Fiction
1. Isadora by Amelia Gray
(5 Rave, 1 Mixed)
“Gray is a gutsy, utterly original writer, and this is the finest work she’s done so far. Isadora is a masterful portrait of one of America’s greatest artists, and it’s also a beautiful reflection on what it means to be suffocated by grief, but not quite willing to give up.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
Read an excerpt from Isadora here
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2. The Thirst by Jo Nesbø
(4 Rave, 2 Positive, 2 Mixed)
“Nesbø’s greatest strength as a novelist is the way he places two opposing forces in battle: the perverse criminal and the compulsive detective. In Nesbø’s consistently excellent Hole series, The Thirst may well be the pinnacle.”
–Eric Swedlund (Paste)
*
3. Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
(2 Rave, 5 Positive)
“This is a story packed with wicked and wickedly funny confessions about a host of hallowed subjects … Woman No. 17 tastes like a juice box of suburban satire laced with Alfred Hitchcock … The disclosures that Lepucki engineers in this smart novel are sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, always irresistible.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
*
4. Augustown by Kei Miller
(3 Rave, 2 Positive)
“Miller shows how the dominance of its brutal history lies just beneath the surface of everyday life; it runs through the island and Augustown like water. But his is a slippery tale, an old-time story. The beguiling simplicity of the narrative and prose yields to the profound realisation that for the people of Augustown, the only way to ‘fly away to Zion’ is through death; and some indeed are prepared, are ‘ready fi dead.'”
–Colin Grant (The Guardian)
*
5. Broken River by J. Robert Lennon
(2 Rave, 3 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“…a stunning novel that doesn’t shy away from its well-rounded—if disparate—characters and their consequences. While a less-talented writer would wrap up the drama with a nice bow, Lennon chooses to meet violent responses with a poignant dose of reality.”
–Pete Mercer (Paste)
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Non Fiction
1. Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks
(3 Rave, 3 Positive)
“Churchill & Orwell is an eminently readable, frankly inspirational and exceptionally timely tribute to the two men Simon Schama called ‘the architects of their time.’ It is to be hoped that their counterparts in intellectual clarity and moral courage are among us today.”
–Patricia L. Hagen (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
*
2. Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg
(2 Rave, 2 Positive)
“…an exhaustive and transfixing new biography … Rosenberg had uncovered an astonishingly complex individual who was as petrified of being found out for her nontraditional gender identity as she was outspoken about human rights.”
–Karen Iris Tucker (Slate)
*
3. There’s a Mystery There: The Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak by Jonathan Cott
(3 Rave, 1 Positive, 2 Mixed)
“In this riveting account of Sendak’s vision, Mr. Cott captures the pain and glory of the creative process: moments of soaring grandiosity and times of grinding struggle, of words and images that won’t come or that come in the wrong way.”
–Megan Cox Gurdon (The Wall Street Journal)
*
4. Give a Girl a Knife by Amy Thielen
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“……charts the beautiful winding path that led the author from rural Minnesota to high-stakes Michelin-starred restaurants in New York—in search of what she thought was culinary sophistication—and then back to Minnesota, and a cabin in the woods built by her artist husband … The author makes even [the familiar] passages memorable with her attention to the sensory world of these kitchens.”
–Georgia Pellegrini (The Wall Street Journal)
*
5. Shtum by Jem Lester
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 2 Mixed)
“This is a remarkable book, at once hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, written with the glum humour only Brits can carry off … Lester drew on his and his wife’s experience with their autistic child in creating this entirely plausible yet surreal portrait.”
–Sarah Murdoch (The Toronto Star)
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