Shorter days, longer nights, but still time to be enticed by a new title! A range of general fiction, romance, mystery, and more await your discovery.
12/5: All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Sunday Forrester, who is autistic, lives a happy, well-ordered life with her strong-willed teenage daughter, Dolly. When charming new neighbors move in, Sunday and Dolly initially find great community with them, until hidden dark motives emerge from these new friends. Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. (general fiction)
12/5: The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild by Mathias Énard, translated by Frank Wynne
In this comic novel, anthropology student David Mazon leaves Paris for what he thinks is a standard rural village. Little does he know that the Wheel of Life underpins everything, with every living thing the reincarnation of something else. And each year, Death takes a break, and the gravediggers party. (general fiction)
12/5: The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann
An archivist looks back on his life, including the missed love of his youth, weighing paths not taken even as he perhaps gets a second chance at that romance. (general fiction)
12/5: The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy
In contemporary Ireland, women with lives of scarcity search for hope and possible futures. (short stories)
12/5: Five Bad Deeds by Caz Frear
Ellen has what seems like the perfect life, making normal mistakes, until she gets an anonymous letter that someone is going to make her pay for the bad things she’s done. Can she figure out who sent the letter before the promised consequences hit too close to home? (thriller)
12/5: Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero
In her early 30s, Flores still lives in Brooklyn with her mother, Paula, who emigrated from Peru. They’re grappling with a strained relationship and lingering grief three years after the death of beloved father and husband Martín. Notified that they must leave their apartment, they search for a way forward. (general fiction)
12/5: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
In 1789 Maine, midwife Martha Ballard is called to identify the cause of death for a respected town member found frozen in the river. When the local doctor overrides Martha to declare it an accident, Martha investigates the murder on her own as scandal engulfs the town. (historical fiction)
12/5: The Gentleman’s Gambit by Evie Dunmore
British suffragette and academic Catriona is quite busy, thank you, but finds herself playing host to her father’s colleague Elias Khoury. Elias, ostensibly at Oxford to classify artifacts, is instead more interested in repatriation of said artifacts. However, attraction threatens to derail both their plans. (romance)
12/5: Lost Hours by Paige Shelton
Beth Rivers is settling into her new home after nearly a year in Alaska. While she’s on a tourist boat to see glaciers, the crew rescues a bloody woman who says she was kidnapped. When another person is kidnapped, Beth and the local police chief connect the dots. (mystery)
12/5: The Mayors of New York by S.J. Rozan
Private investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are asked to surreptitiously find the missing – presumed runaway – teenage son of the mayor of New York. (mystery)
12/5: The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner
Tash, a new mom, longs to be close to the other mothers in her London neighborhood. But as she begins to dig into the recent murder of a local nanny, Tash questions the motives of those around her. (thriller)
12/5: Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura
Rival archaeologists Corrie Mejía and Ford Matthews embark on the dig of an Aztec empire deep in the Mexican jungle. With smugglers sniffing around, Corrie and Ford must work together, even as they try to resist their growing attraction. (romance)
12/5: Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes
Thirteen years after a disastrous 1869 Arctic expedition that ended in cannibalism, Captain William Day sets off into the same frozen landscape to rescue his former second-in-command. But the spirits of the restless dead are not far behind. (horror)
12/5: The Wildest Sun by Asha Lemmie
16-year-old Delphine Auber leaves Paris in the wake of World War II determined to find her father, who she believes is Ernest Hemingway. Over the next 14 years, her search takes her to Harlem, Havana, Key West, and into her adulthood. (historical fiction)
12/5: Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Kron
In a near future ravaged by climate change, the only way to survive is to gain acceptance to a location of The Inside Project, which runs weather-safe, closed cities around the world. Three young women gain access to the Inside built in Manhattan, but they find themselves reckoning with the downward impacts of corporate feminism.
12/12: Death in the Dark Woods by Annelise Ryan
Morgan Carter – bookstore owner and cryptid hunter – is asked by the warden of a nearby national forest to look into a death that some claim is the work of a local Bigfoot. But there are many dangers to be found in the woods. (mystery)
12/12: Prophet Songby Paul Lynch
Eilish, a mother-of-four in an Ireland turning towards tyranny, must grapple with what a future life could look like – and what she will do to protect her family – when the secret police come for her husband. (general fiction)
~Posted by Andrea G.
