Literary Fiction

Book Buzz: Television by Lauren Rothery

Adult Fiction, Film, Literary Fiction, Performing Arts, Satire, Television & Radio

Lauren Rothery, photo credit the author “I had what feels to me like a bizarre, non-linear experience in the movie business. I was never a part of any union, and worked all kinds of non-union assisting jobs to finance my own projects, which had small crews and shot on film in a very guerilla fashion. I didn’t go to film school, so everything I learned about telling stories in that way came from asking a lot of questions of crew members on various sets, watching a lot of movies and interviews, and making things up as I went along.”
― Lauren Rothery, Interview, LitHub

What booksellers are saying about Television

A #metoo comedy? In the hands of Lauren Rothery, this debut novel can pull off the seemingly impossible, using acute observation (“She made a lot of four-hour friends”) to skewer everything from Hollywood to fame to podcast ads in a sprawling, yet somehow compact weave of texts and forms (conversations, screenplays, letters, etc). “Nobody walks in Los Angeles, but I liked to. It made me feel French.”
― Doron Klemer. Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana | BUY
A traipse through time and the relationship of a movie star and his best friend/lover/partner. Set in the glamor and depravity of Hollywood, Rothery turns modern feelings of appearances and sex, phones and art, love and grief into a timeless and impressionistic drama. With each unexpected turn and change of form, you’ll relate to each character more intrinsically. I couldn’t put this down!!!
― Ross Ramirez, E. Shaver, Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia | BUY
Such a fresh, nimble novel, with so much depth. An LA book that brilliantly explores film, art, fame, and the limits of each. It’s a story about uncanny love and the inconvenience of celebrity, about restlessness and contentment and the ways we move between them. Comparisons to Didion will abound, but I think Rothery’s formidable voice is entirely her own.
― Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama | BUY

About Lauren Rothery

Lauren Rothery was born in London and raised in San Diego. She spent her twenties writing and directing short films and music videos between New York and Los Angeles. In 2020, she moved to Europe and began writing fiction. Television is her first novel.

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Spotlight On: Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

Adult Fiction, Family Life, Literary Fiction, Siblings, Small Town & Rural, Supernatural, Thrillers

This story was absolute FUN to write. Yes, I have fun writing all my stories. Readers can see it in the humor I imbue in those tales, even when the topics are serious. But there was a different kind of freedom with The Dead Cat Tail Assassins. I wasn’t bound to our world. Or our histories. I wasn’t trying to deliver some deeper message on real-life colonialism or racism or the like. I set out to just tell a story that was fast-paced, punchy, full of action, thrills, and, when called-for, sheer hilarity. As I pitched it to my editor, this is John Wick meets Dungeons & Dragons.

― P. Djèlí Clark, Disgruntled Haradrim

What booksellers are saying about Dead Cat Tail Assassins

Clark has a way of drawing you in immediately to his elaborately created and detailed worlds of magic and mystery. You’re immediately thrown into a city in the midst of festival revelry where an incredibly deadly (and also dead) group of assassins are on the prowl. I love how Clark can make you feel so much empathy and compassion for an assassin; how his stories revolve around a code of ethics. Really well done and a lot of fun!
― Jamie Southern, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
First of all, you have to love a god that’s the patron of both assassins and chefs. This is another banger from Clark. So much vicious fun. Highly recommended!
― Robin Wood, Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida | BUY
A bloody romp of a good time—The Dead Cat Tails Assassins has the world-building of an epic without the overwhelming page count. It’s one of the most vivid and engrossing fantasies I’ve read in years. Absolutely not to be missed.
― Courtney Ulrich Smith, Underbrush Books in Rogers, Arkansas | BUY
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins leads you astray, trips your feet out from under you, and then dunks your head underwater, all in the span of one night. This novella is an action-packed romp through a gloriously rich and well-defined world. Clark crafts a succinct and enthralling story that carries you through till the last page, offering a wide cast of vivid characters (mostly assassins) who capture your attention and your heart. On top of all of that there lies a time paradox to challenge and twist your perception of the world itself.
― Faith Skowronnek, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina | BUY

About P. Djèlí Clark

Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. Djèlí Clark spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. He is the author of the novel A Master of Djinn and the novellas The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. He has won the Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards and been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Awards. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Apex, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies, including Griots, Hidden Youth, and Clockwork Cairo. He is also a founding member of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons.

