Adult Fiction
New adult fiction
What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel by Irina Reyn
Set among early 21st-century Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City, Reyn's debut beautifully adapts Anna Karenina's social melodrama for a decidedly different set of Russians. Anna, 30-something with a string of bad relationships behind her and a restless, literarily inclined soul, is wooed into marriage by the financial stability and social appropriateness of Alex K., an older businessman with roots in her Rego Park, Queens, community. As Anna chafes at her unromantic life, trouble hits in the form of David, the hipster-writer boyfriend of her sweet, naïve cousin, Katia. The furiously flying sparks between Anna and David provide cover as Katia is quietly pursued by Lev, a young Bukharan Jew who, like Anna, is a dreamer whose relationship with the émigré community is fraught. Reyn's Anna is perhaps even harder to sympathize with than Tolstoy's original, but Reyn's sparkling insight into the Russian and Bukharan Jewish communities, and the mesmerizing intensity of her prose, make this debut a worthy remake. Lev's and Anna's divergent trajectories and choices illuminate how perilous the balance between self and society remains. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Schooled by Anisha Lakhani
Lakhani paints a darkly comic picture of what a five-figure tuition bill really gets you at an elite Manhattan private school. The former Dalton English teacher knows the territory, and it is bleak. Here's Anna, a newbie teacher with Ivy credentials whose passion for the low-paying teaching profession is cause for celebration at the upper-crust Langdon school, where as the exotic-looking newcomer, she is mistakenly identified as a coveted minority hire. With low pay and even lower expectations from teachers and parents, Anna realizes there's no way she can survive until she learns about lucrative after-school tutoring gigs. And just like that, Anna's ideals go out the window. In a hilarious out-of-control spiral into obsession with all-things designer, expensive and showy, Anna transforms into someone who believes money can buy everything and everyone. There is redemption, of course, in the form of a teacher who bucks the system, and Anna discovers some of her students are pretty wonderful. The realization comes rather abruptly, and the happy ending is a bit pat, but the romp through an unsettling, soulless world of adults and children who'd rather coast through life than live it provides plenty of laughs. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Holding My Breath: A Novel by Sidura Ludwig
Ludwig's nicely observed debut, a coming-of-age tale, often shies away from the powerful themes it raises. Born in 1952 to a close-knit Jewish-Canadian family in Winnipeg, Beth Levy dreams of becoming an astronaut, an ambition partly inspired by stories of her late uncle, who died before Beth was born but left behind his fascination with the stars. On Beth's first day in elementary school, her widowed grandmother dies, and Beth's mother, Goldie, assumes responsibility for Goldie's younger siblings, who become like older sisters to Beth. Teenage Sarah is beautiful and restless, and yearns to be an actress or a singer. Carrie, a withdrawn seamstress overwhelmed by private tragedy, encourages Beth to follow her passions, although Beth's parents expect her to live out a quiet middle-class life in Winnipeg. The drama is understated throughout; crises occur, but have little influence on the steady pace of the narrative. Issues such as anti-Semitism and adolescent cruelty surface briefly and are quickly dropped. The result is a charming, if less than courageous, performance. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo
London-based novelist and documentary filmmaker Guo was a 2007 Orange Prize finalist for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. She has completely re-written, in English, this story of tough, sprightly heroine Fenfang Wang, first published in 1997 in Mandarin (and earlier this year in a different, U.K.-only English translation). Fenfang, 17, leaves her mother a note and flees her rural farming village for Beijing. An odd job cleaning a movie theater brings her in contact with a low-level director and leads to higher-paying work as a movie extra, where she's a face among thousands. Her affections, stuck between volatile producer's assistant Xiaolin and beloved American student Ben, do little to lessen the hard knocks, which keep coming. Then, at the suggestion of her friend Huizi, Fenfang gives script writing a go, and things start to change. Guo beautifully captures the sense of a young girl struggling to forge a life. Fenfang's voice is bracing and welcome. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Blood Alone: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery by James R. Benn
