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Help the CBS New York Book Club pick a spring read
"I Leave It Up To You," by Jinwoo Chong, "Harlem Rhapsody," by Victoria Christopher Murray, and "The Girl From Greenwich Street" by Lauren Willig - Club Calvi has three new fiction books for you to consider for the Club's next read.
Chong's "I Leave It Up To You" is about a Manhattan man who wakes from a coma to discover his fiancé has left him, his career is over, and he has no place to live. He returns to Fort Lee, New Jersey, to live with his parents who he hadn't seen in years before the coma, and to work in the family's sushi restaurant while he rebuilds his life.
Murray's "Harlem Rhapsody" is a historical novel about Jessie Redmond Fauset, who discovered and shaped literary legends of the Harlem Renaissance including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, while having a tempestuous affair with civil rights activist W.E.B Du Bois.
Willig's "The Girl From Greenwich Street" is a historical fiction mystery of a notorious Manhattan murder trial in 1800 that united rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to save a man from the gallows. The Manhattan Well Murder Case was the first murder trial in America in which the proceedings were recorded in transcripts.
You can read excerpts below and get your copy of the books.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"I Leave It Up to You" by Jinwoo Chong
From the publisher: A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He's been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it's been ten years since he last saw his family.
Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion that he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa's life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 a.m. fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, too: that of romantic interest to the nurse who took care of him, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.
There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.
Jinwoo Chong lives in New York
"I Leave It Up to You" by Jinwoo Chong (ThriftBooks) $22
"Harlem Rhapsody" by Victoria Christopher Murray
From the publisher: In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all.
W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie's boss, he's her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie's leadership, The Crisis thrives...every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it's clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater, and the arts. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but as she strives to preserve her legacy, she'll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success
Victoria Christopher Murray was born in Queens and splits her time between Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
"Harlem Rhapsody" by Victoria Christopher Murray (ThriftBooks) $22
"The Girl From Greenwich Street" by Lauren Willig
From the publisher: At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows.
Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin's boarding house—and doesn't come home. Has she eloped? Run away? No one knows—until her body appears in the Manhattan Well.
Her family insists they know who killed her. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma.
But privately, quietly, Levi's wealthy brother calls in a special favor….
Aaron Burr's legal practice can't finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections. To defend Levi Weeks is a double win: a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines.
Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn't going to let Burr monopolize the public's attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man's life—and destroy each other.
Lauren Willig lives in New York City.
"The Girl From Greenwich Street" by Lauren Willig (ThriftBooks) $23
Excerpt: "I Leave It Up To You" by Jinwoo Chong
What the Actual F***, Man?
Waking up is an easy thing to do. To be asleep, then not. To be a mind out there in the dark with no ground underneath, no legs or arms, no chest, no blood pumping in rhythmic bursts up my neck, no body at all, no hands, no hair or eyes, no a** or d***. Yes, sir, just your eyeless, handless, a**less, d***less self just hanging out there in space for forever until suddenly, you're not. Because suddenly is in fact the best word I can think of to describe it. Suddenly, SUDDENLY, with all the absolute cosmic consequence in the universe, a strange and terrifying surprise takes place and a thing that was not ever supposed to happen—happens. So quietly that nothing about it feels extraordinary at all. You wake up. You being me. Me being somebody, just some guy who in a singular moment has found himself all at once awake and sore in the neck. Clenching my fists shut, opening my eyes, two of them on my face exactly where I remembered them to be. Seeing another someone sitting there in front of me, composed of bold lines as though drawn on fresh white printer paper with a king-size Sharpie. Giant blue eyes—two of them—staring back at me. Like a tether, a spark from him to me, into my face, my neck, down my chest and arms, to the bottoms of my toes buried under warm, scratchy fibers. I hear a thought click slowly into place, my first thought in a very, very long time: that in the beginning, there was me, and also him. "Ren?"
I didn't hear my own voice but felt my throat vibrate. His eyes were fixed on me and had been all this time. He didn't move. Maybe he hadn't heard me. I tried to arrange my perception of him; parts—the eyes, the shoulders, the chest—were swimming around, jagged and refracted as if underwater. I noticed then that he was covered, head to toe, in crisp blue fabric. A cap over his hair, a surgical mask over his face. There was a cord of neck muscle pushing against his skin. Ren looked upset. I tried to tell him everything was fine, to calm down, since I had a lot to ask him: Where was I? Why did my entire body feel like vibrating air? Like Jell-O? Like it was broken in every conceivable place and hastily put back together again by someone with only a loose understanding of the human body and which of its parts fit into each other? He looked really, really upset, more so by the second.
