Bright

When five-year-old Kampol is told by his father to sit in front of their run-down apartment building and await his return, the confused boy does as he’s told—he waits and waits and waits, until he realizes his father isn’t coming back anytime soon. Adopted by the community, Kampol is soon being raised by figures like Chong the shopkeeper, who rents out calls on his telephone and goes into debt extending his customers endless credit.

Dueling flea markets, a search for a ten-baht coin lost in the sands of a beach, pet crickets that get eaten for dinner, bouncy ball fads, and loneliness so merciless that it kills a boy’s appetite all combine into this first-ever novel by a Thai woman to appear in the U.S. Duanwad Pimwana’s urban, at times gritty vignettes are balanced with a folktale-like feel and a charmingly wry sense of humor. Together, they combine into the off-beat, satisfying, and sometimes magical coming-of-age story of an unforgettable young boy and the timeless legends, traditions, and personalities that go into his formation.

“Enchanting . . . [a] melancholy-tinged but still exuberant novel.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Bright is a wonderful introduction to a masterful contemporary Thai voice.” —Split Lip Reviews

“An authentic portrait of a working-class community in Thailand…Bright will prove to be seminal for Thailand’s place in the literary world.” —Prabda Yoon, author of Moving Parts

(Group read suggestion from Sue Attalla, book club moderator.)

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Four Reigns

Note: If this book is chosen for the group read, we’ll read it over 2 months since it is a longer read.

Four Reigns (Si Phaendin), M.R. Kukrit’s longest and best-known novel, is the rich and entertaining story of the life of Phloi and her family, both inside and outside palace walls. The story unfolds during the reign of King Chulalongkorn (King Rama V) in the closing years of the 1800s, ending in the mid 1940s with the death of his grandson, King Ananda Mahidol (King Rama VIII). Over a span of four reigns, we see the lives of minor courtiers under the absolute monarchy and watch the huge social and political changes that Thailand experienced as it opened itself up to international contact. We follow the characters against the historical backdrops of the 1932 revolution, the new constitutional monarchy, the growing Japanese presence in Thailand, the outbreak of World War II, and the Allied bombing raids on Bangkok. Through the lives and relationships of Phloi and her husband and children, we experience modern Thai history in an intimate and personal way, garnering new insights into the sensibilities of an era.

Four Reigns was originally written in 1953 as a newspaper serial in the Thai daily, Siam Rath.

"Kukrit, famous as a journalist, wit, connoisseur of the arts, and, for much of his life, a politician, and once the prime minister. . . is also a world-class writer, equipped with imagination, humor, narrative skill, and keen understanding of human nature." ―The NY Review of Books

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

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Moving Parts

Winner, English PEN Translates Award

Selected by Asymptote for September World Book Club

Surreal and puncturing short stories from the Thai master of the form.

In a pink-walled motel, a teenage prostitute brings a grown man to tears. A love-struck young boy holds the dismembered hand of his crush, only to find himself the object of a complex ménage à trois. A naked body falls from the window of a twenty-story building, while two female office-workers offer each other consolation in the elevator…

In these wry and unsettling stories, Prabda Yoon once again illuminates something of the strangeness of modern cultural life in Bangkok. Disarming the reader with surprising charm, intensity and delicious horror, he explores what it means to have a body, and to interact with those of others.

“Sleek, supple and soaring – in this extraordinary translation, Prabda Yoon’s stories command your attention” — Eley Williams

“[Moving Parts] finds truth at the intersection of the absurd and the morbid” — Asymptote

“Scrappy, playful and morbid…. [Moving Parts] is a brilliant, surreal portrait of the Thai capital…: an alienated city with a cartoon-creepy vibe, shiny and dilapidated.” — White Review

“In Moving Parts, Prabda Yoon has created an essential imaginary of the twenty-first century metropolis; drily funny and deeply felt, vivid and vertiginous.” — David Hayden

“Yoon’s masterful stories unfold the drama of modern life, with all the stylistic resonances of the miraculous.” — Eka Kurniawan

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Welcome Me to the Kingdom

NY Times Editors’ Choice & Longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize

An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth century Bangkok, telling the story of three families striving to control their destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.

We came with the drought. From the window of the train, the rich brown of the Chao Phraya River marked the turn from the northeast into the central plains. We came for Bangkok on the delta. The thin tributaries that laced the provinces found full current at the capital. And in the city, we’d heard, the wealth was wide and deep.

