July 7, 2020 | strande
Looking for a book that will keep you turning pages? This list features unique fiction titles, many with strong female protagonists, for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Tara Westover.
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Her interactions with other people, however, leave her open to suspicion.
Weaving together multiple generations, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is both a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the history of passing. The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores the multiple reasons and realms in which people feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
What does it take to come back to life? For Jessa-Lynn Morton, the question is not abstract. In the wake of her father's suicide, Jessa steps up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the family crumbles. Her mother sneaks into the taxidermy shop to make provocative animal art, while her brother, Milo, withdraws. And Brynn, Milo's wife--and the only person Jessa's ever been in love with--walks out without a word. It's not until the Mortons reach a tipping point that a string of unexpected incidents opens up surprising possibilities.
It's 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her in many ways.
Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace, but what happens when the man Korede is pursuing gets his head turned by Ayoola?
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses--the loneliness of Francis's wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian's wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come. A lifelong friendship and love blossoms between the children in these two families. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years.
Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and inseparable friends at an elite boarding school, but they've barely spoken since. Until Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.
Madison's twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust.
Thinking of her dead-end life at home, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose.
Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. One psychotherapist is determined to uncover her motive.
Pairing free verse with watercolor illustrations, Mary's Monster is a unique and stunning biography of Mary Shelley, the pregnant teenage runaway who became one of the greatest authors of all time.By age nineteen, she had been disowned by her family, was living in scandal with a married man, and had lost her baby daughter just days after her birth. Mary poured her grief, pain, and passion into the powerful book still revered two hundred years later.
Fatima is a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain. Her dearest friend is Hassan, whose gift of mapmaking includes creating maps of places he's never seen and that bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan's surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan's gift as a threat. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls?