Fiction / Literature / Comics / Graphic novels: special features

Book SynopsisA NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • From the best-selling author of Three Strong Women comes a thrilling novel about a triple homicide that dredges up unsettling memories from a lawyer’s childhood.A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CrimeReads, and Words Without Borders[NDiaye] is a master at agitating, probing and upending expectations. —Lovia Gyarkye, The New York Times Book ReviewYou won’t be able to put it down. —VogueThe heroine of Marie NDiaye’s new novel is Maître Susane, a quiet middle-aged lawyer living a modest existence in Bordeaux, known to all as a consummate and unflappable professional. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of a horrific crime, Maître

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Book SynopsisA NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary, gloriously uplifting novel about the power of friendship and the puzzling ties that bind us • The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers takes readers along on Clayton [Stumper]'s quest to discover his roots, treating us to a literary mood boost about friendship and found family.—Real Simple   “A lovely read, warm, amusing and engaging.”—Alexander McCall Smith, bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency SeriesClayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution.When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton’s life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay’s quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change Clay—and the Fellowship—forever.The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is pure joy, a story about love and family and what it means to find your people—no matter what age you are.

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Book SynopsisFrom one of America’s most celebrated storytellers come three dark, interlocking tales about the residents of a rural New York town, and the shocking headlines that become their local mythologies.A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man’s character. A couple grows concerned when an enigmatic family moves next door, and the children start sneaking over to beg for help. Two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and begin blackmailing their grandson, demanding that he pay back what he owes.Suspenseful, thrilling, and expertly crafted, American Spirits explores the hostile undercurrents of our communities and American politics at large, as well as the ways local tragedies can be both devastating and, somehow, everyday. Ushering the reader through the town of Sam Dent, Russell Banks has etched yet another brilliant entry into the bedrock of American fiction.

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034, another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America?s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the worldIt is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that?s held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he?ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world?s great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy.Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.

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Book SynopsisIn this vibrant, gratifying novel, a pious, small-town teenager travels to Atlanta to get an abortion and finds herself smack in the middle of the civil rights movement and the secret lives of queer Black people.Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town?s midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia?s orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists!?And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn?t want a baby, but what does?she want? Will this trip help her find out?These Heathens?is a funny, poignant story about Black women?s obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend.

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Book SynopsisThe unbreakable bonds of family and love are explored in this brilliant and tender story from the author of Guy''s Girl. On the day she arrives in Canada for her older brother''s wedding, Eliot Beck hasn''t seen her family in three years. Eliot adores her big, wacky, dysfunctional collection of siblings and in-laws, but there''s a reason she fled to Manhattan and buried herself in her work?and she?s not ready to share it with anyone. Not when speaking it aloud could send her backinto the never-ending cycle of the obsessive-compulsive disorder that consumed her for years. Eliot thinks she''s prepared to survive the four-day-long wedding extravaganza?until she sees her best friend, Manuel, waiting for her at the marina and looking as handsome as ever. He was the person who, when they met as children, felt like finding the missing half of her soul. The person she tried so hard not to fall in love with… but did anyway. Manuel''s presence at the wedding threatens to undo the walls Eliot has built around herself. The fortress that keeps her okay. If she isn''t careful, by the end of this wedding, the whole castle might come crumbling down.

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Book SynopsisA woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Black Sheep and So Thirsty.Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio?s parent?s messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That?s not what Clio?s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody aftershe wentoff the deep end. ButAlexwas insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.After Alex?s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters.Where her sisters see childhood trauma,Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins,Cliodiscovers there might be some truth to her mother?s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother?s book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio?s beautiful life to its very foundation.

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Book SynopsisAN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author, a hilarious, sharply drawn send-up of local politics • A novel about a dark-horse candidate who risks his personal happiness for a career in the Texas House of Representatives • Required reading in these politically turbulent times.”—Susan Orlean, author of On Animals“A rollicking satire . . .— Paul Begala, The New York Times Book Review Sonny Lamb is an affable, if floundering, rancher with the unfortunate habit of becoming a punchline in his Texas hometown. Most recently, to everyone’s headshaking amusement, he bought his own bull at an auction. But when a fire breaks out at a neighbor’s farm, Sonny makes headlines in another way: not waiting for help, he bolts to the farm where his heroic actions make the evening news.Almost immediately, and seemingly out of nowhere, a handsomely dressed lobbyist from Austin arrives at his ranch door and asks if he’d like to run for his West Texas district’s seat in the state legislature. Though Sonny has zero experience and doesn’t consider himself political at all, the fate of his ranch—and perhaps his marriage to the lovely “cowgirl” Lola—hangs in the balance. With seemingly no other choice, Sonny decides to throw his hat in the ring .As he navigates life in politics—from running a campaign to negotiating in the capitol—Sonny must learn the ropes, weighing his own ethics and environmental concerns against the pressures of veteran politicians, savvy lobbyists, and his own party. In tracing Sonny’s attempt to balance his marriage and morality with an increasingly volatile professional life, Lawrence Wright has crafted an irresistibly funny and clever roller-coaster ride about one man’s pursuit of goodness in the Lonestar State.

