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The Mars House: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick
By Natasha Pulley. 2024
'Pure Pulley' STUART TURTON'Joyful and profound' CATRIONA WARD'Simply unputdownable' THOMAS D. LEE'A work of staggering genius' IMRAN MAHMOOD'Charming and funny…
and perfectly paced' TEMI OH'A spiritual heir to Terry Pratchett' ROBIN STEVENS 'Book of the year for me' LAUREN JAMESJanuary Stirling was one of the principal dancers of London's Royal Ballet. Now he's a climate refugee bound for Tharsis, the notorious terraformed colony on Mars. It's a utopia for the naturalised population. For January, as a dangerous Earthstronger whose body is unadjusted to the weaker Martian gravity, it's a life sentence to hard labour and ferocious discrimination. But he will live.Aubrey Gale, energy trillionaire and hereditary senator, is running for election on a hardline platform to protect the native population from dangerous immigrants. The path to equality is simple, requiring all Earthstrongers who choose to come to Mars to undergo the disabling and sometimes fatal process of surgical naturalisation.Which is no life at all.When a disastrous media encounter plunges Aubrey and January's lives into chaos, the solution is a five-year made-for-reality-TV marriage that could secure January's future and ensure Aubrey's political success . . . but it soon becomes clear that thousands of lives hang in the balance, and nothing is as it seems.Timely and utterly unputdownable, The Mars House is an exceptional genre-blending story about privilege, strength, life, and love across class divisions - perfect for fans of Babel by R.F. Kuang, The Ferryman by Justin Cronin, and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.'I was blown away by this dark, enchanting story of witchcraft, power and injustice. ..nothing short of brilliant' Mary ChamberlainErzsébet…
Báthory, whose infamous place in history characterises her as the 'Blood Countess', was accused of the murder of over 600 peasant girls in Hungary, 1610. The Nightingale's Castle tells the story of a woman fighting for her survival and the complicated, often cruel, household over which she presides.Praise for The Nightingale's Castle'Moving, fascinating and haunting.. A mesmerising combination of gothic horror and elegant restraint' Francesca De Tores, author of Saltblood'Gripping... a fascinating exploration of women's struggle to have their truth heard' Louise O'NeillIn 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gave birth to an illegitimate child. The infant, a girl, was swiftly bundled up and handed to a local peasant family to be brought up in one of the hamlets surrounding the Castle. Many years later, 15-year-old Boróka reluctantly leaves the safety of the only home she has ever known in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Trusted members of the countess's household have been sent out to gather new serving girls, and the kindly old man who has taken care of Boróka for almost all her life knows that it is dangerous to turn them away.Boróka struggles to find her place at Cachtice Castle: she is frightened of the countess's reputation as an alleged murderer of young girls, and the women who run the castle are terrifyingly cruel. When plague comes into the heart of the castle, a tentative bond begins to form between Boróka and the Countess Báthory. But powerful forces are moving against a woman whose wealth poses such a threat to the king: can the countess really trust the women who are so close to her? And when the show trial begins against the infamous 'Blood Countess' where will Boróka's loyalties lie?The Book of Words
By Jenny Erpenbeck. 2007
A searing novella about coming of age in a land of tyranny, by one of Germany's most brilliant young authors.…
In The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck captures with amazing virtuosity the inner life of a young girl who survives the totalitarian regime of a curiously unnamed South American country (most likely Argentina during its "dirty war"). Raised by parents whose real identity ends up shocking her, the girl comes of age in a country where gunshots are mistaken for blown tires, innocent citizens are dragged off buses, and tortured and disappeared friends and family return to visit her from the dead.The Brass Age
By Slobodan Šnajder. 2024
'Like Olga Tokarczuk, Šnajder has written a novel about a Europe that has lost its diversity and has beendestroyed by…
