Winter Newsletter 2022 Fiction

Celeste Ng creates a fictitious yet terrifyingly real future where economic and health crises lead to political violence and racial backlash. We meet a Chinese American family caught in the middle of all of this, one whose desire to stay under the radar is threatened when the mother’s poetry starts to speak for the resistance. Ng’s novel explores our deepest fears and our deepest humanity, and the role that art and books can play in centering our democracies. Booklist says in its starred review “As lyrical as it is chilling, as astonishing as it is empathic, Our Missing Hearts arguably achieves literary perfection.” Don’t miss this.   

—CASEY

Award-winning author George Saunders is back with yet another dazzling collection of short stories. The nine deeply personal works that make up this collection are mainly speculative stories that involve harsh confrontations with reality alongside smaller and equally poignant narratives on motherly love, generational guilt, and our desire to cling to the past. Those who love Saunders for his wry cynicism, witty prose, and earnest sentimentality will not be disappointed. —MAGNOLIA

This novel made me feel as if I was having a heart-to-heart talk with my own mother, a woman whom I’ve never fully understood. Cruz delivers a fully flawed and loveable character in your lap and lets you melt into her. The nuances of being a single mother, a senior citizen, and an immigrant in the wake of the Great Recession are entirely entangled in Cara Romero’s life, and you will want nothing more than to keep listening to her talk. 
—NIKOLE

Maggie O’Farrell, author of Hamnet and one of the best historical fiction writers of our time, is back with an immersive portrait of life at court in 1500’s Florence. When Lucrezia is married off to another court at an early age, she finds herself at the intersection of girlhood and womanhood, at the mercy of the men, power, and politics of the time. Thus begins a coming-of-age story unlike any other, one that not only illuminates the past but reckons with the emotional lives of women throughout time.

—CASEY

I am always excited by a new Barbara Kingsolver novel but even more so when she lays bare the heartbreak and heart-filled essence of our humanity. Demon Copperhead, the witty, smart and resourceful boy growing up in poverty and foster homes in Appalachia, brilliantly casts a light on an entire generation of forgotten kids damaged by opioid addiction. Kingsolver brings into the open communities who have been unraveled and bowed in so many ways but are also filled with family, ingenuity, and grit. This is the book that everyone will be talking about for years to come.

—CASEY

Like the jazz that hums through this swingy debut novel, Laura Warrell weaves together the loud, lyrical, effervescent story of trumpet-playing ladies’ man Circus Porter and, more importantly, the women who have threaded through his life over the years. A daughter, her mother, lovers, the loved, and the left, each woman seeks to determine her story and relationship on her own grounds. A beautiful, breakable, lovely mess is found—and this fine novel is its song.

—MELINDA

Five years ago, the world was introduced to our favorite gay curmudgeon, Arthur Less, when Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Less: A Novel. Now, we feel the joy once again as we join Arthur on a cross-country road trip that results in laugh-out-loud experiences while he reckons with his career, love life, upbringing, and the distinct existence that is America. It is a dramatic understatement to say that Arthur’s hapless adventures are exactly what we all need right now.

—CASEY

Huynh’s debut novel is deliciously fresh, heartfelt, and hilarious. Set largely in the Vietnamese community of Little Saigon in Orange County, three generations of estranged women have been living with their family’s curse, but this might be the year it breaks. Mai Nguyen’s trusted fortune teller has foretold it, bringing the women all back together, as Mai tries to reconcile with her mother and sisters and secure perfect futures for her daughters. Quick-witted reality ensues. This book is built on truth and love, and it’s so much fun.  
—MELINDA

Travel alongside Hera, queen of queens, as she recounts the untold tale of Penelope, queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus. North eloquently critiques what it means to be the wife of a king and the son of a hero. I felt enthralled and honored to watch the story unfold through the eyes of Hera, an underrepresented figure of Olympus. An absolute must for fans of Madeline Miller's Circe.

—KAILEY JO

For me, this book was like looking into a mirror. I appreciated that one unifying element in these stories is food—from jollof rice to egusi soup—and culture from very distinct ethnic groups in Nigeria. Conversely, it highlights the surreal experience of being considered black in America, being affected by racism, but also feeling disconnected to the visceral anger that many black-americans feel toward the United States’ history. This was a uniquely satisfying book.

—MORGAN