Fiction
La fiesta del chivo
Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936- author.
SPANISH Vargas Llosa
Fiction
"Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic--and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call 'The Goat,' controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own"--Amazon.
Vampiros en El Norte
Cañas, Isabel, author.
SPANISH Canas
Fiction
"Un enfrentamiento entre vampiros y vaqueros en la frontera entre Texas y México en este western sobrenatural de la autora de La hacienda. Como hija de un ranchero en el México de 1840, Nena sabe un par de cosas sobre monstruos; su hogar ha estado mucho tiempo amenazado por tensiones con anglos del norte. Pero algo más siniestro merodea por el rancho en la noche, algo que drena la sangre de los hombres y los da por muertos. Lo mismo que atacó a Nena hace nueve años. Al creer a Nena muerta, Néstor ha intentado huir de su pena, yendo de rancho en rancho, trabajando como vaquero. Pero no hay alcohol suficiente para disipar los terrores nocturnos de dientes filosos; no hay mujer que pueda borrar de su mente a su amor de la infancia. Cuando Estados Unidos invade México en 1846, Nena y Néstor se reencuentran repentinamente de camino a la guerra: Nena es curandera, una sanadora que lucha por probarle a su padre su valía para que no la case con un extraño, y Néstor es miembro de la caballería auxiliar de rancheros y vaqueros. Pero el impacto de su reunión --y la ira de Nena hacia Néstor por abandonarla tiempo atrás-- queda pronto opacado por la aparición de una pesadilla de carne y hueso. Y a menos de que Nena y Néstor resuelvan su pasado y enfrenten juntos el futuro, ninguno de los dos sobrevivirá para ver el amanecer."--
Set in 1840s Mexico, Isabel Cañas’s 2023 Gothic vampire novel is sure to enthrall fans of historical and speculative fiction alike. Two characters torn apart by circumstance but pulled back together by fate must reconcile deep cuts when both of their homes come under attack in this supernatural Western certain to please even the pickiest of readers. -Charlotte
La sed
Yuszczuk, Marina, 1978- author.
SPANISH Yuszczuk
Fiction
"En el nuevo mundo por enésima vez recién descubierto de las mujeres, 'La sed' se interna para poner una distancia: de menor a mayor, especie contra género en la taxonomía de los reinos. Una vampira llega a las costas de la Buenos Aires decimonónica para ver por segunda vez en su vida cómo las aldeas se vuelven una ciudad cosmopolita. Es el ocaso de las bacanales de sangre, de la Europa en que se puede matar y comer a destajo. Hay que adaptarse, mezclarse con los humanos, ser discreta. En el otro extremo de la novela, una mujer contemporánea pasea con su hijo por el cementerio de la Recoleta y vive un poco inquieta su modesta emancipación. El encuentro entre el mortal aburrimiento de la una y el gótico a destiempo de la otra desencadena la hermosa novela que deja caer todo el peso de la muerte tumultuosa del pasado porteño sobre las pasiones familiares en sordina del presente. Darwin dice que para los naturalistas, "las especies, cuando se cruzan, resultan especialmente dotadas de esterilidad, a fin de impedir la confusión". Marina Yuszczuk demuestra que en la literatura, por suerte, es exactamente al revés. Los experimentos con lo monstruoso de Mary Shelley y con la astucia doméstica de Jane Austen, más que Drácula, están en el origen de la novela de especies que se niega a ser sólo novela de género."--
Marina Yuszczuk’s latest novel is a Gothic tale spun across two timelines, depicting a sapphic, supernatural romance between a modern woman and a nineteenth-century vampire. This novel showcases the intersections between female agency, horror both modern and historical, and the fragile, all-consuming nature of desire. -Charlotte
Blackouts
Torres, Justin, 1980- author.
