Fiction Archives - Page 9 of 172

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, translated by Takami Nieda [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Chesil commemorated the end of her 20s by writing a novel based on her childhood experiences. The result, The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart, is a literary triumph that's both outstanding storytelling and searing societal commentary. "High school was...

The Silent Parade [Detective Galileo 4] by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

As the third narrator of Keigo Higashino’s internationally bestselling Detective Galileo series (four volumes available Stateside thus far), David Shih is also the first (finally!) to be facile with Japanese names and places. Although the Taiwanese American actor speaks only English, his conscientiously researched, accurate...

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Edoardo Ballerini is that rare talent who instantly, effortlessly transports listeners into a story. His agile adaptability further enhances Ruta Sepetys’ (The Fountains of Silence, 2019) latest historical fiction as he expertly performs characters’ specific details, empathically channels emotions, and deftly reveals a narrative rife...

Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, illustrated by Daniel Sousa [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Bilingual, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hawaiian, Nonfiction, Pacific Islander, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Kapaemahu began as an animated short film that garnered international recognition. The award-winning production team of Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson now sets their script onto the page, resulting in a spectacular picture book featuring stills from animation director Daniel Sousa's moving images....

Keeping Two by Jordan Crane [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Jordan Crane (The Last Lonely Saturday) spent more than two decades creating Keeping Two, a magnificently multilayered graphic novel that empathically addresses the universal human fears of losing those most beloved. In the course of a single evening, the story introduces, challenges, and reconnects two...

People from Bloomington by Budi Darma, translated by Tiffany Tsao [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indonesian, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

More than four decades after its Indonesian debut, the fascinating People from Bloomington by Budi Darma (1937-2021), one of Indonesia's most lauded authors, arrives for English-language readers. Darma (Conversations) wrote these seven stories in peripatetic jaunts between 1976 and 1979, when he was a master's and...

Mister Lightbulb by Wojtek Wawszczyk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Polish, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning animator Wojtek Wawszczyk’s graphic debut, which won the Polish Comics Association’s 2019 Best Graphic Novel award, is available now for English-language readers thanks to this translation by the lauded Antonia Lloyd-Jones. A decade-plus in the making, this epic bildungsroman superbly imbues the surreal...

Yonder by Jabari Asim [in Booklist]

14 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Chameleonic writer Jabari Asim’s second novel after Only the Strong (2015) gets historical with a cast of enslaved Black characters – searingly called the Stolen, their white enslavers rightfully are Thieves – who attempt to survive the atrocities of the antebellum South. “All of...

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth [in Booklist]

13 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Jokha Alharthi’s third novel is her second to arrive in the U.S., again gorgeously rendered by Oxford professor Marilyn Booth. Their auspicious earlier pairing produced Celestial Bodies (2019), making Alharthi the first female Omani author to be translated into English; the novel became the first...

Are We Ever Our Own by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Short Stories

The BOA Short Fiction Prize promises "collections [that] are more concerned with the artfulness of writing than the twists and turns of plot." Cuban Irish American author Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes (The Sleeping World) effortlessly displays both craft and narrative in the 11 loosely interlinked stories...

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd [in Booklist]

11 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW During a rare non-work outing, a colleague asks, “tell me something about you,” but the protagonist “couldn’t think of a single thing ...

Rave by Jessica Campbell [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Canadian artist Jessica Campbell (XTC69) introduces Rave with a provocative epigraph from controversial televangelist Pat Robertson that condemns feminism as "anti-family ...

Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Jason Griffin [in Booklist]

07 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Virtuoso Jason Reynolds’ latest is another chameleonic masterpiece, brilliantly consumable in various mediums, each providing transporting rewards. The original collaboration, conceived between best friends Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin, works best on the page: Reynolds’ glorious words – cut-out phrases and sentences – laid...

Made in Korea (vol. 1) by Jeremy Holt, illustrated by George Schall [in Booklist]

06 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Bill and Suelynn Evans of Conroe, Texas, can’t have kids. Their experience at their wealthy friends’ son’s birthday party inspires a search for a proxy of their own. In this not-too-distant reality, “the smartest men on the planet” are consumed with “makin’ phony kids”...

Author Interview: Monica Ali [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Monica Ali: 'I need to write. No Matter What' Monica Ali’s debut novel, Brick Lane, earned a Man Booker shortlist nod and recognition for Ali as one of Granta's 2003 "Best Young British Novelists." Born to a Bangladeshi father and British mother, Ali was raised in England,...

Love Marriage by Monica Ali [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Even at 400-plus pages, by book's end, readers will miss the Ghorami and Sangster clans of Monica Ali's addictively readable, shrewdly insightful, subversively humorous novel Love Marriage. Yasmin Ghorami and Joe Sangster are in love, engaged to be married in the months ahead. They're both physicians,...

Walk Me to the Corner by Anneli Furmark, translated by Hanna Strömberg [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Swedish, Translation

In Walk Me to the Corner, Swedish painter and comic artist Anneli Furmark explores the transformative joy and heartbreaking consequences of unexpectedly falling in love in middle age. "What would you choose?," a group of women friends discuss during dinner. "To be fine all the time...

The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky by Kim Jihyun [in Shelf Awareness]

31 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean, Repost

More than a foot tall and nine inches wide, the exquisite The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky, by Korean author/illustrator Kim Jihyun, makes a magnificent first impression. The pages within showcase spectacular illustrations and, without a single word, gorgeously reveal a...

Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser [in Booklist]

30 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Australian, Australian Asian, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The monsters here are, of course, people, made terrifying by what Michelle de Kretser labels “three scary monsters – racism, misogyny, and ageism.” Subtitled “A Novel in Two Parts,” the notable Sri Lankan-born Australian de Kretser’s (The Life to Come, 2018) latest is indeed...

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home by Zahra Marwan [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Arab American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Repost

Debut author/illustrator Zahra Marwan's inviting, evocative picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, presents her family's relocation from one desert to another on the opposite side of the world. Her poignant opening dedication, "To my parents, who should have never had to leave," immediately foreshadows...

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