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The Rib King: A Novel
By Ladee Hubbard. 2021
Thrillist - 30 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2021Book Riot – Our Most Anticipated Releases of 2021Real Simple…
– The Best New Books to Read in 2021Chicago Review of Books – 12 Must-Read Books of January Book Riot – January 2021 Horoscopes and Book Recommendations Glamour--7 of the Best New Books in JanuaryVulture – 46 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021 Lit Hub – Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 GMA.com – 16 January reads for the new year Harper’s Bazaar – 24 Books You Need to Read in 2021 -The Millions – Most Anticipated: The Great First-Half 2021 Book Preview Popsugar – From Bravery to Outlawed – These Are the Best Books of January 2021 Ms. Magazine – January 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us Bustle – The Best New Books, Week of January 18th Vulture – 27 Notable New Releases Over the Next Two Weeks Lit Hub – 14 new books to fuel your reading resolutions “Ultimately the reason to read The Rib King is not its timeliness or its insight into politics or Black culture, but because it accomplishes what the best fiction sets out to do: It drops you into a world you could not otherwise visit and makes you care deeply about what happens there.”--BookPage (starred review)The acclaimed author of The Talented Ribkins deconstructs painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in early the twentieth century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family.For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household’s all-black staff, along with “Miss Mamie,” the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices—the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" boys like August.But the Barclays fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie’s delicious rib sauce to local markets under the brand name “The Rib King”—using a caricature of a wildly grinning August on the label—Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash, agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy. Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, The Rib King is an unsparing examination of America’s fascination with black iconography and exploitation that redefines African American stereotypes in literature. In this powerful, disturbing, and timely novel, Ladee Hubbard reveals who people actually are, and most importantly, who and what they are not.The Lehman Trilogy: A Novel
By Stefano Massini. 2020
Basis for the 2022 'Tony Award Best Play' winnerMagnificent in scope, internationally lauded, and transcendent, the novel in verse that inspired…
the sensational West End and Broadway play of the same name. The Lehman Trilogy follows the epic rise and fall of three generations of that infamous family and through them tells the story of American ambition and hubris. After leaving his native Bavaria, Henry Lehman arrives in America determined to make a better life. Sensing opportunity in the Deep South, he opens a textile shop in Alabama, laying the foundation for a dynasty that will come to dominate and define modern capitalism. Emanuel and his brother Mayer begin investing in anything and everything that will turn a profit, from cotton to coal to railroads to oil to airplanes—even at the expense of the very nation that forged them. Spanning three generations and 150 years, The Lehman Trilogy is a moving epic that dares to tell the story of modern capitalism through the saga of the Lehman brothers and their descendants. Surprising and exciting, brilliant and inventive, Stefano Massini’s masterpiece—like Hamilton—is a story of immigration, ambition, and success; it is the story of America itself from a daring and original perspective.Translated from the Italian by Richard DixonThe Artist of Disappearance: Three Novellas
By Anita Desai. 2011
Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction&“The excellent strength [the novellas] share is a gracefulness and dreamlike sonority, reminiscent of…
writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and W.G. Sebald, wherein strange evolutions of solitary lives are the rule, and readers are held by the stately, hypnotic dignity of the voice that tells them.&” – San Francisco ChronicleSet in modern India, these three novellas move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are, each in their own way, masters of self-effacement. An unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures where he discovers a surprise "relic." A translator blurs the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unraveling her desires and achievements. In the title novella, a hermit hidden away in the woods with a secret is discovered by a film crew, which compels him to withdraw even further until he magically disappears . . . Rich and evocative, remarkable in their clarity and sensuous in their telling, these novellas remind us of the extraordinary yet delicate power of this pre-eminent writer. &“Desai, at her best, offers enchanting, subtle, and deeply observed portraits of layered characters trapped between worlds.&” – Daily Beast&“Lingers in the memory the same way these landscapes and people of India prove impossible to forget.&” – Boston GlobeTranslator Translated: A Novella
By Anita Desai. 2011
Distraught by her own lack of accomplishment -- especially in comparison to that of a childhood rival who has become…
a famous and successful publisher -- a middle-aged woman has the opportunity of a lifetime: to translate the work of an unknown literary star and, in the process, impress the woman she most admires.Interviewing Matisse, or The Woman Who Died Standing Up: A Novel
By Lily Tuck. 1991
Lily, Molly, and Inez are women of a certain age, of a certain bearing, of a certain class. Late one…
dire night, Molly telephones from Connecticut to catch Lily up with the news: Inez's corpse -- near-naked but wearing boots -- has been discovered propped up "like a broom" in a corner of her Soho loft. It is an occasion ripe for an all-night heart-to-heart conversation, bouncing deliriously from one evasion to the next -- until the pair of talk-crazy, talk-weary women have successfully diverted themselves with all the wonderfully vagrant stuff of life . . . with everything, in fact, except grief.The Bones of Paradise: A Novel
By Jonis Agee. 2016
The award-winning author of TheRiver Wife returns with a multigenerational family saga set in the unforgiving Nebraska Sand Hills in…
the years following the massacre at Wounded Knee—an ambitious tale of history, vengeance, race, guilt, betrayal, family, and belonging, filled with a vivid cast of characters shaped by violence, love, and a desperate loyalty to the land.Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.’s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed, exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future.At the center of The Bones of Paradise are two remarkable women. Dulcinea, returned after bitter years of self-exile, yearns for redemption and the courage to mend her broken family and reclaim the land that is rightfully hers. Rose, scarred by the terrible slaughters that have decimated and dislocated her people, struggles to accept the death of her sister, Star, and refuses to rest until she is avenged.A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land—its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass, and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness—and the durable men and women who dared to tame it. Intimate and epic, The Bones of Paradise is a remarkable achievement: a mystery, a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration of the beauty and brutality, tenderness and cruelty that defined the settling of the American West.The Museum of Final Journeys: A Novella
By Anita Desai. 2011
Disappointed by his professional and social position, an entitled and officious junior civil servant imagines that his life will change…
when a mysterious old man promises to lead him to a museum filled with priceless treasures.The Enchanted: A Novel
By Rene Denfeld. 2014
“The Enchanted wrapped its beautiful and terrible fingers around me from the first page and refused to let go after the…
last. A wondrous book that finds transcendence in the most unlikely of places. . . . So dark yet so exquisite.” — Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night CircusAn astonishing and redemptive novel for readers of Alice Sebold and Toni Morrison, told from the point of view of a convict whose magical interpretations of prison life allow him to find absolute joy while isolated from the rest of humanity and a female investigator who experiences her own personal salvation in her work as a death penalty investigator.This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it but I do.The enchanted place is a high security prison and is relayed through the eyes of an inmate on death row who escapes his surroundings by immersing himself in books, and by re-imagining the world that surrounds him. Instead of focusing on the cloudy medical vines that snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden’s finger to press the red buttons, our narrator sees golden horses as they run deep under the earth, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs.A woman and fallen priest haunt the prison halls--an unnamed female investigator only known as the Lady who is known for discovering information relating to soon-to-be executed inmates’ backgrounds that can be used to overturn their sentences. She is put on the case of a man named York and as she digs into his past, the experience brings up ghosts of her own and threatens to destroy everything that she has come to know about the enchanted place.The Enchanted is a magical novel about redemption, the humanity that can lie within what is monstrous, and the human capacity to transcend and survive.When You Read This: A Novel
By Mary Adkins. 2019
“Warm, original, funny and heartbreaking, this novel made me drop everything so I could read it in one lovely afternoon.…
When You Read This is inventive and witty, but more importantly it’s honest and wise. I adored it.” — Jennifer Close, author of Girls in White Dresses and The Hopefuls For fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell, a comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts.For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish. Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss.A Fold in the Tent of the Sky: A Novel
By Michael Hale. 1998
Struggling actor Peter Abbott is about to land the biggest role of his life. His audition for Calliope Associates—a clandestine…
private investigation firm made up of men and women with highly developed psychic abilities—requires only proof of Peter's psychic skills, no dramatic monologue. Business is booming until members of the group begin disappearing at the hands of fellow psychic Simon Haywood. His genius is matched only by Peter's, but Simon alone discovers a unique way to use his extrasensory skills to travel back in time, committing crimes without any trace. Simon's mind grows warped and paranoid as the universe strains against his tinkering. Terrified that his extracurricular voyages will be curtailed, he plans to "erase" his colleagues. But Simon's methods are not exactly cold-blooded; instead he goes back to the moment of his victims' conception and prevents them from being created. Because no one in the present day recalls he or she ever existed, he's not caught . . . until Peter realizes what's happening. Now time is running out as Simon's sociopathic travels are disrupting the universe, folding and twisting the constraints of matter to a near-breaking point and threatening to spin the entire cosmos out of control. A Fold in the Tent of the Sky takes murder into a new dimension as it races toward its electrifying, time-twisting climax.All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella's Stepmother
