Literary

Spotlight On: West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman

Crime, Literary, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators

Dann McDorman, photo credit Beowulf Sheehan

Q: Why set the novel in the 70s?
A: The superficial reason is that it was fun! The hairstyles alone defy belief…The zeitgeist of the 1970s felt intensely familiar to me. We’d lost trust in institutions and in each other; the old solutions didn’t work; the new ones seemed inadequate; a creeping disillusionment had overtaken the best of us, while the worst seemed full of passionate intensity. As an era, the 1970s seems extraordinarily relevant to writers and readers today.
― Dann McDorman, Interview, Bloomsbury UK

What booksellers are saying about West Heart Kill

This one is an absolute must read for devotees of the classic mystery genre. Unique in concept while at the same time holding true to the classic formulae that make the mystery novel so intriguing to us. In this tale we join Adam McAnnis, a somewhat sketchy private eye who joins a list of colorful characters on a long weekend getaway to a private hunting lodge. As the weekend progresses and the bodies start piling up we partner with Adam as he investigates the twisted relationships and subtle clues that will help him find the killer (or killers?). Interspersed in the story are vignettes by the author who leads us on an academic study of the mystery novel that at times almost seems to mock both the reader and the genre itself while at the same time crafting an entertaining and thoroughly complex and mesmerizing mystery thriller. If for nothing more than for it’s unique approach to story telling, for true fans of the mystery novel, you owe it to yourself to enjoy this one.
― Brent Bunnell, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC | Buy from Fiction Addiction
Wow! This book is entirely captivating and such an interesting take on the mystery genre. Adam McAnnis, detective and friend of one of West Heart Hunting Club’s founding family members, is allowed to join the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive club. All seems relatively normal, but with a mystery it never really is normal, is it? Murder, lies, old money, infidelity, and an unreliable narrator voice guide this story, and McDorman bends the book’s structure in a way that I have never seen before, making comments about the genre, plot, characters, and reader as it moves along to make for a fully immersive experience. Loved it!
― Kalynn Simpkins, Underground Books in Carrollton, GA | Buy from Underground Books
Everything about this novel was new and invigorating. I’ve never come across storytelling in this way especially with mysteries. The author subverts the status quo of mystery point of view. Always have the focus on one person or never give in depth insights into the detectives thoughts. With West Heart Kill, we are integrated into every single part of the story. The use of first, second, and third omniscient POVs was a little jarring at first, but once you get used to it, you can understand the utilization of them. Mysteries lay out the clues so that the reader can solve the crime along with the detective, but with this novel, you’re the detective. You are in the book. You’re being guided by the author as if he was writing YOUR story. You are given quizzes, clues, and questions from the character themselves. Though we do follow the main character, we are also the main character, and that experience made this one of my favorite novels I’ve read this year.
― Ae Fuller from Novel in Memphis, TN | Buy from Novel
This book is a ball to read. For obvious reasons: because it scratches that edge-of-your-chair itch, because it’s a 1976 period drama, because it’s full of rich people behaving badly, etc. And for not so obvious reasons: because the narrator acknowledges our presence as readers (!), because Mc Dorman offers us a history of the mystery genre (!!), because well it’s so darn funny and surprising (!!!)
― Laura Cotten from Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL | Buy from Thank You Books

About Dann McDorman

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

21st Century, Adult Fiction, Coming of Age, Fiction, Humorous, Ireland, Literary, World Literature

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I feel very fortunate to have had read this beautiful book. Autism is so hard and not having anyone in my family with it, I only know what I hear. When these 3 characters come together to help build a boat they bond and learn so much about themselves and each other. People are afraid of what they don’t understand and autism is one of those things we just don’t know enough about. It’s hard enough to be a freshman in high school, compound that with being different. This is a love story for the 3 generations involved. I guarantee you will see the world a bit differently after.

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney, (List Price: $17.95, Biblioasis, 9781771965859, November 2023)

Reviewed by Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Adult Fiction, African American & Black, Banned Books, Historical, Literary, Sagas

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Yaa Gyasi reinvents the notion of historical fiction in this haunting, sweeping tale of enslavement, colonialism, power, greed, despair, determination, and hope. I was captivated from page one! She brings to life the human cost of surviving the larger, often brutal, forces driving history through the gripping, visceral story of one extended family. Three hundred years of history come to life: from Ghana to Harlem and more as we follow their fates across continents and through time. A very moving book.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, (List Price: $16.95, Vintage, 9781101971062, May 2017)

Reviewed by Liz Feeney, E. Shaver, bookseller in Savannah, Georgia

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Adult Fiction, Banned Books, Family Life, Literary, Women

