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FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

Bravo and encore for two novels of classical music

Feature by Lauren Bufferd

There’s a saying you might have heard: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Fortunately, two authors—one veteran, the other new to fiction—have ignored this warning and written novels about classical music, and we readers are luckier for it. 

The Great Passion by James Runcie, author of the acclaimed Grantchester Mysteries, is a beautiful coming-of-age novel set in 18th-century Germany. In 1726, 13-year-old Stefan Silbermann is mourning the death of his mother. His father makes arrangements for Stefan to attend a music school in Leipzig, an especially useful education for a boy whose family’s business is building and repairing church organs. At school, lonely Stefan is tormented by the other students, finding solace only in singing and in the presence of the demanding but empathic choir director, Johann Sebastian Bach. 

Stefan’s heavenly singing voice and sensitivity endear him to Bach, who enlists Stefan as a soloist in many of his cantatas. But Stefan remains deeply unhappy, and when he runs away from the dorms, Bach invites him to live at the Bach family home. There, Stefan basks in the warmth of domestic life, assisting Bach’s children with chores and working as a copyist for the great composer. 

When another tragedy strikes, this time in Bach’s family, Stefan is a firsthand witness to the way grief can be a catalyst for musical genius, watching and then performing in the work that will become one of Bach’s most celebrated compositions, “The Passion According to St Matthew.” Stefan’s exposure to Bach’s creativity, family and devotion to God is the restorative balm that the young man needs in order to move forward with his life.   

On the other end of the spectrum is Brendan Slocumb’s debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, a fast-paced thriller about a young Black violinist and his search for a priceless instrument, set against the backdrop of systemic racism within the world of contemporary classical music.

Ray McMillian has a dream of becoming a concert violinist, and nothing will stand in his way: not his unsupportive mother and uncles, his disinterested teachers or the industry’s inherent racial bias. When Ray’s beloved grandmother gifts him with her grandfather’s violin, it brings him a step closer to his dream, and when the instrument is revealed to be an extremely rare and valuable Stradivarius, his star really begins to rise. 

Ray is on the verge of attending the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow when the prized instrument is stolen and held for ransom. Suspects range from members of Ray’s own family, eager to claim the insurance money, to his musical rivals in Europe. Even the descendants of the family who once enslaved Ray’s great-great-grandfather are claiming the instrument belongs to them. As Ray travels the globe, not sure whom he can trust, music remains the only constant in his life, supporting him no matter the situation. 

Despite their differences in literary styles, locations and eras, these novels are connected by more than just their musical themes. Resilience is a powerful presence in both stories, whether in the face of personal pain and grief or against the constant pressures of embedded prejudices. Music is the conduit through which two young men learn to overcome loss and fight against insurmountable odds, offering not only a reason to live but also a way to thrive.

Classical music is a powerful force in new novels from James Runcie and Brendan Slocumb, inspiring their heroes and illuminating the way forward.
FictionComing of Age

What the Fireflies Knew

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Kai Harris’ debut novel is a stirring story of a transformative summer for a Black girl growing up in 1990s Michigan.

What the Fireflies Knew drops us directly into the mind of 10-year-old Kenyatta, known as KB, who has discovered her father’s dead body in the garage of their home on a “dead-end street” in Detroit. Soon after, KB’s mother leaves her and her older sister, Nia, at their grandfather’s house on a “green and noiseless” street in Lansing, Michigan. Their mother offers no explanation of where she is going or when she will be back.

KB tries hard to relate to Nia and understand why she is so angry and distant. KB also attempts to parse her family’s secrets—where her mother is and why she left, why people whisper about her daddy, and why her grandfather and mother don’t get along. Amid these questions, KB shares moments of tenderness and closeness with her stoic grandfather, who does his best to warn KB about predatory boys and the capriciousness of the white kids who live across the street.

KB is at once intuitive and naive, vulnerable and strong. Her voice captures the wonder of youth and the heartache of growing up. As the summer progresses, her presence glows and grows, like the fireflies she catches with her grandfather, like her understanding of the world around her.

Harris, a Michigan native who currently teaches creative writing at Santa Clara University in California, depicts the events of KB’s summer in an inspiring manner, ruminating on the nuances of racism, relationships and sexual development with quiet, mesmerizing restraint. Throughout these complicated and emotionally charged issues, What the Fireflies Knew celebrates the fortitude of its young protagonist. This elegant and eloquent novel is perfect for readers who loved Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

Kai Harris’ young heroine’s presence glows and grows, like the fireflies she catches with her grandfather, like her understanding of the world around her.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical FictionFamily SagaComing of Age

Best Fiction of 2021

Feature by the editors of BookPage

We begin each new reading year with high hopes, and sometimes, when we’re very lucky, we find our expectations rewarded. So it was with 2021.

It must be said that a lot of these books are really, really long. Apparently this was the year for total commitment, for taking a plunge and allowing ourselves to be swallowed up. 

Also, it should come as no surprise that books-within-books frequently appear on this list. For all our attempts at objectivity within our roles as critics, we just can’t help but love a book that loves books. Amor Towles, Ruth Ozeki, Jason Mott, Maggie Shipstead and Anthony Doerr all tapped into the most comforting yet complex parts of our book-loving selves. 

But most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations, such as in Will McPhail’s graphic novel, which made us laugh till we cried, and Colson Whitehead’s heist novel, which no one could’ve expected would be such a gorgeous ode to sofas.

And at the top of our list, a book that accomplishes what feels like the impossible: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ epic debut novel, which challenges our relationship to the land beneath us in a way we’ve never experienced but long hoped for.

Read on for our 20 best works of literary fiction from 2021.

20. What Comes After by JoAnn Tompkins

In JoAnne Tompkins’ debut novel, faith is simply part of life, a reality for many that is rarely so sensitively portrayed in fiction.

19. How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

To those disinclined to question the role that economic exploitation plays in supporting our modern lifestyle, reading this novel may prove an unsettling experience.

18. Gordo by Jaime Cortez

In his collection of short stories set in the ag-industrial maw of central California, Jaime Cortez artfully captures the daily lives of his characters in the freeze-frame flash of a master at work.

17. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro continues his genre-twisting ways with a tale that explores whether science could—or should—manipulate the future.

16. Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford’s graceful novel reminds us that tragedy deprives the world of not only noble people but also scoundrels, both of whom are part of the fabric of history.

15. Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is one of our best chroniclers of suburban family life, and his incisive new novel, the first in a planned trilogy, is by turns funny and terrifying.

14. In by Will McPhail

Small talk becomes real talk in this graphic novel from the celebrated cartoonist, and the world suddenly seems much brighter.

13. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

With hints of Jami Attenberg’s sense of mishpucha and spiced with Jennifer Weiner’s chutzpah, Melissa Broder’s novel is graphic, tender and poetic, a delicious rom-com that turns serious.

12. The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

Robert Jones Jr.’s first novel accomplishes the exceptional literary feat of being at once an intimate, poetic love story and a sweeping, excruciating portrait of life on a Mississippi plantation.

11. Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

In her exceptional debut novel, Ash Davidson expresses the heart and soul of Northern California’s redwood forest community.

10. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

“There are few things more beautiful to an author’s eye . . . than a well-read copy of one of his books,” says a character in Amor Towles’ novel. Undoubtedly, the pages of this cross-country saga are destined to be turned—and occasionally tattered—by numerous gratified readers.

9. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Devastating, hilarious and touching, Torrey Peters’ acutely intelligent first novel explores womanhood, parenthood and all the possibilities that lie therein.

8. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies

Peter Ho Davies’ third novel is a poetic look at the nature of regret and a couple’s enduring love. It’s a difficult but marvelous book.

7. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

What does it mean to listen? What can you hear if you pay close attention, especially in a moment of grief? Ruth Ozeki explores these questions in her novel, a meditation on objects, compassion and everyday beauty. 

6. Matrix by Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff aims to create a sense of wonder and awe in her novels, and in her boldly original fourth novel, set in a small convent in 12th-century England, the awe-filled moments are too many to count.

5. Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

A surrealist feast of imagination that’s brimming with very real horrors, frustrations and sorrows, Jason Mott’s fourth novel is an achievement of American fiction that rises to meet this particular moment with charm, wisdom and truth.

4. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Sorrow and violence play large roles in the ambitious, genre-busting novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr, but so does tenderness.

3. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Like Dante leading us through the levels of hell, Colson Whitehead exposes the layers of rottenness in New York City with characters who follow an ethical code that may be strange to those of us who aren’t crooks or cynics.

2. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

In her exhilarating third novel, Maggie Shipstead offers a marvelous pastiche of adventure and emotion as she explores what it means (and what it takes) to live an unusual life.

1. The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

From slavery to freedom, discrimination to justice, tradition to unorthodoxy, celebrated poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers weaves an epic ancestral story that encompasses not only a young Black woman’s family heritage but also that of the American land where their history unfolded.

See all of our Best Books of 2021 lists.

Most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations. Read on for the 20 best literary fiction titles of 2021.
FictionComing of Age

The House of Rust

Review by Laura Sackton

Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s lyrical and surprising debut novel, which won the inaugural Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, is a magical coming-of-age saga about a Hadrami girl from Mombasa, Kenya, and the dangerous sea voyage that changes the course of her life.

When her fisherman father goes missing at sea, Aisha, unwilling to believe he’s dead, sets out to rescue him. She’s aided by a scholarly talking cat, who summons a boat made of bones. Sailing into the unknown, Aisha battles several sea monsters—and the sea itself—before finally bringing her father home.

Back in Mombasa, she finds the shape of her old life no longer fits. Awakened to the existence of a dangerous and alluring new world, her simmering desire for adventure and independence becomes impossible to ignore. Rebelling against the pressure to get married and settle down, she is drawn into the lives of the magical creatures who inhabit Mombasa, including talking crows and ancient spirits.

The House of Rust can be disorientating at first. Bajaber’s prose is lush but dizzying; it’s easy to get lost among the many names, overlapping stories and shifts in perspective. But that disorientation is also the book’s strength. Aisha, too, is disoriented, caught between two worlds, navigating the familiar roads and markets of Mombasa and the unfamiliar language of powerful crows. With remarkable skill, Bajaber, who is a Kenyan writer of Hadrami descent, navigates the novel’s duality, rendering it both a realistic drama about familial expectation, lineage and grief, as well as a darkly whimsical adventure about monsters who hold grudges and the courage it takes to face your fears head-on.

There’s a fablelike quality to Bajaber’s prose, vividly capturing the pulse of magic that runs just beneath the surface of everyday lives. A cat offers meditations on willpower, while other characters deliver beautiful monologues like something out of a fairy tale. But even at the story’s most surreal and strange moments, Bajaber grounds the tale in the contemporary world of Mombasa, with its rich blend of Hadrami and Swahili cultures.

Enchanting and sometimes delightfully odd, full of lush descriptions and the rhythms of the sea, The House of Rust is, at heart, a remarkable book about a fiery young woman determined to steer her own course, no matter how many monsters she has to face along the way.

This award-winning novel is enchanting and sometimes delightfully odd, full of lush descriptions and the rhythms of the sea.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

O Beautiful

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Jung Yun’s second novel is a riveting story of a Korean American woman claiming a country that has done its best to reject her.

After decades as a model, Elinor Hanson went back to school and reinvented herself as a journalist. Barely supporting herself with freelance work, she is surprised when one of her graduate school professors offers her a plum assignment: covering North Dakota’s oil boom for a prominent magazine. Elinor, who grew up on a U.S. Air Force base in North Dakota, is curious about the changes this new gold rush has created, so she agrees to travel home.

Elinor barely recognizes the state she left behind. Its small towns burst with new arrivals seeking opportunities, and fracking has all but destroyed the land. But the anxiety expressed by longtime residents is dishearteningly familiar to Elinor, and her encounters with sexism and racism quickly bring back the trauma of life on the air base. Elinor is the daughter of an American airman and a Korean woman who met overseas, and on the base, other wives withheld their friendship from Elinor’s mother, while other husbands were all too willing to flirt.

