Excerpt from Those Who Knew by Idra Novey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was for these earnest-faced young northerners that Olga had put together the Conspiracy section under the front window. She kept it stocked with the crumbling leather-bound volumes of Trotsky and Marx that people continued to find buried in their backyards when they dug a hole for a dead dog or to uproot some unwanted shrub. Owning such books now didn't mean much of anything, which was why people in the hills kept selling her their disinterred editions of Lenin's Practice and Theory of Revolution for less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes. Olga then sold the editions for triple that to her eager young northerners as souvenirs.

A few days earlier, she'd had an unusual northerner come in, a fellow in his midthirties so freshly bathed he still smelled of soap and asking if she carried poetry. Even odder, he'd pulled a scone for her out of his bag from some baking he'd done that morning in his hostel, a situation so unexpected, and delicious, she'd reported it to Lena.

Most hours, when she had any customers at all-either for cannabis or literature-they were from the new liberal arts college up the hill. She had initially been put off by the righteous air of its young professors who'd taken part in the marches to get rid of Cato, especially Lena, whose haughty enunciation had immediately given her away as hailing from a conservative private school up the coast.

Excerpted from Those Who Knew by Idra Novey. Copyright © 2018 by Idra Novey. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.