“Get in Trouble: Stories”
by Kelly Link
Brace yourself for unabashed fangirling: Kelly Link is one of the most amazing writers working today, and hopefully “Get in Trouble” will finally propel her to giant stardom and bring more attention to her past collections. Her stories are dark and magical, filled with subtle menace and mystery. The stories in this collection include ghosts, vampires, and life-sized dolls. Need comparisons? Link is Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Karen Russell, and Muriel Spark, all rolled into one and served up with a big glass of absinthe. Short story writers don’t get much more spectacular.
“Welcome to Braggsville”
by T. Geronimo Johnson
Freshman D’aron Davenport finds himself adrift in the unfamiliar waters of UC Berkely, until he makes friends with a trio of like-minded students. Now fast friends, the quartet decide to travel to D’aron’s hometown of Braggsville, Ga., to disrupt the town’s annual Civil War reenactment with their own brand of performance art. Their resulting journey will take them to some very unusual places. A coming-of-age story, a road-trip novel, a comedy, an examination of race in America – “Welcome to Braggsville” is all this and more. Get your hands on it as soon as possible.
“A Spool of Blue Thread”
by Anne Tyler
A beautiful, sprawling novel that follows four generations of the Whitshank family, starting in the 1920s, and revolves around the family home. Written with Tyler’s usual grace and humor, Abby Whitshank tells the stories of her, her husband Red, and their four children. There are few writers who capture the essence of family as magnificently as Tyler. This is her 20th and, according to her, final novel, and it is a lovely bookend to a consistently wonderful career.
“After Birth”
by Elisa Albert
Since the difficult birth of her first child a year before, Ari has felt disjointed and adrift in the world. Then she meets Mina, a one-time cult member and soon-to-be new mom. Their resulting friendship helps Ari navigate the strange world of motherhood, and her alien thoughts and feelings about her child. At times funny and horrifying, “After Birth” is a whip-smart, fast, razor-sharp examination of the treatment of new mothers and the expectations placed on them by society. Albert’s words howl from the page.
“Find Me”
by Laura van den Berg
Already a much-lauded short story writer, van den Berg now tackles the novel with her fantastic debut about a deadly flu and a group of survivors quarantined inside an old asylum in Kansas. Joy has been living a miserable existence alone, working as a grocery bagger and nursing an addiction to cough syrup. When a deadly flu outbreak kills thousands of people, Joy discovers she has a chance to be something: She is immune to the illness, and volunteers to be part of a group study. But life inside the hospital is boring, and Joy escapes to Florida, where she faces the ghosts of her past. “Find Me” is so quietly powerful and lovely and cold, it’s like reading it through snow.