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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Feature by the editors of BookPage
Model Home by Rivers Solomon book jacket

Model Home

Read if your Halloween plans are: A horror movie marathon, specifically A24 horror movies

Ezri Maxwell doesn’t know whether their childhood home had ghosts, exactly, but they do know that it was haunted and determined to maim, traumatize and scare them and their Black family into leaving their mostly white Dallas suburb. Desperate to distance themselves from a childhood of constant dread, Ezri and their sisters fled the former model home as soon as they were old enough. Their parents, however, stayed where they were—right until the day they died under mysterious circumstances. At its core, Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a study of the interior landscape of someone trying to make sense of their life in the wake of extreme tragedy. Ezri’s head is cluttered with the detritus of trauma, from their mother’s ambivalence toward them as a child to the repercussions of living with mental health issues for years, (“a host of diagnoses—which change with whatever clinician I see”). A disturbing tale that explores self-doubt, family drama and childhood trauma, Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.

—Laura Hubbard

Djinnology by Seema Yasminis book jacket

Djinnology 

Read if your Halloween plans are: Exploring potentially haunted places—abandoned strip malls, creaky old houses, creepy caves … you get the idea.

If you’re in the mood for some spine-tingling stories, cozy up to Djinnology: An Illuminated Compendium of Spirits and Stories From the Muslim World, a fictitious (or is it?) compendium that is both fascinating and creepy, and made all the more so by Pulitzer Prize-winner Fahmida Azim’s striking illustrations. Seema Yasmin, a journalist, professor and physician, has created a fictional narrator named Dr. N, a taxonomist and ontologist who has traveled the world to investigate the sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent djinn. Djinn, Dr. N writes, have been “haunting humanity since pre-Islamic times.” He submits the fruits of his research to his academic committee to explain his long and unexplained absence from class, in this volume of stories from around the world that capture the long history and great variety of djinn. Many of these stories are related to human events, such as one concerning a ghostlike horseman who allegedly appeared in Cairo’s Tahrir Square at the height of the Arab Spring. Another terrifying tale of more dubious origins takes place in London, when a woman delivering her husband’s specimen to an IVF clinic spots what she thinks is an abandoned baby in the middle of the road. She stops, of course, but things do not go as she expects. Djinnology is beautifully designed, with maps, English and Arabic inscriptions and more, gamely selling a high-octane, between-two-worlds vibe. Most of all, Azim’s haunting illustrations in smoky colors perfectly portray this menagerie of spirits. Readers will find themselves looking over their shoulders.

—Alice Cary

We Love the Nightlife by Rachel Koller Croft book jacket

We Love the Nightlife

Read if your Halloween plans are: A bar crawl in a tiny costume, weather be damned

Quite often in fiction, the figure of the vampire has represented loneliness, but we’ve arguably never seen that sense of yearning quite the way Rachel Koller Croft portrays it in her new novel, We Love the Nightlife. Croft’s protagonist, Amber, is frozen in her party girl prime, turned in the waning days of the 1970s by her maker, the beautiful and manipulative Nicola. Decades later, Amber begins to imagine what life might be like without Nicola, and considers an escape plan. But Nicola’s influence is powerful, her ambitions are vast and her appetite for control deeper than Amber ever imagined. Despite her vampiric nature, Amber feels like one of us. This is mainly due to Croft’s skill; her conversational, warm and relatable prose depicts Amber not as a lonely monster, but as a person longing for freedom in a savage world covered in glitter and awash with pulsing music. We also get to see Nicola’s side of the story and her own brand of yearning, giving the book an antagonist who’s not just remarkably well-developed, but human in her own twisted way. These dueling perspectives, coupled with memorable side characters and a beautifully paced plot, make We Love the Nightlife an engrossing, darkly funny, twisted breakup story that’s perfect for vampire fiction lovers and fans of relationship drama alike.

—Matthew Jackson

American Scary by Jeremy Dauber book jacket

★ American Scary

Read if your Halloween plans are: Watching a brainy horror documentary, or peeking at spooky clips on YouTube

Any horror writer doing their job knows how to tap into the fears that plague us most. Jeremy Dauber’s American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond provides a robust account of how art has reflected American dread for centuries. As it turns out, our history is rife with foundational fear, making it prime territory for some scary storytelling. Dauber starts his “tour of American fear” with our country’s bloody beginnings and proclivity for blaming the devil for everything from bad weather to miscarriage (hello, Salem!). He then passes through slavery, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War and beyond to more contemporary paranoias reflected in film: murderous technology (The Terminator), individual indifference (the Final Destination series) and surveillance (Paranormal Activity), to name a few. Dauber’s attention to the details of myriad cultural touchstones, both famous and obscure, will entice those who care to tiptoe deeper into the darkest of the dark. American Scary’s greatest success is making readers consider what art may be born of our late-night anxieties. Spooky stuff, huh?

