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Authors Helene Wecker and Kat Howard in Conversation

The Hidden Palace, the sequel to The Golem and the Jinni

The follow-up to acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad. An absorbing fusion of folklore and historical fiction.

A Virtual Event. Registration Required.

About the Book:

Fans of The Golem and the Jinni have waited eight years for this sequel. It has been worth the wait.”  -- BookPage (starred review)

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they'll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human--just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined--but they're not yet certain of what they mean to each other.

Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who's been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele--not knowing that she's about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart--especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

A Midwest native, Helene Wecker holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Joyland and Catamaran, as well as in the fantasy anthology The Djnn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and children.  

Kat Howard's short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in best of and annual best of collections, and performed on NPR. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Roses and Rot and the Alex Award-winning An Unkindness of Magicians. She is also the writer of the Books of Magic series, set in the Sandman Universe. She lives in New Hampshire, and you can find her on twitter at @KatWithSword.

This event is co-sponsored with Wilmette Public Library, Highland Park Public Library, Mount Prospect Public Library, Glencoe Public Library, and The Book Stall Bookstore. 

A limited number of signed copies of The Hidden Palace are available through The Book Stall. The Hidden Palace is available to put on hold through the Evanston Public Library: Book, eBook, eAudiobook. The Golem and the Jinni is also available: Book, eBook, eAudiobook.

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