As Elinor grapples with the difficult assignment, she is drawn into an unsolved missing persons case: a white woman who disappeared while jogging eight years ago. But that story doesn’t allow her to forge fresh investigative paths or distract from the rage she realizes has been simmering since her teens. In fact, the longer Elinor stays in North Dakota, the angrier she becomes, and a meeting with her sister only exacerbates the flood of bad memories. When some of her former classmates reach out about a harassment suit against her professor, she begins to question his motivations in passing on the assignment in the first place.

O Beautiful moves swiftly, with all the force of a finely honed thriller. As Elinor reckons with her past and the ways people have treated her, her mother and her sisters, she begins to examine the anger and love she feels for both her family and country. Open-ended and openhearted, O Beautiful may provide Elinor with more questions than answers, but it also instills in her a newfound determination to claim America as her own

Open-ended and open-hearted, O Beautiful instills a newfound determination in its Korean American heroine to claim America as her own.
FictionSpeculative FictionFamily SagaDebut FictionComing of Age

Six of the brightest new names in fiction

Feature by the editors of BookPage

We’ve got our eyes on you: These emerging writers have stopped us dead in our tracks with their unforgettable first novels, from epic historical adventures to imaginative family sagas.

GOODBYE VITAMIN
By Rachel Khong

For fans of: Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Stephanie Danler, Nell Zink.

First line: “Tonight a man found Dad’s pants in a tree lit with Christmas lights.”

About the book: A 30-year-old woman returns home to help care for her father, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

About the author: The former executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine, Rachel Khong lives in the Bay Area.

Read it for: Hilarious, insightful observations that balance well with bittersweet memories.

REBELLION
By Molly Patterson

For fans of: Jane Smiley, Jane Hamilton, Min Jin Lee.

First line: “Hazel is driving and damn her children and damn her eyesight and who cares where she’s going.”

About the book: During the Boxer Rebellion in China, American missionary Addie Bell disappears, an event that will echo through the years and the lives of three other women.

About the author: Molly Patterson, who won the Pushcart Prize for her 2012 short story “Don’t Let Them Catch You,” is a native of St. Louis and lived in China for several years.

Read it for: The author’s dazzling ability to capture disparate settings, from a turn-of-the-century American farm to present-day China, and to weave together the stories of four strong women.

GATHER THE DAUGHTERS
By Jennie Melamed

For fans of: Tales of chilling societies like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

First line: “Vanessa dreams she is a grown woman, heavy with flesh and care.”

About the book: An isolated cult society ruled by men begins to crumble when young girls rebel against their preordained and doomed futures.

About the author: A psychiatric nurse practitioner specializing in working with traumatized children, Jennie Melamed lives in Seattle with her husband and two dogs.

Read it for: The gripping, haunting portrayal of girls coming of age and questioning everything they’ve ever been taught.

SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE
By Sarah Schmidt

For fans of: Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, literary horror like Stephen King.

First line: “He was still bleeding.”

About the book: This fictional retelling of the Lizzie Borden murders is a domestic nightmare, unfolding through multiple perspectives to reveal a claustrophobic household laden with dread.

About the author: Sarah Schmidt lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and daughter, and works at a regional public library.

Read it for: Staggeringly gorgeous, feverish prose and the thrill of deep, dark, gruesome detail.

THE TALENTED RIBKINS
By Ladee Hubbard

For fans of: Toni Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Colson Whitehead.

First line: “He only came back because Melvin said he would kill him if he didn’t pay off his debt by the end of the week.”

About the book: Antiques dealer Johnny Ribkin journeys through Florida where he meets with other members of the Ribkin family, whose special abilities were used to further the civil rights movement.

About the author: Ladee Hubbard lives in New Orleans with her husband and three children. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Read it for: An intimate portrait of a black family battling against segregation and inequality whose strength literally turns them into comic book-worthy superheroes.

THE HALF-DROWNED KING
By Linnea Hartsuyker

For fans of: Ken Follett, Diana Gabaldon, George R.R. Martin.

First line: “Ragnvald danced on the oars, leaping from one to the next as the crew rowed.”

About the book: A brother and sister fight to seize power and control of their own fate in the harsh, beautiful and unpredictable world of medieval Norway.

About the author: A descendant of the first king of Norway, Linnea Hartsuyker grew up in the woods of upstate New York and turned to writing after a decade working at internet startups.

Read it for: A spellbinding evocation of a long-lost world of magic and blood feuds, populated by characters riddled with doubt and human failing beneath their epic exteriors.

 

Khong photo credit Andria Lo.
Patterson photo credit Elaine Sheng.
Melamed photo credit Jennifer Boyle.
Schmidt photo credit Nicholas Purcell Studio.
Hubbard credit Vilma Samulionyte.
Hartsuyker credit Nina Subin.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

We’ve got our eyes on you: These emerging writers have stopped us dead in our tracks with their unforgettable first novels, from epic historical adventures to imaginative family sagas.

FictionComing of Age

Dive in deep

Feature by Barbara Clark

Windswept islands protect, isolate and irrevocably shape the course of events in two new novels about the lives of people in far-flung places.

Readers who gravitate toward glorious prose will find a feast in The Dragonfly Sea, a mesmerizing new novel by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Dust, 2014) that delves into the discoveries, joys, sorrows and epiphanies of a singular coming of age—that of Ayaana, a stubborn, imaginative girl from a small island off the coast of Kenya who discovers that she can trace her heritage to a 14th-century Chinese seafarer.

Early in her life, Ayaana’s compass is set when her mother tells another character, “You shall only point my daughter to eternal possibilities. She was not born for limits.” From her childhood on Pate Island to her adventures in the Far East as a charming young woman, Ayaana’s life is marked by both violence and great beauty. Assorted characters alter her destiny, from a sailor who fills the role of the father she’s always wanted to a powerful Turkish mogul who seeks to possess her soul.

The story is deftly interwoven with a sense of life’s fragility, as if it’s holding its breath in anticipation of some danger. This feeling of vulnerability assails Ayaana: “Life was passage, nothing lingered.” Jealousies and troubled kinships affect husbands, fathers and lovers who travel on the ocean tides and are often lost, swept away by storms or twists of fate, but the author brings the story full circle with passages that dazzle and enlighten.

The singular culture of the haenyeo (sea women) of the Korean island of Jeju is at the center of bestselling author Lisa See’s captivating new novel, The Island of Sea Women, a quietly amazing story of two close companions whose friendship is transformed by misunderstanding, cultural prejudice and the terror of war.

