Literary

Cove, Cynan Jones

Described as “new nature writing,” The Spectator describes Cynan Jones’ new novel as “…an unforgettable adventure. The story of his Crusoe-like hero, adrift on the ocean and reborn after a lightning strike, makes for a wildly rewarding and utterly exhilarating read.” Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man […]

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All the Birds, Singing–Evie Wyld

From one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads

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Black Wave, Michelle Tea

It’s 1999 in San Francisco, and as shockwaves of gentrification sweep through Michelle’s formerly scruffy neighborhood, money troubles, drug-fueled mishaps, and a string of disastrous affairs send her into a tailspin. Desperate to save herself, Michelle sets out to seek a fresh start in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, climate-related disruptions and […]

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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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American War, Omar El Akkad

This award-winning journalist, until recently with The Globe and Mail, turns to fiction with a debut novel set in a not-too-distant America – ravaged by environmental calamities, dwindling resources and population displacement – that has fractured and descended into a second civil war. Considering the country’s current political and social […]

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Take Wing and Fly Here, Priyanka Kumar

Take Wing and Fly Here follows two avid birders who have set out on their “Big Year,” which is a personal challenge to spot and identify as many bird species as possible in one year. She explores the reasons that people collect such sightings and the impacts it can have […]

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Wild Things, Jaimee Wriston Colbert

Brace yourself for Jaimee Wriston Colbert’s Wild Things. These linked rural noir stories unfold their wings near the Susquehanna River in a landscape graced by wildlife and haunted by lost property, “business after business failing, padlocking their doors, factories with their boarded up windows, just another has-been town slowly shutting […]

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Mr. Eternity, Aaron Thier

“I was thinking a lot about how much the rhythms of life are determined by the place where we live,” the 32-year-old author said, in a conversation from his current home in central Great Barrington. “I was sitting there in the New England winter, looking outside and imagining what it […]

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Nutshell, Ian McEwan

Some of the novel’s most eloquent passages capture the state of our peril: “A combination, poverty and war, with climate change held in reserve, driving millions from their homes, an ancient epic in new form, vast movements of people, like engorged rivers in spring, Danubes, Rhines and Rhones of angry […]

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The Way of Water, Nina Munteanu

Thanks to Nina Munteanu for the following information on two new books on water. The Way of Water is a near-future vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with resource warfare. An ecologist and technologist, Nina Munteanu uses both fiction and non-fiction to examine […]

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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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A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel is one of my favorites: the tale of Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in the English countryside, unraveling the suicide of her eldest daughter. Woven throughout is another tale, set in a suburb of Nagasaki several years after the end of World War II: Etsuko, then […]

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The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson

The lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work, from her sensitive tale of island life, The Summer Book, to her […]

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Marrow Island, Alexis M. Smith

Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment. Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to […]

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The Sunlight Pilgrims, Jenni Fagan

Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter – it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland – THE SUNLIGHT PILGRIMS tells the story of a small Scottish community […]

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