PRE-ORDER: Secret Keepers

Secret Keepers, by Teresa Tumminello Brader

*PRE-ORDER* Forthcoming Publication Date: March 25, 2025

*Pre-orders receive a copy of Prose Series #14 (also by Teresa) or another of your choice--let us know in the order notes! 

In Teresa Tumminello Brader’s follow-up to her New Orleans memoir, Letting In Air and Light, Secret Keepers expands the question of whether we can ever truly know our loved ones. This collection of character-driven short stories delves intimately into romantic and family relationships—some fractured, some fragile, all troubled by mysteries for which there may be no clear answers. One woman convinces herself of a husband’s affair that may or may not be imagined; other families struggle to rebuild amidst the wreckage of hurricanes and severed family ties. Compelling stories of betrayal and regret intertwine with thoughtful depictions of strong women seeking more authentic lives. Within the familiar world of South Louisiana, Brader’s characters navigate obsession, loss, and a tentative hope that some connections are still worth trying to keep.

Teresa Tumminello Brader is a New Orleanian, spurred on to writing by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Her short-story collection Secret Keepers is her latest book from Belle Point Press. Her first book, Letting in Air and Light, a work of hybrid memoir/fiction from the same press, has been honored as one of three nominees for the 2025 One Book One New Orleans citywide read and literary outreach. Her stories, essays, poetry, and reviews can be found online and in print anthologies. She has a bachelor of arts in English from Marquette University, her four years in Milwaukee the only time she lived away from the city of her birth. 

Praise for Secret Keepers

“Secret Keepers, as its title suggests, examines interiority and evokes the question: Can we ever truly know another person, or even ourselves? From the domestic to the speculative, Brader conjures in these stories the suppressed desires of everyday people; the quicksilver signals exchanged between lovers, family, neighbors, and strangers. This is a collection that simmers with quiet tension.”

—Chin-Sun Lee, author of Upcountry

“Beset by natural disaster and disasters of their own making, the characters in Teresa Tumminello Brader’s short fiction collection, Secret Keepers, imprint themselves on our hearts like secrets of our very own. In prose as lush as a humid New Orleans night, these stories navigate the truths and lies and pains and joys of ordinary people in the most heartfelt ways. A must-read story collection.”

—Gerry Wilson, author of That Pinson Girl and Crosscurrents and Other Stories

“Steeped in the cultures, languages, and sheer grit of New Orleans, the stories in Secret Keepers trace a haunting landscape of human loss and longing. The sorrow song of the City, of illicit love affairs, sexual fantasies, Katrina desolation—all set to a fevered beat—evoke a sense of place that is as real as rotten seafood after a hurricane or the rust on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Teresa Tumminello Brader knows southern Louisiana as only someone with deep historical roots in a place can, and these stories shine as evidence." 

—Minrose Gwin, award-winning author of Beautiful Dreamers and The Accidentals

Interview with Teresa

Feature in Country Roads Magazine

NPR Interview: The Reading Life

Southern Review of Books

Interview: CRAFT Literary

Details:

• Trim size: 5.5" x 8.5"
• Publication date: March 25, 2025
• ISBN: 978-1-960215-34-5