—Amanda Haggard

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner book jacket

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society

Read if your Halloween plans are: Curling up in a chair at home, reading a lightly spooky book or one of the more gothic Agatha Christies

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle resides in a quiet hamlet in upstate New York. The only out of the ordinary detail about Ms. Pinkwhistle is that she loves to solve a good murder mystery—not only those in the books she protects and enjoys at work, but also the real-life, grisly deaths in the otherwise sleepy little town of Winesap. But when a string of local murders hits a little too close to home, Sherry realizes that she can no longer remain an unattached bystander. A demon, or several, might be at the heart of these ever-increasing deaths, and Sherry will need the help of her skeptical friends and her possibly-possessed cat to root out the evil in Winesap. C.M. Waggoner’s The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is a stunning blend of genres, a dark supernatural adventure masquerading as a cozy mystery—and by the time readers realize this, they, like Sherry, are too deeply entrenched in the case to let it go. Waggoner infuses the pages with darkly humorous scenes and snappy dialogue, as well as unexpected magical touches that hearken back to the author’s previous fantasy novels, a combination that’s perfect for fans of horror tropes as well as lovers of mystery. Sherry Pinkwhistle is a sleuth to be reckoned with, and beneath her frumpy and soft exterior lies a pleasant surprise: a clever, determined heroine who will stop at nothing to protect the place she calls home and the people who live there. 

—Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Eerie Legends by Ricardo Diseño book jacket

Eerie Legends 

Read if your Halloween plans are: Circling up with friends and family for a night of scary stories

Eerie Legends: An Illustrated Exploration of Creepy Creatures, the Paranormal, and Folklore From Around the World arrives like Halloween candy, just in time for the spookiest season of the year. Austin, Texas-based artist Ricardo Diseño’s bold, offbeat illustrations don’t simply complement these spine-tingling stories, they lead the way. Each chapter blends elements of fiction and nonfiction, and includes a corresponding full-page illustration that stands on its own as a fully realized piece of art. The horror elements here are plenty scary, but skew toward the creature-feature end of the spectrum—think Universal Studio monsters, or even Troma’s The Toxic Avenger. The chapter on Krampus details the yuletide terror’s appearance with frightening specificity: “Part man, part goat, and part devil. . . . His tongue is red, forked, creepy, and always whipping around.” Diseño’s hoofed monster, straight out of the Blumhouse cinematic universe, is shown in the midst of abducting a child. Each chapter ends with a campfire-style tale about the designated monster, written with Lovecraftian zeal by Steve Mockus. As an added incentive, the cover glows in the dark—a feature I hadn’t noticed until after I fell asleep with it on my bedside table. Talk about eerie.

—Laura Hutson Hunter

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk book jacket

★ The Empusium

Read if your Halloween plans are: A hike contemplating the macabre beauty of seasonal decay—be sure to leave the woods before dark!

Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s fabulous novel, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, opens in 1913, when Polish 24-year-old Mieczyslaw Wojnicz arrives in the village of Görbersdorf, Germany, to be treated for tuberculosis. Tokarczuk is known for her penchant for the mythical and her deft, dark satirical wit, and as the subtitle, “A Health Resort Horror Story,” would lead readers to hope, the forests above the village whisper and echo with eerie sounds. The narration seems to come from ghostly entities who at times “vacate the house via the chimney or the chinks between the slate roof tiles—and then gaze from afar, from above.” A cemetery in a nearby town discloses evidence of a ritual killing every November. It is September, and the clock is ticking. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Empusium is about the rigid patriarchal world of pre-WWI Europe, and the tension between rationality and emotion. It is also about a young person coming of age—like Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, from which it draws inspiration. Facing a threat he does not understand, Mieczyslaw responds to the mysteries around him with curiosity and seeks his own way forward. Tokarczuk also favors a new path and, as usual, casts her enthralling spell.

—Alden Mudge

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

What I Know About You

Review by Laura Sackton

In his beguiling debut novel, What I Know About You, Éric Chacour delicately explores the complicated circumstances that create distance between people, and the limits of what anyone can know about those they love.

In 1980s Cairo, Tarek, a doctor from a Levantine Christian family, begins a relationship with a young man. Up until this moment, Tarek’s life has been a series of expected events. He grew up to become a doctor like his father, and took over the family practice after his father died. He has played the roles his wealthy family expected him to: dutiful son, successful professional. 

The young man, Ali, comes from a poor neighborhood, and enlists Tarek’s help when his mother becomes ill. As their relationship evolves, Tarek is not prepared for all the ways his love for Ali changes him. He doesn’t know how to navigate a relationship that he must hide from his community. Ali upends Tarek’s neat, ordered life, and the turmoil affects Tarek’s entire family.

Despite several dramatic plot elements, this is a quiet, internal novel. Its brilliance is in the way Chacour plays with point of view. The opening section is written in the second person, and while at first it reads like it is addressing the reader, it soon becomes clear that something more complex is going on. Who is the narrator? Who are they speaking to? How do they know such intimate details about Tarek’s life, his doubts, fears, desires and joys?

