Fiction
The Strawberry Patch Pancake House
Laurie Gilmore
OverDrive Audiobook
Fiction, Romance
Every book in the Dream Harbor series can be read as a standalone. As a world-renowned chef, single dad Archer never planned on moving to a small town, let alone running a pancake restaurant. But Dream Harbor needs a new chef, and Archer needs a community to help raise his daughter, Olive. Iris has never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months. So when it's suggested that Archer is looking for a live-in nanny, she almost runs in the opposite direction. Now, Iris finds herself in a whole new world. One where her gorgeous new boss lives right across the hall and likes to cook topless... Keeping everything strictly professional should be easy, right? The Strawberry Patch Pancake House is a cozy romantic mystery with a single dad and found family dynamic, a small-town setting and a HEA guaranteed! Tropes: Single Dad, Forced Proximity, Slow Burn, Found Family
The Paris express : a novel
Emma Donoghue
FICTION Donoghue Emma
Fiction, Historical Fiction
Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train's crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.
Emma Donoghue brings imaginative storytelling to a famous photograph: the Montparnasse derailment, the one with the steam engine hanging out of the station. Donoghue wonders who was on that train, what were their lives like, what did their interactions look like. What she creates is riveting. -Anne M
Godkiller
Hannah Kaner
SCIENCE FICTION Kaner Hannah
Diverse Characters, Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQ+
"Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless gods in the world--but after a great war, the new king outlawed them and now pays "godkillers" to destroy any who try to rise from the shadows. As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered by a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing them and enjoys it. But all this changes when Kissen is tasked with helping a young noble girl with a god problem. The child's soul is bonded to a tiny god of white lies, and Kissen can't kill it without ending the girl's life too. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, the unlikely group must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favor. Pursued by assassins and demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning. Something is rotting at the heart of their world, and they are the only ones who can stop it." -- Back cover.
"Godkiller" has wonderful, immersive world building (I want to eat, like, all of the food described in this series), and memorable characters. The cast is incredibly diverse, featuring multiple characters with disabilities, casual queerness, and thoughtfully executed fantasy racial diversity. The first novel has strong DnD vibes, but the characters quickly evolve past those initial archetypes as the series continues. This is one of my new favorite fantasy series, and I would recommend the sequels, "Sunbringer" and "Faithbreaker" as well. -Chelsea
La fiesta del chivo
Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936- author.
SPANISH Vargas Llosa
Fiction
"Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic--and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call 'The Goat,' controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own"--Amazon.
Originally published in 2000, Vargas Llosa’s "La Fiesta del Chivo" dives deep into the Dominican Republic of the 1960s. Narrating the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo from the fictional point of view of Urania Cabral, Llosa’s historical fiction novel proves without a doubt why it was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. -Charlotte
Vampiros en El Norte
Cañas, Isabel, author.
SPANISH Canas
Fiction
"Un enfrentamiento entre vampiros y vaqueros en la frontera entre Texas y México en este western sobrenatural de la autora de La hacienda. Como hija de un ranchero en el México de 1840, Nena sabe un par de cosas sobre monstruos; su hogar ha estado mucho tiempo amenazado por tensiones con anglos del norte. Pero algo más siniestro merodea por el rancho en la noche, algo que drena la sangre de los hombres y los da por muertos. Lo mismo que atacó a Nena hace nueve años. Al creer a Nena muerta, Néstor ha intentado huir de su pena, yendo de rancho en rancho, trabajando como vaquero. Pero no hay alcohol suficiente para disipar los terrores nocturnos de dientes filosos; no hay mujer que pueda borrar de su mente a su amor de la infancia. Cuando Estados Unidos invade México en 1846, Nena y Néstor se reencuentran repentinamente de camino a la guerra: Nena es curandera, una sanadora que lucha por probarle a su padre su valía para que no la case con un extraño, y Néstor es miembro de la caballería auxiliar de rancheros y vaqueros. Pero el impacto de su reunión --y la ira de Nena hacia Néstor por abandonarla tiempo atrás-- queda pronto opacado por la aparición de una pesadilla de carne y hueso. Y a menos de que Nena y Néstor resuelvan su pasado y enfrenten juntos el futuro, ninguno de los dos sobrevivirá para ver el amanecer."--
Set in 1840s Mexico, Isabel Cañas’s 2023 Gothic vampire novel is sure to enthrall fans of historical and speculative fiction alike. Two characters torn apart by circumstance but pulled back together by fate must reconcile deep cuts when both of their homes come under attack in this supernatural Western certain to please even the pickiest of readers. -Charlotte
La sed
Yuszczuk, Marina, 1978- author.
