Tiny Threads

April 1, 2024

Award-winning MG and YA author Rivera (Barely Floating) makes her adult debut. Samara has moved to California to take her dream job working for famous fashion designer Antonio Mota. Then she starts hearing voices and seeing strange things and discovers that the town and Mota's house might be hiding some horrific secrets beneath the glamour. Prepub Alert.

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July 15, 2024
A fashion writer tangles with sinister secrets in this harrowing haute couture thriller from Rivera (We Light Up the Sky). When Samara Martín leaves New Jersey and her tight-knit Cuban American family to take a dream job in California with designer Antonio Mota, she’s determined to shine. But Mota proves an irascible boss, and making matters worse, his company headquarters is adjacent to a possibly haunted slaughterhouse. As Samara tries to win favor with the head seamstress, strange things happen: a mysterious embroidered name appears on outfits; hoglike grunting noises fill her apartment at night; she sees an apparition of a young woman in a bloodied gown; and a one-night stand with the charming son of Mota’s investors (whose family owned the local sewing mill where Samara’s late grandmother worked as a seamstress) leaves her covered in scratches. Overwhelmed by paranoia, Samara leans into her spiraling alcohol addiction. As danger ramps up, she’s forced to confront an ugly family secret and a historical cycle of privileged white men taking advantage of young Latina seamstresses. Though this weird-Cinderella tale has too many tragic threads hastily interwoven, there’s enough masterful detailing and vividly imagined scares to keep readers on pins and needles. Horror fans shouldn’t miss it.

August 1, 2024
In her visceral and thought-provoking adult debut, middle-grade and YA author Rivera (Barely Floating, 2023) examines the dark underbelly of the high-fashion industry. Eager to prove her fashion bona fides, second-generation Cuban American Samara Martin leaves her stifling life in New Jersey to work for legendary designer Antonio Mota in gentrifying Vernon, California. Samara's ideas capture Mota's attention, and she initially earns favored status with her notoriously difficult-to-please employer. But her dream job quickly becomes a nightmare when Samara is haunted by visions and voices warning her about her new home and workplace. As she digs deeper into Vernon's fraught history, Samara uncovers shocking secrets that threaten not only her livelihood but her life. Exploring themes of gentrification, identity, toxic workplace culture, and the exploitation of women, Rivera's slow-burn horror novel ratchets up the tension in an explosive finale that proves that all that glitters is not gold. Suggest to fans of Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching (2020), Zakiya Dalila Harris' The Other Black Girl (2021), Ripe, by Sarah Rose Etter (2023), and the 2018 British horror film, In Fabric.

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