Great recent titles you may have missed, selected by our librarians.
April - June 2020 Issue
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See also:
- Featured Review: Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
- Nonfiction Recommendations
- Previous Issues
Adiga, Aravind. Amnesty.
A young man from Sri Lanka who lives in Australia faces a moral dilemma when he fears that telling the police what he knows about a murder could lead to his deportation.
Anappara, Deepa. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.
This novel that portrays life in the slums of Indian cities tells the story of three children who become amateur detectives to solve the disappearance of their friend.
Angelo, Megan. Followers.
In 2015, two ambitious young women use social media to become rich and famous; in 2051, a woman whose life is live-streamed in a town in California for government-selected celebrities discovers that her life may be based on a lie.
Barry, Quan. We Ride Upon Sticks.
In this comic novel set in suburban Massachusetts in the 1980s, the members of a losing high school girls’ field hockey team, inspired by the witch trials of three centuries earlier, sell their souls to the devil in exchange for a winning season.
Beams, Clare. The Illness Lesson.
A pupil at a progressive girls school in Massachusetts in the 1870’s begins to exhibit strange physical symptoms, which spread to the other girls.
Bump, Gabriel. Everywhere You Don’t Belong.
An African-American boy from the South Side of Chicago, abandoned by his parents, is raised by his grandmother, and struggles to find his identity and a place where he can belong.
Card, Maisy. These Ghosts Are Family.
In this complex novel, whose stories span two centuries and eight generations, a man leaves Jamaica for London in 1970 in order to better support his family, but an accident leads him to assume a false identity, and he starts a new life and family in New York.
Doshi, Tishani. Small Days and Nights.
When an American woman returns to her native India after her mother’s death, she discovers that she has an older sister with Down syndrome.
Fowler, Therese Anne. A Good Neighborhood.
In this suspenseful domestic drama, a pair of neighbors become enemies when the big new house that one of them builds causes damage to an ancient and beloved oak tree on the other neighbor’s property.
Greenwell, Garth. Cleanness.
A group of nine connected short stories about a young, gay American literature teacher who is working in Sofia, Bulgaria in the post-Soviet era.
Hargrave, Kiran Millwood. The Mercies.
In this story set in a small Norwegian fishing village in the 17th Century and based on an actual incident, authorities suspect witchcraft after a freak storm kills a large number of fishermen, leaving mostly women in the village.
Jen, Gish. The Resisters.
In this dystopian novel set in an authoritarian future America, a husband and wife are members of the resistance until their daughter’s talent for baseball leads to her being courted by a university for the privileged.
Jin, Meng. Little Gods.
After the death of her mother, a young Chinese-American woman returns to China to find her biological father, and to try to learn more about her mother, who was a physics student in the turbulent 1980s.
Kehlmann, Daniel. Tyll.
This is a colorful and darkly humorous retelling of the German folk stories about a trickster named Till Eulenspiegel, which moves the stories from the middle ages to the 17th Century, amid the violence and chaos of the Thirty Years’ War.
King, Lily. Writers & Lovers.
A young novelist supports herself by waitressing while working every day on the novel she has been writing for six years, struggling to cope with her grief over her mother’s death and falling in love with two men.
Krivak, Andrew. The Bear.
After human civilization ends, the last two people on earth are a man and his daughter, to whom he teaches the survival skills she will need after he is gone.
McBride, James. Deacon King Kong.
This novel with a large cast of quirky characters is set in Brooklyn in 1969, and begins with a drunken Baptist deacon shooting a drug dealer who he had once coached in baseball.
McCann, Colum. Apeirogon.
Two men, a Palestinian and an Israeli, both of whom have lost their daughters to political violence, travel together around the world to share their stories and their hope for peace.
Montimore, Margarita. Oona Out of Order.
The main character in this novel makes a chronological jump each year on her birthday, New Year’s Eve, leading her to live her life out of order.
Nemens, Emily. The Cactus League.
In this novel set in Scottsdale, Arizona, a sportswriter, trying to understand why a major baseball star is hitting rough times, studies the people who surround the player’s life.
Nguyen, Kevin. New Waves.
Two disaffected workers at a tech firm steal their company’s data to sell to a rival company, but the woman is killed in a car accident.
Offill, Jenny. Weather.
This novel takes the reader into the mind of a librarian, who worries over everything from her brother’s drug problems to global climate change.
Phillips, Arthur. The King at the Edge of the World.
This novel of court intrigue takes place in Elizabethan England, where a Turkish physician, stranded in Britain, is sent to investigate the likely heir to the throne, James VI of Scotland, to determine whether he is a Protestant or a secret Catholic.
Popkey, Miranda. Topics of Conversation.
This novel looks at issues of female identity and the stories women use to explain themselves through a series of conversations that take place over 20 years.
Rainsford, Sue. Follow Me to Ground.
In this folktale-like story, Father and his daughter Ada cure sick villagers by temporarily burying them in the Ground, a mysterious and powerful entity. But when Ada falls in love with a villager, Father foresees that dire events will result that the Ground will not be able to heal.
Schaitkin, Alexis. Saint X.
In this thoughtful thriller, an American teenager, whose family is on holiday on a Caribbean island, is found murdered. Years later, her younger sister recognizes a man her sister had known on the island, and begins to stalk him in pursuit of the truth about her sister’s death.
Sparks, Amber. And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges.
A collection of short stories, most of them very short, written from a sardonically feminist perspective, examining the lives of women who have been wronged.
Stuart, Douglas. Shuggie Bain.
Shuggie Bain is a boy growing up poor in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s and 1990s, the son of a beautiful, alcoholic mother, and a philandering taxi driver father.
Taylor, Brandon. Real Life.
The main character of this novel is a lonely gay black man from Alabama in a graduate biochemistry program at a predominantly white midwestern university.
Thomas, Scarlett. Oligarchy.
A teenaged Russian girl is sent to an elite British boarding school, whose students are obsessed with their weight; when girls start dying, the Russian begins to suspect that something sinister is going on.
Unferth, Deb Olin. Barn 8.
After a rebellious teenager takes a job in Iowa as an auditor for an egg producer, she and a friend develop a plan to liberate a million hens from a cruelly operated egg farm.
Van Meter, Crissy. Creatures.
The main character in this novel is an oceanic researcher who lives on an island off the coast of Los Angeles. When the story begins, it’s her wedding weekend, her fisherman fiancé is missing, her mother is trying to take charge, and a dead whale has washed up on the beach.
Yoon, Paul. Run Me to Earth.
This novel, which begins in Laos in 1969, tells the stories of three orphans who meet while living in a bombed-out hospital.
Yuknavitch, Lidia. Verge.
A collection of dark, yet hopeful stories about people who are outsiders in contemporary society.
Zapata, Michael. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau.
A young orphan discovers a manuscript in his late grandfather’s belongings, and, with his friend, a reporter, sets out to find the astrophysicist his grandfather had attempted to send it to.