In 1980, young lovers Pea and Nam arrive in Bangkok in search of a life, and a world, beyond Thailand’s rural outskirts. Thirty days, they promise each other. Thirty days for Pea to find work, for him to put aside his violent and unstable past and take root in this strange new land. But Bangkok does not want for male laborers, especially teenage boys with thick provincial accents, and when time finally runs out on their promise, it’s Nam who ultimately adapts to the capital’s ruthless logic and survives.

Spanning decades and perspectives, seamlessly shifting between the absurd and the tenderhearted, the interwoven stories of Welcome Me to the Kingdom introduce three families—Nam, her American husband, Rick, and their daughter, Lara; Vitat, a Thai Elvis impersonator, and his only daughter, Pinky; and Tintin and Benz, orphans who have adopted each other as brothers—who employ various schemes to lie, betray, and seduce their way to the “good life.”

These disparate citizens of Bangkok orbit each other over the next three decades—sometimes violently, passionately colliding. Through skin-whitening routines, cult conversion, gambling, and sex work, the collection’s characters look for reinvention in a city buckling under the weight of its own modernity.

Wildly imaginative and ambitious, Mai Nardone’s stories reveal the growing discrepancy between Bangkok’s smiling self-image and its ugly underbelly, and, in the process, offer a striking portrait of a city unmade by the whims of global capitalism, in a kingdom caught between this world and the next.

“An honest, crystalline depiction of what urbanization has done to complicate and erode human life. Bangkok is the true star here, a modern city at the center of a tale as old as civilization itself. Every brightly lit kingdom has an underbelly.” —NY Times Book Review

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She Who Became the Sun

Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner & Astounding Award Winner as well as Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Hugo Award, Locus Award, & Otherwise Award

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

“The characters are bold and complex in this story of fealty, family, and self. Epic worldbuilding, high action, and ruthless shades of love and desire make the tale at turns tragic and inspiring... Parker-Chan’s debut is forceful, immersive, and unforgettable. This inspired queer retelling of Chinese history is an exciting read.” ―Library Journal, starred review

“Parker-Chan’s gorgeous writing accompanies a vibrantly rendered world full of imperfect, fascinating characters. With every turn of the page, the book offers a new set piece, a new revelation, a new horror.... If you’re a fan of epic fantasy, you can’t miss this one.”―BookPage, starred review

“In the book’s opening chapters, Parker-Chan masterfully balances poetry and tension, keeping the reader flying through the pages as they watch Zhu gain a foothold in life… this is an important debut that expands our concept of who gets to be a hero and a villain, and introduces a pair of gender disruptors who are destined to change China – and the LGBTQ fantasy canon – forever.” ―USA Today

“Gorgeous and sprawling masterpiece of historical fantasy.”―Buzzfeed

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The Membranes

Best Translated Book of 2021, a Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2021, & a Book of the Year 2021 selection

“An extraordinary novella . . . at last available in English in a brilliant translation by Ari Larissa Heinrich. At just 134 pages, its scope is dazzling. Now, from the vantage point of the future, its playful and unsettling insights into digital saturation, the traps of consciousness and labor, and the fugitive fabulations of identity and the self, have only grown more profound.” (The Paris Review Daily)

It is the late 21st century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

“[T]his captivating novel is rich and rewarding.” ―Publishers Weekly

”A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it.” ―Literary Infatuation

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Ten Steps to Nanette

NY Times Bestseller, One of the Best Books of the Year: PopSugar, Vulture

“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself,” Hannah Gadsby declared in their show Nanette, a scorching critique of the way society conducts public debates about marginalized communities. When it premiered on Netflix, it left audiences captivated by their blistering honesty and their singular ability to take viewers from rolling laughter to devastated silence. Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in an isolated town in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. They perceived their childhood as safe and “normal,” but as they gained an awareness of their burgeoning queerness, the outside world began to undermine the “vulnerably thin veneer” of their existence. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, Gadsby found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. At age twenty-seven, without a home or the ability to imagine their own future, they were urged by a friend to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.             

Gadsby became well known for their self-deprecating, autobiographical humor that made them the butt of their own jokes. But in 2015, as Australia debated the legality of same-sex marriage, Gadsby started to question this mode of storytelling, beginning work on a show that would become “the most-talked-about, written-about, shared-about comedy act in years” (The New York Times).           

Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

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Boulder

Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname ‘Boulder’. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.

With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.

Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world—and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.