In sparse but beautiful prose, Chacour invites readers into the secret world that exists between the mysterious narrator and Tarek. On the surface, What I Know About You is an emotional family story, a queer awakening, a tumultuous romance. It’s a richly textured portrait of Cairo from the 1960s through the 2000s, and a nuanced exploration of queer relationships in Egypt during a time of intense governmental and societal homophobia. But even more compelling than all that is the story underneath: the why and the how of the narrative itself. As the narrator muses at one point, “there’s no way to stay outside your own story.” 

Éric Chacour’s debut is an emotional family story, a tumultuous queer romance and a richly textured portrait of ’80s and ’90s Cairo—with an intriguing narrative twist.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Wildes

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) is known for his comedic plays (The Importance of Being Earnest), fiction (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and for his trial and imprisonment for his homosexuality. Less well known is that he had a family: his wife Constance, who advocated for more practical dress for women, and their sons Cyril and Vyvyan. In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard focuses on Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan.

Like a play, The Wildes is structured in five acts. Act 1 opens in 1892 at a farm in the Norfolk countryside, where Constance and Oscar; their son Cyril; Oscar’s larger-than-life mother, Lady Jane Wilde; and their friends Arthur and Florence Clifton are spending a holiday. Soon, they are interrupted by the arrival of young Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie. The spoiled Bosie, a student at Oxford, seems to be one of Oscar’s “poets”—young, literary men eager to spend time with the great writer. This section, the longest in the novel, often feels like a drawing-room comedy—both Constance and Lady Jane Wilde are wits—but woven throughout is the slow dawning of Constance’s understanding about Oscar and her marriage, as she pieces together the reality of Oscar and Bosie’s relationship.  

Act 2 leaps forward five years, to a villa in Italy where Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan are living. The scandal of Oscar’s trial for gross indecency and homosexual acts, and his imprisonment, have forced Constance and the boys into exile, and they are hiding unhappily under a new last name. Acts 3 and 4 leap forward again, skipping over the tragedy of Oscar and Constance’s early deaths to episodes in Cyril and Vyvyan’s adulthoods—for Cyril, a pivotal day in the trenches in World War I France, and for Vyvyan, a theater outing with a family friend, on a night in 1925. Act 5 circles back to 1892 in that farmhouse in Norfolk, with a hopeful reimagining of this family’s life.

Although Bayard’s ending asks a little too much of Constance, the novel gives its heart to her; she’s a believable, loving, heartbroken character. In The Wildes, Bayard has built a story beyond the well-known tragedy, and though the novel never gives us Oscar’s perspective, we see him through Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan’s eyes—as an engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets, and a terrified man unable to love openly.

 

In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard shows us Oscar Wilde through the eyes of his wife and sons—presenting a portrait of the poet and playwright as engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets and a terrified man unable to love openly.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Empusium

Review by Alden Mudge

Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s fabulous novel, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, opens in September 1913, when Polish 24-year-old Mieczyslaw Wojnicz arrives in the village of Görbersdorf, Germany, to be treated for tuberculosis. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the novel draws inspiration both from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and from a real tuberculosis sanitarium, which, in an afterword, the author notes her effort to precisely recreate.

But this is Tokarczuk, for whom the factual and historical are just the beginning. She is known for how she mines her inspiration to achieve the mythical, and for her deft, dark satirical wit. As the subtitle, “A Health Resort Horror Story,” would lead readers to hope, the forests above the village whisper and echo with eerie sounds. The somber woods are seasonally populated by sooty charcoal burners, workers who in their off-hours fashion female effigies from moss and ferns and twigs. The narration, in the first-person plural, seems to come from ghostly entities who at times “vacate the house via the chimney or the chinks between the slate roof tiles—and then gaze from afar, from above.” There are no graveyards in Görbersdorf, where disease presides, but a cemetery in a nearby town discloses evidence of a ritual killing every November. It is September, and the clock is ticking.

While awaiting admission to the sanitarium, Mieczyslaw lodges at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen. The only other young person at the guesthouse is Thilo, an art student whose health is declining rapidly, and with whom Mieczyslaw develops an intimate friendship. The older men staying in the guesthouse come from various European cities, part of a society soon to collapse with the outbreak of World War I. After dinner, fueled by a ritual glass or two of the local psychoactive beverage, the men pontificate and mansplain, denigrating women in black-and-white terms that, Tokarczuk notes, are direct quotes from some of history’s brightest literary luminaries—Shakespeare, Yeats and many others. Mieczyslaw’s tablemates are full of certainty and unacknowledged fear.

Mieczyslaw listens, uncertain. The diagnosis that brought him to Görbersdorf came from his widowed father, who treated “the property entrusted to him in the figure of his son with great responsibility and—it was plain to see—love, albeit devoid of any sentimentality or any of the ‘female emotions’ that he so abhorred.” Mieczyslaw’s quest is to understand what, exactly, is wrong with him.

The Empusium is about a rigid patriarchal world and the tension between rationality and emotion. It is also about a young person coming of age—much like The Magic Mountain, which has been described as a bildungsroman. Facing a threat he does not understand, Mieczysl​​aw responds to the mysteries around him with curiosity and seeks his own way forward. Tokarczuk also favors a new path and, as usual, casts her enthralling spell.