SPANISH Yuszczuk
Fiction
"En el nuevo mundo por enésima vez recién descubierto de las mujeres, 'La sed' se interna para poner una distancia: de menor a mayor, especie contra género en la taxonomía de los reinos. Una vampira llega a las costas de la Buenos Aires decimonónica para ver por segunda vez en su vida cómo las aldeas se vuelven una ciudad cosmopolita. Es el ocaso de las bacanales de sangre, de la Europa en que se puede matar y comer a destajo. Hay que adaptarse, mezclarse con los humanos, ser discreta. En el otro extremo de la novela, una mujer contemporánea pasea con su hijo por el cementerio de la Recoleta y vive un poco inquieta su modesta emancipación. El encuentro entre el mortal aburrimiento de la una y el gótico a destiempo de la otra desencadena la hermosa novela que deja caer todo el peso de la muerte tumultuosa del pasado porteño sobre las pasiones familiares en sordina del presente. Darwin dice que para los naturalistas, "las especies, cuando se cruzan, resultan especialmente dotadas de esterilidad, a fin de impedir la confusión". Marina Yuszczuk demuestra que en la literatura, por suerte, es exactamente al revés. Los experimentos con lo monstruoso de Mary Shelley y con la astucia doméstica de Jane Austen, más que Drácula, están en el origen de la novela de especies que se niega a ser sólo novela de género."--
Marina Yuszczuk’s latest novel is a Gothic tale spun across two timelines, depicting a sapphic, supernatural romance between a modern woman and a nineteenth-century vampire. This novel showcases the intersections between female agency, horror both modern and historical, and the fragile, all-consuming nature of desire. -Charlotte
Blackouts
Torres, Justin, 1980- author.
RECEIVED
Fiction
"Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history"--
This own-voices, National Book Award-winning story takes the form of a dreamlike conversation between queer men from two separate generations. Using a mix of blackout poetry and prose, Torres weaves narratives lost and found into a breathtaking work spanning time, space, and humanity. -Charlotte
Dream state : a novel
Eric Puchner
FICTION Puchner Eric
Fiction, Literary Fiction
"PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, Pushcart Prize winner, and Best American Stories contributor, Eric Puchner returns with an ambitious and deeply moving novel set against the backdrop of the American West that follows three lifelong friends and the betrayal at the center of their entwined fates. Cece and Charlie are in love and a few weeks away from their summer wedding. But when Cece meets Charlie's best friend from college, Garrett, her long-held expectations for her future begin to crumble. As Garrett's gruff mask slips, Cece begins to anticipate the big day with dread as her feelings for Garrett become impossible to bury. And as she decides to follow her instincts, ditching her groom for his best man, she will alter the three of their lives forever, the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood, and, in the end, across generations. Years later, Cece's daughter, Lana, and Charlie's son, Jasper, meet and become fast friends, finding themselves reunited again and again throughout their adolescence. Soon enough, they find themselves enacting their parents' mistakes, falling victim to duplicity and heartbreak, with age and mortality looming. With Montana's once-warm summers growing untenably hot, and the nearby lake all but drying up, obscured only by the ceaseless smoke of wildfires, Garrett's career as a wildlife researcher feels increasingly futile. As he watches Cece begin to lose herself, Charlie wonders whether he will ever find stability, especially with a son failing to adjust to the demands of adulthood. With delicacy, precision, and enormous heart, Dream State is at once a study of the unholy catastrophe of marriage, and a tender ode to the beauty of impermanence"--
I’ve been a little stuck on “Dream State” since I’ve finished it. I have a range of feelings and lots of unanswered questions—about the book, the characters, the sequence of events, and about myself. It is one of those books that makes you self-examine your past and think more about the future. What is in our control and what is out of it? What do our relationships mean to us and what do we mean to others? “Dream State” is a heavy-lift of a novel, but if you want a book to stay with you, this one sure will for me. -Anne M
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow : a novel
Gabrielle Zevin
FICTION Zevin, Gabrielle
Diverse Characters, Fiction
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is my favorite book of the year, and possibly one of my favorite reads to date! If you're like me and are a gamer, you'll want to read this beautiful story about the platonic love between two lifelong friends as they collaborate on designing video games. This is a story about love, platonic love, disability, and growth -- one that will be on my mind for a long time. -Violette
The mortal and immortal life of the girl from Milan
Domenico Starnone
FICTION Starnone Domenico
Fiction, Literary Fiction
Imagine a child, a daydreamer, one of those boys who is always gazing out windows. His adoring grandmother, busy in the kitchen, keeps an eye on him. The child stares at the building opposite, watching a black-haired girl as she dances recklessly on her balcony. He is in love. And a love like this can push a child to extremes. He can become an explorer or a cabin boy, a cowboy or castaway; he can fight duels to the death, or even master unfamiliar languages. His grandmother has told him about the entrance to the underworld, and he knows the story of Orpheus's failed rescue mission. He could do better, he thinks; he wouldn't fail to bring that dark-haired up from the underground if she were dead, and it only he had the chance. A short, sharp, perfectly styled and unforgettable novel about love, desire, memory, and death by the Strega Prize winning Italian author of Ties and International Booker Prize, longlisted author of The House on Via Gemito.--
This is a book about death and coming to terms with it. How does one wrestle with loss as a child? What type of scars do they leave when we are older? How long do you carry loss with you? These are questions Starnone wrestles with in "The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan." Mimi's experiences and feelings strike true. -Anne M
This romance novel makes for a nice and easy listening audiobook. The drama isn't too hot to handle, the scars are only emotional, and no one gets murdered. So I guess that's my way of saying I'll happily live in a strawberry pancake house for a week. Both main characters have their own way of being a hot mess. One: a scatterbrain yoga and swim instructor; the other: a perfectionist, exacting chef who can't make Bisquick pancakes right. I sometimes get so emotionally wrapped up in the mental lives of a novel's protagonists that it's hard to remember I live in the real world. This book didn't make me work so hard. It was gentle and tame with mild but interesting love scenes. -Melody