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Fates and Furies offers a sharp portrait of a modern marriage, an eminently flexible partnership, still full of dark corners and locked rooms. We follow first Lotto’s perspective and then Mathilde’s through the full arc of this for-better-or-worse, and the result is a dynamic and quick-footed novel, Lauren Groff at the height of her powers. Lotto and Mathilde’s physical connection is hot and brutal and sometimes strange. The echoes of Shakespearean tragedy, of mythology, even allegory give their relationship resonant heft, while the storyline keeps the dirt of real life under their nails. I really, really loved Mathilde: her sheer darkness and fierce love for Lotto, her deep flaws and careful veneer. She was sympathetic and awful and familiar and pragmatic and true. This book is smart—about women and wives, marriage and art—and beautiful, and going to be talked about for a long, long time.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, (List Price: $18.00, Riverhead Books, 9781594634482, September 2015)

Reviewed by Ashley Warlick, M. Judson, Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

21st Century, Adult Fiction, Ireland, Literary, Short Stories (single author), World Literature

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So Late in the Day is brilliantly written with Keegan’s beautiful prose. The underlying theme in the stories is the fractured relationships between a man and woman, told with a nuanced tension that grips the reader from beginning until end. A quietly delightful, tense, and gripping read.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, (List Price: $20, Grove Press, 9780802160850, November 2023)

Reviewed by Kelley Barnes, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina

Absolution by Alice McDermott

21st Centur, 21st Century, Adult Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Literary, World Literature

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There’s so much I could say about this epistolary novel set in 1963 Saigon and confessing to the lives of two American wives in Ho Chí Minh’s Vietnam, but for now, I’ll say: Alice McDermott is (maybe) my favorite living novelist, and Absolution is (maybe) her best novel yet.

Absolution by Alice McDermott, (List Price: $28, Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 9780374610487, 2023-10-31)

Reviewed by Laura Cotten, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Fiction, Literary, Southern Book Prize Finalist

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This book is no mere pick of the month. This is the kind of book that comes along once in a generation. The kind of book that makes us want to open bookstores. The kind of book that will be required reading for our children and grandchildren as they go through school. The kind of book that will be filmed page by page and line by line because there is not one thing about it that needs to be changed. I can only hope that we are ready to let this book change us. This is a story that needed to be told, but couldn’t be told without a great deal of pain. For Jesmyn Ward to explore this territory and tell this story amid her own personal grief is an act of bravery. It is an act of service to American society to tell this story no matter how hard it got, and to withhold shortcuts and saviors and swooping gestures, to force us to look at the honest truth of the human toll of our history. And it is an act of love to each and every individual who we will never know but whose story this could be.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, (List Price: $28, Scribner, 9781982104498, March 2023)

Reviewed by Emily Liner, Friendly City Books in Columbus, Mississippi

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Adult Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary, Southern Book Prize Finalist, Women

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n immersive trip through Southern Gothic Early America. The narrative follows a lone girl down the Potomac River, from Jamestown and into the unknown. Nameless or many-named like a barn-cat drifter, Girl wields caution, imagination and a blade to survive the crystalline forests of Virginia and Maryland. She drafts off a peloton of memories–as the British orphan, the mistress’s servant, Bess’s friend, the glassblower’s lover—that pull her forward to eat dirt and vibe with a bear in the present. It’s all about the stories that keep us alive. Groff’s easy and percussive writing, along with her use of time, space and inner dialogue, create an immediacy that had me trying to locate Girl’s coordinates on a map so I wouldn’t lose her. Captivating. Awesome. Great.

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff, (List Price: $28, Riverhead Books, 9780593418390, September 2023)

Reviewed by Jackie Carlson, Tombolo Books in St Petersburg, Florida

Spotlight on: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Adult Fiction, Gay, Historical, LGBTQ+, Literary

In my teenage years, when I first read Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, I was intrigued to discover that he had based it on Ethel Proudlock’s trial in Kuala Lumpur in 1911. She was the first white woman to be charged with murder in Malaya. She claimed that the man she had shot dead had tried to rape her in her home.

