Boundless Press | The Coin: A Novel

The Coin: A Novel

Yasmin Zaher

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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.

The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.

But America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her principles. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness, and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

In enthralling, sensory prose, The Coin explores nature and civilization, beauty and justice, class and belonging—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative, wry, and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.

“[A] smart, sneering novel of capital and its consequences . . . In a spiraling, hallucinogenic plot, The Coin draws a dotted line between the narrator’s grandmother’s garden in Palestine and a splatter of excrement on New York City subway tiles; between her grandfather’s birthplace of Bisan—'now a low-income town in Israel, housing mostly Jewish families from Morocco and no Palestinians'—Stokely Carmichael and a Gucci window display appropriating the language of revolution . . . The whiplash feels intentional, funny in an absurdist way, like the narrator’s existential seesawing between jaded American consumerism and the sadness and guilt of displacement . . . The novel’s power is not in cohesion, but in chaos." —Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review

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Sunny's Book Truck\ \ CJ\ \ • Aug 15 2025

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[Poll:\ \ Are any of these on your TBR?\ \ Hi nerds,\ \ Last night we held our second installment of the Sunny's Salon—a monthly addition to our event programming that is like a book club with no assigned reading. We kicked off the night by doing a 15 minute reading sprint with some lofi music playing in the background and then went into a larger discussion centered around or Last, Now, and Next. It was so fun hearing about what people were reading or had on their radar (weirdly three people wanted to read Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh next) and seeing where reading taste overlapped and differed. Below you will find 50 (!) book recommendations gathered from the Yuma community.\ \ \ \

Endling: Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness.\ \
Hot Girls with Balls: In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year.\ \
Mayra: An eerie, hypnotic debut about friendship, desire, and memory set against the sultry backdrop of Florida’s swamplands.\ \
Empire of Pain: A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin.\ \
Say Hello to my Little Friend: Scarface meets Moby Dick in Say Hello to My Little Friend following a young man’s attempt to capitalize on his mother’s murky legacy—a story steeped in Miami’s marvelous and sinister magic.\ \
I'll Make a Spectacle of You: This heart-pounding horror debut from Beatrice Winifred Iker takes listeners to Bricksbury University, the oldest and most storied HBCUs in the nation. But as one student is about to find out, a long history comes with a legacy of secrets.\ \ \ \ \
Before Elvis: In this thought-provoking book, the Black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley's music finally receive recognition and praise.\ \
Nineteen Minutes: Jodi Picoult pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.\ \
Pageboy: With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.\ \
Follow My Voice: This spellbinding #BookTok sensation from internationally bestselling author Ariana Godoy follows a nineteen-year-old battling agoraphobia as she forms an unexpected connection with the host of her favorite college radio show.\ \
Wild Love: She's been driving him wild for years. The good kind of wild. The bad kind of wild. But mostly, the kind of wild that comes with wanting your best friend's little sister and knowing you can't have her.\ \
The Possession of Alba Díaz: When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust…from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.\ \ \ \ \
The Colossus of New York: Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in—or spent time—in the greatest of American cities.\ \
Is Mother Dead: A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middleaged artist and her aging mother.\ \
The Metamorphosis: This is not just a novel about physical transformation but also a deep reflection on alienation and loneliness.\ \
Time and Time Again: In this debut YA speculative romance perfect for fans of Rachael Lippincott, two queer, disabled, Jewish teens find themselves stuck in a time loop--and falling love.\ \
The Fellowship of the Ring: One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.\ \
The Library at Hellebore: A deeply dark academia novel from USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education and An Education in Malice who are hungry for something more diabolical.\ \ \ \ \
A Resistance of Witches: As World War II rages around her, a witch abandoned by her coven must journey to find a book of unspeakable power before it lands in Nazi hands.\ \
Ruthless Vows: The epic conclusion to the intensely romantic and beautifully written story that started in Divine Rivals.\ \
Tender is the Flesh: Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore.\ \
Our Share of Night: A woman’s mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family.\ \
Heart of Darkness: The story is narrated by Charles Marlow, recalling his obsessive quest to locate the ivory trader Kurtz, who has become ensconced deep in the jungle managing a remote outpost. As he ventures further and further down the Congo, Marlow finds himself and his surroundings become increasingly untethered.\ \
Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed: A "harrowing, incendiary" exposé of the real Kennedy Curse—the family’s generations-long legacy of misogyny, murder, and mayhem.\ \ \ \ \
The Summer I Turned Pretty: As the summer seasons pass, Belly has to choose between two brothers who love her…and she’ll have to break one of their hearts.\ \
Releasing 10: A devastatingly raw, achingly beautiful love story that will rip your heart out and patch it back together.\ \
Tropic of Orange: Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway.\ \
Atmosphere: An epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.\ \
Starving Saints: A transfixing fever dream of medieval horror following three women in a besieged castle that descends ravenously into madness under the spell of mysterious, godlike visitors.\ \
Black Salt Queen: Filled with passion, romance, betrayal, and divine magic, Black Salt Queen journeys to a gorgeous precolonial island nation where women—and secrets—reign.\ \ \ \ \
American Scare: A vital exposé for both our history and our present day, American Scare tells the riveting story of how the Florida government destroyed the lives of Black and queer citizens in the twentieth century.\ \
Can't Get Enough: Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She has phenomenal friends, a loving family, and a thriving business that places her in the entertainment industry's rarefied air. Your vision board? She’s probably living it.\ \
Ship Fever: The elegant short fictions gathered hereabout the love of science and the science of love are often set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century.\ \
Lapvona: In a village buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself part of a power struggle that puts the community’s faith to a savage test.\ \
Smothermoss: A haunting, imaginative, and twisting tale of two sisters and the menacing, unexplained forces that threaten them and their rural mountain community.\ \
Everything is Tuberculosis: A deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.\ \ \ \ \
City of Quartz: In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy.\ \
The Coin: A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.\ \
How to Read a Book: A heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.\ \
Razorblade Tears: A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.\ \
All the Dangerous Things: A totally gripping thriller about a desperate mother with a troubled past.\ \
Lock Every Door: A young woman whose new job apartment sitting in one of New York’s oldest and most glamorous buildings may cost more than it pays.\ \ \ \ \
Compound Fracture: A queer Appalachian thriller that pulls no punches—following a trans autistic teen who's drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.\ \
This is Me Trying: Inevitably drawn back together by circumstance and history, Beatriz and Santiago navigate grief, love, mental illness, forgiveness, and what it means to try to build a future after unfathomable loss.\ \
You Weren't Meant to be Human: Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.\ \
Bright Young Women: Don’t miss this “breakneck thriller” that examines “our culture’s obsession with serial killers and true crime” ( Harper’s Bazaar) as it follows two women on the pursuit of justice against all odds.\ \
The Changeling: With a new introduction by Karen Russell, the 40th anniversary edition of The Changeling is a visionary fairy tale and a work of mythic genius by one of our best writers.\ \
Choke: Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times.](https://sunnysbooktruck.binderybooks.com/item/P7WfIPf3S2q1NS4tNJ2v/)

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