Whether it is fiction or nonfiction, international authors can open our eyes to new corners of the human experience. Below are some upcoming titles from international authors that range from cozy mystery to reporting the aftermath of a recent tragedy.
Expectant Detectives by Kat Ailes (United Kingdom)
Expected Publication: January 9, 2024
For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy Cotswold village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their unexpected first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam. But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local antenatal class and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.
With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice sets out to solve the mystery and clear her name, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.
The Favorites by Rosemary Hennigan (Ireland)
Expected Publication: November 14, 2023
Most students would kill to be accepted into the prestigious Law and Literature cohort at Franklin University. But for Jessie Mooney, enrollment in the course is about more than elite campus status, rigorous thought, and professional connections. It’s her chance to get close to charismatic professor Jay Crane—and take him down.
From the moment she discovered their secret relationship, Jessie’s been convinced Crane is to blame for the events leading to her sister’s death. Still haunted by their last email exchange— You know what you did —she’ll cross any line to hold him accountable. But when Jessie finally earns Crane’s trust and the coveted position as one of his “favorites,” attracting the other students’ envy and suspicion, the truth becomes darkly twisted. Is it justice Jessie craves, or revenge? And what does she stand to lose if she gets her way?
Shimmering with tension, this provocative novel explores the nature of obsession, the inequities of power, and the ways that anger, desire, and love reveal the best, and worst, of us.
Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk (Ukraine)
Expected Publication: January 23, 2024
From one of Ukraine’s most prolific contemporary authors comes this profound novel of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time. Winner of the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award and the German Usedom Prize, Forgottenness movingly―and unflinchingly―illuminates the intricacies of the Ukrainian experience in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An exceedingly anxious young narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder and alcoholism to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace and companionship in researching the historical figure of Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882–1931), a social and political activist of Polish descent who played a pivotal role in the struggle for Ukrainian independence―and just so happened to struggle with hypochondria. Through a series of mesmerizing digressions, the narrator’s own family saga is told in parallel with Lypynskyi’s, culminating in “an impressively sincere self-inquiry about identity”?(Jury of the Usedom Prize, led by Olga Tokarczuk). Shot through with wry humor and brilliantly translated by Zenia Tompkins, this urgent work announces Tanja Maljartshuk as a major voice in world literature.
All She Lost by Dalal Mawad (Lebanon)
Expected Publication: January 9, 2024
On August 4 2020, a huge explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people – it is the apocalypse of a sequence of events that have led to Lebanon’s unprecedented collapse. Journalist Dalal Mawad has interviewed tens of Lebanese and foreign women – victims of the explosion, and those stuck in Lebanon – and weaves an extraordinary story of survival, corruption and impunity.
She spoke to mothers who lost their children on August 4, spouses who lost their partners, refugee women who have fled from the war in Syria – and who now find themselves in another failing state. We hear from the Lebanese grandmother, bankrupted by the small nation’s collapse, who remembers Beirut’s glory days of the 1960s – when the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Miles Davis came to Beirut. And then the women like Dalal herself, who have left their home behind.
The women in this book all experienced the explosion and suffered unimaginable loss and tragedy, but it is not just this one event that brings them together. Their personal stories converged to tell the story of a nation whose glory days are long gone, now riven by protracted violence, lurching from crisis to crisis, and fighting to survive. It tells not only of what these women have lost, but also what Lebanon has lost, and a part of the Middle East that is no more.
-Annotations from the publishers
–Post by Melissa Friedlund, Adult Services Specialist
Giveaway
Enter your name here for a chance to win ARCs of the books mentioned in this post. One entry per person. Drawing to be held approximately 7 days after this post.
ARCs are “advanced reading copies.” These are free copies of a new books given by a publisher to librarians and other reviewers before the book is printed for mass distribution.
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