*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, Junja was a “real” mermaid, a Korean haenyeo – one of the world-renowned freediving women who gather sea life – of Jeju Island. By 2001, she’s spent most of her life as “a pillar of the Korean American community in...
The youngest winner ever of multiple important literary prizes in her native Korea, Ae-ran Kim’s first full-length novel arrives Stateside, hauntingly English-enabled by lauded translator Chi-Young Kim (no relation). Areum suffers from progeria, a rare disease that causes rapid, premature aging: “My dad sees his...
*STARRED REVIEW Here’s what we might know – or agree on from limited historic documents and scholarly guessing research – about the Bard’s wife: she’s commonly named “Anne Hathaway” but her father referred to her as “Agnes” in his will; she was older than her still-teenage husband;...
*STARRED REVIEW With only a few audiobook credits each, Yetide Badaki and Chukwudi Iwuji might be considered audiobook newbies. Their extensive acting experience however – especially Iwuji with his substantial work on British stages – ensures that Nigerian-born, award-winning literary darling Akweke Emezi’s sophomore adult title...
*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, the Galvin family seemed perfect. Father Don's work with the Air Force brought the family to (coincidentally, presciently named) Hidden Valley Road in Colorado. There, mother Mary oversaw the raising and nurturing of their dozen children – 10 boys and...
Hideo Yokoyama (Seventeen) might not yet have a following in the U.S. like some of his compatriot mystery writers – Keigo Higashino and Natsuo Kirino, for example – but the acclaim he's earned in his native Japan will likely spread to English-language readers. With Jonathan...
*STARRED REVIEW “Begin at the end,” Emily St. John Mandel’s (Station Eleven, 2014) highly anticipated latest opens. Relative-newbie narrator Dylan Moore, a Julliard-trained actor, instantly becomes Vincent as she is “plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s dark wildness.” She’s notably named by...
The genre-hopping, award-winning Mexican writer, poet, musician, and teacher Julián Herbert made his English-language debut with Tomb Song, an autobiographical novel focused on his relationship with his late mother, a prostitute dying of leukemia. His nonfiction The House of the Pain of Others is a hybrid...
*STARRED REVIEW Debut collections rarely prove even in quality and efficacy, which makes Jenny Bhatt's 15 compelling stories in Each of Us Killers even more memorable. Peripatetically spread across continents, Bhatt's characters are often caught between expectations, desires, and boundaries. Bhatt opens with a bang – literally. In...
*STARRED REVIEW Internationally bestselling author Eshkol Nevo and award-winning translator Sondra Silverston are five-for-five in enabling Anglophone readers seamless access to Nevo’s engrossing novels. Reminiscent of the retired judge in his last title, Three Floors Up (2017), who communicated with her dead husband via answering-machine messages,...
Akutagawa Prize-winning Sayaka Murata (Convenience Store Woman, 2018), with her lauded, chosen translator Ginny Tapley Takemori – two short stories and now two novels thus far – returns for more societally defiant, shockingly disconnected, disturbingly satisfying fiction. At 11, Natsuki is already aware she doesn’t fit...
*STARRED REVIEW "As a girl, I sensed that there wasn't really anywhere I was safe," Selva Almada (The Wind That Lays Waste) reveals in the chilling author's note about growing up in a provincial Argentinian town. By 8, Almada had already experienced verbal sexual abuse, accosted...
*STARRED REVIEW A year has passed since the oldest Torres daughter, Ana, fatally fell (jumped?) from her bedroom window. Her sisters have endured their loss behind rigid defenses: Jessica assumed Ana's life, including claiming Ana's boyfriend; Iridian assuages her loneliness with Ana's books and writing; Rosa...
*STARRED REVIEW Yes, indubitably, you’ll need to first read/listen to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018) to fully appreciate April’s resurrection, why/how we’re not alone, the need to save humanity despite, well, humans. While Kristen Sieh helmed Hank Green’s bestselling debut almost solo – Green himself did a...
*STARRED REVIEW Banished from a large private city hospital, the doctor has run a remote village clinic for three years. His “pharmacist” is an untrained young woman, her husband on call for urgent labor. Despite the doctor’s acerbic demeanor, his care is unreproachable, even self-funding necessary...
*STARRED REVIEW S.A. Cosby and Blacktop Wasteland were featured in Booklist’s 2020 Spotlight on Crime Fiction, and his editorial proved to be thought-provoking and memorable. For readers seeking further Cosby-talk, choose the audiobook, because, while actor Adam Lazarre-White is absolutely convincing, the recording’s highlight just might be Cosby’s 10-minute...
Madeleine Ryan’s novel covers less than 24 hours, but by book’s end, readers are left feeling remarkably bonded with this fiercely independent young woman who thinks, acts, and lives differently from the so-called norm. What actually happens over 300-plus pages is relatively minimal: she prepares...
*STARRED REVIEW Nearly seven long, long years have passed since the eminent Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator, has had a high-profile case. Utmost gratitude gushes, not only for his return, but for Sam Dastor’s in the fifth title in Tarquin Hall’s delectable Delhi-based mystery series. This time,...
Born in Addis Ababa, NEA fellow Maaza Mengiste (The Shadow King) takes readers home to "a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory." As one of the editors for Akashic Books' ongoing Noir series, Mengiste gathers "some of Ethiopia's...
Earlier this year, Bishakh Som debuted her dazzling graphic collection, Apsara Engine, the genesis of which is found here – inseparably entwined with Som’s own unique origin story. Som introduces herself in a narrative frame, bordering the memoir’s beginning and end: “I wanted to clue...
