Betrayal Archives - Page 22 of 47

The Scattering [The Outliers Trilogy, Book 2] by Kimberly McCreight [in School Library Journal]

14 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

While Phoebe Strole stays consistently convincing in voicing characters of different genders and ages, and conveying shocks and surprises throughout, Kimberly McCreight's continuing mystery centered on teen Wylie is showing signs of fatigue, not to mention just plain disbelief. Wylie, a self-described "full-on agoraphobic" in...

Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo [in Library Journal]

06 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Against a tumultuous backdrop of political, military, and economic turmoil in modern Nigeria comes a portrait of a marriage that begins with idealistic devotion and ardent promise. For Yejide and Akin, love should have been enough, but after four years without children, “even love...

Penance by Kanae Minato, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Library Journal]

04 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Kanae Minato is two for two for twisted psychological Japanese noir. What she did with deadly milk cartons in Confessions made quite the debut splash. She goes back to school in Penance (expertly rendered into English by lauded translator Philip Gabriel) in which 10-year-old Emily is raped...

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware [in Library Journal]

01 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Imogen Church is three-for-three as Ruth Ware’s anointed narrator. With her convincing range of accents, modulations, and control, Church adroitly voices multiple viewpoints, proving to be more effective than many full-cast recordings. Like her previous bestsellers, The Woman in Cabin 10 and In a Dark,...

Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley [in Library Journal]

22 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Emma Gregory, with her impressive range of Anglophone accents – differentiated by age, region, country – is the ideal conduit for the 10 nuanced, exquisite stories in Tessa Hadley's (The Past) latest collection. Loss of innocence looms large in many of the pieces, from a...

All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan [in Library Journal]

21 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian, Repost, Translation

Gabra Zackman narrates with intense intimacy, as if fully aware what she's reading is more than mere words on the page. This electrifying love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man continues to inspire global headlines – it's earned author Dorit Rabinyan (Persian...

A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee [in Library Journal]

06 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

*STARRED REVIEW The five "narrative parts" of this work, designated only with Roman numerals, comprise five styles: short story; first-person, faux memoir; folktale of sorts; 10-parts-plus-epilogue novella; and no-punctuation vignette. The connections require attention, with results well worth the reader's intriguing participation. An Indian American professor's tragedy-ensuing...

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Columbia undergrads Lucy and Gabe meet in a Shakespeare seminar – on 9/11. Their class – including the professor who glibly asks if the pilot was drunk when his TA announces the first tower crash – is as yet unaware of the devastating reverberations to...

New Boy [Hogarth Shakespeare] by Tracy Chevalier [in Library Journal]

02 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Internationally lauded for historical novels (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Tracy Chevalier takes a surprising narrative path as she returns over the Pond to her capital birth-city (she’s been British-domiciled for decades) with the Bard in tow: Chevalier’s privileged fifth graders play out Othello...

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan + Author Interview [in Bloom]

01 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Café Leila & Beautiful Ruins: Q&A with Donia Bijan “Strange things happened when I returned to Tehran in 2010 after thirty-two years in exile,” writes Donia Bijan in her recent essay, “The Women’s Hour.” Traveling with her sister, she found her childhood home – the hospital their father built...

Mad Country: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay [in Library Journal]

30 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nepali, Nepali American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Vikas Adam’s remarkable chameleonic range proves ideal for Samrat Upadhyay’s (Arresting God in Kathmandu) latest superb collection, set mostly in Nepal. Exceptionally gifted with accents, Adam could easily be mistaken for a multi-person cast; he's effortlessly convincing as a disappointed father, a female inmate,...

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies [in Library Journal]

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

Six Four, the first available-in-English-translation novel from Japanese phenomenon Hideo Yokoyama, requires serious commitments of time and memory space. It runs over 24 audible hours, with so many pertinent players that the print version includes a densely-populated “Cast of Characters.” Dead and missing daughters populate this exquisitely...

The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman [in Library Journal]

24 Oct, by SIBookDragon 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 SIBookDragon 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...

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova [in Library Journal]

19 Oct, by SIBookDragon 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...

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig [in Library Journal]

12 Oct, by SIBookDragon 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...

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

09 Oct, by SIBookDragon 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 SIBookDragon 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...

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

27 Sep, by SIBookDragon 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 SIBookDragon 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,...

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