On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
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Animals have inspired some of the most memorable moments in African storytelling. In 17th century Ethiopia, Galawdewos repeatedly relies on the appearance or the death of animals to portray Walatta Petros’ miraculous saintly power. When animals are incorporated in ritual process, the visual effect is powerful. The image of Ozidi […]
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A book, television show, or movie set somewhere in Scandinavia leads the reader or viewer to expect dark, foreboding landscapes and ominous, threatening events. Susanne Jansson’s sparkling debut novel The Forbidden Place fulfills these expectations in a myriad of absorbing ways. –Run Spot Run In the remote Swedish wetlands lies […]
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Recreates the experience of living in Thailand’s aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles. -Ron Charles, Washington Post Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
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The Hungry Tide was published in 2004 but is still getting accolades in the media and has celebrated many reprints since. The Hungry Tide is a very contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most fascinating regions on the earth. Off the easternmost […]
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Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson Hardcover, 259 pages Published June 13, 2017 by HarperCollins Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Midnight at the Electric interweaves three different generations of protagonists to tell the heartbreaking and simultaneously hopeful stories of young women living through times of societal upheaval. The stories […]
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Emily Strelow’s mesmerizing debut stitches together a sprawling saga of the feral Northwest across farmlands and deserts and generations: an American mosaic alive with birdsong and gunsmoke, held together by a silver box of eggshells—a long-ago gift from a mother to her daughter. Written with grace, grit, and an acute […]
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Using the idiom of the time and place–a small, close-knit, East Tennessee community as the Depression yields to World War II–the story follows the struggles of Maizee Hurd as she suffers through a series of setbacks from childhood on: the gruesome early death of her mother; her father’s rejection; the […]
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My hope is that Cave Walker fits into contemporary eco-fiction in the sense that nature occupies a central space in the novel almost at all times. The Maine woods through which Gillian hikes to reach the holy cave is a character. Each cave is a distinct character. Even when Gillian […]
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All Among the Barley works best in its intensely-researched descriptions of farming: although prone to words like “Cerulean”, “soughing” and “susurrate”, they bring to poetic life the hard-won knowledge needed to determine when a crop is ripe. The drama of harvest is gripping: temperamental barley can be ruined by a […]
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This looks fantastic! A fairytale/fantasy where surrounding nature strongly intersects with the story. A magical debut novel for readers of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman’s myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular […]
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Unfortunately I cannot find this book at Goodreads yet, but the Hindu Business Line has an interesting article with the title: Unquiet Flows a River: The English translation of a famed 1974 Tamil novel lets a broader audience take in the ethos of a subaltern people in a fecund Dravidian […]
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Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that […]
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Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly […]
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Click here for information on the series. The New Inheritors is the most recent (#3) book. Kent Wascom is one of the most exciting and ambitious emerging voices in American fiction. Envisaging a quartet of books telling the story of America through a single family and region, the Gulf Coast […]
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