Beyond Bestsellers - Fiction, Winter 2024

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

January - March 2024 Issue

       

See also:

Broder, Melissa.  Death Valley.
In this highly original novel that explores grief in a sensitive and quirky way, a writer takes a break from her novel and her dying father's hospital bedside to walk in the California desert, with unexpected results. Ebook
 
Bump, Gabriel.  The New Naturals.
A Black couple, both professors at a New England college, who are feeling angry and lost after the death of their infant daughter, decide to create an underground utopian community.
 
Chua, Amy.  The Golden Gate.
In this twisty historical thriller set in the 1940's, a homicide detective investigates the murder of a presidential candidate at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, a case that involves Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and three socialite cousins.
 
Cole, Teju.  Tremor.
In this novel of ideas, a Black Ivy League professor, writer, and photographer who is facing pushback over the subjects he chooses returns to Lagos, Nigeria, where he was raised, for a fresh perspective.
 
Davis, Lydia.  Our Strangers.
A collection of short stories, often very short, some funny, others deeply moving, and some in the form of poems, that portray small moments of ordinary life.
 
Diop, David.  Beyond the Door of No Return.
In the 18th century, a French botanist travels to Senegal to discover plants, but becomes obsessed with the tale of a noblewoman who was sold into slavery.
 
Donoghue, Emma.  Learned by Heart.
In this novel based on the 19th century diary of Anne Lister, an old woman living in an asylum recalls her childhood, when she and Anne fell in love at boarding school. Downloadable audiobook
 
Due, Tananarive.  The Reformatory.
In this historical horror story set in the 1950s, a twelve-year old Black boy is unjustly sentenced to six months of cruel punishment at a Florida reformatory, where he is also visited by the ghosts of former inmates who died at the school.
 
Ellroy, James.  The Enchanters.
In this fast-paced and atmospheric story loaded with sex, drugs, and celebrities, a Los Angeles detective is hired in 1962 to investigate the death of Marilyn Monroe – suicide or murder?
  
Evans, Diana.  A House for Alice.
This deeply felt novel about Black middle-class Londoners brings back the characters from the author’s previous book, Ordinary People, but begins years later, when they are older and their relationships have changed.
 
Fountain, Ben.  Devil Makes Three.
In Haiti in 1991, an American who has been running a scuba diving tourist attraction with a friend sees his business destroyed by political turmoil and turns to diving in the Caribbean in search of lost ships and treasure.
 
Hunter, Lindsay.  Hot Springs Drive.
Two young suburban mothers meet in the hospital where they are giving birth and quickly become best friends, but things begin to go wrong when one of them suggests they join a weight-loss group together.
 
Kaner, Hannah.  Godkiller.
In this fantasy novel, the first of a planned trilogy, a king has outlawed the gods, and employs godkillers to hunt them down. On the road to a ruined city, a godkiller encounters a noble girl, a god, and a former knight, and despite their differing goals, they form an alliance. Ebook, downloadable audiobook
 
Keegan, Claire.  So Late in the Day.
A collection of three short stories by an Irish writer that explore the power dynamics in relationships between men and women.
 
Key, Justin C.  The World Wasn’t Ready for You. 
These eight short horror stories include historical and science fiction, and explore racial, gender, and class inequality.
 
Koh, E. J.  The Liberators. 
In this multigenerational novel that describes significant events in modern Korean history, a South Korean woman whose father was killed by the dictatorship enters into an arranged marriage and moves with her husband, son, and mother-in-law to California in the 1980s.
 
Labatut, Benjamín.  The Maniac.
This novel, which takes its name from an early computer, provides fictional studies of real-life physicists, plus a Korean master of the game Go, showing people whose brilliance leads to troubled lives.
 
Lahiri, Jhumpa.  Roman Stories.
A collection of nine short stories set in Rome, written in Italian and then translated by the author and her editor, that depict the lives of insiders and outsiders, natives and foreigners.
 
Mathis, Ayana.  The Unsettled. 
In this family drama set in the 1980s, a woman whose abusive husband has thrown her and her son out of their home moves into a shelter in Philadelphia. She considers moving back to her home town in Alabama until her son's father brings them to his commune.
 
McElroy, Isle.  People Collide.
An aspiring writer living temporarily in Bulgaria with his wife, a successful teacher, discovers one morning that his mind is now inhabiting her body, while his body, presumably with her mind inside it, is missing. Ebook
 
Mosley, Walter.  Touched.
A Black man wakes from a deep sleep with the realization that he is one of a small number of people destined to stop humanity from destroying all life.
 
NDiaye, Marie.  Vengeance is Mine.
In this French psychological thriller, a man hires an attorney to represent his wife, who is accused of murdering their three children; the attorney becomes obsessed with the husband, who she believes she met before during a troubling incident in her childhood.
 
Newman, Sandra.  Julia. 
A retelling of George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, written from the point of view of Julia, the love interest of the original novel's protagonist.
 
O'Brien, Tim.  America Fantastica. 
In this wild satirical adventure, a former journalist, whose career was ruined years before by his unscrupulous father-in-law, robs a bank in California, kidnapping a teller in the process, and sets out with her for Mexico.
 
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. (Ed. by Jordan Peele.)
A collection of horror stories by well-known and new Black authors that combine supernatural creepiness with the reality of racism.
 
Park, Ed.  Same Bed, Different Dreams.
In this novel which combines history, science fiction, and contemporary satire, a former novelist who has become a tech employee finds an English translation of an unfinished Korean novel that tells the supposedly true story of a secret Korean nationalist group.
 
Peters, Amanda.  The Berry Pickers.
In 1962, a four-year-old indigenous girl from Nova Scotia goes missing in Maine, where her family is picking blueberries. The story is told in alternating chapters by their son, who was the last to see her, and by a young girl named Norma. Ebook
  
Phillips, Jayne Ann.  Night Watch. 
In this historical novel set in West Virginia after the Civil War, a woman who has become mute due to trauma is left at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum along with her 12-year-old daughter, where a doctor's compassionate treatment leads to healing.
 
Rash, Ron.  The Caretaker.
In a small town in North Carolina in the 1950s, the son of a wealthy family is disinherited for marrying a teenaged girl from Tennessee; drafted to serve in the Korean War, he asks his friend, a loner who works as a cemetery caretaker, to look after his pregnant wife while he's gone.
 
Tan Twan Eng.  The House of Doors.
This historical novel by a Malaysian author blends fact and fiction to tell the story of a visit that British author W. Somerset Maugham paid to the colonial-era Malay States in 1921.
 
Torres, Justin.  Blackouts.
An elderly dying man gives a younger friend a place to stay in exchange for the friend continuing his life's work of investigating a 1941 book on the pathology of homosexuality, which was actually based on sympathetic interviews by a lesbian anthropologist.
 
Vara, Vauhini.  This Is Salvaged: Stories.
A collection of empathetic short stories about people who, after experiencing losses and traumas, gradually learn how to put their lives back together.
 
Washington, Bryan.  Family Meal.
After a gay man's lover is killed by police in Los Angeles, the grieving man returns to Houston, struggles with drug and sex addiction, and finds himself connecting with the family of his former best friend.
 
Zeineddine, Ghassan.  Dearborn.
A collection of ten short stories that vividly and warmly portray life in the Lebanese American community in Dearborn, Michigan.