Murder Archives - Page 3 of 18

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Melissa Chadburn's electrifying debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, opens with gruesome death: "Dying hurts like f*ck-all everything." The description comes from "Aswang," a shape-shifting creature of Filipinx folklore, who knows "about the slow agonies of death" because she reanimates the body of 18-year-old Marina,...

Homicide and Halo-Halo [Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery 2] by Mia P. Manansala [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost

Cozy mystery label aside, Mia P. Manansala's enticing second installment of her toothsome Tita Rosie's Kitchen series opens with a warning: "I wrote Homicide and Halo-Halo while both me and my protagonist, Lila, were in rather dark places in our lives." Introduced – and nearly...

The Verifiers by Jane Pek [in Booklist]

09 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese American

Her boss calls Veracity “a personal investments advisory firm,” but to Claudia Lin, “a month into the job, it’s obvious to me that our clients think of us as a detective agency.” What she’s hired to do is verify details for clients who don’t quite...

The Red Palace by June Hur [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

June Hur's self-described "obsessing over books about Joseon Korea" has made her a critically acclaimed author of historical Korean fiction. She follows The Silence of Bones and The Forest of Stolen Girls with another riveting thriller, The Red Palace, which transports readers to 1758 Hanyang (now Seoul), when murder...

The Final Case by David Guterson [in Shelf Awareness]

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

David Guterson (Ed King; Snow Falling on Cedars) returns to the courtroom with The Final Case. His opening note outlines the real-life 2011 trial of parents in Skagit County, Wash., charged with the death of their adopted daughter from Ethiopia. The author "attended the trial, and conducted...

Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol [in Booklist]

21 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Repost

Philippines-born Gina Apostol has earned significant recognition for Insurrecto (2018) and The Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012). Such success often inspires resurrection of older works, in this case, Apostol’s debut, which she began writing in 1983 at 19 and which won the 1997 Philippine National Book Award. “I changed nothing...

Reprieve by James Han Mattson [in Booklist]

13 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A multi-generational family home of horrors looms throughout James Han Mattson’s (The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves) spellbinding latest. Ever-versatile narrator JD Jackson chills and thrills, underscoring the slyly literary, intensifying the social commentary, enhancing the utterly gory. John Forrester began his house of frights...

I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To: Stories by Mikołaj Grynberg, translated by Sean Gasper Bye [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Photographer/psychologist/author Mikołaj Grynberg is best known in his native Poland for his documentary nonfiction featuring his generation of Polish Jews, born after the Holocaust and raised by survivors. Grynberg turns to fiction for the first time with I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One...

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward [in Booklist]

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

Catriona Ward’s latest is quite the creepfest addition to psychological thrillers in which houses or buildings star as characters. Veteran Christopher Ragland sounds so appropriately trusting, even as listeners should be well aware: believe no one. The book’s characters couldn’t be more different, but Ragland proves...

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela [in Booklist]

29 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

At 13, Anamaria is a beloved daughter, a top-performing student at an elite academy. But she lives in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on the Texas border in 1999, threatened by looming femicide. And then Anamaria meets Thirty, who insists she’s Anamaria’s 17-years-in-the-future self. Thirty indeed talks...

The Family Chao By Lan Samantha Chang [in Booklist]

11 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

In her first book in a dozen years, Lan Samantha Chang (All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, 2010) – the first woman and first Asian American director of the storied Iowa Writers’ Workshop – introduces the family Chao who, for 35 years, has been feeding...

Brickmakers by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

Argentinian literary powerhouse Selva Almada's stupendous second novel (after The Wind that Lays Waste) opens and ends in a deserted fairground where death claims two young men predestined to hate each other. Pájaro Tamai is "sprawled on his back," although just earlier that evening his ribs...

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy [in Booklist]

08 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Charlotte McConaghy returns for another spectacular woman-and-nature thriller, finding a pitch-perfect accomplice in prolific Saskia Maarleveld. After chasing birds from the water in Migrations, McConaghy plants in the Scottish Highlands where the reintroduction of wolves – utterly disappeared by hunters since the late 1800s –...

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Thanks to veteran narrator JD Jackson and newbie Ronald Peet, Mott’s fourth novel is also a “hell of an audiobook.” An unnamed writer (impeccably embodied by Jackson) embarks on his inaugural book tour because he’s written Hell of a Book. He’s been coached, trained,...

Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko, translated by Roddy Flagg [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Translation

Once upon a time, Wu Shih-sheng had a happy home with his wife and daughter. But then his daughter ran away and he fell heavily into debt after an accident; lost their home; took to sporadically driving a taxi; forced his wife, Kuo Hsiang-ying, into...

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur [in Booklist]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Korean Canadian June Hur’s enthralling debut, The Silence of Bones, vividly captured 19th-century fatal court intrigue during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty. Her follow-up is another tautly plotted thriller, set in 15th-century Joseon, and helmed by relative audiobook newbie Sue Jean Kim, who adroitly controls a sprawling...

Lemon by Yeo-sun Kwon, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

30 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The Western publishing world has taken a quarter-century to deliver one of Korea’s most lauded writers to English-reading audiences. Publishing and prize-winning since 1996, Yeo-sun Kwon is deftly translated by award-winning Korean Canadian Janet Hong. At 18, high-school senior Kim Hae-on “was perfection, bliss...

The Human Zoo by Sabina Murray [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Sabina Murray (The Caprices) has built a lofty career on her ability to craft intricately layered, thought-provoking fiction: what she initially presents as straightforward storytelling is intensified with piercing cultural, sociopolitical and historical nuances that encourage greater interaction for deeper satisfaction. The Human Zoo is yet...

Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell [in Booklist]

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Mariana Enriquez’s second collection, after 2017’s Things We Lost in the Fire, is insatiably addicting even as the dozen stories are gruesome, lurid, and utterly weird. As a Buenos Aires journalist, she witnessed true horror, the consequences of dictatorship, corruption, 30,000 disappeared; her literary...

The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga [in Booklist]

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Lebanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Next-door neighbors Cora Hamed and Quinn McCauley’s best-friendship began in toddlerhood, but they’ve spent the last 10 months in silence. Cora’s sister Mabel is dead. Quinn’s brother Parker murdered her; he took a gun to school and killed four people, including himself. Mourning defines the Hamed...

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