Candace Chen arrives in New York City post-college because "it seemed like the inevitable, default place to go." After a summer of wandering Manhattan wearing her dead mother's dresses – taking pictures and getting picked up – she unexpectedly falls into a publishing job. She...
Never mind the children who play in the Upper East Side schoolyard of St. Timothy's just off Park Avenue – it's the parents who display the serious behavioral issues. On everyone's radar is Philippa Lye, whose elegant aloofness makes her the most coveted friend. Into this...
Reba Buhr can't correctly pronounce the California city of Marin, but she sure can modulate her versatile voice to match the various ages and backgrounds of the women and girls who populate the 16 stories of Danielle Lazarin’s superb debut collection. Buhr embodies youth in...
Shoved onto the asphalt by police, lying "parallel like burial plots" next to her husband Roy in a motel parking lot, Celestial recalls her wedding proclamation: "What God has brought together, let no man tear asunder." But an American marriage – especially if a black...
From outright untruths to complex subterfuge, the titular lies proliferate throughout SJ Sindhu’s debut novel, especially targeting the institution of marriage among three generations of a conservative Sri Lankan American family. Lucky and Kris are both gay, but their convenient matrimonial union finally satisfies parental...
For five preteen Camp Forevermore girls, a simple overnight kayaking trip turns horrifying when their group leader dies mysteriously and the girls must find their way back alone. One insists on remaining with the corpse; the others leave and promise to send help. Interspersed with their...
Knowing each other's stories – even the most private details – doesn't equate with the true intimacy of having "someone to talk to." The two distinct sections of Liu's (Remembering 1942) latest Anglophone-friendly novel present two such lonely men whose seemingly unrelated lives share a...
*STARRED REVIEW Leigh and best friend Axel "figure out what the other person's feeling" by asking "'What color?’": "carbazole violet" for silence, "burnt orange" for anger, "Prussian blue" for hurt. Their unexpected first kiss sets off a "whole goddamn spectrum" of feelings Leigh doesn't have time...
Although Fresh is Pulitzer Prize-winning Jeffrey Eugenides's (Middlesex) first-ever collection, the contents might seem familiar as only two of the 10 stories are actually "fresh" – the opening "Complainers" and closing "Fresh Complaint." The rest appeared in various publications between 1989 and 2013. What's truly new...
At just two hours, Matthew Weiner's debut novel is more of a novella, perhaps its length (or lack thereof) a reflection of his television expertise. Screen aficionados will certainly recognize Weiner's name: he's creator/producer/director of the wildly successful Mad Men and writer/producer of the groundbreaking...
John Scalzi (Redshirts) explains in his snappy introduction, which he reads, that he has "two natural [writing] speeds": novel-long and "really short." This 18-piece collection showcases his "fast, punchy, and to the point"-shortest. For such a "miniature" book, it's got quite a full cast: Allyson...
After 10 years of surveillance-heavy luxury living as wife to Byron, the founder of the ubiquitous Gogol Industries, Hazel flees to her widowed father's trailer to find her septuagenarian parent unpacking a sex doll. Despite the changing locations, Byron still looms, via a brain-implanted chip...
As the world welcomes 1959, 17-year-old Sonya is a hopeful young woman, despite the violent chaos that threatens her home city of Havana. Her boyfriend has already fled Cuba for Miami with his family, but Sonya is determined to contribute to the coming revolution by...
Mira T. Lee’s impressive debut – both a celebration and mourning of the bond between two sisters, the younger afflicted with mental illness, the elder desperate to save her – deserves better aural interpretation. The full cast (in rare recognition, a who-was-who is added at...
“I can’t think of a happier story”: Shobha Rao talks GIRLS BURN BRIGHTER After 15 years of writing and 15 years being rejected, Shobha Rao made her fiction debut two years ago with An Unrestored Woman, a collection of a dozen impeccable stories – savage and...
In her second National Book Award-winning title, Jesmyn Ward returns to Bois Sauvage, MS, where her first NBA winner, Salvage the Bones, played out; Bones’ Skeetah and Eschelle appear momentarily here. Jojo, 13, and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their African American grandparents. Their drug-addicted mother...
Twenty-six-year-old, four-months-pregnant Cedar Hawk Songmaker was adopted by Minneapolis liberals but has recently reconnected with her extended Ojibwe birth family. Reunion notwithstanding, the world is in dystopic collapse – evolution is in rapid reverse, the Church of the New Constitution has usurped control, the human...
Matt Sullivan, a San Diego–based, bilingual tabloid features writer, arrives in 2003 Havana with ring and wedding dress in hand for his Cuban fianceé, Yarmi, only to find her lifeless body in the bathtub. Considered charming, chatty, and caring by all who knew her, Yarmi,...
After introducing a stupendous community of left-behind stateside military wives in her debut collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon presents in her first novel two women who have accompanied their U.S. Army husbands to Jordan. Shared circumstances ease Cassie and Margaret...
Japan and Korea’s centuries-long, combative history has long made Koreans in Japan second-class citizens. Kaneshiro, who is Korean Japanese, channels his own experiences into his teenage protagonist, Sugihara, a Japan-born-and-raised ethnic Korean. Sugihara decides to transfer into a Japanese high school after attending only Korean...