Olga Tokarczuk’s deft, dark satirical wit is on full display in The Empusium, which challenges the rigid patriarchal world of pre-WWI Europe with horror and humor.
FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Pearly Everlasting

Review by Carolyn Cates

In 1903, a wildlife photographer ventured into a remote Maine lumber camp to capture the image of a woman nursing an orphaned bear cub alongside her newborn daughter. This true story inspired Tammy Armstrong’s debut novel, Pearly Everlasting, which imagines the life of that girl and that bear, suckled at the same breast and raised as brother and sister in a cabin set deep in the pines.

Pearly Everlasting’s mother is a healer, and her father is a cook in a logging camp in the woods of New Brunswick. Her father finds an orphaned bear cub during “false spring,” brings it home, and raises “Bruno” as the newborn Pearly’s brother. It’s hard to say whether Pearly is part bear, or Bruno is part human; either way, they share a powerful connection. Girl and bear ramble through the forest on endless adventures. But when the camp gets a cruel new supervisor, Heeley Swicker, their innocent life is forced to change. Swicker turns up dead, and Bruno is blamed and sold by Swicker’s nephew to animal traders. Enlisting the help of her friends Songcatcher and Ebony, Pearly sets out on a quest to the “Outside” to rescue him. Afterwards, she and Bruno must find their way homeward alone through ice and snow, meeting good people, bad people and one cranky and dangerous wild bear along the way.

Told in a lyrical voice (it’s no surprise to learn that Armstrong is a poet), Pearly Everlasting is at times hauntingly beautiful, at times sad, yet also laugh-out-loud funny in other moments. There’s a dose of fairy-tale magic in the woodland setting: Old Jack, a spirit from the loggers’ stories, is always lurking in the shadows and threatening Pearly’s world. 

This tender tale of hope and the redeeming nature of human kindness is also about coming home, literally and figuratively. At the end of her journey, Pearly remembers all of those who helped her along her way, and writes to them: “I tell them how the trees have grown so big up here on Greenlaw Mountain the spring light lives inside their boughs and rarely comes out to warm our yard. But by summer, the light climbs down and spills itself wide—a carpet Bruno naps in longer each day. This is how we take our days. This is how we make them stay.”

Told in a poetic voice, Tammy Armstrong’s debut novel, Pearly Everlasting, imagines the life of a girl and a bear raised as brother and sister in a cabin set deep in the pines.
FictionPopular FictionInspirational FictionHistorical Fiction

Christian fiction picks for fall 2024

Feature by Edith Kanyagia

With emotionally charged scenes and endearing, authentic characters, these novels weave inspiring stories of growth, faith and love. As they bring new life to forgotten and abandoned structures, two women find healing from their pasts and hope for their futures.

 

★ Lowcountry Lost

Author of 20 novels, including acclaimed bestseller Under the Magnolias, T.I. Lowe delivers a soul-stirring, unforgettable romance in Lowcountry Lost, pairing a couple’s redemption story with the restoration of a deserted town.

Avalee Elvis is a general contractor and the owner of Lowcountry Lost, a small outfit that renovates abandoned buildings and brings businesses to struggling towns. After Avalee’s whole world crumbled six years ago, flipping houses was what made life livable again, and she’s very excited about their next project: bringing a small dilapidated ghost town in South Carolina back to vibrant life. That is, until she learns that the structural engineer assigned to the project is the man Avalee most wishes she could forget: her ex-husband, Rowan Murray.

In captivating prose, Lowe relays a moving story about grief, healing and enduring love. Avalee struggles with the broken, painful parts within her and is plagued by nightmares about the events that led up to the end of her marriage. Now that she’s finally finding a path she is passionate about and moving forward, her past catches up with her. This time, however, Avalee lets Rowan in, and they face their heartbreaking history together. As they lean on each other instead of pushing each other away, the pain that separates them begins to dissipate.

The atmospheric ghost town and its restoration provide the perfect setting for the story. Founded during the 1800s, the town had been bustling until a road bypassing it was built, leading to its isolation and decline. As Avalee and Rowan team up to restore the town and save the buildings that had been left to waste away, readers will enjoy watching them slowly rekindle what they once had.

 

Between the Sound and Sea

Two-time Christy Book of the Year Award-winning author Amanda Cox’s entrancing Between the Sound and Sea chronicles the restoration of a lighthouse and the journey of an event planner who is looking for a new start.

After a scandal ruins her family’s reputation, Josephina “Joey” Harris is forced to leave behind her event planning business in Copper Creek, Tennessee, and take on a project that entails salvaging a decommissioned lighthouse on an island in North Carolina. Undeterred by the ghost stories associated with the island, Joey sets out to restore the lighthouse to its former glory. In the process, she stumbles upon details about the former lighthouse keeper, Callum McCorvey, and his family, and resolves to uncover the truth behind their mysterious disappearance.

Joey’s enemies-to-lovers story with Finn, whose grandfather owns the lighthouse, is compelling and engaging. Through the characters’ backgrounds and their growing relationship, Cox dispenses wisdom about faith, reconciliation and embracing fresh starts. The stories of other characters, including that of Finn’s grandfather, are rewarding and full of surprises. With extraordinary finesse, Cox develops realistic, empathetic characters that are easy to connect with and root for.

