Izzy is a frustrated Pitbull impersonator trying to make his way in modern-day Miami until the real-life rapper threatens him to cease and desist. Having come to America as a seven-year-old from Cuba, he fights to carve out a sense of identity. Is he a Cuban, or is he an American? Like many immigrants…
“Is this a test?” she asks. “For me?” “I’d say it’s more for us,” he says gently. “Or me, maybe. You’ve been good Annie. You’ve been wonderful, actually. It’s been over a month since you were grounded. And even that was for a mistake. I ought to give you more credit.” - Sierra Greer,…
As a seasonal reader, I find spring challenging. I’m not ready for the effervescent reads of summer, but I’m also not looking for the big literary titles of the colder months. Instead, I want something that balances substance and charm, something both engaging and offbeat.. Something fresh and fun and a little bit bracing –…
Amor Towles needs no introduction, his last two novels, A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway, were runaway bestsellers (and I loved them). In this outing Towles offers us one novella and a collection of short stories. In Table for Two Towles brings us stories that center on unlikely encounters that result in…
“Sometimes I think I have a parasite. I feel like there is a creature crawling inside me, trying to migrate to my brain. I picture him like Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants; a malevolent little mastermind who is trying to use my body like a Trojan horse. I worry that I am a shell for something…
It slipped out, I told myself, you’re so sensitive these days! Am I the type of woman who picks fights with her man on a Sunday? Or am I the woman who understands he meant no harm and knows not to ruin an evening? - Ela Lee, Jaded, pg. 226 Jade Kaya is right where…
Behind You is the Sea, by Susan Muaddi Darraj, is billed as a novel, but it reads more like a collection of linked short stories. Whatever it’s called, it combines the best of short and long-form fiction: sensitively drawn portraits of singular characters, set in a world that gives continuity and context to their lives.…
Stories of genealogy and reparations are not my typical cups of tea. But in Maura’s Cheeks’ debut novel, Acts of Forgiveness we encounter not only a challenging subject, but an engrossing family drama. Our main character, Willie Revel, is the daughter of a stay-at-home, frustrated academic mother and an entrepreneur, construction-company founding father. Before…
Through her subtitle and the opening quote from Philip Larkin, Keegan sets the tone for So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men, a series of three vignettes set in contemporary Ireland and explores men wrestling with frustrations and women reacting to their own desires. From “Aubade” by Philip Larkin: ”It stands…
Available February 13, 2024 While Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife is definitely historical fiction – set largely in Manchuria in the early 1900s – it also weaves elements of mystery and folklore into an evocative, compelling, and wholly original story. In the last days of the Qing Dynasty, Snow is on the hunt for the…
