Archives de catégorie : Fiction

ROOTLESS de Krystle Zara Appiah

The debut reading group novel by London Library Emerging Writer Krystle Zara Appiah. ROOTLESS opens with Sam discovering that his wife, Efe, has left him and their daughter and returned to Ghana. Sam is shocked – their marriage was perfect. Or was it? ROOTLESS is a portrait of a British-Ghanaian marriage in crisis, as well as posing the question: can you ever really go home?

ROOTLESS
by Krystle Zara Appiah
The Borough Press UK/Ballantine US, Spring 2023
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Best friends Efe and Sam meet as teenagers in 90s London. Efe is a new arrival in the UK from Ghana, sinking under the weight of her parents’ expectations. Sam is focused and idealistic, taking his first steps towards a career in corporate law. Over the years that follow the best friends become lovers, then marry. But an unplanned pregnancy forces them to confront just how radically different they want their lives to be. Soon Efe is swallowed up by the demands of motherhood, the dreams for her life dangling from a thread. And when she leaves, disappearing one morning and leaving both Sam and their daughter behind, Sam’s illusion of their perfect marriage crumbles. He’s about to discover exactly who he’s married to and the lengths he’ll go to win her back.
This is beautifully written and provocative reading group fiction, with much to discuss around love, marriage, motherhood, and if you can ever really ‘go home’. For fans of Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Krystle’s second novel, HINTERLANDS, will explore the complex and competitive relationships that can exist between sisters, plus the secrets lurking in a close-knit community.

Krystle Zara Appiah is a Ghanaian writer and screenwriter, born and raised in London. She has a degree in literature and creative writing from the University of Kent. In 2020, she was one of forty writers selected for the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She also works as a children’s books editor. ROOTLESS is her debut novel. Her second novel will explore the complex and competitive relationships that can exist between sisters, plus the secrets lurking in a close-knit community.

DOOM’S DAY CAMP de Joshua Hauke

The Last Kids on Earth meets Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in this funny and adventurous middle-grade graphic novel set in a world where everyone has unusual abilities except for a boy named Doom . . . who just might have to save them all.

DOOM’S DAY CAMP
by Joshua Hauke
‎ Razorbill/Penguin YR, March 2022

Doom Thorax is destined for greatness! Well, maybe…His dad is, after all, the fiercest apocalyptic warrior to ever walk what’s left of the earth. Unfortunately, in a world where the remaining humans (if you can still call them that) all have extraordinary abilities, Doom is painfully ordinary. In fact, the only thing even remotely special about him is that he is the one person in their whole pack who can read.
When his dad leads the adults off to battle a mysterious new threat, Doom gets left in charge of all the other kids from his camp. The only problem is he can barely take care of himself, let alone a group of weirdos like them. What’s he supposed to feed a boy made of mud? Why is the girl with telekinesis such a headache? And how can he stop his super strong little sister from turning everyone against him? Doom has ¬ finally been given a chance to prove himself. But it may take a lot more than book smarts if he and the others are going to have any chance at surviving on their own.

Joshua Hauke was lucky enough to discover that he was a weirdo at a very young age. After breaking his drawing arm three times in a row, Joshua learned that he could teach almost any part of his body to pick up a pencil, including his opposite arm and his left earlobe. Eventually, he even trained his beard to help out! Joshua is the creator of the webcomic Tales of the Brothers Three, which is inspired by his own life growing up in the Midwest. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

OTHER HOUSES de Paddy O’Reilly

A masterful and tender story about people who live at the fringes of society, from payday to payday. Acutely observed and lyrical, Paddy O Reilly’s novel paints a haunting picture of class, aspiration and the boundaries we will cross for love.

OTHER HOUSES
by Paddy O’Reilly
Affirm Press Australia, March 2022
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

All those memories. A man on his knees. The dark burn of Coke washing down a yellow wall. The night someone strung dead bats along the school fence, their black leather wings shredded into streamers. I never want to revisit that life.
Lily works as a cleaner. Each day she moves through the houses of wealthy Melbournians, unseen, scrubbing away the detritus of other people’s privilege. Her partner Janks, a reformed drug addict, churns vats of cheesy dip in a factory. With every measly pay check they inch further and further away from their former lives of poverty and addiction. Both Janks and Lily are determined that their daughter Jewelee won’t end up like them. She’ll have a career, not a deadend job. She’ll have savings, not debt. She’ll be able to afford a cleaner, not be the cleaner. Her future will be bright. But, like Sisyphus, one wrong move in their upward battle will see them back at square one, fighting to just get by.

