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Contemporary fiction
Author Spotlight: Meryl Wilsner
Posted on July 14, 2020| Posted in Spotlight
We chat with Meryl Wilsner about reading, writing, and their latest book, Something to Talk About!
First Few Pages: A Burning
Posted on July 8, 2020| Posted in First Few Pages
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely–an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor–has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
First Few Pages: The Son of Good Fortune
Posted on July 1, 2020| Posted in First Few Pages
Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town’s seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight.
But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel’s tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. “We are ‘TNT’—tago ng tago,” she told him, “hiding and hiding.” Excel is undocumented—and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.
Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies—and existing outside the normal constructs of American society—Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?
First Few Pages: Party of Two
Posted on June 17, 2020| Posted in First Few Pages
Dating is the last thing on Olivia Monroe’s mind when she moves to LA to start her own law firm. But when she meets a gorgeous man at a hotel bar and they spend the entire night flirting, she discovers too late that he is none other than hotshot junior senator Max Powell. Olivia has zero interest in dating a politician, but when a cake arrives at her office with the cutest message, she can’t resist—it is chocolate cake, after all.
First Few Pages: It's Not All Downhill From Here
Posted on April 15, 2020| Posted in First Few Pages
Review: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
Posted on March 23, 2020| Posted in Book Reviews
Two lives. Two loves. One impossible choice. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick One Day in December.
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
Local Lit Fest 2020
August 7, 2020
The 2020 Junior Book Crew Take on Social Media
August 5, 2020
First Few Pages: Fairest
August 4, 2020
King Encounters
August 3, 2020
Quarantine Poems by the 2020 Junior Book Crew
August 1, 2020
