Archives de catégorie : London 2023 Fiction

THE UNICORN WOMAN de Gayl Jones

Set in the Post WWII South, a dramatic new direction for Jones: narrated entirely by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal.

THE UNICORN WOMAN
by Gayl Jones
Beacon Press, August 2024

Black army veteran named Buddy Ray Guy is a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love. He moves around the south, having several women across different states. He recalls his love affairs in post-war France, both in the provinces and in Paris, as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities.

Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University, and has taught at Wellesley and the University of Michigan. Her books include Palmares, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the recently published The Birdcatcher, a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award.

JUST SOME STUPID LOVE STORY de Katelyn Doyle

This witty and endearing novel follows the will-they-won’t-they of a couple who are just out of reach of each other, perfect for fans of Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation and Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren.

JUST SOME STUPID LOVE STORY
by Katelyn Doyle
(aka Scarlett Peckham)
Flatiron, 2024
(via Nancy Yost Literary)

Screenwriter Molly Marks is a love cynic, despite the fact that she writes rom-com screenplays for a living. She thought ghosting her high school boyfriend, Seth, was the end of her chance at love—until a 15-year reunion sets something in motion that some would call fate—but absolutely not Molly Marks.
Divorce attorney Seth Rubinstein believes in love, true love at that, despite his job. He’d never admit it, but he carried a torch for Molly long after their sudden and devastating breakup. Over the last decade, he’s sought his soulmate in one bad date and one rushed relationship after another.
When Seth and Molly are seated at the same reunion table, sparks fly, and a bet is made: whoever can more accurately predict the outcome of five relationships over the next five years must declare that the other is right about love. The two are then launched into a years-long series of entanglements, breakups, and friendship attempts showcased throughout the narrative in emails, texts, late-night calls, and accidental run-ins until they reach a breathtaking conclusion that will force them to confront one more relationship—theirs—and whether their story is one of timeless heartbreak or if they are truly meant to be.

Katelyn Doyle has already won the hearts of countless readers through the historical romances she’s penned as Scarlett Peckham. As Peckham, Doyle is a USA Today bestselling author. The Washington Post selected her debut, The Duke I Tempted, as one of the Best Romance Novels of 2018. Entertainment Weekly has called Peckham’s “storytelling breathtakingly human,” and her contemporary work is no different. She continues to showcase the witty, romantic, and feminist voice that has already earned acclaim everywhere, from Kirkus and NPR to The New York Times Book Review (twice).

SORRY: Ich habe es nur für dich getan de Bianca Iosivoni

Love can sweep you away – but what if it drags you into its darkest abysses? Perfect for readers of Colleen Hoover and fans of the Netflix series You.

SORRY:
Ich habe es nur für dich getan
(I’m Sorry: I Did It All For You)
by Bianca Iosivoni
Penguin Germany, March 2023

San Francisco. Robyn, a young and ambitious journalist, is shocked when the police show up on her doorstep. Her ex-boyfriend Julian has been reported missing. At a single stroke, the past comes flooding back: the longing, the pain, the disappointment… Robyn thought she had put it all behind her. She’s deeply worried about Julian. What could have happened? Robyn seeks help from her best friend, Cooper – though she has long felt much more for him than that. When the police suspect Cooper of having something to do with Julian’s disappearance, she doesn’t know what to believe, or what to feel. Who can she trust? Can she even trust herself?
An irresistible mix of powerful emotions, psychological suspense and addictive twists.

Over the years, Bianca Iosivoni has won thousands of fans with her new adult and fantasy bestsellers. She loves heady love stories with all their highs and lows, as well as thrills and twists – and combines both in her books for Penguin. SORRY will give you goosebumps and butterflies with its gripping blend of toxic feelings and psychological suspense.

TIANANMEN SQUARE de Lai Wen

A truly remarkable novel about coming to see the world as it is, TIANANMEN SQUARE is the story of one girl’s life growing up in the China of the 1970s and 80s, as well as the story of the events in 1989 that give the novel its name: the hope and idealism of a generation of young students, their heroism and courage, and the price that some of them paid.

TIANANMEN SQUARE
by Lai Wen
Swift Press, late 2024
(via Emily Randle Editorial & Literary)

It is Beijing in the 1970s, and Lai lives with her parents, grandmother and younger brother in a small flat in a working-class area. Her grandmother is a formidable figure – no-nonsense and uncompromising, but loving towards her granddaughter – while her ageing beauty of a mother snipes at her father, a sunken figure who has taken refuge in his work.
As she grows up, Lai comes to discern the realities of the country she lives is: an early encounter with the police haunts her for years; her father makes her see that his quietness is a reaction to experiences he has lived through; and an old bookseller subtly introduces her to ideas and novels that open her mind to different perspectives. But she also goes through what anyone goes through when young – the ebbs and flows of friendships; troubles and rewards at home and at school; and the first steps and missteps in love.
A gifted student, she is eventually given a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University; while there she meets new friends, and starts to get involved in the student protests that have been gathering speed. It is the late 1980s, and change is in the air…
This novel manages to balance both the sense of an individual girl growing up and going through all the changes that every young person goes through – falling in love, realising that grown-ups are people who make mistakes, reckoning with your own character – with the sense of growing up in the China of the time and the tragic events that give the book its title and its culmination.

Lai Wen is a pseudonym. She was born in Beijing in 1970 and left China in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square protests. She now lives in the UK with her husband and two children.

TALONSISTER de Jen Williams

A living weapon journeys into a forbidden land. How much trouble can she get into? The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.

TALONSISTER
by Jen Williams
Titan, September 2023
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Leven has no memory of her life before she was a soldier. The process of turning her into a Herald – a magical killing machine – was traumatic enough that it wiped her mind clean. Now, with the war won and the Imperium satisfied, she finds herself unemployed and facing a bleak future. Her fellow Heralds are disappearing, and her own mind seems to be coming apart at the seams. Strange visions, memories she shouldn’t have, are resurfacing, and none of them make any sense. They show her Brittletain, the ancient and mysterious island that the Imperium was never able to tame. Leven resolves to go to this place of magic and warring queens, with the hope of finding who she really is.
Envoy Kaeto has done a number of important little jobs for the Imperium, most of them nasty, all of them in the shadows. His newest assignment is to escort the bonecrafter Gynid Tyleigh as she travels across the Imperium – as the woman responsible for creating the Heralds, his employers owe her a great deal. But Tyleigh’s ambition alarms even Kaeto, and her conviction that she has found a new source of Titan bones, buried deep in the earth, could lead to another, even bloodier war.
Ynis was raised by the griffins, and has never seen another human face. She lives wild, as they do, eating her meat raw and flying with her talon-sister, T’rook. The griffins fiercely protect their isolation – the piles of skulls that litter the mountains of Brittletain are testament to that – but the magic they guard will always make them a target for the greed of men. By choosing not to kill Ynis when she was just a baby, the griffins may have doomed themselves – because the girl’s past is coming for her, and it carries a lethal blade. Acquired at a 5-way auction.

Jen Williams started writing about pirates and dragons as a young girl and hasn’t ever stopped. Her short stories have featured in numerous anthologies and she has won Best Fantasy Novel at the British Fantasy awards for both The Ninth Rain and The Bitter Twins with her Winnowing Flame trilogy. She has previously written the Copper Cat trilogy, as well as the thriller Dog Rose Dirt. Jen lives in London with her partner and their cat.