A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
If anyone can capture what makes Sunday afternoons and lives of quiet desperation so melancholy, it’s Anita Brookner. In Undue Influence, an isolating and wistful sorrow pervades the life of Claire Pitt, a young woman working in a dusty second-hand London bookshop run by two elderly spinsters with an undying devotion to their deceased father, a supposed man of letters. Claire edits St. John Collier’s writings in the tomb-like shop basement, an apt setting for her dormant self-esteem. Mostly she is distracted and saved from deadly boredom by a pile of moldering 1950s women’s magazines, feeding her fantasies of finding a satisfying female role in simplistic black and white. After her mother’s death, Claire becomes even more detached, believing herself to be less than she should be, and wanting more than she thinks she deserves. She walks the streets of London observing and analyzing others’ actions, removed from even the sound of her own footsteps. Then one day a rare customer enters the shop. He’s attractive and needy, with the weakness of character destined to dissipate Claire’s remaining motivation to define her life. Tragically, she blames herself for giving in to this psychological script by exerting undue influence over this grown man. Their affair meanders aimlessly, like its characters, until Claire manages to alter the direction of her life with the simplest of gestures. It’s easy to miss the epiphany, but not to be missed is Brookner’s courage in bringing solitude to the surface, with all its pain and terrors. Desperate, lonely thoughts make up this entire story, leaving room for insights so sharp their cuts are barely felt. Whittling an existence from indifferent fate, Brookner’s characters are courageous, not pitiable, and their slightest victories are set glittering against such austere lives.
Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville, Tennessee.
If anyone can capture what makes Sunday afternoons and lives of quiet desperation so melancholy, it's Anita Brookner. In Undue Influence, an isolating and wistful sorrow pervades the life of Claire Pitt, a young woman working in a dusty second-hand London bookshop run by two…
T.C. Boyle writes with grace, skill, humor, and agility. From one sentence to the next, he can make a reader think, puzzle over an an unexpected plot development, and laugh out loud. His imagination blooms in every paragraph, leaving the reader invigorated. Boyle’s previous books have demonstrated that he can enlighten, entertain, and exhilarate, and he delivers once again with his latest novel, A Friend of the Earth.
The best-selling author of Riven Rock and Budding Prospect, T. Coraghessan Boyle is best known for The Road to Wellville, a wild story about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the corn flake. With A Friend of the Earth, Boyle takes us to the future, 2025 to be exact. In Santa Ynez, California, the estate of a faded rock star includes a private menagerie of creatures no one else would want warthogs, hyenas, sad-looking lions. Tyrone O’Shaughnessy Tierwater, former radical environmentalist, manages these creatures. What has happened to the all the other creatures of the Earth? Well, they’re all extinct. Mammals, birds, reptiles, fish most of them are wiped out. The biosphere has crumbled.
And now Andrea, his former wife, comes to see Tyrone. He’s 75, his militant tree-hugging days behind him. The two begin a relationship again, and their involvement leads to a story only Boyle can tell. Were Salvador Dali still alive, he’d appreciate Boyle’s novels. They’re surreal, comical, and tragic. Beneath Boyle’s luxuriant canvas of vibrant colors are deeper explorations of social issues. In A Friend of the Earth the issue is concern for the environment and for what humans have done, not only to the world we live in and share, but also to ourselves. The folly of our ways is tragic, but it’s also funny and makes for good reading. A Friend of the Earth should add to Boyle’s well-deserved and growing reputation as a talented novelist.
Jonathan Shipley is the publications coordinator for a Seattle company.
T.C. Boyle writes with grace, skill, humor, and agility. From one sentence to the next, he can make a reader think, puzzle over an an unexpected plot development, and laugh out loud. His imagination blooms in every paragraph, leaving the reader invigorated. Boyle's previous books…
Meet the older, wiser Douglas Coupland. His latest novel, Miss Wyoming, loses the flaws that mar his weaker novels too much style, not enough substance; pseudo-profound ramblings; and self-absorbed, unsympathetic characters. Instead, Miss Wyoming contains some of Coupland’s best writing witty, irreverent, and full of detailed characterizations and up-to-the-minute pop culture. In books such as Generation X and Microserfs, Coupland’s characters have shown us what it means to grow up in America at the end of the 20th century.
Their attempts at escape or reinvention were, more often than not, unsuccessful (Shampoo Planet, Polaroids from the Dead). Now, his characters have returned home, where they try to create more meaningful lives than the ones they ran away from. In her teens, Susan was a beauty queen turned ’80s sitcom star. By her mid-twenties, she was an unemployed has-been with a grim future. Then she walks away from a plane crash in the Midwest, the sole survivor (one of Coupland’s magical moments: her seat alone sits upright among the smoldering carnage in an Ohio field). Presumed dead, Susan disappears for a year. She emerges after a year to prevent her mother from capitalizing on her supposed death. You will cheer for the reborn Susan as she remakes her life on her own terms. John is no less driven than Susan, and just as alienated. He produces multimillion dollar blockbuster movies with his best friend. After his decadent lifestyle leads to a breakdown, John sells everything he owns and walks away from his life. He believes seeing America from the road will be a poetic and healing journey, but he nearly dies in the desert. His partying lifestyle was empty, his walkabout was a flop. Lacking direction or purpose, he is not as admirable as Susan, but he is endearingly earnest. Susan and John, both smart and strong, have survived Hollywood’s cruelty and capriciousness. They ran away and returned changed, determined to make something solid and lasting out of their lives. When they meet, it feels like destiny. And although Susan and John live in Hollywood, the most difficult place in America to do anything with integrity or substance, by the novel’s end they have embarked upon something noble and honest.
Surprisingly for Coupland’s readers, Miss Wyoming is satisfying in traditional ways: the right couples pair up, and families are repaired. Most importantly, the end of the book feels like the beginning of something good.
Robin Taylor manages Web projects for an IT company in Washington, D.
C.
Meet the older, wiser Douglas Coupland. His latest novel, Miss Wyoming, loses the flaws that mar his weaker novels too much style, not enough substance; pseudo-profound ramblings; and self-absorbed, unsympathetic characters. Instead, Miss Wyoming contains some of Coupland's best writing witty, irreverent, and full of…
Mr. Spaceman has sprung from one of the funniest and most poignant stories in Butler’s last collection, Tabloid Dreams. In Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover, lonely Edna Bradshaw told of falling in love with Desi, an alien being, in the parking lot of an Alabama Wal-Mart. Now Butler has picked up Desi and Edna’s story at a later point. Married and hovering above the earth at the end of the year 2000, they’re entertaining an entire busload of Texans bound for a Louisiana casino. Desi has beamed both bus and passengers up to his spaceship so he can continue his research into the nature of human beings.