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Spotlight On: Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

Adult Fiction, Family Life, Literary Fiction, Siblings, Small Town & Rural, Supernatural, Thrillers

It’s too easy to equate character strength with physical power. So what is strength? What does it mean to be truly tough? Is suffering what makes you strong? Is continuing to persist, to exist on your terms in the face of overwhelming opposition or little hope of change—is that strength? (Recently, reading K.X. Song’s novel An Echo In the City about the 2019 Hong Kong protests I was impressed with the characters’ repeated acknowledgment that they knew they couldn’t win and yet that was no reason to stop fighting). Is strength merely preserving some core kernel of your true self deep down when all the world tells you that what you are, what you believe, what you feel is not right, not okay, not even real? Does that internal personal act of truth and private rebellion equate with strength? Is real strength the ability to ask for what you want and keep asking? Is it the ability to make hard choices in the face of disappointment or compromise?

― Alisa Alering, Interview, We Are Grimoire

What booksellers are saying about Smothermoss

Alering thrills and excites with Smothermoss, the story of two sisters navigating adolescence and dark forces in the Appalachian mountains. Sprinkled with magic and charm, this lush adventure through the wilderness had me ensnared from the very first page..
― Alea Lopes, Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida | BUY
A hauntingly eerie tale about two sisters, Shelia and Angie, set in the 1980s Appalachia. When two hikers turn up brutally murdered, Shelia and Angie get roped into hunting the killer. The imagery in this novel was so raw and creepy. I haven’t looked at rabbits the same since finishing this book. Angie draws creepy tarot cards with images you would see in your worst nightmare. This is a weird novel but a fun one, trust me!
― Anna Anabseh, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia | BUY
I loved almost everything about this book: the imagery, the writing, the characters, and the magical “reality”. I can’t wait to see what this author writes next!
― Alexandra Bender, Fonts Books in McLeann, Virginia | BUY
A creeping mystery and a building sense of dread run through this story of self discovery. Smothermoss delivers absorbing imagery, troubling questions, and no easy answers, but but reminds the reader that life goes on regardless, and while there’s life, there’s hope.
― Arthur Acton, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina | BUY
A lyrically beautiful Southern Gothic story set in the Appalachian mountains, Smothermoss is an edge-of-your-seat yet gorgeous read. Two very different sisters exist in communion with the flora and fauna where the mountain plays a pivotal role. Both Sheila and Angie are trying to figure out their place in the world as kids in the 1980s. When a double murder in their small community put everyone on high alert, Angie is certain she can catch the killer. Smothermoss reads like a fairy tale with thrilling moments that could lead to devastation. Highly recommend.
― Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia | BUY

About Alisa Alering

Alisa Alering grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania and now lives in Arizona. After attending Clarion West, their short fiction has been published in Fireside, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Podcastle, and Cast of Wonders, among others, and been recognized by the Calvino Prize. A former librarian and science/technology reporter, they teach fiction workshops at the Highlights Foundation.

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Spotlight On: The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Grames

Adult Fiction, Amateur Sleuth, Historical, Italy, Literary Fiction, Mystery & Detective, World Literature

As a child, I was intensely proud of my Italian origins, as I understood them from the cultural products my wonderful grandparents bestowed upon me. It was only as I grew up and tried to read and learn more about Calabria and what it meant to be Calabrian that I realized how misunderstood and under-celebrated my grandmother’s homeland was. I became fixated on the idea of offering another perspective.

