*STARRED REVIEW The story starts at the end – “Today Su Lan begins to die” – and finishes at the beginning – “her new American life.” In between, multiple fragments pieced together from various points of view present an immigrant teenager’s quest to understand who she...
“They were best friends at Dartmouth who had decided to take the summer and fall quarters off.” Jack and Wynn are like brothers, “but better, because [they] didn’t have to grow up fighting.” After working as wilderness instructors in the Adirondacks, they embark on a...
Kacen Callender, who identifies as queer, trans POC, wrote the Stonewall and Lambda winner Hurricane Child as Kheryn Callender; they debuted their name change in May 2019 with the announcement of the sale of their upcoming transgender YA novel Felix Ever After. Callender's second middle-grade title, King and the...
Since comparisons to Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians seem unavoidable, here's what might be familiar: yes, crazy, rich, Asian characters populate Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties. Differences, however, immediately overshadow superficial similarities, most obviously from the very first sentence: "When your sister murders three hundred people,...
*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean born, Oxford-educated, Amsterdam-domiciled Jing-Jing Lee opens her expansive, extraordinary debut novel with a reclamatory dedication: “For all the grandmas (halmonies, lolas and amas) who told their stories, so that I could tell this one.” Lee’s rescue of stories belonging to older women is...
“Elsa Weiss left no testimony behind” when she jumped to her death some 30 years ago. She remains a recorded name, one of the 1,684 Jews on the infamous Kastner train that left Budapest, Hungary, in June 1944; she was among the 1,670 passengers to...
*STARRED REVIEW Although the page facing the title of Azar’s first novel to be translated into English clearly states, “Translated from the Farsi,” the linguistic enabler remains anonymous; the publisher’s official line is, “the translator of this book has asked not to be named out of...
At 42, Andrew knows too much about death – personally and professionally. He’s lost his father, mother, sister; his bully brother-in-law is hardly family. He works in London’s Death Administration department, where he deals with what’s left of those who died alone, inspecting their homes,...
This English-language debut from French writer/filmmaker Valérie Mréjen opens with a nameless suicide: a man “decides he’s old enough” and replaces the disco ball with rope. The story, however, begins with a divorced father who determines that his children are lacking suitable New Year’s Eve...
The town of Africville exists, designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The small coastal community on the edge of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was home to black residents since the early 1800s, the majority with southern U.S. and Caribbean origins. Narrative magazine assistant editor Jeffrey...
Perhaps because her single mother was an adamantly independent, relentlessly peripatetic news photographer, Nina Hill prefers to stay still. Mostly raised in L.A. by a wonderful nanny, by high school she was better read than all of her teachers. She finished a UCLA Art History...
Born on the same day during a freak September blizzard in Tennessee, Eric and Morgan – and their families – "became friends for life." The shared birthday anchors them through life's most dramatic changes: Morgan's mother dies and Morgan's father shuts down, while Eric's once-perfect...
Two brothers. Two narrators. Two type fonts: serif for "The Older Brother" chapters; sans serif for "The Younger Brother." Their family has shrunk as Mahir Guven's debut, Older Brother, begins: "...
*STARRED REVIEW Tom Hanks couldn’t be a more affable, ‘let’s-enjoy-this-together’ narrator for Ann Patchett’s (Commonwealth) marvelous latest. From the title all the way through to the ending credits, Hanks never ever falters, always performing his charming, ever-so-likable self: “Chapter threeee” lilts up to mimic ‘wheeeeee!; you...
*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prized, National Book Awarded for The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead moves a century-plus forward to 1960s Florida, where having darker skin remains crime enough (the contemporary irony looms). J.D. Jackson proceeds deliberately, his narration measured and nuanced, avoiding over-performing through even the most...
*STARRED REVIEW With a mere handful of solo credits, Ewan Chung is a relative newbie to audiobooks, but his remarkable versatility proves the ideal fit to showcase Daniel Nieh’s outstanding thriller. The DC-born Chung is a talented polyglot, fluent in Mandarin (he translated the DVD audio...
The retired-detective-turned-Santería-priest Padrino gets a second chance to play savior in Teresa Dovalpage's continuing Havana Mystery series. She mines familiar territory from book one, Death Comes in Through the Kitchen (2018), using another bathroom murder to intertwine the lives of U.S. visitors with Cuban locals. Two decades...
*STARRED REVIEW Until his cousin Jun was murdered, Jay thought little of his Filipino heritage. A Michigan senior headed to university in the fall, Jay’s been on auto-pilot for most of his 17 years. Similar in age, Jun and Jay stayed avid pen pals after childhood...
In an unusual narrative structure, S. K. Ali (Saints and Misfits, 2017) inserts herself directly into her latest #OwnVoices Muslim rom-com, making her aural debut. She opens by introducing two teens intrigued with “marvels” and “oddities” – whose alternating journal entries follow – then intervenes...
Despite calling the small coastal community of Port Coral ‘home,’ Rosa has always avoided the water. She – and maybe the rest of the town – believes she’s been cursed by tragedy, since both her grandfather and father drowned as young men. Raised mostly by...
