This term, the library has added some wonderful fiction titles to the collection. Check them out below, then check them out! All descriptions from blurbs.
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
“Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear that even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.”
Call #: F WHIT
Days without end
Sebastian Barry
“After signing up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, go on to fight in the Indian Wars and, ultimately, the Civil War. Having fled terrible hardships, they find these days to be vivid and filled with wonder, despite the horror they both see and are complicit in. Their lives are further enriched and imperilled when a young Indian girl crosses their path, and the possibility of lasting happiness emerges, if only they can survive.”
Call #: F BARR
Lincoln in the bardo
George Saunders
“February 1862. The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. Days later, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body. From this seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm – called, in Tibetan tradition, the bardo – where ghosts mingle, squabble and commiserate, and a monumental struggle erupts over his soul…
Call #: F SAUN
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds”, a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.”
Call #: F NGUY
The gap of time
Jeanette Winterson
“A baby girl is abandoned, banished from London to the storm-ravaged American city of New Bohemia. Her father has been driven mad by jealousy, her moth to exile by grief. Seventeen years later, Perdita doesn’t know a lot about who she is or where she’s come from – but she’s about to find out. Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale vibrates with echoes of Shakespeare’s original and tells a story of hearts broken and hearts healed, a story of revenge and forgiveness, a story that shows us that whatever is lost shall be found.”
Call #: F WINT
This is my song
Richard Yaxley
In the 1940s, musician Rafael Ullmann is sent to a Nazi concentration camp. In the 1970s, Annie Ullmann lives a lonely life on a Canadian prairie. Three decades later, in Australia, Joe Hawker is uncertain about himself and his future…until he discovers a song, written by his grandfather many years ago. This is my song crosses three continents and time-lines, chanting the need for each of us to find our own music, to sing to those we love most.”
Call #: F YAXL
Silence
Shusaku Endo
“It is 1640 and Father Sebastian Rodrigues, an idealistic Jesuit priest, sets sail for Japan determined to help the brutally oppressed Christians there. He is also desperate to discover the truth about his former mentor, rumoured to have renounced his faith under torture. Rodrigues cannot believe the stories about a man so revered, but as his journey takes him deeper into Japan and then into the hands of those who would crush his faith, he finds himself forced to make an impossible choice: to abandon his flock or his God.”
Call #: F ENDO
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