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by Melissa Scrivner Love
An astonishing debut crime thriller about an unforgettable woman who combines the genius and ferocity of Lisbeth Salander with the ruthless ambition of Walter White.
The Crenshaw Six are a small but up-and-coming gang in South Central LA who have recently been drawn into an escalating war between rival drug cartels. To outsiders, the Crenshaw Six appear to be led by a man named Garcia ... but what no one has figured out is that the gang's real leader (and secret weapon) is Garcia's girlfriend, a brilliant young woman named Lola. Lola has mastered playing the role of submissive girlfriend, and in the man's world she inhabits she is consistently underestimated. But in truth she is much, much smarter - and in many ways tougher and more ruthless - than any of the men around her, and as the gang is increasingly sucked into a world of high-stakes betrayal and brutal violence, her skills and leadership become their only hope of survival.
Lola marks the debut of a hugely exciting new thriller writer, and of a singular, magnificent character unlike anyone else in fiction.
"Starred Review. This adrenaline-charged debut will thrill readers as they discover one of crime fiction's most captivating protagonists yet. Lola's resilience and loyalty will have them wanting to see more of the genre's newest heroine and her creator." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Love's writing is artful and evocative, her story's sense of place and culture are strong, and, in Lola , Love has created a fully fleshed-out and uniquely compelling antihero who commands fear, respect, and adoration in equal measure." - Publishers Weekly
"A gritty, fast-paced thriller rife with gangland intrigue layered over a moving story of absolution." - Booklist
"Intense, gritty, and breathlessly paced, Lola is a thriller that's been elevated by exquisite writing and deep character development...I fell hard for Lola in all her fierce and broken beauty, her reckless and necessary hardness, her bottomless capacity for loyalty. Don't miss this ride." – Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Everyone
"Lola is a raw, dark and claustrophobic tale, but also a powerful and moving one...It's a long time since I've felt so connected to a character's emotions and motivations in a novel."- Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew
"With prose that's just a joy to read and a protagonist I'd welcome in my corner any time, Lola is a terrific first novel, one of the best I've come across in years." - SJ Rozan, Edgar-winning author of Ghost Hero
"I have never read anything like Lola, magical and microscopic in scope. An art book, a lens, a page turner, a provocative examination of the many cities that are one city, Los Angeles, as well as the woman who drives the story, the woman who sees, notices, processes, relentlessly, our Lola." - Caroline Kepnes, author of You and Hidden Bodies
This information about Lola was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Melissa Scrivner Love was born to a police officer father and a court stenographer mother. After earning a master's degree in English Literature from New York University, Melissa moved to Los Angeles, where she has lived for over a decade. During that time, she has written for several television shows, among them Life, CSI: Miami, and Person of Interest. She and her husband, a comedy writer and Los Angeles native, welcomed their daughter in 2014. Lola is her first novel.
Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
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