This is to prepare him to reveal himself and his spaceship to earth media on New Year’s Eve. With down-home hospitality, Edna offers cheese straws and sausage balls to the abducted bus passengers who can’t help noticing Desi’s eight fingers on each hand, all ending in little sucker disks. But he’s simple and wise by turns, lacing his conversation with earthly advertising slogans and song titles.
I’m a friendly guy, he says. There Is a Kind of Hush All Over the World Tonight. I Would Like to Teach the World to Sing. I Would Like to Buy the World a Coke. Eventually Desi learns the life stories of individual passengers through his empathic powers. Though these often moving monologues from the heart compose a kind of cross-section of American humanity, many have the familiar ring of characters met too often in recent fiction. None is as engaging or original as Desi himself. His visit to an American supermarket, dressed in zoot suit and hat, is one of the most hilarious scenes in the book. Butler’s blend of humor and insight, along with his ability to examine the human condition, is on display here, as it was in Tabloid Dreams and Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. Mr.
Spaceman is a tour de force, a flight of fancy which lands in the heart.
James William Brown is the author of Blood Dance (Harcourt Brace). He teaches fiction writing in Boston.
Mr. Spaceman has sprung from one of the funniest and most poignant stories in Butler's last collection, Tabloid Dreams. In Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover, lonely Edna Bradshaw told of falling in love with Desi, an alien being, in the parking lot of an…
“I write about foods with a strong sense of place,” notes a character in Black Cake. The same could be said about its debut author, Charmaine Wilkerson, whose exquisitely paced family drama begins on a small unnamed Caribbean island in 1965 and quickly shifts to 2018, where it makes stops in London, Scotland, California and Rome. Readers will quickly find themselves immersed in a mysterious, gripping journey, one that unfolds in brief but bountiful chapters and even includes a suspected murder.
When Eleanor Bennett dies in 2018, she leaves a recording with her lawyer, instructing her two adult children to listen to its full eight hours together. Her son, Byron, is a renowned ocean scientist working on mapping the ocean floor, and his sister, Benny, is a bit of a lost soul who left the family eight years ago. “You children need to know about your family, about where we come from, about how I really met your father,” Eleanor says. “You two need to know about your sister.”
This revelation is shocking; Byron and Benny had no idea that such a sister existed. In addition to her deathbed message, Eleanor has also left a black cake in the freezer for Benny and Byron to share “when the time is right.” The confection, a Caribbean version of plum pudding, is a family favorite and figures prominently—and creatively—throughout the novel.
The sea is a strong presence in Black Cake, its hidden depths paralleling the many veiled events of Eleanor’s past. The innate pull of the ocean, especially warm Caribbean waters, influences and transforms several of Wilkerson’s characters. As the family lawyer muses about Eleanor’s oceanographer son, he says, “The oceans are a challenge. And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that?” In Eleanor’s case, that map is full of surprises, and Wilkerson skillfully charts its course, showing “how untold stories shape people’s lives, both when they are withheld and when they are revealed.”
Wilkerson navigates multiple points of view and time frames while addressing—always with just the right touch—issues of domestic violence, race, sexual identity, colonialism, prejudice and more. Fans of family dramas by Ann Patchett, Brit Bennett and Karen Joy Fowler should take note. Black Cake marks the launch of a writer to watch, one who masterfully plumbs the unexpected depths of the human heart.
Whatever one may think of Anthem, Noah Hawley’s latest literary thriller, no one could ever accuse the author and award-winning creator of the television series “Fargo” of skimping on plot. His action-stuffed follow-up to Before the Fall is an exciting cautionary tale that addresses just about every social ill facing Western civilization.
The action begins calmly enough: In 2009, a white judge named Margot Nadir and her second husband, a Black man named Remy, are watching their 9-year-old daughter, Story, sing the national anthem at a recital near their Brooklyn home. In a nice bit of foreboding, the Nadirs (one of the novel’s broad touches is their name) say they’re proud to “belong to the party of Lincoln” and feel that “the desire to belong, to be something, doesn’t make that dream come true.” As readers soon discover, their ambition, including Margot’s nomination to the Supreme Court, doesn’t shield them from real-world complexities and tragedies they could not have foreseen.
Hawley shifts the narrative a few years into the future, when a plague afflicts the world. As Hawley, one of the more skilled writers of pithy lines, puts it, “The summer our children began to kill themselves was the hottest in history.” Soon the crisis spreads worldwide, with more and more 12- to 25-year-olds taking their lives. Markets tank. Thousands die each day. And every victim scrawls “A11” near the site of their death.
Among them is Claire Oliver, the 17-year-old daughter of a pharmaceutical titan. Her death devastates her younger brother, Simon, who is sent to the Float Anxiety Abatement Center, where he hyperventilates into his omnipresent paper bag and contemplates the meaning of existence.
Hawley has further complications in store for Simon, and for the reader. An enigmatic Float resident who calls himself the Prophet tells Simon that God “has a mission for you”: to help build a new utopia. “The adults are lost. We, their children, are starting over.”
And that’s only the start. Anthem touches on just about every contentious topic one could name, from gun culture and climate change to race relations, extremist politicians and the “yelling box” that is the internet. The novel would have been stronger if Hawley had blended his themes more seamlessly into the narrative rather than letting his characters give speeches, but many of his painstakingly crafted scenes read like an action movie in book form. “We choose our reality,” one character says. Hawley’s novel reminds us to choose wisely.
“We choose our reality,” a character in Noah Hawley’s novel says. Anthem is a reminder to choose wisely.
Spring is getting closer every day, and with all that excitement bubbling up, perhaps your attention span is short circuiting. No need to worry—the editors of BookPage have just the ticket in the form of five quick but stunning reads.
Julie Otsuka is a master of the short novel, and her National Book Award finalist, The Buddha in the Attic, is an epic saga written with brevity. In just 144 pages, Otsuka captures the lives of a group of Japanese women who immigrate to America, meet their husbands (many of whom lied about their ages and occupations), find work as farmers and maids, navigate the racist and classist minefields set by their white employers, raise children and scratch out a living, only to disappear suddenly as the United States enters World War II. The story is relayed by a first-person plural narrator who encompasses dozens of experiences, and it unfolds in a series of snapshots that coalesce into an astonishing mosaic of Japanese American life at the beginning of the 20th century. You can sense the mountain of research that Otsuka distilled into each beautiful sentence. It’s innovative, surprising and deeply moving.