― Juliet Grames, Interview, Italics Magazine

What booksellers are saying about The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

Grames has given us Santa Chionia in full, all the life in this “dying” village in 1960s Calabria. Francesca, a twenty-seven year old American, leads the tour with her hopes, stubborness, smarts, and naivete, delightfully unnerving the wary locals. While we share in her revelations big and small. from a surprising bite of food, to the complicated history of the town itself, we inexorably move toward understanding the great mystery of who is The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia.
― Land Arnold, Letters Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina | BUY
Ooooh, this is a good one! Set in an isolated Italian village, it is so rich in detail, so deep in characterization, that it’s like eating dessert in a fine restaurant where you savor each bite, letting it linger on the palette, the memory staying with you long after you finish. That is what this was for me, a book that I read slowly (very unlike me) just so I could make it last. Easily one of my favorite books of the year so far!
― Pete Mock, McIntyre’s Books in Pittsboro, North Carolina | BUY
Another immersive novel from Juliet Grames! In Lost Boy, the author transports the reader to Southern Italy and unfurls a riveting story of young, idealistic Francesca, an American working to open a nursery school in the clifftop town of Santa Chionia. She gets pulled into the mystery of finding out who the skeleton discovered in the town is AND into the dark, ruthless politics of the secluded town. This was a real page-turner!
― Lynne Phillips, Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, Arkansas | BUY
Multi-genre book part historical fiction, part mystery. Francesca, a young American woman, travels to a remote Italian village to start a nursery school. In the village, she finds the residents secretive and unfriendly. When a flood uncovers a body under the post office she is drawn into the mystery of finding out the identity of the corpse.
― Kathy Clemmons, Sundog Books in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida | BUY

About Juliet Grames

Juliet Grames is the best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Real Simple, Parade, and The Boston Globe, and she is the recipient of an Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America. She is editorial director at Soho Press in New York.

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Spotlight On: Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler

Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

When I first started writing seriously, about 16 years ago, I wrote down conversations at restaurants, on the bus, anywhere I was just passing time, because I was trying to develop my ear. For a very brief while I also transcribed an hour or two a day of public access television, so it wasn’t just natural conversation I was interested in learning—or maybe ingraining is a better word. There was something strict about it. I would also try to write down conversations I’d had when I got home, and then deviate from what had actually been said, try to add in staircase wit, and then think about if that was actually better, or if it introduced something embarrassing to the interaction, and if it did, could I go from there to develop something new. I think the important thing is to become observant of both the world and of yourself, and see what flows from there. What you want to develop is insight, and (fortunately, I think) that looks different for every author and artist.

― Halle Butler, Interview, Our Culture

What booksellers are saying about Banal Nightmare

This is Halle Butler at her best. A witty, deadpan, meandering, and relatable story with a cast of characters who you love to loathe. This book felt like watching a reality TV show where you’re witnessing a group of people all seemingly competing among themselves to see whose life is secretly more fucked up, and they’re all winning.
― Maddie Grimes, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee | BUY
Mordant, funny, distressingly honest and a bit terrifying, Banal Nightmare crackles with humanity in all it’s complexity. If you don’t recognize yourself in these pages, you may hate these feckless, at times ugly, characters. If you do, you may still hate it, but you’ll hate it like like those who’ve done wrong hate being exposed. But it’ll thrill you in its fearlessness. Either way, Banal Nightmare will leave a mark on you. It blisters.
― Matt Nixon, A Cappella Books in Atlanta, Georgia | BUY
The title Banal Nightmare perfectly captures the boredom and anguish that permeates this bold novel about an artist/part-time social outcast who’s recently moved back to her hometown after leaving her narcissistic ex. Though the narration focuses on Moddie, an outrageously unlikable (sometimes sympathetic) protagonist, our perspective drifts to the shocking thoughts of the old friends, strangers, and enemies around her–all terrible in different ways. Butler’s writing is harsh, wild, and precise in its mockery. Moddie’s inner monologue as she attempts to fit in oscillates between painfully relatable and completely insane. Sadistic and brilliantly funny!
― Julia Lewis, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia | BUY

About Halle Butler

Halle Butler’s first novel, Jillian, was called the “feel-bad book of the year” by the Chicago Tribune. Her second novel, The New Me, was named a Best Book of the Decade by Vox and a Best Book of the Year by Vanity Fair, Vulture, Chicago Tribune, Mashable, Bustle, and NPR, and the New Yorker called it a “definitive work of millennial literature.” She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.