fascism, communism and, in recent times, nationalism ... a modern epic' Le Monde'A masterpiece' La RepubblicaThe very next day processions of young men, some still children, began to move around the little town of Nuštar, with drums providing a steady rhythm ... These young men came from German families, Germans living outside the Reich, Volksdeutsche. Some stayed in their houses, some were shut up in the storeroom by their mothers, but as time went on more and more of them followed the drumming ...1769. A hungry year in Germany. Kempf the ancestor departs his homeland with his compatriots in search of a brighter future. Years pass and generations of Germans make Slavonia their home. But in 1940, when Europe is at war once more, this minority, the Volksdeutsch, are called to fight for the Reich, for a land now foreign to them.Among their ranks is Georg Kempf, the narrator's father. Forcibly conscripted into the Waffen SS, he deserts, aware of the danger that this involves. At the end of the war, he falls in love with a committed partisan called Vera despite the unimaginable: if they had met earlier, each one would have had to kill the other.The Brass Age, Slobodan Šnajder's masterpiece, is both a family saga and a powerful historical novel about the destiny of those shackled by history, and the generations doomed to inherit the contradictory fates of their forebears. Šnajder looks to his own biography to capture two hundred years of conflict and dividing ideology. In the process, he reconstructs a world that fell apart.The Brass Age
By Slobodan Šnajder. 2024
'Like Olga Tokarczuk, Šnajder has written a novel about a Europe that has lost its diversity and has beendestroyed by…
fascism, communism and, in recent times, nationalism ... a modern epic' Le Monde'A masterpiece' La RepubblicaThe very next day processions of young men, some still children, began to move around the little town of Nuštar, with drums providing a steady rhythm ... These young men came from German families, Germans living outside the Reich, Volksdeutsche. Some stayed in their houses, some were shut up in the storeroom by their mothers, but as time went on more and more of them followed the drumming ...1769. A hungry year in Germany. Kempf the ancestor departs his homeland with his compatriots in search of a brighter future. Years pass and generations of Germans make Slavonia their home. But in 1940, when Europe is at war once more, this minority, the Volksdeutsch, are called to fight for the Reich, for a land now foreign to them.Among their ranks is Georg Kempf, the narrator's father. Forcibly conscripted into the Waffen SS, he deserts, aware of the danger that this involves. At the end of the war, he falls in love with a committed partisan called Vera despite the unimaginable: if they had met earlier, each one would have had to kill the other.The Brass Age, Slobodan Šnajder's masterpiece, is both a family saga and a powerful historical novel about the destiny of those shackled by history, and the generations doomed to inherit the contradictory fates of their forebears. Šnajder looks to his own biography to capture two hundred years of conflict and dividing ideology. In the process, he reconstructs a world that fell apart.'I was blown away by this dark, enchanting story of witchcraft, power and injustice. ..nothing short of brilliant' Mary ChamberlainErzsébet…
Báthory, whose infamous place in history characterises her as the 'Blood Countess', was accused of the murder of over 600 peasant girls in Hungary, 1610. The Nightingale's Castle tells the story of a woman fighting for her survival and the complicated, often cruel, household over which she presides.Praise for The Nightingale's Castle'Moving, fascinating and haunting.. A mesmerising combination of gothic horror and elegant restraint' Francesca De Tores, author of Saltblood'Gripping... a fascinating exploration of women's struggle to have their truth heard' Louise O'NeillIn 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gave birth to an illegitimate child. The infant, a girl, was swiftly bundled up and handed to a local peasant family to be brought up in one of the hamlets surrounding the Castle. Many years later, 15-year-old Boróka reluctantly leaves the safety of the only home she has ever known in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Trusted members of the countess's household have been sent out to gather new serving girls, and the kindly old man who has taken care of Boróka for almost all her life knows that it is dangerous to turn them away.Boróka struggles to find her place at Cachtice Castle: she is frightened of the countess's reputation as an alleged murderer of young girls, and the women who run the castle are terrifyingly cruel. When plague comes into the heart of the castle, a tentative bond begins to form between Boróka and the Countess Báthory. But powerful forces are moving against a woman whose wealth poses such a threat to the king: can the countess really trust the women who are so close to her? And when the show trial begins against the infamous 'Blood Countess' where will Boróka's loyalties lie?God's Kingdom: A Novel
