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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My Sister, The Serial Killer
by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Starring: hardworking, practical Korede, and her beautiful sister Ayoola, who seems to have made a habit of killing her boyfriends.
What it's about: Korede is the one who ends up having to dispose of the bodies and keep her sister out of jail. But when the handsome doctor who Korede has fallen in love with notices Ayoola and asks for her number, Korede faces a dilemma.
Why you might like it: This darkly funny debut captures complex family relationships and the crowded streets of Lagos, Nigeria, with equal skill.
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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 Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghanistani youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of the nation's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. 40,000 first printing.
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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. |
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Quichotte
by Salman Rushdie
What it is: an homage to Cervantes' classic Don Quixote. Set in the modern day, a middling Indian crime writer invents a delusional traveling salesman who crosses the U.S. in search of the love of a TV talk show host, accompanied by a son who doesn't exist.
Why you might like it: it's a sharply humorous indictment of modern American culture.
Reviewers say: "brilliant" (Publishers Weekly); "dazzling and provocative" (Booklist)
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| House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-JonesThis reissuing of a book first published in Polish in 1998 by a Nobel and Booker Prize winner explores life in a small village along the Polish-Czech border. Stylistically complex and using a variety of elements (stories, gossip, recipes, etc.), Tokarczuk's "scattered fragments are beautifully tied together to form a unified whole" (Library Journal). Try this next: Vaim by Jon Fosse. |
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The Books of Jacob
by Olga Tokarczuk
Told by the dead, supplemented by the author, drawing from a range of books, and aided by imagination, the which being the greatest natural gift of any person. That the wise might have it for a record, that my compatriots reflect, laypersons gain some understanding, and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment.
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Books You May Have Missed |
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My Name Is Emilia del Valle
by Isabel Allende
Raised 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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The Wind Knows My Name
by Isabel Allende
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration (People), from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta Timely, provocative . . . emotionally satisfying . . . [a story about] the kindness of strangers who become family.--The New York Times Book Review AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht--the night his family loses everything. As her child's safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers--and never stop dreaming.
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| Spent by Alison BechdelIn this comic graphic novel, author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel -- who shares a name and striking similarities with the author of the book -- lives on a goat farm in Vermont with her partner Holly and works on her next book project that deals with late-stage capitalism while helping her sister, spending time with friends, and pitching a reality show where people try to live more ethically. Kirkus Reviews raves, "Bechdel is incisive, tender, and funny -- often at the same time." |
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The Girl Who Fell From the Sky: A Novel
by Heidi W. Durrow
Like the author, the main character in this melancholy debut novel has an African-American father and a Danish mother. Blue-eyed and light-skinned, 11-year-old Rachel is orphaned by a family tragedy and moves to her paternal grandmother's mostly black community in Portland, Oregon. Still grieving, she is confused by the needs of others to label her with one race or another, and for the first time becomes aware of race and racial identity. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky won the PEN/Bellwether Prize in 2008.
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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 Heart in Winter
by Kevin Barry
In 1891 Montana, young Irish poet Tom Rourke drinks, takes drugs, and falls for Polly Gillespie, the devout mine leader’s new bride. The lovers commit arson, steal money and a horse, and then head west...but a posse is hot on their trail. This buzzy, critically acclaimed novel “is brutal, hilarious, and fabulously entertaining" (Booklist). For fans of: lyrical Irish writers; Cormac McCarthy.
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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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The Only Good Indians
by Stephen Graham Jones
Korean edition of [The Only Good Indians] by Stephen Graham Jones. A New York Times Best Seller. The lives of four American-Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. Korean edition translated by Lee Ji Min.
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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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Orbital
by Samantha Harvey
Over the course of 24 hours, six astronauts from five countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Russia) navigate life with each other and ponder their pasts and their futures while orbiting earth in a final space station mission. Read-alikes: The Wanderers by Meg Howrey; How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.
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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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Confessions of the Fox
by Jordy Rosenberg
Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found. Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript--a gender-defying exposâe of Jack and Bess's adventures. Dated 1724, the book depicts a London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with the city's newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of the Plague abound. Jack--a transgender carpenters apprentice--has fled his master's house to become a legendary prison-break artist, and Bess has escaped the draining of the fenlands to become a revolutionary. Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography or a hoax? Dr. Voth obsessively annotates the manuscript, desperate to find the answer. As he is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess's tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined--and only a miracle will save them all--Amazon.com.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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