"Ren—" I tried to say again, opening my mouth, making the shape of his name with my lips. I said my husband's name a lot, punctuating my existence with it as though I had a nervous tic. I felt safe when I said his name. He always appeared, full and warm, when I said it, moved ever so slightly in his sleep when I whispered it to him in our bed. I was in the middle of saying it again when I felt my throat strain against something sharp and hard. It occurred to me that there were not—as I'd assumed—just us two things within this new universe I'd woken up in. Among the great many things that were now making their presence known—a harsh overhead light, a dull warmth gathered at the small of my back—was the grip end of a canoe oar or a golf club that, for reasons unknown, I'd been deep-throating in my sleep. I made a soft choking noise, testing it out again—"Ren?"—and felt the canoe oar strain against the right side of my esophagus, scraping soft tissue. I brought my hand up toward my neck, continuing to choke. I tried to stay calm. I didn't want to freak him out. But Ren's eyes had gone as wide as plates.
"Oh f***—" he said loudly, in a rough and booming voice that took me a second—two—to realize I did not recognize. "Oh holy mother******* f***!"
A pause, while I continued to choke. Then, gathering his breath, the person sitting in front of me, who was not in fact my husband, said this: "This really isn't supposed to happen."
I tried to say something along the lines of "What a f****** weird thing to say" but gagged before my lips could form the words. Not-Ren's voice was deep and flat, clear like audio recorded on an expensive podcasting microphone and filtered straight into my ears through noise-canceling headphones. I'd never heard a voice so sharp and high-def in my entire life; his was a knife that had cut away all the fuzz around the world, making it new and whole. He had a wonderful voice. There was a lot to admire about a voice like that, despite its obvious distress, despite its not being my husband's and currently not trying very hard to tell me where my husband even was. The broomstick in my throat was starting to make me tear up. Weakly, I pointed at it, asking him for help.
"Jack—" He was suddenly a lot closer than before, one hand steady around my neck. I caught a glimpse of dark, curly hair poking up over the collar of his shirt while he reached for something above my head. "Just stay calm. Can you do that, Jack? It's a breathing tube. You've been intubated—"
I remembered that Jack was my name. Jack, plus a big, obnoxious Jr. that has been appended since birth, not only on my birth certificate, but also within normal conversation. Jack Jr., Jack Jr. Hey, look over there, it's Jack Jr. just f****** around minding his own business and being an exemplary citizen and s***. Hey, Jack Jr.! Why's the sky blue, Jack Jr.? Oh, that's easy, it has something to do with the refractory properties of the atmosphere, which scatters blue wavelengths of light more than any other on the spectrum of visible radiation. Happy? Need anything else? Not a thing, Jack Jr., you're a real stand-up guy, Jack Jr.
Excerpted from I Leave It Up to You by Jinwoo Chong. Copyright © 2025 by Jinwoo Chong. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpt: "Harlem Rhapsody" by Victoria Christopher Murray
(Introduction to the excerpt: Jessie Redmon Fauset and her mother have just moved to Harlem and are about to tour their new apartment when this scene opens.)
"You can't compare Philadelphia and Washington, DC, to this. New York is everything. It's music and theater and . . . come on, Maman." Carrying my valise, I rush toward the sienna-brick brownstone.
At the first step, I glance over my shoulder. My mother stands in the same spot. In her pale gold overcoat and matching cloche, she is as fashionable as any New Yorker. But her eyes are as wide as mine as she soaks in the city's vivacity.
My heart swells for the woman who didn't birth me but who, for the last twenty- five years, has nurtured me with love. "You were born from my heart," she's told me since I was twelve.
Over the city's music, I call out, "Allez, Maman!" in the same tone she'd used with me moments before.
At the front door, my hand trembles with excitement as I try to steady the key. We step into the vestibule and then through another door before we enter the hallway and I move to the only door on the first floor. But before I insert the key, the door swings open.
"Will!"
"Welcome to New York!"
I study the man I'd first contacted when I was a student at Cornell University, some sixteen years ago. His mustache has been trimmed since I last saw him in August. And there is a bit more silver blending with the jet-black hair of his beard. As always, he's dressed impeccably in one of his brown three- piece, wide- lapel suits. Tonight, though, he wears a more formal bow tie rather than the neckties I know he prefers.
The twinkle in his eyes and his wide smile draw me closer. However, just as I reach for him, I remember. My mother. How had I forgotten her so quickly?
