New Books In Literature

When Olivia Givens and her family leave Ireland in 1819, they have no idea that they are distant victims of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia four years before. They know only that the crops are failing and the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars have led to the loss of their family property. Fifteen-year-old Olivia has a special reason to want to stay: her first crush on a local boy. But no one listens to a young girl in love, and soon Olivia is standing on the shores of the Ohio River with the rest of her Ulster Protestant family. The city of Cincinnati has just come into being, and that, combined with the illness of Erasmus, the family’s youngest child, convince the Givens to end their journey west in Ohio.Before long, Olivia’s mother has died in childbirth and her father has abandoned his three surviving children to head south on a paddle boat. James, the eldest son, takes responsibility for his brother and sister. But it’s not the easiest job in the world: Olivia has too much independence of thought to fit n

The Eurovision Song Contest has launched careers (think ABBA and Celine Dion), inspired outrageous costumes, and generated spinoffs. The campy competition also led a fan to dare author Catherynne M. Valente on Twitter to create a science fictional Eurovision, resulting in the publication of Space Opera (Saga Press, 2018) two years later.Shunning science fiction’s typical seriousness, Space Opera strives to be as ridiculous—and funny—as possible. “You can’t play ‘Eurovision in space’ straight,” Valente says, and proves her point by turning Eurovision’s 50 nations and 100 million viewers into a competition that extends across the universe, attracting billions of viewers and outrageous alien performers—everything from sentient viruses and talented wormholes, to creatures that look like red pandas—but can travel through time—or like Microsoft’s much-maligned animated office assistant Clippy.Space Opera’s intergalactic song contest was founded following the devastating Sentient Wars to promote amity among species

The poetry and prose in Ivy Johnson’s Born Again (The Operating System, 2018) beautifully dives into the ecstatic expression of religious experience. With its confessional style, this collection gives power to the female voice, rending open that which would be hidden behind closed doors. The work blends sensuality and spirituality, merging the grounded reality of existing a physical body in the world with a sense of worship, prayer, and spell casting.I submerge my hands in ink and smear them across the wallI cover my body in rich purple paint and rub against white paperI place a sticker of the Virgin Mary on my bedroom window next to the fire escapeShe hurts with the glow of blue frostI race down the stairs to make snow angels in the dog-pissFill the silhouette of my body with marigolds— from “Take a Moment to Gather Yourself”Ivy Johnson is a poet and performance artist in Oakland, CA. Her book, As They Fall, is a collection of 110 notecards for aleatoric ritual and was published by Timeless, Infinite Light i

An optimistic young Mexican woman gets pregnant while trying to cross the border into the states.  An Indian-American woman struggles with infertility. When undocumented Solimar is detained by the state, Kavya and her husband foster and then fall in love with her little boy. They’re good people, the law is on their side, and it’s hard not to root for them, but we’re forced to ask ourselves - what defines parenthood? Is it the biological connection or is it the daily grind of feeding, changing diapers, and tending to all their needs? In addition to a mother’s love, Lucky Boy (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017) deals with immigration, undocumented workers, the struggle between haves and the have-nots, infertility, survival, and love.Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator from Berkeley, California. Lucky Boy was named an IndieNext Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. It won the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist for Stanford University's Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and stories ha

The twelfth-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable woman by any standards. Known for her musical compositions and mystical prayers, Hildegard was also Germany’s first recognized female physician. The daughter of minor nobility, she entered the convent in childhood as a tithe from her parents. Excited by the prospect of acquiring an education, then a goal unattainable for girls outside a convent, Hildegard suffers a setback when she confronts the strict seclusion imposed on nuns by the anchorage of St. Disibod and its ascetic magistra, Jutta of Sponheim. But relief comes from the company of Volmar, a fellow oblate who like Hildegard loves to sneak out of the abbey and walk in the nearby woods, and Brother Wigbert, the monastery’s infirmarian. It’s through the teaching of Brother Wigbert that Hildegard discovers her affinity for medicine.Alas, not every member of the abbey hierarchy believes that young women should spend time outside the walls of the anchorage, and as political threats from

