Beyond Bestsellers - Fiction, Winter 2019

Great recent titles selected by our librarians.

January - March 2019 Issue

       

See also:

Ackerman, Elliot.  Waiting for Eden. 
An American soldier, badly burned by an explosive device during his service in Iraq, is slowly dying; his best friend, who was killed in the same explosion, tells his story.

Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame.  Friday Black. 
These thoughtful and hard-edged stories show the ugliness of contemporary racism through plots that go just slightly beyond reality.

Anders, Charlie Jane.  Rock Manning Goes for Broke. 
In an alternate American future, a high school student who loves to make slapstick movies is pressured into making propaganda films for a violent militia group.

Apostol, Gina. Insurrecto. 
A filmmaker and her translator develop competing versions of a screenplay that tells the story of a brutal massacre by American soldiers in the Philippines in 1901.

Archer, Jeffrey.  Heads You Win. 
In this novel, which presents two different versions of the story, a young Russian man flees to the west with his mother in 1968, tossing a coin to decide whether to emigrate to London or New York. 

Berlin, Lucia.  Evening in Paradise: More Stories. 
A new collection of 22 short stories by the late author of the acclaimed A Manual for Cleaning Women, some dark and some humorous, many set in the American southwest and in South America.

Boyne, John.  A Ladder to the Sky. 
A man with little literary ability sets out to be the greatest novelist of his generation, and succeeds through raw ambition and plagiarism.

Braithwaite, Oyinkan.  My Sister, the Serial Killer. 
A Nigerian nurse, who has kept her sister’s secrets after she killed three of her boyfriends, faces a dilemma when her sister becomes interested in a doctor that the nurse herself loves.

Brown, Rosellen.  The Lake on Fire. 
Two young Jewish immigrants run away from a communal farm in Wisconsin to seek their fortunes in the big city of Chicago, just before the Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Carey, Edward.  Little.  
This novel, accompanied by illustrations by the author, tells the story of an orphaned French servant girl who learned to mold wax into human figures at the time of the French Revolution, and survived numerous adventures before she achieved success under the name Madame Tussaud.

Chai, May-Lee.  Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories.  
The characters in these stories, Chinese immigrants to America and Chinese-Americans, all struggle to bridge the two cultures in their lives.

Coleman, Claire G.  Terra Nullius.  
In this dystopian novel, Earth, and in particular, Australia, has been invaded by alien settlers, whose brutal behavior towards the native people is similar to that of British settlers of Australia towards the Aborigines during its colonial period. 

Dubus, Andre, III.  Gone So Long.  
A man who murdered his wife forty years earlier, now freed from prison because he is terminally ill, goes in search of their daughter, who he hasn’t seen since he killed her mother.

Eisenberg, Deborah.  Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories. 
The characters in these six short stories find their lives messy and bewildering, and always want something different from what they have.

Enger, Leif.  Virgil Wander.  
After a small-town Minnesota man accidentally drives his car into Lake Superior and survives with few injuries, he feels reborn and becomes a new, more dynamic person.

Fuller, Claire. Bitter Orange. 
In this suspenseful novel, a sheltered young woman, hired by a wealthy American who has bought an abandoned English country estate, meets a glamorous couple also working for the American, and is drawn into their lives. 

George, Margaret.  The Splendor Before the Dark: A Novel of the Emperor Nero.  
In the second of two books about the Roman Emperor Nero, the author describes the last years of his life, and shows him to be a finer and saner person than his legend depicts.

Hall, Louisa.  Trinity. 
Seven fictional characters who knew him at different parts of his life and career describe the character and life of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who created the atom bomb.

Harvey, Samantha.  The Western Wind.  
This literary mystery takes place in Fifteenth Century England, in a village where its wealthiest citizen, a newcomer, is found drowned in the river; whether by accident, suicide, or murder is unknown.

Higashino, Keigo.  Newcomer: A Mystery.  
In this gentle mystery, a Tokyo detective investigates the murder of a new resident by visiting local business owners, whose stories give him a clearer picture of the dead woman.

Jackson, Shelley.  Riddance: Or, The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. 
In this gothic mystery set in 1919, a girl who stutters becomes the star pupil at a vocational school for children with speech impediments, whose headmistress believes the dead can communicate through her students.

Kim, Eugenia.  The Kinship of Secrets. 
This novel portrays the lives of two Korean sisters – one who is raised in wartime Korea by her grandparents, and the other who lives with their parents in the United States.

L’Amour, Louis.  No Traveller Returns.  
The celebrated Western author’s son put this adventure story, set on a tanker crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1939, together from fragments his father left behind.

McCarthy, Kevin.  Wolves of Eden.  
In this Western mystery, a pair of Irish brothers flee to America and join the army during the Civil War; after the war, they are stationed at a fort in Montana when an officer and his aide arrive to investigate a triple murder.

Moore, Wayétu.  She Would Be King. 
In this book, which mixes history with magical realism, three characters meet in Monrovia in the early days after the founding of Liberia.

Mosley, Walter.  John Woman. 
The title character of this thoughtful novel is a shy boy who kills his father’s boss as a teenager; later, he changes his name, gets a college education, and becomes a controversial history professor. 

Murakami, Haruki.  Killing Commendatore. 
In this surreal novel, a man who has moved into the home of a famous artist and found a painting hidden in the attic begins to have strange and puzzling experiences.

Perry, Sarah.  Melmoth.  
In this gothic story, a middle-aged Englishwoman living in Prague, trying to atone for some wrong she committed twenty years earlier,  learns of an old manuscript telling the story of Melmoth, a vengeful female monster.

Roy, Anuradha.  All the Lives We Never Lived. 
This novel, set in India in the late 1930s and early 1940s, tells the story of a boy whose mother abandons him when she leaves the country with a group of artists. Although he never sees her again, he later gets a group of letters his mother wrote at that time. 

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos.  The Labyrinth of the Spirits. 
The last volume in the author’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books tetralogy, an adventure full of characters, stories, puzzles, and references to books.

Serre, Anne.  The Governesses. 
Three governesses, employed by a family living on a country estate, devote their days to erotic adventures in this surreal and dream-like French novel.

Taneja, Preti.  We That Are Young. 
This novel, set in contemporary India, tells the King Lear-like story of three sisters raised by their father, a wealthy and influential businessman who is preparing to divide his empire between his two oldest daughters and their husbands.
 
Teo, Sharlene.  Ponti. 
Two teenagers from different backgrounds, both of them misfits, meet and become best friends at their all-girls school in Singapore in the early years of the century.

Walker, Karen Thompson.  The Dreamers. 
A mysterious illness, which causes victims to fall into a deep sleep from which they can’t wake, breaks out on a California college campus, and then spreads, leading to the whole town being quarantined.