Paddy O’Reilly is an Australian author. She wrote the novels The Factory, The Fine Colour of Rust and The Wonders, two collections of award-winning short stories, and a novella. Her novels have been shortlisted for major awards, and her stories have been widely published, anthologised and broadcast in Australia and overseas.

THE WILDERWOMEN de Ruth Emmie Lang

Two sisters embark on an extraordinary journey to discover the truth behind their mother’s mysterious disappearance. Ohioana Book Award finalist Ruth Emmie Lang returns with a new cast of ordinary characters with extraordinary abilities

THE WILDERWOMEN
by Ruth Emmie Lang
St. Martin’s Press, November 2022
(via Harvey Klinger)

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The oldest of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning, never to return.
Zadie’s estranged younger sister, Finn, can’t see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an “echo” more powerful than anything she’s experienced before: a woman singing a song she recognizes, a song about a bird…
When Finn wakes up alone in the woods with no idea of how she got there, she realizes who the memory belongs to. Nora. Now, it’s up to Finn to convince her sister not only that their mom is still out there, but that she wants to be found. Against Zadie’s better judgement, her and Finn hit the highway, using Finn’s echoes to retrace Nora’s footsteps and uncover the answer to the question that has been haunting them for years: Why did she leave?
But it isn’t long before Zadie realizes there is a dark side to her sister’s gift. The more time Finn spends in their mother’s past, the harder it is for her to return to the present, to return to herself. As Zadie feels her sister start to slip away, she will have to decide what lengths she is willing to go to to find their mother, knowing that if she chooses wrong, she could lose them both for good.

« Exquisitely drawn characters imbue Lang’s unconventional plot with verisimilitude and heart, inspiring readers to ponder whether the world is stranger and more beautiful than it appears. Effervescent, ethereal, and suffused with wonder. » — Kirkus (starred review)

« Lang’s melancholy, atmospheric writing sets the perfect tone as the Wilder sisters unravel the mystery. The result is a cozy supernatural outing perfect for an autumn night. » —Publisher’s Weekly

Ruth Emmie Lang was born in Glasgow, Scotland and has the red hair to prove it. When she was four years old, she immigrated to Ohio where she has lived ever since. She has since lost her Scottish accent, but still has the hair. Ruth currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband and dreams of someday owning a little house in the woods where she can write more books. Her first novel, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, was a finalist for the 2017 Book of the Year Award from Book of the Month Club and was a Target Book Club Pick in 2018.

THE APPLICANT de Nazlı Koca

Direct, darkly funny, and profound, Nazlı Koca’s debut novel THE APPLICANT explores what it means to be an immigrant, woman, and emerging writer.

THE APPLICANT
by Nazlı Koca
Grove Press, February2023

It’s 2017 and Leyla, a leftwing Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel in order to stay afloat while awaiting a verdict on her visa status. Having failed her master’s thesis and sued the German university over its decision, she is on the verge of losing her student visa and being forced to return to Istanbul, a city she thought she’d left behind for good.
As the clock winds down on her temporary visa, Leyla meets a right-wing Swedish tourist at a bar one night and—against her political convictions and better judgment—begins to fall in love. Will she choose to live a cookie-cutter life as the wife of a Volvo salesman, or just as unimaginable, return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, the ghost of her father still haunting their lives?
Written in the wry, propulsive diary-form of Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin and with the probing selfreflection of Sheila Heti’s novels, Nazli Koca radically and courageously examines one’s place in a deeply uncertain world, examining the bounds of state violence and self-destruction, of social dissociation and intense familial love. A highly original narrative, THE APPLICANT is a stunning dissection of a liminal life lived between borders and identities.

Nazlı Koca is a writer and poet from the Mediterranean coast of Turkey who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame and lives in New York City. She is the recipient of grants from the Nanovic Institute, Soham Dance Space, and United States Artists. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, BookForum, Second Factory, The Chicago Review of Books, books without covers, among other outlets. THE APPLICANT is her first novel.