—Christy, Associate Editor
The Body in Question
A courtroom drama that spotlights the jurors’ sequestration instead of the case itself, Jill Ciment’s The Body in Question enraptured me from the start. The protagonist, a middle-aged photographer whose life is consumed by caring for her much older husband, views the jury’s three-week isolation as a respite from assisting him. Her liberation leads to an affair with another juror that, though initially secret, begins to bleed into their surroundings with far-reaching consequences. At 192 pages, The Body in Question keeps readers engaged with fast-paced developments and characters who are eccentric in their ordinariness. Ciment’s sparse writing enhances the mundanity of sequestration, even when a case is as monumental as this one. Though the subject matter is complex, the narrative progresses without judgment, in the same way a jury must consider only the facts laid before them before reaching a verdict.
—Jessie, Editorial Intern
In Waves
A comic book moves more quickly than other types of literature, so even though AJ Dungo’s graphic memoir is actually quite long, the total time readers spend with the book isn’t. In Waves is powerful, as Dungo blends moments from surfing history with memories of falling in love with and then losing his partner to cancer. The sections on their time together will absolutely wreck you, but as those dark waters ebb and flow, the story of surfing offers levity, revealing the sport’s legacy as a refuge for Hawaiians. An especially helpful dose of hope comes from the friendship between surf legends Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake: “Duke represented the blissful nature of surfing. Tom personified the idea that surfing could provide comfort to those who felt broken.” In Waves engages with both the depths of Dungo’s grief and the safe haven of surfing, offering a quick dip that will leave readers a bit battered by the waves.
—Cat, Deputy Editor
A Spindle Splintered
We are currently living through an absolute gold rush of sci-fi and fantasy novellas, and among all those tiny universes, Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered contains a multiverse. It’s a Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and “Sleeping Beauty” mashup that’s just as fun as it sounds and way smarter than it needs to be. It follows Zinnia Gray, a young woman with a rare condition that will cause her to die before her 22nd birthday. During her “Sleeping Beauty”-themed 21st birthday party, Zinnia jokingly pricks her finger on a spindle and ends up in a fairy-tale world, complete with a princess on the verge of succumbing to her own curse. You can sense Harrow’s glee on every single page, especially when she drops references and jokes tailor-made for a specific type of Tumblr-using, fandom-obsessed, very online reader. But this novella is as poignant as it is pop-culture obsessed, spinning a tale of sisterhood that defies the bleakness of every reality.
Have you ever gone on a walk with a friend in nature and ended up in a highly personal or philosophical conversation? That’s sort of what reading Becky Chambers’ novella is like. It’s a thoughtful fable that effortlessly incorporates profound questions—such as, why does human life need a purpose?—into what is essentially a road-trip story about a monk and a robot. The novella’s first half is so charming and soothing that by the second half, when Chambers’ protagonists are forging paths through the literal and metaphorical weeds, you’ll find yourself hanging on their every word. It all works because Chambers never loses the trees for the forest. In one moment, her characters will be discussing whether death is necessary to give life meaning, and in the next, they’ll be discussing the point of onions. Imaginative and comforting, A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a sheer delight.
—Stephanie, Associate Editor
Keep it short and sweet with these five succinct books.
“I never intended to write a story with a cake in it,” says Charmaine Wilkerson, former broadcast journalist and, with Black Cake, first-time novelist. “It just sort of walked into the story.”
And what a remarkable story it is. Wilkerson’s exquisitely written novel is a globe-trotting, multigenerational family saga set in the Caribbean, California, London, Scotland and Rome. Its rich plot—which includes a suspected murder—unfolds at an enthralling pace.
The novel begins with a short, enigmatic prologue set in 1965, then jumps ahead to 2018, when an attorney summons Byron Bennett and his estranged sister, Benny, to listen to a lengthy recording made by their late mother, Eleanor, who divulges startling secrets about her life. “Please forgive me for not telling you any of this before,” she says.
“I have always kept that recipe in a place where I keep precious things.”
When Benny was growing up, her mother taught her to make the special titular black cake, saying, “This is island food. This is your heritage.” Wilkerson, who grew up in Jamaica and New York and now lives in Rome, explains during a video call that the Caribbean fruitcake known as black cake has long been a family favorite, a descendant of “the good old-fashioned English plum pudding . . . transformed, over time, by tropical ingredients.”
Long ago, Wilkerson’s mother mailed her a copy of her recipe, filled with comments and instructions. Later, after Wilkerson’s mother died, a younger relative asked her for a copy. “I don’t think I’d looked at it for years,” Wilkerson recalls, “but I knew exactly where to find it. I’ve moved a number of times in my life. I am not the neatest person in the world, but I have always kept that recipe in a place where I keep precious things.”
Don’t expect to find the recipe within the pages of this novel, however. Wilkerson didn’t want readers to presume that this is simply a culinary tale. “It’s about the idea that there’s the story you tell about your life, about your family history, about your culture. And then there are the stories that are not told, or concealed, or not fully revealed,” she says. “The cake symbolizes the history of this family, in which the children, who are now grown, really don’t know the half of what their parents went through. Their journey of discovery is going to actually change the way in which they see not only their parents, their family history, but their own relationships.”
Warm, engaging and thoughtful, Wilkerson speaks precisely and with a hint of a lilt in her voice, a remnant from her childhood in Jamaica. Although she repeatedly states that she’s a private person, the handful of memories that she shares are reminiscent of her prose—sensory-filled, memorable and layered with meaning. She recalls her first taste of sugar cane during a school field trip, when the bus broke down next to a sugar cane farm and someone chopped up pieces for the children to taste. She also offers a tantalizing clue to how she ended up living in Rome: “Most people who end up moving to Italy and staying there move for two reasons: It’s either art history, or it’s a love story. You can guess which one.”
Prior to writing this novel, Wilkerson spent several years working in short fiction—notably, flash fiction. The crafting of Black Cake first began when she wrote a short scene about two teenage girls swimming in Caribbean waters in the 1960s. “They were driven by this visceral ambition and connection with nature and this determination to swim, despite the fact that they were afraid,” she says. Next, she wrote some seemingly unrelated scenes set in contemporary times. “At a certain point,” she says, “I realized they were all the same story. And that’s when I knew I had a novel, you know—that I wasn’t just all over the place. I was circling an idea.”
Like a shark, perhaps?