Young-sook and Mi-ja are part of Jeju’s female free-diving collective, which forms the economic backbone of the island community in the years leading up to World War II. The friends are bound by ancient female spirits that watch over the island, and by the age-old ties of cooperation that enable their community’s survival. See interweaves details of the island’s semi-matriarchal culture with the adventures and travails of the two women, whose differences grow throughout the decades. Poignant chapters reveal the perspective of an aging Young-sook as she encounters the family of her old friend, forcing her to confront past missteps and the horrors of a 60-year-old massacre, ultimately bringing the generations together to forgive and heal.

Within this enthralling story is a fascinating historical perspective on Korea, a country long victimized by war and foreign occupation, and the ways in which the strains of modernization have forever altered Jeju’s island culture.

Windswept islands protect, isolate and irrevocably shape the course of events in two new novels about the lives of people in far-flung places.

NonfictionFictionMilitary HistoryMemoirComing of Age

Book Clubs: March 2019

Feature by Julie Hale

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
TOP PICK
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend focuses on the powerful connection between a grieving woman and her dog. The unnamed female narrator inherits Apollo, a 180-pound Great Dane, from a late professor friend who committed suicide. As she comes to grips with her friend’s death, the narrator finds herself increasingly concerned for Apollo, who is also clearly mourning his owner. Because pets aren’t allowed in her apartment building, the narrator refuses to leave him alone for extended stretches of time. Although her concern for him keeps her at home—and causes her friends to question her emotional well-being—the relationship revitalizes both woman and dog. Nunez delivers a compassionate, sharply realized study of one woman’s experience with grief, and she does so without lapsing into sentimentality. The Friend is an unforgettable exploration of loss, healing and canine love.

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
Affluent white couple Rebecca and Christopher decide to adopt the infant son of their late nanny, Priscilla, who was black. Alam’s portrayal of the fraught nature of contemporary race relations rings true in this empathetic novel.

Eat the Apple by Matt Young
In his debut memoir, Young uses a wide range of narrative tones and techniques to tell the story of his years as a Marine, and how unprepared he was for the horrors that awaited him in Iraq.

Aetherial Worlds by Tatyana Tolstaya
Fantasy and reality intermingle in these compelling short stories, which have earned Tolstaya comparisons to Gogol and Chekhov.

The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
Nour’s family relocates to Syria when her father dies, but war forces them into exile. Her story is linked with that of a 12th-century girl who also fled her home in this powerful novel of the refugee experience.

The best new paperback releases for book clubs.
NonfictionFictionComing of Age

Book Clubs: April 2019

Feature by Julie Hale

Top Pick
Rachel Cusk concludes her acclaimed Outline Trilogy with Kudos, which finds the narrator, a British writer named Faye, in a new marriage. During a literary festival and travels in Europe, Faye encounters people in various stages of disillusionment about their lives and domestic affairs. As ever, she proves a willing listener while acquaintances pour out their stories. From the self–centered journalist who comes to interview Faye and hardly stops talking, to publicists, writers and others of literary ilk, Faye crosses paths with a jaded cast of characters who tell all. Meanwhile, she keeps in contact with her two sons via phone, conversations that bring tenderness to the book. Like its predecessors Outline and Transit, this novel is understated yet fierce—a beautiful and melancholy exploration of the female experience, precisely rendered by its author. Followers of the series will find this final installment deeply satisfying.

Look Alive Out There
by Sloane Crosley
A smart, companionable presence on the page, Crosley cements her reputation as one of today’s leading nonfiction writers with this collection of shrewdly observed pieces that touch on topics as wide-ranging as fertility, volcanoes and life as a single woman in New York City. 

Varina
by Charles Frazier
Varina, wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, leaves her home as the Civil War ends and fends for herself and her children. Frazier chronicles her remarkable life in this richly detailed novel.

The Overstory
by Richard Powers
Powers works on a grand scale to tell a grand story about the interconnectedness of humankind and nature as nine disparate characters come together to preserve an area of virgin forest.

Tin Man
by Sarah Winman
Winman has crafted a heartbreaking narrative about love and redemption in her powerful third novel, which explores the relationships and disparate paths of three young people.

Top Pick
Rachel Cusk concludes her acclaimed Outline Trilogy with Kudos, which finds the narrator, a British writer named Faye, in a new marriage. During a literary festival and travels in Europe, Faye encounters people in various stages of disillusionment about their lives…

FictionComing of Age

What they’re reading: Erika Swyler

Feature by Cat, Deputy Editor

Erika Swyler’s latest novel, Light From Other Stars, follows a young girl growing up in the shadow cast by the Challenger explosion, in a town that feels the strange effects of a machine that was invented by her father and seems to have influenced the very nature of time. Here, Swyler shares three books she’s recently enjoyed reading.

All Grown Up

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg

For me, picking up a Jami Attenberg book comes with the sense that I’ve stumbled across a diary I was unaware of keeping. Though the characters themselves are wholly unique personalities, there’s a deep honesty to Attenberg’s writing that’s almost universally relatable. Comedic melancholy is a tricky thing to pull off, but when it works, as it does in All Grown Up, it’s incredibly satisfying. In a series of vignettes, All Grown Up’s Andrea hits on the disillusionment we all feel when we think about aging. Andrea’s friends and family pass through different milestones of adulthood—marrying, having children, divorcing—while seemingly leaving her behind. The novel asks readers to question the validity of milestones and what a full life outside those milestones might look like. Almost all novels are in some way coming-of-age novels, and this is the one I choose to carry into my 40s. It made me feel more valid as a human. Andrea is so beautifully flawed that it’s difficult not to feel that you know her, or that you are her.

Mem

MEM by Bethany Morrow

I’ve recommended this book so many times my friends are sick of hearing about it. What if you could have all your bad memories, your personal traumas removed, but those memories kept existing as a shadow self? What if that shadow self became its own independent person? Delores Extract #1, the first extracted memory, stayed with me. Set in an alternate history 100 years in the past, Morrow’s world is rich, dark and nuanced. It’s a beautiful example of work that examines what it means to be human, and whether our traumas might be an integral part of our best selves. I hate to praise world building too much, but it’s perfect here. The play between the familiar and fantastic is subtle enough for the reader to envision a complex world without being distracted. There’s adventure, social commentary, romance and just the right amount of fantasy. There comes a point in novels like this where the easy road is to go dark and devastating; MEM takes the more difficult route and brings in light. For a short novel, it packs an enormous punch.

