|
|
|
|
Fiction A to Z February 2026 |
|
|
|
|
|
The Compound
by Aisling Rawle
Lily--a bored, beautiful twenty-something--wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation.
|
|
|
|
The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans
Sybil is seventy-three years old, in the winter of her life. Sybil has always made sense of the world through writing letters and through this epistolary novel we see how she comes to terms with her past and present and learns forgiveness.
|
|
|
|
Five Seasons of Charlie Francis
by Danica Roache
When the tides in the Cobequid Bay went out and left stretches of mudflats, I could walk halfway to the other shore. Sometimes the mud engulfed my feet, right up to my ankles, and made it hard to move. The longer you stayed stuck, the harder it was to keep going. Charlie Francis's five-year plan has gone to shit. She was supposed to greet the new millennium by diving head-first into a master's degree, but her thesis has ground to a halt, Y2K was a bust, her rambunctious family and claustrophobic hometown are driving her around the bend?and the maybe-love-of-her-life, Adam, keeps joking about her moving home to marry him and have his babies. When Charlie's beloved uncle?the same person who told her to get out of town and never look back?dies suddenly, Charlie leans into her independence, breaking Adam's heart and rushing headlong into an academic career despite the baked-in racism of the predominantly white institution. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she has to navigate being a (mostly) single mother on top of everything else. Charlie finds herself at a crossroads?and only so much stress-baking can keep reality at bay. How can she reconcile being a student of history within the colonial system that exploited her ancestors? How can she be a good mother when she can barely afford groceries? And how can she be a proud Mi'kmaw woman when the world seems determined to keep her down? Maybe it's time for a new five-year plan.
|
|
|
|
The Forgotten Book Club by Kate StoreyFor three decades, Grace supported her husband Frank's passion for books, despite not being a reader herself. Since his passing, their shelves echo longingly, and Grace's heartache has only grown. When Grace's grandson suggests joining Frank's old book club to feel closer to him again, Grace reluctantly agrees. Yet, upon arrival, she discovers this isn't a typical book club: here, members settle in for an hour of reading... in silence. Disappointed by the sparse attendance and confused by the lack of chatter, Grace flees. But when fellow member, Annie, convinces her to stay, Grace is determined to ensure that neither Frank - nor his beloved book club - are forgotten. And as she breathes new life into the group, Grace might just find this is where she truly belongs. Because this next chapter of life could just be the beginning of her story.
|
|
|
|
A Guardian and a Thief
by Megha Majumdar
In a near-future Kolkata, India, climate change causes flooding and famine. Ma, her elderly father, and her young daughter have precious visas to join Ma’s scientist husband in Michigan. But a desperate resident of the shelter where Ma works follows her, convinced she’s skimming resources, and steals the documents. For seven days, Ma looks for the thief .
|
|
|
|
Heart the Lover
by Lily King
In a 1980s college literature class, a woman grows close to two best friends, who call her Jordan after a character in The Great Gatsby. She eventually dates one of the men but falls in love with the other. Decades later, they all meet again.
|
|
|
|
by Florence Knapp
In the wake of an enormous, history-making storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the child after him. But when the registrar asks which name she wants to pick, Cora hesitates... What follows are three alternate and alternating versions of both Cora's and her young son's life, shaped by her brave last-minute choice of name. Spanning thirty-five years, the novel draws us in from the first page, as we follow three unforgettable journeys of one young man, but also his mother, grandmother, and sister. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing. |
|
|
|
To the Moon and Back
by Eliana Ramage
After her mom leaves her abusive father, Steph Harper and her younger sister grow up in Oklahoma’s Cherokee Nation, where Steph dreams of space. She eventually goes to college, finds a girlfriend, and is chosen for astronaut training. But her goals strain her ties with her family.
|
|
|
|
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife's birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, 'A Corona for Vivien'. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery. 2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, 'A Corona for Vivian'. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|