literary fiction (books) – Page 3

Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made

In Malaysia in 1945, near the end of World War II, the Alcantara family is barely hanging on. Matriarch Cecily’s husband Gordon is a shell of his former self, while their beloved teen-aged son Abel has disappeared. Their daughter Jujube tries to maintain some semblance of normality as she works serving occupying Japanese soldiers in a teahouse, while the baby of the family, Jasmin, spends her days hiding in the basement. Cecily herself harbors a secret she desperately hopes her family never discovers–she helped usher in this invasion by working as a spy for Japanese General Fujiwara a decade earlier. Cecily had been lulled in by his pan-Asian message and the hope of overthrowing the colonizing British, but that’s not quite how things panned out.

Book Buzz: Literary Classics Reimagined, Historical Legal Wrangling, Collaborative Fiction, Space Operas, Van Living, and Audiobook Suspense

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For April, we’re looking at an acclaimed new take on the story of Huckleberry Finn, historical fiction about a famous 19th century British trial, a collaborative effort between some of today’s most famous writers, a new series that melds the genres of science fiction and espionage thriller, a guide to living the van life, and two very different suspense novels on audiobook, one with a historical setting while the other is extremely contemporary.

Paulette Jiles’s Chenneville

When John Chenneville comes to in a hospital bed in Virginia a few months after the end of the Civil War, his memories are shadowy and half-formed. Everything from his service in the Union Army to his happy childhood in an old French family outside of St. Louis comes back to him in pieces. Upon returning home to Missouri, he learns that his beloved younger sister and her family were murdered, which triggers a quest for vengeance that takes him from St. Louis to modern-day Oklahoma and then Texas in this excellent, haunting historical novel/literary Western.

I’ve been an avid Paulette Jiles reader ever since a stranger came up to me at Books in Bloom and highly recommended Enemy Women to me. I’ve been hooked on Jiles’s work ever since and keep an eye out for her newer releases. (A special thank you to Julie for ordering this book and adding it to the collection!) A Missouri Ozarks native who spent years in Canada and now lives in Texas and was an accomplished poet and memoirist before becoming a novelist, Jiles has a keen ear for language and an equally astute eye for observation. She excels at writing complex but likable and engaging characters, evocative historical settings, and elegantly lyrical but readable prose.

Book Buzz: Fiction Extravaganza

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For January, we’re looking at historical fiction set in 18th century colonial India and 1950s North Carolina, Viking fantasy, lots of horror, suspense about a party gone very wrong, and audiobooks galore. Since last month was all nonfiction, this month it is all fiction!

Book Buzz: Fictional Libraries, Homages to Classics, Historical Mysteries, Second-Chance Romances, and Extreme Knitting

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For November, we’re looking at historical fiction about libraries (both the gothic kind and the WWII espionage kind), a modern literary homage to a 19th century classic, a brooding mystery set in 1950s small-town Minnesota, an Atlanta-based contemporary romance, and a nonfiction audiobook that ponders the mysteries of knitting.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes: October

This year, our theme is “Walk A Mile In My Shoes.” The idea that you can’t understand someone (and shouldn’t judge them) until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes is a pretty common sentiment. And research has shown that reading fiction is one way to really get such a walk going. So, that’s what we are going to do this year: use fiction (and some nonfiction when we just can’t resist) to take walks in someone’s shoes. We hope you join our journey. For October, our theme is domestic violence.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes: September

R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface

Junie Hayward lives in the genteel poverty one might expect from a struggling professional writer. On one hand, she’s had some professional success in that she’s had a book traditionally published. On the other hand, the book didn’t sell very well, her agent and editors are indifferent to her, and she really pays the bills through a glorified tutoring job.

Her Yale classmate Athena Liu, meanwhile, is the literary establishment’s new darling. She’s wracking up an impressive reputation as a young author of note–her books are received with widespread critical acclaim, and she gets publicity that Junie couldn’t even begin to dream of. Junie resents Athena, but they also are each other’s only friend/frenemy in the DC area, so they still find themselves hanging out together–awkwardly and passive-aggressively–but hanging out together all the same.

Then one horrible night, Athena dies by accident, and Junie ends up impulsively stealing the latest manuscript from her dead “friend” and passing it off as her own. Junie knows what she’s doing is wrong, but in her mind, she’s honoring Athena’s legacy while also affirming her own greatness at writing since she revised it. The book, about Chinese laborers in Europe during WWI, is a big hit.

But as Junie experiences the fame and acclaim she so envied Athena over, she realizes it comes at a price. And to protect her initial lie, she has to craft even more lies, as Junie does everything from ambiguously cultivate the idea she’s Chinese American like Athena to spinning more made-up stories about her inspiration for the story. What should be a happy moment and the crowning achievement of her career quickly descends into paranoia that she will be caught.

Book Buzz: Historical Fiction Galore, Nordic Noir, Romance with a DNA Twist, Audiobook Suspense, and Small Arkansas Libraries

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For August, we’re looking at historical fiction that ranges from interwar England to 1930s New Jersey to 16th century China, a new Nordic Noir series, a cute romance that hinges on DNA, an eerie audiobook about summer in Long Island, and a nonfiction profile of Arkansas libraries that highlights a couple of our sister branches.

Book Buzz: Book Codes, Mysterious Happenings, Haunted Crows, Environmental Disasters, Garden Composts, Awkward Vacations, and Audiobook Romances

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For July, we’re looking at a puzzle-style mystery about books and codes, a gothic mystery set in the Victorian era, a contemporary Canadian literary horror novel, a nonfiction story about an infamous environmental disaster in the 1970s, a guide to composting, and audiobooks about romances.

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