| Followers by Megan AngeloWhat happens: Two storylines unfold, one set in 2016, and one in 2051. Separating the two is a catastrophic data hack.
Why you might like it: Exploring the pitfalls of social media, this debut novel takes contemporary interest in celebrity culture to its logical extreme.
For fans of: Dave Eggers' The Circle; Courtney Maum's Touch, or Connie Willis' Crosstalk -- all of which touch on different aspects of the trouble with technology and social media. |
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| You were there too by Colleen OakleyHow's this for weird: For years, Mia Graydon has had a recurring character appear in her dreams; when she meets him in real life, she's shocked to find out she's been appearing in his.
What happens: Mia, whose marriage has faltered under the weight of infertility problems, has to figure out which man is the one for her. Expect to need tissues in this relationship-driven book.
For fans of: Kristin Harmel's The Life Intended; Taylor Jenkins Reid's One True Loves. |
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A boy and his dog at the end of the world
by Charlie Fletcher
My name's Griz. My childhood wasn't like yours. I've never been to school, I've never had friends, in my whole life I've not met enough people to play a game of football. My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, before all the people went away, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs. Then the thief came. He told stories of the deserted towns and cities beyond our horizons. I liked him, until I woke to find he had stolen my dog. So I chased him out into the ruins of the world. I just want to get my dog back, but I found more than I ever imagined was possible. More about how the world ended. More about what my family's real story is. More about what really matters.
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Primordial soup
by Christine Leunens
Novels about young girls and food problems don't usually make for light reading and frequently border on the depressing. This one has barely a serious note in it. Mealtimes at Kate Lester's house are not an enjoyable experience. The culinary creations of her Lithuanian mother range from the undesirable to the disgusting. Food begins to taint Kate's vision of the world and culinary imagery constantly fills her mind. Things are further confused, when, interpreting what she hears at church literally, she comes to the belief that sex involves man and woman "eating each other's flesh". With a mother unwilling to go into the facts of life, Kate's first sexual encounter is certain to be interesting. This wickedly funny novel hurtles along at a furious pace. Leunens captures the confusions and horrors of adolescence brilliantly, and her use of metaphor is masterful. If the ending verges on the melodramatic, it is entirely appropriate.
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Bunny
by Mona Awad
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort; a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door; ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.
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Chances are...
by Richard Russo
Three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today: Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. Each holds his own secrets, and are still puzzling over something that happened on a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-four years later, as this new weekend unfolds, the distant past confounds the present and the mystery of Jacy Calloway, with whom all three were in love.
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To Calais, in ordinary time
by James Meek
Three journeys. One road. England, 1348. A gentlewoman is fleeing an odious arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor is returning home to Avignon and a handsome young ploughman in search of adventure is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers' past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires. A tremendous feat of language and empathy, it summons a medieval world that is at once uncannily plausible, utterly alien and eerily reflective of our own.
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Cygnet
by Season Butler
It's too hot for most of the clothes I packed to come here, when I thought this would only be for a week or two. My mother kissed me with those purple-brown lips of hers and said, we'll be back, hold tight. The Kid doesn't know where her parents are. They left with a promise to come back months ago, and now their seventeen-year-old daughter is stranded on Swan Island. Swan isn't just any island; it is home to an eccentric old age separatist community who have shunned life on the mainland for a haven which is rapidly sinking into the ocean. The Kid's arrival threatens to burst the idyllic bubble that the elderly residents have so carefully constructed; an unwelcome reminder of the life they left behind, and one they want rid of. Cygnet is the story of a young woman battling against the thrashing waves of loneliness and depression, and how she learns to find hope, laughter and her own voice in a world that's crumbling around her.
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| Salt slow: Stories by Julia ArmfieldWhat it is: a collection of short stories blending realism with horror, science fiction, and mythology. Each story explores the role of women through their physical experiences.
Don't miss: a wolf for a stepsister ("Formerly Feral"); sleep, anthropomorphized ("The Great Awake"); the breakup of a marriage ("Smack").
For fans of: Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties. |
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| Hunter's moon: A novel in stories by Philip CaputoWhat it is: several interconnected stories set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that address the toll violence takes on men and their relationships.
Read it for: the strongly depicted characters; the bonds between men; nature's beauty.
Reviewers say: "Expertly blending plot and character, each of these taut, propulsive tales possesses novelistic depth" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Of wars, and memories, and starlight
by Aliette de Bodard
A major first collection from a writer fast becoming one of the stars of the genre. Aliette de Bodard, multiple award winner and author of The Tea Master and the Detective, now brings readers fourteen dazzling tales that showcase the richly textured worldbuilding and beloved characters that have brought her so much acclaim.Come discover the breadth and endless invention of her universes, ranging from a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war; to the multiple award-winning Xuya, a far-future space opera inspired by Vietnamese culture where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are part of families.
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| Lot: Stories by Bryan WashingtonWhat it is: a short story collection that explores the lives of Houston's working class inhabitants; many of the stories share a narrator in an unnamed Afro-Latino teenager who's beginning to realize he's gay.
Reviewers say: Debut short story writer Bryan Washington is "dynamic writer with a sharp eye for character, voice, and setting" (Publishers Weekly).
Keep an eye out for: Washington's next book, Memorial, will reportedly be published later this year. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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