Fiction

In 1919, Kitty Weekes, pretty, resourceful, and on the run, falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams. But something more is going on at Portis House—its plaster is crumbling, its plumbing makes eerie noises, and strange breaths of cold waft through the empty rooms. It’s known that the former occupants left abruptly, but where did they go? And why do the patients all seem to share the same nightmare, one so horrific that they dare not speak of it?

The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.”

Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you’re from.

Two down-on-their-luck comedians embark on a road tour and find more than a few good laughs on the way.

Olivia Vincent dreams of stand-up comedy stardom. Bustling around a busy Manhattan office by day and hustling from club to club by night, she can’t catch a break. Work is falling through the cracks, and after ditching a major client to make a performance, Olivia gets the boot.

Determined to pursue her dreams, she snags an audition in Los Angeles for a coveted spot on late-night TV. But the only way to get there is to join seasoned stand-up Nick Leto on a cross-country road tour. She agrees on one condition—no funny business.

Icky comedy condos, tiny smoking nightclubs, and Nick’s incessant classic rock radio are a far cry from life on the Upper East Side. Reality sets in, and Olivia wonders if she can hack it in showbiz or if she’s just a hack. As Nick helps Olivia improve her act along the way, sparks begin to fly and ignite what they thought was an impossible flame. Maybe being stuck with Nick in a Jeep isn’t so bad. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of Olivia’s actual funny business.

A funny, gossipy and ultimately poignant novel about four Gen X teen friends turned 21st-century adults who awkwardly come back together to confront an influential teacher whose brutal remarks have haunted them all for years.

In his early forties, nonprofit writer Tip Murray is just getting past the wreckage of his youth and settling into semi-humdrum married New England domesticity. Things take an unusual turn when he receives shocking news from his high school best friend, hippie farmer Natalie, that one of their former teammates from speech team, Pete, has committed suicide. Surprisingly mentioned in Pete’s final Facebook post? A devastating comment made to him by their speech team coach, Gary Gold.

Feeling nostalgic for their 80s adolescence, Tip and Nat decide to reconnect with two long lost friends from the team, haughty menswear designer Anthony and tightly wound college professor Jennifer. The reunited quartet quickly discover an unsettling thread: all were quietly wounded by Mr. Gold’s deeply cutting remarks. The silver lining? Gold is still alive, and a quick Google search shows that he has retired to Florida. There’s only one thing left to do: fly down to a posh resort to confront him. What happens next is far from what any of them could have imagined.

Fueled by cringe-y confrontations and 80s nostalgia, a literary mashup of The Breakfast Club and The Big Chill, Speech Team explores what it means to take account of the pain that can suffuse a life and what it means, years on, to move forward.

Jezebel was born into the world howling. She intends to leave it the same way.

When Jezebel learns she can’t be a king like her father simply because she’s a girl, she vows never to become someone’s decorative wife, nameless and lost to history. At fifteen she’s married off, despite her protests, to Prince Ahab of Israel. There, she does what she must to gain power and remake the dry and distant kingdom in the image of her beloved, prosperous seaside homeland of Tyre, beginning by building temples to the gods she grew up worshipping. As her initiatives usher in an era of prosperity for Israel, her new subjects love her, and her name rings through the land.

Then Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh and her former lover, begins to speak out against her. Bitter at having been abandoned by Jezebel, he lashes out, calling her a slut. Harlot. Witch. And the people, revering their prophet’s message, turn on her.

As ancient powers and faiths are pitted against each other, bloodshed descends on Israel and Jezebel faces the fall of her legacy. Determined despite the odds to make Israel a great nation, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect her family, her throne—her name. A stunning revision of a notorious queen’s story, Jezebel is a thrilling lyrical debut about a fierce woman who refuses to be forgotten.

One might as well start with Séraphin: playlist-maker, nerd-jock hybrid, self-appointed merchant of cool, Rwandan, stifled and living in Windhoek, Namibia. Soon he will leave the confines of his family life for the cosmopolitan city of Cape Town, in South Africa, where loyal friends, hormone-saturated parties, adventurous conquests, and race controversies await. More than that, his long-awaited final year in law school promises to deliver a crucial puzzle piece of the Great Plan immigrant: a degree from a prestigious university.

But a year is more than the sum of its parts, and en route to the future, the present must be lived through and even the past must be survived.

From one of Africa’s emerging literary voices comes a lyrical and piquant tale of family, migration, friendship, war, identity, and race following the intersecting lives of Séraphin and a host of eclectic characters from pre- and post-1994 Rwanda, colonial and post-independence Windhoek, Paris and Brussels in the 70s, Nairobi public schools, and the racially charged streets of Cape Town.