Resources By Department: New Books: Fiction

Audition by Katie Kitamura
A mesmerizing Mobius strip of a novel that asks who we are to the people we love. Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, and young--young enough to be her son. Who is he to her--and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day--partner, parent, creator, muse--and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone--or something--seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize that they have already chosen their next target.
My Struggle: Book Six by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The full scope and achievement of Knausgaard's monumental work is evident in this final installment of his My Struggle series. Grappling directly with the consequences of Knausgaard's transgressive blurring of public and private, Book Six is a troubling and engrossing look into the mind of one of the most exciting artists of our time. Knausgaard includes a long essay on Hitler and Mein Kampf, particularly relevant (if not prescient) in our current global climate of ascending dictatorships.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
Banal Nightmare follows Moddie, a young woman recently returned to her hometown, as she throws herself at the mercy of her old friends who never left. Friends who all seemingly work at the local liberal arts college, who are all suddenly tipping toward middle age, going to parties, sizing each other up, obsessing over past slights, and dreaming of wild triumphs couched in elaborate revenge fantasies. When her friend Pam invites a mysterious New York artist to take up a winter residency in town, Moddie has no choice but to confront a trauma from her past and grapple with the reality of what her life has become.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom
The newly nameless narrator has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders. A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car. Along the way, the narrator and their new bestie--a self-proclaimed "garbage goth" with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail)--unpack the narrator's childhood and a recent personal loss that they refuse to face head-on.
O. Henry: 101 Stories by O. Henry
Here are more than 100 of O. Henry's best short stories, including not only such favorites as 'The Ransom of Red Chief' and 'The Last of the Troubadours' but also 'The Caballero's Way,' which created the character of The Cisco Kid, a murderous desperado in O. Henry's telling, and 'The Cop and the Anthem.' This volume represents stories from all of O. Henry's collections, including the Honduras stories published in Cabbages and Kings while Porter was hiding there to escape an embezzlement indictment, as well as the most generous selection ever published of O. Henry's New York (which he called Baghdad-on-the-Subway) and Texas stories. Also gathered here are previously uncollected stories.
Twist by Colum McCann
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the story of the underwater cables that carry the world's information. The sum of human existence--words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses--travels through the tiny fiber optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break at an unfathomable depth. Fennell's adventure brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. When the boat is sent up the west coast of Africa to repair a series of underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry news that may cause their lives to unravel.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves confused and disembodied, blinking under the fluorescent lights of their high school music room. They are greeted by the man they know as their music teacher, who restores the ghostly teens to their corporeal forms with a flick of his fingers and explains: nearly a year ago they went missing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, and have long been presumed dead. Which they are. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the teenagers agree to the terms of a deal that their teacher proposes: they must compete to remain in the mortal realm.

New Books: Fiction

Renfro Library Home | MHU Home