New Fiction Roundup – November 2018

11/6: The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco – In 1887, Alma Rosales goes undercover as a man to hunt for an opium shipment missing from a Washington Territory outpost.

11/6: The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith – In this latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe finds herself running for office, much to her dismay.

11/6: The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem – Phoebe enlists the help of a loner with a pet possum to look for her friend’s missing daughter in California’s Inland Empire. Hailed as Lethem’s return to detective fiction.

New Fiction Roundup – October 2018

10/2: Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III – An ex-con living a solitary life in seaside New England travels to a quaint Florida town in search of his estranged daughter.

Novels to read during Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15th-October 15th, honors the histories, cultures and contributions of Americans with ancestry in Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. To help you celebrate through reading, our librarians put together a list of fiction by Latinx authors published between 2016-2018; see the full list and place holds in our catalog.

New Fiction Roundup – September 2018

9/4: The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory – When her boyfriend surprises her with a Jumbotron proposal at a baseball game, Nik says no, and is saved when a stranger steps in to whisk her away. That stranger is Carlos, and could there be a spark between the two?

9/4: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – Set in the midst of literature’s most famous war, Barker imagines the events of The Iliad as experienced by the captured women living in a Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.

9/11: She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore – In a novel shot through with magical realism, Moore reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three characters who share an uncommon bond. A Peak Pick!

9/18: 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day in this literary puzzle. Evelyn Hardcastle dies at a party Aiden Bishop is attending. Waking up the next morning, Aiden finds it is once again the morning of the party, only he is in the body of a different guest. He’ll inhabit 8 people on that day, until he can solve the crime.

Romance throughout American history

Happy 241^st birthday, America! You don’t look a day over 240 years old. In honor of Independence Day, here are a few romances from some eras of American history that aren’t as beloved in the romance world as the Wild West or the Civil War, in chronological order.

Hamilton’s Battalion by Courtney Milan,
Rose Lerner, and Alyssa Cole
This collection of historical romance novellas are all connected by one man: Alexander Hamilton. In Milan’s “The Pursuit Of,” a Black American soldier goes on a 500 mile walk and is joined by a motor-mouthed Redcoat, who knows that his companion’s silence can mean more than one thing. Rose Lerner’s “Promised Land” is the story of Rachel, a Jewish woman who disguises herself as a man to fight for America, only to come face to face with the man who broke her heart. And in Alyssa Cole’s “That Would Be Enough,” Mercy is Eliza Hamilton’s servant, helping Eliza’s quest to preserve her husband’s legacy. But when a bold dressmaker comes into the Hamilton household, Mercy must decide what’s more important: being safely alone or taking a chance on love.