Fiction A to Z January 2026 |
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Celebrate Black History Month in February |
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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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Mabel has been living in the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. She and her mother, Eunice, provide round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude. The era of slavery is still fresh in the country's consciousness. When tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting. For fans of: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. |
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Groove by Bernice L. McFaddenNew York City, April 2002: Geneva, Crystal, Noah, and Chevy, a close friend group, are all mid-thirty, flirty--and ready to embrace the heat of the summer. But behind closed doors, each of them has struggles of their own: Geneva keeps accidentally falling for the charms of her good-for-nothing ex-husband; Crystal is a high-flying executive with a picture-perfect life and a boyfriend who might just be too good to be true. When their friend Chevy gets entangled with a hot and mysterious stranger, the group must come together to save their friend before it's too late--and before secrets break their forever friendship. Try this next: Seven Days in June by Tia Williams.
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Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden RoycePhee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well. When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp-the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death-- Read-alike: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora.
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edited by Ebony LaDelleA collection of love stories set at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, exploring hope, endurance, and what it means to leave a legacy, from some of today's most prominent Black writers and edited by the ... author of Love Radio. Try this next: Heartbreak U : Freshman Year by Johnni Sherri. |
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Cape Fever by Nadia DavidsThe year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits. Mrs. Hattingh offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes--a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both. For fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
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The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode GryttenNils Vik wakes up on November the 18th and knows it will be the day he dies. He follows his morning routine as voices from his past echo in his mind, and looks around the empty house one last time, before stepping onto his beloved boat. His dog, dead these many years, leaps aboard with him, and then the other dead begin to emerge--from the woods along the fjord, from each of the ferry stops along the route, from his logbook full of memories. The people from the past accompany him now, prodding him, showing him what he might have missed before, as he waits for his Marta, his late, remarkable wife, to finally join him on the boat again-- Read-alike: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.
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| When the Fireflies Dance by Aisha HassanOn the edge of Lahore, Pakistan, seven-year-old Lalloo's family lives in modern indentured servitude, making bricks by hand with no hope of freedom. When his brother is murdered, young Lalloo is spirited away by his father to be a mechanic's apprentice. As Lalloo grows, he makes friends and saves money, wanting to free his parents and sisters in this slow-burn, haunting debut that examines grief, hope, and family love. For fans of: Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. |
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The Lucky Ride: A Novel Full of Opportunity by Yasushi KitagawaShuichi is on the hook to paying the company back his salary for the past year after losing multiple contracts. This new looming debt means that he will have to cancel the trip to Paris he has been planning for a year. A trip that his family desperately needs as his teenage daughter has stopped going to school and won't leave her room. Shuichi believes that he's the unluckiest person in Japan. A strange taxi driver appears when Shuichi is at his lowest. The taxi driver offers to take him to his next potential opportunity, should he seize it. In the backseat of this taxi Shuichi embarks on a philosophical and magical ride learning that luck is not inherent, it's an investment built over time and even over generations-- Read-alike: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
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The Award by Matthew PearlDavid Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him--until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices-- For fans of: The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
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Town & Country by Brian SchaeferThe trendy rural town of Griffin has become a popular destination for weekenders and the city's second homeowners, but now a congressional race in this swing district is highlighting tensions between life-long residents and new arrivals. The campaign pits local pub owner and town supervisor Chip Riley against the wealthy young carpetbagger Paul Banks, challenging the social and political loyalties of their families and friends with lasting repercussions. Read-alike: You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg.
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| Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Try this next: Vaim by Jon Fosse. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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