New Literary Fiction

Asle is an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the west coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. Written in melodious and hypnotic "slow prose," A New Name is the final installment of Jon Fosse's Septology.

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For 17-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with in her own home, every day. Marjorie has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their ignorance of and disdain for the wider world.

When Blue Bird and her grandmother leave their family's camp to gather beans for the long, threatening winter, they inadvertently avoid the horrible fate that befalls the rest of the family. Luckily, the two women are adopted by a nearby Dakota community and are eventually integrated into their kinship circles. Ella Cara Deloria's tale follows Blue Bird and her daughter, Waterlily, through the intricate kinship practices that created unity among her people. Waterlily, published after Deloria's death and viewed as the masterpiece of her career, offers a captivating glimpse.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world - her music, her purpose - is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: She performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

For more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as an unrivaled master of the short story. Now the arc of that achievement appears in one definitive volume. Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and McGuane's hallmark Big Sky country, with its vast and unforgiving landscape, these are stories of people on the fringes of society, whose twisted pasts meddle with their chances for companionship.

Tanzania, 1956. A Maasai woman gives birth to a child with albinism. The child is seen as a curse upon her tribe, and so begins Pó's tumultuous story. As Pó navigates the world, she must claim her life in the face of violence and ostracism. Further south, in Portuguese-controlled Mozambique, Ezequiel struggles for acceptance, too. Adopted by missionaries, he is not recognized by his Portuguese father's community or by his Makonde mother's tribe. When civil war erupts, he must choose whom to fight for and whom to leave behind.

Introduced with characteristic wit and sympathy by Sloane Crosley, Constant Reader gathers the complete weekly New Yorker reviews that Parker published from October 1927 through November 1928, with gimlet-eyed appreciations of the high and low, from Isadora Duncan to Al Smith, Charles Lindbergh to Little Orphan Annie, Mussolini to Emily Post.

A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo. They walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here - is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey?

Here are poems about things that you may never have thought about before. You'll be introduced to jellyfish stew, a bouncing mouse, a ridiculous dog, and a boneless chicken. You'll learn why you shouldn't argue with a shark, eat a dinosaur, or have an alligator for a pet. You'll meet the world's worst singer and the greatest video game player in history. You'll even find an invitation to a dragon's birthday party....

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

When Dave Robicheaux, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he returns to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially.

It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear.

Honora and Sexton are just settling into their new marriage, and have just bought their beloved New Hampshire house, when the economy crashes and everything in their world changes. Anita Shreve presents a "literary novel of the caliber and craft of Edith Wharton or Henry James," says the Baltimore Sun.

Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation - a thesis on mid-century children’s literature. Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown - author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon -whose existence no one else will acknowledge.

Andy Wofford, middle-aged father and English teacher at a third-tier private school, receives a surprising invitation for a drink from an old college classmate. Once awkward and forgettable, Michael Kinnick has become a famous, wealthy, and absurdly confident lifestyle guru. Of all the people who’d want to catch up, why Michael? After thirty divergent years, why now? Mildly apprehensive, Andy is also very curious.

You'll devour Melissa de la Cruz's hot new adult novel, in which her Blue Bloods immortals have matured and are now exposed to new challenges, new loves, new threats, and a haute, hot hipster lifestyle. It is 10 years after the great War with Lucifer, and the Coven has rebuilt. Leader of the Fallen, Oliver Hazard - Perry, plans to celebrate this prosperity by throwing a 400 Year Ball - and all Blue Blood society will be there. And then, all hell breaks loose...

Tepper enjoys sitting in his car, reading his newspaper in peace. His car always seems to be parked in a prime spot and other drivers want to know if Tepper is going out. He isn't. This drives some people crazy - including the mayor - but leads others to think Tepper harbors some hidden wisdom. The tale that emerges is "refreshing and completely likable."

Children of the New World introduces listeners to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.

When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his eager, naïve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought home with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father with his determination to overthrow the traditional values of society. Vividly capturing the hopes and fears of a changing Russia in the 19th century, Fathers and Sons is Ivan Turgenev's masterpiece. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Disfruta de este regalo navideño: Mis galletas crujientes de Nochevieja, una de las recetas de Días de Navidad, de Jeanette Winterson. Puedes escuchar su original punto de vista sobre el significado de Año Nuevo mientras cocinas.