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Fiction A to Z October 2017
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| The Salt Line: A Novel by Holly Goddard JonesIn an unspecified future, the United States' borders have receded behind a salt line—a ring of scorched earth that protects its citizens from deadly disease-carrying ticks. Those within the zone live safe, if limited, lives in a society controlled by a common fear. Few have any reason to venture out of zone, except for the adrenaline junkies who pay a fortune to tour what's left of nature. Those among the latest expedition include a popstar and his girlfriend, Edie; the tech giant Wes; and Marta; a seemingly simple housewife. Once out of zone, the group find themselves at the mercy of deadly ticks—and at the center of a murderous plot. They become captives in Ruby City, a community made up of outer-zone survivors determined to protect their hardscrabble existence. As alliances and friendships shift amongst the hostages, Edie, Wes, and Marta must decide how far they are willing to go to get to the right side of the salt line. |
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Paris in the Present Tense
by Mark Helprin
Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.
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The Shell : Memoirs of a Hidden Observer
by Mustafa Khalifah
This compelling first novel is the astonishing story of a Syrian political prisoner of conscience atheist mistaken for a radical Islamist who was locked up for 13 years without trial in one of the most notorious prisons in the Middle East. The novel takes the form of a diary which Musa keeps in his head and then writes down upon his release. In Tadmur prison, the mood is naturally bleak and yet often very beautifully captured. The narrator, a young graduate, is defiant and stoical, and somehow able to pick out humor and irony in the shocking events and characters he describes. Considered by many in the Arab world to be a symbol of the Syrian opposition in the current civil war, this novel provides an essential perspective on the tragedy the Syrian people are living through.
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| Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel by Celeste NgUgliness seethes under a placid suburban surface in this multilayered novel, which features two families that grow too close for comfort. It begins when itinerant artist Mia and her teenage daughter Pearl rent a Shaker Heights, Ohio, house from the Richardsons, who have four kids around Pearl's age. Three of the four become Pearl's constant companions; the fourth becomes Mia's. But it's a custody suit elsewhere in the community that threatens everything -- and calls into being the "little fires everywhere." Told backwards through time through multiple narrators, this insightful book will appeal to fans of complex family dramas like Ann Patchett's Commonwealth or Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies. |
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I Must Have You : A Novel
by JoAnna Novak
The year is 1999, and thirteen-year-old Elliot is a self-appointed "diet coach" who teaches her classmates how to survive on one stick of gum a day to get heroin-chic, Kate Moss thin. Elliot is obsessed with her best friend and former "client" Lisa, who is fresh out of inpatient treatment and dating a nineteen-year-old drug dealer. Meanwhile, Elliot's mother Anna, a capricious poetry professor, has a drug addiction and eating disorder of her own. When Lisa transfers her fixation from food to sex with her boyfriend, Elliot's fragile grip on reality begins to falter, at the same that time that Anna's fascination with the object of her own blind lust, the student who relinquishes his cocaine to her during office hours begins to consume her. I Must Have You is the story of what happens one three-day weekend in an explosion of desire, hunger, and lost innocence.
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Only Love Can Break Your Heart
by Ed Tarkington
Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick. Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears. Seven years later, Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasn’t forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero, but he’s getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors’ daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them, their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families. After a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town, Rocky and his family must reckon with the past and find out how much forgiveness their hearts can hold.
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| Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel by Jesmyn WardThis new novel from National Book Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward started getting attention long before it was published, and is already being considered for prizes of its own. A story of how the past affects the present, and of deeply entrenched racism, it is also the tale of a biracial boy and his addicted, grieving black mother and incarcerated white father. A road trip to Dad's prison kick-starts the novel, which offers deeply affecting characters, a strong sense of place (rural Mississippi), and a touch of magical realism in appearances by the dead. |
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| If the Creek Don't Rise by Leah WeissIn a remote North Carolina mountain town, 17-year-old Sadie feels trapped -- pregnant and married to an abusive adulterer, her options are limited. When a new schoolteacher arrives in town, things seem ripe for change not just for Sadie but for others in her community as well. With fascinating characters -- Sadie, schoolteacher Kate, the preacher, a local medicine woman, and others -- who share narrative duties, this bewitching debut vividly portrays impoverished Appalachia. |
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| Something Like Happy by Eva WoodsThirty-five-year-old Annie Hebden has lost her baby, her husband, and will soon lose her mother, too. Depressed and numb, she is the antithesis of her eccentric, bubbly new friend, Polly, who wakes each morning determined to wring as much happiness out of her day as she can. Polly has challenged Annie to try one way to be happy each day for 100 days -- which may be all that Polly, who has terminal brain cancer, has left. Alternately tragic and comic, this charming, heartwarming debut set in London is "inspiration in a bottle" (Booklist), and was inspired by a social media hashtag. |
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Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country : And Other Stories
by Chavisa Woods
The eight stories in Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country paint a vivid image of people living on the fringes in America, people who don't do what you might expect them to. Not stories of triumph over adversity, but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods's characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong—often the places where they were born. In "Zombie," a coming-of-age story like no other, two young girls find friendship with a mysterious woman in the local cemetery. "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" describes a lesbian couple trying to repair their relationship by dropping acid at a Mensa party. In "A New Mohawk," a man in romantic pursuit of a female political activist becomes inadvertently much more familiar with the Palestine/Israel conflict than anyone would have thought possible. And in the title story, Woods brings us into the mind of a queer goth teenager who faces ostracism from her small-town evangelical church. In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.
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| If I Could Turn Back Time by Beth HarbisonTomorrow is Ramie Phillips' 38th birthday, and she's celebrating on a luxury boat funded by her successful career. But a friend's pregnancy announcement reawakens doubts about her life's priorities, so when Ramie wakes up the next morning as her 18-year-old self, she decides to give life with her first love a second chance. Will that make her any happier? Only time will tell... |
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| The Returned by Jason MottLong-deceased persons have been showing up, hale and hearty, all over the globe, causing consternation among folks who worry who's going to feed and clothe them. Among these worriers are Harold and Lucille Hargrave. Though they're now in their eighties, their 8-year-old son, who died decades earlier, is now very much alive. This strange new reality must be dealt with, even as the world around them struggles with questions that range from the spiritual to the political. A great "what-if" novel, The Returned is "startling and disturbing" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| Landline by Rainbow RowellDeftly balancing a successful career and a wonderful family, Georgie McCool's life reaches the next level when she sells a television pilot to a network -- but it comes with a deadline that conflicts with the family's annual Christmas vacation. When she opts out in favor of working, her frustrated husband Neal takes the kids and heads to Nebraska without her. And when Georgie calls on the landline, Neal picks up. However, it's not present-day Neal she's speaking to -- it's Neal from the past, shortly before they got engaged. Handed an improbable opportunity to reexamine (and possibly alter) her past, Georgie must evaluate her life and decide what to do about her own future. |
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| The Bookseller: A Novel by Cynthia SwansonIn 1962, Kitty Miller leads a somewhat unconventional life as a single woman and the co-owner of a bookstore. But whenever she falls asleep, she somehow starts living the life of Katharyn Anderson, married and the mother of three in 1963. As Kitty figures out the moment that resulted in two such different paths, she also identifies the trade-offs and sacrifices each course required -- and begins to wonder which version is the real one. With a retro-urban feel and a compelling set-up, the mystery of Kitty/Katharyn lasts until the final pages. |
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