A New Look at Jonestown

The 1978 Jonestown Massacre in Guyana is considered one of the greatest peacetime horrors. Almost all of the lives lost were Americans. The death toll exceeded 900, including some 300 who were age 17 and under, making this one of the largest mass deaths in American history.

At the time, Guyanese Prime Minister Burnham dismissed it as “an American problem.” All the books until now on the subject were written by people from outside Guyana. This book is the first by a Guyanese resident and is now available in the US for the first time.

Jim Jones was a charismatic US cult leader who founded what became the Peoples Temple in the 1950s. Following negative media attention in the 1970s, the powerful, controlling preacher moved with some 1,000 of his followers to the Guyanese jungle, where he promised they would establish a utopian community.

On November 18, 1978, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan went to Jonestown to investigate claims of abuse and was murdered along with four members of his delegation. That same day, Jones ordered his followers to ingest poison-laced punch while armed guards stood by. In total, 918 lives were lost.

This is the story of Jonestown finally told from a Guyanese perspective, written by one of Guyana’s most distinguished political leaders who is often referred to as “Guyana’s Gandhi.” Also included are excerpts from the writings of several other Guyanese, including George Danns, Walter Rodney, and Jan Carew.

“A New Look at Jonestown is an elucidating, mesmerising read that transcends Jones' captivating, precipitous slide into madness..” —The Gleaner

“Well worth reading.” —Kaieteur News

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Unavailable from Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Path to Freedom

A multi award-winning, historically-accurate memoir which the Smithsonian displays in its Anacostia Museum Library

Little about Conrad Taylor's upbringing in a remote mining town deep in the impenetrable tropical rain forests of Guyana prepared him for West Point. An extraordinary opportunity for most, attending the highly-regimented United States Military Academy was a life-changer for him. Enduring culture shock, navigating rude awakenings, and surviving the rigorous West Point experience hardened Taylor for return to a Guyanese government which had become a dictatorship overnight. Paranoid about regime change and now anti-American, leaders of the dictatorship were fearful the young graduate had become a spy for the United States.

With authentic samples of Guyanese life both before and after West Point alongside a vivid description of his time at the military academy, Taylor’s book chronicles the hardships he faced and the eventual epic journey to freedom that he made back to the US. The narrative charts a sometimes-humorous journey of resilience, hope, survival, and love. Its revelations will be nostalgic for some, shocking to many, and enlightening for others.

“Conrad Taylor's captivating memoir is an extremely interesting read, thanks to Taylor's talent for illustrating his life's journey in such a fascinating way. Difficult to put down until the end. For those looking to be inspired, as well as broaden their knowledge about Guyana and Third World political affairs, this commendable memoir is highly recommended.” —Lit Amri

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Walk Wit’ Me

There is a saying that most Guyanese use to identify their roots after they have voluntarily immigrated or simply fled to another country: “My navel string is buried in Guyana” meaning my roots are there. It’s a place where true and enduring friendships were formed forever. Guyanese will meet one another decades later and feel as if it was yesterday, reminiscing about their beloved land; lapsing into the language only a fellow Guyanese can understand.

Before immigrating to Australia, Helena believed the sun only rose and set in Guyana. She never imagined another paradise existed on the planet.

Helena’s memoir is laced with nostalgia and, at the same time, it is her sincere intention to portray the true essence of the Guyanese culture. This is not only an account of her first 21 years of life in Guyana, it also contains anecdotes of visits back to her homeland alongside a sprinkling about her new life in Australia.

“What an eye opener! Written by a Guyanese of working-class Portuguese extraction, [this book teaches] so much about the social setting and economics of a much-neglected and rarely-written-about group of Guyanese. Often, these stories are told orally and then lost. Helena has written them with great detail and humour. Highly recommended.” —Eva James

Note: The use of colloquialism is of utmost importance to the local culture—it is the vernacular Guyanese understand. The included glossary at the back is helpful for understanding local phrases and sayings which may not be clear to some.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old son—who is hired to care for the Professor. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper's shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

“Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching.” —Paul Auster

“Deceptively elegant . . . This is one of those books written in such lucid, unpretentious language that reading it is like looking into a deep pool of clear water. But even in the clearest waters can lurk currents you don't see until you’re in them. Dive into Ogawa's world . . . and you find yourself tugged by forces more felt than seen.” —The NY Times Book Review

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Colorful

A beloved and bestselling classic in Japan, this groundbreaking tale of a dead soul who gets a second chance is now available in English for the very first time.

“Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery!” shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn’t been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he’s been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on ‘homestay’ in the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn’t have a single friend, and his family don’t seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto’s life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto’s misunderstandings.