Wilkerson laughs, saying, “That’s me, a shark. I don’t always manage to get a bite of food, but I did this time.”
She certainly has. Black Cake is slated to become a Hulu series with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and creator Marissa Jo Cerar (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) at the helm—not too shabby for someone who has long dreamed of telling stories. “I’ve always dabbled and written and read,” Wilkerson says, “but the act of writing regularly and making sure that you don’t lose the thread when you have all these different voices is something that takes consistent work. I came to that fairly recently.”
“That’s me, a shark. I don’t always manage to get a bite of food, but I did this time.”
While Wilkerson’s mother gifted her with her prized recipe, her father’s work as a textile artist helped her zero in on her writerly goal. She remembers loving the smell of the dyes in his studio, and admired how he “was able to take art and turn it into a discipline.” After his death in 2013, she took one of his flannel shirts (which she still wears regularly) and finally began to write fiction. “I realized I had to stop thinking that I was being frivolous and recognize that it was work. So, I made some changes in my life.”
As a child, Wilkerson watched her father swim in the ocean toward the horizon until he disappeared, and similar imagery figures prominently in Black Cake. (Byron is a renowned oceanographer whose mother taught him to surf, and who encourages young people to “catch the wave and ride with it.”) “I think that’s what we do in life,” Wilkerson says. “We try to make a plan, but then life happens, and we try to use everything we’ve brought with us.”
Undoubtedly, she has ridden her own wave like a pro. “This is what I have wanted to do for a long time,” she says.
Photo of Charmaine Wilkerson by Rochelle Cheever
Rooted in memories of her family, Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel explores an island of mysteries and a cake full of surprises.
2022 brings exciting releases from longtime favorites Jennifer Egan, Julie Otsuka, Mohsin Hamid and Kate Quinn, plus follow-ups from Namwali Serpell and Linda Holmes, and a slew of adult novels from stars of young people’s literature: Jason Reynolds, Nina LaCour and Kelly Barnhill.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson Ballantine | February 1
Did someone say “Oprah”? Debut novelist Charmaine Wilkerson’s decades-spanning family drama will make its way to Hulu as a limited series, to be written and executive produced by Marissa Jo Cerar, creator of “Women of the Movement,” who has teamed up with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment. But before we’re completely submerged in media buzz, the novel itself stands out among upcoming family sagas, as it takes two estranged siblings from the Caribbean to London to California as they follow their mother’s final request for them to reconnect, discover their family’s secrets and, after all is said and done, eat their mother’s famous black cake.
What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris Tiny Reparations | February 1
The first fiction title from Phoebe Robinson’s publishing imprint, Tiny Reparations Books, is the debut novel from Kai Harris, which is told from the perspective of an 11-year-old girl over the course of a seminal summer spent with her sister and estranged grandfather. We’re feeling strong uplifting vibes from Harris’ artist statement: “I want my words to be a safe space, a retreat, a giant bowl of comfort food (with ice cream on top). I want my words to be truth and light.” You can read an excerpt from Harris’ novel in Kweli Journal, in a special issue on Black girlhood that was guest edited by Nicole Dennis-Benn.
Nobody’s Magic by Destiny O. Birdsong Grand Central | February 8
The acclaimed poet (Negotiations) and BookPage contributor (!) turns to fiction with her first novel, a triptych that follows the lives of three Black women with albinism, each navigating romance, autonomy, grief and their own sense of power. We’re feeling the emotional lyricism of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, set within a Southern milieu.
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka Knopf | February 22
Julie Otsuka writes compact, ferocious little novels that land with a wallop: Her first, When the Emperor Was Divine, won the 2003 Asian American Literary Award and the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and her second, the internationally bestselling The Buddha in the Attic, was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award and won the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her third novel, which also clocks in at fewer than 200 pages, is her first in over a decade. It follows a passionate group of recreational swimmers after a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool, in particular one woman whose diminishing memory is exacerbated by the loss of her daily laps. By the time her estranged daughter returns home, the woman has been swept away into memories of childhood and days spent in a Japanese American internment camp.
The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith Ballantine | March 1
Readers of children’s books and YA know and love bestselling author Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight), and now everyone else will know her, too, because she’s making her adult fiction debut in March. The Unsinkable Greta James is about an indie guitarist who, after the death of her mother and an onstage breakdown, joins her father on what was supposed to be his wedding anniversary cruise in Alaska. Goodness knows we love emotional tales set at sea, and it’s also pretty cute that Smith’s novel is being published by Ballantine, where she worked as an editor once upon a time.
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler Putnam | March 8
There is truly no way to predict what kind of book Karen Joy Fowler will write next. Her previous novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves(2013), which won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2014 California Book Award for Fiction and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, was about a middle-class family raising a chimp. So naturally her next novel is a historical saga centered on the theatrical Booth family—as in John Wilkes Booth.
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo Viking | March 8
NoViolet Bulawayo made quite a splash as a first-time novelist a decade ago: In 2012, she was one of the National Book Award’s 5 Under 35 honorees, and her 2013 debut novel, We Need New Names, won multiple awards and was a finalist for the Booker Prize. Her long-awaited follow-up is unlike anything else on this list, voiced by a chorus of animals who live in an unnamed African country and who must contend with the unexpected death of their leader, Old Horse. If this sounds Orwellian, it’s because it is: Bulawayo was inspired by the Zimbabwean coup and resultant fall of the nation’s president of nearly four decades in 2017, which led to online discourse and hashtags drawing a connection between the events and George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.
The Great Passion by James Runcie Bloomsbury | March 15
The TV series “Grantchester,” based on James Runcie’s Sidney Chambers mysteries, is, I think it’s fair to presume, universally beloved. (It’s about a vicar who moonlights as a sleuth in 1950s Cambridge; if you don’t love it, you just haven’t read/watched it yet.) Along with penning his acclaimed, bestselling fiction, Runcie is also a documentary filmmaker, and his film resume includes a 1997 TV documentary about Johann Sebastian Bach, created for the BBC series “Great Composers.” In 2016, Runcie wrote a radio play, The Great Passion, about Bach’s writing of the St. Matthew Passion, and now we’ll get to enjoy Runcie’s creation in novel form, which follows the life of Bach from 1720 on, as well as the story of a 13-year-old boy who becomes a soloist for the great composer.