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Spotlight On: Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru

Adult Fiction, Friendship, Literary Fiction, Noir

I never used to reread. Then I started teaching and had to think of books I cared about enough to want to discuss with students. Now I reread a lot. I’ve discovered that if I pick up more or less anything I read before I was 30, it’s as if I’m reading it for the first time. It’s odd – the more I read, the less I feel I’ve read. The last “classic” I reread was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is one of those “over-familiar” books it has become fashionable to dismiss. I was, I think, just as enchanted by Gatsby’s forlorn love for Daisy as when I first read it as an A-level student.

― Hari Kunzru, Guardian

What booksellers are saying about Blue Ruin

I love Hari Kunzru’s writing. His alchemical style produces novels that are both page-turners and deep ruminations on the political and philosophical mores of the contemporary world. In Blue Ruin, Kunzru takes on the art world of London in the 1990s and the bizarre, time-still days that were the summer of 2020. Confronted with their past selves, three art school friends must reckon with the meaning and purpose of making art; how it intersects with authenticity, success, vmoney, survival, and truth.
― Elese Stutts, Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina | BUY
If art comes from the ineffable place where artist, intention and craft alchemize into something original, profound, provocative and memorable, then Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru is capital-A Art. I was spellbound.
― Matt Nixon, A Cappella Books in Atlanta, Georgia | BUY
One of our sharpest observers of contemporary Euro-American culture takes readers on a journey through the Fine Art ecosystem from school, friendships and ambition to money, class and careers, weaving in plenty of complex relationships and subtle drama along the way.
― Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky | BUY

About Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru is the author of six novels, Red Pill, White Tears, Gods Without Men, My Revolutions, Transmission, and The Impressionist. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, he is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and writes the “Easy Chair” column for Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

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Spotlight On: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

Kaliane Bradley | Photograph by Robin Christian

I was watching a TV show called The Terror. It aired in 2018, but I was watching it in lockdown 2021. And I was struggling to follow what was going on. It’s a great show, but I had lockdown brain. I just thought, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on. There are a lot of people that are all talking, they all look the same — they’re all white guys with mutton chops and big, arctic coats…” So I looked at the fan wiki. And under the bloopers section they referred to a guy called Graham Gore. I went to his Wikipedia page and read about him. And as I was reading it, I just thought, “My God, this man sounds so competent and chill and nice.” It was April 2021. I had just started a new job in January. And I hadn’t met any of my colleagues because we were still isolating, and I couldn’t get the VPN to work. And it was very stressful. I was like, “I bet Gore could get the VPN to work. I bet he wouldn’t cry. He’d just handle this lockdown. He’d have no problems and be fine.

So that’s why I kind of latched on to him.

― Kaliane Bradley, Bookweb

What booksellers are saying about The Ministry of Time

What if time travelers had tour guides to help them adjust? Maybe they would find things they like along the way – TV, pre-rolled cigarettes, the tour guide? Loved this books mixing timelines and people from a variety of eras and social classes. The history feels genuine and well researched (had to look up a picture of Graham Gore to see if he really was that cute) Time travelers trying to live a normal life, slowly discovering that things aren’t as simple as getting a job and taking care of your apartment. Just the right tone for the requisite love interests between historical and contemporary characters. Mowed right through this in a weekend.
― Doloris Vest, Book No Further in Roanoke, Virginia | BUY
I can’t remember the last time I was so charmed by a novel ― or more particularly, by a character in a novel. Lieutenant Graham Gore alone is worth the read, but thankfully he’s just part of an immensely satisfying reading experience. Time travel, espionage, explorations of climate change and colonialism, romance ― this book has it all. I highly recommend this book ― you will grin all the way through!
― Chelsea Bauer, union ave books in Knoxville, Tennessee | BUY
A “time travel romance, spy thriller, workplace comedy and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and potential for love to change it all”. I didn’t know how it would all work but it does. And it does it well. I instantly became invested in the characters and their journey. Highly recommend this “genre bender.”
― Kelley Barnes, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina | BUY
One part Bill Ted’s Excellent Adventure, one part James Bond, and two parts Kate and Leopold and you have this charming, engaging adventure that can not be put down! Bradley’s writing is a magic trick; the romance scintillates, the comedy delivers, and her discussion on identity is brilliant. Don’t miss this one!
― Dominic Howarthm, Book & Bottle in St. Petersburg, Florida | BUY

