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Fiction A to Z October 2026 |
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| Under Story by Chloe BenjaminAfter a terrible loss and then a divorce, grieving Wisconsin scientist Laurel Salter takes a job washing dishes at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. When a surreal light suddenly appears near the research base, it becomes known as the Arc and draws in more scientists, including Laurel’s ex, Eli. Believing the light is evidence of Eli’s theory of a second universe where time moves backward, Laurel tries to talk him into entering the Arc. For fans of: GMA Book Club books; Scott Alexander Howard’s The Other Valley. |
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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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| 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). |
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| Queen Mab by Emily McBrideWhen 23-year-old Mab, a literature doctoral student, gets pregnant, she and her new husband are surprised but pleased. After a difficult birth, Mab is at first drawn to daughter Maud, but as her husband goes back to his studies, she's left alone to care for a baby that she increasingly believes is a changeling, with her real daughter taken by fairies. Emotionally intense and unsettling, this "stark portrait of maternal depression and psychosis is unflinchingly presented". |
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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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| First Summer by Ekin OklapAn unnamed teenage narrator is happy to meet Clara, who's just arrived in the neighborhood to spend the summer with her grandmother. In Clara, the narrator recognizes the loneliness she also feels, and the two soon become fast friends. They spend hours reading, swimming, and talking about their favorite science fiction book series (chapters of which are interspersed throughout), and their feelings for each other grow into something more. For fans of: quiet coming-of-age love stories with introspective characters. |
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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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| 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: engaging stories with heart that explore community and found family. |
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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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Comfort & Joy: A Fable by Kristin HannahJoy Candellaro, recently divorced and alone, boards a plane bound for the beautiful Pacific Northwest. When an unexpected detour takes her deep into the woods of the Olympic rainforest, Joy makes a bold decision to leave her ordinary life behind. In the small town of Rain Valley, six-year-old Bobby O'Shea is facing his first Christmas without a mother. Unable to handle the loss he has closed himself off from the world, talking only to his invisible best friend. His father Daniel is desperate to help his son cope. When the little boy meets Joy, the two begin to heal. -- adapted from back cover Tuesday, November 10 at 2:00pm - 3:00pm Sharon Forks Library |
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Sunrise on the Reaping (the Hunger Games) by Suzanne CollinsThe phenomenal fifth book in the Hunger Games series! Acclaimed actor Jefferson White, who starred in Paramount Network's Yellowstone as Jimmy Hurdstrom, brings his talent to the worldwide best-selling Hunger Games series as narrator of the Sunrise on the Reaping audiobook! When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for? As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena. Tuesday, November 10 at 5:30pm - 6:30pm Post Road Library |
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Python's Kiss: Stories by Louise ErdrichA staggering sense of empathy infuses the stories. With its range of voices and styles, this puts Erdrich's powers on full display. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, a captivating collection of short storiesIt was as though I was chosen--marked out by the python's kiss for wisdom or maybe sorrow. Or perhaps, I think now, a sense of the ridiculous in extremes of experience. Also, I hoped for a long life. Written over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. Accompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe--an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an opportunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers. Tuesday, November 17 at 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Denmark Library |
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Wednesday, November 18 at 10:00am - 11:00am
Post Road Library |
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After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage--and what it means to be Cuban. Thursday, November 19 at 10:00am - 11:00am
Cumming Library. |
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"Every crime is a mystery story with a motive. With the insight he brought to his revolutionary work inside the FBI’s elite serial crime unit, John Douglas pieces together motives behind violent criminal behavior. He not only takes us into the darkest recesses of the minds of arsonists, hijackers, bombers, poisoners, assassins, serial killers, and mass murderers, but also the seemingly ordinary people who suddenly go on a shocking rampage. With in-depth analysis on real cases and killers, such as Lee Harvey Oswald, Theodore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh, The Anatomy of Motive sheds light on the surprising similarities and differences among various deadly offenders. More importantly, it teaches us how to anticipate potential violent behavior before it’s too late. Thursday, November 19 at 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Sharon Forks Library. |
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All creatures great and small by James HerriotRecalls the early career of James Herriot, a country veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire, describing the joys and trials of working with his unique clientele. Saturday, November 21 at 10:30am - 11:30am
Hampton Park Library |
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Author of The Perfect Marriage and You Shouldn't Have Come Here comes a chilling family thriller about the (sometimes literal) skeletons in the closet. After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm's length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn't been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going through their parents' belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends. Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave. Tuesday, November 24 at 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Post Road Library |
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Contact your librarian for more great books! |
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Forsyth County Public Library
585 Dahlonega Street, Cumming, Georgia 30040
770-781-9840ForsythPL.org |
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