French Braid by Anne Tyler Knopf | March 22
More and more writers are setting their novels—or parts of their novels—in the “pandemic present,” and though we’re not surprised, we are pretty wary. So much about living through the COVID-19 pandemic can’t be fully understood yet, but we trust Anne Tyler to join Zadie Smith, Louise Erdrich and a handful of others in their incisive looks at our present challenges. The latest from Tyler, whose novel Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989, follows a Baltimore family from the 1950s to the present, returning her many fans to the sweeping style of one of her best loved works, A Spool of Blue Thread.
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn William Morrow | March 29
We’re big fans of Kate Quinn over here, but the synopsis of her latest historical novel is on a whole other level: It’s a World War II novel . . . based on a true story . . . about a Russian librarian . . . who becomes the deadliest female sniper in history. She’s called Lady Death! It’s also worth noting that this is Quinn’s first hardcover release from William Morrow, a clear sign of reaching that special level of publishing gold. Go Kate!
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan Scribner | April 5
This one’s another jaw-dropper: a “sibling novel” to Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Good Squad. Coming to readers more than a decade after Goon Squad, The Candy House is the story of a brilliant man and his unique creation called “Own Your Unconscious,” which is technology that allows you to access all your memories—and share your memories with others. We’re intrigued, especially by the enigmatic (you might even say downright confusing) publishing materials’ explanation for the link between the two books: “If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music’s more disjunctive approach. . . . With an emphasis on gaming, portals and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.” Sounds weird! We’re in.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel Knopf | April 5
After the imaginative brilliance of both Station Eleven (recently adapted into a series on HBO) and The Glass Hotel (also in development for TV series), we’re willing to trust Emily St. John Mandel implicitly, which perhaps goes against our code as critics, but oh well. The St.-J-M literary universe, which binds together all of her novels, expands with Sea of Tranquility, an epic tale spanning from 1912 Vancouver Island to a moon colony 200 years in the future. Plus, the version of Sea of Tranquility distributed to independent bookstores will include a special chapter, which is a cool bonus for readers dedicated to patronizing their local bookstores.
True Biz by Sara Nović Random House | April 5
Sara Nović follows up her award-winning first novel, Girl at War, with a tale set within a residential school for the deaf. Its title is a phrase from American Sign Language that means “really, seriously, real-talk,” and as Nović is herself a member of the Deaf community and an instructor of Deaf studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, we’re expecting just that: real talk. Plus, there are already plans for True Biz to become a TV adaptation, produced by and starring deaf actor Millicent Simmonds, whom you may know from John Krasinski’s 2018 horror film, A Quiet Place. Nović will also be an executive producer on the show, and the studio has expressed further commitment to hiring Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to fill many of the creative and leadership roles.
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart Grove | April 5
With Shuggie Bain, Scottish American author Douglas Stuart became the sixth first-time novelist and second Scottish writer to win the prize since it was founded 50 years ago. Naturally, we’re bringing some very high hopes to his second novel, Young Mungo. It’s a story of star-crossed lovers: two young working-class men, one Protestant, the other Catholic, living amid the violent gangs on a Glaswegian estate. In a secluded pigeon dovecote, they find a private world to explore their love, but the threat of discovery looms large.
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Berkley | April 12
Take My Hand is poised to be a big breakout for Dolen Perkins-Valdez, though her list of achievements is already quite long. She’s the bestselling author of Wench and Balm, a PEN/Faulkner fellow, a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and winner of the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the ALA. This is her first novel since 2015, and it was inspired by a true event: the 1973 Relf v. Weinberger case, in which three underage Black sisters were sterilized without their consent, and a social worker’s whistleblowing blew the lid off the nationwide scandal. This novel fictionalizes those events through the story of a nurse in Alabama, and for readers of historical fiction, it’s one to watch for sure.
Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance by John Waters FSG | May 3
The very first novel from legendary filmmaker John Waters (Mr. Know-It-All) is a “perverted feel-bad romance” starring a clever con woman who steals suitcases at airports. Other important John Waters news (because we don’t have any further information about the book) is that he recently dedicated namesake bathrooms at the Baltimore Museum of Art and appeared on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” plus there are murmurings about a new film project and an upcoming art exhibit. We love an irreverent, prolific genius!
Trust by Hernan Diaz Riverhead | May 3
Hernan Diaz’s debut novel, In the Distance, really put him on the map, earning him a finalist spot for both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2018. Published by Coffee House Press in 2017, it was an exceptional entry in the recent list of great novels reimagining the narrative of the American West, garnering comparisons to Jorge Luis Borges’ work. Diaz’s follow-up, Trust, is an imminently intriguing story-within-a-story centering on a 1938 novel titled Bonds, about the immense fortune cultivated by a Wall Street tycoon and his aristocrat wife. Comparisons to Amor Towles are already swirling, so keep your eyes peeled.
Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass Pantheon | May 3
In her seventh novel, the 2002 National Book Award-winning author of Three Junes takes us 10 years into the future, where locals in a small coastal town are doing their best amid an increasingly terrifying world of escalating storms and domestic terrorist attacks. Then two outsiders come to Vigil Harbor, one of whom is a woman determined to solve the disappearance of a long-lost lover. Plus, there’s a secret involving a selkie! That’s a lot to unpack, so we’re looking forward to seeing Julia Glass’ navigation of it all.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill Doubleday | May 3
2022 will be a big year for Newbery winner Kelly Barnhill, who in March returns with her first book for young readers since The Girl Who Drank the Moon (read about it in our list of most anticipated children’s books), and then in May delivers her first novel for adult readers, When Women Were Dragons. During the Mass Dragoning of 1955, hundreds of thousands of women, scattered all around the world, spontaneously transformed into dragons. At the story’s center is a girl who wants to understand why.
The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker Mariner | May 17
Sarai Walker’s debut novel, Dietland, was one of our Best Books of 2015, and with her second novel (finally!), she moves into historical fiction with a tale inspired by a tourist attraction near San Francisco: the Winchester Mystery House, a spooky mansion built by a turn-of-the-century American firearms heiress. The Cherry Robbers is a subversive gothic novel that follows the story of Iris Chapel, who attempts to escape her family’s multigenerational curse, in which each daughter is fated to die on her wedding night.
You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead Knopf | May 17
Hot on the heels of Maggie Shipstead’s finest novel and one of our Best Books of 2021, Great Circle, comes her first book of short stories! If Great Circle displayed her tremendous ability in crafting a tale of immense breadth, a story collection will swing the other way, allowing fans to revel in her talent for brevity.