In West Mills

In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow

I’m a sucker for headstrong characters. Knot Centre, a smart, hard-drinking woman who makes no apologies for herself, is rendered in technicolor. I can’t wait for people to get their hands on this book. I think I was two pages in before I was smacked by a serious case of writer envy. Winslow’s use of voice is incredible. It’s not often than an author’s love for their characters come across so clearly on the page, and that’s part of what makes this book so special. There’s a kindness in not just the lyricism of the prose, but in the manner in which it approaches its subject. In some ways the novel almost serves as a handbook for accepting and loving difficult people over the course of a lifetime. Covering 46 years of small-town life in North Carolina, the characters are nuanced, real, prickly, but never are they rendered without the deepest empathy. It’s ambitious in scope, but always keeps its footing. It’s that rare wonderful book that feels like you’ve known it forever even though you’ve just met.

 

Author photo by Nina Subin

Erika Swyler shares three books she’s recently enjoyed reading.
NonfictionFictionMemoirComing of Age

Summer reading 2019: Your sweetest escape

Feature by BookPage contributors

Summer days were made for getting lost in a good book. We’ve gathered a few of the season’s hottest novels—stories of romance, adventure and suspense—that are just right for whiling away a few lazy hours. Grab a cold drink, find a spot in the shade, and get ready to read.

Cape May
By Chip Cheek
In Chip Cheek’s debut novel, the year is 1957. Young Henry and Effie from tiny Signal Creek, Georgia, are on a two-week honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey. By the end of their first awkward week of marriage, Effie wants to go home early, and Henry, defeated, assents. But the night before they are to leave this coastal ghost town, they spot signs of life—signs of a party, no less—and decide to stop in. Cheek paints a graphic and sensuous portrait of an fragile marriage embattled well before its time. Cape May is a besotted picnic of a novel—day-drunk and languid, shadowed by ever-threatening storm clouds. —Kathryn Justice Leache

Cari Mora
By Thomas Harris
If it’s a thriller you seek for summer reading, look no further than Cari Mora by Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Rising. Beautiful young Cari Mora is an immigrant caretaker of a house in Miami Beach with a fortune hidden beneath it: millions of dollars in cartel gold. When Hans-Peter Schneider—a psychopath who thrives on violence—comes after the treasure, he develops a sinister interest in Cari. But she’s a fighter at heart, has experienced war and knows how to look after herself. Harris explores the dark side of human passion in this pulse-pounding novel. His first book in 13 years, Cari Mora will not disappoint fans of disturbing, taut thrillers. —Julie Hale

The Flatshare
By Beth O’Leary
If the idea of flatmates sharing a bed at alternate hours without meeting sounds too far-fetched, hold your skepticism. If it sounds like a meet-cute waiting to happen, you’re in luck. Regardless of your starting point, The Flatshare is a charming love story to warm your heart. After Tiffy’s boyfriend dumps her, she’s desperate to find a new flat. Night nurse Leon needs extra cash, and he’s willing to get creative. The flatmates follow a strict schedule to ensure that they won’t overlap, but as they begin to get to know each other through notes, their curiosity about each other grows. Even skeptical readers will be surprised by the thoughtful way Beth O’Leary faces not only new love but also the traces of individual pasts. —Carla Jean Whitley

How Not to Die Alone
By Richard Roper
Filled with humor and heart, How Not to Die Alone, Richard Roper’s debut novel, tells the story of Andrew, a solitary soul whose public health job entails tracking down the next of kin of people who die alone. Due to a misunderstanding, Andrew’s co-workers think he’s a happily married father of two. In truth, his only family is a distant sister, and he leads a generally isolated existence. When Peggy joins his team at work, Andrew feels an attraction that she seems to share. But coming clean about his life could mean the end of his career and his reputation. What’s a lonely guy to do? A brisk, compelling read, Roper’s book is a rom-com with substance. —Julie Hale

Into the Jungle
By Erica Ferencik
Delve into the heart of the Amazon in Erica Ferencik’s second action-packed thriller. In 2010, while living in a hostel in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Lily Bushwold, a Boston native, meets Omar, an Amazon hunter turned motorcycle mechanic. Two scrappy yet tender kindred spirits, they quickly fall in love. When Omar is summoned back to his jungle village, Ayachero, to avenge his mourning family, Lily accompanies him. Little does she know it’s not just Omar she follows, but a mystical calling to discover her ca’ah, her life’s purpose, intrinsically bound up with the fragile jungle ecosystem. A chilling journey into jungle life, Into the Jungle is also a deep probe into environmental ethics and love. —Mari Carlson

Monsieur Mediocre
By John von Sothen
Ah, Paris! There’s no city quite like it. And these days, when Americans are finding vacations as scarce as video rental stores, it’s hard not to look with longing at the six weeks’ getaway still in vogue across the pond. But American-­born columnist John von Sothen didn’t come to France for the vacations. Fifteen years ago, he fell in love with a French actress and moved to Paris. Now the father of two teens, he has penned an entertaining memoir of his life as a husband, father and constantly surprised expat. Monsieur Mediocre offers thoughtful observations about everything from politics to family life with irresistible charm. —Deborah Hopkinson

Mr. Know-It-All
By John Waters
If you’re a person who’s easily offended, take it from me: Don’t even read the reviews, much less crack open the cover of John Waters’ latest book. A whip-smart (he’d no doubt like that description), funny, multitalented and unique cultural icon, Waters is also an artist and book collector, and these essays reflect his endless assortment of interests—ranging from his movie-making memories (Patty Hearst thought he was kidding when he asked her to be in a movie) to his planning of and taking what he calls “a senior-citizen acid trip.” While it’s certainly not a book for everyone, Waters’ legion of admirers will be lining up in droves to hop aboard the Mr. Know-It-All bus. —Alice Cary

