Here is a new list of five authors to discover, and two to grow on!
The evening mist is back over the pond. The air is colder.
Fall into Winter waterborne storms are brewing off the Pacific Northwest coastline, and these maelstroms usually hit us hard in November and December.
It’s way past time to take the patio umbrellas down and search for the hand held kind.
We’ll all fall back an hour soon enough.
1: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria. She is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her first short story collection is also out: The Thing Around Your Neck. She is a talent worth seeking out on your next bookstore visit!
2: Paul Murray’s first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize back in 2003, and he followed that novel with a whopper of a novel, Skippy Dies, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Jess Walter wrote: (Skippy Dies is) “Dazzling . . . It’s the Moby-Dick of Irish prep schools.”
3: Ehud Havazelet has written three books: two of them the short story collections What Is It Then Between Us? and Like Never Before, and the novel Bearing the Body. The last two books were New York Times Notable Books. He has won California and Oregon book awards, the Wallant Award, and is the recipient of several writing fellowships. His stories continue to amaze me.
4: Jess McConkey’s Love Lies Bleeding, a debut novel under Shirley Damsgaard’s psuedonym, is a bare bones, psychological novel about a past that comes back to haunt her characters.
5: Ken Grimwood, the last author on my short list here is no longer with us, having passed away in 2003, but he is considered a master of dark and speculative fiction. He published five novels under his name, Breakthrough, Elise, The Voice Outside, Replay, Into the Deep, and Two Plus Two using the pseudonym Alan Cochran. His most famous novel, Replay, is worth finding first. I’ve read Replay two times now, the last in one all-day sitting on a flight home to Ohio, where I then passed my copy onward to the nice couple who sat next to me. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s a time-travel classic that asks the question: “What if you could live your life over again, knowing the mistakes you’d made before?” If you admire Ray Bradbury’s canon or the early work of Dean Koontz, give Grimwood a try.
Feel like cozying up by a fire on a stormy day with a book that will really make you think? Try one of these five authors if you haven’t already made their acquaintance.
Thank you, Justin! Just ordered _Replay._
You’re very welcome and enjoy it. I had never heard of Replay until its second publication. Often, even the small BIG books slip past the majority of good readers. Replay won the 1988 World Fantasy Award for best novel and was published in eleven languages.There’s another suspense novel, Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, that went through a similar reissue this past summer. I read a galley copy long ago of Tony and Susan, back in the early nineties when I worked for a bookstore, and fell in love with the dual structure. It quickly faded, but not from my memory. Wright’s book is a revenge story about a writer, an ex-husband, serving up his in a very cold way to his former wife. Sadly, like Ken Grimwood, Austin Wright died in 2003. It was rediscovered in the UK and given a second release there to more acclaim, which prompted another release here in the States. Okay – Add Tony and Susan to my short list of recommended books here 😉
I hadn’t heard of Replay but it sounds as though it might be something I’d like. I can vouch for The Vices, BTW.
Thanks, Guy, Replay is kind of the Groundhog Day of fantasy/science fiction novels! But some people really disliked Groundhog Day so I just mean it as a comparison of the concept and not about the acting/Bill Murray/direction. I will now move The Vices up in my stack!
Replay…why is there not a movie? SUCH an amazing book. I read it yearly. Luv luv luv it.