Beyond Bestsellers - Fiction, Summer 2025

Arnett, Kristen.  Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One.
A woman who works at an aquarium store and moonlights as a rodeo clown meets a beautiful older professional magician and starts a relationship with her that's part professional and part personal. Ebook

Austen, Alice.  33 Place Brugmann.
This novel set in an apartment building in Brussels beginning in 1939 portrays the lives of a number of the residents, including an art dealer and his family, who hope that they will be spared from the horrors of World War II, but the Nazi occupation changes everything for them. Ebook

Aw, Tash.  The South.
In this novel by a Malaysian author, a family spends their summer in the southern part of Malaysia where their mother has inherited a small section of land, and their 16-year-old son bonds with the slightly older son of the land's care-taker, taking his first steps to independence.

Barnes, Camilla.  The Usual Desire to Kill.  
In this novel which combines humor and heart-break, a middle-aged British actress travels to France to visit her aging parents, a couple of crotchety, ailing, bickering, and exasperating retired academics. Downloadable audiobook

Carr, Garrett.  The Boy From the Sea.  
A barrel with a newborn baby boy washes up on the shore of a small seaside community in Ireland in the 1970s, setting off complications in the relationships of the fishing family that adopts him.

Currie, Ron.  The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne.  
This gritty novel takes place in an old mill town in Maine, in a French district called Little Canada, which is run by a powerful French-American woman in the black-market opioid business.

Curtis, Aaron John.  Old School Indian.  
In this comic and touching novel, a middle-aged man returns to the Mohawk reservation in New York State where he was raised, in the hope of curing a painful autoimmune disease he suffers from. The story is narrated by his alter-ego, a fictional character he invented when he left his home as a teenager to become a poet. Downloadable audiobook

Dinan, Nicola.  Disappoint Me.
A British trans woman from Hong Kong, living in London, struggling personally and professionally after a breakup, finds a new but not always easy relationship with a lawyer, who is the son of Chinese immigrants.

Dermansky, Marcy.  Hot Air.  
In this short, madcap novel, a first date for two suburban single parents is disrupted by a hot air balloon carrying a quarrelling tech billionaire and his philanthropist wife, which crashes into a backyard swimming pool.

Donoghue, Emma.  The Paris Express.  
This literary thriller with vivid characters, some based on historical figures, retells the story of the real-life crash of a French train travelling from the Normandy coast to Paris in October, 1895. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

El-Mohtar, Amal.  The River Has Roots.
This dark poetic fairy tale tells the story of a town which borders Faerie and two sisters who sing duets to the magic willow trees along the river until a suitor forcibly separates them. Downloadable audiobook

Fayne, Rickey.  The Devil Three Times.
This complex multi-generational family saga begins in the early 19th century with an African woman who has been kidnapped and loaded onto a slave ship, where she makes a deal with the Devil for her survival. The story then follows six generations of her offspring, Black and white. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Folk, Kate.  Sky Daddy.
This unusual and sometimes comic novel tells the story of a woman who is erotically obsessed by airplanes, and always searching for the plane that will return her passion.

Gurnah, Abdulrazak.  Theft.
This novel by a British author born in Zanzibar concerns the relationships among three main characters – a beautiful and bookish young woman; a handsome, well-to-do, and selfish young man; and a man working as his servant, who is falsely accused of theft. Ebook

Harkin, Jo.  The Pretender.
This often satirical literary novel fictionalizes the life of Lambert Simnel, an English peasant who, at the age of ten, is unexpectedly (and falsely) revealed to be the rightful heir to the English throne.

Harman, Sarah.  All the Other Mothers Hate Me.  
In this zany and suspenseful comedy, a divorced American woman living in London sends her ten-year-old son, Dylan, to an exclusive school, where she is forced to endure the other mothers' snobbery. When a boy who has been bullying Dylan disappears and she finds evidence that Dylan may be involved, she goes further and further in her attempts to protect him. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Hegarty, Louise.  Fair Play.
In this well-plotted comic mystery that pays tribute to classic English detective novels, the guests of a wealthy pair of siblings, who traditionally hold a New Year's Eve party in a posh location, find on New Year's Day that one of their hosts has died in the night.

