May 11, 2024
A grifter in Los Angeles, two lost souls questioning the meaning of art, an award-winning writer’s adult debut, and an emotionally powerful novel following a displaced Algerian family that is perhaps the best of a seasoned writer’s career. These writers and their stories have origins in the U.S., England, India, Poland, Algiers, France, England, Salonica, Australia, Buenos Aires, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Cuba. We invite you to travel along with them to discover their imaginary worlds.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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All Fours
By MIRANDA JULY
Published by RIVERHEAD
“It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.” This can be taken many ways in July’s sexy romp that finds our protagonist at a crossroads in her life and marriage. She is also having a secret, torrid affair (not far from home) in a hotel room she inexplicably redecorates. Everyone in her life thinks she is driving cross-country from California to New York, but she is actually having an existential breakdown as she comes to terms with the aging process. The author is in high form as she combines banality with eroticism, hilarity with soul searching. You won’t want to miss this. Limited signed copies and specially produced broadsides available.
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This Strange Eventful History
By CLAIRE MESSUD
Published by W.W. NORTON
“All in this strange eventful history is uncertain,” states one of Messud’s vividly drawn protagonists on a ferry ride to Dover with her husband-to-be. We accompany a peripatetic extended family as they create new ‘homes’ for themselves despite displacement. Intellectually curious and successful, each claim family and God to be their ruling planets. These characters’ triumphs (enduring love) and tragedies (illnesses, depression, regret) create a tapestry of players on the world stage across generations of the 20th century. Sparked by the author’s personal history—her father was a pied-noir from French Algeria—this is an incredibly rich and rewarding novel, enhanced with details of the politics and cultures of their times through war, love, and dislocation. Superb.
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Blue Ruin
By HARI KUNZRU
Published by KNOPF
Kunzru, is the winner of the Chowdhury Prize in Literature for exceptional writers. This book completes his red, white, and blue theme, set in upstate New York during the pandemic. Having left London without working papers after a promising but ultimately disappointing early career as an artist, Jay is delivering groceries during lockdown. That is, until he encounters his ex-girlfriend and her husband (his former best friend) whose comfortable lifestyle is in sharp contrast to the fact that he is living in his car. Jay’s hapless life is shaken up when he is invited to stay with them, giving Kunzru an opportunity to explore the commerce of art and the nature of success.
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The Lady in Waiting
By MAGDALENA ZYZAK
Published by RIVERHEAD
If you’re craving another Ripley-style novel, this could be the book for you. Zyzak is a Polish-born writer whose talent as a filmmaker informs this riotous, thoroughly entertaining novel. Viva is an unemployed Polish immigrant who falls into a swirling plot of sex, thievery, bed-hopping, husbands and ex-husbands, Russian oligarchs, and even a Vermeer painting. It begins when she picks up a glamorous hitchhiker. “Nothing exciting had happened to me since I’d come to L.A. Until Bobby.” Soon you will wonder who’s hustling who as they careen from Hollywood, CA to Venice, Italy in this lively picaresque.
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skin & bones
By RENÉE WATSON
Published by LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY
In her first book for adults, Watson, who has garnered a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor, continues to address the concerns explored in her previous bestsellers—Blackness, body image, generational legacies, and “what it’s like to feel both invisible and visible at the same time.” Lena confronts this issue when, at 40, her comfortable life is shattered. A single mother, she’s days away from marrying the man she loves. Until a confession upends everything. Watson’s spirited novel, told in short episodes including a history of Black people in Portland, Oregon, is about love, betrayal, fat-shaming, and the essential role of friendship in getting through the tough times.
