Part four of our Summer Reading Spotlight! Check out the newest in popular fiction and non-fiction at UVM Libraries. Be sure to visit Howe Library Lobby for even more titles on display.
Clementine (Book One) by Tillie Walden
"In Book One, Clementine discovers new allies, new rivals, and new love. But as the group tries to build a walker-free settlement in an abandoned ski resort, they soon discover that the biggest threat to their survival... is each other."
Clementine (Book Two) by Tillie Walden
“Clementine and her new friends are rescued by an island community led by enigmatic doctor Miss Morro. But just as Clementine's scars are finally beginning to heal she discovers dark secrets that threaten to tear her new life apart. Can Miss Morro be trusted? What about the rest of the islanders? And just how far will Clementine go to protect the ones she loves?"
Shadow life by Hiromi Goto
“Poet and novelist Hiromi Goto effortlessly blends wry, observational slice-of-life literary fiction with poetic magical realism in the tender and surprising graphic novel Shadow Life, with haunting art from debut artist Ann Xu. When Kumiko's well-meaning adult daughters place her in an assisted living home, the seventy-six-year-old widow gives it a try, but it's not where she wants to be. She goes on the lam and finds a cozy bachelor apartment, keeping the location secret even while communicating online with her eldest daughter. Kumiko revels in the small, daily pleasures: decorating as she pleases, eating what she wants, and swimming in the community pool. But something has followed her from her former residence -- Death's shadow. Kumiko's sweet life is shattered when Death's shadow swoops in to collect her. With her quick mind, sense of humor, and help from friends new and old, Kumiko is prepared for the fight of her life. But how long can an old woman thwart fate?”
Silver nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
"Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she's been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives--even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies."
The Kamogawa food detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
"What's the one dish you'd do anything to taste just one more time? Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by . . . The father-daughter duo are 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person's treasured memories - dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility. A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal."
來自清水的孩子. 1, 愛讀冊的少年 ( Son of Formosa) by 游珮芸 (You, Peiyun)
“1930年代，日本統治下的台中州清水街，小男孩焜霖在童謠和圖畫書的陪伴下無憂地成長。然而，戰爭焰火逐漸沸騰，遊行、空襲、徵召......誰也無法置身於外。終戰後，這個認真學習ㄅㄆㄇ、熱愛讀冊的少年，以為總算迎來安穩生活，怎麼知道，更巨大的黑暗正在前方等著他......。”
translation: “In the 1930s, in Qingshui Street, Taichung Prefecture under Japanese rule, the little boy Kunlin grew up carefree in the company of nursery rhymes and picture books. However, the fireworks of war gradually boiled over, with parades, air raids, recruitment... no one could stay away. After the war, this young man who studied hard and loved reading thought he had finally ushered in a stable life. How did he know that a greater darkness was waiting for him ahead...”
Wandering stars by Tommy Orange
"Colorado, 1864, Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison-castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in 'There There' -- warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts -- asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. 'Wandering Stars' is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange's monumental gifts."
おいしいごはんが食べられますように by 高瀬隼子
“職場でそこそこうまくやっている二谷と、皆が守りたくなる存在で料理上手な芦川と、仕事ができてがんばり屋の押尾。ままならない人間関係を、食べものを通して描く傑作。心をざわつかせる、仕事＋食べもの＋恋愛小説。”
translation: “Nitani, who is doing reasonably well at the workplace, Ashigawa, who is a good cook and is someone everyone wants to protect, and Oshio, who is good at his job and a hard worker. This is a masterpiece that depicts the complicated human relationships through food. A heart-warming novel about work, food, and romance.”
The waters : a novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell
“On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp--an area known as "The Waters" to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan--herbalist and eccentric Hermine "Herself" Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest--the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn--has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy "Donkey" Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. Rage simmers below the surface of this divided community, and those on both sides of the divide have closed their doors against the enemy. The only bridge across the waters is Rose Thorn.”