RECEIVED
Fiction
"Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history"--
This own-voices, National Book Award-winning story takes the form of a dreamlike conversation between queer men from two separate generations. Using a mix of blackout poetry and prose, Torres weaves narratives lost and found into a breathtaking work spanning time, space, and humanity. -Charlotte
Dream state : a novel
Eric Puchner
FICTION Puchner Eric
Fiction, Literary Fiction
"PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, Pushcart Prize winner, and Best American Stories contributor, Eric Puchner returns with an ambitious and deeply moving novel set against the backdrop of the American West that follows three lifelong friends and the betrayal at the center of their entwined fates. Cece and Charlie are in love and a few weeks away from their summer wedding. But when Cece meets Charlie's best friend from college, Garrett, her long-held expectations for her future begin to crumble. As Garrett's gruff mask slips, Cece begins to anticipate the big day with dread as her feelings for Garrett become impossible to bury. And as she decides to follow her instincts, ditching her groom for his best man, she will alter the three of their lives forever, the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood, and, in the end, across generations. Years later, Cece's daughter, Lana, and Charlie's son, Jasper, meet and become fast friends, finding themselves reunited again and again throughout their adolescence. Soon enough, they find themselves enacting their parents' mistakes, falling victim to duplicity and heartbreak, with age and mortality looming. With Montana's once-warm summers growing untenably hot, and the nearby lake all but drying up, obscured only by the ceaseless smoke of wildfires, Garrett's career as a wildlife researcher feels increasingly futile. As he watches Cece begin to lose herself, Charlie wonders whether he will ever find stability, especially with a son failing to adjust to the demands of adulthood. With delicacy, precision, and enormous heart, Dream State is at once a study of the unholy catastrophe of marriage, and a tender ode to the beauty of impermanence"--
I’ve been a little stuck on “Dream State” since I’ve finished it. I have a range of feelings and lots of unanswered questions—about the book, the characters, the sequence of events, and about myself. It is one of those books that makes you self-examine your past and think more about the future. What is in our control and what is out of it? What do our relationships mean to us and what do we mean to others? “Dream State” is a heavy-lift of a novel, but if you want a book to stay with you, this one sure will for me. -Anne M
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow : a novel
Gabrielle Zevin
FICTION Zevin, Gabrielle
Diverse Characters, Fiction
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is my favorite book of the year, and possibly one of my favorite reads to date! If you're like me and are a gamer, you'll want to read this beautiful story about the platonic love between two lifelong friends as they collaborate on designing video games. This is a story about love, platonic love, disability, and growth -- one that will be on my mind for a long time. -Violette
The mortal and immortal life of the girl from Milan
Domenico Starnone
FICTION Starnone Domenico
Fiction, Literary Fiction
Imagine a child, a daydreamer, one of those boys who is always gazing out windows. His adoring grandmother, busy in the kitchen, keeps an eye on him. The child stares at the building opposite, watching a black-haired girl as she dances recklessly on her balcony. He is in love. And a love like this can push a child to extremes. He can become an explorer or a cabin boy, a cowboy or castaway; he can fight duels to the death, or even master unfamiliar languages. His grandmother has told him about the entrance to the underworld, and he knows the story of Orpheus's failed rescue mission. He could do better, he thinks; he wouldn't fail to bring that dark-haired up from the underground if she were dead, and it only he had the chance. A short, sharp, perfectly styled and unforgettable novel about love, desire, memory, and death by the Strega Prize winning Italian author of Ties and International Booker Prize, longlisted author of The House on Via Gemito.--
This is a book about death and coming to terms with it. How does one wrestle with loss as a child? What type of scars do they leave when we are older? How long do you carry loss with you? These are questions Starnone wrestles with in "The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan." Mimi's experiences and feelings strike true. -Anne M
Sunrise on the reaping
Suzanne Collins
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Collins Suzanne
Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction
"As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear gripsthe districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a youngfriend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena."--
Suzanne Collins returns to the world of Panem with a timely and brutal novel. "Sunrise on the Reaping" explores the concept of implicit submission. It asks us what motivates our acceptance of the status quo, and what it might take to change. -Chelsea
The True Love Experiment
Christina Lauren
OverDrive Audiobook
Fiction, Humor, Romance
Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Romance. Sparks fly when a romance writer and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the ultimate Hollywood love story—but only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script—from the "divine" (Jodi Picoult) New York Times bestselling authors of The Soulmate Equation and The Unhoneymooners. Felicity "Fizzy" Chen is lost. Sure, she's got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she's asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn't been practicing what she's preached. Fizzy hasn't ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can't-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she's spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie? Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work but when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass—unless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too. "Full of big laughs, a few tears, and some seriously steamy scenes" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), The True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzy's debut in the New York Times bestselling The Soulmate Equation.
Once I got into this audiobook, I had to make sure I only opened it when I had a solid block of time to binge-listen. The story, the narrative performances had me so rapt that any disruption to my attention to it stoked my ire. I missed the fact that it won an Audie; the award is well deserved. And honestly, I'm not a fan of the covers of Christina Lauren's books so I passed this one by every time I saw it. But boy was I missing out! The writing is so funny too, the plot clever. The first book in this series, The Soulmate Equation, is definitely going on my To Be Read list. Can't wait! -Melody
The Children of Jocasta: A Novel
Natalie Haynes
OverDrive Audiobook
Fiction
The New York Times bestselling author of Pandora's Jar and Stone Blind returns with a powerful retelling of Oedipus and Antigone from the perspectives of the women the myths overlooked.When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced . . . Because that is what happened the last time, and that is why my siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband. Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we've known it.
This new audioversion of Natalie Haynes' novel is compelling! Great story, great narration. And Haynes is talented in providing layers and thoughtfulness in her retelling of the Greek tragedy. -Anne M
Originally published in 2000, Vargas Llosa’s "La Fiesta del Chivo" dives deep into the Dominican Republic of the 1960s. Narrating the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo from the fictional point of view of Urania Cabral, Llosa’s historical fiction novel proves without a doubt why it was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. -Charlotte