April 19, 2025
As Oscar Wilde once quipped, romance can take many forms. This week we have male friends and lovers; a triad of art-world influencers; linked stories by an Irish up-and-comer with bad luck in love; historical fiction from the Tudor period featuring a romance of convenience; and a novel about new beginnings after a breakup.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Fantasies of Future Things
By DOUG JONES
Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER
Jones has said, “I wanted to read something in which I could recognize myself.” His evocative debut takes us into the lives of two gay men beginning a relationship in 1996 Atlanta. Daniel has recently lost his mother and is struggling with his sexuality when he meets Jacob, whose personal life is also in upheaval. They work for a real estate developer who instructs them to knock on doors in the Black community and make offers to homeowners to make way for gentrification, anticipating the coming Summer Olympics. Are Daniel and Jacob willing to contribute to injustice for the sake of succeeding in their careers?
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Gabriële
By ANNE BEREST & CLAIRE BEREST
Published by EUROPA EDITIONS
Translated by Tina Kover
Berest is well known for her bestselling novel, The Postcard, based on family members who were lost in the Holocaust. Her new novel is also based on family history, featuring her great-great grandmother—Gabriële Buffet. Buffet (a musician who died at 104!) married the artist Francis Picabia who founded the experimental Dadaist movement with Marcel Duchamp in turn of the century France. Here, Berest captures one of the most thrilling periods of art history. The novel is filled with the excitement of creativity as these artists invent a new vocabulary for painting and sculpture. Set in glamorous locations from London to Paris and St. Tropez, the author rescues her ancestor from a shadowy history.
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The Pretender
By JO HARKIN
Published by KNOPF
A stranger comes to town—that time-tested plot—and sets in motion a novel set in 1400s England. John Collan is a 12-year-old boy living in the English countryside when someone comes to his village to announce John is actually Edward, Earl of Warwick and nephew of King Richard III. His simple rural life disrupted, he is taken to Oxford, Burgundy, and eventually Ireland to be ‘kept safe’ by his captors, where he meets Joan, his Irish host’s daughter. They will both face many challenges as they forge a partnership. This rousing historical novel about pretenders to the throne is reminiscent of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, and loosely based on a true event about the rise of the Tudors.
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Old Romantics
By MAGGIE ARMSTRONG
Published by BIBLIOASIS
These stories share the theme of thwarted love. In the title story, a Dublin couple attempts to take a romantic holiday to NYC. Most plans fail miserably. They seem highly unsuited to each other, but Margaret (the narrator throughout) says, “he had wads of cash—wads—his golden fifty-Euro notes flickered at me like the page of a book he could rip from at will…” The narrative voice is infectious. After many small but intense fights, they travel down south as Margaret documents everything in her notebook. This and other highly entertaining stories of bad dates and desperate stabs at relationships make for an impressive debut about just how far we’ll go to find romance.
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I See You've Called in Dead
By JOHN KENNEY
Published by ZIBBY BOOKS
This book about death, funerals, and obituaries is no tear-jerker. New Yorker writer Kenney’s (Love Poems for Anxious People) new novel is both comic and heartwarming. Bud, a suspended obit writer for an important NY newspaper (he tipsily sent in his own obituary) is dealing with being single since his wife left him. His closest pal and neighbor is paraplegic, and with a newfound female friend who Bud met at a funeral, they band together to reckon with their past disappointments. Bud rejects the adage that ‘life is short and then you die’ for a belief in second chances. Kenney exalts the power of friendship and the personal connections that make it possible to overcome physical and psychological despair.
