Patti Callahan Henry's latest book is out TODAY!

Find out more about the latest from my Friends & Fiction co-host and dear friend!

Hi, friends!

I’m on my way home today from a fabulous launch party last night in Atlanta to celebrate my dear friend and Friends & Fiction sister Patti Callahan Henry’s new novel, The Story She Left Behind, which is in stores everywhere today! I’d love to tell you a bit about it, and I hope you’ll check it out this week!

Named an IndieNext pick for April, a LibraryReads pick for March, one of B&N’s Best Books of March, a Heather’s Pick for Canada’s Indigo bookstore chain, a SIBA Read This Next pick, the Reader’s Digest Book Club pick for April, a Printfresh Book Club pick, and a winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, the early buzz for The Story She Left Behind is amazing. Louise Penny calls it “brilliant, riveting, so beautifully written, impossible to put down,” Shelley Read calls it a “celebration of family, hope, forgiveness, and the tender generosity of abiding love,” and Adriana Trigiani declares that Patti is “at the height of her literary powers.”

This immersive story was inspired by a real cold-case literary mystery of a child prodigy author who went missing in the 1920s, leaving behind shattered loved ones and a sequel to her most beloved novel written in a secret language that no one could decode. Patti reimagines this real-life case, introducing us to Clara, a young mother still shattered by her mother Bronwyn’s years-ago disappearance, and Clara’s precocious daughter Winnie, who’s utterly captivated by her long-lost grandmother’s stories and fictional characters. We travel with these two across the pond on a quest to track down Bronwyn’s language in hopes it might hold the key to unlock the mystery of her disappearance.

Along the way, Clara and Winnie have adventures, meet with adversity, and, with the help of the charming Englishman Charlie, begin to unravel the haunting mystery at their family’s core. Patti gives us slow burn romance, an absorbing mystery, and, as always, an enchanting story.

This captivating story takes place across three distinct settings—the languid lowcounty of South Carolina, London in peril during the Great Smog, and England’s lush and enchanting Lake District. With beautiful, descriptive prose, Patti brings each so vividly to life, that the mystical lands each become characters themselves.

William Kent Krueger calls The Story She Left Behind, “a lovely mix of so many elements sure to please [Patti’s] universe of readers, a magical mosaic of adventure, suspense, romance, mystery, and even a sprinkle of make-believe.” This is such a lovely description of this story of longing, forgiveness, the beautiful but complicated mother/daughter relationship, and the power of language, imagination, and story.

I just know you will love this book as much as I did. I encourage you to grab your copy from your local indie or on Bookshop.org, and to visit Patti on her book tour if she’s coming to a town near you!

And don’t forget that in just three months, on June 17, my fifteenth novel, THE STOLEN LIFE OF COLETTE MARCEAU, hits stores across the United States and Canada! New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin calls it “a fabulous tale of heartbreak and bravery and just how hard one will fight for those they love,” while USA Today bestselling author Colleen Oakley says, “This stunning and fastidiously researched story examines the complexity of morality, and the power that ordinary people have to enact change in the world around them. It’s one of those rare books where I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, but was also so wholly absorbed, I never wanted to reach the end.” (Thanks, ladies!)

I hope you’ll check it out and consider pre-ordering it, along with BEACH HOUSE RULES, the latest from one of my other Friends & Fiction partners in crime, Kristy Woodson Harvey, coming May 27! (I loved this one, too!)

Have a wonderful week!