P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome Hannah Assadi to celebrate the paperback release of her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, with a talk, audience Q&A, and book signing. Included in Best Books of 2022 lists by The New Yorker and NPR, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells follows an elderly woman confronting a lifetime of secrets and betrayal through the scrim of fading memory, under the mysterious skies of her island home. Hannah will be in conversation with Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me. After the talk, Assadi and Kim will sign copies of their books.

Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of WWII, impressionable young Elle Ranier leaves New York City to forge a new life together on the island with her new husband, Simon. There they will live for decades, raising a family while waging a quixotic campaign to find the source of the mysterious blue offshore light—and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk beneath the surface.

Fifty years later, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island—and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did her husband’s business, now shuttered, survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of Gabriel—the handsome, raffish other man who came to the island with them and risked everything to follow the lights?

Darkly romantic and deeply haunting, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells pulls us into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.

Praise for “The stars are not yet bells”

“An exhilarating reading experience.” — NPR, Best Books of 2022

“A prophetic fever dream sprung from a singular imagination. Hannah Lillith Assadi is an incomparable stylist and a fearless storyteller. This novel is a lush, addicting, daring wonder.” — Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness

“A haunting elegy for loss, desire, and memory.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A heartbreaking and profoundly visionary book. Hannah Assadi movingly renders the kaleidoscopic nature of memory—revealing not only one woman’s disordered heart and mind, but the way our consciousness recombines shards of memory to create a glittering, prismatic view of a life.” — Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves

“The beauty of Assadi’s prose and the splendid depiction of a love that transcends death ... will leave readers undone.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A luminous and deeply moving portrait of the end of life and the persistence of desire.” — JoAnne Tompkins, author of What Comes After

Preorder your signed paperback edition of “The stars are not yet bells”

Available to ship in most places!

• This is a free in-store event with limited amphitheater-style seating
• We encourage all guests to wear masks.
• The talk will be followed by a book signing. Books signed at P&T Knitwear events must be purchased from P&T Knitwear. If you would like a signed copy and cannot attend the event, we’re happy to take your pre-order. We ship to most places!

About the author

Hannah Lillith Assadi teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first novel, Sonora, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

About the moderator

Crystal Hana Kim is the author of If You Leave Me, which was a Booklist Editor’s Choice title and named the best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. Kim is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and is a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Currently, she is the Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College and a contributing editor at Apogee Journal. Her second novel, The Stone Home, is forthcoming from William Morrow / HarperCollins. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.

Time: 7:00 PM — 8:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration