Club Calvi reveals three new FicPicks. Now you can vote on which book the club should read next!
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Find out more about the books below.
You can help decide the first book for Club Calvi for 2026.
Voting is now open for which Top 3 FicPick should be the Club's next read.
Here are your choices:
"The Unwritten Rules of Magic" by Harper Ross tells the story of a ghostwriter who has lived in the shadow of her father, a famous author. After his death, she discovers that wishes typed on his vintage typewriter come true but with a cost.
"Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg is about an unemployed woman who live-streams her life so she can raise money to care for her sister who is in a coma at a hospital.
In "A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing" by Alice Evelyn Yang, a daughter cares for the father who abandoned her and her mother years ago. As his memory fades, he recounts his troubled life in China and a haunting prophecy.
You can read excerpts, vote, and get the books below.
Voting closes Sunday, January 27 at 6pm.
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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"The Unwritten Rules Of Magic" by Harper Ross
From the publisher: Emerson Clarke can't remember a time when she felt in control. Her father—a celebrated author—was a chaotic force until he got Alzheimer's. Her mother turned to gin. And recently, her teen daughter has shut her out without explanation. If only she could arrange reality the same way she controls the stories she ghostwrites, life could be perfect.
Or so she thinks.
After her father's funeral, Emerson steals his vintage typewriter—the one he'd forbidden anyone to touch—and tests its keys by typing out a frivolous wish. When it comes true the very next day, she tries another. Then, those words also spring to life. Suddenly, she becomes obsessed with using the typewriter to rewrite happiness for herself and her daughter.
But the more she shapes her real-life, the more she uncovers disturbing truths about her family's history and the unexpected cost of every story-come-true. She should destroy the typewriter, yet when her daughter's secret finally emerges, Emerson is torn between paying the price for bending fate and embracing the uncertainty of an unscripted life.
Harper Ross lives in Connecticut.
"The Unwritten Rules of Magic" by Harper Ross (ThriftBooks) $22
"Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg
From the publisher: Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She's behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she's being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.
Dell is her stream's dungeon master, banishing those who don't abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform's ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on earth: the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Lior Torenberg lives in New York.
"Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg (ThriftBooks) $23
"A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing" by Alice Evelyn Yang
From the publisher: Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call—there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.
While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions—fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.
Alice Evelyn Yang lives in New York.
"A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing" by Alice Evelyn Yang (ThriftBooks) $23
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Excerpt: ""The Unwritten Rules Of Magic" by Harper Ross
The entire room feels like it's throbbing with anticipation. I open the glass door, flexing my fingers before pulling the equipment out of the cabinet. It's lighter than anticipated and vibrates as if resting on the hood of a running car.
Pursing my lips, I glance at the undercarriage, seeking some explanation. Nothing there. My father's spirit haunting the old girl?
"Don't worry, Dad. I'll take good care of her." My curiosity about his nefarious to-do list is eclipsed by excitement. Thankfully, Sadie isn't here to witness my habit of talking to myself. She thinks it odd. My father always said it was a sign of a vivid imagination.
I set the typewriter gently on his desk and then scale the rolling bookcase ladder to reach the carrying case. Outside, peach-colored light dances across the water. A sign of permission?
After loading my bounty into its case, I carry it and my shoes to the mudroom cubbies to set beside my purse. A quick patter through the kitchen confirms that the caterers already put up the stemware. The envelope I left with their check and tip is gone. Leftovers are stacked neatly in containers in the refrigerator.
An eerie silence is broken only by the low hum of the refrigerator.
Although my dad spent the past six months gazing blankly from his wheelchair, his aura had still permeated the house. Its absence is tangible—a frost settling over the surfaces—making the place feel tomb-like.
Rubbing my arms against the sensation, I cross through the dining room and spacious entry hall to reach the grand salon that spans the width of the stately colonial.
Dorothy lies curled on the gray velvet chaise like a kitten. One arm is flung haplessly aside, and her head has rolled backward, bending her neck at an angle that will surely cause a crick.
How freeing it must be to let go so entirely, safe in the knowledge that someone else will take care of everything.
A burn rises in my esophagus, but I snatch a velvet lumbar pillow from a nearby chair and the cashmere throw from the ottoman.
"Psst," I whisper, angling the pillow behind her head.
She swats at me as if I'm a mosquito, mumbling something unintelligible before shifting her body. Her seasoned dance partner, I follow her movement in perfect sync, wedging the pillow to support her head and draping her with the throw.