Life, brazen and garish : a tale of three women by Dacia Maraini
"Maraini uses language and stylistics, rather than description, to define her three women protagonists. Lori, the youngest of the three women, uses the impetuous, spontaneous language of youth, late adolescence. Lori's mother, Maria uses the protracted language of a romantic, a learned researcher, and most significantly a translator who chooses words with intention in an attempt to bridge cultures, experiences and, in this case, generations. The grandmother Gesuina, a former stage actress, has a voice that is brutally honest, provocative, escapist. All three voices reflect the essence of the characters: Lori, the reckless teenager who flies off on her moped, her life's speed represented by her diary without punctuation; Maria, the pensive translator whose detailed observations are so concentrated on the word that she does not see the circumstances that are unfolding around her; Gesuina, the erstwhile stage actress, who muses aloud and audio-records hoping for an audience to receive her recitation".
Mazaltob : a novel by Blanche Bendahan
"The novel Mazaltob (1930) by Blanche Bendahan is the forerunner of a modern Sephardi feminist literature in French, which in recent decades has earned growing recognition. Yet this model for a vital current of post-colonial literature has disappeared from our cultural memory. Rendering the novel Mazaltob into English aims to repair that loss".
Das Vorkommnis : Roman by Julia Schoch
“Da steht sie vor ihr, die Halbschwester, von der sie nie etwas wusste. Eine Erfahrung wie ein Schuss: Ein Mensch taucht auf, und das ganze Leben ist verändert. Julia Schoch, eine der eindringlichsten Stimmen autofiktionalen Schreibens in der deutschen Literatur, erzählt sehr persönlich und schafft zugleich ein Abbild von uns allen - über eine Frau, deren Leben eine unerwartete Wendung nimmt, über Kindheit in der DDR, über Familie, Ehe, Liebe.”
translation: “There she is, the half-sister she never knew about. An experience like a gunshot: a person appears and her whole life is changed. Julia Schoch, one of the most powerful voices of autofictional writing in German literature, tells a very personal story and at the same time creates a picture of all of us - about a woman whose life takes an unexpected turn, about childhood in the GDR, about family, marriage, love.”
Goldenseal : a novel by Maria Hummel
"Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades. As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing comfort from the public and private traumas that they had each endured and which a newly optimistic world was eager to forget. Told through a continuous, twisting conversation that unfolds over the course of a single evening, in which each woman tells her story and reveals long-hidden secrets, the narratives of Edith and Lacey burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret".
Glory : the gospel of Judas, a novel by Giuseppe Berto
"Glory (La gloria) is Giuseppe Berto's testamentary novel. The first-person narration of the Gospel in the voice of Judas Iscariot constitutes Berto's closing argument in a life-long debate with Christianity. His interpretation of the gospel story is certainly unconventional, even oppositional. Rather than a rejection of the Christian faith in which he was raised and educated, however, Berto fashions an alternative account to the four canonical gospels that ultimately constructs a competing view of the human condition and of humanity's prospects for redemption. In Berto's parodic rendition of the Christian gospel, Judas, after a lifetime of tormented interrogation, decides to embrace the ambiguity of the human condition, which is, as he describes it, a liminal existence played out over a long and trying transition of unknown and unknowable duration, between the original paradise of the Garden of Eden and the final redemption at the end of days-a period otherwise known as history".
Some strange music draws me in by Griffin Hansbury
“It’s the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel’s dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia’s presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.”
