Great recent titles you may have missed, selected by our librarians.
January - March 2020 Issue
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See also:
- Featured Review: Women Talking by Miriam Toews
- Nonfiction Recommendations
- Previous Issues
Alharthi, Jokha. Celestial Bodies.
This multi-generational novel, which takes place in the Middle-Eastern country of Oman, shows how women’s lives there have changed over the last century.
Anshaw, Carol. Right After the Weather.
A struggling theatrical set-designer in Chicago lands a job that could be her big break, but then an unexpected act of violence changes everything.
Armfield, Julia. Salt Slow.
A collection of nine short stories written in an elegant and poetic magical-realism style.
Attenberg, Jami. All This Could Be Yours.
After a family’s patriarch suffers a heart attack and lies dying in a hospital, his wife and children remember his business life as a criminal and his personal life as a tyrant to them.
Aw, Tash. We, the Survivors.
After a Malaysian man convicted of murder completes his prison sentence, a sociology student interviews him for her dissertation and he tells her the story of his troubled life.
Barry, Kevin. Night Boat to Tangier.
A middle-aged Irish gangster waits at a Spanish ferry terminal in the hope of finding his runaway daughter and reminisces with an old friend about their lives.
Cha, Steph. Your House Will Pay.
This novel, set in Los Angeles and based on a true incident, shows how the members of two families are affected after an elderly Korean woman is shot, possibly as revenge for her earlier killing of a young African-American woman.
Colvin, Jeffrey. Africaville.
The story of three generations of an African-Canadian family whose roots are in a town founded and settled in the late 18th century by descendants of escaped slaves.
De Robertis, Carolina. Cantoras.
In this novel set in Uruguay under violent military dictatorship, five queer women become friends and band together for the courage and strength to live their own lives.
Del Amo, Jean-Baptiste. Animalia.
This novel by a French author portrays life on a small family farm in Gascony at the end of the 19th century, and then describes in graphic detail how by the 1980’s, it has become a filthy and cruel pig-breeding operation.
Forbes, Curdella. A Tall History of Sugar.
This fairy-tale like novel begins in Jamaica in 1958 and tells the story of a strange-looking boy found abandoned in a basket, and his soulmate, who protects him from the world and later becomes his lover.
Gritton, JP. Wyoming.
The main character in this novel, set in Colorado in the late 1980’s, is a man who, after his wife leaves him and he loses his job, delivers a load of marijuana for his brother, with disastrous consequences.
Hand, Elizabeth. Curious Toys.
In this colorful historical novel set in Chicago in 1915, a teenaged girl, whose mother dresses her as a boy to protect her, spends a summer running free through an amusement park, until she sees evidence of a murder.
Hughes, Michael. Country.
A retelling of the ancient Greek saga The Iliad, set in Northern Ireland in the late 1960’s.
Koepp, David. Cold Storage.
In this thriller, a retired Pentagon specialist in bioterrorism and two security guards are the only people who can stop a rapidly-reproducing fungus from taking over the world.
Lerner, Ben. The Topeka School.
In this somewhat autobiographical novel, a man recalls his middle-class childhood in Topeka, Kansas, made difficult by his parents’ strained marriage, and by a troubled friend who commits an act of violence.
Levy, Deborah. The Man Who Saw Everything.
In this complex dreamlike story, a young historian is hit by a car while crossing Abbey Road in London in 1988; in the second half of the book, the same event takes place, but in 2016.,
NDiaye, Marie. The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel.
A former kitchen apprentice tells the life story of a great woman chef who rose from a poor childhood to fame as an inventor of minimalist nouvelle cuisine.
Newitz, Annalee. The Future of Another Timeline.
In this feminist science fiction thriller, a cultural geologist from the future tries to stop a group of 19th century moral crusaders and anti-time travel activists from stripping women of their rights.
O’Brien, Edna. Girl.
In this novel inspired by the 2014 abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls by the militant group Boko Haram, a young girl escapes from kidnappers, but, having been raped and given birth to a baby, she finds herself rejected by her family and community.
Older, Daniel Jose. The Book of Lost Saints.
The spirit of a political prisoner from the Cuban Revolution visits her descendants in modern-day New Jersey to encourage them to learn their family history and the truth behind her disappearance.
Palmer, Dexter. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen.
In this historical novel inspired by a true incident, a young woman living in a small
English town in the early 18th century amazes the local surgeon, and eventually much of the nation, by giving birth to rabbits.
Pufahl, Shannon. On Swift Horses.
This novel set in 1956 follows the lives of three people: a restless newly-married woman who takes up horse-race betting, her husband who hopes to get in on a building boom in California, and his secretly gay brother.
Reid, Kiley. Such a Fun Age.
In this book that explores white privilege and race relations, a wealthy white woman calls her black babysitter at the last minute to take care of her 3-year old, and the babysitter is subsequently accused by a security guard of kidnapping the child.
Sainz Borgo, Karina. It Would Be Night in Caracas.
In this novel set in the turbulence of contemporary Venezuela, a young woman whose mother has recently died finds her apartment taken over by a group of women black marketeers.
Schine, Cathleen. The Grammarians.
The main characters in this comic novel are twin sisters, who are passionate about the English language and unusually close to each other, until a disagreement turns into a major falling-out between them.
Sexton, Margaret Wilkerson. The Revisioners.
A black woman and her son in contemporary New Orleans move reluctantly into her white grandmother’s house to save money; a related narrative tells the story of one of her ancestors, a woman with second sight who escaped from slavery in her childhood.
Shafak, Elif. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.
A middle-aged Turkish woman, who has been stabbed, spends her last moments looking back over her life in Istanbul.
Shem, Samuel. Man’s 4th Best Hospital.
This satire takes place at a busy hospital, where subversive doctors try to care for patients despite the constant battle for profits between the hospital administration and the insurance companies.
Smith, Zadie. Grand Union: Stories.
A collection of nineteen short stories on a great variety of topics, many of them exploring issues involving power, gender, and race.
VanderMeer, Jeff. Dead Astronauts.
In this sequel to the science fiction novel Borne, set in a world where an evil company’s biotech experiments have gone wrong, three dead astronauts land in a strange city in the future.
Winterson, Jeanette. Frankissstein: A Love Story.
This unusual novel combines two interconnected stories – one, about Mary Shelley, her life with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and how she came to write the novel Frankenstein; the other story takes place in the present at a robotics conference, and explores the relationship between a transgender doctor and a scientist.
Wurzbacher, Ashley. Happy Like This.
A group of serious short stories about women and their relationships with each other.