New Fiction

Family Lore

by Elizabeth Acevedo

available in August, hardcover, Ecco

From the bestselling, National Book Award winning author, Elizabeth Acevedo this is this story of a Dominican American family spanning three days and tracing the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is a portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

The Librarianist

by Patrick deWitt

available in July, hardcover, Ecco Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert’s condition.

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

available in August, hardcover, Harper

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Good Night, Irene

by Luis Alberto Urrea

available now, hardcover, Little, Brown and Co.

In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.

The Postcard

by Anne Berest, translated by Tina Kover available

now hardcover, Europa

Editions

Every so often a book comes along that stays with you. The Postcard is that book for me. Extremely difficult at times but then so enduring. How does an author do that? Part mystery, part historical, part autobiography, this is a story that follows the Rabinovitch family from the flight from Russia to Palestine, and then Paris. In January of 2003 a postcard arrived at the Berest family home. On the front of the postcard, a photo of the Opera Garnier and on the back, four names—all of whom died at Auschwitz in 1942. Why the postcard? Who sent it? Anne Berest brings humanity to its worst...and best. Her writing is so beautiful. I feel like I have met these people, that I can actually smell the oranges that she describes. This is an important book and I encourage you to enjoy this emotional and beautiful experience. –Kelly E.

Somebody’s Fool

by Richard Russo

available in July, hardcover, Knopf

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath in upstate New York, and to the characters that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers in his beloved bestsellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool. Infused with all the wry humor and shrewd observations that Russo is known for, Somebody’s Fool is another classic from a modern master.