October 11, 2025
Settings as far flung as the South Pacific, Bulgaria, Kolkata, and Northwest England, (plus Manhattan), feature in this week’s selection, which includes two novels we will present at The Center. We have end days in India; life’s end for a devoted gardener; life lessons for a Black painter in New York City; an epic search for survival in the Kingdom of Tonga; and a mysterious corpse in an Iron Age bog. The ambition and scope of these five fine novels are perfect for immersive fall reading.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Wayfinder
By Adam Johnson
Published by FSG / MCD
Find yourself in a mesmerizing world in the South Pacific during the Middle Ages. Johnson, inspired by a trip to Polynesia, focuses his novel on two families, one noble and one struggling to survive. Narrator Kōrero lives on Bird Island and we meet her as a mysterious large canoe arrives, heralding the arrival of a rare visitor. She has the opportunity to go to the Tongan Empire, where she will become involved in the royal family. Along the way, Johnson puts to good use his research into celestial navigation, the culture of storytelling, and amazing species of birds and botanicals—creating a Shakespearean drama that could become a classic.
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A Guardian and a Thief
By Megha Majumdar
Published by Knopf
“…in seven days, [Ma] would be aboard a plane grading upward” toward Ann Arbor and away from a near-future Kolkata ravaged by climate change—empty stores, no food, flooding—to join her scientist husband with child and father-in-law in tow. With their treasured ‘climate visas,’ all the essential paperwork dutifully procured, and the loose ends of their lives tied up, the family is ready to go. But overnight, a thief steals these papers, setting in motion the suspenseful narrative of these two desperate families trying to save their loved ones amid impending disaster. It is a propulsive, impressive follow-up—a finalist for the National Book Award—to Majumdar’s award-winning debut and as timely as today’s global headlines.
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Death and the Gardener
By Georgi Gospodinov
Published by Liveright
Translated by Angela Rodel
Our narrator Georgi relates the intimate story of his dying father. “Surely this is why we tell stories. To create another parallel corridor where the world and everything in it are in their rightful places.” His detailed account becomes the story of a generation born after WWII, honoring his father’s entire life. But what mattered at the end was the bountiful garden his father was planting—a beautiful way for those left to remember him. The delicacy in the craft of this simple story sneaks up on you. It is as much a celebration of life as a book of grief from Bulgaria’s highly regarded International Booker Prize winner.
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Minor Black Figures
By Brandon Taylor
Published by Riverhead
The prolific Taylor has come up with another beautifully nuanced portrait of people at a crossroads. This time his protagonist, Wyeth, is a Black New York City painter whose creativity is blocked, eking out a living with day jobs in the art world—at a gallery and for an art restorer. There, he explores the lives and careers of unsung Black painters. He prickles at his own work being read as racially relevant. Then he meets a white Catholic ex-priest in a bar who presents a possibility to change his life. It is a rich canvas on which to investigate the politics of desire, both evocative and provocative.
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The Bog Queen
By Anna North
Published by Bloomsbury USA
North guides us between the present and the past in a tale that is both a mystery and a story of ancient history. When a well-preserved body is discovered in an English bog, it sends our present-day protagonist on a search for answers. Agnes is an American forensic scientist and what at first seems like a recent death is over 2,000 years old. The murder victim is a Druid from Roman Britain who is given her own voice to parallel Agnes’s investigation. The novel is tangibly pungent; you can feel and smell the dirt and moss and peat—a deeply layered, exhilarating novel.