Characterization and atmosphere carry Benn's third WWII mystery (after 2007's The First Wave), a convincing blend of fact and fiction. As part of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Billy Boyle, a freewheeling Boston cop in civilian life now working as special investigator for General Eisenhower, bears a message from the real-life Lucky Luciano to the head of the Sicilian Mafia asking that he order local soldiers to stop fighting American troops. Unfortunately, the chaos of warfare interferes with Billy's mission, as does another mobster out to exploit the situation for money who plots to have Billy killed while Billy is wounded and suffering from amnesia. The hero's gradual rediscovery of his memories lets him question what kind of person he is, in particular whether he's more than a brutal killer. Benn also does a fine job of depicting a dusty, poverty-stricken Sicily, where warm loyalty is the reverse side of pitiless vendetta. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Into the Fire: A Novel by Suzanne Brockmann
The 13th exciting, if long-winded, entry in bestseller Brockmann's Troubleshooters series answers a question posed in 2004's Hot Target what happened to former Troubleshooter op Vinh Murphy? Seven years earlier, the half-Vietnamese, half African-American agent went MIA after his wife, Angelina, was killed during a conflict with the neo-Nazi Freedom Network. Now back in California, Vinh has been suffering alcoholic blackouts in between e-mailing death threats to FN's leader, Tim Ebersole. After Ebersole's murdered and Vinh becomes the chief suspect, a sober Vinh turns to an old friend of Angelina's, a deaf former cop, for help in remembering if he did kill Ebersole. A romantic subplot involving Izzy Zannella, a navy SEAL with Team Sixteen, and Eden Gillman, the runaway teen sister of a fellow SEAL, sweetens the mix. Readers unfamiliar with the players might need a scorecard, but Brockmann ignites sufficient sparks to keep the blaze going. A jaw-dropping conclusion suggests more fireworks ahead. (July 22) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Everything Nice by Eileen Shanman
Here's a chick lit heroine with beauty and brains and a bad-ass attitude that lands her in trouble. Out-of-work, out-of-love and out-of-luck, take-no-prisoners ad copywriter Michaela Mike Edwards faces off with a gaggle of giggly 12-year-olds in a life skills class. In a hilarious sendup of new-fashioned home ec, Mike rewrites the curriculum to accommodate information the charter school girls can actually use, and discovers, to her surprise, that she cared. Her reinvention as daughter to her widower father Gerry (who raised her solo) and stepdaughter-to-be of his fiancée, Deja, is a lot rockier but no less rollicking. Along the way, ex-boyfriend Jay (whose standup comedy brutally strips away the artifice of their relationship) and Aussie journalist best-pal Gunther help attune Mike to what she's searching for. Shanman's second novel (after Right Before Your Eyes) is a gem of razor-sharp wit and impeccable timing, and though things sag in the blended extended family passages, this is a great anytime read that comes just in time for summer vacation. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The Likeness by Tana French
Starred Review. Edgar-winner French blurs the boundaries between victim and cop, memory and fantasy, in this stunning sequel to her debut, In the Woods. Det. Cassie Maddox, a dead ringer for Lexie Madison, whose body has been found on the outskirts of the Irish village of Glenskehy, agrees to masquerade as Lexie in a police effort to identify her murderer. Cassie journeys to Whitethorn House, the rambling mansion Lexie shared with four fellow Ph.D. students and tells the friends that she survived the attack. As she probes deeper into the close-knit group, Cassie finds herself becoming emotionally attached to the stoic Daniel, sensitive Justin, gadabout Rafe and dependable Abby. But as tensions rise in the house and in Glenskehy, Cassie must decide if the biggest threat comes from without or lurks within. French cleverly subverts the conventions of the locked room mystery, ratcheting up the tension at every turn with her multidimensional characters. Readers looking for a new name in psychological suspense need look no further than this powerful new Irish voice. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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