By Howard Frank Mosher. 2015
Howard Frank Mosher is one of America's most acclaimed writers. His fiction, set in the world of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom,…
chronicles the intertwining family histories of the natives, wanderers, outcasts, and fugitives-white, Native American, escaped slaves fleeing north, French Canadians, and others-who settled in this remote and beautiful place. God's Kingdom explores the Kinneson family through the coming of age of the heir, Jim, and its rich and complicated history. Earnest and innocent, a bright high school student, Jim grows curious about the unspoken "trouble in the family" that haunts his father, a small-town newspaper editor, and his grandfather, a raconteur who keeps the Kinnesons' secrets to himself. Layer by layer, tale by tale, sorting out fact from deliberately obscured legend, Jim explores the Kinnesons' long relationship with others in the Kingdom, culminating in a discovery that forever changes his life and place in that world. Beginning with a magical Thanksgiving Day hunting trip in the autumn mountains, and ending with Jim on the brink of leaving home to find life-and perhaps love-on the other side of the ridge, God's Kingdom unfolds with the patient delight of a master storyteller.Small Blessings: A Novel
By Martha Woodroof. 2014
From debut novelist Martha Woodroof comes an inspiring tale of a small-town college professor, a remarkable new woman at the…
bookshop, and the ten-year old son he never knew he had. Tom Putnam has resigned himself to a quiet and half-fulfilled life. An English professor in a sleepy college town, he spends his days browsing the Shakespeare shelves at the campus bookstore, managing the oddball faculty in his department and caring, alongside his formidable mother-in-law, for his wife Marjory, a fragile shut-in with unrelenting neuroses, a condition exacerbated by her discovery of Tom's brief and misguided affair with a visiting poetess a decade earlier.Then, one evening at the bookstore, Tom and Marjory meet Rose Callahan, the shop's charming new hire, and Marjory invites Rose to their home for dinner, out of the blue, her first social interaction since her breakdown. Tom wonders if it's a sign that change is on the horizon, a feeling confirmed upon his return home, where he opens a letter from his former paramour, informing him he'd fathered a son who is heading Tom's way on a train. His mind races at the possibility of having a family after so many years of loneliness. And it becomes clear change is coming whether Tom's ready or not.A heartwarming story with a charmingly imperfect cast of characters to cheer for, Small Blessings's wonderfully optimistic heart that reminds us that sometimes, when it feels like life has veered irrevocably off track, the track shifts in ways we never can have imagined.Breathless in Bombay: Stories
By Murzban F. Shroff. 2008
Shortlisted for the 2009 Commomwealth Writers' Prize Shroff's vibrant narratives in this concept collection of 14 stories set in contemporary…
Bombay feature a range of beautifully drawn characters in fascinating situations: from the laundrywallas' water shortage problems, to the doomed love affair of a schizophrenic painter and his Bollywood girlfriend, to the wandering thoughts of a massagewalla at Chowpatty Beach, to the heart-warming relationship of a carriage driver and his beloved horse. Each of these stories is richly crafted and arranged against the grand chaotic backdrop of life that is Bombay. Shroff's love for his hometown shines through, but so does his deep understanding of its challenges and problems. The reader is afforded an insider's view of this pulsating city, and through an unforgettable emotional and cultural journey comes to care for the characters presented in these stories.Poor White (Belt Revivals)
By Sherwood Anderson. 2018
Hugh McVey moves from Missouri to the agrarian town of Bidwell, Ohio. He invents a mechanical cabbage planter to ease…
the burden of famers, but an investor in town exploits his product, which fails to succeed. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a millionaire and transforms Bidwell into a center of manufacturing. McVey, perennially lonely and ruminative, meets Clara Butterworth, who attends college at nearby Ohio State and is perennially harassed by her potential matches. Published one year after Winesburg, Ohio, in 1920, Poor White has a modernist style, an realist attention to every day life, and an eerily contemporary resonance.The Burning