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Book SynopsisONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • DAKOTA JOHNSON’S TEATIME PICTURES SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK ● From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father’s fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears his precocious daughter’s voice.“A sharp book, beautifully written.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind and EntitlementExcellent...I enjoyed the novel hugely...Like Edward St Aubyn and Anne Enright, Hamya is so good on generational conflict, the friction of family, and the damage done by charming but complacent men. But The Hypocrite is a strikingly original book too. I tore through it, shoulders clenched but full of admiration. —David Nicholls, author of One Day, in Electric LiteratureAugust 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them. When the house lights dim however, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, has used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of the men of his generation.  Set through one staging of the play, The Hypocrite seamlessly and scorchingly shifts time and perspective, illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that, with impeccable nuance, examines the fraught inheritances each generation is left to contend with and the struggle to nurture empathy in a world changing at lightning-speed.

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Book SynopsisThe latest installment in the warm and welcoming 44 Scotland Street series finds all our favorite residents of Scotland's most celebrated address navigating their enchanting and eventful lives.Angus Lordie is approached in the park by a shadowy, Deep Throat-like figure with government secrets to share, who mistakes him for a journalist. Now Angus is privy to some controversial plans of the Scottish Parliament—but just what is he meant to do about it? Elsewhere, Big Lou’s husband Bob hires a personal trainer who changes his entire outlook on life, much to Lou’s dismay. At the schoolhouse, young Bertie Pollock’s class has a new ringleader, Galactica MacFee, who quickly comes between Bertie and Olive. All this proves too much for Bertie to bear, and he flees to Glasgow with best friend Ranald Braveheart MacPherson in tow. And the indomitable Irene again finds herself in Edinburgh ... and it looks like there might be romance in the air. 

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Book SynopsisNAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 BY PEOPLE, VOGUE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE MILLIONS, AND NBC TODAYFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.Sweet, sexy, sad, articulate, and funny. - VogueAs much heart, humor, and gritty realness as can fit between two covers. - PeopleCherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she?s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she?s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent?a much older lesbian magician?who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot?s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It?s not long before Cherry must decide how much she?s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act?and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit. Equal parts bravado, tenderness, and humor, and bursting with misfits, magicians, musicians, and mimes, Stop Me If You''ve Heard This One is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.

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Book SynopsisA diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by ?Buenos Aires?s sorceress of horror? (Samanta Schweblin, The New York Times)?Entertaining, political and exquisitely gruesome, these stories summon terror against the backdrop of everyday horrors. . . . A queen of horror delivers more delightfully twisted stories.??Los Angeles Times?As vivid and essential as Kafka?s tales.??Minneapolis Star-TribuneLONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION ? A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TIME, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE TELEGRAPH, ELECTRIC LIT, PASTE, LATINA MEDIA On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed?all those birds were once women.Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women?these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez?s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez?s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her ?the most exciting discovery I?ve made in fiction for some time.?

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Book SynopsisTHE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A mesmerizing new novel from the author of Evening: the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life • A luminous story about erotic obsession, the hunger for intimacy, communication, and oblivion that will appeal to readers of Miranda July's All Fours “Minot exquisitely explores desire and denial, intimacy and illusion in a ravishing, haunting, and insightful tale of sexual ecstasy and emotional torment, integrity and creativity, self and motherhood.” —Booklist (starred review)Minot’s writing is like a diamond knife on ice.” —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning authorIvy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity in

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Book SynopsisA stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Justin Torres in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakeningSet in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other?s lives.James?a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old?is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village?s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his reach: autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents?his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man?Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boywho is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke?s bravado is a deep wound?a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.

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Book SynopsisGoing Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men—all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood—take charge of a toddler following an unexpected lossTéo Erskine, now in his thirties, has moved on from childish things: He has a good job, a slick apartment in London, and when he heads back to the suburbs on the occasional weekend to visit his old friends, he makes sure everyone knows he can afford to pick up the tab. So what if he asks a few too many questions about Lia, the girl of their group, wondering if she will come out, if she’s seeing anyone, if she might give him another shot? Téo is hazily aware that something possibly happened between Lia and Ben Mossam, Téo’s closest friend and his greatest annoyance, but he can’t bring himself to ask. Lia, meanwhile, has no time to indulge their rivalry. She’s now the single mother of a toddler son, a kid named Joel that Téo occasionally (and halfheartedly) offers to babysit.Téo is home for one such weekend when the unthinkable happens—a tragedy in the heart of their group—and he suddenly finds himself the unlikely guardian for little Joel. Together with his father, Vic, Ben Mossam, and Sybil, Lia’s beguiling rabbi, they bide time until they can find a proper home for Joel, teaching him to play video games, plying him with chicken nuggets and waffles, and learning to sing him lullabies at night. But when a juvenile mistake leads to a terrible betrayal, Téo must decide what kind of man he wants to be. Wise, relatable, and blissfully laugh-out-loud funny, Going Home is a captivating first novel that explores the mysterious ways children can force us to grow up fast while simultaneously keeping us young forever.

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Book SynopsisThe prose is textured, viscous almost, an ooze of sweet honey shot through with golden light . . . A Language of Limbs is a novel of (impeccable) vibes and mood, a gay hymnal written from inside the guts of the two protagonists.—Yves Rees, Australian Book ReviewA breathtaking, sliding-doors, will-they-won’t-they love story and a tender epic that explores the weight of a choice, the love of community and how joy is found in even the darkest corners.   Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow.   In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. Meanwhile, in the second, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend and eventually makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature.   During pivotal moments, the physical space between these two women closes—like when they each meet the first great loves of their lives in 1977 at a protest, or when, almost a decade later, they are both rushed to the hospital with only a curtain between them. Through the AIDS crisis—and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars and hospitals to homes—we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally and poignantly, they collide.

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