“Before there was Pixar‘s Soul or Matt Haig‘s The Midnight Library, there was Colorful by Eto Mori . . . Told with a lightness of touch and masses of empathy it’s not hard to see why Colorful has found a place in Japanese literary canon . . . Straddling the worlds of Young Adult and General Fiction, Colorful tackles a tough subject with heart and soul and shouldn’t be missed.” —The AU Review

"It’s hard to overstate what a boon Colorful will be for English readers. It’s a coming-of-age narrative that’s bighearted and emotional, tender and hilarious, thoughtful and bursting with light.” —Vulture

”Powerful and moving . . . It’s honest and sincere, and it handles serious topics with gentle nuance and an occasional touch of humor . . . Jocelyne Allen’s translation of the original novel is equally fun and lively, with an especially good ear for the dialog of the teenage characters." —Contemporary Japanese Literature

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

I Will Never See the World Again

Best Book of the Year – Bloomberg News

A resilient Turkish writer’s inspiring account of his imprisonment that provides crucial insight into political censorship amidst the global rise of authoritarianism.

The destiny I put down in my novel has become mine. I am now under arrest like the hero I created years ago. I await the decision that will determine my future, just as he awaited his. I am unaware of my destiny, which has perhaps already been decided, just as he was unaware of his. I suffer the pathetic torment of profound helplessness, just as he did.

Like a cursed oracle, I foresaw my future years ago not knowing that it was my own.

Confined in a cell four meters long, imprisoned on absurd, Kafkaesque charges, novelist Ahmet Altan is one of many writers persecuted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s oppressive regime. In this extraordinary memoir, written from his prison cell, Altan reflects upon his sentence, on a life whittled down to a courtyard covered by bars, and on the hope and solace a writer’s mind can provide, even in the darkest places.

“Urgent…brilliant…a timeless testament to the art and power of writing amid Orwellian repression.” —Washington Post

“Remarkable…Altan’s talent allowed him to communicate his experience in rich, haunting detail…Despite the oppressive, cruel darkness at the core of Altan’s memoir, his words shine like bioluminescent creatures patrolling the abyss…brilliant.” —NPR

“The title of Mr. Altan’s book is the statement of a brutal fact, rather than a cry of despair. There is not a smidgen of self-pity in the memoir’s 212 pages. What emerges is this: You cannot jail my mind, and you cannot shut me up.” —New York Times

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Accabadora

Awarded 7 major literary prizes, including Italy’s prestigious Premio Campiello

Accabadora is an exceptional English–language debut, written with intriguing subtlety reflecting a sensual picture of local Italian life and death in villages during the 1950s. A time where family ties and obligations still decide much of life’s ebb and flow. A must-read for those who love a touch of the unusual.

Formerly beautiful and at one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai has a long held covenant with the dead. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as the village’s Accabadora. When Bonaria adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers.

“A touching meditation on life and death and the power of love to bind, transcend, and let go.” —Publishers Weekly

”Poignant, honest, and magical, this is a dazzling story for the senses, and one I will not soon forget.” —Susan Sherman, noted author

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Six Heirs

“The Known World is a sprawling region ruled by mortals, protected by gods, and plied by magicians and warriors, merchants and beggars, royals and scoundrels. Here, those with the gift of the Erjak share a psychic bond with animals; a far-reaching fraternity unites criminals of every persuasion in a vast army of villainy; and upon the mighty river Alt, the dead will one day sail seeking vengeance on the enemies of their descendants.

But for all the Known World’s wonders, splendors, and terrors, what has endured most powerfully is the strange legacy of Ji. Emissaries from every nation—the grand Goranese Empire; desolate, frozen Arkary; cosmopolitan Lorelia; and beyond—followed an enigmatic summons into the unknown.

Some never returned; others were never the same. Each successive generation has guarded the profound truth and held sacred the legendary event. But now, the very last of them—and the wisdom they possess—are threatened. The time has come to fight for ultimate enlightenment…or fall to infinite darkness.”

“Volume 1 of 4 in the internationally bestselling Secret of Ji series. Winner of the Prix Ozone and Prix Julia Verlanger.”

“In a fantasy world containing magicans, gods, and mortals, telepathic communication with animals doesn’t seem to far-fetched. In this new spin on epic fantasy, Pierre Grimbert tackles a world beset with shadowy thieves and mystical empires…Grimbert looks to be one big new name to watch in the ever-expanding genre of high fantasy.” —Tor.com

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Circle

Minoo wakes up outside her house, still in her pajamas, and is drawn by an invisible force to an abandoned theme park on the outskirts of town. Soon five of her classmates—Vanessa, Linnéa, Anna-Karin, Rebecka, and Ida—arrive, compelled by the same force. A mystical being takes over Ida’s body and tells them they are fated to fight an ancient evil that is hunting them. As the weeks pass, each girl discovers she has a unique magical ability. They begin exploring their powers. The six are wildly different and definitely not friends . . . but they are the Chosen Ones.