The pandemic in Peng Shepherd’s debut novel, The Book of M, starts with magic—the disappearance of a man’s shadow.The occurrence, broadcast worldwide, is greeted with delight until more and more people lose their shadows. People start losing their memories as well—while gaining an ability to change the world with the power of their imaginations.As society collapses, the landscape becomes as beautiful as it is terrifying: deers have wings, clouds tinkle like bells, lakes appear overnight, flowers bloom in winter.The Book of M has garnered widespread praise, earning recommendations from The Today Show and USA Today, and making Amazon’s list of Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2018. A reviewer on Bustle called it a “post-apocalyptic masterpiece.”In a world of vanishing memories, Shepherd finds an unlikely hero: a patient with classic amnesia. Unlike the “shadowless”—who eventually forget everything, including how to speak or eat or breathe—the amnesiac never forgets how the world works. This allows him

It’s 1999, and Ann is a guitar-playing thirty-year-old preschool teacher who dreams of having children even though she was born without a uterus. As Laura Catherine Brown's novel Made by Mary (C and R Press, 2018) opens, Ann and her husband Joel have been rejected as adoptive parents, and their plan to host and pay medical expenses for a pregnant teen goes terribly wrong. Then Ann’s 49-year-old mother Mary, a jewelry-designing, goddess-worshipping, lesbian hippie, offers to carry her daughter’s baby. Brown’s debut novel, Quickening, was published by Random House and featured in Barnes & Noble’s "Discover Great New Writers" series. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including The Bellingham Review, Monkeybicycle, Paragraphiti and Tin House; and in anthologies with Seal Press and Overlook Press. She received her BA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and supports her writing habit by working as a graphic designer. Her writing education came through many writing workshops inclu

This 2018 reprint of Little Man, Little Man exemplifies communal and collaborative textual production. The story was written by James Baldwin and illustrated by French artist Yoran Cazac. It was published in 1976 and then went out of print. In this new edition, scholars Nicholas Boggs and Jennifer DeVere Brody write the introduction, while Baldwin’s nephew and niece, Tejan Karefa-Smart and Aisha Karefa-Smart write the foreword and afterword respectively. In Little Man, Little Man, which Baldwin alternately described as a children’s book for adults and an adults’ book for children, we see a slice of a Harlem neighborhood through the eyes of young TJ. The story presents a complex and multifaceted vision of black childhood in America and nudges the contemporary reader to think critically about what it means to see through the eyes of a child and to be seen by those in one’s world.Nicholas Boggs was an undergraduate at Yale when he discovered James Baldwin's out-of-print "children's book for adults," Little Man,

Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps (Delphinium Books, 2018) is set in a near-future Pakistan where a repressive patriarchy requires women to take multiple husbands and become full-time baby makers after wars and disease render women devastatingly scarce.A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times called it a “thrilling novel” with “exquisite” social commentary. Before She Sleeps was also among the books recently highlighted in an article in The Atlanticabout “The Remarkable Rise of the Feminist Dystopia.”Before She Sleeps focuses on a group of women who’ve found a modicum of freedom by hiding underground with the assistance of powerful men, for whom they provide clandestine but non-sexual companionship.The book explores the boundaries of their freedom through an eastern and Islamic lens. “Western readers… are expecting some fantastic like Hunger Games-type scenario where the women come out as warriors and just smash the patriarchy. Feminism in my part of the world, in the Middle East and South Asia is a lot more subtle. W

Emery, Em for short, is a smart and dedicated college graduate. She anticipates a future in which she, and eventually, her parents, can escape the lower strata of the domed city of New Worth. She hopes her upcoming career as a data curator, someone who pores over the copious electronic exchanges which constantly overwrite the old, will make the sacrifice of her parents worthwhile. They saved their money to buy her an implant, a neurological link to the data network, so that she would be in an advantageous position.But just as she’s about to move her virtual relationship with a man she knows as Rik to the next level, after meeting him in person, her life takes a twist. Em has a secret life pursuing and punishing criminals who rip the valuable implants out and resell them. In a highly structured society, she’s taken the law into her own hands, making her vulnerable to blackmail. Aventine, a pseudo-government company which specializes in safe data-transfer by through encoding the data in the blood of its courier

