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Fiction A to Z January 2026 |
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| Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan BraithwaiteYears ago, a man's first wife cursed a later wife, plus all of the women in her family for generations. Ebbing and and flowing in time, this moving Read with Jenna pick from the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer follows three of the cursed Nigerian women: Monife, who drowns herself after losing her lover; her cousin, Ebun, who has a child the day of Monife's funeral; and Ebun's child, Eniiyi, who looks and acts like Monife. Read-alike: Olufunke Grace Bankole's The Edge of Water. |
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The Emperor of Gladness
by Ocean Vuong
In a dying Connecticut town, 19-year-old Hai, who struggles with addiction, is on a bridge ready to end it all when Grazina, an elderly Lithuanian widow with dementia, yells at him. Becoming her caretaker in a rundown house by the river, Hai gets work at a fast food place and finds a home there too. Both heartwarming and heartbreaking, Ocean Vuong's lyrical second novel is an Oprah Book Club pick. Try these next: Joe Wilkins' The Entire Sky; Julie Otsuka's The Swimmers.
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| The Eleventh Hour by Salman RushdieA New Yorker best book of 2025, this bestselling collection of five stories thoughtfully and wittily explores life and death for a variety of characters (older men, a ghost, a musician, and more) who live in various locations (India, England, and the United States). Try this next: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson; An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories by Ed Park.
*If you would like to request this book, please visit your library and ask for assistance! |
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Old Babes in the Wood: Stories
by Margaret Atwood
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, a dazzling collection of short stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You've been missing out. --The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Makkai, best-selling author of The Great Believers Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories--some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine--explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood's characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; Impatient Griselda explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and My Evil Mother touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love--and what comes after. Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.
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Books You May Have Missed
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| My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel AllendeRaised by her Irish former nun mother and a loving stepdad in San Francisco, Emilia del Valle never knows her Chilean aristocrat father. As a young journalist covering the Chilean Civil War of 1891, she begins a romance and also finally meets the father who abandoned her. Isabel Allende fans will relish reading about the del Valles, whose various members often appear in her work. Try this next: Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie. |
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Good material : a novel
by Dolly Alderton
"Jen has dumped Andy, and he's handling the breakup in exactly the way all his friends and family might have expected: very, very badly. Crashing at his mother's house and obsessively photographing his hairline, Andy embraces the rites and rituals of every breakup-the ill-advised decision to move onto a houseboat, the forced merriment of a lads' night out, the accidental late-night text to the ex-all resulting in a never-ending shame spiral. Even as Andy tests the waters of a new relationship, he finds himself drawn back to Jen, revisiting old texts and emails, trying to figure out what truly went wrong"
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| The Heart of Winter by Jonathan EvisonThis poignant portrait of a marriage begins on Abe Winter's 90th birthday. While he's uncomfortable with the attention, his 87-year-old wife, Ruth, has a tooth that's causing her problems. When Ruth's diagnosed with oral cancer, Abe tries to care for her in this novel that looks back over 70 years, from their opposites-attract college romance to marriage problems, raising kids, and more. Try these next: Jessica Soffer's This Is a Love Story; Mikki Brammer's The Collected Regrets of Clover. |
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| The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham JonesIn 2012, college professor Etsy Beaucarne learns about a 100-year-old diary written by her great-great-grandfather, Lutheran minister Arthur Beaucarne, and hopes she can utilize it to secure tenure. Contained within its pages are the confessions of Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire seeking vengeance for the massacre of his people. For fans of: The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo; Lone Women by Victor LaValle. |
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| Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins ReidIn 1980, physics and astronomy professor Joan Goodwin is selected to train as an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center. As the astronaut candidates work together and become friends, Joan unexpectedly finds herself falling in love with one of them. This acclaimed, suspenseful tale cuts back and forth between training and a 1984 mission gone wrong. Read-alikes: Eliana Ramage's To the Moon and Back; Bonnie Garmus' Lessons in Chemistry. |
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| Woodworking by Emily St. JamesIn autumn 2016, recently divorced 35-year-old Erica Skyberg, a closeted trans woman in small-town South Dakota, teaches, does community theater, and makes friends with openly trans transfer student Abigail. Though they bond, Abigail is also a snarky 17-year-old trying to find her own way. With characters who feel real, this debut novel is an "engrossing drama [and] a must-read" (Publishers Weekly). Try this next: Edward Underhill's The In-Between Bookstore. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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