About Kaliane Bradley

Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short fiction has appeared in Somesuch Stories, The Willowherb Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Extra Teeth, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.

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The Mother of All Things by Alexis Landau

Adult Fiction, Family Life, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Women

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A lovely book about a woman leaning to find herself after losing her moorings in motherhood and marriage. This book is good. The suggestions of Greek Myth woven into the story are interesting but the story is much more about the marriage and motherhood than it is about Goddess and Greek Myth. The selected sources in the back are of great interest to anyone interested in those subjects and the story stands strong on its own as one woman reckoning with her choices in the past and every day.

The Mother of All Things by Alexis Landau, (List Price: 29, Pantheon, 9780593700792, May 2024)

Reviewed by Kimberly Daniels, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina

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Spotlight On: Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

Coming of Age, Fiction, Hispanic & Latino, Literary Fiction, Multiple Timelines

Xochitl Gonzalez, photo by Mayra Castillo

While this is absolutely a work of fiction, it comes from a deeply personal place to me. In some ways, this book has been percolating inside me since my own grandparents moved me from our walk-up in Brooklyn to College Hill nearly thirty years ago.

It was still, in those days, rare to be a Latina at Brown. I was part of a very small community of minority students that sat inside this larger school: a position that came with the comforts of an intimate collective, but all the challenges of feeling like a visitor to a dominant culture.

― Xochitl Gonzalez, Letter from the author

What booksellers are saying about Anita de Monte Laughs Last

An imaginative, inventive and interesting novel. Imaginative in putting together a historic event with present day significance, inventive in it’s use of magical realism, and interesting in its views on women in the arts, and privileged and unprivileged students in academia.
― Andrea Ginsky, Bookstore Number 1 LLC in Sarasota, Florida | BUY
Two days after I finished listening to this book, headlines broke that artist Carl Andre had died. Based on the life and work of Ana Mendieta and her husband, Carl Andrea, Gonzalez captures the ghostly rage of a woman murdered by her jealous husband while grounding the reader with a contemporary narrative that was extremely compelling.
― Adah Fitzgerald, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina | BUY
Wow, wow, wow. This one has fangs. Anita is pure fire. Add Xoxhitl to your list of authors to watch, if you haven’t already. This is a vibrant revenge/coming-of-age story with dual timelines, mirrored situations, and magical elements. It explores the art world, and who is seen and why. A love song to minority women, to up and coming artists, and to anyone that wants to be seen and heard for who they are, not who they know.
― Krista Roach, E. Shaver, bookseller in Savannah, Georgia | BUY
A deeply moving book of art, race, feminism and power in relationships. Raquel is a latina woman at Brown, when she decides to base her senior thesis on famous minimalist artist, Jack Martin, she uncovers his artist wife, Anita De Monte. Martin was accused of murdering Anita and successfully erased both her and her art from history after he was acquitted. A gripping story told from the multiple perspectives of Anita, Jack and Raquel.
― Kathy Clemmons, Sundog Books in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida | BUY

About Xochitl Gonzalez

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Award. Gonzalez is a 2021 MFA graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her nonfiction work has been published in Elle Decor, Allure, Vogue, Real Simple, and The Cut. Her commentary writing for The Atlantic was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.