In this gripping first installment of The Engelsfors Trilogy, a parallel world emerges in which teenage dreams, insanely annoying parents, bullying, revenge, and love collide with dangerous forces and ancient magic.

An international sensation across 26 countries, The Circle is razor-sharp and remarkable from start to finish.

“What a stunning novel. Raw, real, smart, very thrilling and very, very wicked. The Circle is Twilight by way of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” —Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Magicians

View on Amazon | Unavailable via Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8

Naoki Higashida was only thirteen when he wrote The Reason I Jump (view on Amazon), a revelatory account of autism from the inside by a nonverbal Japanese child, which became an international success. Now, in Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, he shares his thoughts and experiences as a young man living each day with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, Higashida explores school memories, family relationships, the exhilaration of travel, and the difficulties of speech. He also allows readers to experience profound moments we take for granted, like the thought-steps necessary for him to register that it’s raining outside. Acutely aware of how strange his behavior can appear to others, he aims throughout to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage society to see people with disabilities as people, not as problems.

With an introduction by the bestselling novelist David Mitchell, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 also includes a dreamlike short story Higashida wrote especially for the U.S. edition. Both moving and of practical use, this book opens a window into the mind of an inspiring young man who meets every challenge with tenacity and good humor. However often he falls down, he always gets back up.

“[Naoki Higashida’s] success as a writer now transcends his diagnosis. . . . His relative isolation—with words as his primary connection to the outside world—has allowed him to fully develop the powers of observation that are necessary for good writing, and he has developed rich, deep perspectives on ideas that many take for granted. . . . The diversity of Higashida’s writing, in both subject and style, fits together like a jigsaw puzzle of life put in place with humor and thoughtfulness.” —The Japan Times

“Profound insights about what the struggle of living with autism is really like . . . the invitation to step inside Higashida’s mind is irresistible.” —London Evening Standard

“Naoki Higashida’s lyrical and heartfelt account of his condition is a gift to anyone involved with the same challenges…Higashida shows a delicate regard for the difficulties his condition creates…and is adept at explaining his experiences in language that makes sense to neurotypicals.” —The Guardian

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A quirky, sigh-inducingly satisfying read that is now an international bestseller

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

“An affecting, deeply immersive journey into the desire to hold onto the past. This wondrous tale will move readers.” —Publishers Weekly

“Perfect for anyone who wants to feel connected right now.” —Book Reporter

Note: We’ve also found the book to be great on audio.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

City of Strife

130 years have passed since Arathiel last set foot in his home city. Isandor hasn’t changed—bickering merchant families still vie for power through eccentric shows of wealth—but he has. His family is long dead, a magical trap has dulled his senses, and he returns seeking a sense of belonging now long lost.

Arathiel hides in the Lower City, piecing together a new life among in a shelter dedicated to the homeless and the poor, befriending an uncommon trio: the Shelter’s rageful owner, Larryn, his dark elven friend Hasryan, and Cal the cheese-loving halfling. When Hasryan is accused of Isandor's most infamous assassination of the last decade, what little peace Arathiel has managed to find for himself is shattered. Hasryan is innocent… he thinks. In order to save him, Arathiel may have to shatter the shreds of home he’d managed to build for himself.

Arathiel could appeal to the Dathirii—a noble elven family who knew him before he disappeared—but he would have to stop hiding, and they have battles of their own to fight. The idealistic Lord Dathirii is waging a battle of honour and justice against the cruel Myrian Empire, objecting to their slavery, their magics, and inhumane treatment of their apprentices. One he could win, if only he could convince Isandor’s rulers to stop courting Myrian’s favours for profit.

In the ripples that follow Diel’s opposition, friendships shatter and alliances crumble. Arathiel, the Dathirii, and everyone in Isandor fights to preserve their homes, even if the struggle changes them irrevocably.

City of Strife is the first installment of the City of Spires trilogy, a multi-layered political fantasy led by an all LGBTQIAP+ cast. Fans of complex storylines criss-crossing one another, elves and magic, and strong friendships and found families will find everything they need within these pages.