The empty crystal tumbler rests on the floor beside the chaise. A quick sniff has me recoiling from the gin's potent pine notes. I figured as much, but hope is a foolish squatter I've never learned to evict.
I glance out the windows framing a shamrock-green lawn that slopes down to the coast of Long Island Sound. My father's remaining ashes rest on the table in front of them in an onyx marble urn too small to contain someone whose life was so large. I cross to it, tracing its plaque with my fingertips.
We moved to Darien from the rural town of Easton after my father signed his first major motion picture deal. Our first day here, my dad had held my hand while we strolled past the cheerful yellow daffodils that border the flagstone patio, across the meticulous harlequin pattern created by the lawn service, and down to the narrow dock that stretches over the water.
"Are you proud of me?" he asked.
His blue eyes always sparkled with a peculiar combination of intelligence, mischief, and ennui, exactly like Robin Williams. That evening, the sun set them ablaze as if the fire in his belly sought release.
I nodded, skipping to keep pace with his long stride. "Yes!"
He grinned before capturing me in a bear hug, always happiest on the receiving end of praise. "This is just the beginning. I'm going to give you everything you could ever want. Do you trust me?"
"I do."
"That's my girl." He swiped my nose with his finger and kissed my head, his approval the only motivation I ever needed.
Now I turn away from the window with a sigh. Heaviness settles in my chest when I imagine how strange it will be—sad, even—after this place is no longer ours.
Where will Dorothy go? She belongs in rehab, but I never win that debate.
I can't think about it all right now. These last years of losing Dad in chunks—from his not recognizing me to not remembering what a toothbrush was for—have sapped my fight.
When Dorothy called to say he'd passed in his sleep, my first reaction was relief for the end of his suffering. Since then, each surfacing memory makes my head feel like it might split open.
The long day weighs on me, tugging at my eyelids. I open the Uber app to summon a ride home. A ten-minute wait—just enough time to deal with my mother.
I return to the sofa to stroke her shoulder. "Hey."
She shrugs me off.
Crouching, I whisper, "Let's get you into bed."
She turns her head, her gaze unfocused. "I'm fine here."
If we were a normal family, I'd insist she come home with me so she wouldn't be alone. But we aren't normal, and every time I try to pretend that we are, it only reopens the empty pockets of need I've worked so hard to stitch shut.
"All right. I'll check on you in the morning."
Dorothy offers no thank-yous. No kiss. And certainly no questions about my grief. Just a wobbly nod and a return to slumber, blissfully unaware of the unsettling notes I discovered.
Lucky her.
I pad through the house to the mudroom to gather my things, including the typewriter. My new possession is the rainbow at the end of a stormy day.
After decades of wonder and yearning, I finally get to play with it. Perhaps it will become my good-luck charm, too
Adapted from THE UNWRITTEN RULES OF MAGIC by Harper Ross. Copyright (C) 2026 by Write Ideas, LLC. Published with permission of St. Martin's Press, an imprint of St. Martin's Publishing Group.
Excerpt: "Just Watch Me" by Lior Torenberg
It's five in the morning and I'm a summer slug wrapped too tightly in my sheets. I shove them off and open my stream. Zero viewers. My LiveCast rank has dropped to 480,892. I catch up on the chats I missed, which are just inane enough to be interesting.
karnie_vibes: i once slept for an entire weekend
pklrik: no u didn't
karnie_vibes: yes i did!!!
karnie_vibes: i had the flu
karnie_vibes: every time i woke up i took nyquil and went back to sleep
Around eight thirty, my first viewer of the day joins: excelsior404. A string of texts come in from my mom, one after the other, wrapping around my finger and turning it purple.
How are you, Dell?
Let's talk when you have time Please don't ignore me
Don't make me worry about you too
I eat handfuls of granola and chase them down with a shot of Pepto Bismol to get ahead of the stomach pain, which never actually works. Then I head out to see a man about a check. I usually jump the turnstile at the subway station, but I'm feeling flush this morning. I swipe in ($2.90) and take the train across town. The ride is just long enough to let the nerves set in. The closer I get to Juice Body, the tetchier I feel, lymph nodes swollen underneath my armpits and neck.
Maybe Nik will have a change of heart and hire me back. More likely, I'll have to grovel. I'm not above that, at least I wasn't before I started streaming, but I can't imagine doing it now. I have a reputation to uphold, viewers to entertain. Or mademoiselle_dell does, at least. Eleven viewers join during my trip to Juice Body and my LiveCast rank is slightly higher than it was this morning, but I still have work to do to get back to where I left off last night.
...
