YA contemporary. Hani and Ishu are Bengali-Irish teens living in Dublin. They are among the only desi girls in their school, are very different people, and are not friends. But when Hani is trying to figure out how to stop her white Irish friends from their quite aggressive refusal to accept her identification as bi, …
YA speculative fiction. A prequel to Emezi’s wonderful book Pet. That one is set in a city that is a generation past a revolution won under abolitionist politics (though that language is never used), while this one is set in the midst of that revolution. The protagonist of Bitter, after whom the book is named, …
Literary fiction. Follows a semi-pro wrestler in Nebraska whose life is, relatively speaking, good – he is pretty sure he’s about to hit the big time, he is in a solid long-term relationship, he has a decent day job as a school janitor, and he knows who he is and what he wants. This book …
Science fiction, or maybe science fantasy. Set in a future world built in part out of elements drawn from Chinese history. The China-ish realm is besieged by giant aliens which can only be fought off by equally giant transforming mechs, each piloted by one man and one woman, the latter of whom often ends up …
I have read several books by this author before, all middle-grade, and really, really liked them, so there was no way I wasn’t going to read this one, her first book aimed at adults. The titular Delilah, a big-city photographer who doesn’t do relationships, goes back to the small town where she grew up to …
Sci-fi thriller. Set in a ship that has been sent by the monopolistic corporation that claims all non-Earth space to explore a world for possible settlement. The main character is a psychologist of sorts, but one that specializes not in talk therapy but in observing people’s secret tells to figure out what they won’t talk …
Sci-fi. A scientist who has developed sophisticated human cloning technology that works but that has not yet been broadly commercialized finds out that her husband is somehow having an affair with a clone of her. Told in a first-person voice that wonderfully conveys (particularly in the audiobook) the suffer-no-fools, brilliant, not really very nice, damaged, …
Middle grade/YA. Contemporary fantasy, I suppose. Follows a teen Lipan Apache girl on not-quite-our-Earth and a cottonmouth snake animal person in the world of animal people that is a sort of reflection of Earth, an alternate dimension with which it was once wholly joined but which is now only connected through a small number of …
Literary fiction that is both historical and has a bit of a speculative element. Coming of age in the impoverished, queer, artistic fringe of the Black Atlantic in the 1990s, coupled with an unexpected look at the burgeoning surveillance culture of that era. Captures the feel of a moment that is passing, of a time …
Sci fi. Set far enough in the future that there has been a major climate crisis-related collapse on Earth and then a recovery, as well as expansion of humanity to points within the solar system and even to the stars beyond. It is a universe with no non-human sentient species, at least so far, and …