|
|
Fiction A to Z December 2024 |
|
|
|
|
| Curdle Creek
by Yvonne Battle-Felton
Curdle Creek is an isolated all-Black town that's determined to stay small via an assortment of unusual rules and rituals. After her father is picked to be Moved On, middle-aged widow Osira finds herself struggling, but then she discovers she can travel to other times and places. Fans of creative takes on Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" will want to read this leisurely paced dystopian horror mashup. Try this next: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez. |
|
| Blood Test
by Charles Baxter
Brock Hobson, a small-town insurance salesman and Sunday school teacher, takes a cutting-edge blood test that indicates he'll commit murder. Wrestling with this news while wondering if he's being scammed, he navigates life with his two teens, his park ranger girlfriend, his ex-wife, and her obnoxious new boyfriend. Fans of witty dialogue and satire will appreciate this "disarmingly sweet novel about family...with just the right amount of Midwestern menace" (Kirkus Reviews). |
|
| The Witches of El Paso
by Luis Jaramillo
Already balancing a law career and family, Marta takes in her 93-year-old great-aunt Nena. Then she learns Nena has supernatural powers and witches took her from her 1940s home to 1792, where she gave birth before being sent back. To help Nena find her long-lost child, Marta embraces her own supernatural gifts. Read-alikes: Malas by Marcela Fuentes; The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Córdova. |
|
| The Ancients
by John Larison
In a dystopian future where the elite rule, three children from a lower clan find themselves alone after their mother is abducted and their father killed. Trying to make it to relatives, they travel in a world damaged by climate change. Meanwhile, their mother hopes to escape captivity where she and others are forced to labor for a scholar who's just inherited his father's wool business. Try these next: Sarah K. Jackson's Not Alone; Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Wild-Built. |
|
| Shred Sisters
by Betsy Lerner
Taking place between the 1970s and 1990s, this poignant coming-of age story narrated by rule-following Amy Shred details life with her beautiful, erratic older sister Olivia, covering their complex relationship as well as mental health issues, school, romance, addiction, and more. This intimate first novel will interest fans of other thought-provoking sister duos, like those in Julia Phillips' Bear and in Alexandra Tanner's Worry. |
|
| How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
by Anna Montague
Among the belongings of her recently deceased best friend, Magda finds plans to celebrate Magda's 70th birthday on the road. So taking a break from her therapy practice, Magda drives around the country with her friend's ashes next to her, confronting her past and discovering new possibilities for life and love. Read-alikes: Emma Copley Eisenberg's Housemates; Olivia Ford's Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame. |
|
| The City and Its Uncertain Walls
by Haruki Murakami
Featuring his signature genre-blending originality, Haruki Murakami's first novel in years (which is partially based on an old short story) begins with two teens in love: a girl who says her real self exists in a walled city and the boy she imagines the city with. She goes missing, and the boy grows up, always looking for her. Read-alikes: Miye Lee's The Dallergut Dream Department Store; David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. |
|
| Lazarus Man
by Richard Price
Acclaimed author Richard Price's moving latest traces the fallout after a Harlem apartment building collapses, depicting a former teacher struggling with addiction who survives 36 hours under the rubble, a NYPD officer looking for a missing tenant, a mortician hoping the tragedy might save his failing business, and a photographer capturing it all. Read-alikes: Hannah Michell's Excavations; Diane Evans' A House for Alice; Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire. |
|
| Absolution
by Jeff VanderMeer
In this prequel to the Southern Reach trilogy, readers will find an atmospheric story combining horror, science fiction, and eco-fiction, as a government agency sends expeditions into the odd and mysterious coastal locale known as Area X. Readers who appreciate weird, unsettling tales and unanswered questions can start here or with the 1st novel, Annihilation. Read-alikes: Tade Thompson's Rosewater; T. Kingfisher's The Hollow Places. |
|
| Time of the Child
by Niall Williams
As Christmas 1962 approaches, a 12-year-old boy finds an infant in a churchyard one cold night and quietly delivers her to his small Irish town's doctor. Dr. Troy nurses the baby back to health (secretly, lest rumors begin about his unmarried daughter), and then he hatches a complex plan that might help everyone. Set in the same location as the author's 2019 novel This Is Happiness, this "lovely Christmas miracle of a book" (Library Journal) can be enjoyed on its own. |
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|