New Fiction Roundup, June 2019

No matter what kind of summer reader you are – romance, mystery, fantasy, historical fiction, general fiction – something is coming out in June for you to savor.

6/4: Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin – In this contemporary take on Pride and Prejudice set in Toronto’s Muslim community, poet and teacher Ayesha is holding out for true love over an arranged marriage when smart, judgmental Khalid comes into her orbit.

6/4: City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert – 89-year-old Vivian reflects back on the years she spent living with her Aunt Peg in Manhattan, working at the Lily Playhouse theatre and living the single life, as well as the personal mistake she made that led to a professional scandal and changed the course of her life. A Peak Pick!

Library Reads for June 2019

Ten books coming in June that librarians across the US are loving.

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
Relationships are hard, whether with a spouse, a best friend, a new love interest, or ourselves. Evvie navigates all of these after a life-changing series of events. An engaging novel that explores relationship nuances without being too dark or too cutesy. For fans of Jenny Colgan, Cecilia Ahern, and Sophie Kinsella.  ~ Maribeth Fisher, Scotch Plains Public Library, Scotch Plains, NJ 

Bus Reads for May

Commuting to Seattle by bus five days a week gives me a lot of reading time.

Here’s what I read on the bus in May:

Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin
A nice little thriller, reminded me a bit of Josh Bazell’s book Beat the Reaper, which I also enjoyed. Rice Moore is seeking a hideout from the Mexican cartel he betrayed, he finds that in the Appalachian Mountains working on a nature preserve, but its not all peace and quiet. The bears protected on the preserve are found dead, while he searches for the poachers it brings him a little too close to the past he was running from.

New Fiction Roundup, May 2019

With a trio of new releases by local authors (Chiang, McGuire, Bauermeister), a selection of contemporary romances, several short story collections, and the long awaited latest from Thomas Harris, May should have a little something for every reader.

5/7: The Bride Test by Helen Hoang – Khai Diep, on the autism spectrum, is mortified when his mother plays matchmaker and returns from a visit to Vietnam with Esme, a potential bride. A romance from the author of The Kiss Quotient. A Peak Pick!

5/7: Exhalation by Ted Chiang – Chiang’s long awaited second short story collection gathers together nine stories that examine what it means to be human, and the ways that meaning is complicated and enhanced by our experiences with ever advancing technology. A Peak Pick!

Historical fantasy – the best of both worlds!

I appreciate the way genre designations can make books easier to find, but I confess that I love the bleeding edges where books shade from one genre into another; my current bailiwick is historical fantasy. I find that it brings the best elements of historical fiction – a strong sense of time, place, and culture – and melds it with the fantastical elements that make anything possible. Here are a few recent titles that I’ve been thrilled to find.

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson – In 1491, Granada, the last remaining vestige of Muslim Spain, has been surrounded and besieged by the Catholic Spanish forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. When a delegation comes inside the walled city to negotiate, young concubine Fatima is charged with welcoming the female delegates, including a member of the Spanish Inquisition. After Fatima accidentally reveals that her friend Hassan, the court’s mapmaker, can draw places he’s never seen and reshape reality, she realizes she has put him in danger. Aided by jinn, Fatima and Hassan flee the city.