FörhandsrecensenterLucy Jane Bledsoe

Two estranged childhood friends find themselves on parallel paths to return to the site of the conversion therapy camp that tore them apart.

"A multilayered gem of a novel, polished, intelligent, and moving. Tell the Rest deftly explores courage, drive, happiness, sexuality, love, and more in a riveting story that whisks readers along to a surprising and satisfying conclusion. I could not put it down." —Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times best-selling author of The Last Train to London 

Delia Barnes and Ernest Wrangham met as teens at Celebration Camp, a church-supported conversion therapy program—a dubious, unscientific Christian practice meant to change a person's sexuality. After witnessing a close friend suffer a devastating tragedy in the hands of the camp counselors, they escaped in the night, only to take separate roads to their distant homes. 

They have no idea how each have fared through the years. Delia is a college basketball coach who prides herself on being an empowering and self-possessed role model for her players. But when she gets fired from her elite East Coast college and loses her wife to another woman in rapid succession, she returns to her hometown of Rockside, Oregon to coach the girls' basketball team at her high school alma mater.

Ernest, meanwhile, is a renowned poet in New York City who's left behind his loving husband for a temporary teaching job in Portland, Oregon. His work has always been boundary-pushing, fearless. But the poem he's most wanted to write—about his dangerous escape from Celebration Camp—remains stubbornly out of reach. 

Both remain on a mission to overcome the consequences and inhumane costs of conversion therapy. As events find them hurtling toward each other once again, they both grapple with the necessity of remaining steadfast in one's truth--no matter how slippery that can be. Tell the Rest is a powerful novel about coming to terms--with family, history, violence, loss, sexuality, and ultimately, with love.

It’s 1974. Title IX has passed two years ago, but Louisa’s high school still refuses to fund an all girls’ basketball team. After hearing Gloria Steinem speak, Louisa learns an important lesson: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Now what can she do but stand up and fight back? When Louisa asks her principal to start a girls team, she’s soon viciously targeted by male coaches at her school, lied to by the school board, and dismissed as “out of line” as she fights for a fair chance to be an athlete. No Stopping Us Now is a story about finding one’s own voice through the joys of sports, love, and the power of sisterhood. Based on the author's true story, it is a compelling examination of the courage it takes to stand up for what’s right. Young adult, LGBTQ historical fiction perfect for the 50th anniversary of Title IX in June 2022.

Berkeley brings its own unique blend of Bay Area noir, complementing the grit and grime that preceded it in San Francisco Noir and Oakland Noir. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Barry Gifford, Jim Nisbet, Lexi Pandell, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Mara Faye Lethem, Thomas Burchfield, Shanthi Sekaran, Nick Mamatas, Kimn Neilson, Jason S. Ridler, Susan Dunlap, J.M. Curet, Summer Brenner, Michael David Lukas, Aya de León, and Owen Hill. From the introduction by Jerry Thompson and Owen Hill: A town named after a British philosopher doesn’t exactly evoke visions of Goodis or Highsmith. Grifters? Dames? Cops? In Berkeley? On the surface the alleys don’t seem that dark, until we look a little closer. Possibly the most iconic visual image of Berkeley does involve cops. It’s the film with Mario Savio, atop a police car with a megaphone, declaring, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part!” Now there’s a statement that sums up the spirit of noir. Berkeley Noir asks, If not here, where? While deciding which keys were needed to rev its engines, it was clear to us that for every mile, for every author who helped pave the way for this collection, writers like Anthony Boucher, Janet Dawson, Margaret Cuthbert, Ellen Gilchrist, Linda Grant, Jonathan Lethem, and Barry Gifford (included here with a new gem, “Barroom Butterfly”), there would always be a place in the heart of Berkeley where one would feel at home. From legends like Philip K. Dick setting his stories here, or Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni working out marital bliss in her early novels, or Linnea A. Due tackling teenage alcoholism in the 1970s in High and Outside. The search for an authentic and eclectic voice, and the search for home, become the most important ingredients of this journey.