When you picture the midwestern United States, what do you see? For those who live on either coast, the phrase “flyover country,” might come to mind. Wide open spaces and vast empty plains. Miles and miles of corn, as far as the eye can see. The kind of place where nothing much happens, and nobody important ever lived.At least, so goes the prevailing stereotype.But if you’ve spent much time in the Midwest, chances are you have a very different perspective of this landscape. Your vision of America’s heartland is probably populated with the friends, family, and experiences that helped shape you, and the great state you call home.For writer Erica Trabold of Stromsburg, Nebraska, the Midwest is more than the place she came of age—it’s also a landscape rich with stories. In her debut collection, Five Plots (Seneca Review Books, 2018), Trabold explores themes of family, heritage, belonging, nostalgia, and the natural world in a series of beautiful, tightly-woven essays. Through her unique formal experimentations wi

On its back cover, Patrick B. Mullen’s Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music(University of Illinois Press, 2018) is aptly described as “part scholar's musings and part fan's memoir”. Mullen is professor emeritus of English and folklore at the Ohio State University and across the eight chapters that make up this book, he enthusiastically and engagingly describes his many encounters with a wide range of vernacular musics throughout the north American continent and details his experiences with the musical genres, performers, events, and songs that have shaped the soundscape of his life. As his fellow music scholar, E. Cecilia Conway puts it: this “book lets us ride shotgun with Mullen on his journey from Beaumont, Texas boy to Ohio professor to dancing to 'Don't Be Cruel' and 'The Twist' amidst the diversity of American Music. Read Pat Mullen at his expansive best."Rachel Hopkin is a UK-born, US-based folklorist and radio producer and is currently a PhD candidate at the Ohio State Univers

Christmas is not looking bright for Charles Dickens. His latest novel has proven a massive flop, and that upstart William Thackeray doesn’t miss an opportunity to crow. Bills are rolling in, every relative in creation has his or her hand out, the kids (number steadily increasing) have their hearts set on expensive toys, and Mrs. Dickens has already started making plans for the most elaborate holiday party yet. Oh yes, and Dickens’ publisher is begging him to write a Christmas book when the spirit of Christmas seems to have packed up and moved to Scotland together with Dickens’ exasperated family.Determined not to give in, Dickens moves to a cheap hotel, rents a room under the name Ebenezer Scrooge, dons the disguise of an old man, and roams the streets of London in pursuit of a mysterious young woman in a purple cloak. And surprise, by the time December 25 rolls around, Dickens has not only recovered his joie de vivre but penned what may be the world’s most beloved holiday classic, A Christmas Carol.In Mr. Di

In her new novel This is How it Always is (Flatiron Books, 2017), Laurie Frankel tells the story of the Walsh-Adams family and how they grapple with the youngest child, the fifth son, who announces at age three that he wants to be a girl. While his four older brothers revel in typical boy behavior, Claude, who decides her name is now Poppy, wears dresses and purses to school. Local homophobia pushes the Walsh-Adams family to leave their big old farmhouse in Madison, Wi. for a smaller home in Seattle. There, they decide to keep Poppy’s trans status a family secret. When Poppy is outed, her mother takes leave from her job and travels across the world to help her daughter figure out who she wants to be.Laurie Frankel is the author of the novels This Is How It Always Is, The Atlas of Love, and Goodbye for Now. She lives in Seattle with her family.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Joshua Max Feldman's thoughtful, bittersweet novel Start Without Me (William Morrow, 2017), two strangers meet at an airport restaurant, and through the course of one Thanksgiving Day, help each other grapple with love, disappointment, and family. In candid, witty, and often funny, razor-sharp dialogue, Feldman confronts the fall-out from excessive drinking, mental illness, childhood trauma, drugs, adultery, and nearly every other way a person can be wounded.  His deeply-flawed characters are recognizable and honest as they strive to understand their mistakes while continuing to make them. Adam is a former musical prodigy who comes home for Thanksgiving for the first time since getting sober. Even though his family has seen him hit rock-bottom, he still feels like he’ll never be able to get anything right with them.  Flight-attendant Marissa is in a marriage strained by tensions over race, class, and her husband’s lack of ambition. Now she finds out that she’s pregnant following a one-night-stand