That is the effect of W. E. B. Du Bois. His mere presence emits a magnetic force that is difficult to deny or resist.
This is a reminder that now, living in New York, I must be measured in my actions. This will be different from seeing Will on his occasional stopovers in Washington, DC.
I shift so my mother can enter our new apartment, but she doesn't take a single step. She expects an introduction. "Maman, allow me to present Dr. William Du Bois."
"Mrs. Fauset, it is my absolute pleasure to finally make your acquaintance." He takes her valise.
My mother's smile has vanished. She steps over the threshold and greets Will with a curt "Good afternoon."
My mother strolls around the parlor, taking in the regal Victorian-style room decorated in crimson and gold, and runs her hands over the oak edge of the sofa, then the matching damask-upholstered wingback chairs.
"This is a nice apartment." I hope my mother agrees. I turn to the bay windows facing Seventh Avenue. "But look at this, Maman. This . . . will be my favorite place."
The windows jut out of the brownstone like a pair of owl's eyes keeping watch over the neighborhood.
Will says, "This is the largest apartment, the only one in the building that hasn't been split."
"What do you mean?" My eyes are once again on my mother as she rounds the room.
"With so many people flocking to New York from the South, landlords are reconstructing the spaces, dividing apartments in half, then doubling the rent," Will explains. "I know the owner of this brownstone, so I secured one of the best furnished spaces in Harlem for you."
My mother's steps are silent against the Oriental area rug as she saunters toward the back.
"Some of the gals from the office prepared the apartment. Then, of course, Helen," he says, referring to my sister. "We wanted to make certain you had everything you'd need until your belongings arrive."
My mother pauses where the parlor spills into the kitchen. Even with the icebox, stove, and sink, there is space for a hutch and a small dining table.
"Would you like me to show you the two bedrooms and the water closet, Mrs. Fauset?"
"No." She waves her hand. "I'm certain those rooms are sufficient."
I nod, Will nods, and my mother says nothing as she lowers herself onto the sofa. She sits—back straight, shoulders squared, her coat still buttoned—as if she hasn't determined whether she'll stay.
After a moment, I sit in one chair and Will in the other. Maman speaks first: "Dr. Du Bois, thank you for not only finding us this home, but for securing this job with The Crisis magazine for my daughter."
"No thanks is necessary. I wanted to make certain you would be comfortable, and Jessie . . . I mean, Miss Fauset has earned this position as the literary editor. I expect that section of The Crisis to thrive under her leadership."
"I agree; my daughter will be a credit to your magazine. Jessie has always been a writer, and has been educated well. She's not only a Phi Beta Kappa graduate, but she's proficient in several languages. And in her teaching career, she has already—"
"Maman," I interrupt, dismayed. My glance shifts between her and Will. "I'm certain Dr. Du Bois doesn't desire a recapitulation of my credentials."
"Yes, I was quite impressed with your daughter when I interviewed her for this position."
"Is that when you first became"—she pauses—"impressed?" Another pause. "With my daughter?"
If Will hears my mother's derision, he gives no indication. "I was very impressed. Beyond Miss Fauset's writings is her understanding that literature is a venue that must be utilized to display the best of the Negro race."
"On that, we can agree, Dr. Du Bois. Literature can be useful in this fight for equality. That's what I tell my daughter. She can change this world with words."
Excerpted from Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray. Copyright © 2025 by Victoria Christopher Murray. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpt: "The Girl From Greenwich Street" by Lauren Willig
Chapter One
On Thursday last was found in a well dug by the Manhattan Company, on the north side of the Collect (but which afterwards proved useless) the body of Miss G. E. Sands who had been missing from the evening of Sunday the 22nd.
—Greenleaf's New Daily Advertiser, January 8, 1800
New York City
January 6, 1800
"I heard they found her muff floating in a drain in Bayard's Lane."
"No—not a drain. The Manhattan Well."
Greenwich Street heaved with people, shoving, pushing, jostling.
Alexander Hamilton slowed, contemplating this unexpected hindrance. His two clerks had been more than usually slow and doltish this morning, his correspondence more than usually irritating, so he had darted out of his office with the object of buying Eliza a coffee biggin. She'd looked so heavy-eyed at the breakfast table, bouncing baby Betsy in one arm while presiding over the coffeepot with the other. The coffee biggin, Gouverneur Morris assured him, produced a superior, stronger quality of coffee. Whether it did or not, Alexander had no idea, but it would be something to offer Eliza, to take that smudged, hollow look from her eyes.
