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The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
What makes a life? A sense of duty? An obligation to your loved ones? To take the path that has been proscribed for you? Dickie Barnes is the brains of the family, attended college at Trinity. But a...
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The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
In 1921, Lesley Hamlyn and her retired lawyer husband are living in Penang, Malaysia and frequently host dignitaries. Among them is Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese revolutionary. Another is the acclaimed...
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The Last Ranger by Peter Heller
The wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park for a while now. Yet their existence is precarious, ensured only by strict anti-poaching regulations. The ranger in charge, Ren, spends...
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Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Mira Bunting is a subversive who launched Birnam Wood, a ragtag group of activists who plant crops in unused land, often illegally, and distribute the results equitably. Their anemic acts of rebellion...
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
In the town of Pottstown, PA, Blacks and Jews have formed a comfortable alliance, thanks in large part to Chona, a kind Jewish woman who runs the Heaven Earth grocery store. As the dark clouds of...
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Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar
Ignore the hyperbole tucked into the clever cover art. Parking does not explain the world but it does exacerbate socioeconomic inequality and exposes the problems of a car-centric culture. “Sooner or...
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith
The imprint of colonialism in Jamaica is one of the central themes of Smith’s novel which seeks to explain the meaning of authenticity. Mrs. Eliza Touchet, the abolitionist housekeeper of a Victorian...
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The Best Possible Experience: Stories by Nishanth Injam
Injam captures the heartache of immigration without sappiness and includes ample doses of dark humor. In the story “Summers of Waiting,” a granddaughter returns to India from Chicago to care for her...
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The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
“Part of aging, at least for many of us, was to see how misshapen and imperfect our stories had to be.” Librarian Bob Comet’s life has been misshapen by a singular tragedy: his wife Connie leaves him...
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The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
With the ocean as their backyard, Ah Boon and his classmate Siok Mei grow up in land that becomes Singapore. Siok Mei gets swept up in anti-government activities but Ah Boon, having seen his own...
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The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
Teenager Rintaro Natsuki is a hikikomori, a nerdy introvert who would like nothing better than the company of books. But the bookstore he inherits from his grandfather is dying and the teen must...
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The Dissident by Paul Goldberg
In ‘70s Moscow, a lot is on the line in the lead-up to a visit from Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. So when two gay men, one of them an American, are brutally murdered, the KGB is keen on solving...
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Fishing for the Little Pike by Juhani Karila
“Elina Ylijaako had to catch a pike from a certain pond by June 18th every year. Her life depended on it.” So launches this utterly delightful romp through the middle-of-nowhere Finland where a boggy...
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National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning...
Can you pinpoint one dish that speaks for an entire country? Despite the book’s bold title, the author finds that it’s hard to do so. But the more dishes, the tastier the repast. Blending travelog with...
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Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women And The Search For...
First there’s the engaging thesis: Learning about the reasons for Indian women’s crushes on the Bollywood superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, might be a common thread that could weave disparate stories across...
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North Woods by Daniel Mason
A catamount, a wild cat that once populated the western forests of Massachusetts, makes a cameo appearance in this absolutely spellbinding novel. Tracing the passage of time over centuries, one home...
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My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar
The filling in of the blank slate of one man’s life against larger historical events is not particularly novel ground. But, in narrating the story of Jadunath Kunwar against the backdrop of...
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The Limits by Nell Freudenberger
Everything’s off-kilter during the early months of COVID. The children, especially, are not okay. Pia, the daughter of a French scientist who researches coral in the South Pacific, reluctantly agrees...
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The Hunter by Tana French
The searing mind-numbing high heat of an exceptionally dry summer is a central character in French’s novel. Fifteen-year-old Trey has just come to terms with her father’s absence and not coping with...
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The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm
An unnamed middle-aged archivist in a small Swiss town reflects on the path not taken in this moving melancholic reflection. When we find him, the archivist has lost his job at the local newspaper,...
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Choice by Neel Mukherjee
Riddled with climate anxiety, battling obsessive-compulsive disorder, Ayush can’t get over capitalism’s oversized destructive effect on the lives of ordinary people. Economics is life, life is...
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Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
“A national campaign was a great unfathomable whale, with all kinds of subsidiary life flourishing on its skin and between its strands of baleen,” writes Cunningham in an impressive debut chronicling a...
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Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa
I’ve not read such a heartwarming capture of childhood friendship in a long time! Tomoko spends a crucial middle school year with her mother’s aunt’s family in a stunning manor in the hillsides of...
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Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
When Cyrus Shams was barely a toddler, his mother died in an Iranian flight shot down by an American missile. Now an American recovering from addiction, Cyrus is determined to explore the meaning of...
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Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman
Movement is responsible for breaking up pallets off the delivery truck early in the morning before customers hit Town Shop in Pottstown, New York. The division’s boss, Meredith, is universally reviled...
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