Great recent titles you may have missed, selected by our librarians.
January-March 2022 Issue
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See also:
- Featured Review: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
- Nonfiction Recommendations
- Previous Issues
Alameddine, Rabih. The Wrong End of the Telescope.
A Lebanese trans woman doctor, now living in America, goes to the Greek island of Lesbos to help provide medical care in a refugee camp; there, she meets a Syrian woman, dying of cancer, and bonds with her.
Brown, Natasha. Assembly.
A young Black woman in Britain with a seemingly successful career in investment banking receives a frightening medical diagnosis and thinks about the constant racism and harassment she experiences on her job. Ebook
Cash, Wiley. When Ghosts Come Home.
In this thoughtful mystery set in a small town in North Carolina in the 1980s, the local sheriff discovers a crashed airplane and near it, the body of a local man, a well-known civil rights advocate, who has been shot to death. Ebook, Downloadable Audio
Clayton, Meg Waite. The Postmistress of Paris.
In this novel inspired by a true story, an American heiress living in Paris during World War II assists the French Resistance by helping to smuggle artists out of the country and delivering messages to people hiding from the Nazis. Ebook, Downloadable Audio
Ferris, Joshua. A Calling for Charlie Barnes.
In this funny and tender book, a novelist tells the story of his father, whose life has been littered with failed marriages and money-making schemes. Ebook
Grossman, David. More Than I Love My Life.
Three women – grandmother, mother, and daughter, reunite for the grandmother's birthday, and confront the traumas that have shaped their lives and their relationships.
Itami, Emily. Fault Lines.
A young married Japanese woman, who spent time in the United States when she was younger and has been frustrated and disaffected since her return, starts an affair and looks back on her life choices. Ebook
Johnson, Jocelyn Nicole. My Monticello: Fiction.
A collection of short stories that explore the effects of racism on Black Americans and a novella, in which a group of people of color, including a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, take refuge at Jefferson's home, Monticello, after violence by white supremacists. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Jones, Gayl. Palmares.
In this magical realist novel set in Brazil in the late seventeenth century, a Black woman enslaved on a plantation as a child flees to a free settlement and marries; after the settlement is destroyed by Portuguese soldiers, she escapes to search for her husband. Ebook
King, Lily. Five Tuesdays in Winter: Stories.
A collection of 10 short stories with sharply-drawn characters and convincing dialogue that deal with love, grief, and change. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Knausgaard, Karl Ove. The Morning Star.
In this mixture of realism and the supernatural, the appearance of a new bright light in the night sky sets off a series of frightening domestic disruptions for a group of Norwegians.
Lish, Atticus. The War for Gloria.
In this novel set in Boston, a teenager becomes his mother's caretaker after she is diagnosed with ALS; as she declines, his biological father, a man with psychopathic tendencies, re-enters their lives.
MacLeod, Alison. Tenderness.
In this novel inspired by D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence has a short, intense affair which leads him to write a book that is too frank and explicit to be published. Decades later, as its legal fate is being debated, Jackie Kennedy takes an interest in the book.
Martin, Kimmery. Doctors and Friends.
This novel written before the Covid-19 crisis details the ways that seven doctors who became friends in medical school are affected by a global pandemic.
Mattson, James Han. Reprieve.
In this thriller fraught with themes of racial tension, a group of people in Lincoln, Nebraska participate in a full-contact haunted house, which results in the murder of one of the team members. Ebook, Downloadable audio
McCarthy, Tom. The Making of Incarnation.
A complicated and philosophical novel centered on a company that studies time, motion, and data, which has been hired to evaluate the special effects in a new science fiction film.
Miller, Nathaniel Ian. The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven.
The story of a Swedish man who moved from Stockholm to an arctic island in 1916, where he worked as a miner and a trapper, and lived alone as much as he could for the rest of his life. Ebook
Onuzo, Chibundu. Sankofa.
After the death of her Welsh mother, a British woman discovers the diary of her father, an African man who spent a year as a student in London before returning to his country without knowing he had a child. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Ozeki, Ruth. The Book of Form and Emptiness.
After his father, a jazz musician, dies in an unusual accident, a 13-year-old boy begins hearing voices; meanwhile, his mother, working at home for a media-monitoring company, becomes a hoarder. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Park, Sang Young. Love in the Big City.
In this Korean novel, a young gay man shares an apartment with his best friend. After she moves in with her fiance, the two friends grow apart; but he begins writing stories and becomes a successful author.
Pride, Christine and Jo Piazza. We Are Not Like Them.
Two women, best friends since childhood, find their relationship and beliefs challenged when one of their husbands, a Philadelphia police officer, shoots an unarmed Black teenager, and the other woman, a television journalist, covers the story. Ebook
Shafak, Elif. The Island of Missing Trees.
The story of two teenagers – one Greek, one Turkish - and their forbidden love, set amidst the trauma of the civil war in Cyprus in the 1970s and narrated in part by a fig tree. Ebook, Downloadable audio
So, Anthony Veasna. Afterparties: Stories.
A collection of short stories set in the Cambodian-American community of California's Central Valley, where despite the genocide that haunts their families' pasts, people enthusiastically embrace life. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Solomon, Asali. The Days of Afrekete.
A Black woman, who is married to a white politician who has just lost an election, throws a big dinner party for his supporters at their home in Philadelphia, and thinks back on her days as an intellectual and lesbian at Bryn Mawr. Ebook
Soyinka, Wole. Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth.
This satirical novel explores the corruption and falsehoods that lie beneath the supposed success of the author's country, Nigeria. Ebook
Toews, Miriam. Fight Night.
This novel about an unusual family in Toronto, Canada, is told in the voice of its nine-year old daughter, a feisty girl who worries about her mother's mood swings and misses the father who has abandoned them, but whose grandmother inspires her with her joyous rebelliousness. Ebook
Tóibín, Colm. The Magician.
A fictionalized biography of the great German writer, Thomas Mann that explores his family, the tumultuous world politics through which they lived, and his philosophical and literary ideas. Ebook
Verble, Margaret. When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky.
In the 1920s, a young Cherokee Indian woman works as a horse diver at Glendale Park in Nashville, a Wild West-style amusement park built on a former Indian burial ground. Ebook
Watkins, Claire Vaye. I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness.
In this dark and unsparing novel, based on the life and background of its author, a depressed young woman spends a month in Nevada, away from her husband and infant child, exploring her own and her family's painful pasts.
Whittall, Zoe. The Spectacular.
A young musician in a band, who knows she does not want to become pregnant, is frustrated by doctors who refuse her request for a tubal ligation; meanwhile, she discovers that her mother, who abandoned her when she was a teenager, has become a member of an ashram in the midst of a sex scandal.
Wideman, John Edgar. Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone: Stories.
Stories examining the lives of Black men in America, looking unsparingly at issues around incarceration, poverty, and historical racism. Ebook
Williams, Joy. Harrow.
In this bleak tale of life on an ecologically-damaged Earth in the near future, a girl leaves her suddenly-closed boarding school to go in search of her mother and ends up as a guest at an abandoned resort next to a dying lake. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Winman, Sarah. Still Life.
This warm and witty novel about friendship, love, and art begins during World War II, when a young army private meets a British art historian in Tuscany in 1944. Ebook, Downloadable audio
Wu, Kyle Lucia. Win Me Something.
A young woman with a white mother and a Chinese father, who felt unappreciated by both her parents after their divorce, becomes a nanny for a wealthy white New York City family.
Yeo-sun, Kwon. Lemon.
This psychological novel from South Korea explores the aftermath of violence, as a young woman becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her beautiful older sister. Ebook