Archives de catégorie : Fiction

TO EACH THIS WORLD de Julie E. Czerneda

From an Aurora Award-winning author, a new sci-fi novel follows three intrepid humans caught up in a conflict that stretches across time and space.

TO EACH THIS WORLD
by Julie E. Czerneda
DAW Books, November 2022
(via KT Literary)

Biologist Julie E. Czerneda’s new standalone science fiction novel follows a desperate mission to reconnect with long lost sleeper ships, sent centuries earlier from Earth to settle distant worlds.
A trio of Humans must work with their mysterious alien allies to rescue any descendants they can find on those worlds. Something is out there, determined to claim the cosmos for itself, and only on Earth will Humans be safe. Or will they? The challenge isn’t just to communicate with your own kind after generations have passed. It’s to understand what isn’t your kind at all. And how far will trust take you, when the truth depends on what you are?

“The search for the 21st-century’s Larry Niven is now officially over. Julie E. Czerneda gives us a galaxy-spanning vision of credible aliens and high-stakes conflict. A wonderful book.” —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

“Czerneda serves up the real stuff—a suspensefully original, sci-tech tale of alien contact, as interstellar humanity seeks a perilous path out of a lethal trap.” —David Brin, author of Earth and Kiln People

Having written twenty-three novels (and counting) published by her beloved DAW Books and Hugo-winning editor Sheila E. Gilbert, as well as numerous short stories, and editing several anthologies over the past 25 years, Julie E. Czerneda was inducted in the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2022. Her work has received international acclaim, multiple awards,and best-selling status. Julie’s works combine her training and love of biology with a boundless curiosity and optimism.

ON HER OWN de Lihi Lapid

A moving, page-turning story of two families in crisis that melds the clock-ticking tension of Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me with the “issue-driven” gravity of Jennifer Haigh’s Mercy Street.

ON HER OWN
by Lihi Lapid, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverton
HarperVia, March 2024

Watching her Russian immigrant mother, Irina, struggle to put food on the table, Nina, a beautiful and restless teenager, vows her life will be different. When a strapping older man in a fancy car appears at school one day offering her luxuries her single mother cannot afford, Nina believes he’s her ticket out of her dumpy little town. Ignoring the danger signs and her mother’s constant pleas—which end in exhausting screaming matches—she packs a suitcase and leaves home after one last fight.

Ten days later, a terrified Nina, her dress torn, is hiding in the stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment after witnessing a murder she cannot talk about. She is discovered by one of the building’s tenants, a confused, lonely old widow who mistakes her for the granddaughter she hasn’t seen for a long while, not since her son moved his family to America. “You’ve come back to me, Dana’le.” Instead of correcting the mistake, the desperate Nina jumps at the chance for a place to hide.

Hiding from her mother and the dangerous man who are both frantically searching for her, Nina settles into the old woman’s apartment. But how long can Nina possibly hide out until the poor woman realizes she’s not who she says she is, or before someone else – her homesick son in America who keeps calling, or the lovely local neighbors who drop by with groceries—catches on?

Set between the eve of Passover and Israel’s Independence Day, On Her Own is a tense and immersive psychological read about two families looking for redemption, the transformative bonds between strangers, and the unexpected places from which love can grow.

Lihi Lapid is a bestselling Israeli author, photojournalist, columnist, and activist. She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband Yair Lapid, the former Prime Minister of Israel, and their two children. This is her third novel.

THE AFTERTASTE de Daria Lavelle

An epic love story, dark comedy, and synesthetic adventure through food and grief, THE AFTERTASTE will delight readers of Alice Hoffman and Sweetbitter.

THE AFTERTASTE
by Daria Lavelle
Bloomsbury, TBD
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Konstantin “Kostya” Duhhovny is a haunted man. His father passed shortly after they immigrated to Brooklyn from Ukraine, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. He can’t see them, but his mouth will often flood with the tastes of meals he’s never consumed, and Kostya understands that this is how they haunt him.

Keeping to himself has served him well for most of his life, but on the night when Kostya decides to let the phantom flavors guide his hand, everything changes. Could this be his true purpose, offering real closure to grieving strangers? He sets out to learn everything he can by taking on the New York culinary scene. As his kitchen skills begin to catch up with his ambitions, Kostya cannot see the catastrophe that looms. The one person who knows Kostya must be stopped… also happens to be falling in love with him.

Daria Lavelle is a debut novelist who earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She was born in Kyiv before immigrating to the US as a child, and currently lives in New Jersey with her family.

THE WEDDING PEOPLE d’Alison Espach

For fans of Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually and Kevin Wilson, Alison Espach’s THE WEDDING PEOPLE is a pitch-perfect balance of humor and heartbreak.

THE WEDDING PEOPLE
by Alison Espach
Holt, 2024
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding guests, but she’s the only one who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s alone, at the lowest moment of her life.

Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe—which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other. Soon Phoebe is swept into the lives and the dysfunction of the wedding people, finding herself forever changed.

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Vogue, Joyland, Glamour, Salon, and McSweeney’s, among other places. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.

LUCKY de Jane Smiley

From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, a soaring, soulful novel for readers of Daisy Jones and The Six about a folk musician who rises to fame across our changing times.

LUCKY
by Jane Smiley
Knopf, April 2024)
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Before Jodie Rattler became a folk sensation, she was just a little girl who struck lucky at a racetrack. That roll of two-dollar bills she won has never left her side since. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing.

Full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock’n’roll, Lucky is a colorful portrait of one woman’s journey in search of herself.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.