| What's mine and yours by Naima CosterWhat it is: a multi-generational family drama set in the Piedmont area of North Carolina between 1992 and 2018.
Read it for: a racially diverse cast of well-developed characters whose lives intersect over 30 years; a sweeping tale of two families grappling with race and racism.
For fans of: Mary Beth Keane's Ask Again, Yes, Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half, and Therese Fowler's A Good Neighborhood. |
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| Raft of stars by Andrew J. GraffWhat it is: an atmospheric and suspenseful coming-of-age story with shades of the film Stand By Me.
What happens: Thinking that they've killed a man, ten-year-old Fish and his best friend Bread flee into the deep Wisconsin forest and are tracked by four adults desperate to save them and each seeking answers of their own.
Reviewers say: debut author Andrew Graff "depicts the harsh Northwoods setting and his misfit characters’ inner lives with equal skill" (Publishers Weekly). |
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All the lonely people
by Mike Gayle
"Life is waiting to happen to Hubert Bird. But first he has to open his front door and let it in. In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfilment. But he's lying. The truth is day after day drags by without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on. Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Along the way Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all . . . Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?"
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Sensation machines
by Adam Wilson
"A razor-sharp darkly funny, and deeply human rendering of a future that's nearly upon us. Michael and Wendy Mixner are a Brooklyn-based couple whose marriage is failing in the wake of their daughter's stillbirth. Michael, a Wall Street trader, has secretly lost the couple's life savings. Wendy, a digital marketing strategist, has been hired onto a data-mining project of epic scale, whose mysterious creator has ambitions to reshape America's social and political landscapes. When Michael's best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy's client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple - and the country. An endlessly twisty novel of big ideas, Sensation Machines is a brilliantly observed human drama that grapples with greed, automation, universal basic income, revolutionary desires, and a broken justice system.
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The second home
by Christina Clancy
"After a disastrous summer spent at her family summer home on Cape Cod, seventeen-year-old Ann Gordon was left with a secret that changed her life forever, and created a rift between her sister, Poppy, and their adopted brother, Michael. Now, fifteen years later, her parents have died, leaving Ann and Poppy to decide the fate of the Wellfleet home that's been in the Gordon family for generations. Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to the house"
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| How beautiful we were by Imbolo MbueThe situation: Since the 1980s, the fictional African village of Kosawa has been poisoned by an American oil company's leaking pipelines. After many requests for help are ignored, a small act of rebellion leads to decades of revolution.
What happens: Nothing much changes in Kosawa, as both the nation's despotic regime and the oil company ignore the villagers' pleas. Then Thula, who grew up in Kosawa in the '80s, returns from the U.S. determined to fight back.
Read it for: the links between environmental degradation and human rights. |
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Unseen city: A novel
by Amy Shearn
"In a city teeming with stories, how do lost souls find one another? It's a question Meg Rhys doesn't think she's asking. Meg is a self-identified spinster librarian, satisfied with living with her cat, stacks of books, and her dead sister's ghost in her New York City apartment. Then she becomes obsessed with an intriguing library patron and the haunted house he's trying to research. The house has its own story to tell too, of love and war, of racism's fallout and the ghost story that is gentrification, and of Brooklyn before it was Brooklyn. What follows is an exploration of what home is, how we live with loss, who belongs in the city and to whom the city belongs, and the possibilities and power of love"
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Lake life
by David James Poissant
"The Starling family is scattered across the country. Parents Richard and Lisa live in Ithaca, New York, and work at Cornell University. Their son Michael, a shoe salesman, resides with his elementary school teacher wife, Diane, in Dallas. His brother, Thad, an aspiring poet, makes his home in New York City with his famous painter boyfriend, Jake. But for years they've reunited for vacation each summer at their North Carolina lake house. Now that's about to end, as Richard and Lisa have decided to retire, move to Florida, and sell the lake house. Before they do, the group will spend one final weekend at the lake. However, what's supposed to be a joyous farewell takes a nightmarish turn when they witness a neighbour boy drown. The stress of this tragedy unlooses a series dramatic revelations among the Starlings. As the weekend unfolds, the family's strength is tested, and each member is forced to reckon with who they are and what they want out of life. Set in contemporary America, Lake Life is a sprawling domestic novel in the mold of John Updike's Rabbit series, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Elizabeth Stroud's Olive Kitteridge"
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| Giovanni's room by James BaldwinWhat it is: This haunting 1956 novel by poet, essayist, and activist James Baldwin follows an American man in Paris who, struggling with his sexuality and separated from his girlfriend, becomes involved in an intense but doomed relationship with a young Italian bartender.
Read it for: poetic language and a better understanding of the fallout of society's historical repression of LGBTQIA identities.
Read this next: Sarah Winman's Tin Man. |
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| Here is the beehive by Sarah CrossanWhat it is: a novel in verse that follows estate lawyer Ana as she comes to terms with the sudden death of Connor, her married lover and client.
About Ana: Married herself, Ana cannot grieve openly, and takes the audacious step of altering Connor's will and befriending his widow in an effort to keep him close a little longer.
Why you might like it: this free-form poem is a heart-wrenching exploration of guilt and grief. |
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| Girl, woman, other by Bernardine EvaristoWhat it is: a much-lauded portrayal of the broadness of the Black British experience through the stories of 11 women and one nonbinary person whose lives intertwine in sometimes surprising ways.
Read it for: vivid, unique characters; a finely tuned exploration of intersectionality; a mixture of prose and poetry; a history lesson.
Book buzz: This co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize landed on too many "best of" book lists to count and also won Fiction Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. It's currently being adapted for television. |
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| Everything under by Daisy JohnsonWhat it is: a horror-tinged contemporary retelling of the ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex, which has its origins in epic poetry and myth.
What happens: After a long estrangement, English lexicographer Gretel reunites with her mother Sarah, who now suffers from dementia. Her reappearance will force Gretel to reckon with monsters from their shared past on a houseboat in Oxford.
For fans of: Maria Dahvana Headley's Beowulf adaptation The Mere Wife. |
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| Conversations with friends by Sally RooneyStarring: college students Frances, a poet, and Bobbi, her best friend and former lover, who fall in (and in love) with an older heterosexual couple, photographer Melissa and actor Nick.
It's complicated: Frances' secret (but "ironic") affair with Nick affects her relationship with Bobbi; the harm she's doing to herself by refusing to be vulnerable is only slowly revealed.
For more novels featuring poets: Chanelle Benz' The Gone Dead; Danzy Senna's New People. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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