The novel also covers an intriguing, lesser-known part of history about WWII activity in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Descriptions of the war are deftly incorporated into Joey’s investigation of the disappearance of Callum McCorvey, while the period before the war beautifully frames Finn’s grandfather’s childhood and his friendship with Callum’s daughter, Cathleen. With brilliant skill, Cox draws on the restoration of the lighthouse and the main characters’ lives to inspire hope.

 

Read our spring 2024 Christian fiction recommendations.

Acclaimed authors T.I. Lowe and Amanda Cox use the renovation of old buildings to parallel their characters’ pursuit of emotional repair and new beginnings.
FictionChildren's & YAYA FictionYAShort StoriesLiterary FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

The Hold List: Born this way

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Chasing Redbird

Sharon Creech’s Chasing Redbird was the first book I ever read by myself, which was a big deal for me; I am dyslexic and struggled to read when I was younger. I was captivated by the main character, Zinnia Taylor, because she was a misfit, just like me. Zinny has six siblings, and in their chaotic home, she often gets lost in the fray. She prefers to spend time with her Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate who live next door and provide her with a safe haven. When Jessie dies unexpectedly, Zinny withdraws even further from her family. As she wrestles with her grief and guilt, she discovers an abandoned 200-year-old pioneer trail on her family farm and becomes obsessed with restoring it to functionality. Her family thinks she’ll give up, but Zinny has to see this project through. It may be the only way to heal her broken world. Creech treats the topic of grief and family dynamics delicately and beautifully, painting a profound picture that will speak to readers of all ages.

—Meagan, Production Manager

Earthlings

From childhood, we’re trained to take part in society, learning what behavior is praiseworthy, and what behavior is outrageous. By adulthood, most of us conform automatically, but for some, it comes less easily—like Natsuki, the protagonist of Japanese author Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. As a child, Natsuki feels like an outsider, and she is relieved when her stuffed hedgehog, Piyyut, reveals to her that she is actually an alien from planet Popinpobopia. Her alien’s perspective lets her see her town for what it is: a “Baby Factory” in which humans serve society by working, getting married and having babies that will grow up to become society’s tools in turn. Natsuki struggles to accept that future, though she longs for the security of being normal. Her isolation increases when a teacher sexually abuses her, and no one believes her when she seeks help. Like Convenience Store Woman, Murata’s other novel that has been translated into English, Earthlings pushes readers—hard—to see the absurdity of what is and isn’t considered acceptable. While the subject matter remains bleak, by the end of the book, Natsuki finds allies, and their acts of defiance take on a kind of euphoric hilarity, despite the severity of the consequences.

—Phoebe, Associate Editor

Kaikeyi

In Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi, Princess Kaikeyi is the lone daughter in a family with seven sons. After her father banishes her mother, she is left with only the stories of the gods that her mother once shared with her. Now on her own as the sole woman in her family, she is determined for her voice to be heard. However, her world shatters when the king quickly marries her off for the sake of securing an alliance, despite Kaikeyi begging to remain independent. Before she journeys to the kingdom of her betrothed, she discovers a special magic that can influence how she is perceived within relationships. With this newfound spark of confidence, she plows through societal barriers, fighting on the battlefield for her new home and joining her husband’s council, where she resiliently presses the other men in the room to make changes in their kingdom. After years of ruthless judgment and scorn, Kaikeyi and her two sister-wives, Kausalya and Sumitra, start a women’s council for members of the community to seek advice and direction. Kaikeyi is a persistent force throughout the story, never afraid to disrupt the conditions of society. She rubs people the wrong way and inspires others, making her a dynamic character whose persistence and courage will win readers’ hearts.

—Jena, Sales Coordinator

The Complete Stories

A keen observer of idiosyncratic behavior, the inimitable Flannery O’Connor spun unforgettable, expansive short stories that brim with characters whose feelings of otherness alienate them from society. The most well-known is The Misfit in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a story that is often readers’ entry point to this Southern writer. The Misfit is “aloose from the Federal Pen” and, with unfailing politeness, executes a family on their way to a vacation in Florida. Complex and contemplative, The Misfit finds “no pleasure [but] in meanness” yet tries to square his crimes with a sense of right and wrong. Other misfits in O’Connor’s stories include Olga in “Good Country People,” an unapologetically surly spinster whose leg was shot off in a hunting accident, and who gets hoodwinked by a Bible salesman. Some of her misfits crave redemption and empowerment—O’Connor was, afterall, a Catholic—while others are unwilling or unable to change. Perhaps the greatest misfit in O’Connor’s stories is the midcentury South itself. A region straining to be better? Or one unwilling to shed the yoke of violence? The Complete Stories is a compendium you can spend a lifetime reading and re-reading, feeling freshly enlightened each time.

