Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #697
by muffy
The Atlas of Reds and Blues,* poet Devi S. Laskar’s fictional debut is at once powerful, difficult, yet timely and necessary reading.
Drawing on the author’s own experience, the narrative takes place over the course of a single morning, as a woman, known only as Mother lies sprawled on her driveway in an upscale Atlanta suburb, bleeding from a gunshot wound.
In short, graphic chapters, Mother recounts lucidly of her girlhood in North Carolina of immigrant parents, the family’s visits to India, her experience as a reporter in a hostile work environment, her relationship with a husband who is virtually absent, leaving her to raised their three daughters in a community that is fixated on their otherness. While her daughters are harassed and bullied at school, Mothers endures zealous traffic cops, “discrimination, cruelty, and stupidity in routine circumstances” because of the color of her skin
The Atlas of Reds and Blues grapples with the complexities of the second-generation American experience and what it means to be a woman of color in today's America. “Laskar's bravura drama of one woman pushed to the brink by racism is at once sharply relevant and tragically timeless.” (Booklist)
Will appeal to fans of The Hate u Give by Angie Thomas.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #696
by muffy
After the Rain is the first novel by television news-anchor/reporter Jane Lorenzini.
Fort Myers, Florida, January 1888. Having lived in the storeroom of the local grocer since running away from home as a teenager, 25 year-old Belle Carson was about to turn her life around when she answered a newspaper ad for a gardener at Seminole Lodge - the winter home of Mina and Thomas Edison. She was excited by Mina’s plan for an extensive garden along the Caloosahatchee River, and for the first time, her own cottage on the grounds. As she gained confidence and courage, made friends, started a woman’s club, and contemplated a relationship with Boone, the Estate’s young groundskeeper, her dark past resurfaced. When Belle fought back, the repercussion threatened to destroy everything she had so carefully cultivated.
“Well-drawn characters and descriptions of Edison's laboratory, the estate, and a mysterious listening device that allows Belle to eavesdrop on private conversations help to vivify this particular time period.” (Publishers Weekly)
Readers eager to learn more about Thomas Edison the man and his milieu would enjoy Electric City by Elizabeth Rosner, and The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #695
by muffy
If you too, are desperate for the next release of the Austen Project, fret no more. We have a fix!!! “Austen devotees will rejoice in this respectful cross-cultural update of a beloved classic.” (Library Journal)
Unmarriageable * * by award-winning essayist (and a literacy ambassador for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation) Soniah Kamal, is a contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan.
Faithful to the original plot, almost scene by scene, the Bennets are now the Binats, having relocated to Dilipabad (fictional town outside of Lahore, Pakistan) due to a reversal of fortune. To supplement the family's income, Jena (32) and Alys (30) teach English Literature at the local girls’ school where their younger sisters Qitty, Mari, and Lady also attend. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for eligible bachelors, never mind that the Binat girls are deemed “unmarriageable.” When Jena catches the eye of the rich and handsome Bungles, Mrs. Binat eagerly awaits an advantageous proposal. But his friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family and declared so.
“What ensues is a funny, sometimes romantic, often thought-provoking glimpse into Pakistani culture, one which adroitly illustrates the double standards women face when navigating sex, love, and marriage. This is a must-read for devout Austenites.” (Publishers Weekly)
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #694
by muffy
The Age of Light * * * by Whitney Scharer opens on a hot July day in 1966 at a Sussex farmhouse where Lee Miller is throwing a sumptuous dinner party for her Vogue editor, trying to forestall her dismissal as the magazine’s food writer for perpetually missing deadlines. After a series of comic mishaps that threaten to ruin the dinner (not the least being Lee’s secret drinking), she is shocked to find her new assignment is to write about her years with Surrealist artist Man Ray. Lee finally agrees, with one caveat: not his photos, hers.
1929. The 22 year-old Lee - Vogue’s cover-girl, famous for her staggering beauty, arrives in Paris intending to forge a new identity as an artist. As her funds run low, she talks her way into assisting Man Ray in his chaotic studio, learning every aspect of the artistic process. Their personal and professional lives soon become intimately entwined. The student/muse becomes a collaborator and innovator - a fact that grates on the much-older and egotistical Ray, and eventually leads to bitter betrayals on both of their parts.
