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The Plans I Have for You: A Novel - Hardcover

Sanders, Lai

 
9781668087923: The Plans I Have for You: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1668087928 ISBN 13: 9781668087923
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Lai Sanders’s debut novel is a timely, razor-sharp thriller exploring race and privilege, perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang.

One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Thrillers of 2026

“A strangely dark, seductive debut novel.” —Kirkus Reviews

Shelley Hu’s life is over. A viral video cost her a spot at Columbia Law, her prestigious Manhattan law firm internship, and her hopes to build a better life for herself and her mother. Now Shelley is back in Kissimmee, Florida, working the night shift at a kitschy motel near Disney World—the very same job she held in high school. Shelley’s life is a black hole while those who caused the incident that cost her everything have been free to happily move on with their lives. But one night, the beautiful, enigmatic Sophia Moon checks in to Shelley’s motel with her husband and young son. Sophia’s appearance is far from random—she too has experienced a public shaming, and she proposes a plan to help Shelley get back what she deserves and enact revenge on the three people responsible for the worst day of her life.

Shelley returns with Sophia to New York with a new identity, new career, and new ambitions. Shelley ingratiates herself in her targets’ worlds until they begin to suffer one odd calamity after another. Soon Sophia’s support turns to obsession, as Shelley is forced to reckon with Sophia’s dark and mysterious past and the chilling truth that Sophia’s real plans are far beyond what Shelley ever imagined.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lai Sanders is an American writer and nonprofit worker living between Lebanon and France. The Plans I Have for You is her debut novel. Her first name is pronounced like the English word lie.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1. Shelley SHELLEY
December 2016

“I don’t want to lie to you,” she said. “I know who you are.”

We sat across from each other at one of the small tables in the lobby. The whole place looked like a sunken pirate ship, and that was on purpose. The walls were aquamarine. The chairs were round, plastic, and clumsily painted in strokes of colors that gave the rough suggestion of wine barrels. And the pièce de résistance: The front desk where I worked, with its wooden wheel and glow-in-the-dark fish tank, was the stern of the ship. Glittering gold doubloons hung in strings. I was in a bright salmon shirt and a balding plastic lei, the same ones I always put on when I showed up for the night shift. I had drawn the line at wearing an eye patch.

It was two in the morning and the lobby was empty. Her eyes were moist, almost glistening. I didn’t know what to say to her. I took a sip of my coffee instead.

She had checked into the motel two nights before, arriving just minutes after I took over reception at ten thirty. Her husband was circling the parking lot in what I imagined was a minivan, looking for a spot. She’d led her kid inside by the hand and come up to me and said in one breath, “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but would it be all right if he uses your bathroom before we check in? We’ve been in the car for hours.”

It was one of those questions that instantly flipped my brain to autopilot. I jabbed a thumb behind me. “It’s right through this door.”

Before she shepherded the kid around the corner, she’d looked into my eyes and said, “I appreciate you so much.”

I could tell right away they were Korean. She had a small, pale, oval-shaped face and frizzy black hair pulled back into a loose bun. She was wrapped in a light-colored coat that made her look not rich but comfortable, like an ad for Everlane. When they finally checked in, she picked up a pen and I saw an audience of rings, cheap, dainty little things, across all five fingers. Stars and moons and obviously fake gemstones.

As for the dad: There was less to say about him. He was lanky. He wore a baggy gray sweatshirt that said CORNELL. And he had that energy a lot of men had, where if he came into the same room as you and stood there quietly, you wouldn’t even hear him breathe.

Not long after I moved back to Florida, my mom became convinced that we were being punished by a jinn.

It’s angry at us for some reason, she’d say, pacing the length of the kitchen table. I can feel it. It’s in the air.