The House of Doors is about many things, but at the heart of it all, it is really about the acts of creation: how Maugham had come to hear about the trial, and how he had transmuted it into his story. It’s about the power of stories, how they can transcend cultures and borders, transcend even time itself.
― Tan Twan Eng, Interview, The Booker Prizes

What booksellers are saying about The House of Doors

I walked the streets of Penang along side Somerset Maugham. I felt the rough paths beneath my feet, as the clatter of Mah jong tiles felll from a doorway. We were on our way to the House of Doors. My fingers caressed the worn wood of its front door. But neither of us gained entry. Entry was reserved for others. This is a rare book. All my senses were captured by Tan Twan Eng. The pages glowed with atmosphere as the story propelled me into the lives of Cassawary House. Best book I’ve read this year.
― Trish O’Neill, MacIntosh Books & Paper in Sanibel, FL | Buy from Macintosh Books & Paper
Gorgeously written with strong characters telling the tale of Malaysia between the two wars. Who knew I needed to know all of this. We sometimes focus on what happened to us. This story will get right under your skin. I am a huge fan of Somerset Maughn and loved this story that drops him in there. Based on real events you are invited into this world and you won’t be the same!
― Suzanne Lucey from Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, NC | Buy from Page 158 Books
Nobody transports a reader in time and place like Tan Twan Eng. Bringing the same beautiful, lyrical writing as he did in The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists, he sends readers back in time to 1921 when writer Somerset Maugham arrives in Penang at a crossroads in life. The House of Doors reads like a magical look back in time into the life of one of my favorite writers as well as an entirely new story whose layers unfurl one a time, revealing an overlapping web of love, friendship, power and more.
― Beth Seufer Buss from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC | Buy from Bookmarks

About Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang but lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker. His second, The Garden of Evening Mists, was a major international bestseller, shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker, and winner of the Man Asia Literary Prize 2012 and the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. It was adapted into an award-winning film in 2019, directed by Tom Lin. Twan divides his time between Malaysia and South Africa.

Good Books for Bad Children by Beth Kephart

Biography & Autobiography, Children, Juvenile Nonfiction, Literary

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Most of our beloved classic children’s authors (think Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, E. B. White, John Steptoe, and so many more!) have books in the world thanks to efforts of one formidable woman—Ursula Nordstrom. This brilliant biography displays her awesomely unorthodox approach to children’s literature and her wily sense of humor, all while celebrating the unique books she ushered into the world.

Good Books for Bad Children by Beth Kephart, (List Price: $18.99, Anne Schwartz Books, 9780593379578, September 2023)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Bookseller, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

Spotlight on: Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Adult Fiction, Literary

Jesmyn Ward, photo Credit Beowulf Sheehan

In each book since my second novel, there has been a wild animal presence: a dog, a snake, and a great black vulture…I like to think they are reflections of the natural world, but I also believe they are something more, that they are the manifestations of that which does not operate by human logic. They exist in a liminal space, fierce and free and mysterious. They are both ordinary and divine, and they bear proof that there is more to this world than we know.
― Jesmyn Ward, Interview, LitHub

What booksellers are saying about Let Us Descend

This book is no mere pick of the month. This is the kind of book that comes along once in a generation. The kind of book that makes us want to open bookstores. The kind of book that will be required reading for our children and grandchildren as they go through school. The kind of book that will be filmed page by page and line by line because there is not one thing about it that needs to be changed. I can only hope that we are ready to let this book change us.This is a story that needed to be told, but couldn’t be told without a great deal of pain. For Jesmyn Ward to explore this territory and tell this story amid her own personal grief is an act of bravery. It is an act of service to American society to tell this story no matter how hard it got, and to withhold shortcuts and saviors and swooping gestures, to force us to look at the honest truth of the human toll of our history. And it is an act of love to each and every individual who we will never know but whose story this could be.
― Emily Liner, Friendly City Books in Columbus, MS | Buy from Friendly City Books
One year after her sire sold and marched her mother south, he does the same to enslaved teen Annis. In the depths of Louisiana bound in rope and destitution, Annis must use the extensive knowledge of combat and foraging imparted to her by her mother, and by her warrior grandmother before her, to transcend her squalor and claim her humanity. Let Us Descend is an often-painful story with an excellent lead character whose story is explicitly her own to wrangle. Largely, it is about one family’s generational fight so that each descendant may have a better life than the last.
― Sam Edge from Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, NC | Buy from Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews
Let Us Descend is a novel of American slavery loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. Through many circles of hell you are led on a heart-wrenchingly powerful journey. Annis struggles through the soul-searching harrowing hellish march from the Carolinas to Lousiana, in shackles. She speaks to her mother and her african warrior grandmother, and mystical spirits of good and bad. These memories and spirits comfort and strengthen her on this journey. She finds love and loses love, and this love becomes her measure of love. All very strong women at every turn. This a powerfully magnificent novel with an absolute break-neck breath-taking end.
― Amy Loewy from Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, LA | Buy from Garden District Bookshop
A visceral and haunting gut-punch of a novel. Annis’s journey through the hell of the American South’s antebellum era is harrowing but her spirit and tenacity will keep you turning the page with bated breath. The gorgeous writing, and magical realism of Let Us Descend will stay with you long after you finish.
― Chelsea Bauer from Union Ave Books in Knoxville, TN | Buy from Union Ave Books

About Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Adult Fiction, Coming of Age, Fiction, LGBTQ+, Literary

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An October Read This Next! Book

There are two things I expect from a Bryan Washington narrative: food rendered so exquisitely I could lick the page and an emotional excavation so expansive it swallows the book and me with it. Family Meal delivered on these expectations and more. It’s propulsive and harrowing, the brittle edges of its characters encapsulating a world and giving way to its perfectly tender center.

Family Meal by Bryan Washington, (List Price: 28, Riverhead Books, 9780593421093, October 2023)

Reviewed by Miranda Sanchez, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Adult Fiction, Fiction, Literary

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An October Read This Next! Book

History, family, community, and the all encompassing power of life in the face of brutality are abundant in Ward’s work, no less here in Let Us Descend. I was floored by the story of Annis, a young woman enslaved and sold down to a Louisiana plantation. Through her connections (both physical and spiritual), Annis builds a life and a future beyond loss. With a slight twist of magical realism and always brilliant prose, Jesmyn Ward has delivered another amazing novel and gift to readers.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, (List Price: 28, Scribner, 9781982104498, October 2023)

Reviewed by Michelle Cavalier, Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs, Louisiana

Spotlight on: North Woods by Daniel Mason

Adult Fiction, Historical, Literary, Nature & Environment

“You know, even though I’ve – I love writing about nature, I had previously really mostly written about nature as a kind of setting. And this time around, I thought, I want to write about it as a kind of protagonist. What would it be like to treat it like I treat my human characters? And, of course, all the good stuff that makes up the stories that we want to hear about human characters – all the drama, the sex, the violence, the treason – are ones that we can find in the natural world, as well.”
― Daniel Mason, Interview, NPR

What booksellers are saying about North Woods

Daniel Mason’s North Woods is a masterful literary art form exploring the four-hundred-year history of the woods surrounding a particular house in western Massachusetts. Mason uses songs, journals, letters, medical notes, and other techniques to share the lives of those who live, love, suffer, create, and die there. The manner in which this book reveals the life cycles of flora and fauna is lyrical, respectful, and full of wonder and awe. Throughout North Woods humanity shapes and changes the environment, but the natural world very much reveals itself to be omnipotent.
― Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia | Buy from Avid Bookshop
In times like these, art’s what gets us through. In North Woods, Mason meets us head-on: our fear of change, our place in nature, what it is we owe to the ancestors. It’ll be compared to The Overstory but its similarity to Lincoln in the Bardo ― the stories of those who came before us ― is what it recalls. That said: Mason’s his own man and his own master and doesn’t really need to be compared to anyone at all. He sits, at the top of the mountain, with the those to whom we give our eternal thanks for books we love.
― Erica Eisdorfer, Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina | Buy from Flyleaf Books
Majestic and sprawling and a grand ol’ adventure through time of one singular, special place starring as the ultimate main character with deep ties that bind these stories into one. Incredible.
― Jill Naylor from Novel in Memphis, TN | Buy from Novel.
I read Daniel Mason’s book, North Woods, on a trip across the country. In the car, when I finished the last page, I turned to my husband and said, “Oh my gosh—I’ve got to start reading this again immediately!” Spanning around 400 years of inhabitants of a house in Massachusetts, this novel is haunting and haunted. Mason makes use of many literary forms, including the loveliest poetry and epistolary writing, to tell the story of the intertwined lives of the people who lived in the yellow house with the orchard of Wonder apples.
― Mamie Potter from Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC | Buy from Quail Ridge Books

About Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted for opera and the stage, and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His short stories and essays have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award, and an O. Henry Prize. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University department of psychiatry.

Wellness by Nathan Hill

Adult Fiction, Family Life, Fiction, Humorous, Literary

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Nathan Hill has done it again! Wellness is so good, I think my heart both broke and grew at the same time, while reading it. Hill’s ability to capture both the beauty and horror of life are astounding. There is so much more I could say about this book, but I don’t want to spoil the magic of it for other readers! "Behind curtains, this, he thinks, is what lovers do-they are alchemists and architects; they invent the world around them." Indeed, this is what lovers do. Thank you for this wonderful book!

Wellness by Nathan Hill, (List Price: 30, Knopf, 9780593536117, September 2023)

Reviewed by Jessica Osborne, E. Shaver Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia

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