Book Club Hardcover Selections
The Singer’s Gun (Unbridled Books)
by Emily St. John Mandel
The newest hardcover addition to the Book Buffs book club is arriving at your door very soon! The Singer’s Gun (Unbridled Books), by Emily St. John Mandel, follows the story of a young twenty-something as he tries to navigate into adulthood while still trying to overcome his past family life filled with crime and corruption. Emily’s first novel, Last Night in Montreal, received wide critical praise and was one of our book club selections last year. It is so good we had to break with our tradition of selectioning an author only once!
How to Read the Air (Riverhead Books)
by Mengestu
Arriving in October, is the next hardcover selection, How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead Books). It is also a second novel from its author. This beautifully written novel follows the life of a son from an Ethiopian immigrant family. His geographical and emotional journey traces his parents’ travels from a war-torn Ethiopia to a life in America. Dinaw Mengestu’s first novel, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, was named as a New York Times Notable Book.
Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Readers are sent across the globe to Mumbai, India. The story evolves around Kavita, a poor Indian woman, who gives birth to a daughter that she quickly spirits away to a Mumbai orphanage in order to save the baby’s life. At the same time, an American couple — Somer and Krishnan — are struggling to start a new family. They decide to adopt a baby from the orphanage in Mumbai, and find themselves parents to Asha, Kavita’s baby girl, who shares her heritage with Krishnan. This debut novel explores the contrast of classes within India as Asha struggles to discover her cultural identity and place within her diverse family.
Paperback Originals
Eline Vere: A Novel of the Hague
by Louis Couperus, translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke
Arriving in October, this selection is by one of the foremost figures in Dutch history, Louis Couperus. Published in 1889, Eline Vere: A Novel of the Hague is a psychological novel inspired by the work of Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert and Leo Tolstoy. It captures a piece of Dutch society and all its trappings at the end of the nineteenth century. Award-winning translator, Ina Rilke translated this work from the Dutch. Eline Vere is published by one of our favorite publishers, Archipelago Books.
Broken Glass Park
by Alina Bronsky
Broken Glass Park by Russian-born Alina Bronsky, the subject of constant praise and debate since her debut novel was published in Germany in 2008. She has been hailed as a literary prodigy and her novel as “an explosive debut” (Emma Magazine). Now, Broken Glass Park makes its first appearance in English in Tim Mohr’s masterful translation.
The heroine of this engrossing and thoroughly contemporary novel is seventeen-year-old Sascha Naimann. Sascha was born in Moscow, but now lives in Berlin with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, street-wise, and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Sascha’s story does not remain on the margins; it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be young, alive, and conscious in these first decades of the new century.
If you're looking for more great reading ideas, visit our Previous Selections for suggestions from past years.