“Scharer sets her viewfinder selectively, focusing on her heroine’s insecurities as much as her accomplishments as an artist; her hunger to be more than “a neck to hold pearls, a slim waist to show off a belt” is contrasted with her habit of solving problems by simply leaving. The price for Lee is steep, but it makes for irresistible reading. Sexy and moving.” (Kirkus Reviews)
Check out these titles in our Fine Arts collection for more on the life and art of Lee Miller, especially Lee Miller's War: Photographer and Correspondent With the Allies in Europe, 1944-45, which were among the first photographs of the death camps to reach the American public. For readers who enjoyed The Muralist by Barbara A. Shapiro, and The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown.
* * * = 3 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #693
by muffy
My Sister, the Serial Killer *, Nigerian Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel has been called “(p)ulpy, peppery and sinister, served up in a comic deadpan…This scorpion-tailed little thriller leaves a response, and a sting, you will remember.” (The New York Times)
Petite and light-skinned, beautiful and charismatic Ayoola could do no wrong growing up in her complicated family. Her older sister Korede knows better. A nurse at Lago’s St. Pete’s Hospital, she is the one who cleans up the bloody mess each time Ayoola, claiming self-defense, kills a boyfriend (“Three and they label you a serial killer.”) Korede is willing to protect Ayoola until her secret crush, Dr. Tade Otumu becomes smitten with Ayoola on one of her impromptu visits to the hospital. Now, the long-suffering, overlooked and underappreciated Korede must make a choice.
“(W)hat makes Braithwaite’s first novel stand out from others in this genre (gothic mystery) is the unobtrusively sly approach she takes to the conventions of “black widow” storytelling and the appealing deadpan voice of the jittery yet world-weary Korede. Along the way, there are scattered glimpses of life in Lagos, most acidly when Korede deals with the routine corruption involved in a traffic stop.” (Kirkus Reviews) Will appeal to Dexter fans, and begs the question - "how much will we sacrifice for the sake of family?" as in Stay with Me by fellow Nigerian Ayobami Adebayo.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #692
by muffy
I have been saving the galley to One Day in December by Josie Silver for quite some time, waiting for a long stretch of uninterrupted time so I could kick back and enjoy it, and it did not disappoint. Called “unabashedly romantic”, it is the story of 2 Londoners who cross paths on a cold December evening and spend the next decade circling each other’s lives.
Hotel clerk Laurie James spotted a young man at a bus stop from her upper-deck seat. They locked eyes and the connection was electric but before either one of them could make a move, the bus pulled away. Over the course of the next year, Laurie never stop looking for her “bus boy”. When she finally met him, he was Jack O’Mara - her best friend/roommate Sarah's new boyfriend. For different reasons, they decided not to tell Sarah while their deep connection remained -- even after Laurie took herself off to the wilds of Thailand and met the dreamy Robinson Crusoe/banker Oscar Ogilvy-Black.
“There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions. Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.” (Kirkus Reviews) Enough said! For fans of Miss you by Kate Eberlen, and definitely if you have been bingeing on Love Actually this holiday season.
If you don't insist on a happy ending, may I suggest Harriet Paige's highly stylish Man With a Seagull on His Head ? - "(A) novel about... the electric charge that comes from real if unexpected connection. Beautiful, lyrical, and strangely moving...".
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #691 - Small Gems
by muffy
With winter solstice approaching and our to-do lists becoming overwhelming, there is no reason why your pleasure reading should suffer. The trick for me is to try out small gems - books under 200 pages.
Crudo, at 141 pages, is the first work of fiction by award-winning author Olivia Laing. This “brief, breathless experimental novel” (Kirkus Reviews) has been named a 2018 New York Times Notable book.
Set in the summer of 2017, the 40-year old narrator is American writer Kathy Acker (a writer who too, is known for basing much of her work on the writing of others) is about to be married while the whole world is falling apart (nuclear testing in North Korea, floods in Houston, the Grenfell Tower fire, white supremacist march in Charlottesville, and antics of an increasingly unstable president). Frolicking with her much-older fiance and a well-heeled crowd in a Tuscan hotel, Kathy must come to terms with the idea of a lifelong commitment.