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Spotlight On: The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Fiction, Hispanic & Latino, Literary Fiction

When I lost sight in one eye, I felt heartbroken that all my unrealized characters and their unfinished stories might not find the light of day. So, very slowly, with great frustration at first as I learned to work in new ways with compromised vision, I created a place where they could finally be finished. This is not my last book, or so I hope. I’m not yet ready to join my characters in the cemetery of untold stories.

― Julia Alvarez, Interview, Publishers Weekly

What booksellers are saying about The Cemetery of Untold Stories

I loved the cemetery setting filled with the characters whose unfinished stories were literally buried because the writer didn’t want to lose her mind with so many voices and tales rambling around in her head. She thought they would lie to rest and leave her be, but instead they burst to life, their stories pouring out to anyone who would listen. Imaginative, moving – a real joy to read!
― Cathy Graham, Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda, Florida | BUY
Alma, a successful novelist, is haunted by the stories she was never able to finish. When she inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she decides it is time to put those stories to rest, and creates a cemetery for her unfinished manuscripts. Her stories have other ideas. What follows is a fascinating, compelling examination of the nature of stories–why we tell them, who gets to hear them, and the nature of authorship itself.
― Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia | BUY
This is a novel idea! An author tries to bury her story but the characters come to life and try to change the plot to something they want. Magically told through this creative and fantastic authors voice you want to jump into the book to live the experience. I just couldn’t put it down. This is one that will stay under my skin for a long time.
― Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina | BUY

About Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

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Spotlight On: Blackouts by Justin Torres

Adult Fiction, Gay, Hispanic & Latino, LGBTQ+, Literary Fiction

I’m 43, about to be 44. The generation right above me is kind of a lost generation, wiped out by the pandemic, but not entirely wiped out, right? There are a lot of people from that generation that I’m friends with. And then, the generation above that is leaving the Earth all the time right now. But one thing that works as a through line down to my generation, is this idea that you laugh at yourself. It’s something in the queer sensibility, something about camp, a part of the lesson: Don’t take it too seriously. The world’s going to give you fucking shit. You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself.
― Justin Torres, Interview, Interview Magazine

What booksellers are saying about Blackouts

A beguiling collage of intimate conversations, lost histories, censored documents, imagined movies, regrets, and passions bound together with utmost care and a disarming tenderness. With Blackouts Torres has struck a perfect balance between generosity and restraint that will invite conversation, curiosity, and a hope for the future. Truly fine art.
― Luis Correa from Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA | Buy from Avid Bookshop
Blackouts is the first novel from Justin Torres in over a decade (if you haven’t read We the Animals, it’s beautiful!) and, trust me, it’s well worth the wait. Part ghost story, part personal narrative, part archival study, Blackouts is an incredible examination of cultural memory and what we lose when we erase queer histories. Blackouts is a beautiful testament to storytelling as an act of preservation.
― Lindsay Lynch from Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN | Buy from Parnassus Books
This book wrecked me in ways I can’t find words for and can’t stop talking about anyway. At its core, this is a story of two queer men sharing memories and talking about their lives, both of them knowingly hazy on the details and emotionally honest, but it’s also an intimate collage of factual records, fictional accounts, lived reality, erasure, and oral history. The result is a gift: a tender, challenging, loving retelling of queer experience that is nothing short of exquisite. Structurally inventive and emotionally expansive, this is a book to spend time with, to read what isn’t there as well as what’s left on the page, the redactions—and the act of redacting—inseparable from the story.
― Miranda Sanchez, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews, Raleigh, North Carolina | Buy from Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews

About Justin Torres

Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He was named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Tin House, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA.

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Family Lore \ Sabiduría familiar por Elizabeth Acevedo

Adult Fiction, Ficción, Fiction, Hispanic & Latino, Hispano y Latino, Literary Fiction, Spanish Language

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La primera novela para adultos de Acevedo es un homenaje al intermedio, ocupando los espacios entre los sueños y la realidad, la vida y la muerte, y la República Dominicana y los Estados Unidos. Contadas desde las perspectivas de las mujeres Marte, cuatro hermanas y sus dos hijas, toda la familia contempla las historias y las mujeres que las formaron, mientras se preparan para que su hermana mayor les diga que alguien está a punto de morir. Escrito en la tradición de Sandra Cisneros y otras autoras latinas, Acevedo teje una historia que te abraza con la fuerza de las limas de Yadi, negándose a soltarla mucho después de voltear la última página.