By Jens Liljestrand. 2021
Life goes on in the face of a climate crisis in this astonishing and unforgettable debut novel that follows four…
characters as they struggle to survive in a burning world. Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenaged love stories, marital collapses, identity crises, and revolts against hopeless parents continue to play out. Didrik is a forty-year-old media consultant whose misguided efforts to become the family hero render him a pathetic vision of masculine incompetence. Melissa is an influencer with a suitcase full of lost dreams after denying climate change for years. André is the nineteen-year-old loser son of an international sports star who uses the erupting violence around him to orchestrate his own personal vengeance on his negligent father. And Vilja is Didrik&’s teenaged daughter who steps into a leadership role in the face of adult ineptitude. &“Simultaneously nerve-wracking, astute, and consumedly entertaining&” (Sydsvenskan, Sweden) and through these four related stories, Even If Everything Ends eloquently illustrates a picture of a very near future that is at once extraordinary and entirely realistic.An Elegant Theory
By Noah Milligan. 2016
"A delightfully intelligent psychological thriller, Noah Milligan&’s debut novel is as ambitious and complex as its main character, Coulter Zahn,…
who aspires to nothing less than a complete understanding of the universe. An Elegant Theory intrigues the mind, thrills the senses, and keeps the reader engaged straight through to the surprising ending. An auspicious debut."—Rilla Askew, author, Kind of KinCoulter Zahn sees reality differently than others. Much like light can theoretically be in all places at once, Coulter sees multiple versions of his life. A promising PhD candidate at MIT, he and his young wife are nervously expecting their first child. When his dissertation comes under intense criticism, his estranged mother returns, and Sara tells him she's leaving him, Coulter&’s already delicate mental state becomes further fragmented.One evening, with his life and mental health unraveling, Coulter loses control, irreparably changing the course of the lives around him. But the very next morning, he catches a break in his research, discovering the true shape of the universe. Influenced by those around him and his own untrustworthy psyche, Coulter must decide whether to face the consequences of his actions or finish his research, perhaps making the greatest contribution to science since Einstein&’s theory of relativity.An existential psychological thriller, An Elegant Theory explores how the construction of memory and consciousness can shape motive, guilt, and identity through the lens of a modern-day mad-scientist motif."An Elegant Theory is a vibrant puzzle of a novel, an unstoppable force—full of twists, turns, and surprises while remaining fully grounded in real life to today. Surely, this is the start of a great literary career."—Jessica Anya Blau, author, The Trouble with Lexie"An excellent novel for discussion with a group or book club . . . . I believe Noah Milligan is an author to keep an eye on in the future."—booksandpals.blogspot.caNoah Milligan's other books:Five Hundred PoorInto Captivity They Will GoIn the Shadow of 10,000 Hills
By Jennifer Haupt. 2018
"...more than a page-turning narrative; it's an embrace of the Kinyarwanda greeting amahoro--'peace.'"—Oprah.comAn evocative page-turner and an eye-opening meditation on…
the ways we survive profoundly painful memories and negotiate the complexities of love.&”—Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much is TrueFinalist – National Reading Group—Great Group Reads 2018Finalist – Foreword Indies Book of the YearIn 1968, a disillusioned and heartbroken Lillian Carlson left Atlanta after the assassination of Martin Luther King. She found meaning in the hearts of orphaned African children and cobbled together her own small orphanage in the Rift Valley alongside the lush forests of Rwanda.Three decades later, in New York City, Rachel Shepherd, lost and heartbroken herself, embarks on a journey to find the father who abandoned her as a young child, determined to solve the enigma of Henry Shepherd, a now-famous photographer.When an online search turns up a clue to his whereabouts, Rachel travels to Rwanda to connect with an unsuspecting and uncooperative Lillian. While Rachel tries to unravel the mystery of her father's disappearance, she finds unexpected allies in an ex-pat doctor running from his past and a young Tutsi woman who lived through a profound experience alongside her father. Set against the backdrop of a country grieving and trying to heal after a devastating civil war, follow the intertwining stories of three women who discover something unexpected: grace when there can be no forgiveness."An intensely beautiful debut.&”—Library Journal"Good choice for those seeking tales of hope . . . and it may prove popular with book clubs.&”—BooklistFive Hundred Poor
