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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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TROUBLE THE SAINTS

Alaya Johnson

TROUBLE THE SAINTS is a timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to fight her fate at the dawn of World War II.
Amidst the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn in to the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she's hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.

Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything - not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams.

Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared at her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it's too late - is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

A dazzling, daring novel - a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines - and an altogether brilliant saga.

Alaya Dawn Johnson is the award-winning author of fiction for adults and young readers. Her debut young adult novel, The Summer Prince, was a finalist for the Locus and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and her follow-up novel, Love is the Drug, won the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has also won the Nebula Award for her novelette, "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i."
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Published 2020-07-21 by Tor Books

Comments

Beware this magnificent beguilement of a novel: once begun, Alaya Dawn Johnson's Trouble the Saints won't let you go.

This alternate history demands the reader's full attention. Fans of challenging, diverse fantasy will enjoy this literary firecracker.

Alaya Dawn Johnson was interviewed for this fabulous Publishers Weekly piece, Writing the Book You Want to Read. In it, she discusses Trouble the Saints and how she wrote it as an examination of violence: "I had a lot of thoughts about how violence is often used as a shorthand for strength, especially in a lot of works [with] a strong, female character. But I feel that sometimes, that strength comes at a cost." Read more...

announcement, cover reveal and excerpt Read more...

Johnson nails this world. I felt like I could smell the smoke in the air, see the sticky liquor spills on the Pelican Club's floor and the stage. Her writing is marvelous, making the dialogue, the cadence, and the city on the cusp of a world war feel gritty and real.

The Editor-in-Chief chose it as one of her Spring Picks, and said "Johnson wrote one of my favorite YA titles, The Summer Prince... In Saints, she brings together a young female assassin, a New York City backdrop, a love story, and an exploration of racial injustice. I can't wait." Read more...

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In musical prose, she also offers passionate and painful depictions of the love expressed in romance and friendship and the sacrifices such love can demand. A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book.

Kirkus's list of the Best Books of 2020 Read more...

Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story... in a word: Awesome.

People say that history is written by the victors, but sometimes who wins, and along which axis, is a function revealed by time, not peace treaties. Sometimes, often, almost always, histories travel alongside one another in eerie parallel, one more accepted, or acceptable, than the other, but not necessarily more true. Read more...

Trouble the Saints gives us a tale of how agency doesn't always equal freedom, and solutions don't always lead to success, with characters you desperately hope make the right choice even when that choice doesn't exist.

Author Alaya Dawn Johnson Talks 'Trouble the Saints', Compelling Characters & More Read more...