House of Yesterday

Taking inspiration from the author's own Afghan-Uzbek heritage, this contemporary YA debut is a breathtaking journey into the grief that lingers through generations of immigrant families, and what it means to confront the ghosts of your past.

Struggling to deal with the pain of her parents' impending divorce, fifteen-year-old Sara is facing a world of unknowns and uncertainties. Unfortunately, the one person she could always lean on when things got hard, her beloved Bibi Jan, has become a mere echo of the grandmother she once was. And so Sara retreats into the family business, hoping a summer working on her mum's latest home renovation project will provide a distraction from her fracturing world.

But the house holds more than plaster and stone. It holds secrets that have her clinging desperately to the memories of her old life. Secrets that only her Bibi Jan could have untangled. Secrets Sara is powerless to ignore as the dark truths of her family's history rise in ghostly apparitions—and with it, the realisation that as much as she wants to hold onto her old life, nothing will ever be the same.

Told in lush, sweeping prose, House of Yesterday is a story of secrets, summer, and family sacrifice that will chill you to the bone as the house that wraps Sara in the warmth of her past becomes the one thing she cannot escape.