(Descriptions are from Amazon)
Chloe Benjamin – The Immortalists
A Washington
Post Notable Book; An NPR Book of the Year; A LibraryReads Top 10 Book
of the Year
If you knew the date of your death,
how would you live your life?
It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side,
and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who
claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four
adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades.
Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San
Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring
reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor
post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she
tests the boundary between science and immortality.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and
depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and
choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving
testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull
of familial bonds.
Esi Edugyan – Washington Black
Winner
of the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize
When two English brothers arrive at a Barbados sugar
plantation, they bring with them a darkness beyond what the slaves have already
known. Washington Black – an eleven year-old field slave – is horrified to find
himself chosen to live in the quarters of one of these men. But the man is not
as Washington expects him to be. His new master is the eccentric Christopher
Wilde – naturalist, explorer, inventor and abolitionist – whose obsession to
perfect a winged flying machine disturbs all who know him. Washington is
initiated into a world of wonder: a world where the night sea is set alight
with fields of jellyfish, where a simple cloth canopy can propel a man across
the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and
meaning – and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to
see each other as human.
But when a man is killed one fateful night,
Washington is left to the mercy of his new masters. Christopher Wilde must
choose between family ties and young Washington’s life. What follows is a
flight along the eastern coast of America, as the men attempt to elude the
bounty that has been placed on Washington’s head. Their journey opens them
up to the extraordinary: to a dark encounter with a necropsicist, a scholar of
the flesh; to a voyage aboard a vessel captained by a hunter of a
different kind; to a glimpse through an unexpected portal into the Underground
Railroad. This is a novel of fraught bonds and betrayal. What brings Wilde and
Washington together ultimately tears them apart, leaving Washington to seek his
true self in a world that denies his very existence.
From the blistering cane fields of Barbados to the
icy plains of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-drowned streets of London to
the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black teems with all the strangeness
of life. This inventive, electrifying novel asks, What is Freedom? And can a
life salvaged from the ashes ever be made whole?
Rachel Kushner – The Mars Room
EW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TIME’S
#1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMESNOTABLE BOOK OF 2018; FINALIST
for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL
It’s 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two
consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in
California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been
severed: the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a
new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to
survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and
prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner
evokes with great humor and precision.
Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars
Room demonstrates new levels of mastery and depth in Kushner’s work.
It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined. As James
Wood said in The New Yorker, her fiction “succeeds because it is so
full of vibrantly different stories and histories, all of them particular, all
of them brilliantly alive.”
Liane Moriarty – Nine Perfect
Strangers
From the
#1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little
Lies
Could ten days at a health resort really change you
forever? In Liane Moriarty’s latest page-turner, nine perfect strangers are
about to find out…
Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some
are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here
for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and
pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might
involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the
next ten days are going to be.
Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic
novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and
an exquisitely painful paper cut. She’s immediately intrigued by her fellow
guests. Most of them don’t look to be in need of a health resort at all. But
the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic
owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers
Frances didn’t even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts
and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer – or should
she run while she still can?
It’s not long before every guest at Tranquillum
House is asking exactly the same question.
Combining all of the hallmarks that have made her writing a
go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will
make you laugh and gasp, Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers once
again shows why she is a master of her craft.
Lawrence Osborne – Beautiful Animals
“A seductively
menacing new thriller by Lawrence Osborne…who unites Graham Greene’s
fondness for foreign soil with Patricia Highsmith’s fascination with the
nastier coils of the human psyche.” –NPR’s “Fresh Air”
FINANCIAL TIMES SUMMER
PICK 2017; GUARDIAN BEST HOLIDAY READS 2017
On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the
Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man
named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi,
the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the
exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation
with her family, to help this stranger. As the two women learn more about
the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the
Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their
seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels all must face the horrific
consequences they have set in motion.
In this brilliant psychological study of
manipulation and greed, Lawrence Osborne explores the dark heart of friendship,
and shows just how often the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.
Kathy Page – Dear Evelyn
WINNER OF THE 2018 ROGERS WRITERS’ TRUST FICTION PRIZE; A 2018 KIRKUS BEST
BOOK OF THE YEAR; A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2018; A QUILL
& QUIRE BEST BOOK OF 2018
Born between the wars on
a working-class London street, Harry Miles wins a scholarship and a chance to
escape his station, but discovers instead that poetry is what offers him real
direction. While searching for more of it he meets Evelyn Hill on the steps of
Battersea Library. The two fall in love as the world prepares once again for
war, but their capacity to care for each other over the ensuing decades becomes
increasingly tested.
Twisting
and startling, harrowing and deeply tender, Dear Evelyn explores
how two very different people come together to shape and reshape each other
over a lifetime. It is a compelling and unconventional love story that will
leave its mark on any reader who has ever loved.
Waubgeshig Rice – Moon of the Crusted
Snow
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe
community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds
as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community
members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the
crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadearship loses its grip on power as
the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve.
Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness
and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and
their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their
community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named
Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave
decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends
our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society
collapses, another is reborn.
Heather Rose – The Museum of Modern
Love
Art will wake you up. Art will
break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity you must be
fearless.” –Heather Rose
Our hero, Arky Levin, has reached a
creative dead end. An unexpected separation from his wife was meant to leave
him with the space he needs to work composing film scores, but it has provided
none of the peace of mind he needs to create. Guilty and restless, almost by chance
he stumbles upon an art exhibit that will change his life. Based on a real
piece of performance art that took place in 2010, the installation that the
fictional Arky Levin discovers is inexplicably powerful. Visitors to the Museum
of Modern Art sit across a table from the performance artist Marina Abramovic,
for as short or long a period of time as they choose. Although some go in
skeptical, almost all leave moved. And the participants are not the only ones
to find themselves changed by this unusual experience: Arky finds himself
returning daily to watch others with Abramovic. As the performance unfolds over
the course of 75 days, so too does Arky. As he bonds with other people drawn to
the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life
and what he must do. This is a book about art, but it is also about success and
failure, illness and happiness. It’s about what it means to find connection in
a modern world. And most of all, it is about love, with its limitations and its
transcendence.
Jessica Shattuck – The Women in the
Castle
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER; GoodReads
Choice Awards Semifinalist
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets
they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling
Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful
and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become
intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the
author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards
of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat,
Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s
ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of
war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to
assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her
husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow
resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son
of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they
make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin,
where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the
hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister’s
wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that
house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the
ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain
and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the
black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become
infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that
threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms
with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the
war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
Also Nominated
Kate Atkinson – Transcription
From the
bestselling author of Life After Life, a new novel that explores
the repercussions of one young woman’s espionage work during World War II.
Juliet Armstrong is a dissatisfied radio
producer in a 1950s London that is recovering from the war as much as she is.
During World War Two, Juliet was conscripted into service, transcribing
conversations between an MI5 agent and a ring of suspected German sympathizers.
The seemingly dull work quickly plunged Juliet into a treacherous world of code
words and secret meetings where Juliet herself was sent into the field. These
moments of intrigue and romance feel like a lifetime ago as Juliet trudges
through her commute, her job and her new life. But as Juliet and the rest of
London find ways to return to normal, her routine is upended by an encounter
with a mysterious man from her past life.
Haunted by the relationships and actions of her
past and facing a very real threat in the present, Juliet cannot escape the
repercussions of her work for the government. With no other choice, Juliet is
quickly pulled back into the life of espionage she thought she’d left behind.
Kate Atkinson’s latest novel brings mid-century London to life in a gripping
tale of deception and consequences.
David Bergen – Stranger
From
Giller prize–winning author of The Time in Between and Canada
Reads finalist for The Age of Hope comes a
stirring tale that lays bare the bonds of motherhood, revealing just how far a
mother will go to reclaim her stolen child.
Íso, a young Guatemalan woman, works at a fertility
clinic at Ixchel, in the highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. She tends to
the rich northern women who visit the clinic hoping that the waters of the
nearby lake might increase their chances of conception. Like many of the women
working at the clinic, Íso is aware of the resident American doctor, Eric Mann.
Soon Íso is his secret lover, stealing away with Dr. Mann on long motorcycle
rides through the mountains and enjoying beach vacations with Eric and his
doctor friends. But their tryst does not last long. Dr. Mann decides he will
return to the US, and a freak accident cuts the couple’s time together even
shorter. Before Íso can tell Dr. Mann that she is pregnant, he is gone.
After the birth of her daughter, the baby is taken
from her. The director of the clinic informs Íso that her child is in America.
Determined to reclaim her stolen daughter, Íso makes her way north through
Mexico, eventually crossing illegally into a United States divided into
military zones. Travelling without documentation, and with little money, Íso
descends into a world full of danger. In a place of shifting boundaries, Íso
must determine who she can trust and how much, aware that she might lose her
daughter forever.
The profound intelligence and political resonance we have come
to expect from Bergen sit front and centre in Stranger, contributing
to the growing legacy of this Giller Prize–winning author. With its themes of
dislocation and disruption, of power and vulnerability, of rich and of poor, Stranger is
a powerfully resonant political novel for our times.
Tana French – The Witch Elm
Named a New York Times Notable
Book of 2018’ “A brilliant new work of suspense from “the most important
crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (Washington Post)
and an excellent holiday gift.
From
the writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New
Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King,
“absolutely mesmerizing” by Gillian Flynn, and
“unputdownable” (People), comes a gripping new novel that
turns a crime story inside out.
Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a
scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that
will change his life – he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for
dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he
might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral
home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an
elm tree in the garden – and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the
possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
A spellbinding standalone from one of the best
suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we
become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are.
