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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in November
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Python's Kiss by Louise ErdrichThis latest from Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich collects 13 stories written over the past two decades. Taking place mainly in a vividly depicted Midwest, the tales include a range of characters, such as a young girl concerned for a dog and a group at a bar. Enhanced by woodcut artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe, the author's daughter, this thought-provoking book "puts Erdrich’s powers on full display" (Publishers Weekly). Read-alike: Waiting for the Long Night Moon : Stories by Amanda Peters.
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Wild People Quiet by Tara GereauxSaskatchewan, 1946. Florence has created a beautiful life for herself. Her home is immaculate; she is a model employee at Pratt's Insurance. Her hair is the perfect shade of movie-star blonde--never once does she allow her brown roots to show. But one morning, everything changes. Florence notices a new group of men at the local diner, Métis workers from out of town, hired on for the season at a nearby farm. And one of them has a connection to the past that Florence has spent her entire life outrunning. He has one simple request for her. Suddenly, Florence is thrown back into memories of her life before. And when Florence learns of the government's plans for the Métis community on the fringes of town, she will be faced with a choice--one that will shatter her carefully constructed life forever. Try this next: A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter.
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| The Birthing Tree by Amanda PetersUnder a tree sacred to Mi'kmaq women, Aliet Paul’s mother died giving birth to her. Since her father wasn’t named, Aliet grows up in 1960s and ‘70s Nova Scotia with her Mi'kmaq grandmother Kiju, learning about her midwifery work. But when Aliet is 17, a disturbing event sends her away. After Kiju’s death in the 1990s, Aliet quits her nursing job in the city to return home and reckon with the past. For fans of: Mona Susan Power’s A Council of Dolls. |
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The Last Human Bear by Greg SarrisMary Hatcher lives with a curse--or is it a power that could make her life whole? A Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, Mary keeps trying to make sense of her enigmatic family. Strange rumors spread about her. Her stepmother may have taught her how to become a Human Bear, a shapeshifter who can menace and poison enemies. Two men may love her--or love who they think she is. A mystery even to herself, Mary learns to pass between Native and white societies, tenaciously carving her own path as an independent woman. But as she explores love and desire, family inherited and chosen, and the secrets of the natural world, one question gnaws at her: Is she fated to do harm? Read-alike: Notes on Her Color by Jennifer Neal.
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The Jaguar's Roar by Micheliny VerunschkAn Indigenous girl and boy in Brazil are kidnapped by German scientists during a colonial expedition in 1817 and taken to Europe, where they die within months. Meanwhile, in contemporary São Paulo, a young woman sees pictures of the children in a museum, causing her to reflect on the horrors of the past in this English language debut by Brazilian author Micheliny Verunschk. Try this next: Ædnan : an Epic by Linnea Axelsson
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Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbli WeidenVirgil Wounded Horse is desperately trying to escape his past as a hired vigilante on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. But when a legendary figure from the reservation is murdered, he's forced to return to the job. Making matters more complicated, threats are coming from the Pine Ridge 705--a street gang from a neighboring reservation who want to expand their reach into Rosebud--and Mitch Gagnon, a shady politician who will stop at nothing to gain more power. With a heated tribal council election looming, as well as new revelations regarding past injustices at the local Native boarding school, the stakes grow even higher. Will Virgil find the justice he's seeking before it's too late? Book 2 in the Virgil Wounded Horse Series, which began with Winter Counts.
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| Dèy by Edwidge DanticatAfter gunfire rings out in a Miami mall, Haitian American real estate agent Magnolia, who’d been shopping for her nine-year-old daughter’s birthday gift, shelters in place at the Oasis restaurant. Surviving the traumatic event, she goes home and doesn’t share with anyone that she was there when the shooting happened. But as everyday life goes on, she struggles, questioning her relationships while examining the past and the present. Try this next: Francesca Momplaisir's The Garden of Broken Things. |
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Small Boat by Vincent DelecroixIn November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsized in the English Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, nearly three hours later, all but two of the migrants had died, the worst single loss of life ever to occur in the Channel. Small Boat is a fictional first-person account of the French navy officer who took the migrants' calls--and her attempts to justify the indefensible. Read-alike: The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed.
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Har Mar: Stories by Hilal IslerIn Hilal Isler’s gripping debut story collection, Har Mar, women in the early twenty-first century navigate the complex spaces between countries, families, languages, and selves. Isler’s characters are all on the verge of something―success, rebellion, revelation―and they want to disappear as much as they want to be seen. Moving back and forth between Turkey and the United States, these stories trace migrations both physical and emotional: a nanny plots to flee the wealthy family she cares for in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul; in Har Mar, a quiet mall tucked in the suburbs of Minneapolis; a bookseller escapes her grief in a complicated relationship with a wig retailer; an actress is hired by a famous American novelist to portray her at public events. Try this next: Bliss montage : Stories by Ling Ma. |
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| When Lemons Give You Life by Anna JohnstonPretending to have dementia while living in a care home, retired chef Griff Barlow grieves for his beloved late partner. Preparing to end it all, he breaks into the nursing home kitchen to bake one last lemon tart, but sharing it ends up changing his life. Meanwhile, his much younger sister navigates life changes and deals with her sadness that she and Griff are estranged. For fans of: the author's previous novel, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife; Marianne Cronin's Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love. |
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| Unprecedented Times by Malavika KannanArriving at Stanford University in fall 2019 from suburban Florida, Rishi, a burnt-out youth climate activist, looks forward to having fun, reading, and writing fiction while making new friends and having her first relationship with a woman. Things don't go as planned and COVID forces her back home, where she leaves virtual college to join friends working at a Pennsylvania farm. Unprecedented Times "feels like pages ripped straight from your funniest friend's diary" (Booklist). Try this next: Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour. |
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| Sunrise by Téa ObrehtIn 2024, after the small plane her boyfriend was piloting crashes, Nina ends up alone in the Wyoming mountains, where she stumbles upon Sunrise, an abandoned town. In 2003, Coll is putting the finishing touches on Sunrise’s annual historical reenactment when a newcomer upsets things. In 1902, gunslinger Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise after years away. This buzzy novel is the lyrical latest from the author of The Tiger's Wife. Try this next: Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky. |
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| You'll Love It Here by Natalie SueAfter her estranged dad dies, Mona talks back to a client and is put on leave from her marketing job. Then her elderly landlady lands in the hospital, leading Mona to make a sketchy deal with the woman's niece: Mona will become the temporary super of the building and secretly prep the place for sale. But getting to know her quirky neighbors and the handsome guy at the neighborhood deli has her questioning her priorities. For fans of: The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson. |
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| The Book of Chuck by LaToya WatkinsIn 1936 Texas, babbling baby Nannie predicts her father’s death that same day. Forty years later, the son Nannie abandoned, Chuck, dreams of making a happy family, but things don’t go as planned. At the new millennium, Chuck’s youngest child, teenage Baby, begins to have surprising visions of death and investigates her lineage. “This astonishes,” raves Publishers Weekly. For another layered family saga with Texas roots and supernatural elements, try Luis Jaramillo’s The Witches of El Paso. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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