Rebecca Rotert

"A highly ambitious and stylish literary debut set against the 1960's Chicago jazz scene about a talented but troubled singer's heartbreaking relationship with her precocious ten-year-old daughter"--

a novel

Last night at the blue angel

Hazel Gaynor

Joshilyn Jackson

Emmi Itäranta

Nadia Hashimi

Holly Brown

Katherine Harbour

Mary McNear

CJ Hauser

Carrie La Seur

M. P. Cooley

Sarah Creech

New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson presents The New Voices in Fiction Sampler: Summer Selection. This free e-book sampler is a curated volume of excerpts from new and upcoming titles by debut fiction authors you'll want to get familiar with early on. The New Voices in Fiction Sampler: Summer Selection includes: An Introduction from Joshilyn Jackson and an excerpt from her latest novel, Someone Else's Love Story, on sale now. And excerpts from: The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor Up at Butternut Lake by Mary McNear The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta The From-Aways by CJ Hauser Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert Don't Try to Find Me by Holly Brown Ice Shear by M.P. Cooley The Home Place by Carrie La Seur Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

Summer Selection

The New Voices in Fiction Sampler

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, a highly ambitious and stylish literary debut that combines the atmosphere and period detail of Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility with the emotional depth and drama of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a talented but troubled singer, her precocious ten-year-old daughter, and their heartbreaking relationship. It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is a city of uneasy tensions—segregation, sexual experimentation, free love, the Cold War—but it is also home to one of the country’s most vibrant jazz scenes. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. Finally, her big break arrives—the cover of Look magazine. But success has come at enormous personal cost. Beautiful and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet extremely self-destructive woman whose charms are irresistible and dangerous for those around her. No one knows this better than Sophia, her clever ten-year-old daughter. For Sophia, Naomi is the center of her universe. As the only child of a single, unconventional mother, growing up in an adult world, Sophia has seen things beyond her years and her understanding. Unsettled by her uncertain home life, she harbors the terrible fear that the world could end at any moment, and compulsively keeps a running list of practical objects she will need to reinvent once nuclear catastrophe strikes. Her one constant is Jim, the photographer who is her best friend, surrogate father, and protector. But Jim is deeply in love with Naomi—a situation that adds to Sophia’s anxiety. Told from the alternating perspectives of Sophia and Naomi, their powerful and wrenching story unfolds in layers, revealing Sophia’s struggle for her mother’s love with Naomi’s desperate journey to stardom and the colorful cadre of close friends who shaped her along the way. Sophisticated yet poignant, Last Night at the Blue Angel is an unforgettable tale about what happens when our passion for the life we want is at sharp odds with the life we have. It is a story ripe with surprising twists and revelations, and an ending that is bound to break your heart.

A Novel

Last Night at the Blue Angel

Rebecca Rotert

About

Books

Join the club