By Danielle Teller. 2018
In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous reimagining of a classic tale, told from…
the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella’s "evil" stepmother.We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we?As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story. . . .A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated from her family and forced into servitude as a laundress’s apprentice when she is only ten years old. Using her wits and ingenuity, she escapes her tyrannical matron and makes her way toward a hopeful future. When teenaged Agnes is seduced by an older man and becomes pregnant, she is transformed by love for her child. Once again left penniless, Agnes has no choice but to return to servitude at the manor she thought she had left behind. Her new position is nursemaid to Ella, an otherworldly infant. She struggles to love the child who in time becomes her stepdaughter and, eventually, the celebrated princess who embodies everyone’s unattainable fantasies. The story of their relationship reveals that nothing is what it seems, that beauty is not always desirable, and that love can take on many guises.Lyrically told, emotionally evocative, and brilliantly perceptive, All the Ever Afters explores the hidden complexities that lie beneath classic tales of good and evil, all the while showing us that how we confront adversity reveals a more profound, and ultimately more important, truth than the ideal of "happily ever after."The Anatomy of Desire: A Novel
By L. R. Dorn. 2021
A Publishers Weekly Best Mystery/Thriller of 2021Audie Award finalist for Multi-Voice PerformanceFor fans of riveting true crime docuseries a la…
Serial and Making a Murderer, The Anatomy of Desire is a modern tale of crime and punishment exploring unbridled ambition, blinding passion, and the dark side of desireAmbition. Passion. Betrayal. Murder?Claire Griffith has it all, a thriving career, a gorgeous boyfriend, glamorous friends. She always knew she was destined for more than the life her conservative parents preached to her. Arriving in Los Angeles flat broke, she has risen to become a popular fitness coach and social media influencer. Having rebranded herself as Cleo Ray, she stands at the threshold of realizing her biggest dreams.One summer day, Cleo and a woman named Beck Alden set off in a canoe on a serene mountain lake. An hour later, Beck is found dead in the water and Cleo is missing. Authorities suspect foul play, and news of Cleo’s involvement goes viral. Who was Beck? An infatuated follower? Were she and Cleo friends or lovers? Was Beck’s death an accident . . . or murder?Told in the form of an immersive investigative docuseries, L. R. Dorn’s brilliant reimagining of Theodore Dreiser’s classic crime drama, An American Tragedy, captures the urgency and poignance of the original and rekindles it as a very contemporary and utterly mesmerizing page-turner that will keep you guessing... Did she or didn't she?Joy in the Morning: A Novel
By Betty Smith. 1963
From Betty Smith, author of the beloved American classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes an unsentimental yet radiant and powerfully…
uplifting tale of young love and marriage.In 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone halfway across the country to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law—and there they marry. But Carl and Annie’s first year together is much more difficult than they anticipated as they find themselves in a faraway place with little money and few friends. With hardship and poverty weighing heavily upon them, they come to realize that their greatest sources of strength, loyalty, and love, will help them make it through. A moving and unforgettable story, Joy in the Morning is “a glad affirmation that love can accomplish the impossible.” (Chicago Tribune)The Eighth Girl: A Novel
By Maxine Mei-Fung Chung. 2020
Optioned by Netflix and a most anticipated book from Bustle, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and LitHub!An unsettling, seductive psychological thriller…
about a young woman with multiple personalities, perfect for fans of Caroline Kepnes and Clare Mackintosh"An electrifying, thought-provoking, and unflinching novel." —Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee“An exceptional debut from a talented author.” —Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author of I Let You GoBeautiful. Damaged. Destructive. Meet Alexa Wú, a brilliant yet darkly self-aware young woman whose chaotic life is controlled by a series of alternate personalities.When Alexa’s friend Ella gets a job at a high-end gentlemen’s club, she catches the attention of its shark-like owner and is gradually drawn into his inner circle. As Alexa’s world becomes intimately entangled with Ella’s, she soon finds herself the unwitting keeper of a nightmarish secret as she follows Ella into London’s cruel underbelly. Threatened and vulnerable, Alexa will discover whether her multiple personalities are her greatest asset, or her most dangerous obstacle.Electrifying and breathlessly compulsive, The Eighth Girl is an omnivorous examination of life with mental illness and the acute trauma of living in a misogynist world. With bingeable prose and a clinician’s expertise, Chung’s psychological debut deftly explores identity, innocence, and the fracturing weight that young women are forced to carry, causing us to ask: Does the truth lead to self-discovery, or to self-destruction?Reprieve: A Novel