By Noah Milligan. 2018
"An honest glimpse at how the other half lives and how the other half dies that should inspire us to…
try harder."—Jared Yates Sexton, author of The People Are Going To Rise Like The Waters Upon Your ShoreFrom acclaimed author, Noah Milligan, comes a short story collection, Five Hundred Poor. The title comes from Adam Smith&’s The Wealth of Nations, &“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.&”These are ten stories of those five hundred poor, the jaded, the disillusioned, and the disenfranchised."Noah Milligan writes about Oklahoma in such an uncanny, dark, compelling way."—Brandon Hobson, author of Where The Dead Sit TalkingNoah Milligan's other books:An Elegant TheoryInto Captivity They Will Go.Pickle's Progress: A Novel
By Marcia Butler. 2019
"The four main characters in Pickle&’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life."—Richard…
RussoMarcia Butler&’s debut novel, Pickle&’s Progress, is a fierce, mordant New York story about the twisted path to love.Over the course of five weeks, identical twin brothers, one wife, a dog, and a bereaved young woman collide with each other to comical and sometimes horrifying effect. Everything is questioned and tested as they jockey for position and try to maintain the status quo. Love is the poison, the antidote, the devil and, ultimately, the hero.&“Pickle&’s Progress is a Weird — But Secretly Sweet — Journey.&”—nprOslo, Maine: A Novel
By Marcia Butler. 2021
"This book will break your heart and heal it." - E.J. Levy, author of The Cape Doctor A pregnant moose walks into…
a rural Maine town called Oslo, looking for food and a place to deliver her calf. Just as when strangers run into each other on the street, the movement of the moose determines the fate of three families in the town as they grapple with trauma, marriage, ambition, and their fraught relationship with the natural world. Meet Pierre Roy, a brilliant twelve-year-old, who loses his memory in an accident. Then Claude Roy, Pierre&’s blustery and proud fourth-generation Maine father who cannot, or will not, acknowledge the too-real and frightening fact of his son&’s injury. And his wife, Celine, a once-upon-a-time traditional housewife and mother who descends into pills as a way of coping. Enter Sandra and Jim Kimbrough, musicians and recent Maine transplants who scrape together a meager living as performers while shoring up the loose ends by attempting to live off the grid. Finally, the wealthy widow "from away," Edna Sibley, whose dependent adult grandson is addicted to 1980&’s Family Feud episodes. Their disparate backgrounds and views on life make for, at times, uneasy neighbors. But when Sandra begins to teach Pierre the violin, forces beyond their control converge. The boy discovers that through sound he can enter a world without pain from the past nor worry for the future. He becomes a preadolescent existentialist and invents an unconventional method to come to terms with his memory loss, all the while attempting to protect, and then forgive, those who&’ve failed him.Oslo, Maine is a character-driven novel exploring class and economic disparity. It inspects the strengths and limitations of seven average yet extraordinary people as they reckon with their considerable collective failure around Pierre&’s accident. Alliances unravel. Long held secrets are exposed. And throughout, the ever-present moose is the linchpin that drives this richly drawn story, filled with heartbreak and hope, to its unexpected conclusion."(T)he flawed but deeply relatable characters in Butler's second novel ... exude an authentic sense of humanity, making this a sure-fire recommendation for Fredrik Backman fans." —Carol Haggas, BooklistA seductive, imaginative, and utterly unique story; an astute and compassionate foray into the intersecting lives of characters who are both ordinary and exceptional, saintly and deeply flawed." —Karen Dionne, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Wicked SisterNo Call Too Small
By Oscar Martens. 2020
&“Martens&’ work would be impressive in any era, but it is particularly timely today. It is wonderful to come upon…