—Erica, Associate Editor

If you've ever felt like the odd one out—the black sheep in your family, or loner in your community—you'll love these four books with protagonists who can't help but stand out.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

There Are Rivers in the Sky

Review by Thane Tierney

Water. Generally, we don’t give it much of a thought. Unless there’s too little . . . or too much. Then it fills our consciousness, saturating our brains with phrases like “atmospheric rivers” and “glacial retreat,” or such devastatingly commonplace words as “drowning” and “drought.”

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, here on the head of a learned and cruel Assyrian king, there as a snowflake on the tongue of an impoverished British baby, and yet again as a lifesaving elixir in the possession of a Yazidi grandmother driven into exile by the Islamic State group.

In a fabulist twist, the Booker-shortlisted, bestselling author imbues this recurring molecule with a sense of memory. After a particularly disturbing and graphic passage near the book’s opening, Shafak states her case clearly and succinctly: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

The book opens with King Ashurbanipal in the 640s B.C.E.; then the narrative takes a leap of thousands of years and miles, to Victorian era London. There, a young lad born to an itinerant scavenger is crowned “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums.” Modeled on real-life Assyriologist George Smith, Arthur rises above his station to become a scholar who, like Ashurbanipal before him, is enchanted by the Epic of Gilgamesh.

From there, the scene shifts to 2014, by the Tigris river in southeastern Turkey. There, Narin, a young Yazidi girl, is preparing for a journey to Iraq with her grandmother so that she can be baptized in a sacred temple. When the girl questions her elder about why they are being forced from their land, the grandmother recounts a brief history of the Yazidi people, concluding that “For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors.”

Shafak seems to be on a mission to prevent us from forgetting, whether it’s the majesty of ancient Mesopotamia, the horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated upon the Yazidis, or the fragile ecosystem of rivers such as the Tigris and the Thames. Like water itself, There Are Rivers in the Sky seeps into the cracks and crevasses of our humanity, unlocking a sense of wonder.

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, touching four lives linked by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Volcano Daughters

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Gina Maria Balibrera’s debut novel, The Volcano Daughters, offers the epic early 20th-century tale of sisters Graciela and Consuelo, born into poverty and servitude on a coffee finca (plantation) on the side of a volcano in El Salvador.

In 1923, Graciela and her mother, Socorrito, are summoned to San Salvador for the funeral of the father that Graciela never knew: a peasant who rose to become the advisor to El Gran Pendejo, the strongman ruling El Salvador. There Graciela meets her sister, Consuelo, who was taken from the finca as a 4-year-old, and lives in luxury with her adoptive mother, Perlita. Soon, Graciela learns that El Gran Pendejo intends for her to advise him as her father did, though she’s only 9. Every morning Graciela is driven to the presidential palace, where she listens to the nonsense El Gran Pendejo spouts, repeating it back to him. Meanwhile, the teenage Consuelo, who failed at the same job, stays busy falling in love with her young art teacher.

That’s only the beginning of The Volcano Daughters, which spans 30 years and multiple settings, including Paris, San Francisco and Hollywood. As El Gran Pendejo’s pronouncements grow more bizarre, he lands on the idea of killing the country’s Indigenous people, who he claims are communists. The massacre that follows separates Graciela and Consuelo, as each flees the country thinking the other dead.

The Volcano Daughters is also a ghost story, as the ghosts of Graciela’s and Consuelo’s best friends from the finca—Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia—share the novel’s first person-plural narration, sometimes disappearing into the story, other times butting in with commentary. 

Because The Volcano Daughters covers so much ground (both literally and narratively), and has a large cast of characters, including the ghost narrators, parts of the story slip by almost too quickly for the reader to connect with them emotionally. Still, Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances.

With its depictions of the 1930s Hollywood scene and Paris art world, and its imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history, The Volcano Daughters stands out. 

Gina María Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances, an imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

Mina’s Matchbox

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Powerful in its nuanced details, Mina’s Matchbox is an immersive and poignant coming-of-age story.

After the death of her father, 12-year-old Tomoko is sent to live with her aunt’s family in the coastal Japanese town of Ashiya, while her mother stays in Tokyo. Mina’s Matchbox chronicles Tomoko’s transformative year with her extended family, from 1972 to 1973, especially her close relationship with Mina, her book-loving cousin who has asthma.

Unlike Yoko Ogawa’s darker novels, such as Hotel Iris and the Orwellian The Memory Police, Mina’s Matchbox adopts a narrative tone that is curious and filled with wonder, conveying Tomoko’s enchantment with the enormous house in Ashiya and its fascinating occupants, such as Tomoko’s quiet aunt; her uncle, prone to mysterious disappearances; her German grandmother, Rosa, who has a unique bond with the housekeeper, Yoneda; and Pochinko, the family’s pygmy hippopotamus. Ogawa draws readers into the personalities and interactions of the family, unraveling the characters’ complex inner lives.

Looking back from three decades later, the adult Tomoko finds profound insights in her childhood delight with the expansiveness of life. Ogawa’s masterful descriptions, too, add depth and suggest simmering secrets that wait to boil over.

Translated by Stephen B. Snyder, Mina’s Matchbox is an elegant and stirring work that captures the dreams of youth, and the lingering sweetness that can remain even after those dreams have faded.

Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox is filled with wonder, conveying 12-year-old Tomoko’s enchantment with her extended family during the year she spends with them, from 1972 to 1973.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Bright I Burn

Review by Sydney Hankin

As the 16-year-old daughter of moneylenders from Kilkenny, Ireland, Alice Kyteler has learned to trust very little. Only the surrounding brooks and forests, the gold stashed in her floorboards, and her own mind make the cut. One wrong turn could paint an immediate bullseye on her back: For a woman in the 13th century, a charge of witchcraft is just a misstep away. With her mother dead at the hands of her father, and herself aware that she is rapidly approaching the age at which she must marry, Alice has more reason than ever to be on her guard around the men in her life.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by the few known details about Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose life author Molly Aitken thoughtfully explores into adulthood and old age. Four marriages—each unmistakably different from the last—shape Alice’s path through the highs and lows of motherhood, work, religion, loss and public life. While her experiences as a young parent are the most emotional and devastatingly palpable, Alice’s defining blend of pragmatism and spontaneity lend a unique outlook to her later years. As she learns to navigate grief and a world awash in fear, Alice’s wistfulness becomes lyrical poetry in Aitken’s hands: “Here, moth larvae nick away at bark until trees crash to the ground, and snow falls, suns set, and rivers change course. It is the place of great sky-shattering storms. A place where two women could stand naked, hair undressed for the wind to dance.”

Memories and dreams, along with letters, songs and the ever-present town gossip, are interspersed with the narrative, creating a quick-moving yet immersive experience that’s better felt than analyzed. While folks looking for a more historically expansive narrative may find Bright I Burn to be too interior, the author’s prowess in character building helps bring Alice’s story to life. Aitken instills a complex and heartbreaking grit in Alice which is both moving and painful to witness.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose 13th-century life author Molly Aitken imbues with a complex and heartbreaking grit.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionGothic FictionDebut FictionCrime FictionComing of Age

Find something new in these 5 debuts

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Smothermoss

First lines: “It is happening again. Snow melts, the crust of frost cracks and heaves. Water sinks below ground, swelling channels. Sap rises. Wild garlic sprouts, arbutus creeps, and bloodroot quickens. Curved shoots of spotted skunk cabbage thrust toward the light.”

Read if you enjoyed: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow or Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Alisa Alering’s debut, Smothermoss, is a novel of violence, trust and the landscape of Appalachia. The mountains and hollows, the moss, quartz, water and trees are all painted in their full aliveness.

In the 1980s, Sheila, Angie and their mother are trying to figure out how to survive. Working long shifts at the asylum, their mother is rarely present, and while the two sisters share a small room, their diverging interests and ways of being make it hard for them to relate to each other. Sheila goes to work, she worries, she feeds the rabbits. Angie explores, she knows the neighbors, and she draws mysterious creatures on her own deck of tarot cards which almost seem to self-animate. Then two female hikers are murdered on the Appalachian Trail, and the murderer may not have left the area. The secrets of what happened hide in the landscape. Each scene builds in tension and a sense of wonder, surprising you with the direction these sisters’ future may take.

—Freya Sachs

 

Bright Objects

First line: “Barely an hour before my first death on a warm night in January 1995—when I blacked out in a crumpled Toyota south of a town called Jericho—a bright object was sighted somewhere in the constellation of Virgo, the sign of the maiden, not far from a star named Porrima, after the Roman goddess of prophecy.”

Read if you enjoyed: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh or The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon

A fatal accident, a cosmic visitor and a mysterious stranger all come together in a small Australian town in Ruby Todd’s dazzling debut, Bright Objects.

Young widow Sylvia Knight is recovering from the car accident that killed her husband and left her with serious injuries, both physical and psychological. Profoundly lonely, Sylvia works at the local mortuary, keeps her husband’s grave tidy and puts on a cheerful face for her mother-in-law, Sandy. But she is haunted by sketchy memories of the night of the accident.

When a rare comet appears, Joseph Evans, local meditation teacher and the heir of a wealthy family, sees the comet as a divine messenger and begins a series of mystical lectures that attract a cultlike following. He is eager to involve both Sylvia and Sandy, and Sylvia is distressed to see her mother-in-law drawn in by his promises. Wrestling with suicidal ideation, Sylvia finds her obsession with uncovering her husband’s killer pushing her to the edges of her sanity.

Bright Objects is a riveting literary thriller of obsession, vengeance and astronomy, but its most poignant gift may be its depiction of trying to make sense of life after tragedy.

—Lauren Bufferd

 

Pearl

First line: “Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me Went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned Who do you think was saved?”

Read if you enjoyed: Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin, or Wintering by Katherine May

Sian Hughes’ debut novel, Pearl, offers a coming-of-age story set in rural England, one that reverberates with grief and longing, but also a wry humor.

As the novel opens, narrator Marianne is taking part in an ancient mourning ceremony and fair called the Wakes in her home village in Cheshire. It’s a ceremony that Marianne always attends, one that leads her to ponder the loss of her mother. When Marianne was 8, her mother walked out into the rain one fall day, forever leaving behind Marianne and the rest of their family.

