A previously unpublished novel by a literary master, Skylight tells the intertwined stories of the residents of a faded apartment building in 1940s Lisbon.
Silvestre and Mariana, a happily married elderly couple, take in a young nomad, Abel, and soon discover their many differences. Adriana loves Beethoven more than any man, but her budding sexuality brings new feelings to the surface. Carmen left Galicia to marry humble Emilio, but hates Lisbon and longs for her first love, Manolo. Lidia used to work the streets, but now she’s kept by Paulo, a wealthy man with a wandering eye.
read more
Winner of the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize
Debut novelist Lesley Jørgensen delivers a rich, funny delight of a novel in which the “marriage plot” is on dazzling display. But as scandals, secrets, culture clashes, and misunderstandings abound—how will anyone find time for love?
Mrs. Begum is the doting, anxious mother of three grown children—Tariq, an art curator with a secret he’s not quite ready to share with his parents; her baby, Shunduri, the pampered princess of the family; and her daughter Rohimum, who has returned home to rural England in shame. Mrs. Begum is determined to marry them off,
read more
A Publishers Weekly 2014 Best Summer Book
Almost everyone in town blames eight-year-old Violet Morgan for the death of her nine-year-old sister, Daisy. Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night opens on September 4, 1913, two months after the Fourth of July tragedy. Owen, the girls’ father, “turns to drink” and abandons his family. Their mother Grace falls victim to the seductive powers of Grief, an imagined figure who has seduced her off-and-on since childhood. Violet forms an unlikely friendship with Stanley Adamski, a motherless outcast who works in the mines as a breaker boy.
read more
My Sunshine Away unfolds in a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom. But in the summer of 1989, when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—experiences a horrible crime late one evening near her home, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of Southern suburbia has a dark side, too.
In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love.
read more
Elegantly simple fairy tales of strangeness and wonder from a master of the form.
No one has done more for the contemporary fairy tale than Kate Bernheimer. In eight new stories, she leads us into a forest of everyday magic and misfits, where dinosaurs wear pajamas and talking dolls ruin your life. Elegant and brutal, Bernheimer’s latest collection locates the existential loveliness of ideas amidst the topsy-turvy logic of things. This collection renews classic stories with intelligent wonder. Like one of Bernheimer’s girls, whose hands of steel turn to flowers, the reader will marvel.
read more
Driven to despair by the intimate traumas of family, a nameless woman uses her sexuality as a weapon and shield. Eimear McBride’s acclaimed debut tells the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumor, touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma.
Read our interview with the author on the Reading Group Choices blog!
read more
