless.

A mysterious and haunting tale about the powerlessness of women of color and society's indifference toward them. But also about their indomitable will to survive.