Mrs. Everything
By Jennifer Weiner
At the outset, Jennifer Weiner’s new novel pays homage to Little Women: Older sister Jo, a tomboy and athlete, wants to be a writer, while younger sister Bethie just wants to be a sweet, pretty daughter. But in Alcott terms, these two sisters are more like Jo and Amy—sometimes they just don’t get along. Mrs. Everything follows the two sisters from their Jewish girlhood in post-World War II Detroit through the present and into the near future, 71 years in all. With its long timespan and focus on cultural change, Mrs. Everything is a departure for Weiner, but she still delivers flawed but approachable female characters, well-­examined friendships and romantic relationships and often-joyful sex scenes. —Sarah McCraw Crow

Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune
By Roselle Lim
Summer beckons a reading list that is as light, fun and feel-good as the season itself. Roselle Lim’s Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune definitely fits that need. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lim’s debut is the story of 20-something Natalie, who has just returned home to the worst news possible: the unexpected passing of her mother, Miranda. Her shock and sadness are compounded by the guilt of parting ways seven years ago over a disagreement which now seems extraneous. But this is a story of luck and fortune, so it isn’t long before Natalie is given a chance to fix it all. —Chika Gujarathi

Necessary People
By Anna Pitoniak
Two complex women inhabit Necessary People, Anna Pitoniak’s second psychologically astute novel. College graduates Stella Bradley and Violet Trapp have become the closest of friends, though they’re opposites in so many ways. When their longtime friendship gives way to ambition, Pitoniak perceptively traces the fracture of their sisterlike bond, leading to a denouement the reader will not anticipate. An insightful glimpse into the competitive world of TV news and Pitoniak’s spot-on portraits of these two women come together in a gripping novel that’s sure to be a popular summer read. —Deborah Donovan

Nuking the Moon
By Vince Houghton
One category of “beach read” that’s criminally neglected is the “dad beach read.” Vince Houghton tackles this genre head-on in his curious, delightful new book, Nuking the Moon. At the height of World War II and the Cold War, national governments the world over devised missions and schemes that never came to fruition—because they were very bad. Houghton, a curator at the International Spy Museum in Washington, roasts these failed plots one by one. “Why not use a live cat to spy on the Russians?” someone at the CIA once asked without a hint of irony. “I’ll tell you exactly why,” Houghton responds, to readers’ delight. —Christy Lynch

Out East
By John Glynn
This memoir relates the travails of a group of privileged New England kids as they navigate an indulgent, raucous summer in Montauk in their late 20s. (Of course, references to The Great Gatsby abound.) When feelings for a male friend develop into something more, author John Glynn finds himself bearing the weight of a secret about his sexual identity. What follows is a charming portrait of how deeply human it is to be uncertain, to be driving a hundred miles an hour toward nowhere and longing to have a buddy in the car. Out East is a heart-wrenching reminder of the precarious emotional inner life that undulates just beneath the surface, even for people who seem as though they have it all. —Kelly Blewett

Passion on Park Avenue
By Lauren Layne
The title says it all: Passion on Park Avenue by Lauren Layne is a Big Apple romance brimming with sophisticated fun. At 29, Naomi Powell is spirited, independent and oh-so-successful. The daughter of a housekeeper, she holds the rank of CEO at a major jewelry company—a position that gives her access to the rarefied world of the Upper East Side. Yet Naomi isn’t quite accepted by the city’s well-to-do. When handsome Oliver Cunningham—the son of a family who once employed her mother—enters the picture, she has a new distraction on her hands. The first entry in Layne’s new Central Park Pact Series, Passion on Park Avenue is the perfect summer escape. —Julie Hale

Recursion
By Blake Crouch
Blake Crouch’s follow-up to his breakout bestseller, Dark Matter, has an instantly compelling premise—across the country, people have begun experiencing vivid, emotional memories of alternate lives. Solving the mystery of False Memory Syndrome would be enough to drive Recursion forward, but the second you think the book has settled into a holding pattern, it pinwheels off in an entirely unexpected direction. Early on, Crouch lets the reader in on the secret of the syndrome’s origins through frequent flashbacks to 11 years before the disease started to spread, and the two timelines play off each other in increasingly poignant ways. It’s early, but Recursion may be the smartest, most surprising thriller of the summer. —Savanna Walker

The Scent Keeper
By Erica Bauermeister
Emmeline and her scientist father live a somewhat idyllic, if Spartan, existence on a remote island off Canada’s west coast. He’s invented a mysterious machine, the Nightingale, a kind of olfactory Polaroid camera that captures scent moments on specialized paper. But paradise, like childhood, has a fixed term, and one traumatic incident whisks Emmeline off her island into a society that she finds finds both intriguing and terrifying. Reminiscent of Vianne Rocher from Joanne Harris’ beloved Chocolat, Emmeline is persistent, engaging and a savant in her chosen field. All she has to do is to take her father’s advice: follow her nose, and then get out of its way. —Thane Tierney

Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered
By Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark
Fans of the wildly popular “My Favorite Murder” podcast already know the heart, hilarity and horror embodied by hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. But even those who have been living under a rock will enjoy their new book, Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered. Kilgariff and Hardstark delve into comedy’s darker, more vulnerable underbelly in these essays, detailing adolescent escapades with drugs, creeps, eating disorders and more. Confessional, wise and more than a little obscene, this book is for anyone whose path to adulthood is littered with blunders. These authors will show you how to remember them and laugh. —Christy Lynch

Summer Hours
By Amy Mason Doan
Summer Hours is a sweet, satisfying love story. Growing up, Becc always played by the rules, getting good grades and preparing for a journalism career. But a college romance with the irresistible Cal derailed her plans and damaged an important friendship. Years later, as she travels to California for a wedding, Becc is accompanied by a special guy whom she hasn’t seen in ages (we won’t spoil the story by revealing his identity!). Memories of the time she spent with him come flooding back, but he doesn’t seem to share her enthusiasm for the past. Should Becc ignore her feelings, or follow her heart? Doan spins an unforgettable tale of old-fashioned romance in this winning novel. —Julie Hale

Time After Time
By Lisa Grunwald
Fans of historical fiction will savor Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald. In 1937, Joe, a railway man working in Grand Central Station, crosses paths with Nora, a mysterious young woman who doesn’t quite fit in with her surroundings—because she’s a ghost. The real Nora was an art student who died in a subway crash in 1925. As a spirit, she reappears in Grand Central Station every now and again, but when she and Joe fall in love, they’re determined to find a way to build a life together. An unforgettable tale of otherworldly romance, Grunwald’s book is a true page-turner. Pick up a copy and prepare to be transported. —Julie Hale

What are you reading this summer? Check out these must-reads for long, lazy days . . .
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionSpeculative FictionComing of Age

8 new voices to discover

Feature by bookpagedev

It’s tough out there for a debut author, but these eight newcomers get nothing but love from us.