Pearl was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, and is based in part on a medieval poem of the same title. Hughes, who is a poet herself, brings an attention to language and to the natural world that lends a beautiful vibrancy to her sentences. But there’s a droll sensibility here, too: Humor brightens grief-filled and difficult moments, such as an episode of postpartum psychosis. Pearl is also full of the gentle landscape and hallowed folklore of English village life, sometimes with a slightly gothic cast, and to that end, each chapter opens with part of a nursery rhyme or nonsense poem.

Hughes has written a tender debut novel which, at its end, brings the reader back around to the grown Marianne at the Wakes, imbuing the festival with a lovely, redemptive new meaning.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

 

Between This World and the Next

First lines: “Open your eyes. Empty your mind. What’s happening in the present will pass. This is what Song tells herself. It’s dark and hot and the middle of the night. Through the light that comes from the open door, she sees a bead of sweat on the tip of his nose.”

Read if you enjoyed: Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor or Hunted by Abir Mukherjee

As Praveen Herat’s gripping debut political thriller, Between This World and the Next, opens, Joseph Nightingale, a British war photographer nicknamed Fearless after a moment of heroism during the Bosnian conflict, has accepted his old friend Alyosha Federenko’s invitation to Cambodia.

Federenko stashes Fearless at the Naga, a gathering place for the gangs and soldiers of fortune set loose upon the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the chilling pleasures of this book is Herat’s vivid, knowledgeable portrait of this threatening netherworld, from outposts like the Naga to breakaway states like Transnistria. Also at the Naga is Song, a young Cambodian woman enslaved as a cleaner. Song cares for the young children who are brought to the Naga by adult predators and whose gruesome abuse is recorded on video. The existence of one of these videos, handed off to Fearless, sets the elaborate plot rolling with increasing velocity.

The final chapters of Between This World and the Next are breathtaking in their descriptive power and imaginative reach, and the novel’s ending is very satisfying. But some threads still dangle and not all questions are answered—which makes one hope for a sequel.

—Alden Mudge

 

They Dream in Gold

First lines: “His pillow ruptures between her knees. Feathers plucked from the breasts of live geese burst into the darkness of the room. She watches them by the flashes of the storm’s lightning.”

Read if you enjoyed: Village Weavers by Myriam J.A. Chancy or True Biz by Sara Novic.

Playwright and director Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, crackles. Her prose is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one.

Mansour, a child first of Senegal and then of the world, exudes music and wants to make his mark as a musician. Mama Eva, who raised Mansour and keeps her own secrets, aspires to culinary heights. And Bonnie, an only child raised by her grandmother, is entranced by Mansour’s sound on a demo CD before she ever meets him. They all have, as Sennaar writes, “a need for a life of wonder.” After Mansour goes missing while on tour in Spain, the lives of the women who love him are strung painfully taut as they wait for news: Back in her crumbling mansion in Switzerland, Mama Eva worries as she cooks for her long-awaited restaurant’s opening day, while pregnant Bonnie broods and paces.

They Dream in Gold wends from Mama Eva’s 1940s youth in Dakar to Bonnie and Mansour’s first meeting in 1960s New York City, to a Brazilian music festival in the middle of Carnival where Mansour’s star is born. Unreserved and confident, Sennaar’s piercing narrative voice reverberates through a novel pulsing with all the intensity it takes to compose a life and make it sing.

—Melissa Brown

These vibrant novels from first-time fiction writers grabbed our attention right from the opening lines.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

They Dream in Gold

Review by Melissa Brown

Playwright and director Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, crackles. Her prose is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one. Over the course of 400 pages, Sennaar moves swiftly back and forth across continents and generations to tell a vividly realized story of family, identity and love.

Mansour, a child first of Senegal and then of the world, exudes music and wants to make his mark as a musician. Mama Eva, who raised Mansour and keeps her own secrets, aspires to culinary heights. And Bonnie, an only child raised by her grandmother, is entranced by Mansour’s sound on a demo CD before she ever meets him. They all have, as Sennaar writes, “a need for a life of wonder.” After Mansour goes missing while on tour in Spain, the lives of the women who love him are strung painfully taut as they wait for news: Back in her crumbling mansion in Switzerland, Mama Eva worries as she cooks for her long-awaited restaurant’s opening day, while pregnant Bonnie broods and paces.

They Dream in Gold wends from Mama Eva’s 1940s youth in Dakar to Bonnie and Mansour’s first meeting in 1960s New York City, to a Brazilian music festival in the middle of Carnival where Mansour’s star is born. The novel’s five parts flow in and out of each character’s past and present, examining the people who have shaped them, although some side characters are less compelling. Bonnie, Mansour and Mama Eva have each been orphaned in different ways and are looking for home, a place to stay and belong. Unreserved and confident, Sennaar’s piercing narrative voice reverberates through a novel pulsing with all the intensity it takes to compose a life and make it sing.

Mai Sennaar’s prose in They Dream in Gold is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one.

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