I didn’t ask her any questions. In those first days back, I had pretty much stopped talking. In the mornings, after we ate breakfast and my mom left for her shift at the motel, I’d pile the dirty dishes in the sink, slip back under the covers, and let the daylight hours waste away like sand. In the afternoons, when I finally talked myself into getting up to pee, I’d catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror on the armoire, gray and hunched over the edge of the bed, the collar on my T-shirt greasy with sweat. Another day.

Also: The jinn stuff was old news to me. It had been there all along.

I was six years old when my grandmother first told me about the jinn, not long after my dad died and she and my grandfather had moved in with me and my mom. It usually visited her at the tail end of her long afternoon naps, emerging from the shadows in the walls and crouching over her body: a dark, silent, faceless figure that took its rest directly on her beating heart. I couldn’t see the jinn, but I could see the force of its weight. I’d see the tiny tremors in her fingers and toes, the way her chest quivered with shallow breaths. I’d see my grandmother’s eyes, glassy with terror, her tears carving a glistening trail down her papery face.

Over time, we’d learned the best way to deal with it. I’d lay my head over her chest, my ear to her heart, and count out loud for her. One. Two. Three. Four. By thirty, her heartbeat would start to slow. By sixty, she could move her fingers, wriggle her toes. By two hundred, sometimes three hundred, she could find her voice again. I’m okay, she would say, straining to raise her arm so that she could stroke my hair, her palm damp with sweat. It’s gone. It’s gone.

Count yourself lucky that you can’t see it, she would say once she was back on her feet. These things make themselves best known to those who have experienced the greatest despair.

My grandmother was right, it turned out.

Because here I was eighteen years later, back in the ratty little apartment I’d grown up in, no job, no Columbia Law, no friends, no reputation, no future. Nothing left in my life but my mom and the vast, bitter disappointment that she hid behind a flimsy veil.

The day after I returned to Kissimmee, lying in the bed where my grandmother had once slept, I saw the jinn peel away from the shadows and slither onto my bed. This time, it had come for me.

And this time, there was no one who could make it leave.

A month after she picked me up from the Orlando airport, my mom burst into my room with a red plastic pail. “Look what I got for you,” she said.

It was filled with water and about a dozen small dark-green turtles; some were paddling wildly across the surface, while others were motionless at the bottom, either resting or dead. “Manuel from maintenance got these from his brother-in-law at the pet store for a discount,” my mom said. “Twelve turtles for less than two hundred dollars.”

“I don’t want twelve pet turtles, Ma.”

“They’re not pets,” my mom said. Her face was shining with an animation I hadn’t seen since the day I told her that I’d landed a coveted internship at one of the biggest law firms in New York City. “Get up and get dressed. We’re going to do a life release ceremony.”

At Lake Toho, we found a quiet dock overlooking a marshy mass of lily pads and bulrushes and yellow-tinged water. In the distance was a gray bark-like thing that was either driftwood or a snoozing alligator. I looked down at the pail in my hands, where the turtles were stirring uneasily, and back at my mom. “So what am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause, and that was when I realized she hadn’t thought this far ahead. “I don’t know,” my mom said. “Just pour them into the water gently, I guess.”

“Should we even be doing this? We don’t even know if they can survive in this habitat. They could get eaten by a gator.”

“They’re not going to die,” she said. “We’re giving them a new life. That’s why it’s called a life release.”

She stepped forward to stand next to me. “Put them in the water, and I’ll say something. A prayer.”

As I tipped the bucket, my mom clasped her hands together. “Dear Buddha,” she began, her voice tentative. “Dear Guanyin bodhisattva, my daughter has saved these turtles from a pet store, and she is now giving them back to nature. So please… please bless my daughter. Please give her good fortune and protect her from evil things. Thank you.”

The last turtle fell into the lake with a plomp. My mom and I looked at each other. “You lied, Ma,” I said.

“What?”

“You lied to the bodhisattva. You told her I was the one who got the turtles when really, it was Manuel. So now the karma’s going to...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668087928
ISBN 13 
9781668087923
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
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Niederlande