Historical

The Devil’s Highway, Gregory Norminton

An ancient route links Britain’s deep past and far future in an ecologically aware tale spanning thousands of years –The Guardian Spanning centuries, and combining elements of historical and speculative fiction with the narrative drive of pure thriller, this is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions […]

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The Overstory, Richard Powers

A hearing-and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, […]

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Parts Per Million, Julia Stoops

Parts per Million, the debut novel by Julia Stoops, is forthcoming April 2018. The manuscript was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. Three activists let a photographer with a hazy past join their unorthodox household in Julia Stoops’s debut novel, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. As […]

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The Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert

From the National Book Award nominee and author of the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling A Short History of Women, a deeply moving, “lyrical, ominous, and unexpectedly funny” (Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers) novel that follows a cast of characters as they negotiate one of Manhattan’s swiftly changing neighborhoods, […]

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Addlands, Tom Bullough

There have been a number of attempts to graft the style of the so-called new nature writing onto the novel…Tom Bullough’s Addlands is a very creditable contribution to this genre. -The Spectator The stark beauty of the Welsh countryside is given powerful life in this sweeping tale of one family […]

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Only the Animals, Ceridwen Dovey

Ten tales are told by the souls of animals killed in human conflicts in the past century or so, from a camel in colonial Australia to a cat in the trenches in World War I, from a bear starved to death during the siege of Sarajevo to a mussel that […]

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Cities of Salt, Abdul Rahman Munif

Translated by Peter Theroux. Set in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom in the 1930s, this remarkable novel tells the story of the disruption and diaspora of a poor oasis community following the discovery of oil there. The meeting of the Arabs and the Americans who, in essence, colonize the remote […]

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A Thin Bright Line, Lucy Jane Bledsoe

One day a few years ago I was telling a friend about my aunt and she suggested I Google her. Since Lucybelle died in 1966 and was just a farm girl from Arkansas, I didn’t expect to find anything. But I did: two items popped up on the internet. One was […]

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Strange as this Weather Has Been, Ann Pancake

Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family— a couple and their four children— living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is […]

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The Spawning Grounds, Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Sharp imagery and spare dialogue are put to good use in Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s ghost tale of a mysterious force intent on destroying a family in rural British Columbia. The Globe and Mail The long-awaited new novel by the two-time Giller-shortlisted author is full of the qualities Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s fans love: […]

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Jesus and Magdalene, João Cerqueira

Thanks to João Cerqueira for information about his novel Jesus and Magdalene, published by Line by Lion Publications in July 2016. It is available for order at Amazon. The novel won the silver medal at the 2015 Latino Book Awards with the original title A segunda vinda de Cristo à […]

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I Will Send Rain, Rae Meadows

A book about Oklahoma in the 1930s demands a spare, harsh style to match the landscape. “I Will Send Rain” obliges with a grim portrait of a family weathering the Dust Bowl as naggingly evocative as grit in your mouth. The New York Times, “The Shortlist / Eco-Fiction” Annie Bell […]

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Barkskins, Annie Proulx

From Annie Proulx—the Pulitzer Prize-­ and National Book Award-­winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests. Also see an interview in The New Yorker. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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The Swallow and the Nightingale, Thea Iberall

Thanks to author Thea Iberall for information on The Swallow and the Nightingale, a fable about a 4,000 year old secret brought through time by the birds. A scientist risks her life to help her daughter and heal the world. Are you ready for the Good? Review blurbs: “The book […]

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The River Between, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Christian missionaries attempt to outlaw the female circumcision ritual and in the process create a terrible rift between the two Kikuyu communities on either side of the river. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads

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