General Fiction
Blue Sisters.
By Coco Mellors.
Sept. 2024. 352p. Ballantine, $28.99 (9780593723760); e-book (9780593723777).
The three remaining Blue sisters are estranged and living very different lives. Avery is the oldest and has always cared for her sisters. She appears to have gotten her life together, having recovered from her addictions, and is a successful lawyer, married to a beautiful woman. Avery enjoys being needed, but ever since her sister Nicky died of an accidental overdose, she has been sabotaging her future. Bonnie was a champion fighter, up until Nicky’s death. After losing a match, Bonnie walked away from it all. Lucky is a beautiful model who flies all around the world, but her increasing dependency on drugs and alcohol is no longer deniable. An email from their mother informs them that she is selling their family home, and all the Blue sisters find their way back. Going home and facing their grief together helps the sisters see that they need to move forward. Sisterhood, grief, addiction, and hope are all themes Mellors (Cleopatra and Frankenstein, 2022) addresses here. This quick but powerful read is a must for fans of Jodie Chapman. —Crystal Vela
The Book Swap.
By Tessa Bickers.
Sept. 2024. 336p. Graydon, $27.99 (9781525836701).
Three years ago, Erin’s best friend, Bonnie, died. They had been friends since childhood, and Erin still struggles with her grief. James, the third person in their friendship, betrayed Erin when they were teens, and Erin has never forgiven him. After Erin rage-quits her awful job, she decides to follow Marie Kondo’s advice and let go of everything that doesn’t bring her joy. In the cleanup, one item, her annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, is accidentally given to a Little Free Library. Erin visits the site everyday hoping the book will be returned. When it is, it is filled with different annotations and an invitation to continue the “conversation” in Great Expectations. As the book pals write back and forth inside different classic novels, they slowly begin to fall in love; all the while not knowing that they have a prior connection. Told in alternating chapters between Erin and James, this is a lovely and lively tale of second chances, following one’s dreams, and books. Bickers deals with sensitive topics with a deft and delicate hand. While there is a sweet romance, family and all its messy complications are at the heart of this wonderful novel. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. —Lynnanne Pearson
The Border between Us.
By Rudy Ruiz.
Sept. 2024. 280p. Blackstone, $27.99 (9798212545266).
Ruiz (Valley of Shadows, 2022) is back with a flawed yet plucky hero in this realistic and heartfelt coming-of-age tale about Ramón Lopez, an ambitious Mexican American boy with big dreams. At a young age, Ramón regularly traverses the border that separates Mexico and Brownsville, Texas, (where the author was born) to accompany his hardworking father on errands for his U.S.-based tire-retreading business. He sees the poverty in Mexico and his dad’s never-ending financial struggles as reminders that pursuing success is everything. Unable to keep up with medical bills for Ramón’s disabled brother and cash-flow issues from failed businesses, the Lopez family moves to Matamoros, Mexico. Ramón, however, stays in Texas with his abuela, where he excels in stilllife painting. Going back and forth across the border to spend weekends with his family in Mexico, the dispirited Ramón is forcibly recruited to smuggle drugs. His dad intervenes and reluctantly allows Ramón to enroll in a New York art school, where he meets Clara, a wealthy white girl with influential art world connections. A life-changing event compels Ramón to ultimately recalibrate his vision of success. Ruiz has written a poignant tale about an endearing underdog’s pursuit of the American Dream. —Andrienne Cruz
YA: YAs will find plenty of impactful scenarios highlighting the universal value of strong family ties, hard work, and fortitude. AC.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife.
By Anna Johnston.
Sept. 2024. 336p. Morrow, $30 (9780063397293).
Australian debut author Johnston crafts a poignant tale of second chances and the lies we tell. After losing his wife to cancer, depleting his savings on her treatment, and facing the threat of losing his home, 82-year-old Frederick Fife has hit rock bottom. Bereft and alone, Fred meets Bernard Greer, a man who looks remarkably like him, and life takes an unexpected turn. Everyone believes Fred to be Bernard, a dementia patient in a nursing home, dismissing his claims of being someone else. So Fred seizes an unusual opportunity and assumes Bernard’s identity. As Fred navigates his new life, he brings joy and positivity to those around him. However, his newfound peace is disrupted by the arrival of Bernard’s estranged daughter, Hannah. Fred is faced with a moral dilemma: continue the deceit and build a relationship with Hannah, or reveal the truth and risk losing everything. This touching narrative explores themes of community, family, and the redemptive power of new beginnings, illustrating the impact of past choices and the potential for personal transformation. —Sarah Myers
Brothers and Ghosts.
By Khuê Phạm. Tr. by Daryl Lindsey and Charles Hawley.
Sept. 2024. 272p. Scribe, paper, $18 (9781957363790).
As a child of Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, Kiều grew up trying to blend in, going by the easier-to-pronounce name Kim. Her parents rarely spoke about Vietnam, or about her father’s family living in California. But when Kiều’s family Christmas celebration is interrupted by a call from her uncle Sơn, to tell her father, Minh, that their mother is dying, the call uncovers long-buried family secrets. Told from the alternating perspectives of Kiều, her father and her uncle Sơn, Brothers and Ghosts examines the experience of one southern Vietnamese family during the Vietnam War, and its long aftermath. Minh left Vietnam in the late 1960s to attend medical school in Germany, where he began to see the war from a different perspective; Sơn struggled to survive after the fall of Saigon in 1975, fleeing twice before finding refuge in California. Kiều travels to meet her extended family while questioning what she knows of her own heritage. Inspired by her own family, journalist Khuê Phạm tells a wrenching story of family, war, and memory. —Laura Chanoux
YA: YAs will appreciate Phạm’s nuanced portrayal of two brothers’ experiences on opposite sides of a war. LC.