“A narrative written with immense vitality and, miraculously, the lightest of touches... It's a subversive love story that shouldn't work, but does.” ~ Deborah Levy (Wall Street Journal)
Want some suggestions : Try BuszzFeed’s 46 Brilliant Short Novels you can read in a day; 10 Best Books under 200 pages; and Short and Spectacular: 21 great novels under 200 pages : From classic to contemporary, discover favorite short books and novellas, guaranteed to stay with you long after the final page - one as short as 60 pages.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #690
by muffy
The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry, (a pseudonym for husband-and-wife writing team of Christopher Brookmyre and Dr. Marisa Haetzman, an anaesthetist), is based on her research into the history of Medicine. This is the first in a new mystery series, set in Victorian Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, 1847. 20 year-old Will Raven, the newly appointed medical apprentice to Dr. James Simpson, a revered professor of midwifery, saw this opportunity as his ticket out of his sordid and hardscrabble upbringing, but not before one last visit to Evie Lawson, a prostitute he has befriended. In her garret room, Will found her cold and contorted body. Soon, young women were found dead across the Old Town, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. As a member of Dr. Simpson’s household, Will met visiting luminaries and became intrigue with daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. However, it was Sarah Fisher, the Simpson’s maid, to whom Will turned to as they looked deeper into these deaths.
“Parry is particularly adept at creating memorable characters in the compassionate and progressive Simpson, impetuous but principled Raven, and intelligent and feisty Sarah, not to mention the perfectly psychopathic villain.” (Library Journal)
Fans of 19th Century medical mysteries would also enjoy Lawrence Goldstone's The Anatomy of Deception (2008) and E. S. Thomson's Beloved Poison (2016)(Booklist); Anne Perry's William Monk series and Caleb Carr's The Alienist.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #689
by muffy
Death Notice, * the first in a trilogy, introduces English language audience to Zhou Haohui, one of the top (and best-selling) suspense authors in China today.
2002, Chengdu. Unbeknownst to his colleagues and superiors, legendary Sgt. Zheng Haoming was quietly investigating an 18 year-old unsolved cold case when he was found murdered. Hovering over his body was provincial detective Pei Tao, closely and personally tied to the case, and insisted that it is again, the handiwork of Eumenides (after the Greek goddess of vengeance and retribution), evident by the death notice found in Sgt. Zheng’s apartment.
As more “death notices” are being delivered, announcing the killer's next targets, a new police task force is formed. What follows is a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Eumenides always a step ahead of the police. The cliff-hanger ending will leave readers shocked and clamoring for the next installment.
"Zhou's story is thoughtfully constructed (and skillfully translated), balancing an exploration of loyalty, jealousy, and the moral tension between law and justice... This procedural...boasts the rich cultural immersion, the bird's-eye view of procedural technique in an international police force, and the complex mysteries that have long driven the popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction."(Booklist) For fans of Jo Nesbo, and Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #688
by muffy
If you never tire of watching Roman Holiday (1953), Audrey Hepburn’s first American film, then you would not want to miss The Royal Runaway * by Lindsay Emory.
Princess Theodora Isabella Victoria of Drieden has a habit of sneaking out of the palace. After being jilted at the altar and sent into exile by her grandmother the Queen, she is back and ready to assume her royal duties as the next in line for the throne. A steamy kiss in a local bar with the sexy Scotsman Nick Cameron seems like a harmless rebound until she learns his true identity. Before she could walk away, he blackmails her into helping him find his missing brother Christian - Thea’s ex-fiancé.
As the pair digs into Christian’s work as a lawyer, they discover a secret that could destroy the monarchy, and the conspirators will stop at nothing to gain the information. “The progressive princess proves to be as resilient as she is rebellious. Even when her throne is threatened, she insists that “human lives are more important than our culture!” Under her reign, “happily ever after” gets a refreshing update. This imaginative, absorbing, and empowering story is a must-read.” (Kirkus Reviews)
"Fans of Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan's The Royal We (2016), Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries series, and Alyssa Cole's A Princess in Theory (2018) will enjoy this breezy read."(Booklist)
* = Starred review