Changer : méthode by Édouard Louis
"Jeune prodige de la littérature traduit et connu dans le monde entier avant même d'avoir 25 ans, celui qui a écrit quatre livres autobiographiques autour de son enfance pauvre, de la violence, de l'humiliation raconte enfin comme Eddy Bellegueule est devenu Édouard Louis. Dans le sillage d'Annie Ernaux et de Didier Eribon, Louis raconte - avec un style élégiaque - son "Odyssée" d'un monde à l'autre et le prix à payer pour se réinventer aussi radicalement. Portrait poignant en transfuge."
translation: "A young literary prodigy translated and known throughout the world before even turning 25, the one who wrote four autobiographical books around his poor childhood, violence, humiliation finally tells how Eddy Bellegueule became Édouard Louis. In the wake of Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon, Louis recounts - with an elegiac style - his "Odyssey" from one world to another and the price to pay for reinventing himself so radically. "
東京都同情塔 (Tokyo-to dojo-to) by 九段理江 (Kudan, Rie)
“日本人の欺瞞をユーモラスに描いた現代版「バベルの塔」。ザハの国立競技場が完成し、寛容論が浸透したもう一つの日本で、新しい刑務所「シンパシータワートーキョー」が建てられることに。犯罪者に寛容になれない建築家・牧名は、仕事と信条の乖離に苦悩しながら、パワフルに未来を追求する。ゆるふわな言葉と実のない正義の関係を豊かなフロウで暴く、生成AI時代の預言の書。”
translation: “A modern-day version of "The Tower of Babel" that humorously depicts the deception of the Japanese. In another Japan where Zaha's National Stadium has been completed and tolerance has taken hold, a new prison, "Sympathy Tower Tokyo," is to be built. Architect Makina, who cannot tolerate criminals, pursues the future powerfully while struggling with the gap between his work and his beliefs. A prophetic book for the age of generative AI that exposes the relationship between loose and fluffy words and fruitless justice with a rich flow.”
The Marlow Murder Club : a novel by Robert Thorogood
"Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there's no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper. One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don't believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club. When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape... "I love Robert Thorogood's writing." -Peter James, international bestselling author".
那一天我們跟在雞屁股後面尋路 by 何玟珒著
“黑色幽默系小說家何玟珒的九篇短篇小說，將故事包裹著懸疑誘人的糖衣，在做工細膩又輕鬆易讀的手法炮製下，渾然不覺蜜裡藏刀，直到疼痛見血，還忍不住一口接一口品嘗。比鬼故事更恐怖的是黑暗的人心，關於身體、性侵、虐戀等傷痛可能隨時在身邊發生。這是一本讀了戰慄卻痛快無比之作，是社會傷害中長出的惡之花。”
translation: “The nine short stories written by the black humor novelist He Wenjuan wrap the stories in suspense and alluring sugar-coating. They are crafted in a delicate and easy-to-read manner. You don't even realize that there is a knife hidden in the honey, until you see the pain and blood. Can't help but taste one bite after another. What is more terrifying than ghost stories is the dark human heart. Injuries such as physical, sexual assault, and sadomasochism may happen around you at any time. This is a book that is thrilling but extremely enjoyable to read. It is a flower of evil that grows out of social harm.”
Funny story by Emily Henry
"Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. How they met, fell in love, and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. Too bad it turned out to be more of a prequel, a complication to Peter's actual love story, the one that ends with him dumping Daphne before their wedding to begin a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Petra. And so that's how Daphne's story really begins: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children's librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only other non-Peter-related person she knows: Petra's heartbroken ex, Miles Nowak. Just until she can get a new dream job literally anywhere else. Scruffy and chaotic, Miles is entirely the opposite of buttoned-up Daphne, and they mainly avoid one another until one night, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship. Miles decides he will convince Daphne to give Waning Bay a real shot. He'll show her why he loves this idyllic town and its residents, and if they happen to post deliberately misleading photos of their adventures together--for a particular audience of two--who could blame them? Miles believes Daphne deserves the chance to build a life here, her own life. As she begins to fall for the town, Daphne wonders what this summer is supposed to mean. Is it just for fun? An interlude to her own love story? Or maybe it was never meant to be a love story? Maybe it was just an anecdote to share at future dinner parties: that time she fell in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex-boyfriend. Who's to say?"