Hickey, Jon.  Big Chief.
In this novel set in Northern Wisconsin, an attorney who works for his (fictional) Indian nation's president finds his loyalty shifting as the tribal election grows near and he begins to realize  the increasingly bad consequences of his old friend's corruption and incompetence. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Jerkins, Morgan.  Zeal.
This multi-generational novel begins in the contemporary era, when a young doctor gives his fiancée his family's most cherished possession: a letter written after the Civil War by a recently freed ancestor to the man she loved; the narrative then takes the reader back to the stories of those two people and their descendants. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Jones, Honor.  Sleep.
A single mother dreads visiting her parents in the family's big house in the country, though her two daughters love it, because of her memories of childhood abuse and dysfunction, but her mother's deteriorating health leads her to take her girls there and begin a reckoning with the past.

Kehlmann, Daniel, trans. by Ross Benjamin.  The Director.
This chilling novel is based on the life and work of the brilliant director G.W. Pabst, a cinema pioneer in the Weimar Republic, who found himself trapped in Austria when World War II broke out, and collaborated with the Nazis in the hope of getting his films funded.

Latronico, Vincenzo, trans. by Sophie Hughes.  Perfection.  
This unusual novel by an Italian writer depicts the lives of a couple of young creative Berliners, showing how shallow and unsatisfying  they are, despite long lists of the many beautiful objects they own.

Millet, Lydia.  Atavists: Stories.
This is a set of 14 interconnected stories, set in Los Angeles, which, with wit and compassion, portray the lives of people from different generations facing difficult situations set off by new technology and climate change.

Nguyen, Kevin.  My Documents.
After explosions kill hundreds of people at six major U.S. Airports and the perpetrators are found to have Vietnamese names, the Government starts an internment program for all Vietnamese people in the U.S., including four young siblings and half-siblings in the Nguyen family. Ebook

Pandya, Sameer.  Our Beautiful Boys.
This is the story, with race and class implications, of four high school boys in California, and how events following a football team celebration lead to hospitalization for one, and suspension and suspicion for the others.

Park, Silvia.  Luminous.  
In this speculative fiction set in a unified Korea in the future, two estranged siblings, one a police detective and the other a robot programmer, are gradually reunited through the search for a missing robot girl, and the rediscovery of their own missing robot brother.

Peters, Torrey.  Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories
These are three quirky and unusual short stories and a novella, which center on trans people and their relationships.

Reed, Joe Mungo.  Terrestrial History.
This philosophical speculative fiction, which covers 100 years of family history, begins with a contemporary Scottish scientist who devotes her life to research into fusion, in her attempt to find an alternative energy source that will stop global warming.

Russell, Karen.  The Antidote.  
This is a supernatural historical fiction set in Uz, Nebraska, during the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression, where dust storms, physical and otherworldly, are leading to drought, murder, corruption, and a reckoning with the settlers' actions in pushing the native people off the land. Ebook

Sathian, Sanjena.  Goddess Complex.
In this sometimes serious, sometimes comic novel, a young woman who has left her husband and dropped out of her graduate program at Yale begins to receive puzzling and inappropriate messages from  strangers, leading her to return to India in search of answers.

Slocumb, Brendan.  The Dark Maestro.   
A virtuoso cellist on the verge of stardom is forced into hiding when his father cooperates with the FBI and the family goes into the Witness Protection Program. As he cannot perform, even as an orchestra member, under a new name, because he is Black, and Black cellists are unusual, he develops a comic superhero to serve as his alter ego, while he hatches a plan to handle the criminals himself. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

St. James, Emily.  Woodworking.  
In this novel set in a small town in South Dakota, a trans teenager reluctantly becomes a mentor for her high school teacher, who needs help and support to make her own transition. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Szalay, David.  Flesh.  
This action-packed novel centers on the life of a Hungarian man who becomes a successful property developer in Britain after a series of escapades on both sides of the law in several countries.

Todd, Milo.  The Lilac People.  
This novel about life for trans people in Germany before and after World War II tells the story of a trans man who escapes Berlin with his lover to an isolated rural location. When the war is finally winding down, a friend who has escaped from Dachau tells the couple that the Allies now occupying the area are continuing to enforce Third Reich laws on public conduct, meaning that they must escape again to find safety. Ebook, downloadable audiobook

Wei, Jemimah.  The Original Daughter.  
In this story of family relationships set in Singapore, a dying woman has just one request for her family – that she can see her two daughters together again before she dies; but the two of them, (one actually adopted), have become permanently estranged.