Literary Fiction

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There’s a memorable line in the Latin American classic Women With Big Eyes that reads, “Aunt Daniela fell in love the way intelligent women always fall in love: like an idiot.”

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Help Wanted is a novel about characters who some might call “ordinary people,” in this case the workers at a big box store very much like Walmart.

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“Everett’s genius in James is that he keeps Twain’s essential plot along with Huck’s fundamental innocence and decency, but he adds his own nuances along the way.”

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“Matsumoto’s love for the rugged, wintry Japanese landscape is evident in his descriptions, which are verbal equivalents of traditional Japanese art . . .”

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“Oberländer’s underlying message of female bodies striving to conform to spaces too narrow to contain them is powerful . . .”

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“Deep in characterization and entertaining in its narrative, this book makes a very philosophical point about how well we are aware of those we consider ourselves close to . .

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After Sappho is labeled as a novel although most of the characters presented actually existed and the words and actions ascribed to them are translated, paraphrased, quoted with minor alte

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“portrays a woman of great intellect, beauty, and ability to read others, whose desire for power forms not for her own glory but to challenge a system that threatens her son’s life.”

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It’s impossible to discuss Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favorite without discussing Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Told in an epistolary style from the perspective of the perpetrator

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“Most of the stories in Dublin Tales show off Irish literature at its best: overflowing with feeling, humor, and insight.

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“With Pelecanos’ longstanding care for the humanity, even among the most desperate and downtrodden, Owning Up is about the ripple effects and long-term ramifications of crime or tr

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“Author Hisashi Kashiwai is able to craft beautiful, heartfelt stories for his characters . . .”

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“If you want plot, read James Patterson. If you want to think, this is the book for you.”

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“Part love story, part adventure, and part mystery, The Fox Wife is an enjoyable excursion into the beliefs and life in the China of 120 years ago.”

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Ways and Means is an amazing debut novel from a prodigiously gifted young writer. . . . virtuosic storytelling.”

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“Wherever he takes you—to the steamy summers of the Deep South, to dingy bars and squalid dwellings, or to fragrant cherry orchards by a lake near Bigfork—Burke makes everything come to lif

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The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a wonderful love story, an engaging mystery expertly written and told, about loss and love . . .”

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Bekono captures Salomé’s narrative voice.

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For the history lesson alone, Cold Victory is memorable.”

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“the plot of Blizzard is compulsive enough to carry it through to the end. The age-old question of what happens next compels the turning of the page.”

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“weaves all these stories and characters into a tapestry of believability that is well-crafted, suspenseful, and satisfying.”

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“Maybe Antarctica could teach us all not to surrender to despair, to keep investing in a world of and beyond ourselves.”

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“As always, Matar’s writing is elegant and metaphorically rich, filled with carefully drawn portraits of Khaled and his intelligent, highly articulate friends and dramatic renderings of the

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The Derelict Light, environmental journalist Mike Stark’s first novel, is a character study of Astoria, Oregon, a small, dreary town on the Columbia River just miles from the Pacific Ocean

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“Quite simply it is dazzling.”

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