Ghosts Of Booksellers Past
While these booksellers themselves aren't necessarily ghosts, their recommendations still stand even after they've left our stores.
New American Stories is an anthology of, more than anything, the weird. Frustrated and weird characters, weird isolated suburban streets, explosive wars whose origins are weird and unclear. The American landscape that each of these stories suggests is bizarre but also familiar. The variation of work in this collection is expansive, from brief stories by relatively un-laureled young writers, to an eerie new story by Don DeLillo. The whole thing is exciting, valuable, and worth reading from front to back, or back to front, or in whatever order you want. The ideal place to read this book: the train. Whether your commute is short or blissfully long.
This book has gotten a lot of comparisons to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in some ways, that's a valid comparison. They're both funny and have big, complex universes. In other ways, however, this is a superior book (and I say that as someone who has a Hitchhiker's tattoo). Valente's world has all of the whimsy of her Fairyland series or of Hitchhiker's but still isn't afraid to ask the Big Questions. Valente engages with politics, morality, and what it means to be human, and moreover she does it all while dousing everything in glitter and glam. It's a big, beautiful heart of a book, and I just loved it to pieces.
-- Jess
Part Saga, part Abarat, part American Gods, and part something entirely its own, this series about angels and demons is my current obsession. Taylor weaves a rich mythology through this complex and action-packed book, leaving me desperate for more of both the world and the characters.
-- Jess
Uprooted is, quite simply, the lush, beautifully written, morally complex, darkly magical, feminist fantasy noel that you've been waiting for. Both the world and the characters give you plenty of reasons to fall in love with this tale that is rooted in a rich fantastical tradition. you won't want to put it down, even as you want it to last forever.
-- Jess
The Sparrow is a book that is not afraid to ask the big questions - what does it mean to be human? To love? To believe in something? But what is so captivating about it is the way it asks these questions. Russell treats her characters with compassion and respect, all while weaving an engrossing story about aliens.
-- Jess
This is the best book I've read in years. There is literally nothing not to love about this story (or its sequel, The Wise Man's Fear). Stories-within-stories, a unique and logical system of magic, compelling characters, beautiful writing - this is everything you want in your high fantasy and more.
-- Jess
NK Jemisin is a master world-builder, here crafting a world that crackles with the tension of the upcoming end of the world and is populated with a memorable cast of characters. The Fifth Season follows several of these characters in an unexpectedly intricate plot that Jemisin deftly weaves together. This is an author at the height of her craft, and reading the Broken Earth trilogy is a joy.
-- Jess
Life in I Crawl Through It is both totally surreal and all too realistic. Characters struggle with life both literal and metaphorical in this stunning, difficult, and weird book. You have to be willing to be very uncertain and unsettled, but this story is totally worth it.
-- Jess
This magic-touched story tells of a girl who grows roses out of her wrist and a bout who hangs moons from the tress. The perfect blend of reality and fantasy, this beautiful novel explores identity, love, and myth in prose that took my breath away.
-- Jess
By blending Latin American culture and elements of Wonderland with a dark note of the Underworld, Cordova creates a rich, complex, and magical world. The characters who inhabit this world are also beautifully drawn and complicated. Together, they make a labyrinth that you won't want to leave once you've entered it.
-- Jess
Beautifully written, full of myth and magic and mayhem, FURYBORN is a sweeping fantasy story that crosses centuries, with two fierce heroines at its heart whose powers over the elements could just as easily destroy the world as remake it. The result is lush, gorgeous, and sexy-- a very promising start to a new trilogy. Legrand is certainly a young new voice to watch.
-- Haley
This is it. This is the best book.
-- Haley
It’s a good sign when you finish a book and find yourself thinking about it days later. But I finished Her Body and Other Parties months ago and I still think about it all the time. The women in Machado’s stories experience prejudice, violence, and horrors of all kinds, but they are not defined or destroyed by it. They are ruthless, fierce, and real, and they fight back. This is one of the scariest and most important short story collections I’ve ever read.
-- Haley
When our hero Agnieszka is taken from her home by the Dragon, an infamous and mysterious wizard, it seems like she’s doomed to a life of servitude and loneliness. But when the Dragon discovers she has magic abilities, he trains her to assist him in the battle to save her village and the surrounding ones from the sentient forest bent on corrupting and destroying them. Halfway through this book, I thought for sure the action couldn’t possibly get more gripping and intense. I was so, so wrong.
-- Haley
The premise: a world where there are four Londons, each with varying levels of magic in them. Our hero Kell is one of very few who can travel between all four. What follows is an utter blast to read, full of characters you will love, and love to hate. Once you read this, be prepared to read absolutely everything else V. E. Schwab writes for the rest of time.
-- Haley
This is one of the lesser known novels in Louise Erdrich’s illustrious body of work, but it’s my favorite. Probably because it’s by far the weirdest. Among the cast of characters are a woman who spends a good half of her life in disguised as a priest, and the ghost of Frederic Chopin. It is of course as beautifully written, far-reaching, and emotionally rich as any of Erdrich’s work. Just with some added strangeness! What’s not to love?
-- Haley
In this collection of essays, including a few that have appeared in the New York Times, Pitchfork, and many other places, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib covers the gambit, using music as a touchstone for his experiences as a Muslim and an African American. He speaks with authority and thoughtfulness on police brutality and Carly Rae Jepson. The result is undeniably of this moment in history, giving voice to experiences both grand and harrowing. It is admirable, captivating, and wonderfully human work.
-- Haley
Rosza is gone. Finn is the only one that saw who took her. But he can't remember what the man looked like. He knows she's in trouble, and he's determined to save her. That is, unless she can save herself first. What follows is enchanting, heartwrenching, and downright terrifying. Bone Gap rings with mythological overtones and shimmers with strange, dreamy imagery. A captivating read.
-- Haley
Deft, clever, engrossing prose is the first and most obvious of this novel's many virtues. While reading, I frequently encountered sentences so ingeniously woven that I looked up expecting the people around me to be equally astonished. The characters here are funny and flawed; you can't help but feel the humanity in even the most monstrous among them. Absolutely excellent.
-- Haley
Don't come between the Mary and Hannah (aka Bunny) Chase. In the wake of a terrible accident, all they have is each other. But that suits Mary just fine. Over the course of this tightly wound and engrossing novel, we come-- slowly, but inevitably-- to learn the lengths to which fierce, raven-haired Mary would go for Bunny. Author Sarah Healy has created a novel so cleverly threaded that it can feel like you're being dared not to flinch. In the tradition of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, The Sisters Chase has a pull like gravity, and is absolutely not to be missed.
-- Haley