Amanda Lee Koe, author of Delayed Rays of a Star

The book: This century-spanning work charts the rise and fall of three of the most famous women of 20th-­century cinema: Marlene Dietrich, Anna Mae Wong and Leni Riefenstahl.

The author: At 25, Amanda Lee Koe became the youngest-ever winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for her story collection Ministry of Moral Panic. She is the fiction editor of Esquire Singapore and the editor of the National Museum of Singapore’s film journal, Cinémathèque Quarterly.

For fans of: Novels that place art within the context of history, like The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith. 

Read it for: Prose to get lost in, plus a heartfelt tribute to cinema history and the complicated lives of notable women.

Kira Jane Buxton, author of Hollow Kingdom

The book: A foul-mouthed, Cheetos-loving crow named S.T. goes on an adventure to save humanity from doom.

The author: Kira Jane Buxton has been previous published in the New York Times, McSweeney’s and more. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with a menagerie: three cats, a dog, two crows and plenty of hummingbirds.

For fans of: All creatures great and small, as well as funny fantasy authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and David Wong.

Read it for: A totally fresh take on the apocalypse, peppered with hilarious philosophical discourse and a fascinating, imaginative animal world.

Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory

The book: An intricate web unfolds in 1851 London, where an aspiring artist is stalked by a creepy taxidermist.

The author: Scotland-born Elizabeth Macneal is a potter based in East London. She won the Caledonia Novel Award for this debut.

For fans of: Victorian gothic fiction, Jessie Burton, Sarah Waters and Imogen Hermes Gowar.

Read it for: A darkly beautiful exploration of the razor’s edge between creation and destruction.

Tope Folarin, author of A Particular Kind of Black Man

The book: The son of Nigerian parents—including a mother who shows signs of mental illness—grows up in a very white Utah in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

The author: A Nigerian-American author based in Washington, D.C., Tope Folarin won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing and was recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40.

For fans of: Coming-of-age immigrant stories, Imbolo Mbue, Nicole Dennis-Benn and Zinzi Clemmons.

Read it for: Acrobatics in structure and pacing, meditations on memory, layers upon layers to unravel and a sharp perspective of the social structures in white and black communities.

Sarah Elaine Smith, author of Marilou Is Everywhere

The book: In northern Appalachia, a 14-year-old girl tries to escape a bleak life by slipping into the place left behind by an affluent teen who has gone missing.

The author: Sarah Elaine Smith holds two MFAs: fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and poetry from the Michener Center for Writers.

For fans of: Novels that delicately balance the brutal and the beautiful, like Julie Buntin’s Marlena.

Read it for: A mesmerizing blend of dream and reality, wrapped in a palpable love of language and plenty of suspense.

Natalie Daniels, author of Too Close

The book: Connie has found a new friend in fellow mom Ness. But jump forward in time, and Connie has been institutionalized for a crime, and her disturbing story sounds strangely familiar to her psychiatrist. Is Ness at the heart of this tale of madness and toxicity?

The author: Natalie Daniels is a pseudonym for London-based actor and screenwriter Clara Salaman.

For fans of: Provocative, well-written thrillers by Laura Lippman and Alison Gaylin.

Read it for: Entertaining thrills and a perceptive exploration of the way women’s relationships are portrayed in fiction.

Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone Dead

The book: A multiracial woman returns to her childhood home in Greendale, Mississippi, to reckon with weary prejudices and the truth of her father’s death.

The author: Chanelle Benz’s 2017 story collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, was long-listed for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Benz lives in Memphis and teaches at Rhodes College.

For fans of: Complicated family stories, wonderful casts of characters, Stephanie Powell Watts, Jesmyn Ward and Celeste Ng.

Read it for: An actor’s ear for dialogue, flawless directorial vision and the many sprawling, tension-building perspectives of the American South.

Zach Powers, author of First Cosmic Velocity 

The book: It’s 1964, and the space race is in full swing. The Soviet launch program seems to be a success, but it’s a ruse. Instead, the program relies on twins: The cosmonaut twin perishes, while the living twin survives on Earth, assuming the life of their deceased sibling.

The author: Zach Powers is the author of Gravity Changes, an award-winning short story collection. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, and works with the Writer’s Center in Maryland.

For fans of: Original alternate histories and juicy tales of Soviet secrets.

Read it for: The psychological burden placed on the twins who are selected to survive.

It’s tough out there for a debut author, but these eight newcomers get nothing but love from us.
RomanceFictionComing of Age

An eight-legged monster of Halloween horror

Feature by Michael Alec Rose

Get ready for a feast of frights, from gaslight romance to cosmic horror. But beware: The eight books get scarier as you read!

The Widow of Rose House
Diana Biller makes no bones about the fact that Edith Wharton—the best American ghost-­story writer of them all—inspired every aspect of her debut novel, The Widow of Rose House. Even the (putatively) haunted house at the heart of the story is based on Wharton’s stately mansion. And best of all, Biller mirrors Wharton’s genius for revealing the emotional gold lying beneath the Gilded Age, which motivates the novel’s massive romantic turmoil. After years of abuse by an evil (and now deceased) husband, Alva Webster hopes to make a new start in the fashionable community of Hyde Park, New York. It’s 1875, a liminal moment in American history, when the dawn of the age of electricity coincides with a mania for psychic research. These paradoxical currents merge in the heart of scientist Samuel Moore, who wants to understand nature’s deepest secrets, however much darkness it takes to bring them to light. He asks Alva to let him investigate her troubled house—but the investigation goes much further than that.

