This week we are mentioning just a few new hardcovers as these might take the same amount of time to read as six smaller books! They are large in every way—in scope, in imagination, and in pagination—and perfect to lose yourself in. So escape to the extraordinary worlds created by these three talented writers.
But in case your attention span is shorter, try one of the prize-winning novels just out in paperback that provide a big reward in a shorter page length, also very portable for the park or beach.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
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Utopia Avenue
By David Mitchell
Published by Random House
Coming in at just under 600 pages, David Mitchell’s dissection of the late 60s British music scene starts out at such a breakneck speed and grabs your full attention so quickly you’ll want to clear off your calendar to read it straight through. A huge publishing event, this eagerly-awaited novel will deliver and delight.
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Antkind
By Charlie Kaufman
Published by Random House
At over 700 pages, acclaimed screenwriter Kaufman’s epic novel features a film critic on a journey to recover the greatest movie ever made, and confirms his place as a writer of incomparable, extreme fiction. If you’ve loved his movies, you know there are few writers who can capture our modern age with such flourishes.
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Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.
By Joyce Carol Oates
Published by Ecco Press
The winner at a monumental 800 pages—Oates proves that she still has an incredible power to enthrall. This epic family story reveals the aftereffects of the death of a powerful patriarch as the loss reverberates through each member. It’s full of keen observations about American culture, grief, race and class.
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Cantoras
By Carolina de Robertis
Published by Vintage
Recipient of the Stonewall Award, Cantoras follows five women through the brutal Uruguayan regime of the 70s when being queer was both courageous and very dangerous.
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Miss Iceland
By AUÐUR AVA ÓLAFSDÓTTIR
Published by Black Cat
Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize, a young woman comes of age as a writer in this irresistible novel about self-expression and the many kinds of love. As idiosyncratic as Iceland’s stunning landscapes and its mesmerizing language.
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In West Mills
By De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Winner of the First Novel Prize at the Center for Fiction, Winslow’s novel comes alive in small-town North Carolina with larger-than-life protagonist Azalea “Knot” Centre and her compassionate neighbor, Otis.
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Patsy
By Nicole Dennis-Benn
Published by Liveright
Lambda Literary Award winner for Lesbian Fiction, Dennis-Benn’s novel features a heroine you will fall in love with, who leaves her home in Jamaica—and her young daughter—for New York in search of herself and liberation.
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The Nickel Boys
By Colson Whitehead
Published by Anchor Books
The 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Whitehead’s 2nd) is taken from a shameful slice of American history about a group of boys’ unconscionable experiences in a Florida reform school in the 60s. It will break your heart.
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Everything Inside
By Edwidge Danticat
Published by Vintage
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Danticat’s short fiction showcases her immense skill in capturing the drama and tragedies of Haiti and Haitian-American life, with a soulfulness uniquely hers. “Without Inspection” is an unforgettable stand-out.