Colored Television.
By Danzy Senna.
Sept. 2024. 288p. Riverhead, $29 (9780593544372); e-book (9780593544396).
The pitfalls and traps of artistic success are explored in the latest compelling novel by Senna (New People, 2017). Novelist and creative writing professor Jane and her family have an itinerant lifestyle, moving from one temporary home to another, never feeling settled. They begin house-sitting for a year in a tony Los Angeles neighborhood, while Jane takes a sabbatical to work on the novel about mixed-race characters in history that she’s been writing for years. When she submits it, it is roundly misunderstood, reflecting the way she’s felt as a mixed-race woman and artist for most of her life. Disillusioned and frustrated, she decides to try her hand at writing for television and successfully pitches a biracial comedy show, thus gaining an eye-opening perspective on the cutthroat world of television. Senna is adept at voice and character. Jane is portrayed with humor and pathos, her wry, revealing observations throughout the novel make the story engaging. The Los Angeles and Hollywood settings are vividly described, and Senna’s insights about identity, parenthood, and creativity are sure to captivate readers. Give to fans of Erasure (2001). —Allison Escoto
Creation Lake.
By Rachel Kushner.
Sept. 2024. 416p. Scribner, $29.99 (9781982116521).
She had planned to earn a PhD in rhetoric at Berkley. Instead, the narrator in Kushner’s surprising and delectable fourth novel, following The Mars Room (2018), became a secret agent versed in undermining social justice movements. A gig with the federal government went disastrously wrong, and now this tough, polylingual, snidely witty 34-year-old adept at weaponizing her good looks is in rural France. Her assignment is to infiltrate a radical farming cooperative her shadowy employers believe is intent on sabotaging the building of a “massive industrial reservoir.” Calling herself Sadie Smith, she has seduced a Frenchman from a prominent family in the region and commandeered their 300-year-old house in the Guyenne Valley while he’s away. Her spying includes intercepting and reading emails sent by the group’s cave-dwelling guru, Bruno Lacombe, who shares provocative, inadvertently hilarious, ultimately affecting theories about Neanderthals, caves, and the deep subterranean “lake of our creation.” This ecstatic vision of the collective human experience shimmers in stark opposition to the corporate plan to extract and lock up the valley’s groundwater. Kushner’s long fascination with underground rebels and their uprisings attains new depths and resonance in this bravura improvisation on the secret-agent trope; this brain-spinning tale of lies, greed, surveillance, crimes against nature, and ecowarriors; this searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature. —Donna Seaman
Elaine.
By Will Self.
Sept. 2024. 304p. Grove, $27 (9780802163530); e-book (9780802163547).
Elaine Hancock has ambitions and aspirations, most of which are suffocated in the service of meeting the demands of her husband, John, a Cornell professor and Milton scholar, and the needs of their young son, Billy. When Elaine asks herself, “Is this it?”, she articulates a common frustration of the 1950s housewife and, indeed, women throughout history. In fact, this story draws heavily on the diaries of Self’s own mother. Elaine feels caged by her domesticity, suffers from postpartum depression, and smokes heavily. She also has an affair, fantasizes about John’s colleagues, battles suicidal ideation, and imagines drowning Billy in the bathtub. John was obsessed with the battle between God and Satan. Elaine lived it (“if you feel the yawning mouth of the abyss—it can only be because you want to… fill it”). Self, the author of a dozen novels, including Phone (2017), and whose previous book was the memoir, Will (2020), draws a deft character study that balances social criticism (Elaine worries that John’s ill-kempt, wrinkled shirt will get her labelled a slattern) with the strive toward personhood. —Bill Kelly
Entitlement.
By Rumaan Alam.
Sept. 2024. 288p. Riverhead, $30 (9780593718469).
Thirtysomething Brooke Orr is hoping for a career reboot as program coordinator for the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation. A billionaire many times over, Asher wants to give away his money before he dies and Brooke’s job is to help find causes worthy of financial support. Brooke decides that a local New York City children’s art nonprofit is deserving of charity, even if its Black owner remains unconvinced. When her best friend and younger brother begin to settle into comfortable lives, Brooke wonders: Can Asher Jaffee rescue her too, while he’s at it? After all, as one character questions, “what we were taught—get a job, work hard, save, be prudent, buy a little place of your own, contribute to the goddamn economy, do the thing that makes the world go round—is that even possible for us?” Alam follows his best-selling Leave the World Behind (2021) with this visceral and absolutely mesmerizing novel of power plays and capitalism. He gives a shout-out to Sylvia Plath, who once said, “How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to.” Brooke, however, doesn’t quite buy that argument. She knows we can find security through other paths, even if we risk flying too close to the sun. —Poornima Apte
Everything We Never Knew.
By Julianne Hough and Ellen Goodlett.
Aug. 2024. 320p. Sourcebooks/Landmark, $23.99 (9781464235719); e-book (9781464217975).
Lexi has it all—a handsome, doting husband; a gorgeous home; and a successful career in real estate. But beneath the polished exterior is a woman beset by unresolved trauma—her father’s abandonment, her mother’s cold dissatisfaction, and a miscarriage she has hidden from her family and friends. Then something strange occurs at her company gala, and Lexi realizes that her life needs to change. She quits her job and connects with Bea, the owner of a local occult shop, who helps her explain what happened: Lexi has the ability to see and heal people’s psychic energy. Bea agrees to train Lexi, but learning to heal others will require Lexi to heal herself first. But skeptical friends and family feel threatened by her newfound passion forwoman coping with her quarter-life crisis in an unexpected way. Lexi’s connections to the people in her life are authentic and moving, and the details of energy healing are thoughtfully presented. Readers will applaud Lexi’s reinvention; suggest this to fans of Heather Webber. —