Note: Arseneault is an asexual & aromantic-spectrum writer who writes sci fi & fantasy led by aromantic & asexual heroes. She also maintains a database of aro & ace characters & books from a large variety of writers. City of Strife includes an asexual aromantic character & a graysexual character. If these terms are new to you: An asexual (aka “ace”) is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. An aromantic (aka “aro”) is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. A graysexual is someone who experiences limited sexual attraction (i.e., they experience sexual attraction very rarely or with very low intensity).

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Barrio Rising

Blending rich narrative accounts with incisive analyses of urban space, politics, and everyday life, Barrio Rising offers a sweeping reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen not by its leaders but by residents of one of the country’s most distinctive popular neighborhoods.

Beginning in the late 1950s political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as Latin America’s most stable democracy. But outside the staid halls of power, in the gritty barrios of a rapidly urbanizing country, another politics was rising—unruly, contentious, and clamoring for inclusion.

In the mid-1950s, a military government bent on modernizing Venezuela razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city’s working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: el veintitrés (the 23rd).

During the next 30 years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, and official neglect, inhabitants of el veintitrés learned to use their strategic location and symbolic tie to the promise of democracy in order to demand a better life. Granting legitimacy to the state through the vote but protesting its failings with violent street actions when necessary, they laid the foundation for an expansive understanding of democracy—both radical and electoral—whose features still resonate today.

“Barrio Rising should appeal to both the general public and specialists, possessing the rare quality of being highly accessible and scholarly in equal measure. This is an exemplary effort of combining archival and ethnographic research to demystify one of Venezuela’s most politically charged neighborhoods, and in doing so, provides crucial insights into the country’s often volatile and complex political history.” —Latin Americanist

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Blue Label

Winner of the Arturo Uslar Pietri award for Latin American literature & shortlisted for the Critics Award of Venezuela

Eugenia Blanc, a young Caraqueñan and quintessential teenager at war with the world around her, has one aim: after graduating from high school, to abandon Venezuela definitively. She embarks on a spontaneous road trip in a banged-up Fiat with her rebellious classmate Luis Tévez, in search of her grandfather, the one person who can provide her with the documents that would allow her to leave the country. While Eugenia and Luis’s tentative, troubled romance unfolds during the Chávez era, the story also looks back at Venezuela’s “lost decade” of the 1990s, a time of intractable violence, inequality, corruption, and instability that led to Chávez’s election.

With an unvarnished fluidity that brings to mind Jack Kerouac and a crazy-ass playlist that ranges from REM to Bob Dylan to El Canto del Loco to Shakira, Blue Label is an audacious, dark novel with a gut-punch of an ending; the prize-winning book by a writer who has cemented his reputation as a major Latin American voice.

“Blue Label is a wickedly well-written novel, with electric prose that delivers one jolt after another, a subtle and joyful sense of humor, an intoxicating infectiousness, a complex character about whom we want to know everything, and an ending that leaves the reader with a feeling of sweet melancholy. It’s a book we’ll be talking about for years to come.” ―Daniel Saldaña París

“One part Scheherazade, two parts Boccaccio, a twist of Bolaño, and a dash of bitters. Blue Label is intoxicating, hilarious, and the best novel on the calamity that is today's Venezuela.” —Carmen Boullosa

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Colaterales/Collateral

A winner of the prestigious poetry award named for the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz—in a special bilingual edition featuring English and Spanish translations.

These poems were written during days spent clearing river debris while living along the Hudson River in Manhattan after moving from Venezuela. However, the global perspective is clearly shown with poems that speak of the wanderings of a nomadic subject who erases and rewrites in an imaginary landscape.

The Paz Prize for Poetry is presented by the National Poetry Series and The Center at Miami Dade College. This annual award—named in the spirit of the late Nobel Prize–winning poet, Octavio Paz—honors a previously unpublished book of poetry written originally in Spanish by an American resident.

“Di Donato's poetry exhibits a tremendous control of language...She is both ancient and contemporary. . . a vital poet who honors the memory of Octavio Paz.” —Victor Hernández Cruz

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Doña Barbara

Rómulo Gallegos is best known for being Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. But in his native land, he is equally famous as a writer responsible for one of Venezuela’s literary treasures, the novel Doña Barbara. Published in 1929 and all but forgotten by Anglophone readers, Doña Barbara is one of the first examples of magical realism, laying the groundwork for later authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends adventure, fantasy, and romance.

Hailed as “the Bovary of the llano” and “possibly the most widely known Latin American novel,” Doña Barbara features a magnetic and memorable heroine, who has inspired numerous adaptations on the big and small screens.

