Angie, I Says

Tina Scacciapensieri is a secretary from Brooklyn with a BFF, Angie, a sweet longtime boyfriend, Vinnie, and a big mouth. As her father says, “Why is everything a fight with you?” When she finds out she’s pregnant, deciding whether or not to marry Vinnie is complicated by her attraction to Noah, a lawyer she has recently met. After Tina gives birth to a boy missing a bone in one of his arms she despairs, feeling it’s her fault. But with family and friends rallied around her, she realizes, “Everybody’s loving this baby already, and I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

Angie, I Says was made into a feature film starring Geena Davis, James Gandolfini and Stephen Rea.

After Isaac

Aaron Saturn, 16, is an emotional zombie—stuck in grief for his little brother, Isaac, who died. He longs for an escape, and thinks he’s found one when he meets Kim, a girl living on the streets of New York City’s East Village. When his parents reveal a startling plan to change their family, Aaron goes into a tailspin. He needs to learn that healing won’t come from running away, but by letting love back into his life.

Recurring Dream

“A poet with this surname should be able to soar and swoop and, indeed, Avra Wing’s poems can take you to faraway places where ‘it is always night/and we can neither arrive nor depart.’ Yet she is grounded in the real world, a world that includes Chinatown shoe stores, Chicago jazz clubs and long-ago seventh grade classrooms; above all, the people who inhabit those places are viewed with compassion and a wry wit. She’s very good company: Ride along with her.”
—Robert Hershon