Fiction
IQ
Joe Ide
FICTION Ide Joe
Fiction, Mystery
"A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tires or a homemade casserole. To get by, he's forced to take on clients that can pay. This time, it's a rap mogul whose life is in danger. As Isaiah investigates, he encounters a vengeful ex-wife, a crew of notorious cutthroats, a monstrous attack dog, and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. The deeper Isaiah digs, the more far reaching and dangerous the case becomes"--
This first book in what I hope is a very long series of crime/detective fiction by author Joe Ide. I started with the print copy and was grabbed quickly by the story. However there is a lot of East LA dialect in this book that slowed me down, so I checked out a copy of the e-aduio and I'm so glad I did. Actor Sullivan Jones brought the characters to life in ways my imagination couldn't. After listening to a few chapters the characters are firmly in my brain and I hear their voices when I read the text. Isaiah Quintabe (IQ) is my new favorite private investigator. He sees things other people miss. Things that aren't where they're supposed to be, or shouldn't be where they are, or things that just don't make sense. Author Joe Ide masterfully weaves together two stories - Isaiah's own rough teenage years and the current case he's been hired to solve - to introduce us to a great new character in detective fiction. The second book in the series is "Righteous" and the third "Wrecked" is due out in October 2018. -Beth
Circe : a novel
Madeline Miller
FICTION Miller Madeline
Fiction, Fantasy
Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.
Another great read from Madeline Miller, author of "The Song of Achilles." To me this book goes beyond telling a new side to an old story--it really brings Circe, her back story and motivations--to life. If you enjoy Greek mythology or just looking for a great summer read, pick up "Circe." -Anne M
The little stranger
Sarah Waters
FICTION Waters, Sarah
Fiction, Horror
One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.
A decaying English manor and a once prominent British family facing changing times equals the perfect set-up for a little bit of horror. Waters brings her exceptional writing and character building to this dark novel. I switched between listening to the audiobook and reading the print and there were genuinely times where I had to stop listening to this because I was frightened. If you like unreliable narrators, this is one to pick up. -Anne M
The remains of the day
Kazuo Ishiguro
FICTION Ishiguro, Kazuo
Historical Fiction, Fiction
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.
Added by Jason
Ties
Domenico Starnone
FICTION Starnone Domenico
Fiction
Translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, Ties is a compulsively readable and provocative novel about marriage and family by one of Italy's bestselling novelists. Like many marriages, Vanda and Aldo's has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in their marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. It is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact. Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award, The Strega.
Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri, do not miss this emotional Italian novella about a family crisis. -Anne M
For two thousand years
Mihail Sebastian
FICTION Sebastia Mihail
Fiction
"Mihail Sebastian's 1934 masterpiece, now available in English for the first time, was written as the rise of fascism forced him out of his literary career and turned his friends and colleagues against him. Confronted with the violence of a recurrent anti-Semitism, Sebastian questions its causes in this perceptive testimony, illuminating the ideological debates of the interwar period with wit, simplicity and vivacity"--
Also recently published in English, this 1934 Romanian work is fiction mirroring reality as Mihail Sebastian grapples with the rise of antisemitism and fascism in the years leading up to World War II. -Anne M
The silence of the spirits
Wilfried N'Sondé
FICTION Nsonde Wilfried
Fiction
What are the limits of empathy and forgiveness? How can someone with a shameful past find a new path that allows for both healing and reckoning? When Clovis and Christelle find themselves face-to-face on a train heading to the outskirts of Paris, their unexpected encounter propels them on a cathartic journey toward understanding the other, mediated by their respective histories of violence. Clovis, a young undocumented African, struggles with the pain and shame of his brutal childhood, abusive exploits as a child soldier, and road to exile. Christelle, a young French nurse, has her own dark experiences but translates her suffering into an unusual capacity for empathy, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Do you prefer more realism? In Wilfried N’Sondé’s “The Silence of the Spirits,” Clovis Nzila, an African migrant, and Christelle, a French nurse, sit next to each other on a suburban Paris train. On the surface, they may seem worlds apart, but after starting a conversation, they learn through telling their stories that there is more that unites them than divides them. -Anne M
The world goes on
László Krasznahorkai
FICTION Krasznah Laszlo
Fiction
In The World Goes On, a narrator first speaks directly, then tells eleven unforgettable stories, and then bids farewell (“for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me”). As László Krasznahoraki himself explains: “Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or a narrative…” A Hungarian interpreter obsessed with waterfalls, at the edge of the abyss in his own mind, wanders the chaotic streets of Shanghai. A traveler, reeling from the sights and sounds of Varanasi, encounters a giant of a man on the banks of the Ganges ranting on the nature of a single drop of water. A child laborer in a Portuguese marble quarry wanders off from work one day into a surreal realm utterly alien from his daily toils. The World Goes On is another amazing masterpiece by the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. “The excitement of his writing,” Adam Thirwell proclaimed in the New York Review of Books, “is that he has come up with this own original forms―there is nothing else like it in contemporary literature.”
Another great example of surrealist fiction. -Anne M
A thoughtful man and his faithful dog survive in the post-apocalyptic mountain west. The language is beautiful and the characters are worth knowing. I was sad to finish this one. -Tom