Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Kate Hope Day, Takis Würger, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, and more—that are publishing this week.
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If, Then by Kate Hope Day
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about If, Then: “The lives of three neighboring families in Clearing, Ore., become inexorably entwined in Day’s captivating debut novel of parallel worlds. Dr. Ginny McDonnell, a surgeon, feels disconnected from her son, Noah, and her husband, Mark, a behavioral ecologist convinced that nearby Broken Mountain, a volcano, isn’t quite as dormant as many believe. Realtor Samara Mehta is still reeling from her mother’s death on the operating table and blames the surgeon, Ginny. Cass Stuart is taking a break from earning her PhD in metaphysics to care for her baby girl but longs to continue her research on the theory of everything and the possibility of a multiverse. Cass, Ginny, and Mark start to glimpse different versions of themselves and Samara of her mother, preceded by a bad taste and a trembling under their feet, while Broken Mountain awakens nearby. Often, Day seamlessly slips readers in and out of realities with little warning, and the scenes in which characters observe and, at times, interact with, their alternate realities are intimate, eerie, and startling, such as Mark’s encounters with the wild, disheveled man he dubs “Other Mark.” Effortlessly meshing the dreamlike and the realistic, Day’s well-crafted mix of literary and speculative fiction is an enthralling meditation on the interconnectedness of all things.”
The Club by Takis Würger (translated by Charlotte Collins)
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Club: “Würger’s chilling if obvious debut opens as Hans Stichler, an orphaned German 19-year-old, is contacted by his English aunt, Alexandra Birk. She teaches art history at Cambridge and says that she can get him accepted into St. John’s College, but there’s a catch: she wants him to infiltrate a Cambridge institution known as the Pitt Club, which is 200 years old and whose members past and present are generations of the English establishment. To help him, Aunt Alex introduces Hans to one of her PhD students, Charlotte, whose father, financier Sir Angus Farewell, is a former member of the club. Charlotte arranges a dinner with Hans and her father, so the latter can nominate the former to the club. Despite Charlotte’s initial reservations about Hans, they are soon an item. A boxer for the school’s highly competitive varsity team, Hans is asked to join the Butterflies, a secret subset of the Pitt Club. Delving into the real purpose of this club-within-a-club, Hans finds sinister links to Charlotte, Aunt Alex, and Angus on the way to a dramatic and inevitable ending. Though it moves at a good pace, the novel is contrived in its depiction of upper-class snobbism, hypocrisy, and corruption, resulting in a diverting if thin story.”
The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Dragonfly Sea: “In this sprawling, beautiful novel from Owuor (Dust), a real-life occurrence of a Kenyan woman travelling to China after learning of her Chinese heritage forms the backdrop for a moving story of loss and discovery. In 1992, on Pate Island, a small island off the coast of Kenya, six-year-old Ayaana spends her days scanning the seas for boats and the return of a father she never knew. One day, a ‘sun-blackened, salt-water-seared, bug-eyed and brawny’ sailor appears and Ayaana chooses him for a father, much to his surprise—and to the chagrin of her mother. Then, years later, when cultural emissaries from China arrive at Pate, 20-year-old Ayaana discovers she is a descendant of one of the members aboard the ship of 14th-century mariner Admiral Zhang He, whose seafaring expeditions brought him to Africa, and agrees to set sail for China to be united with distant relatives. Once there, she serves as living justification for a commercial Chinese stake in an increasingly globalized Africa: ‘Cohabiting with shadows—here was the weight of a culture with a hulking history now preparing itself to digest her continent.’ Attracting attention wherever she goes, Ayaana struggles to assimilate to Chinese culture and is as drawn to the sea as ever. Brilliantly capturing Ayaana’s sense of loss of her home and her family, as well as her hope for the future, Owuor’s mesmerizing prose lays bare the swirling global currents that Ayaana is trapped within. With a rollicking narrative and exceptional writing, this epic establishes Owuor as a considerable talent.”
Running Home by Kate Arnold
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Running Home: “A woman’s crippling grief over her father’s death is the starter pistol for this marathon of self-discovery from Arnold, former Outside magazine editor and daughter of National Geographic photographer David Arnold. When a terminal cancer diagnosis halts her father’s retirement project of archiving thousands of photos, those images reopen old wounds for Katie. Recalling her parents’ separation when she was two, she writes, ‘It’s nearly impossible to untangle my earliest memories from Dad’s photographs.’ Shuttling between his rural Virginia home to care for him and her life in Santa Fe raising two children, she suppressed her anguish. After he died in 2010, she found his diaries, in which he had divulged mixed feelings about fatherhood and ‘deep resentment’ of her. Arnold’s narrative includes flashbacks of her need for her father’s acceptance; she reveals how at age seven, ‘desperate for Dad’s attention,’ she agreed to his dare to run a 10K race, and from that point became ‘a runner by accident.’ After his death, she relied on ultrarunning to manage anxiety and developed a friendship with Zen writer Natalie Goldberg (author of Writing Down the Bones) who offered koans during their weekly walks together (‘You need to know death in order to blossom fully’). While her summations of lessons learned feel too pat, this is a bittersweet recollection of a father-daughter relationship.”
The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack by H.M. Naqvi
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack: “Naqvi’s second novel (after Homeboy) is an uproariously funny, poignant family saga told by a glib septuagenarian contemplating life in his beloved city of Karachi. Once manager of his father’s Hotel Olympus, the philosophical Abdullah, nicknamed ‘Cossack’ because he once outdrank a contingent of visiting Russians, now lives, overweight and diabetic, in the upstairs quarters of a crumbling family house shared with his brother Babu’s family. Beloved uncle of the ‘Childoos’ downstairs, and fancying himself a phenomenologist, Abdullah is nevertheless seen by the majority of his relatives as profligate and irresponsible. Things go treacherously haywire after he’s rescued from thugs in the street by a mysterious lady named Jugnu, and his old friend, a jazz musician dubbed ‘the Caliph of Cool,’ asks him to act as guardian for his grandson Bosco. It so happens that both Jugnu and Bosco’s family are in danger from the Karachi mob. As threats mount, including from Abdullah’s own family, who are pressuring him to give up the title deed to the house so they can sell it, the nostalgic, courageous Abdullah comes up with a scheme to save everyone. Touching on the metaphysical, the moral, and the absurd, this bawdy epic is a fresh-voiced testament to place, family, and the importance of loyalty.“
Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Fall Back Down When I Die: “Montana’s rugged beauty is poetically evoked in Wilkins’s fine debut. The story is divided into three narratives. First, readers meet Wendell Newman, a high school basketball star turned rancher whose family operation is in financial trouble after paying for his late mother’s failed surgeries. Things become even more complicated when he is asked to become guardian for his possibly mute, seven-year-old cousin, Rowdy Burns, whose mother has just been arrested for possession of methamphetamines. Next, there is Gillian Houlton, an assistant principal who is having a difficult time raising her teenage daughter, Maddy, after the death of her husband, a game warden who was killed by a rancher. Finally, readers get the written apologia of a man named Verl, who is on the run from the law and hiding out in the mountains. The three stories converge when a militia group, the Bull Mountain Resistance, shows up at Wendell’s door just as a deputy sheriff and social worker arrive to check up on Rowdy. Shots are fired, and Wendell is forced to flee into the mountains with Rowdy and Maddy. Though the plot depends on too many coincidences, the novel achieves an undeniable cumulative emotional power as the fates of its memorable characters play out. This is an accomplished first novel, notable in particular for its strong depiction of the timeless landscape of Montana’s big sky country.”