Soon, he'd promised her. Soon he'd step away from public life. They'd build an idyll in the countryside, near enough to town that they could enjoy the society of their friends and he could lend his aid as needed to his fellow Federalists, consult on the odd legal matter. . . . Soon. But General Washington had entrusted him with the organization of the new army—never mind how President Adams resented it, how he worked to undermine all of Alexander's plans—and with the general in his grave this past month, Alexander felt more keenly than ever how strongly he needed to press the work forward.
Then there was the petty manner of money. Money, always money. Money for the children's schooling; money to build their house in the country. Money to be earned from the legal practice that was suffering sorely as Alexander struggled to build an army that he knew was needed, if only the ignoramuses in Philadelphia could just be brought to see it.
Just a bit longer. A bit longer and he'd be able to move Eliza and their brood to the countryside, and live the life of a country squire, going out with his fowling piece to shoot ducks in the morning mist, his Eliza presiding clear-eyed at their own tea table. Soon. Eventually. Someday.
But for now, he could buy her a coffee biggin.
Or so he'd intended. Greenwich Street was impassable with this inexplicable crowd. Unlike the elegant brick homes lining Broadway, the houses here were of wood, ugly, clumsy structures so newly built that Alexander could practically smell the wood shavings and fresh-mixed plaster. It was a tinderbox of a street, but it wasn't a fire causing this unaccustomed press of people; he would have smelled the smoke before this.
Only a block away, the students of his alma mater, King's College—now Columbia—rushed to class in their flapping gowns, but this didn't have the flavor of a student riot; there wasn't enough Latin being spoken. Besides, the students were enclosed behind the high gates of the college, effectively locking them away from the city around them. When Alexander was in college, there'd been much made of the college's proximity to the so-called Holy Ground, where pleasure could be found for a price and brawls sometimes broke out between customers and madams, or madams and enraged moralists.
But that was on the other side of the college. This was a street of respectable small tradesmen, running their businesses out of the front rooms of their homes: grocers and tobacconists and, most important, an ironmonger who was reputed to make excellent coffee biggins. Alexander could just make out the wooden sign creaking from one of the awnings, right at what seemed to be the epicenter of the excited crowd.
It seemed unlikely that half the city had experienced a simultaneous desire for a coffee biggin.
"Alexander!" A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and Alexander looked up into the face of his old friend and colleague Richard Harison, once his partner in law practice, still his partner in politics. "Or should I say Major General?"
"Never among friends." Or possibly not at all if that ass Adams had anything to do with it, not to mention Aaron Burr and his Republican rabble, downplaying the threat from France, ignoring the dangers of a Revolutionary regime untrammeled, agitating for the disbandment of Alexander's army. The United States Army, that was, or would be, if Alexander was given the supplies and support he so desperately needed.
"How goes the business of the army?"
"Busily," Alexander quipped.
Even to an ally like Harison, Alexander could never admit the fear that it was all for naught, all his preparations and plans, the punishing pace he had set himself and his clerks. That a** Adams had never wanted the army and he'd certainly never wanted Alexander. Alexander had been forced on him, by the one person with the power to do so. The person who had lain cold and still in his grave these past three weeks. Alexander had marched in General Washington's funeral procession; he'd listened to Gouverneur Morris deliver the funeral oration; but he still couldn't quite entirely believe he was gone, that great man who had loved him as his own father never had.
And there was his Eliza with gray in her dark hair, their Philip studying at King's College—not King's anymore, but Columbia—and Harison, who had been in his prime when they had begun their practice together just after the war, now heavy-jowled, the new Brutus hairstyle not hiding the fact that his hair was thinning at the temples, and gray now, entirely gray.
How had they come to this? This wasn't what Alexander had thought his middle age would be, scrabbling after pennies, after favor, after political advancement, surrounded by incompetents and opportunists.
Alexander cleared his throat. "What ruckus is this? Are the apprentices revolting again?"
"The apprentices are always revolting." Harison chuckled at his own tired sally. "You must have heard, surely? About the girl. The girl in the well."
The man in front of him had said something about the Manhattan Well, that misbegotten monstrosity. "Ah," said Alexander, as if he knew more than he did. "Are all these people—"
"Here to view the corpse." Harison shoved his hands in his waistcoat to warm them. "You haven't come to gawp at the girl in the well, have you?"
Excerpted from THE GIRL FROM GREENWICH STREET by Lauren Willig. Copyright © 2024 by Lauren Willig. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint HarperCollins Publishers.