Either/Or by Elif Batuman Penguin Press | May 24
Fans of The Idiot, New Yorker staff writer Elif Batuman’s absurdist take on the campus novel, have waited five years to find out what’s next for her brainy but awkward heroine, Selin. In Either/Or, Selin returns for her sophomore year at Harvard determined to continue her search for self-knowledge (and possibly her pursuit of Ivan, her freshman crush).
The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz Celadon | May 31
Is Jean Hanff Korelitz on the cusp of becoming the next Liane Moriarty? It certainly feels like she’s close, consistently proving that she can hook readers with her well-balanced literary thrillers and family dramas. You Should Have Known (2014) was adapted as HBO’s 2020 series “The Undoing.” And her 2021 novel, The Plot, was one of those books we kept hearing about from other authors; clearly, Korelitz touched on something deeply true about the writing and publishing processes. Her next novel centers on privileged triplets who, on the cusp of leaving for college, discover a shocking family secret: There was a leftover embryo after their parents’ in vitro fertilization, and now they have a fourth sibling, just born.
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour Flatiron | May 31
YA fiction superstar Nina LaCour is making her first foray into the realm of adult fiction, and the world has stopped on its axis while we wait for the quiet power of Yerba Buena. It’s the story of two young women, shouldering more than their share of trauma and pain, who find their way to each other, so I suppose we could all just start crying and hugging now.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrota Scribner | June 7
Tom Perrotta (Mrs. Fletcher) is the defining satirist of suburban politics, and if you haven’t read his 1998 novel, Election, you at least are likely familiar with the movie adaptation, starring Reese Witherspoon as the ambitious lead, Tracy Flick. To many, Tracy was a villain; to others, a feminist hero. Well, Tracy Flick is back, and she’s got her sights set on a promotion to high school principal. Perrotta will surely line her path with darkly comic hurdles and razor-sharp critique of the school culture—and larger world—around her.
Flying Solo by Linda Holmes Ballantine | June 14
“Pop Culture Happy Hour” host Linda Holmes’ feel-good, utterly enjoyable bestselling debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over, earned an easy spot on our list of the Best Romance of 2019. We’re thrilled to learn about the upcoming publication of Holmes’ second novel, Flying Solo, which sounds like pure joy—and pure gold. It’s about a woman named Laurie who has recently canceled her wedding and returned to her Maine hometown. She’s in charge of her adventurous aunt’s estate that has a mysterious wooden duck among its treasures, and then the duck is stolen, so of course Laurie must discover her great-aunt’s secrets. Sure, the premise isn’t breaking any new ground, but that doesn’t matter, because Holmes knows how to deliver exactly what you want in the most satisfying way.
Horse by Geraldine Brooks Viking | June 14
The acclaimed and beloved author of five previous novels (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning March) returns with a historical novel inspired by the true story of the thoroughbred sire horse named Lexington. Spanning from Civil War-era Kentucky to present-day Washington, D.C., the novel explores hidden legacies, the bonds between human and horse and the secrets held within art, the last of which fans will recall was also an element of Brooks’ novel People of the Book. Plus, we love a title that gets right to the point.
The Twilight World by Werner Herzog Penguin Press | June 14
Werner Herzog’s range as a filmmaker is massive, though I’ll always think of him as the documentarian who captured the saddest penguin moment of all time. (View Encounters at the End of the World at your heart’s own peril.) Considering the intensity of his storytelling, Herzog’s first novel inspires both excitement and trepidation. It’s based on the true story of a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda who defended a small island in the Philippines for almost 30 years after the end of World War II, and whom Herzog met in 1997 during a trip to Tokyo. The novel is described as “part documentary, part poem and part dream.”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Knopf | July 12
The bestselling author of one of all our all-time favorite books-about-bookstores, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (whose film adaptation will star Kunal Nayyar, Lucy Hale and Christina Hendricks), returns! Gabrielle Zevin’s latest novel sounds gently provocative and wonderfully redemptive: Spanning 30 years, it follows two childhood friends who reunite in adulthood to create a video game “where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again.”
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra Hogarth | July 19
World War II meets Hollywood in the third novel from Anthony Marra, whose first two novels, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (which won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was long-listed for the National Book Award) and The Tsar of Love and Techno, earned both critical success and book club popularity. Of course, everyone loves an escapist Hollywood story, but it’s all the better when those bright lights shine on something deep and true, so we’re looking forward to Marra’s epic novel of reinvention, politics and the lengths to which we’ll all go to survive.
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah Algonquin | July 26
Here’s another debut we’re especially excited about: With solid Tommy Orange vibes, the first novel from Oscar Hokeah is a coming-of-age tale told from a chorus of multigenerational voices. Ever Geimausaddle is at the story’s heart, and as his family navigates the ups and (many) downs of life, they also have strong opinions about how young Ever’s future will look. Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma from his mother’s side and of Latinx heritage from his father’s, and he works with Indian Child Welfare in his hometown of Tahlequah, OK. Plus, his writing creds are no joke: He has a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with a minor in Indigenous Liberal Studies. He’s also a winner of the Taos Summer Writers Conference’s Native Writer Award. One to watch, for sure.
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford Atria | August 2
Throughout Jamie Ford’s previous three novels, including his acclaimed debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, readers have been transported to historical Seattle to discover the stories of Japanese and Chinese Americans grappling with buried memories, the fragile bonds within families and found families, and the choices we make to survive. Ford’s fourth novel tangles with many of these same themes through the story of Dorothy Moy, former poet laureate of Washington, who reconnects with her female ancestry as she searches for a way to help her daughter. It’s based on the story of a real person—Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America in 1832—but with a speculative twist.
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid Riverhead | August 2
Booker Prize finalist and bestselling novelist Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West is one of those spectacular novels that we urgently recommend to everyone, so news of his first book since that 2017 novel literally made me gasp so hard that I ran out of air. Like Exit West, The Last White Man has a dollop of the fantastical, as it’s set in a world where white-skinned people wake up with darker skin. Hamid is one of those writers who can package really complicated, difficult issues and make them reach anyone, even someone who maybe isn’t ready to hear about them. Also, it must be said that he has a great reading voice, so we hope that he’ll read this one on audio, as well.
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah Riverhead | August 23
When Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, he became the first Black laureate since Toni Morrison in 1993, and the first Black writer from Africa to receive the award since Wole Soyinka (of Nigeria) in 1986. After Gurnah’s win was announced, it was incredibly hard for readers to acquire copies of his books—partly because of supply chain issues, and partly because his books had never found an audience in the U.S., and so were often out of print or just plain hard to find. Last fall, Riverhead announced plans to publish three titles from Gurnah: the novel he published in the U.K. in 2020, Afterlives, and then two out-of-print novels, By the Sea and Desertion. Coming in August, Afterlives promises to be brutal, sweeping, intimate and necessary, a multigenerational saga unfolding amid the colonization of East Africa.
