Trouble the Saints, Alaya Dawn Johnson
Trouble the Saints, Alaya Dawn Johnson
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Trouble the Saints
A Novel

Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson

Narrator: Neil Shah, Shayna Small

Unabridged: 13 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/21/2020


Synopsis

"Narrators Shayna Small and Neil Shah transport listeners to 1940s New York in this dark fantasy set against a backdrop of racial tension and brewing war...Both narrators also excel at a range of accents, making this audiobook a fully immersive experience." -- AudioFile Magazine

The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to change her fate at the dawn of World War II.

Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into 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 on 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?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines—and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books

“Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story...in a word: awesome.” —N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season

About Alaya Dawn Johnson

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning short story writer and the author of novels for adults and young adults. Her novel Trouble the Saints won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her debut short story collection, Reconstruction, was an Ignyte Award and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. Her most YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, was nominated for the Locus Award for YA novel, won the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People, and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin prize. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, most notably the title story in The Memory Librarian, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe. She is currently the visiting professor in the MFA program of Queens College (CUNY), and writes essays for her newsletter, A stranger comes home.


Reviews

Goodreads review by P.

One of the most beautifully written books I've read, with richly rendered characters and settings. I knew the story would be imaginative. But I don't think I was ready for just how emotional and heartfelt it would be. Take your time with this. Definitely worth it.......more

This book was such a pleasant surprise— I’d never heard of it and just happened to stumble upon it. I’d pitch this book as the themes of The Vanishing Half with the magic and multidimensional characters of Six of Crows. Am I still a little confused about the magic system? Yes, definitely, but it didn......more


Awards

  • NPR Best Book of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year