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Reviews

Reviews

by Meredith Talusan - Memoir, Nonfiction

FAIREST is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Meredith Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved.

by C Pam Zhang - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints and the specters of a ravaged landscape, as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry and glimpses of a different kind of future.

by N. K. Jemisin - Fantasy, Fiction, Urban Fantasy

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones.

by K.M. Szpara - Fiction, Science Fiction

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. Too bad Elisha’s contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects --- and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

by Sarah Gailey - Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her --- a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

by Jeff VanderMeer - Fiction, Science Fiction

A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose purpose remains hidden. DEAD ASTRONAUTS presents a City where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth --- all the Earths.

by Carmen Maria Machado - Memoir, Nonfiction

Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Carmen Maria Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives IN THE DREAM HOUSE its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope --- the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman --- through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

by Jacqueline Woodson - Fiction, Women's Fiction

As RED AT THE BONE opens in 2001, it is the evening of 16-year-old Melody's coming-of-age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony --- a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Jacqueline Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.

by Tamsyn Muir - Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds, she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection. But no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. Of course, some things are better left dead.

by Chuck Wendig - Fiction, Science Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking and is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. Soon Shana and her sister are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America. Like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead. For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them --- and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them --- the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic.