Confession of the Lioness

Couto, Mia/ Brookshaw, David (Get this book)

Inspired by real events experienced by prolific author Couto, this lyrical novel is about the many facets of fear that haunt the people in the tiny village of Kulumani, deep in the bush of Mozambique. Though the plot can get lost in dense dreamlike passages, its depiction of the oppression of women is impossible to shake. Couto weaves a surreal mystery of humanity against nature, men against women, and tradition against modernity. --Publisher's Weekly

The Last Pilot

Johncock, Benjamin (Get this book)
Using the early days of the U.S. space exploration program as a backdrop, Johncock’s impressive debut laces fact with fiction to tell the tale of Jim Harrison, an Air Force test pilot, and his wife, Grace. Jim’s story is fascinating, and the author writes with a strong ear for dialogue, which rattles the pages with intensity. A marvelous, emotionally powerful novel.--Publisher's Weekly

Confession of the Lioness

Couto, Mia/ Brookshaw, David (Get this book)
In the tiny village of Kulumani, the people struggle to keep themselves safe from a marauding band of lions. Mozambique biologist and writer Couto crafts a rich tale in which the spirit world is made real, animals are controlled by people, and dead ancestors are feared for their power to destroy cities. Couto also manages to explore the clash of disparate belief systems—tribal, Islam, Christian—in postcolonial Africa and deftly weaves in a critique of the embedded patriarchy. If there is a fault, it is the unevenness of the reveal of information which at times allows questions to linger too long, distracting the reader from fully falling under the spell of this otherwise entrancing narrative. A haunting, ethereal flight of magical realism.--Kirkus

In the Country: Stories

Alvar, Mia (Get this book)
In this stunning debut collection, the yearnings of the characters resonate well beyond the page, and each story feels as rich, as deep, and as crafted as a novel. Equally impressive is the confident fluidity with which Alvar moves from Manila to Bahrain to Tokyo, from 1971 to 1986 to the 21st century. Throughout Alvar’s stories, the language is as elegant as it is durable, while the lines of class, race, gender, and history are both blurred and crystallized.--Publisher's Weekly

Valley of the Shadow

Peters, Ralph/ Skoch, George (Get this book)
Those who enjoy Bruce Catton's and Shelby Foote's Civil War histories will find a fictional equal in Peters' retelling of the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.Combining character study, strategy, and battle scenes, Peters focuses on the great, small, and those in history's shadows, like U.S. Gen. Emory Upton, "an enigma, a hardened Christian, mean as a Turk…a brilliant, intolerant merciless young man." Famous names also appear: Union Army Gen. Philip Sheridan, all pugnacious Irish temper; tobacco-chewing Confederate Gen. Jubal Early, "a spitting, crook-back man and harsh-mouthed as a heathen"; and future president Rutherford Hayes, who learned "War made it hard to credit a merciful God." A superlative novel. --Kirkus

The Turner House

Flournoy, Angela (Get this book)
A complicated portrait of the modern American family emerges in Flournoy's debut novel. For the 13 Turner siblings, the house on Detroit's East Side isn't just their childhood home. It's also the crux of memories of their dead father and a link among 13 very different adults. But the house has built up debt, their ill mother, Viola, lives elsewhere, and a question hangs—what to do with the Yarrow Street house? Flournoy's writing is precise and sharp, and despite several loose ends—Troy doesn't experience significant emotiona l change by the book's end, and the house's fate remains unclear—the novel draws readers to the Turner family almost magnetically. A talent to watch.--Kirkus

The Lady from Zagreb

Kerr, Philip (Get this book)
Bestseller Kerr’s superlative 10th novel featuring former homicide cop Bernie Gunther finds Bernie, now an officer in the SD, at an international police conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in the summer of 1942. Heinrich Heckholz, an attorney, wants Bernie to use his access at Wannsee to gather evidence that a charitable foundation is involved in fraud. Kerr combines a murder mystery that Raymond Chandler could have devised with a searing look at the inhumanity of the Nazis and their allies, presented from a unique perspective. (Publisher's Weekly)