Heather Morris – the Tattooist of Auschwitz
The #1
International Bestseller & New York Times Bestseller
This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and
courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and
Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story
in the midst of atrocity. In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is
forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his
captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the
German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow
prisoners.
Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale
witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery
and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to
exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow
prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts
a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto
her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow
survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale
Sokolov’s experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of
prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the
Holocaust, The
Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of
love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
Kim Stanley Robinson – New York 2140
NOMINATED FOR THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL 2018
As
the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island.
For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New
York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city.
There
is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There
is the detective, whose work will never disappear – along with the lawyers, of
course.
There
is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures, and the
building’s manager, quietly respected for his attention to detail. Then there
are two boys who don’t live there, but have no other home – and who are more
important to its future than anyone might imagine.
Lastly
there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance
triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all – and even
the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests.
New York 2140 is an extraordinary and
unforgettable novel, from a writer uniquely qualified to tell the story of its
future.
Mark Sakatomoto – Forgiveness
WINNER
of CBC Canada Reads; Finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative
Non-Fiction and the OLA Evergreen Award; #1 National Bestseller
When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean
chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and
volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue
Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.
Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was
captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring
pestilence, beatings and starvation, as well as a journey by hell ship to Japan
to perform slave labour, while around him his friends and countrymen perished.
Back in Canada, Mitsue and her family were expelled from their home by the
government and forced to spend years eking out an existence in rural Alberta,
working other people’s land for a dollar a day.
By the end of the war, Ralph emerged broken but a
survivor. Mitsue, worn down by years of back-breaking labour, had to start all
over again in Medicine Hat, Alberta. A generation later, at a high school
dance, Ralph’s daughter and Mitsue’s son fell in love.
Although the war toyed with Ralph’s and Mitsue’s lives and
threatened to erase their humanity, these two brave individuals somehow
surmounted enormous transgressions and learned to forgive. Without this
forgiveness, their grandson Mark Sakamoto would never have come to be.
Gary Shteyngart – Lake Success
NAMED ONE
OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review •
NPR • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah
Magazine • Glamour • Library Journal • Kirkus
Reviews • Newsday • Pamela Paul, KQED • Financial
Times • The Globe and Mail; LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE
MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
Narcissistic, hilariously
self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it,
hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed
by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he
flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life
with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a
driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes
with wealth—has her own demons to face. How these two flawed characters
navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this
piercing exploration of the 0.1 Percent, a poignant tale of familial longing
and an unsentimental ode to what really makes America great.
“Shteyngart, perhaps more than any
American writer of his generation, is a natural. He is light, stinging,
insolent and melancholy. . . . The wit and the immigrant’s sense of
heartbreak—he was born in Russia—just seem to pour from him. The idea of riding
along behind Shteyngart as he glides across America in the early age of Trump
is a propitious one. He doesn’t disappoint.”—The New York Times
“From one of our finest comic novelists comes a
work with equal parts smarts and heart to go with the steady hilarity of its
plot and prose. . . . Surely the funniest book of the year, indeed one of the best overall.”—Newsday
Merilyn Simonds – Refuge
To whom do we offer refuge
― and why?
After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great events
in New York City, Mexico, and Montreal, 96-year-old Cassandra MacCallum is
surviving well enough, alone on her island, when a young Burmese woman contacts
her, claiming to be kin. Curiosity, loneliness, and a slender filament of hope
prompts the old woman to accept a visit. But Nang’s story of torture and flight
provokes memories in Cass that peel back, layer by layer, the events that
brought her to this moment ― and forces her, against her will, to confront the
tragedy she has refused for half a century. Could her son really be Nang’s
grandfather? What does she owe this girl, who claims to be stateless because of
her MacCallum blood? Drawn, despite herself, into Nang’s search for refuge,
Cass struggles to accept the past and find a way into whatever future remains
to her.
Kim Thuy – Vi
LONGLISTED
FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
The daughter of an enterprising
mother and a wealthy, spoiled father who never had to grow up, Vi was the
youngest of their four children and the only girl. They gave her a name that
meant “precious, tiny one,” destined to be cosseted and protected,
the family’s little treasure.
But the Vietnam War destroys life
as they’ve known it. Vi, along with her mother and brothers, manages to
escape–but her father stays behind, leaving a painful void as the rest of the
family must make a new life for themselves in Canada.
While her family puts down roots,
life has different plans for Vi. Taken under the wing of Hà, a worldly family
friend, and her diplomat lover, Vi tests personal boundaries and crosses
international ones, letting the winds of life buffet her. From Saigon to
Montreal, from Suzhou to Boston to the fall of the Berlin Wall, she is witness
to the immensity of geography, the intricate fabric of humanity, the complexity
of love, the infinite possibilities before her. Ever the quiet observer, somehow
Vi must find a way to finally take her place in the world.