Pillow of Dreams (Nivedita Lakhera, 2017) is an intensely emotional and inspirational collection of poetry and art by Dr. Nivedita Lakhera. She experienced a stroke, divorce, and then a heartbreak all at the young age of 27. She is a doctor of Internal Medicine and is serving as a Hospitalist in San Jose, California. Her career in medicine has inspired some of her greatest work, such as a poem written about the last moments of life of a cancer patient she treated. In this book, she opens each section with a letter written to the reader. In these sections you will meet: Saibo – the one who loves, Meera- the one who yearns, Anahita-the one who heals, and Mulan – the one who conquers. One hundred percent of the book sale profits go towards developing telemedicine software for Syrian refugee camps, developing countries, tribal / remote areas and acute disaster situations. Her work has inspired many and she is a keynote speaker at multiple conferences. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podca

How do families decide when financial relief outweighs the risks of drilling for natural gas on their land?  In Kate Brandes’ novel Promise of Pierson Orchard (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2017), a big energy company comes to Minden, Pennsylvania and hires the long-estranged brother of orchard owner Jack Pierson. Thinking that Wade Pierson is one of their own, some struggling neighbors start selling mining rights to Green Energy.  Jack fears what the company will do to the land and worries that Wade will try to rekindle his relationship with Jack’s wife LeeAnn, who recently left him. Jack reaches out to the mother who abandoned him and his brother when they were teenagers.  She’s now an environmental lawyer with experience in dealing with companies whose spurious promises to landowners are broken, along with ecosystems, relationships, and towns. Kate Brandes is an environmental scientist with 20 years of experience.  A geology teacher at Moravian College, she is also a painter and writer who focuses on t

The Draconis Memoria series is comprised of a trilogy set in a world where drake (dragon) blood is a prized commodity, the basis of the trading fortune of the Ironship Syndicate. It is a brilliant, savage adventure. When I jumped in with Anthony Ryan’s latest release, ominously named The Empire of Ashes (Ace, 2018), I soon realized I couldn’t do justice to the detailed, intricately plotted series without reading all three. In for a penny, in for a pound. August, September, and October found me delving into a world with various cultures: a decadent empire, complete with a doddering emperor, and another continent in thrall to a powerful corporation. There were steaming jungles, barren mountains, and ice floes overlaying ocean-bed volcanoes In addition to the challenges of noting the terrain and politics, there are multiple points of view, as in most adult epic fiction. From my reading, two main characters emerged, and tied together the evolving narrative. Lizanne Lethridge is a ruthless Special Initiatives Agen

It’s a hot August day in 1976, the sun beats down in the Mississippi Delta, and three siblings go swimming in the old, forbidden rock quarry. Everyone knows that something evil and unspeakable once happened there. The youngest child disappears, the quarry is drained, and news of the missing child spreads. As the days and months pass, it becomes clear that Pansy has vanished into thin air. Then older sister Bert graduates from high school. Sure that her little sister is still alive somewhere, she convinces her brother to help find Pansy. Tiffany Quay Tyson’s debut novel, Three Rivers, was a finalist for both the Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. Her second novel, The Past is Never (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018) is a 2018 Okra Pick.  Tiffany was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and is a graduate of Delta State University. After college she worked for a brief stint as a newspaper reporter in the Mississippi Delta, where she received

It seems clear that our dependence on the internet will only grow in coming years, offering untold convenience. But how much control will we have to surrender to access this digital wonderland? That’s one of the key questions animating the first two books in Eliot Peper’s action- and idea-packed Analog trilogy. In the first book, Bandwidth, which came out in May, a single company called Commonwealth controls the digital feed for most of the world. To imagine its power, Peper says, picture all of today’s technology and internet giants “times a thousand.” Despite its monopolistic control over the world’s information delivery system, it finds itself vulnerable to a clandestine group of hackers and psychologists, who, over many years, covertly and subtly manipulate the feeds of world leaders to influence their thinking about important policies, such as climate change. “They’re not creating fake news,” Peper says. “They are actually sorting, ordering, and surfacing true facts about the world in a way that shapes s