Karl Marlantes, Deep River
Marlantes, author of Matterhorn – a masterpiece set during the war in Vietnam – follows up with this magnificent multi-generational epic that tracks an immigrant family fleeing Russia-dominated Finland at the dawn of the 20th Century. At its centre is Aino Koski, who, with her brothers Ilmari and Matti, settles first on a farm in Deep River, Washington, a logging community on the Columbia River. Marlantes models his unforgettable heroine on Aino, one of the pantheon of mythic heroes in the ancient Finnish song cycle The Kalevala, “the woman who stands alone, refusing to be married against her will”. Aino’s decades of struggle take her through political upheaval, the birth of the labour movement, the end of the primeval forest, World War One, family tragedy, love and loss. (Credit: Atlantic Monthly Press)
Janet Fitch, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral
We first met Fitch’s passionate, independent Marina Makarova in her earlier novel, The Revolution of Marina M, which began in 1917 on the eve of the Russian revolution. Fitch’s darker, equally compelling sequel tracks Marina’s perilous journey from 1919 to 1921. She endures grinding labour, the continual threat of arrest or execution, the struggle to survive as a new mother and a nightmarish period of deprivations and violence while working in a desolate orphanage in Petrograd. She succeeds as a poet, joining a group that includes Anna Akhmatova and Maxim Gorky. And, Fitch writes, she “was also a human being who lived the life of her time, a woman who had lost her child, her father, her family.” Marina’s yearning for freedom propels her to risk everything in the dramatic final scenes. (Credit: Little, Brown)
Rob Hart, The Warehouse
Hart kicks off his brilliantly imagined dystopian satire with a quick televised monologue by Gibson Wells, founder of the fictional company Cloud (and the richest man in the US). Wells confesses to his millions of employees that he is dying of stage-four pancreatic cancer. Cut to Paxton, then Zinnia, both arriving by bus for the monthly open call at a MotherCloud processing centre, one of the few places of employment and affordable living left in the country. Paxton, inventor of a gadget quashed by Cloud, has been working as a guard at a for-profit prison, and Zinnia is a highly trained corporate spy on a clandestine mission. By the time these three converge at the end, Hart has created a convincing, horrifying post-Orwellian future dominated by a single corporate dictator. (Credit: Crown)
Selva Almada, The Wind that Lays Waste
Reverend Pearson and his 16-year-old daughter Leni, are on a hot, dusty, desolate stretch of the Pampas in Argentina when their car breaks down. They had been on their way to an indigenous community to visit Pastor Zack – who has been converted and trained by the evangelical Pearson. “Welcome to hell,” says the trucker who finds them on the road and hauls them to the isolated garage of mechanic Gringo Brauer and his teenage son, Jose, nicknamed Tapioca. There’s a storm brewing. Trouble, too, as Almada, a Buenos Aires-based poet and fiction writer, sketches out the compelling stories that have drawn these four together for a life-changing evening. Like Flannery O’Connor and Juan Rulfo, Almada fills her taut, eerie novel with an understanding of rural life, loneliness, temptation and faith. The book is translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews. (Credit: Graywolf)
Guillaume Musso, The Reunion
Novelist Thomas is filled with dread as he travels from New York to Antibes, France for his 25-year school reunion. He knows that the ceremonies will reveal a secret that will destroy his life. Thomas knows what happened when Vinca – the seductive US classmate he loved – disappeared with Alexis, her philosophy teacher. Someone else already knows about it and wants revenge. Thomas compares notes with Maxime – a politician classmate who shares his guilt – Vinca’s friend Fanny, and Pianelli, a journalist who has written about Vinca. In Musso’s masterful plotting, Thomas faces fresh dangers at every turn. The atmospheric finale – which unfolds at Villa Fitzgerald and along Smugglers Way, the coastal path near some of the most lavish properties on the Côte d'Azur – brings shocking revelations. The translation from French is by Frank Wynne. (Credit: Little, Brown)
Daniel Nieh, Beijing Payback
Who had a motive to kill Vincent Li, the owner of a chain of four Happy Year restaurants in Los Angeles County? His college-age son Victor is shocked to learn that his loving, charismatic father had a double life, including ties to three men who run a Beijing-based crime syndicate, and Sun, a young man with lethal training. Posthumous letters from his father explain the family’s history, his connection to the “brotherhood” and their growing “cutthroat, capitalistic” tendencies, which led to a split. He instructs Victor to accompany Sun back to his homeland to “put an end to their depravity”. Nieh’s Victor is witty, passionate, competitive, honourable and courageous enough to face some of the deadliest players in the Beijing underworld as he confronts his father’s past in this superb, sophisticated thriller. (Credit: Ecco)
Kalisha Buckhanon, Speaking of Summer
Autumn Spencer’s twin Summer was her comfort during their girlhood in Hedgewood, Illinois, when Mr Murphy, her mother’s boyfriend, molests her. When Autumn moves to Harlem, her twin is her closest companion. Summer is an artist. She is the adventurous, risky one, while Autumn is quiet and routine – a protector. One December night Summer walks across the rooftop of their brownstone apartment and disappears, leaving only footprints in the snow. Autumn files missing-person reports, posts flyers, grows increasingly obsessed with reports of black women killed in Harlem, and checks in regularly with Noel Montgomery, the only detective interested in her case. Her mother’s death and her affair with Summer’s boyfriend Chase complicate matters. As Autumn unravels, Buckhanon gradually reveals the complex mystery of this brilliant yet fragile woman. (Credit: Counterpoint)
Miciah Bay Gault, Goodnight Stranger
“Baby B was our brother, and he’d been dead all our lives.” So begins the gripping tale of Lydia and Lucas, who aren’t twins, but triplets, always aware of the brother who died in infancy. Narrator Lydia works in the information booth at Wolf Island, the “girl next door” island near Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. At the age of 28, she seems stuck on the island, living with Lucas, who suffers from “pathological shyness,” in a rambling shingled house left by their deceased parents. One August day an oddly familiar stranger arrives by ferry, determined to convince them he is the reincarnation of Baby B. The emotional reactions of Gault’s winning cast of characters lend her ghost story – with its family secrets and unexpected violence – a rare psychological depth. (Credit: Park Row Books)
MT Edvardsson, A Nearly Normal Family
Eighteen-year-old Stella is in jail, facing trial for the murder of Chris, 32, whose ex-wife had been following her, warning that Chris was a psychopath. Stella’s father Adam, a pastor, narrates the first section of the book, as he prepares to testify that she was home at the time of the murder. Stella tells her story next. Like most teenagers, she has secrets from her parents, and even from her closest friend Amina. The third section is her mother’s version; Ulrika is a lawyer, familiar with the Lund courtroom where Stella is being tried, and the finer points of the law. She is ambivalent about her daughter. Edvardsson’s precise understanding of human behaviour and the lies we tell to save those we love makes for a potent legal thriller. The book is translated from the Swedish by Rachel Wilson Broyles. (Credit: Celadon Books)
Susan Steinberg, Machine
The narrative shifts, experimental structure and poetic language in Steinberg’s hypnotic first novel capture the teen years with their shifting emotional tides and heightened awareness of class, gender, self and others. “…to the guys I like to seem small and weak” her unnamed narrator muses; “…to the girls I like to seem terrifying; like a supernova”. She spends the summer at the shore, watching her parents split up. She befriends a local girl, gets drunk with her, allowing the girl to pierce her ears, goes into a haunted house with her, shoplifts, takes pills, goes with boys. When the local girl becomes “the girl who drowned,” the narrator is haunted, “stuck in this summer for good”. (Credit: Graywolf Press)