Michelle Ruiz Keil’s All of Us With Wings is a magical realist ode to punk rock magic. Set in a San Francisco that looks a lot like ours, All of Us With Wings follows Xochi, a struggling runaway who eagerly joins an interesting family as the governess to the family’s headstrong daughter. Naturally, things get …
“1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian …
Ocean Vuong is a pretty famous poet, and this is his debut novel. It is so beautiful, exquisite, raw, and heartbreaking that you question: how is this NOT a memoir? It is set all over the place–they moved quite a bit. The main character, Little Dog, is writing this book as a letter to his …
Where? Oakland, mostly: the center of a dozen or so lives, all of them Native American by some calculation, though each is working to define that for themselves. They are, in Orange’s words, “Urban Indians,” knowing city streets better than any other landscape, but few of them feel at home anywhere. As in Colum McCann’s Let …
This is one of my favorite novels of the year–yes, I can already tell. Emezi explores fluidity and a fractured life from the perspective of Ibgo gods and goddesses that control our narrator’s body in turn. I already need to read it again. —Shawn, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA Akwaeke Emezi has crafted a …
It’s hard to know where to start with this profoundly gorgeous book. Evocative, lyrical, powerful…this book grabs the reader by the throat and forces one to look at the survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and it doesn’t let go easily as I found myself continuously thinking of this story well after turning the final page. …
The house where my father grew up is immortalized on an old Egyptian banknote. It’s the 25 or 50 piastre bill, I think, though I haven’t seen one since I was a child and they’ve been redesigned since then. The old bill, if memory serves me correctly, features a drawing of a narrow alleyway in …
When I needed relief from the darkness of winter, I found this unusual book that left me feeling hopeful. It’s also a good book for someone who’s recovering from surgery! –Barb, Rediscovered Books, Boise, ID More about this book from the publisher: For fans of THE ROSIE PROJECT and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG …
This energetic and fresh story will draw you into the universe straight away. A unique fantasy plot and lovable characters makes this book a quick and easy read. –Lucy, teen reviewer for Queen Anne Book Company Find this magical debut middle grade novel and more gems of storytelling at Queen Anne Book Company and other …
What do chemistry and literature have in common? Both help us make sense of the world. Chemist Weike Wang’s first novel is an equation solving for love. Wang’s mostly unnamed protagonist is a chemist and the daughter of Chinese immigrants who struggles to let herself love and be loved in return. The writing is …
