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New Fiction
Take a look at some of the latest additions to our New and Featured Fiction collections! We check in new books nearly every day -- check out the First Floor's LibraryThing account where we log all of our newest arrivals!
New Fiction - Week of April 28, 2008
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Epstein, Jennifer Cody
The Painter From Shanghai |
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"Pan Yuliang - one-time prostitute, postimpressionist, and adopted Parisian - lived at the intersection of great art and tumultuous modern history. In the painter from Shanghai, Jennifer Cody Epstein reimagines the life of this bold and improbable woman. Down the muddy waters of the Yangtze River and into the seedy backrooms of 'The Hall of Eternal Splendor,' through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution, this novel fells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talented - and provocative - Chinese artists of the twentieth century. Jennifer Cody Epstein conjures the world of the woman behind the Cezannesque nude self-portraits, imagining with lavish detail her life in the brothel and then as a concubine to the Republican official who would ultimately help her find her way as an artist. Moving with the tide of historical events, The Painter from Shanghai celebrates a singular daring painting style - one that led to fame, notoriety, and, ultimately, a devastating choice: between Pan's art and the one great love of her life."--Book jacket
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Harrison, Colin The Finder |
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"When a beautiful young Chinese woman living in New York City named Jin Li agrees to take a car ride with two illegal Mexican women to Brooklyn late one night, little does she know that in minutes she will be running for her life. Why is Jin Li running for her life? Because the young woman is not exactly who she claims to be - and knows things she should not. The people desperately interested in her fate soon include a profane and aggressive hedge-fund billionaire; a sadistic goon who likes to spike people's drinks with concoctions of his own devising; an outsized woman of capacious desires who owns a Brooklyn check-cashing operation; a talented, high-powered Manhattan executive with a very expensive problem he needs to hide; a ruthless criminal speculator in the Chinese stock markets; a brilliant NYPD detective lying on his deathbed; and, above all, Jin Li's ex-boyfriend Ray, a quiet man with disturbing scars and a past he won't discuss."--Book jacket
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Kellerman, Jonathan Compulsion |
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"A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware. What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges; across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers; and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade. The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death - and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness."--Book jacket
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New Science Fiction and Fantasy - Week of April 28, 2008
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Dietz, William C. McCade for Hire |
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"Galactic Bounty: A traitor is on the loose. A treacherous navy captain plans to sell military secrets to the alien Il Ronn. The only man who can stop him is Sam McCade. Betrayed by his friends, stalked by his enemies, McCade is the only one standing between a terrifying alien threat - and the unimaginable devastation of the Terran Empire. Imperial Bounty: Since her brother's absence, Princess Claudia has seized the throne and brought the Empire to the brink of war with the Il Ronn. Only the missing Prince Alexander can stop Claudia's plans - and Sam McCade has only three months to find him. But Princess Claudia controls the Imperial Fleet and will stop at nothing to keep McCade from bringing in his imperial bounty."--Book jacket
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John Joseph Adams, editor Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse |
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"From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of imaginative fiction: the nature or life in the aftermath of total societal collapse. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. Whether the end of the world comes through nuclear war, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm, these are tales of survivors, in some cases struggling to rebuild the society that was, in others, merely surviving, scrounging for food in depopulated ruins and defending themselves against monsters, mutants, and marauders. Complete with introductions and an indispensable appendix of recommendations for further reading. Wastelands delves into this bleak landscape, uncovering the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core." -- Book jacket
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New Mysteries - Week of April 28, 2008
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White, Randy Wayne Black Widow |
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"It went against all of Ford's instincts. When his goddaughter, Shay, called, he assumed it was with details of her imminent wedding, but the news was anything but cheerful. She and her bridesmaids had thrown a pretty wild bachelorette party, it seemed, on St. Arc in the Windward Islands - and someone had secretly videotaped it. Now that person was threatening to blow up her future unless she came across with enough money. But don't worry, Doc, she said, she'd negotiated it down. All she needed him to do was make the exchange. Please? Ford knew it was a mistake - a mistake to trust the extortionist, a mistake for her not to tell her fiance - but he agreed. Now one of the bridesmaids is near death. The blackmailer grabbed the money and threatened to release the tape on the Internet anyway. The panicked bridesmaid took an overdose of pills and alcohol. Fueled by guilt and an overpowering rage, Ford swears to destroy the person responsible, but the blackmailer has other ideas. An agent of corruption like no one they have ever met, the black widow is just getting started."-- Book jacket
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New Horror - Week of April 28, 2008
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Tem, Steve Rasnic The Man on the Ceiling |
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"Having re-imagined and expanded on the novella's surreal tone and redemptive heart, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem have created a compelling new work that blurs the line between memoir and myth, where story and reality blend to find the one thing that neither can offer alone: truth."-- Book jacket
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New World Fiction - Week of April 28, 2008
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Michalopoulou, Amanta
I'd Like |
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"An aging writer, fragile and flawed. A father trying to win back the daughters he has lost. A mother trying on her daughter's pointe shoes when no one else is home. Two sisters in their eighties, sharing a home after decades spent apart. The thirteen short stories that make up Amanda Michalopoulou's I'd Like read like versions of an unwritten novel: each riveting tale resonates with the others, and yet a sense of their connectedness remains tantalizingly out of grasp. Instead, we are presented with a kaleidoscope of characters and events, signs and emotions, linked by the uncanny repetition of certain details: blossoming almond trees, red berets, bleeding feet, accidents small and large. Michalopoulou's characters are both patently fictitious and profoundly real, as they move through a world in which even the smallest of everyday occurrences can take on enormous significance. Engagingly fresh in its approach, I'd Like offers a touching, utterly unique reading experience from one of Greece's most innovative young storytellers."-- Book jacket
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New GLBT Fiction - Week of April 28, 2008
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No new GLBT this week, please check again next week!