Some new guy is working the register. Did Nik replace me already? New guy starts to say something, but I walk past him and into Nick's office. His face is already pink, but it reddens when he sees me. He raises an eyebrow.
"What are you doing here?" he asks.
"How was the Hamptons? How were the Hamptons?"
"Beautiful. It was a beautiful time with my family that I had to cut short because of you."
"That's why I wanted to come in and talk to you."
"Dell. You push me. You push me too far," he says. "I know you're going through a lot and I want to support you, but there is a limit."
"Is that guy my replacement?" I ask.
Nik shakes his head slowly. "That's Johnny. My nephew. He's worked here for the last four years. You worked with him. He was one of the people who trained you when you started."
"Johnny? The guy with the huge mole on his nose?"
"He got his mole removed a couple weeks ago."
"I didn't recognize him without it."
"This isn't how family acts. We don't forget each other when we get a mole removed."
"It won't happen again, I promise. If he gets another mole removed, I'll notice," I say. "Please, Nik. I love this job. I love working here."
"I'm done with this conversation," he says. "Thank you for coming to see me, but it was not necessary. No one has ever gotten as many chances as you, Dell. As I said on the phone, you're no longer a part of the Juice Body family."
"Right," I say. A pit yawns open in my gut and stays open. Free food. Very solid hourly pay. A semi-walkable commute from my apartment. And Nik's not a bad guy, either. He hired me, after all, when he had absolutely no reason to. And he's given me plenty of second, third, fourth chances. And now he's looking at me with his eyes glazed over and his thoughts elsewhere.
"That's it, then?" I ask. "You're just done?"
"That's it," he says. "I've learned my lesson with you. It's taken me time, but I've learned it. And I'm not going to be made a fool of again." I'm not hurt, I'm furious. I don't want my job back, I want to jump on his desk and curb stomp his computer. I want to chuck my feces at the wall like a monkey girl, skyrocket my ranking, and make f***-you money.
I can grovel, but it seems that mademoiselle_dell can't.
"I'll just ask one more time: Are you going to give me my paycheck or not?" I say.
"Do you know when my wife and I planned this trip? Over a year ago. We planned it over a year ago. A week in the Hamptons. Just a week away together. It's not too much to ask. But then I look at the security camera: You're throwing peanut butter at customers! The store is empty! So I leave my vacation and drive back and now I have to figure out who is taking your shifts so I can drive right back tonight and my wife won't divorce me again."
"It was almond butter."
"What?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Let's call it even, Dell."
"No," I say. "You owe me four hundred dollars."
"I don't owe you anything," he says. "You have no respect for me or the rest of the Juice Body family."
"You can't not pay people. Are you serious?" I say. "Are you actually f****** serious?"
He doesn't yell back. Doesn't curse. He just sits there.
"I've never been anything but kind to you, Dell. I've been patient. And you took advantage of all of it. I'm truly sorry about your sister, but that's just the way it is."
"If you're taking food out of my mouth then you're just giving me a reason to eat you," I growl and shut the door behind me. Johnny says hello from behind the register and I flip him the double bird.
Excerpted from JUST WATCH ME by Lior Torenberg.. Published January 2026 by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 2026 by Lior Torenberg.
Excerpt: "A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing" by Alice Evelyn Yang
Ba
2017: Five Days Since Reunion Manhattan, New York
Each morning, when he blinked the thick, crusting sleep from his eyes, he had to relearn the rules of his new existence. Often, he felt as if he had stumbled from one dream into another: the new space he awoke in so foreign and loud and hot. The last space he'd roomed in was—don't remember, but at least it was cool and quiet. Outside, a clamor of car horns and the chatter of English from passing pedestrians floated up toward him. But when he peered out the window, he was greeted by the sight of overhangs printed with Chinese characters and Chinese elders pushing their way through crowds, their grocery carts parting the sea of people for them—the landscape and soundscape a surreal contradiction.
The room he was in was small. It had four stained walls and two windows facing the street. One was half-jammed with an AC unit. There was a kitchen in the corner, cordoned off by a thin, long counter and a tightly packed bookshelf. A dining table with mismatched chairs. The couch he had been asleep on, made up in white sheets, ripe with the smell of his body. A television. Three doors. One leading to a small, tiled bathroom. One at the end of a hallway to the outside, framed by an umbrella and a shoe rack. And the other. He was not sure what was behind it, only that he was not supposed to go inside.
