Chelsea Bieker

For fans of Janet Fitch's White Oleander and Emma Cline's The Girls, a dazzling literary debut by Rona Jaffe Award winner Chelsea Bieker about one teenage girl's feminist awakening and her search for her missing mother

Godshot

From the acclaimed author of Godshot and “a pitch-perfect ventriloquist of extraordinary talent and ferocity” (T Kira Madden) comes a defining book of Californian stories where everyone is seeking or sabotaging love United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California’s Central Valley, the characters of Heartbroke boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to recoup her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny. Heartbroke brims over with each character’s attempt to salvage grace where they can find it. Told in bright, snapping prose that reveals a world of loss and love underneath, Chelsea Bieker brilliantly illuminates a golden yet gothic world of longing and abandonment under an unrelenting California sun.

Heartbroke

The world is not made for mothers. Yet mothers made the world... Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she's landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women's prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her? A gripping story of motherhood and motherloss, intimate terrorism and terrifying love, the insidious ways male violence disrupts mothers and daughters, and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, MADWOMAN marks Chelsea Bieker as a major fiction talent.

Madwoman

God Shot

Heart Broke

Lauren Ezzo

A Novel

'Chelsea Bieker breathes thrilling, risky energy into the familiar trope of the madwoman... A well-paced and absorbing page-turner.' New York Times CLOVE HAS BUILT HER DREAM LIFE. IT'S ABOUT TO COME CRASHING DOWN. Everything appears to be going pretty well for Clove. She's built a stable family home in Portland, she has a handsome husband who encourages her to pursue her dream of writing, and her two kids are pretty adorable. Sure, she dabbles in a low-level shopping addiction and is racking up a not-so-funny amount of credit card debt, but who doesn't have a vice or two? But when a letter arrives from a women's prison in California, Clove's past comes hurtling into her new life. Soon, she is caught up in a dangerous game of cat and mouse as she desperately tries to outrun her worst experiences. Raw and hilarious, Madwoman is a story about resilience, courage, and one woman's refusal to be defined by a past she would rather forget. 'A truly stunning read – this is my book of the year.' Ella Berman A Time Magazine 'Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2024'

Chelsea Bieker

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