Haven by Emma Donoghue Little, Brown | August 23
We’re living for this historical kick from bestselling Irish novelist Emma Donoghue! In her latest novel, she combines the spirituality of The Wonder (currently being developed as a film starring Florence Pugh) with the deep historical research of her timely 2020 novel, The Pull of the Stars (about the 1918 flu pandemic), for a tale about early Christianity. In seventh-century Ireland, a priest and two young monks journey down the river Shannon in search of a place to found a monastery, but they soon drift out to the Atlantic Ocean and arrive at a rugged island inhabited by huge flocks of birds, known today as Skellig Michael.
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell Hogarth | August 30
Namwali Serpell’s debut novel, the expansive yet intricate genre-bending saga The Old Drift, received piles of love—as it should’ve. Along with being one of our Best Books of 2019, it also earned a number of literary prizes, including an L.A. Times Award. Naturally our expectations are high for The Furrows, which is out to break even more literary rules. It’s set in 1990s Baltimore and will explore “different kinds of Black identity, as well as different modes of Black speech.”
Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro Knopf | Fall 2022
Dani Shapiro is best known for her memoirs, such as Inheritance and Devotion, but she’s also a fabulous novelist and story writer. Signal Fires, her first work of fiction in more than a decade, is about a catastrophic event that utterly transforms the lives of two families over several generations. The fateful day occurs in 1985, when a car crash results in the death of a young woman. As Shapiro explains in a release from her publisher, the epiphanies within her own family history, as explored in Inheritance, led to the writing of this novel: “There’s a haunting question at the center of the book,” Shapiro says. “Is the past ever really past, and what is the price of denying our own history? In Signal Fires, each character is haunted, their lives shaped by what they can’t allow themselves to know or feel.”
The Mouthless God and Jesus Number Two by Jason Reynolds Scribner | TBD
NAACP Image Award winner, Newbery Honor recipient and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds (Look Both Ways) is one of the greatest writers of children’s and YA literature, and we’re beyond excited that he’ll bring his gifts to a new readership, hopefully sometime this year. His first novel for adult readers is set within a carnival town that’s home to a boy named Mm who was born without a mouth. Says Reynolds, “I’m honored to tell the story of this boy, Mm, who has lived in my imagination for years, and has also been in the back row of every school auditorium I’ve visited.”
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ Knopf | TBD
Nigerian author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s award-winning first novel, Stay With Me, came out in 2017, and people continue to ask us about it nearly five years later. It’s so wonderful when a truly great book has such staying power! Her second novel is rumored to come out this year, and it’s about “two families in Nigeria at opposite ends of the economic spectrum, whose lives collide when political turmoil erupts in their city.” In a statement from the publisher, Adébáyọ̀ said the book was conceived “after a detour compelled me to realize what remained invisible to me in a town that I had long called home. While it has taken a few years to write a novel I hope illuminates the tangled longings of its characters, I’m excited to share it with readers.”
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange Knopf | TBD
Tommy Orange’s 2018 debut, There There, was a groundbreaking work of fiction that well deserved all the love it received. Along with being one our Best Books of that year, it won the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, was long-listed for the National Book Award for fiction 2018 and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2019, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His follow-up to that smash hit is rumored to hit shelves sometime this year.
In Perlman’s Ordeal Brooks Hansen entertains some truly esoteric guests. His book engages a hypnotist, Dr. August Perlman; a schizophrenic, Sylvie Blum; and an heiress, Helena Barrett. Set in London in 1906, this beguiling historical novel celebrates many surprising personalities. Though both Gustav Mahler and George Bernard Shaw make small appearances in this imaginative work, it’s an invisible creature named Oona who really steals the show. With plotting as suspenseful as a murder mystery, Hansen’s novel makes much better reading than your average cop-and-thug whodunit.
Told through Perlman’s eyes, the story’s focus is one extremely difficult week in this peculiar doctor’s career. Just before he closes his clinic one night, an emergency case is rushed to his care. Perlman is a clinical hypnotist a psychologist of sorts who uses hypnotic suggestion to alleviate physical or psychological distress. His new patient, the aforementioned Sylvie Blum, suffers from dehydration. Her illness is the outward manifestation of inner turmoil. Sylvie’s mind is at war with itself, her identity in crisis. After a day of convalescence at the clinic, Sylvie recovers her health but not her well-being. A new personality has won consciousness. She who once was Sylvie now calls herself Nina.
To complicate matters, the new identity, Nina, is in constant touch with Oona, an imaginary friend. Nina answers to Oona and Oona alone, leaving little room for anyone to communicate with Sylvie. Perlman’s unenviable job is to break this psychological stranglehold and bring Sylvie out of this schizophrenic possession.
As if all this wasn’t harrowing enough, Perlman’s professional ordeal is further compromised by Helena Barrett. Introduced early in the novel as a possible love interest, Barrett’s position in relation to Perlman turns tenuous when she begins to meddle in Nina’s treatment.
All this leads to even stranger occurrences. Perlman and Barrett quiz Nina about Oona. In the process they uncover a strange myth about the lost civilization of Atlantis. Needless to say, this novel takes some very bold turns.
In the end it is a boldness of vision that saves this curious narrative. Hansen takes some big risks with this enigmatic cast, and his risks pay off.
Charles Wyrick is a writer and musician in Nashville.