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts
Romance takes a contemporary turn in Kate Racculia’s wonderful new novel, set in present-­day Boston. The title—Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts —captures both the book’s dynamic spirit and its delightful ambiguity. Does heroine Tuesday Mooney really talk to ghosts? Is the ghost in question her childhood friend Abby, who disappeared when they were both 16, taken one night from the ocean wharf where she and Tuesday used to hang out together? That’s the awful shadow that hangs over Tuesday’s life, the memory that keeps her from true friendship and true love. But fate has other things in store, arriving in the form of an elderly, eccentric billionaire who establishes a treasure hunt in the terms of his will. It turns out that Tuesday is the one person holding all the pieces of the puzzle, which she puts together with her deliciously campy friend Dex, her precocious teenage neighbor Dorry and the secretive Archie Arches, the key to the old man’s riddles and (naturally) the person made in heaven for Tuesday. As it turns out, the treasure hunt is a bid for these characters’ very souls. Abby’s ghost has something to say about it, too—something much more than “Boo!”

The Saturday Night Ghost Club
In our next novel, horror is outdone by hominess. Even the setting of Craig Davidson’s The Saturday Night Ghost Club is too picturesque to be allowed: Niagara Falls in the idyllic 1980s, a place so nostalgically beautiful that nothing bad should happen there (but of course, it does). Jake is a 12-year-old boy who, along with two new summer friends, gets caught up in the magical world of his Uncle Calvin, a lovable kook who not only tells the kids ghost stories but also shows them the ghosts. One hidden card after another appears from Calvin’s sleeve, until only the ace remains—the death card, the one that holds Calvin’s own secret, which even he doesn’t realize. If you like darkness poured out like molasses from a bucket, you’ll love this novel. 

Last Ones Left Alive
Sarah Davis-Goff has given us a zombie novel with a Celtic twist. Remember how the folks in Riverdance used to clomp around on stage with their arms held down and motionless? In her debut novel, Last Ones Left Alive, it finally makes sense: Those creepy dancers were heralding an apocalypse of the ravenous undead, whose arms have already been bitten off. Irish zombies are called skrake, and our teenage heroine, Orpen, spends her life on a little Irish island hoping never to encounter one. But she, her Mam and their formidable friend Maeve cannot evade the menace forever. Davis-­Goff’s painstaking account of the courage and resourcefulness of these three women dominates the first part of the book, but their solitary ordeal preludes a much grander unfolding of female empowerment, in which they must join forces with the banshees, a company of women who set out to defeat the skrake—and other monstrous beings—and give humanity another chance.  

Imaginary Friend
YA author Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) makes his adult fiction debut with Imaginary Friend. Assuming its length (720 pages!) doesn’t scare you off before you even crack the cover, I’ll keep my review short, so you can get started. Chbosky’s chutzpah is to reimagine the Christian story of the Madonna and Child as a horror story. Kate Reese (like Alva Webster in The Widow of Rose House) is escaping an abusive man, hoping for a fresh start with her son, Christopher, in a little Pennsylvania town called Mill Grove. But Christopher gets lost in the woods and comes back changed, haunted by a voice in his head that threatens and commands him to do strange things (or else). This “imaginary friend” cannot stay imaginary for long (well, OK, for around 500 pages). The voice’s threats turn into a horrible reality, a battle between good and evil, with Mill Grove as Armageddon. 

Suicide Woods
Benjamin Percy’s awareness of his own craft—the terms of which are generously set forth in Thrill Me, his book of essays on the art of fiction—is apparent throughout his new collection of short stories, Suicide Woods. Each tale is a creaking door, hinging on a high concept or an uncanny hook, nicely derivative of weird masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Aickman. In every case, the gears of Percy’s plots make an audible noise, grinding his characters’ bodies and spirits (or both) into inevitable carnage. In these unrelenting tales, it can be taken for granted that the worst will always happen—that suicidal patients will ironically be terrorized and undone by their larger fear of death; that the apparition of a “mud man” in a fellow’s yard will turn his life into, well, mud; that a trip to the forbidding wilderness of Alaska will—naturally—forbid all joy, hope and life. The virtue of this collection lies in its super-refined telling, thanks to Percy’s efforts to break through the barriers between genre fiction and literature, by hell and high water (and ice and mud and whatnot).

Full Throttle
Joe Hill’s attitude toward the craft of writing could not be more different from Benjamin Percy’s. Hill eats genre fiction like junk food, chewing up the whole disreputable tradition of horror into a new, unique pulp and spitting it out with massively entertaining mastery. He comes by this skill honestly: I mean, gosh, if your dad is Stephen King and your mom is Tabitha King, you’re as good as doomed (read: saved). For us fans, good fortune is dealt in spades in Full Throttle, Hill’s latest collection of stories. Framing a baker’s dozen of tales are Hill’s beautiful essay of appreciation for his parents at the front and story notes at the back, the kind that horror geeks like me drool over, just because they’re so wonderfully self-indulgent. Best of all are the inclusion of two stories Hill co-authored with his father, whose famous love of motorcycles and road trips gone wrong have corrupted his son just right, making these the best tales in the collection.

A Cosmology of Monsters
The seven books reviewed so far go bobbing for scares, each nibbling at terrors real or imagined, each splendidly diverting in its own way. But Shaun Hamill’s A Cosmology of Monsters bites horror to its core. The most influential horror writer of the 20th century is H.P. Lovecraft, whose works offer a vision of the universe as a place of irredeemable misery and meaninglessness. Our lives are ultimately in the merciless hands (and tentacles) of a pantheon of unimaginably terrifying creatures who inhabit the nether regions of the planet. The only problems are 1) Lovecraft is a notoriously overwrought prose stylist, and 2) he despised people—not just individual persons but everybody, including himself. A magnificent tribute to Lovecraft’s vexing achievement, A Cosmology of Monsters redeems both of the master’s flaws. Hamill’s heart-stopping debut novel features exceptionally graceful language and a set of characters we come to worry about, take delight in, grieve for and love. Saturated with endless wonder and horrific consequences, it’s the story of a family marked for special attention by Lovecraft’s Old Ones. How much loss can a good person endure? Lovecraft never cared to ask the question. Hamill cares very much, all the way to the tragic last act. 

Dip into this season’s best horror fiction with eight books that cover the full spectrum of spooky reading!

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