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New African-American Fiction - Week of April 28, 2008
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Noire Baby Brother |
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Zabu "Baby Brother" Davis has a future full of promise until fate intervenes, and he is wrongly accused of murder. He soon finds himself trapped in a web of justice, murder, and vengeance.
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Martin, Blaine Hustle Hard |
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After his dreams are destroyed, one man must drastically rework his life in this tale of survival on the rough streets of Harlem. The hardworking and determined Jaden is already the most celebrated athlete in the Northeast, with a successful career in professional football— his ticket to a better life— right around the corner. But after his opportunities are ruined by a friend's envious actions, Jaden must turn to a life of robbery and drug dealing to pay the bills and support his ailing mother. As his morals decay, his family comes apart at the seams and the love of his life grows distant. Only after Jaden realizes what he has lost and what he has left does he learn how to navigate the hard life of the hood.
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New Historical Fiction - Week of April 28, 2008
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Neugeboren, Jay 1940 |
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"Set on the eve of America's entry into World War Two, novelist Jay Neugeboren's first new novel in two decades is built around a fascinating historical figure, Dr. Eduard Bloch, an Austrian doctor who had been physician to Adolf Hitler and his familiy when Hitler was a boy and young man, and who cared for Hitler's mother during her illness and death from breast cancer. The historical Bloch was the only Jew for whom Hitler ever personally arranged departure from Europe, and he must now, living in the Bronx, face accusations over the special treatment he received from the Nazi dictator. 1940 focuses on Dr. Bloch's relationship with Elizabeth Rofman, a medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who has come to New York from Baltimore to visit her father, only to find that he has, mysteriously, disappeared. The story grows more complex when Elizabeth's son Daniel, a disturbed young adolescent, escapes from the institution in Maryland where his parents have committed him, and makes his way to New York, where he is hidden and protected by his mother... and by Dr. Bloch."--Book jacket
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New Short Stories - Week of April 28, 2008
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Oates, Joyce Carol Wild nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway |
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"Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens ('Mark Twain'), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway - Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in her newest work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In subtly nuanced language suggestive of each of these writers, Oates explores the mysterious regions of the unknowable self that is 'genius' - for Edgar Allan Poe, a belated encounter with bizarre life-forms utterly alien to the poet's exalted Romantic aesthetics; for Emily Dickinson, resurrected in the twenty-first century in a 'distilled' state, a belated encounter with blundering humanity and brute passion of a kind excluded from the poet's verse; for the elderly, renowned Samuel Clemens, a belated encounter with impassioned innocence, in the form of 'the little girl who loves you'; for Henry James, an aging volunteer in a London hospital during World War I, a belated encounter with the physicality of desire and the raw yearning of love long absent from the master's fiction; and, for Ernest Hemingway, the most tragic of these figures, a belated encounter with the profound mysteries of the world outside him, and the profound mysteries of the world inside him."--Book jacket
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Reynolds, Clay Sandhill County Lines |
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"Sandhill County is the imagined place that informs most of Reynolds's fiction from the early novels The Vigil and Agatite to his most recent, Threading the Needle. It is also the setting for these nine stories, which Reynolds sees as reflective fragments, the kind one notices when driving through North Central Texas - old buildings and houses, each concealing a story. Wondering about such structures, about the people behind the windows and doors, what their stories truly are, Reynolds observes, Sometimes a sensation that wouldn't cause so much as a ripple in the city may roll like a tidal wave in a small town. It is the pulse of such sensations, drumming throughout these stories, that makes whole and illuminates Reynolds's native stomping grounds, the place he finds most evocative, the Texas he returns to again and again."--Book jacket
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