Beyond Bestsellers - Fiction, Spring 2021

Great recent titles you may have missed, selected by our librarians.

April-June 2021 Issue

       

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Alyan, Hala.  The Arsonists’ City.  
The recent history of Lebanon and Syria is told through the story of a family – a Lebanese doctor, his Syrian wife, and their three children - and the many secrets they hold.

Apostol, Gina.  The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata.  
This novel by a Filipino writer takes the form of a memoir written by an aging revolutionary, describing his life and the 1890s revolution against Spain. Extensive footnotes with arguments between an editor, translator, and scholar add a layer of complexity.

Audrain, Ashley.  The Push.  
A woman, whose mother and grandmother had difficult relationships with their children, becomes a mother herself despite misgivings, but she fails to bond with the baby, and suspects there is something seriously wrong with her daughter.

Barry, Kevin.  That Old Country Music: Stories.  
A collection of 11 stories about love, music, and country life by an Irish writer, set in County Sligo, Ireland.

Benjamin, Ali.  The Smash-Up.  
In this novel based on Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome and set during the Kavanaugh Supreme Court Nomination hearings of 2018, a middle-aged businessman, who is losing a sense of connection to his politically active wife, falls in love with his daughter’s babysitter.

Boyd, William.  Trio. 
In this comic novel, the lives of a film producer, a young American actress, and an alcoholic has-been novelist come together during a disastrous movie shoot in Brighton, England in 1968.

Broder, Melissa.  Milk Fed.  
A young anorexic woman, whose mother was obsessed with weight and eating during her childhood,  falls in love with an Orthodox Jewish woman who is unashamedly fat and inspires her to explore what brings her pleasure.

Davies, Carys.  The Mission House.
A depressed Englishman moves to a former British hill station in India and settles into a quiet and soothing life, but the outside world eventually intrudes.

Davies, Peter Ho.  A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself. 
In this semi-autobiographical novel, a father tells the story of his wife’s two pregnancies – the first aborted for medical reasons, and the second, leading to the birth of their son, who may be autistic.

González, Betina.  American Delirium. 
In this dystopian novel by an Argentinian writer, set in a small town in the U.S. Midwest, a group of residents become dissenters and abandon their children, a herd of deer starts attacking people, and use of a powerful hallucinogen spreads among the populace.

Gornichec, Genevieve.  The Witch's Heart.  
In this story based on Norse mythology, a witch who has been burned by Odin escapes to a secluded forest, leaving her heart behind; she later meets Loki, the trickster god, they fall in love, and she bears three children. 

Grushin, Olga.  The Charmed Wife. 
In this study of relationships, marriage, and divorce, Cinderella, fed up after more than 13 years of life with Prince Charming, visits a witch who brews murderous potions.

Harrison, Jamie.  The Center of Everything.  
A Montana woman, struggling with memory loss after suffering a brain injury in a bicycle accident, begins to remember long-forgotten and traumatic childhood incidents.

Henry, Madeleine.  The Love Proof. 
After a brilliant physics student and a business major meet at Yale and fall in love, the physicist begins to slack off on her studies.

Hernandez, Catherine.  Crosshairs.  
In this dystopian novel set in the near future, a fascist Canadian government has sent all its nonwhite and LGBTQ citizens to labor camps, but some, including the main character, have joined the Resistance.

Hobson, Brandon.  The Removed. 
In this book about loss and healing, a 12-year-old Cherokee boy in foster care, with a gift for telling stories, visits a Cherokee couple, startling them by his resemblance to their son who had been killed by a policeman 15 years earlier.

Hubbard, Ladee.  The Rib King. 
This historical thriller begins in New Orleans in 1914, when a Black cook and butler create a barbecue sauce, which the white family they work for successfully markets, without sharing any of the profits.

Hunt, Laird.  Zorrie.  
The story of a seemingly ordinary Midwest woman, and the joys and sorrows of a life of hard work and simple pleasures.

Johnson, Sadeqa.  Yellow Wife. 
In this historical novel, set before the Civil War, the heroine, the child of an African woman and a white plantation owner, grows up sheltered from the worst of slave life, but though she’s been promised her freedom, is sold, and becomes the wife of a sadistic white jail owner.

Jones, Cherie.  How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House.  
In this novel set in Barbados, the lives of two couples connect when a local man murders a rich Englishman in the course of a robbery, while the burglar’s abused wife gives birth alone on the beach.

Mason, Meg.  Sorrow and Bliss. 
This heartfelt and sometimes comic novel centers on a woman who has struggled with depression most of her life, until she is finally prescribed a medication that may help her.

Mihalic, Susan.  Dark Horses. 
The main character of this novel is a talented 15-year-old horseback rider from a wealthy family, whose father is training her for the Olympics, but who has also been sexually abusing her for many years.

Moniz, Dantiel W.  Milk Blood Heat: Stories.  
A collection of short stories, mostly set in Florida, and with vividly-drawn female characters, greatly varied in their themes and plots.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh.  The Committed.  
In this sequel to The Sympathizer, the main character, a Vietnamese former double agent who has survived war, re-education, and a refugee camp, has now moved to Paris, where he finds work selling hashish for a Viet-Chinese drug lord.

O’Donnell, Paraic.  The House on Vesper Sands.  
This literary thriller, set in London in 1893, combines a lady journalist, a Scotland Yard inspector, a university student, a clergyman, a series of missing girls, and a seamstress’s suicide in a complex gothic mystery.

Oyler, Lauren.  Fake Accounts. 
A website writer on vacation in Berlin meets a fellow American working as a tour guide and follows him back to the U.S., where she discovers, while snooping through his phone, that he has a shadow identity as a conspiracy theorist.

Peters, Torrey.  Detransition, Baby.  
In this novel set in New York, a trans woman is approached by her ex-lover, who has detransitioned and is now in a relationship with a cisgender woman, and asked if she will become a second mother to the baby his new girlfriend is carrying.

Romano-Lax, Andromeda.  Annie and the Wolves. 
A Minnesota historian, recovering from a car accident, and obsessed with the life of Annie Oakley, receives a journal in the mail from a mysterious book dealer, which might contain previously unknown information about Oakley.

Russo, Kate.  Super Host. 
A middle-aged painter in London, struggling with a divorce, sudden poverty, and a slump in his artistic career, makes ends meet by renting his large house out to guests via an Internet site.

Summers, Chelsea G.  A Certain Hunger. 
This fictional prison memoir is narrated by a former award-winning food critic who tells the story of her life and how she became a murderer and eventual cannibal.

Vida, Vendela.  We Run the Tides.  
Two teenage girls living in a wealthy San Francisco neighborhood in the 1980s attend a prestigious girls’ private school and become friends, but are already growing apart when one of them disappears. 

Williams, Eley.  The Liar’s Dictionary.  
In this comic novel, a bored dictionary employee amuses himself by inserting fake words and definitions in the volume; more than a hundred years later, a young woman and her girlfriend try to find all of these words and discover who added them.

Yu, E. Lily.  On Fragile Waves. 
An Afghan family leaves war-torn Kabul to attempt to find asylum in Australia, by way of Pakistan and Indonesia; as they travel, their young daughter tells stories to try to make sense of their experiences.