In Perlman's Ordeal Brooks Hansen entertains some truly esoteric guests. His book engages a hypnotist, Dr. August Perlman; a schizophrenic, Sylvie Blum; and an heiress, Helena Barrett. Set in London in 1906, this beguiling historical novel celebrates many surprising personalities. Though both Gustav Mahler and…
Review By Sharon Galligar Chance Noted African-American author Connie Briscoe remembers as a child seeing two portraits of very light-complexioned women on her grandmother’s bureau and asking who the two white women were. She was told they were her great-great grandmother and great-great aunt. And they weren’t white ; both had been slaves up until the end of the Civil War. Being naturally curious, Briscoe set out to uncover the family history. From this research came A Long Way from Home. This emotional narrative is a multi-generational story of slavery, freedom, and the unbreakable bonds of family, as told through three unforgettable women. A Long Way from Home recounts the lives of Susie, her daughter Clara, and her granddaughter Susan. Born and raised as privileged house slaves on Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of President James Madison and his wife Dolley Madison, these women are united by love, a fierce devotion to each other, and, ultimately, a desire for freedom. For Susie, life holds no promise beyond the plantation. As a personal maid to Miss Dolley, she is content. Daughter Clara, however, longs to control her own destiny despite her mother’s words of caution: . . . You don’t know a thing about freedom, ’cause I don’t know anything about it. It takes money and know-how to live free. You don’t just up and do it. Life changes for both women with the death of James Madison and the departure of his wife for her town house. As a result of neglectful management, the plantation eventually falls to a series of owners, each posing a new threat to Susie and Clara and the other longtime Madison slaves. ÊAmid these devastating changes, Clara grows to womanhood and becomes a mother herself, giving birth to two light-skinned daughters, one of whom is Susan. She never reveals the identity of the girls’ white father, and raises them as slaves. Yet the threat of separation is forever lurking, becoming a terrible reality when the younger daughter, Susan, is sold to a wealthy businessman in Richmond. She must create a new life, and it’s in Civil War-torn Richmond that she finds love and the long-held dream of freedom. Briscoe vividly recreates her family’s history with dignity and honesty. This passionate tale pays homage to the African-American experience during the 1800s and to the ancestors, both black and white, whose lives and histories became forever entwined.
Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Review By Sharon Galligar Chance Noted African-American author Connie Briscoe remembers as a child seeing two portraits of very light-complexioned women on her grandmother's bureau and asking who the two white women were. She was told they were her great-great grandmother and great-great aunt. And…
In his sixth novel, Ivan Doig returns to Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front and some of the most colorful natives of Two Medicine country, the McCaskill family. This time around, he turns his attention to Lexa McCaskill, a steady and successful 40-year-old caterer now living in Seattle with another Montana expatriate, Mitch Rozier.
An environmental reporter several years older than Lexa, Mitch left his home in Twin Sulphur Springs for a football scholarship to the University of Washington. Now, 30 years later, he is divorced, soon to be unemployed, and suddenly being summoned home by his estranged father Lyle.
A World War II veteran, Lyle has eked out a living from a series of "surefire and doomed deals" from uranium prospecting to rabbit raising. The physical similarities between father and son belie deep-rooted differences. For Mitch, an ardent conservationist, his father’s disgust for the U.S. Forest Service "and all other government agencies that kept people like him away from the big pinata of natural resources in this country" especially rankles.
Soon after arriving in Montana, Mitch learns that Lyle is terminally ill with leukemia. Lexa comes out to help Mitch care for his father, bringing along her sister Mariah, a beautiful, continent-hopping photographer. Lyle gets on well with the feisty McCaskill sisters, and even allows Mariah to document his illness in a series of photographs for a Montana newspaper.
But old wounds fester between father and son, and Lyle passes away without a real reconciliation. His cryptic last wish, to have his ashes thrown from a fire tower on Phantom Woman Mountain, becomes the lightning rod for Mitch’s anger, and prompts dramatic confrontations between Lexa and Mitch and the two sisters. Only in the aftermath of these conflicts does Mitch find the answers he needs to make peace with his father.
Distinguished by wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Western landscape, Mountain Time is sure to strike a chord with readers who have struggled with the past and won the freedom to embrace their own lives.
Beth Duris is a writer in Washington, D.C.
In his sixth novel, Ivan Doig returns to Montana's Rocky Mountain Front and some of the most colorful natives of Two Medicine country, the McCaskill family. This time around, he turns his attention to Lexa McCaskill, a steady and successful 40-year-old caterer now living…
Set in 1893 London, Paraic O’Donnell’s The House on Vesper Sands follows an appealing cast of characters as they try to unravel a mystery involving missing working-class women and a menacing group called the Spiriters. Inspector Cutter of Scotland Yard takes on the case, and his investigative efforts are shared by journalist Octavia Hillingdon, who’s on the hunt for a good story, and university student Gideon Bliss, who’s romantically linked to one of the missing girls. Readers will enjoy losing themselves in O’Donnell’s atmospheric adventure, which explores themes of feminism, class and Victorian mores.
Clare Beams’ The Illness Lesson takes place in 1800s Massachusetts, where Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, open a progressive girls’ school after his dream of establishing a utopian community fails to bear fruit. Trouble brews when Eliza, a smart, inquisitive student, starts experiencing seizures and episodes of mania. After Caroline and other students experience similar symptoms, Samuel enlists the help of a doctor who proposes an unusual treatment. Beams’ ominous historical thriller is rich in period detail and brimming with tension, and its questions concerning gender and female agency will inspire great reading group discussions.
A Black teacher encounters ghosts both spiritual and emotional on a visit to her hometown in LaTanya McQueen’s When the Reckoning Comes. Mira is in town for her best friend’s wedding, which is taking place at the Woodsman, a renovated tobacco plantation that’s supposedly haunted by the ghosts of the enslaved people who were forced to work there. Mira hopes to see her old friend, Jesse, who was arrested for murder years ago. But events take a terrifying twist, and Mira is forced to come to terms with the past. Reading groups will savor McQueen’s well-crafted suspense and enjoy digging into topics like historical accountability and the weight of memory.
The House of Whispers by Laura Purcell tells the story of a 19th-century maid named Hester who goes to work for Louise Pinecroft, a mute older woman who owns Morvoren House, a lonely estate in Cornwall. Staff members at the house harbor strange beliefs related to fairies, superstitions that are somehow connected to Louise’s late father, a physician whose questionable work with patients took place in caves thought to be haunted. Beyond its eerie aura and propulsive plot, The House of Whispers boasts many rich talking points, such as Purcell’s use of Cornish legends and her ability to create—and sustain—a mood of omnipresent foreboding.
These atmospheric thrillers—quintessentially gothic, decidedly unsettling—are perfect winter book club picks.
Holiday preparations flood our hearts with the warmth of Christmases past—or the echoes of family dinners best forgotten. Wherever your memories lie, two debut works of Christmas fiction are sure to lighten your spirits.
Journalist Megan Angelo has written extensively about pop culture, motherhood, womanhood, TV and film for the New York Times, Glamour, Elle and more. Her debut novel, Followers, is a perfect intersection of her passions that delivers a curious tale of three influencers and their followers, from 2015 to 2051.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
In a novel never published in her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston presented a new vision of the biblical King Herod. Scholar Deborah G. Plant reveals how the masterwork was saved after Hurston’s death, and what we can learn from these precious pages.
“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
