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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #826, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ~ Oscar Wilde
by muffy
2022 National Book Award finalist, and The New York TIme Book Review Editors’ Choice, All This Could be Different * * * * by Sarah Thankam Mathews (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook), is a “darkly witty and finely wrought exploration of the struggle to embrace one's identity, this debut also illuminates the hardships of immigrant life, the elusiveness of lasting romantic love - and ultimately the joy and belonging that can come from a 'family' of friends.” (People Magazine)
During the mid-2000s recession, 22 year-old Indian immigrant Sneha, a recent college graduate, is fortunate to land an entry-level job in Milwaukee, “where she tries on adulthood like an ill-fitting suit.” (Kirkus Reviews) No longer under the watchful eyes of her traditional parents, Sneha scours online dating apps for other queer women, befriends (An)Tig(one) Clay, a philosophy student, and develops a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful older white dancer.
But before long, trouble arrives - her boss stops paying her, the landlord threatens eviction, and a childhood trauma demands to be reckoned with. It's then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.
“Recounting this heady time a decade or so later, Sneha is a magnetic teller of her tale of finding love, growing up, and summoning the power to change--and choose--her life. Kindred to Brandon Taylor's stellar Real Life (2020), this novel burrows deep.” (Booklist)
The Skin and its Girl * * by Sarah Cypher (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook).
Elspeth Noura Rummani is born in a Pacific Northwest hospital, the very day her Palestinian family’s centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike by the Israeli military. An infant with impossibly cobalt-blue skin, she is refused by the lesbian couple intent on adopting her.
With her neuroscientist mother, Tashi, emotional fragile and battling mental illness, great-aunt Nuha, the matriarch and keeper of the family lore, raises her as Betty, believing that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.
Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us--and wield even the power to restore a broken family.
Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook). Frustrated artist Dawn Levit works as a conservator/ bookbinder at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while spending most of her time scouting the city’s street art for inspiration. Genderfluid, she presents as female at work and is concerned that her musician boyfriend Lukas increasingly seems to be attracted to her when she's at her most masculine.
Then, one day at work, Dawn finds something hidden behind the endpaper of an old book she is restoring - the torn-off cover of a '50s lesbian pulp novel, Turn Her About, with what appears to be a love letter in German written on the back.
“The discovery leads to unexpected adventures as she becomes obsessed with tracking down the mysterious note's elusive author even as she questions her own complicated identity. A bookbinder herself, Savran Kelly is also a fine writer, and her debut novel is smooth and involving." (Booklist)
Endpapers will appeal to readers of queer, nonbinary, or trans fiction like Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby as well as anyone who loves character-driven, setting-rich stories like Tell the Wolves I'm Home or The Immortalists.
* * * * = 4 starred reviews
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Black & Proud—Queer Black Comics
by nicole
With Juneteenth approaching (and Pride Month in full swing), it's a perfect time to celebrate queer voices within the Black community. Here are some comics that feature queer black authors, artists, or stories:
Adult:
Bingo Love, by Tee Franklin | Request Now
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Juneteenth Reads
by lucroe
The origin of Juneteenth begins in Galveston, Texas, which was the western-most area of the Union in 1865. When enslaved people there were told of their emancipation on June 19, 1865, they had technically already been freed two-and-a-half years prior, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Slaveholders in Texas had kept the information to themselves, extending the period of violent exploitation of enslaved African Americans. The following year, in 1866, a celebration was had in Texas, the first Juneteenth observance to recognize freedom from slavery in the U.S.
It's considered the longest-running holiday in African American and Black communities, and was often observed with community celebrations on the third Saturday in June. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 after Congress passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.
Here is a reading list of fiction and non-fiction titles related to Juneteenth.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: June is Pride Month—Celebrating Queer Voices in Fiction
by eapearce
There are thousands of fantastic books of all genres written by queer authors and featuring queer characters. Here are a few new titles to check out, in celebration of Pride Month!
Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo | Request Now
Luli Wei is a queer Chinese-American girl who comes of age in pre-Code Hollywood desperate to become a star. Though she knows how limited roles are–and how dangerous the business can be–for someone who looks like her and loves who she loves, her determination remains steadfast. That being said, she doesn’t want the small roles that are often offered to her, parts as maids or serving girls. She does whatever it takes to get her big break, including blackmailing a predatory director. When her break finally comes, it’s in a role as a siren, and she goes on to have a career portraying various monsters. The dark side of Hollywood encroaches on her, though, and soon Luli struggles to separate her roles as monsters from the monster inside herself. Throughout the story, she loves and loses many female costars, and manages to stay a step ahead of all the men who try to outsmart her. Vo has written a stunning work of speculative fiction, weaving accurate historical detail with magical realism so seamlessly that readers will begin to believe the impossible as they sink further into the story.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Light (but not empty) Reads
by emjane
I love a good candy book. And by that, I mean a book that I am read purely for enjoyment without getting anything other than entertainment from it. But what I love even more than a light, candy read is one that has their fast, breezy pace, but also has a hint of depth to it. These “light but not empty” books are perfect to take to the beach, but also have enough something to them that you could have a good discussion with a friend about the story. Here are a few of my favorites!
Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple | Request Now
Bernadette Fox is revered in the architecture field—even if it’s been a long time since she’s done any work—but in the world of her daughter Bee’s private school, she’s the weird mom who just can’t manage to play nice and fit in. Things only get worse when Bernadette has a mental break and disappears, leaving Bee to search for her. Told from the perspective of Bee, Where’d You Go Bernadette paints fully-formed mother and daughter characters, and though the description sounds heavy, the writing is fast-paced and the book doesn’t leave you depressed. Told primarily in emails, letters, fliers, and other ephemera, Where’d You Go is a page-turner with many laugh-out-loud moments.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #825, Spotlight on the Michigan Connection
by muffy
Wade in the Water * (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) by Nyaneba Nkrumah (MFA, University of Michigan) is the unlikely friendship between a precocious black girl and a mysterious white woman in rural, segregated Ricksville, Mississippi in the early 1980s.
11 year-old Ella, the product of a fling between her mother and a black man is ignored by her mother, abused by her stepfather - her only friend being the blind old Mr. McCade. Love-starved but wise beyond her years, she is fascinated by Katherine St. James, a white graduate student, newly arrived from Princeton on a research project, who chooses to rent in the Black half of town. Curious and suspicious, most of the Black folks stay away except for Ella who eagerly befriends Katherine.
In a series of flashbacks, we learn that Katherine St. James used to be Kate Summerville, daughter of a notorious Mississippi Ku Klux Klan leader in nearby Philadelphia, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. The family fled north after the killings of three voting-rights activists, and the case remains unsolved.
“What looks like it could be a narrative of atonement and redemption is turned completely on its head in the final chapters, as more details on Katherine's involvement with her father are presented - some to the community, some only to the reader. Nkrumah seems to agree with Faulkner, who said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past…. A furious look at the long tail of Jim Crow, with lively writing and a well-drawn setting. A promising debut.” (Kirkus Reviews)
Moonrise Over New Jessup * (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) by Jamila Minnicks (UM), the winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is a period novel set in the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, and “brilliantly presents the Black struggle through an anti-integration lens that is equally powerful and persuasive.” (Booklist)
1957. Alice Young steps off the bus in New Jessup, on the way to Chicago to reunite with her sister, in hope of starting a new life. In this unique settlement founded by a coalition of Black families who believed in the ideas of separation espoused by Booker T. Washington, Alice finds warm welcome, lodging, and a job sewing in a dress shop, and soon falls in love with Raymond Campbell, son of one of the town’s founders.
As they marry and raise a family, Alice becomes aware of Raymonds clandestine involvement with National Negro Advancement Society, ideals that the town frown upon, believing it will draw unwanted and dangerous attention from the white side of town and the law. Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for Raymond’s underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval.
Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, “(a)n outstanding writer, Minnicks excels at capturing the atmosphere and issues of a specific locale at a particular time, the Deep South at the dawn of the civil rights era.” (Library Journal)
The One by Julia Argy (MFA in fiction from the UM Helen Zell Writers' Program, 2021) (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) is a razor-sharp and seductively hypnotic debut novel about the very fantasy of falling in love.
20-something Emily Boylan just lost her job as an adm. assistant, never mind she does maybe 10 mins of real work every day, and she is determined to move forward. So when she is approached on a Boston street by Miranda, a TV producer for the hit reality dating show The One, to join the cast after a contestant backed out at the last minute, she's on board. But the moment Emily arrives on location, it becomes clear she's been tapped to win it all, after meeting Dylan Walter and the other 29 women vying for his proposal. And as Emily's fascination with another contestant grows, both Emily and Miranda are forced to decide what it is they really want--and what they are willing to do to get it. A brilliant send-up of our cultural mythology around romance, The One examines the reality of love and desire set against a world of ultimate artifice and manipulation.
“Fans of reality TV will appreciate the insider feel first-time novelist Argy creates for her version of a very famous dating show, with the addition of cheeky suggestions of the secret motivations of some contestants that have nothing to do with love or marriage. The characters are flawed and likable, utterly convinced of the rightness of their participating in the unhealthy behaviors encouraged by the producers…A pop-culture send-up bound to inspire lively discussions.” (Booklist)
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Short & Sweet Comics
by nicole
If you're wiped out from summer and looking for a short read that isn't too heavy, AADL has many comics that are a breeze to read. Check out these simple, sweet, and not-too-long comics to help you unwind:
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy | Request Now
This simple book is full of life lessons for all ages. The story follows a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse sharing their biggest discoveries about kindness, hope, friendship, and love. The conversations between the four friends are emphasized by the charming drawings on every page. This is an easy read that feels calm and quiet, though the unique font might be a bit tough to decipher for some readers. Reading this comic is a meditative experience that will leave anyone feeling inspired.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Summer Comics for Kids & Teens
by nicole
Summer is finally here! Celebrate the sunniest season with these comics set in the summertime:
Teens:
This One Summer, by Mariko Tamaki | Request Now
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Staff Picks: Thrilling Fiction That's More Twisty Than a Pretzel
by denbyt
I love a well-written, substantial book as much as the next reader. Something I can really sink my teeth into. Something that I can mull over, for days or weeks. But then, every once in a while, I find myself in the mood for a fast read that’ll do nothing more than keep me guessing, breathless and at the edge of my seat, until the very end. I’ve gathered a short list of the latter here, just in case you’re on the hunt for your next twisty-turny thriller to while away a few hours on a warm spring evening.
The It Girl by Ruth Ware | Request Now
Hannah and her husband have a great life. A happy marriage. A baby on the way. They’ve put the decade-ago death of their college friend April firmly in the past…until Hannah is told the man who had died in prison, after having been convicted of April’s murder, may have been innocent. Hannah sets out to find the truth. Written in alternating timelines, pre and post-murder, this thriller has every essential ingredient for a page-turner. A cast of potential suspects, a complex victim who is more than what she appears to be, a well-developed narrator, and a twisty-turny plot. The author’s most recent release, The It Girl is going to inspire you to go back and read her backlist–if you haven’t already.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Fabulous Fiction by AAPI Authors
by emjane
We’re highlighting books by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in honor of AAPI Heritage Month – however, don’t just limit your AAPI reading to May! AADL participates in the Unerased Book Club, which highlights amazing titles monthly. Here are four of my favorites read by the group in prior months, but keep checking AADL.TV for our future discussions!]
My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa | Request a Copy |Watch the Book Club Discussion
This twisty thriller centers on Paloma, a woman in her early 30s living in California and having a crisis. Paloma tries to be patient and kind, but life is so much more challenging now that she’s cut off from her parents' riches– plus the people out in the world are so infuriating. Paloma’s story is told in alternating chapters between the present day and her time in an orphanage in Sri Lanka, where she was adopted as a pre-teen.