It’s fireworks season (especially this year!), and this selection of books is particularly bright. Here is a roundup of recent fiction that seems distinctly fresh and original, plus a return to a favorite crime series. It should encourage anyone to curl up with a good book this 4th of July.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
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They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears
By Johannes Anyuru
Published by Two Lines Press
This week we’d like to congratulate the winners of the sixth annual CLMP Firecracker Awards, in particular the Fiction selection, an astonishing novel and one of the best books of 2019. Anyuru begins his story with a harrowing scene of terror in a bookstore. See the full story and description here.
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Parakeet
By Marie-Helene Bertino
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
When is a bird not a bird? When she is channeling your grandmother on your wedding day? A potential runaway bride, a mix of magic and reality, and coming to terms with one’s past form this hugely inventive story, from a former Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction.
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Sad Janet
By Lucie Britsch
Published by Riverhead Books
This dark comedy seems perfect for all of us going through the ups and downs of the endless pandemic—what if there were a happy pill to chase away all the sadness? Would we take it? And wouldn’t we buy this book for its cover anyway?
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Days of Distraction
By Alexandra Chang
Published by Ecco Press
This talented Chinese-American author’s debut novel combines a road trip across the U.S. with a narrative about her father in China, mixing some autobiography into a universal search for identity in an adopted land.
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Crooked Hallelujah
By Kelli Jo Ford
Published by Grove Press
These startling connected stories set in the 70s Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma follow a single mother smothered by the religious forces of her mother’s community as she tries to find a place in the world for herself and her daughter. These women are strong, fierce, loving, and completely unforgettable.
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The Only Good Indians
By Stephen Graham Jones
Published by Gallery / Saga Press
Another view from indigenous voices struggling to break away from the culture of their youth, as four Native men try to escape the violent past that haunts their lives in a twisted horror story that asks if there is no place like home.
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Self Care
By Leigh Stein
Published by Penguin Books
A sharp send-up of the wellness industry for the reader craving another Devil Wears Prada for today’s woman. Media missteps, sexual harassment in the workplace—this novel takes no prisoners!
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Open Secrets
By Sheila Kohler
Published by Penguin Books
Featuring picturesque locales of Switzerland, the Riviera and the East End of Long Island, Kohler’s best novel yet follows a family coming apart through betrayal and lies, and one woman trying to avoid the repercussions.
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Trouble is What I Do
By Walter Mosley
Published by Mulholland Books
Edgar Award winner Mosley (a Center for Fiction Writers Council member) brings back popular detective Leonid MGill whose agreement to help an aging bluesman turns dark and dangerous.