It flung open. She walked into the living room in a flurry of motion, one arm in a suit jacket, the other rapidly scrolling through her phone before she shrugged on the other sleeve. Her hair was smooth, bluntly cut at her chin. The sight of her—this, too, he had to relearn. She looked up, and her mouth formed a small O of surprise.
"You're awake. Sorry, I know it's early, I thought I was being quiet. Work wanted me to come in now." She paused. "I could make some scrambled eggs. Do you want any?"
He could see his face in hers. It was his mother's face. Perhaps his grandmother's before that. Round cheekbones like a waxing moon, uptilted eyes like a fox's, a nose that sloped sharply downward. When he had left, she did not have this borrowed face. She had grown into it. This was what he had to relearn: that she had grown.
He blinked.
He was sitting in one of the mismatched chairs, a plate of scrambled eggs before him. This happened more and more. He forgot the in-betweens. One moment here; the next, there. Like the Myrtle house. One moment—where?—the next—
The squelch of ketchup startled him. Across the table, Qianze's brows knit together into a look of concentration as she painted a zigzagging line over her eggs in thick, dripping red red red—
There was a word on the tip of his tongue. Red what?
Red Army, red badge, red blood, rednecks, all the reds overlap- ping and accruing, red-surrection, red-incarnation, red-threading the red thread of fate, yes yes yes that was it—red thread.
The red thread was snaking toward him, fast as the glint of a silver fish being reeled in, hooking and pulling his mind out from this foreign space with the too-hot air and the too-piercing eyes of his daughter and back into the past, across the Promised Lands of America and past the depths of the Pacific, down, down, down into Mao's Steel Town, when he was just a boy and knobby-kneed and not a He but a We.
In Red August, the lucky month, we all went swimming. The Chairman went floating down the Yángzǐ, so we, his comrades in Ānshān, Liáoníng, went looking to emulate him in any watering hole available to us. Park lakes and reedy little streams—anything not too polluted from the steel factories. We would float on our backs in the shallows and let the sun warm our bellies, which were empty, save for a hunger for blood. We were resplendent in our youth, in our bloodlust. No room for remorse.
"Ba, did you hear me? I asked if you wanted the rest of my food. I've got to leave for work."
Her face came back into focus.
"Fine." She pressed her lips into a line. "I'll leave it out if you want it. Put it in the sink when you're done."
He blinked. There, again, those two piercing eyes, glittering and hard, and they left the taste of curdled bitter melon in his mouth because he knew that he was the one responsible for that resentment, and sometimes his daughter's eyes and face would slip and slide—or elide—into her mother's, his wife's, the small hand putting down a bowl of steamed egg custard lengthening, thinning out—the left thumb now his wife's stiff trigger finger—now the dry, cracked hands of his own mother placing a plate of salted fish preserves at the table—now the bony hands of Nǎinai, his grandmother, reaching out to him, the veins jutting out and haunting him. All of their hands culminating into this one holding the plate. Pointing to him, accusatory—
—No. Not right. Find the thread again. The one that leads to the prophecy. Ah. There it is. There's the lure and the line. Reel it in. Start again. Yes.
Mao's Little Red Book says revolution is violent, and so we worshipped at the altar of violence. Each morning in our classrooms, our dark heads bowed to the hanging portrait of the Chairman, praying wàn shòu wú jiāng, wàn shòu wú jiāng. Long may he live, may he live for ten thousand years.
Mao wrote to the middle-schoolers at Qīnghuá in the capitol that to rebel is justified, and so we rebelled, even though we hailed from Ānshān, Liáoníng, and most people who lived in Ānshān were poor, dirty steelworkers. Still, we dug through our relatives' trunks, seeking old military garb. When we came up empty, we scrounged together steelworkers' trousers and jackets, soaked them in bitter tea to make them look like the worn uniforms of soldiers. We ripped off strips of red cotton wherever we could find it—from curtains, from rags, from bloody fabric—and bound it around our left arms. The adults thought we were playing at war, but we were generals, entrusted by the Chairman to carry out his utopia.
We were not born red. We were not the children of revolutionaries, of veteran generals, of the Chairman's inner circle. Some of us were born black, born from bad classes—the offspring of capitalists, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries. For those of us whose past was stained, the red band and the violence it enabled was a salvation. We would not be targets of this brute horror; we would be the tools for it. Damned if you did, damned if you didn't.
The things we did we tried to forget.
And still they returned to us, lingering in our bodies like a poltergeist.
Excerpted from A BEAST SLINKS TOWARDS BEIJING by Alice Evelyn Yang. Copyright © 2026 by Alice Evelyn Yang. Reprinted courtesy of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.