Death Archives - Page 9 of 45

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller [in Shelf Awareness]

26 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

That Danielle Geller survived to write Dog Flowers seems miraculous. Her raw debut might need a content warning: abandonment, alcoholism, attempted suicide, domestic violence, parental incarcerations, family deaths – much of which is intrinsically linked to her enigmatic, missing mother. In bearing elegiac witness to...

The Adoption by Zidrou, illustrated by Arno Monin, translated by Jeremy Melloul [in Booklist]

19 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW “They wanted to start a family, and now they’ve destroyed one,” Gabriel laments. When that family – including his closest friends – all gathered for a surprise party for his 75th birthday, Gabriel was still a grandfather to beloved Qinaya, adopted by his son,...

The Committed by Việt Thanh Nguyễn [in Booklist]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Vietnamese American

Six years since his first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize, Việt Thanh Nguyễn is back with the much-anticipated second installment in a planned trilogy. Here, the same unreliable narrator adds another few hundred pages to the already 367-page confession he...

Moriarty the Patriot (vol. 2) by Ryosuke Takeuchi, illustrated by Hikaru Miyoshi [in Booklist]

15 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Sherlock Holmes’ archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, appeared in only six of Arthur Conan Doyle’s oeuvre, but popular manga-maker Ryosuke Takeuchi – with energetically animated art by Hikaru Miyoshi – continues to indulge his own empathy for villains in the second volume of many more to come. Here, the...

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth [in Library Journal]

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

On her 15th birthday, Janey's mother confesses that her thought-to-be-sperm-banked father is actually a real person still living in the southern Iowa town from which her mother escaped by going to New York City to "give her coming daughter a better life." Janey ignores her...

Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie [in Library Journal]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Japanese, Repost

While Asha Lemmie's debut – about the tribulations of an illegitimate, mixed-race granddaughter of a cousin to the royal Japanese family – might not be perfect, she certainly deserves better than this lazy aural travesty. Floundering, misrepresentative audiobook adaptations have been rerecorded and rereleased –...

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy [in Booklist]

30 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Fiction, Irish, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Seasoned narrator Barrie Kreinik showcases her prowess as a dialect coach as she embodies Charlotte McConaghy’s vast cast around the world from Australia to Ireland to Greenland, traversing quickly emptying terrains and oceans. Making her adult fiction debut, McConaghy introduces Franny Stone, an untethered...

Accra Noir edited by Nana-Ama Danquah [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW "Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction," writes Nana-Ama Danquah (Willow Weep for Me), Ghanaian American editor of this volume for Akashic Book's long-running Noir series. Hardly an endorsement for tourism, this spine-chilling 13-story collection offers an opportunity to "consider the context, beware...

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar [in Booklist]

28 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Syrian American

*STARRED REVIEW “Exceptional” is the only word for such a confluence of multiple #OwnVoices as the trifecta of trans Arab artists (author, character, and narrator) gathered to create this audible literary feast. In alternating epistolary chapters set decades apart, trans activist Samy Figaredo (making their audio...

Monogamy by Sue Miller [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Narrating the fourth of her own books, Sue Miller doesn’t so much perform as empathically embody her 13th title – the result is an aural gift to her avid readers. Three decades into Graham and Annie’s marriage, Graham unexpectedly dies in his sleep. He...

Saving Ruby King by Catherine Adel West [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW A dead woman opens Catherine Adel West’s startling, haunting debut. Two fathers, two daughters, and the building that is Chicago’s Calvary Hope Christian Church will unravel her unfortunate murder, revealing generations of secrets and violence that culminate in young Ruby King cradling her mother...

Aftershocks: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Repost

A stepmother's unwanted visit, a mother's unexpected phone call, a lover's departure – all happening in a single month – precipitated the breakdown that eventually engendered Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu's penetrating debut memoir, Aftershocks. Owusu spent her youth navigating multiple continents, a half dozen countries,...

Moriarty the Patriot (vol. 1) by Ryosuke Takeuchi, illustrated by Hikaru Miyoshi [in Booklist]

11 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, his Sherlock Holmes legacy comprised four novels and 56 stories. Sherlock has since become an unstoppable literary institution, proliferating across mediums; although his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, only appeared in six of Doyle’s original works, his own...

Sisters by Daisy Johnson [in Booklist]

10 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Born 10 months apart, September and July are the kind of sisters who don’t require words to communicate. Older September is clearly in charge, having trained July over years of playing “September says.” Something terrible has happened at their Oxford school, causing their mother,...

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories by Laura Van den Berg [in Booklist]

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

Measured and controlled, Amy Landon expertly ciphers this 11-story collection with a sense of purposeful detachment, as if these women’s stories are too difficult, too harrowing to risk becoming too involved. Three stories, each highlighting erasure, emerge as standouts: in “Lizards,” an angry Floridian transplant...

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Always approachable, immediately engaged, Hillary Huber returns as Sigrid Nunez’s cipher after voicing her 2018 National Book Awarded, The Friend. Once more, suicide looms, this time as a future intention rather than in response to a foregone event. In this is spare, sharp, simultaneously both daunting...

We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Jenny Torres Sanchez’s latest doesn’t let up – beatings, rape, murder, and still more violence looms. Marisa Blake may be a relative newbie narrator, but her thoroughly bilingual ability ensures a fluent, heart-thumping listen following three teens on the run from their gang-controlled Guatemalan village...

A Good Family by A. H. Kim [in Booklist]

01 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Repost

Once upon a time, Beth and Sam Min-Lindstrom seemed like the perfect, wealthy family with two adorable daughters. But now Beth is in prison, convicted of pharmaceutical shenanigans. Without Beth’s oversight (never mind her hefty salary), Sam and the girls need his always-reliable older sister,...

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Spare and devastating, At Night All Blood Is Black by French Senegalese author David Diop is a bone-chilling anti-war treatise. He chooses as backdrop a little-known chapter of World War I annals, when the French government drafted some 200,000 soldiers from its colonies, including Senegal....

My Mother’s House by Francesca Momplaisir [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW It opens with the mellifluous Dion Graham and ends with an always-appreciated who-read-whom at recording’s end. In between, the horror is unrelenting, yet the three narrators persist with tenacious dignity and grace. Graham enthralls as the titular “my mother’s house” – Kay Manman Mwen...

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