| Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa AnapparaStarring: nine-year-old Jai, who turns detective when his classmate disappears from their unnamed Indian slum, and the two friends he charms into helping him, Pari and Faiz.
Why you might like it: The characters are engagingly complex; the neighbourhood is poverty-stricken but full of life; the writing is descriptive, warm, and witty despite the heartbreaking lack of support for India's poor.
Read it if: Katherine Boo's depiction of a Mumbai slum in Behind the Beautiful Forevers stayed with you long after finishing. |
|
| The regrets by Amy BonnaffonsStarring: recently deceased Thomas, who must remain on Earth for 90 days due to a bureaucratic error; Rachel, still alive but perpetually unlucky in love.
What happens: Despite being forbidden from interacting with the living, Thomas falls in love with Rachel, and the feeling is mutual.
Why you might like it: The surreal set-up creates a humorous, one-of-a-kind romantic comedy. |
|
|
The bookshop at water's end
by Patti Callahan Henry
Bonny Blankenship's most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Lainey's mother disappeared. Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
|
|
|
This is happiness
by Niall Williams
What it is: an old man's memories of falling in -- and out of -- love for the first time, at the same time that his tiny Irish hamlet finally adopts electricity and a newcomer provides his own tale to tell.
Why you might like it: A reflective, contemplative story with a strong sense of Ireland in the 1950s, This is Happiness is narrated in a poetic, lyrical manner.
Reviewers say: "a lilting, magical homage to time and redemption, and a stirring, sentimental journey into the mysteries of love and the possibilities of friendship" (Booklist).
|
|
| Everywhere you don't belong by Gabriel BumpWhat it's about: the coming of age of young Claude McKay Love, raised by his civil rights activist grandmother and her gay best friend on Chicago's South Side.
Why you might like it: Told in short vignettes and very much focused on themes of racial injustice, this debut offers sharp humor, clever dialogue, and a relatable protagonist in awkward, uncomfortable Claude.
Reviewers say: Debut author Gabriel Bump "delivers a singular sense of growing up black that will resonate with readers" (Library Journal). |
|
|
The gifted school
by Bruce W Holsinger
Crystal, Colorado. Four young families juggle the stresses of parenthood, careers, and marriage. As the kids head for middle school, the families are still tight. But when an exclusive magnet school for 'gifted children' is being built, cracks begin to form in their relationships. As the parents go to great lengths to ensure their child is accepted, relationships turn toxic and secrets are exposed.
|
|
|
Rabbits for food
by Binnie Kirshenbaum
It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum's protagonist; an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer, fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow "lunatics" and writing a novel about how she got to this place. Her story is a hilarious and harrowing deep dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly. Propelled by stand-up comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of, or into, the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief.
|
|
|
Burnt Shadows
by Kamila Shamsie
August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history personal, political are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11.
|
|
| Weather by Jenny OffillWhat it's about: the impending end of the world, as worried about by university librarian Lizzie, who's taken a second job for a podcaster who focuses on futurism. Other worries include: politics, her brother's drug addiction, her son's journey through New York's public school system, her knee, her mostly good relationship with her husband.
The style...might not be for everyone: it's told in observational fragments, and despite many witty, sharp comments, this quick read is drenched in anxiety and hopelessness. |
|
| Shuggie Bain by Douglas StuartThe setting: Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s and early '90s.
Starring: young Shuggie Bain, bullied for his effeminate manner and living in oppressive poverty, whose beautiful mother is an alcoholic whom he loves deeply despite her flaws.
What it's like: dark, gritty, and with dialogue relayed in a Glaswegian dialect, this bleak coming-of-age story "will crack you open" (Kirkus Reviews). |
|
| Interior Chinatown by Charles YuStarring: Willis Wu, a stereotyped character actor who longs to break out of the role prescribed to him (Generic Asian Man) and play the hero for once...as Kung Fu Guy.
Interior Chinatown: Ostensibly playing out on the set of a cop show called Black and White, this inventive tale merges Wu's life with the script of the show, sharply indicting Hollywood clichés and racial stereotyping.
Reviewers say: "One of the funniest books of the year" (The Washington Post).
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|