an author who faces into the horrific absurdities of modern life without flinching, a stylist who delivers his most powerful satiric points with laser sharp accuracy and lyrically beautiful language."—Vancouver Sun&“Haunting, darkly funny situations, captured in crisp, spare prose, will appeal to fans of George Saunders.&”—Publishers WeeklyBy the end of the day, a cop must choose between ethics and social death. A camp counsellor, stuck deep in the woods with a small group of boys, only has a few hours before the DTs kick in. Adult children scramble to get the best of what remains of their mother's estate, but funeral plans may be premature. Sandwiched between a depressed mother and a careless father, a young girl must help attract customers to the family business, no matter the cost.The stories in No Call Too Small represent micro-scale disaster tourism on a winding road that is long and dark. Driving too fast, weaving between flaming wrecks, and drifting through cliff-side curves, there's little choice but to hang on and meet whatever's over the rise head on.&“Marten&’s strong prose is a pleasure to read, with dark humour and lively storytelling that brings a quirky humanity to his characters.&”—Janie Chang, Globe and Mail bestselling author of Dragon Springs Road&“A beautifully crafted collection.&”—Marcia Butler, author of Pickle&’s ProgressThe Favor: A Novel
By Adele Griffin. 2023
From National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin, an insightful and warmhearted story of two very different women who make an unexpected…
connection when one decides to carry a baby for the other.At I'll Have Seconds, a high-end fairytale vintage dress shop in Manhattan, Nora Hammond loves nothing better than pairing a rare find with the perfect client.At home, Nora grapples with the bleaker reality of enormous debt, a tiny apartment, and ever-dwindling hope that she and her husband Jacob will have a family of their own.When socialite Evelyn Elliot charges into Nora's life, the women spark an immediate connection, and Nora is jettisoned into the heady whirl of New York's moneyed elite. As Evelyn's stylist and confidante, Nora needs to learn all new rules of engagement for the uber-wealthy. But it isn't until Evelyn decides her next cause is to carry a baby for Nora, that these rules— and this unlikely friendship—are tested.A contemporary story that celebrates alternative routes to family, The Favor is an incisive examination of what it means to long for a child and what relationships cost us—and what they're worth.Upstate: A Novel
By James Wood. 2018
New Yorker book critic and award-winning author James Wood delivers a novel of a family struggling to connect with one…
another and find meaning in their own lives. In the years since his daughter Vanessa moved to America to become a professor of philosophy, Alan Querry has never been to visit. He has been too busy at home in northern England, holding together his business as a successful property developer. His younger daughter, Helen—a music executive in London—hasn’t gone, either, and the two sisters, close but competitive, have never quite recovered from their parents’ bitter divorce and the early death of their mother. But when Vanessa’s new boyfriend sends word that she has fallen into a severe depression and that he’s worried for her safety, Alan and Helen fly to New York and take the train to Saratoga Springs.Over the course of six wintry days in upstate New York, the Querry family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others? Is happiness a skill that might be learned or a cruel accident of birth? Is reflection conducive to happiness or an obstacle to it? If, as a favorite philosopher of Helen’s puts it, “the only serious enterprise is living,” how should we live? Rich in subtle human insight, full of poignant and often funny portraits, and vivid with a sense of place, James Wood’s Upstate is a powerful, intense, beautiful novel.Captain of the Sleepers: A Novel
By Mayra Montero. 2002
For fifty years, Andres Yasin has carried a grudge against J.T. Bunker. Now, Bunker, eighty-two years old and dying of…
cancer, wants to tell his side of a story, a story of his affair with Andres's mother. As a child Andres knew Bunker as the "Captain of the Sleepers"-so called because he transported the bodies of those who had died off the island, but wished to be buried at home. But what really happened between Bunker and Andres's mother, between his mother and her next lover, a leader in the Puerto Rican Nationalistic Insurrection, and what were the actual circumstances of Andres's mother's mysterious death?In this taut, erotic novel that slips effortlessly between past and present, remembrance and reality, Mayra Montero describes a feverish Caribbean childhood of secrets, disillusionment, and sexual awakening. Beautifully translated by Edith Grossman, The Captain of the Sleepers confirms Montero's stature as one of our finest prose stylists and as an international writer of the first rank.