Hundreds of Always Available fiction eBooks are now available until June 30th due to the generosity of several publishers and distributors. Check some out while you wait for your holds to be filled and for the library to reopen.
This collection is particularly a boon for fans of translated fiction. Some highlights include Sayaka Murata’s breakout English-language debut Convenience Store Woman, a spare novel that questions the push to conform to societal expectations as seen through the experiences of 36-year-old convenience store clerk Keiko Furukawa. Hotel Silence by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir is a tender, lighthearted novel with a dark premise, as suicidal Icelander Jonas Ebeneser travels to a war-torn country only to find himself needed by a brother and sister duo operating the titular Hotel. The translation of Argentinian writer Silvina Ocampo’s debut collection of short stories Forgotten Journey (published 1937), is full of short, dreamlike vignettes populated by singular characters and evocative of Argentina’s landscape, both urban and rural. Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou is an incisively witty coming-of-age novel set in the Republic of the Congo from the 1970s-1990s. And if you’re looking for a classic, check out The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Readers focusing on local authors are in luck. Read Deep River by Karl Marlantes, a family saga that begins when a trio of Finnish siblings immigrate to Washington State in the early 1900s to work in the burgeoning logging industry. G. Willow Wilson’s historical fantasy The Bird King transports readers to 15th century Spain, as former concubine Fatima and mapmaker Hassan flee the Spanish inquisition, relying upon Hassan’s ability to alter reality with his maps. Or dive into Sherman Alexie’s short stories with Blasphemy, a collection of 30 wickedly funny and provocative stories that portray contemporary Native American life in the Pacific Northwest.
Other standouts in the collection include Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize winning novel Girl Woman Other, a kaleidoscopic portrait of Black British womanhood. If you’ve wanted to dig deep into writers from the Beat Generation, there are a number of titles to choose from by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski. Short stories lovers are in luck with The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women. And finally, Naomi Hirahara is back with the first in a new cozy mystery series in Iced in Paradise.
~ posted by Andrea G.
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