Fiction A to Z
April 2025
Recent Releases
Dream Count
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This long-awaited latest by the author of Americanah centers on four African women in America. Nigerian travel writer Chiamaka isolates alone in the Maryland suburbs during COVID, pondering her exes. Meanwhile her Washington, D.C. lawyer best friend longs for marriage, her practical cousin starts an MBA program, and her beloved housekeeper is sexually assaulted by a powerful man. Read-alikes: Nikki May's This Motherless Land; Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi's Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions.
Deep Cuts
by Holly Brickley

Two music-obsessed college students meet at a bar in 2000. Songwriter Joe asks our opinionated narrator, Percy, to critique his work, sparking a creative partnership that propels Joe toward indie-rock stardom over the next decade while Percy rethinks not asking for songwriting credit. Fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & the Six will want to try this atmospheric debut that's a love letter to music.
Theft
by Abdulrazak Gurnah

This acclaimed latest from 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah follows three interlinked young people navigating uncertain futures in Tanzania: Karim, whose mother left his abusive father when he was three; beautiful Fauzia, who'd been sick as a child; and Badar, who was sent to work as a servant boy in his uncle's household. "Gurnah is at the top of his game," raves Publishers Weekly.
Wild Dark Shore
by Charlotte McConaghy

On a remote island between Australia and Antarctica, widowed dad Dominic and his three kids live in an old lighthouse and try to keep a United Nations seed vault safe. During a powerful storm caused by climate change, a mysterious woman washes ashore, changing all of their lives in this suspenseful tale. Read-alikes: Jessie Greengrass' The High House; Eiren Caffall's All the Water in the World.
The Dollhouse Academy
by Margarita Montimore

An exclusive, secretive boarding school for actors, the Dollhouse Academy has been the home of 34-year-old megastar Ivy Gordon since she was a teen, and she's desperate to leave. New to the academy are Ramona and her best friend Grace, but life there isn't what the girls imagined. Narrated by Ivy and Ramona, this riveting dark academia novel by the author of Oona Out of Order shines a light on celebrity.
Strange Pictures
by Uketsu

An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . . A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning. A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message. A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbit hole that will reveal a horrifying reality. Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu--an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.
Coming Soon!
Elphie : a Wicked Childhood
by Gregory Maguire

Describes the coming of age story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, as she is molded by her promiscuous mother and her pious father, becomes jealous of her siblings and encounters mistreatment of the animal populations of Oz.
The Book Censor's Library
by Buthaynah °åIsâa

A censor working to remove all mentions of queerness, unapproved religions and any mentions of life before the Revolution from books is haunted at night by the characters of literary classics enticing him to read the forbidden tomes. 
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Handley Regional Library System
100 W Piccadilly St
Winchester, VA 22601
(540) 662-9041

https://www.handleyregional.org/
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