Fiction Archives - Page 55 of 172

13 Terrifying Tales of Diverse Hauntings [in The Booklist Reader]

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, British, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian, Indian American, Japanese, Japanese American, Lists, Malaysian, Repost, Short Stories, Singaporean, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

It’s the time of the year to be scared witless – and by choice, egads! Gluttons for fear, unite. And brace yourselves for the following 13 diverse hauntings. The Black Isle by Sandi Tan The protagonist begins her life as Ling, the first-born twin in a well-to-do Shanghai clan. Half...

The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman [in Library Journal]

24 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Collin, the titular “chalk artist,” waits tables since twice dropping out of college. Nina’s a high school English teacher with a degree from Harvard; she’s also the only child of the legendary founder of the phenomenal video game company Arkadia. Opposites attract; romance happens. Thinking she’s...

Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia [in Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In sleepy Pine Valley, MN, 18-year-old Hattie Hoffman – beloved daughter, excellent student, best friend, adored girlfriend, talented actress – lies dead. Solving her gruesome murder is up to local sheriff Del Goodman, a family friend who watched Hattie grow up. Her English teacher Peter Lund...

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins [in Library Journal]

20 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

The mega-success of The Girl on the Train guaranteed Paula Hawkins’s sophomore title would be an instant bestseller. And, again, Hawkins provides another head-spinning mystery from which she slyly (mis)leads readers toward startling revelations. Nel Abbot is dead. Weeks earlier, Nel’s daughter Lena’s best friend Katie...

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova [in Library Journal]

19 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost

English instructor Alexandra Boyd arrives exhausted in Sofia, Bulgaria, mistakenly takes someone else's bag during a taxi shuffle, and spends the rest of the book trying to return the bag to its owner. With 18-plus hours to go, of course, the needle-in-the-haystack pursuit proves epic...

Beartown by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Library Journal]

18 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Swedish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s novels tackle serious subjects – isolated aging in A Man Called Ove, death and responsibility in My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, abandonment in Britt-Marie Was Here, dementia in And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer...

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig [in Library Journal]

12 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Fifteen years after her debut, The Good Men, Charmaine Craig returns with an epic based on the lives of her Burmese mother and maternal grandparents. A former actor, Craig is the ideal narrator to voice her family's narrative as she guides readers through the...

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts [in Library Journal]

10 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Making and selling dorayaki – a pancake-like pastry filled with the eponymous "sweet bean paste" – was not supposed to define Sentaro's life. His someday-dreams of becoming a writer got waylaid by bad decisions that resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Since getting out, he's...

Celebrate Latinx Heritage Month with Cuban and Cuban American Literature [in The Booklist Reader]

09 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Once upon a time, Cuba was an enigmatic, faraway place that conjured up images of I Love Lucy, history lessons about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recurring headlines about Guantánamo. As far as books go, two loomed large: Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, a multi-generational...

No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts [in Library Journal]

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

As Sarah Jessica Parker’s inaugural selection for the American Library Association’s Book Club Central, Stephanie Powell Watts’s (We Are Only Taking What We Need) first novel is getting well-earned attention. Initially inspired by The Great Gatsby, Watts wanted to give voice to the mostly silent...

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout [in Library Journal]

03 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr, who gracefully, achingly gave voice to the eponymous protagonist in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, returns here as Lucy but adds to her repertoire Lucy’s family, neighbors, and long-ago acquaintances who call Amgash, IL, home. When Lucy’s mother unexpectedly arrived...

Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig [in Library Journal]

01 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Narrator Em Eldridge is undoubtedly convincing – and her range here impressive. She’s youthful and innocent as almost-14-year-old Ginny, gently gruff but patient as Ginny’s Forever Dad, and alternately understanding and stressed as Ginny’s Forever Mom. Eldridge also moves seamlessly among the other characters who...

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy [in Library Journal]

27 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

Arundhati Roy’s 1997 Man Booker Prize-winning debut, The God of Small Things, made her an international superstar. Twenty years later, Delhi-based Roy is an activist power house – feted and feared – with an expansive list of nonfiction credits; her second novel should placate her...

Rich People Problems [Crazy Rich Asians 3] by Kevin Kwan [in Library Journal]

25 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Kevin Kwan’s third volume continues to expose – albeit with plenty of schadenfreudian humor – the outrageous excesses and over-the-top machinations that began with his debut, Crazy Rich Asians (currently in highly anticipated celluloid production). Lydia Look, who voiced book two, China Rich Girlfriend,...

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki [in Library Journal]

24 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lady Daniels is supposed to be writing a memoir about raising her now-18-year-old mute son Seth, who communicates just fine using American Sign Language (ASL) and rapid typing on various screens. Lady’s toddler needs child care, however – Lady has recently pushed hubby out –...

The Years, Months, Days by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas [in Library Journal]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Set in the fictional Balou Mountains in Yan's home province of Henan (also the setting for Lenin's Kisses), these two compelling novellas both exalt emotional bonds and warn against their fatal consequences. To escape endless drought, an entire village flees in search of sustenance...

North Station by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

One word describes Bae Suah's latest: enigmatic. The seven stories that comprise her first translated-into-English collection (and her third collaboration with prolifically adroit British translator of choice Smith) are more fragments than linear narratives. In the opening "First Snow, First Sight," unreliable memory between two...

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch [in Library Journal]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Xe Sands delivers this Book with control, even detachment: the almost languid tone chillingly amplifies the hideous near-future Yuknavitch exposes in her highly anticipated follow-up to The Small Backs of Children. At 49, Christine is in her “last year until ascension,” an anachronistic term that...

Why Am I Me? by Paige Britt, illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Somewhere in a city, people are homeward bound at day's end. Among the commuters are a skateboarding boy and presumably his father; walking slightly ahead are a violin case-carrying girl accompanied by a flower-toting woman, most likely her mother. Waiting for the subway, boy and...

The Bookshop on the Corner: 12(-ish) Novels about Bookstores [in The Booklist Reader]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, British, European, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian American, Lists, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Sometimes – way too often, these days – reality is just, well, too real. So into these beckoning pages I retreat. Novels about bookstores are ultra-alluring, since the possibility of escapist respite is virtually limitless. To follow are a dozen recent titles celebrating those literary...

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