By James Han Mattson. 2021
"Like Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, Alyssa Cole’s When No One Is Watching or Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl, Reprieve…
straddles genres in the best possible way. . . . Sure to spark conversation and debate at book clubs across the land." –LOS ANGELES TIMES“An eventual American classic that is unrelenting in its beauty and incisive cultural critique.” – KIESE LAYMONRecommended by New York Times • Los Angeles Times • NPR • Today • Esquire • O Quarterly • Boston Globe • Chicago Tribune • Harper’s Bazaar • Shondaland • Thrillist • The Millions • Crimereads • XTRA • Tor • Literary Hub • and more!A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room—a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment. On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize—a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who’s been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the United States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe.An astonishingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism to present an unsettling portrait of this tangled American life.Breezeway: New Poems
By John Ashbery. 2015
A bold, striking new collection of poems from one of America’s most influential and inventive poets.With more than twenty poetry…
collections to his name, John Ashbery is one of our most agile, philosophically complex, and visionary poets. In Breezeway, Ashbery’s powers of observation are at their most astute; his insight at its most penetrating. Demonstrating his extraordinary command of language and his ability to move fluidly and elegantly between wide-ranging thoughts and ideas—from the irreverent and slyly humorous to the tender, the sad, and the heartbreaking—Ashbery shows that he is a virtuoso fluent in diverse styles and tones of language, from the chatty and whimsical to the lyrical and urbane. Filled with allusions to literature and art, as well as to the absurdities and delights of the everyday world around us, Ashbery’s poems are haunting, surprising, hilarious, and knowing all at once, the work of a master craftsman with a keen understanding of the age in which he lives and writes, an age whose fears and fragmentation he conjures and critiques with humor, pathos, and a provocative wit.Vital and imaginative, Ashbery’s poems not only touch on the “big questions” and crises of life in the twenty-first century, but also delicately capture the small moments between and among people. Imaginative, linguistically dazzling, and artistically ambitious, Breezeway is John Ashbery’s sharpest and most arresting collection yet.The Blade Between: A Novel
By Sam J. Miller. 2020
A Library Journal Horror Best SellerFrom Nebula Award winner Sam J. Miller comes a frightening and uncanny ghost story about…
a rapidly changing city in upstate New York and the mysterious forces that threaten it.Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge.Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become—overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real-state developers aren’t the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan’s hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.Edinburgh: A Novel
By Alexander Chee. 2016
From the best-selling author of How To Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee's award-winning debut is "One of the great…
queer novels . . . of our time."—Brandon Taylor, GQTwelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean-American boy growing up in Maine whose powerful soprano voice wins him a place as section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys choir. But when, on a retreat, Fee discovers how the director treats the boys he makes section leader, he is so ashamed, he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, Fee’s best friend, is in line to be next. The director is eventually arrested, and Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. Years later, after he has carefully pieced a new life together, Fee takes a job at a private school near his hometown. There he meets a young student, Arden, who, to his shock, is the picture of Peter—and the son of his old choir director. Told with “the force of a dream and the heft of a life” (Annie Dillard), this is a haunting, lyrically written debut novel that marked Chee “as a major talent whose career will bear watching” (Publisher’s Weekly).Old Flame
By Molly Prentiss. 2023
This &“enthralling&” (The New York Times Book Review) and &“introspective, energetic novel&” (Booklist) explores what it means to be a…
woman in her many forms—daughter, friend, partner, lover, and mother—from the acclaimed author of Tuesday Nights in 1980.Emily writes for women&’s catalogs for a living, but she&’d rather be writing books. She has a handsome photographer boyfriend, but she actively wonders how and when they will eventually hurt each other. Her best work friend was abruptly laid off. When her world is further upended by an unplanned pregnancy, Emily is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever. What will she sacrifice from her old life to make room for a new one? What fires will she be forced to extinguish, and which will keep burning? Old Flame is an essential, &“warmhearted, and luminous page-turner about desire, time, love, parenthood, work, and art in women&’s lives&” (Sophie McManus, author of The Unfortunates).Tongues of Flame
By Tim Parks. 1985
The gift of tongues, prophecy exorcism. . . what might such concepts mean in a complacent backwater of North London?…
For Richard Bowen, adolescence becomes a nightmare when his parents join the charismatic movement and find a devil in his brother.Winner of the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask Awards.