“Remarkable. . . . From its first pages it reveals . . . why it made Gallegos famous. . . . If Señor Gallegos is one-half as good a President as he is a novelist, Venezuela is a lucky land.” ―New York Times

“An exciting heroic tale of the life of Venezuelan plainsmen, master and peons, ranchers and cowboys and horse thieves.” ―New Republic

(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

It Would be Night in Caracas

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcón stands over an open grave. Alone, she buries her mother—the only family she has ever known—and worries that when night falls thieves will rob the grave. Even the dead cannot find peace here.

Adelaida had a stable childhood in a prosperous Venezuela that accepted immigrants in search of a better life, where she lived with her single-mother in a humble apartment. But now? Every day she lines up for bread that will inevitably be sold out by the time she reaches the registers. Every night she tapes her windows to shut out the tear gas raining down on protesters. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida must make a series of gruesome choices in order to survive in a country disintegrating into anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But just how far is she willing to go?

A bold new voice from Latin America, Karina Sainz Borgo’s touching, thrilling debut is an ode to the Venezuelan people and a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.

“Dry, concise, direct, with an extraordinary stirring force… Sainz Borgo’s novel is simply masterful.” —Fernando Aramburu

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

The Last Days of El Commandante

President Hugo Chávez’s cancer looms large over Venezuela in 2012, casting a shadow of uncertainty and creating an atmosphere of secrets, lies, and upheaval across the country. This literary thriller follows the connected lives of several Caracas neighbors consumed by the turmoil surrounding the Venezuelan president’s impending death.

Retired oncologist Miguel Sanabria, seeing the increasingly combustible world around him, feels on constant edge. He finds himself at odds with his wife, an extreme anti-Chavista, and his radical Chavista brother. These feelings grow when his nephew asks him to undertake the perilous task of hiding cell-phone footage of Chávez in Cuba. Fredy Lecuna, an unemployed journalist, takes a job writing a book about Chávez’s condition, which requires him to leave for Cuba while his landlord attempts to kick his wife and son out of their apartment. Nine-year-old María, long confined to an apartment with a neurotic mother intensely fearful of the city’s violence, finds her only contact with the outside world through a boy she messages online.

“The stories Barrera Tyszka presents [in The Last Days of El Comandante] offer a solid slice of the uncertainty of Venezuelan life of the time…Barrera Tyszka is particularly good on the everyday—and also on the odd Cuban connection and the complex interplay between Cuban (national and personal) interests and Venezuelan ones at the time.” —The Complete Review

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

After Elias

2021 Edmund White Award Finalist

When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.

Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias—and himself.

From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias weaves the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything.

”Arresting... [a] deftly crafted novel.” ―Foreword Reviews

“Tan has written an immersive, unpredictable, engaging novel propelled by mystery, softened by tenderness, and enriched with little wisdoms.” ―Patrick Nathan, noted author

”Tan has crafted a page turner from a set of unlikely ingredients—tragedy, grief, pain and the darker shadows of the human mind. But most of all he has written tenderly, resplendently, about love.” —Christopher J. Yates, noted author

”It's rare to find a book that works well as a deeply emotional exploration of grief and as a suspenseful thriller, but After Elias manages this feat.” —Booklist

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Cobalt Blue

A literary sensation in South Asia, this memorable novel confronts issues of sexuality in India through a love triangle with a brother and sister falling for the same man. Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity.

Brother and sister Tanay and Anuja both fall in love with an artist lodging in their family home in Pune, Western India. He seems like the perfect tenant, ready with the rent and happy to listen to their mother’s musings on the imminent collapse of Indian culture. But he’s also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history, and no plans for the future.

Translated from the Marathi by acclaimed novelist and critic Jerry Pinto, Sachin Kundalkar’s elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare novel explores the disruption of a traditional family by a free-spirited stranger in order to examine a generation in transition. Intimate, moving, sensual, and wry in its portrait of young love, Cobalt Blue is a frank and lyrical exploration of gay life in India that recalls the work of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst—of people living in emotional isolation, attempting to find long-term intimacy in relationships that until recently were barely conceivable to them

“A mesmerizing novel of heartbreak, memory, and the ease of falling in love set against the impossibility of fully knowing other people.” —Kamila Shamsie, noted author

“One of the most shocking and brilliantly worded stories of love. . . . The story will stick with you, and long after you read it, the novel will play on your mind, forcing you to revisit it from time to time.” ―Buzzfeed

“Cobalt Blue reads like a love song . . . Kundalkar’s writing is masterful in its play of voice, capturing through his characters the claustrophobia of a small town, their longing to escape a middle class existence, and how love, and being in love, has the ability to transform every small detail from the mundane to the magnificent.”—Scroll.in

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book