Sabiduría familiar por Elizabeth Acevedo, ($18.99, Ecco, 9780063207318, November 2023)

Reseña escrita por, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews en Chapel Hill, North Carolina

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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Adult Fiction, Fiction, Hispanic & Latino, Literary Fiction

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Acevedo’s first adult novel is a homage to the in-between, occupying the spaces between dreams and reality, life and death, and the Dominican Republic and the United States. Told from the perspectives of the Marte women, four sisters, and their two daughters, the whole family contemplates the stories and women who shaped them, as they prepare for their eldest sister to tell them someone is about to die. Written in the tradition of Sandra Cisneros and other Latina authors, Acevedo weaves a story that embraces you with the strength of Yadi’s limes, refusing to let go long after the last page is turned.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo, (List Price: $30, Ecco, 9780063207264, September 2023)

Reviewed by Sydney Mason, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

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Rouge by Mona Awad

Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

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A September 2023 Read This Next Book!

Reading this book felt a lot like moving through a dream. The surreal horror and red-soaked imagery stuck with me long after finishing the book. Mona Awad does an excellent job making commentary on beauty standards and the beauty industry in a very unique way. Plus, Tom Cruise!

Rouge by Mona Awad, (List Price: 28, S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books, 9781982169695, September 2023)

Reviewed by Hallee Israel, Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas

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Spotlight on: Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

Adult Fiction, Crime, Literary Fiction, Noir

“I think there’s a great deal of that blend of horror in the tradition where my work is rooted. I think about a writer like William Gay and a story like “The Paperhanger,” O’Connor and a character like the misfit or McCarthy’s Lester Ballard. That’s to say that is the tradition. With this book specifically, though, it was very much a treatise on violence. I wanted there to be moments the reader put the book down because they couldn’t face what was happening on the page. I wanted there to be moments that very same reader cheered the violence on with a fiery sense of vengeance and justice. I wanted the reader to recognize those moments and reactions and question the difference. Those were lofty goals that may very well have been unreached, but that was the intent. The difference in those two reactions speaks a great deal to our humanity.” ― David Joy, Interview, Daily Yonder

What booksellers are saying about Those We Thought We Knew

As another white North Carolinian tired of the nodding heads and silent, complicit racism dominating each environment I’ve ever lived in, I am so proud to know works like this can come from here. David Joy has reached a new level of expertise with this stunningly crafted work of art. He creates so many fully-fleshed voices and turns out a story that can only come from this place and this time. By the last line, I was ready to nominate him for a Pulitzer.
― Alissa Redmond from South Main Book Co in Salisbury, NC | Buy from South Main Book Company
David Joy understands the human condition and, in particular, the complexities, pain, love, and loyalty that live in so many rural areas of our country. His latest novel is a brilliant exploration of the things we cherish and the things for which we fight, the way we hold memories close, and the lies we tell ourselves to ensure the past remains pure.
― Leslie Logemann from Highland Books in Brevard, NC | Buy from Highland Books
I love David Joy’s books. They are raw and gritty and always give me a different perspective. His books can be quite full of violence (always fits well into the story), and this one at first did not appear as violent. However, I did reflect on what transpired in this new novel and realized it was actually full of racism and violence; it reminds the reader that whether you are in a big city or a small town, the same things are happening. His attention to detail, his ability to capture the talk of western NC locals, and his use of historical events all made me thoroughly enjoy and appreciate Joy’s newest novel.
― Suzanne Lucey from Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, NC | Buy from Page 158 Books

About David Joy

David Joy is the author of When These Mountains Burn (winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award), The Line That Held Us (winner of the 2018 SIBA Book Prize), The Weight of This World, and Where All Light Tends to Go (Edgar finalist for Best First Novel). Joy lives in Tuckasegee, North Carolina.

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