Beyond Bestsellers - Fiction, Fall 2020

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

July - September 2020 Issue

       

See also:

Bertino, Marie-Helene.  Parakeet.
One week before her wedding, a young woman is visited by the spirit of her dead grandmother, in the form of a parakeet, who urges her to call off the wedding and go find her estranged brother instead.

Beukes, Lauren.  Afterland.  
In this thriller set in the near future when a virus that causes cancer in men has killed most of the world’s male population, a woman, whose son seems to be immune, struggles to free him from quarantine in the U.S. and get them both safely home to South Africa.

Cook, Diane.  The New Wilderness.  
In this dystopian novel, a couple whose daughter has been made sick by the pollution in their city sign up for an experiment in which they live as nomadic hunters and gatherers in the world’s only remaining natural area.

Cosby, S. A.  Blacktop Wasteland.  
In this heist thriller, a former get-away driver, now a family man who runs an auto repair shop, finds himself in financial trouble, and takes on one last job to try to pay off his bills.

Dimaline, Cherie.  Empire of Wild.
In this novel set in rural Ontario, Canada, a Metis woman, whose husband disappeared after an argument, searches relentlessly for him until she finds him preaching at a revival meeting under a different name, and realizes he is under a werewolf’s spell.

Dolan, Naoise.  Exciting Times.  
A young Irishwoman who has moved to Hong Kong to teach English has an affair with an English banker, and then after he has left on a work trip, becomes involved with a Hong Kong woman who is a lawyer, telling neither of her partners about the other.

Ford, Kelli Jo.  Crooked Hallelujah.
This series of interlinked short stories, set in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, centers on a relationship between a woman and her daughter, who is torn between her love for her family and her aspirations for a different life.

Ho, Lauren.  Last Tang Standing.  
In this comic novel, a successful young lawyer who is determined to become a partner at her high-powered Singapore law firm has to contend with her traditional family’s demands that she find a husband.

Johnson, Daisy.  Sisters.  
This psychological thriller features two teenage sisters, born 10 months apart, who develop an excessively close and eerie relationship with each other.

Jones, Stephen Graham.  The Only Good Indians.  
In this thoughtful horror novel, four Blackfeet Indians, who as young men once violated their elders’ rules and killed a female elk, are stalked by a supernatural force seeking vengeance.

Joy, David.  When These Mountains Burn.  
In this thriller set in western North Carolina at a time of massive brush fires, a retired forester tries to protect his grown son, a drug addict, from a local heroin dealer who’s threatening to kill him.

Kaufman, Charlie.  Antkind.  
In this wildly imaginative novel, a middle-aged film critic finds and then loses a three-month long film made by a 119-year-old man over the course of 90 years. After he loses the film, he tries to reconstruct it from memory.

Kunzru, Hari.  Red Pill.
A middle-aged American writer takes up a three month fellowship in Germany, but instead of working on his novel, he takes to binge-watching a violent cop show written by a racist right-wing idealogue.

Lacey, Catherine.  Pew.
This fable-like story takes place in a small Southern town, where a mysterious and mostly silent stranger, whose name, race, age, and gender are all unknown, is found sleeping in their church one week before the town holds its annual “Forgiveness Festival.”

Lane, Byron.  A Star Is Bored.
This comic novel, based loosely on the author’s own experiences working for Carrie Fisher, tells the story of a suicidal young writer who takes a job as a personal assistant to a famous Hollywood actress who was his childhood idol and is now a mostly recovering drug addict.

Livesey, Margot.  The Boy in the Field.
The lives of three English teenaged siblings are changed forever when they find a young man lying wounded in a field while they are on their way home from school, an incident which each views and remembers quite differently.

Mackintosh, Sophie.  Blue Ticket.  
In this dystopian novel set in the near-future, girls who have reached puberty are given a ticket at a lottery clinic - a white ticket means they have to have children; blue means they must use birth control for the rest of their lives.

McCorkle, Jill.  Hieroglyphics.  
A long-married couple leave Massachusetts to retire in Southern Pines, North Carolina, in part so that the husband can explore his unhappy childhood there.

Mosley, Walter.  The Awkward Black Man.
Seventeen short stories portray the lives of a wide variety of Black American men and their struggles with racism and relationships.

Pandya, Sameer.  Members Only.  
A naive Indian-American university professor finds himself accused both of racism and of criticizing Christianity and western civilization in the same week.

Rooney, Kathleen.  Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.
This imaginative novel tells the stories of two real-life heroes of World War I: a British homing pigeon, and a Harvard-educated American military officer.

Scott, Stephanie.  What’s Left of Me Is Yours.
A young Japanese lawyer investigates the complicated story of her mother’s murder by her lover twenty years earlier.

Strong, Lynn Steger.  Want.  
The main character in this novel seems to have everything – loving husband, healthy children, and a stable job, but in reality, she is overwhelmed and she and her husband are filing for bankruptcy.

Swamy, Shruti.  A House Is a Body.
A collection of twelve short stories about women in India and the United States that focus on love, loss, and life lived across cultures.

Temple, Emily.  The Lightness.  
After her father, a recently-converted Buddhist, disappears, a teenaged girl runs away to a retreat center where he had once studied, hoping to find him or clues to his whereabouts, but instead finds herself drawn into a group of girls whose leader is obsessed with levitation.

Tenorio, Lysley.  The Son of Good Fortune.  
A teenage boy, an undocumented Filipino immigrant who has been living on his own with his girlfriend, runs up a huge debt and is forced to return to his old home and ask for help from his mother.

Tobar, Hector.  The Last Great Road Bum.
This novel is based on the true story of a middle-class teenager from Urbana, Illinois, who left home in the 1960s and spent over 20 years travelling all around the world.
 
Tremblay, Paul.  Survivor Song.  
In this thriller, after a highly contagious and virulent strain of rabies has spread throughout Massachusetts, a pregnant woman and her best friend, a pediatrician, take off in search of a safe place to give birth.

van den Berg, Laura.  I Hold a Wolf by the Ears.  
These 11 short stories, with a surreal and ghostly tone, portray women grasping for stability that seems to elude them.

Walsh, M. O.  The Big Door Prize.
In this playful novel set in Louisiana, a small town grocery store acquires a machine that changes everyone’s lives by telling them their true life calling.

White, Edmund.  A Saint from Texas.  
Two twin sisters, rich with Texas oil money, leave home and don’t look back; one marries a French aristocrat for his title, and the other becomes a Catholic nun and miracle worker in a convent in Colombia.