| After the hurricane by Leah FranquiWhat happens: NYU student Elena goes to Puerto Rico looking for her estranged father amidst the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Relatives she meets for the first time share insights into his painful youth and clues to his fate.
Sample the story: "A piece of the past would be hers. A part of history, a part of the island for her, all her own."
For fans of: Afterlife by Julia Alvarez. |
|
| Jobs for girls with artistic flair by June GervaisThink before you ink: Recently graduated from high school, Gina Mully wants to break the gender barrier among tattoo artists in 1985 Long Island. Her older brother hesitantly allows her to apprentice in his shop.
Read it for... a coming-of-age story with an imminently likeable under-dog female protagonist. Despite addressing serious topics (such as sexual assault), this is an upbeat, moving read.
Read this next: The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer. |
|
|
|
The red arrow
by William Brewer
It was strange because it wasn't so long ago that he was convinced the only way out of the depression that had crippled him since he was a child, was death.' But now, he is on a high-speed train travelling from Rome to Modena, a failed novelist on the tail of a famous physicist whose memoir he is ghostwriting. The more of another man's life he writes, the more his debt to his publisher is paid off. But nothing would be possible, not the journey, not the writing, not his beautiful wife who is waiting for him at the hotel, had he not experienced the life-altering, life-saving treatment for the darkness which had been hovering since the chemical spill in West Virginia. As the narrator untangles the past in his bid to rewrite the future, he spirals across time, exploring memory, our sense of self and the ways we are connected. A devastating insight into depression, it's also a mind-expanding, exhilarating experience of the power of psychedelic therapy to transform a life.
|
|
|
|
Marlo
by Jay Carmichael
It's the 1950s in conservative Australia, and Christopher, a young gay man, moves to 'the City' to escape the repressive atmosphere of his tiny hometown. Once there, however, he finds that it is just as censorial and punitive, in its own way. Then Christopher meets Morgan, and the two fall in love - a love that breathes truth back into Christopher's stifled life. But the society around them remains rigid and unchanging, and what begins as a refuge for both men inevitably buckles under the intensity of navigating a world that wants them to refuse what they are. Will their devotion be enough to keep them together? In reviving a time that is still so recent yet so vastly different from now, Jay Carmichael has drawn on archival material, snippets of newspaper articles, and photos to create the claustrophobic environment in which these two men lived and loved. Told with Carmichael's ear for sparse, poetic beauty, Marlo takes us into the landscape of a relationship defined as much by what is said and shared as by what has to remain unsaid.
|
|
|
|
Return to Harikoa Bay: New work from the master of short stories
by Owen Marshall
Whenever I think of coming to punish my father, it's always in a strong wind, and that's blowing now as I drive up the long, unsealed track to the house and sheds.' So begins one of Owen Marshall's superbly subversive stories. He offers up a wide range of subjects, from untimely deaths to unusual discoveries made about friends or neighbours, from burnishing an overseas trip to a tale about saving a business venture- 'Just in time,' said Paddy. 'I thought I was going to have to resort to giving blow jobs in the office.' It wasn't quite as Jane A would have expressed relief, perhaps, but sincere in its own way . . . With over ten years since his last collection of new stories, Marshall explores his fellow New Zealanders, bringing his wisdom and wry eye to his vivid, insightful scenes: 'Places bring back people, people bring back places, and both conjure the cinema of your past
|
|
|
|
Kaleidoscope: A novel
by Cecily Wong
Everybody's heard of The Brightons. From rags to riches, sleepy Oregon to haute New York, they are the biracial Chinese American family that built Kaleidoscope, a glittering, 'global bohemian' shopping empire sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Statuesque, design savant, and family pet-eldest daughter Morgan Brighton is most celebrated of all. Yet despite her favored status, both within the family and in the press, nobody loves her more than Riley. Smart and nervy Riley Brighton whose existence is forever eclipsed by her older sister's presence. When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons' world, it is Riley who's left with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity, and loyalty. She sets off across the globe with an unlikely companion to seek truths about the people she thought she knew best herself included.
|
|
| The work wife by Alison B. Hart24 hours... inside a #MeToo Hollywood scandal poised to blow, with A-list director and producer Ted Stabler at ground zero.
Starring: Holly, Ted's philanthropic current wife; Ted's former wife, whose promising directorial career tanked amidst whispered rumors; and Zanne, Ted's bright and ambitious personal assistant.
For fans of: Chandler Baker's The Whisper Network or Amy Gentry's Last Woman Standing.
|
|
|
|
The great man theory: A novel
by Teddy Wayne
Paul is a recently demoted adjunct instructor of freshman comp, a divorced but doting Brooklyn father, and a self-desc-ribed "curmudgeonly crank" cataloging his resentment of the priorities of modern life in a book called The Luddite Manifesto. Outraged by the authoritarian creeps ruining the country, he is determined to better the future for his young daughter, one aggrieved lecture at a time. Shockingly, others aren't very receptive to Paul's scoldings. His child grows distant, preferring superficial entertainment to her father's terrarium and anti-technological tutelage. His careerist students are less interested than ever in what he has to say, and his last remaining friends appear ready to ditch him. To make up for lost income, he moonlights as a ride-share driver and moves in with his elderly mother, whose third-act changes confound and upset him. As one indignity follows the next, and Paul's disaffection with his circumstances and society mounts, he concocts a dramatic plan to right the world's wrongs and give himself a more significant place in it.
|
|
| Nothing but the truth by Holly JamesLiar, liar: Lucy, a Los Angeles publicist, depends on lies to do her job. When her boyfriend stands her up, she makes a 30th-birthday wish that comes true with unexpected consequences: no more lies for Lucy!
Read it for: "a delightful, frothy, feminist take on classic chick-lit themes and characters" (Booklist).
More like this: Sonya Lalli's Serena Singh Flips the Script, Camille Perry's The Assistants, Elisabeth Cohen's The Glitch. |
|
|
|
Florida woman: A novel
by Deb Rogers
Jamie is a Florida Woman. She grew up on the beach, thrives in humidity, has weathered more hurricanes than she can count, and now, after going viral for an outrageous crime she never meant to commit in the first place, she has the requisite headline to her name. But when the chance comes for her to escape viral infamy and imminent jail time by taking a community service placement at Atlas, a shelter for rescued monkeys, it seems like just the fresh start Jamie needs to finally get her life back on track until it's not. Something sinister stirs in the palmetto woods surrounding her cabin, and secrets lurk among the three beguiling women who run the shelter and affectionately take Jamie under their wing for the summer. She hears the distant screams of monkeys each night; the staff perform cryptic, lakeside sacrifices to honor Atlas; and the land, which has long been abandoned by citrus farmers and theme park developers alike, now proves to be dangerously, relentlessly untamed. As Jamie ventures deeper into the offbeat world and rituals of Atlas, her summer is soon set to inspire an even stranger Florida headline than she ever could've imagined.
|
|
| The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique RoffeyStarring: Aycayia, a young Taíno woman cursed to live as a mermaid; and David, a gentle musician who rescues her from greedy fishermen in the late 1970s.
Reviewers call it: "A feminist re-telling of an old Taíno myth... amplified by a condemnation of colonization in the Carribean" (Library Journal).
What to read next: Helen Oyeyemi's novel Boy, Snow, Bird; or The Rock Eaters, a short story collection by Brenda Peynado. |
|
|
|
These impossible things
by Salma El-Wardany
"It's always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they've learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women...With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. As their lives begin to take different paths, Malak, Kees, and Jenna--now on the precipice of true adulthood--must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family, and tradition with their own needs and desires"
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
