*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...
*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...
*STARRED REVIEW Wall Street Journal correspondent Te-Ping Chen emerges as a fiction powerhouse, each of her 10 stories an immersive literary event. “Lulu,” which first appeared in the New Yorker, is a tale about the diverging life paths of twins, the overachieving daughter and the slacker...
Almost a decade since her debut collection, This Is Not Your City, Caitlin Horrocks returns with Life Among the Terranauts. The majority of these 14 stories deliver a gut-punch reminder of the seeming unavoidability of loneliness and isolation, despite the promises of coupledom, familial bonds, and understood...
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,...
*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, when the father was a young boy – the same age as his young son now – he wanted to be a crossing guard. After that, he wanted to be a writer. “‘And now you are one!’” the son gleefully...
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...
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,...
The late, great Dorothy West's trailblazing debut novel, The Living Is Easy, remains presciently relevant almost three-quarters of a century after its initial publication. Racial inequity, police brutality, Black incarceration all haunt West's biting narrative, ready to resonate with a new generation of contemporary readers. Set...
*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...
Wayétu Moore is the first to speak, although only briefly, to share her initial excitement over the possibility of narrating her elegant memoir. That opportunity, alas, became another “casualty of COVID-19,” preventing her from safe studio time, but she adds a personal thanks to narrator...
Debut author Lily LaMotte draws on her immigrant experiences – as well as her cooking show obsession – for a toothsome #OwnVoices graphic feast vibrantly illustrated by the Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. For 12-year-old Cici, leaving Taiwan means separation from her beloved A-má (grandmother). In Seattle, Cici's...
That she’s fluent in Korean, Japanese, and English ensures a smooth double debut – as memoirist and narrator – for poet E. J. Koh (A Lesser Love). Her languid delivery is a lulling invitation into emotional intimacy. From her San Jose, California, birth into early...
In a story of “they said, she heard, he believed, she can’t remember,” whom do you trust? Even the title misleads – True Story: A Novel – while the final words confirm little: “But I’m trusting you to see this is true ...
Prodigious Soneela Nankani – who reigns as the South Asian/South Asian American voice-of-choice – ventures onto onto a new continent, landing in Ghana to cipher debut novelist/gender scholar Peace Adzo Medie’s not-quite-Cinderella tale with energetic aplomb. Once upon a time, Afi was a poor village seamstress-in-training,...
*STARRED REVIEW Edie is 23, has a bottom-tier publishing job, and inhabits a shabby sixth-floor Bushwick walk-up. Eric is 23 years older, a New Jersey archivist, and in an open marriage – with rules dictated by his wife. Their one-month online affair compels a first date...
Hardworking Malia and Augie have plenty of love but can’t ever quite get ahead. In hopes of providing better opportunities for their three children, the pair relocate from Hawai'i to Oahu, but not before Augie insists the family share an adventure on a glassbottom boat...
During the 985 nights since she was cleaved from her then 19-month-old, still-breastfeeding son, Homeira Qaderi managed to escape her native Afghanistan and eventually settle in California. Her son, now 4, has been told his mother is dead. With this haunting memoir, Dancing in the...
*STARRED REVIEW Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey makes both her prose and narrating debut with a startling memoir that alchemizes neverending trauma into an exquisite memorial. On June 5, 1985, Trethewey’s mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was murdered by former stepfather Joel Grimmett on Atlanta’s Memorial...
*STARRED REVIEW Introduced to Western audiences with the internationally awarded Bad Friends (2018), Ancco returns with a five-years-in-the-making collection she wrote in her early 20s, originally published more than a decade ago in her native Korea. Translated by prize-winning Canadian Janet Hong, these 13 stories are largely...