“[T]he language of desire never stops vibrating off the page; Baltasar pans the mundane for gold, and offers those nuggets—these morsels of intimacy—in a way that grips and sates.” —New York Times Book Review

“Exquisite, dark and unconventional, Eva Baltasar turns intimacy into a wild adventure.” —Fernanda Melchor

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Gaysia

Benjamin Law considers himself pretty lucky to live in Australia: he can hold his boyfriend's hand in public and lobby his politicians to recognize same-sex marriage. But as the child of immigrants, he's also curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia. So he sets off to meet his fellow Gaysians. Law takes his investigative duties seriously, going nude where required in Balinese sex resorts, sitting backstage for hours with Thai ladyboy beauty contestants, and trying Indian yoga classes designed to cure his homosexuality. The characters he meets—from Tokyo's celebrity drag queens to HIV-positive Burmese sex workers and Malaysian ex-gay Christian fundamentalists to Chinese gays and lesbians who marry each other to please their parents—all teach him something new about being queer in Asia. At once entertaining and moving, Gaysia is a wild ride and a fascinating quest by a leading Australian writer.

”Law has achieved what seems the impossible: an enjoyable read, full of titillation, yet deep with sociological observations, along with a clear understanding of Asian history. Whether you’re planning a trip to Asia, an armchair tourist, or merely curious, Gaysia is a book you should add to your collection.” —Routledge

”In between the funny asides and sharp perceptions, Law offers serious observations to show that Asia may be halfway around the world, but it’s closer than we think. Funny and charming and worthy of being tucked in your carryon this summer.” —Terri Schlichenmeyer

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The Impatient

A powerful, heartrending, and insightful novel of a trio of women in Cameroon who dare to rebel against oppressive, long-held cultural traditions—including polygamy and domestic abuse—that define and limit their lives.

In North Cameroon, well-to-do young Ramla is torn from her true love and wed to a manipulative older man. Safira, her co-wife, juggles envy and empathy for this new bride with disappointment in the husband she desperately loves. Like her older sister, Ramla, Hindou is married off to a man she does not know or want, a distant cousin whose instability and violence terrifies her.

From an early age, these women were raised to submit to men, or risk shame and repudiation of themselves and their families. They are advised to have munyal—patience. They are told that their fates are the will of the All-Powerful, and that it is unthinkable—or rather, impossible—to defy tradition. They are reminded of the Fulani proverb which holds, “At the end of patience, there is the sky.”

Yet Ramla, Safira, and Hindou are tired of waiting for a happiness that may never come. Their lives are driven by impatience and clouded by the suffering rooted in forced marriage and physical abuse, but it is this oppressive culture that binds them together.

Djaïli Amadou Amal makes her literary debut in English with this remarkable novel that breaks taboos as it denounces the cultural mores of Africa's Sahel region. Inspired by the author’s own experiences and written with grace, strength, and veracity, The Impatient is a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change—an unflinching depiction of the psychic damage traditions can have on the women who must abide by them and a denunciation of violence against all women and the normalization of domestic abuse—not only in Cameroon but around the globe.

“A stark and unflinching view of an oppressive culture.” —Publishers Weekly

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

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The Blunder

Cameroon, 1929. As colonial powers fight for influence in Africa, French military surgeon Eugène Jamot is dispatched to Cameroon to lead the fight against sleeping sickness there. But despite his humanitarian intentions, the worst comes to pass: 700 local villagers are left blind as a result of medical malpractice by a doctor under Jamot’s watch.

Damienne Bourdin, a young white woman, ventures to Cameroon to assist in the treatment effort. Reeling from the loss of her child, she’s desperate to redeem herself and save her reputation. But the tides of rebellion are churning in Cameroon, and soon after Damienne’s arrival, she is enlisted in a wild plot to staunch the damage caused by the blunder and forestall tribal warfare. Together with Ndongo, a Pygmy guide, she must cross the country on foot in search of Edoa, a Cameroonian princess and nurse who has gone missing since the medical blunder was discovered.

As Damienne races through the Cameroonian forest on a farcical adventure that unsettles her sense of France’s “civilizing mission,” she begins to question her initial sense of who needed saving and who would save the day.

“Cameroonian writer Mutt-Lon skewers self-centered and condescending humanitarian efforts of people from the first world in his sharp English-language debut…This impressive work finds the humanity of its targets.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mutt-Lon writes with a bracing mix of directness and humor…Yet he never creates enough irony to soften discomfort; doing so would be too easy, and The Blunder, no matter how swift and funny it gets, is an intensely complex novel, full of nuanced characters and difficult histories of colonial and inter-tribal prejudice and conflict…an excellent and infuriating read.” —NPR

(A special thank you to book club member, Anna Ruth for the suggestion.)

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Cruel City

Under the pseudonym Eza Boto, Mongo Beti wrote Ville cruelle (Cruel City) in 1954 before he came to the world's attention with the publication of Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba).

Cruel City tells the story of a young man's attempt to cope with capitalism and the rapid urbanization of his country. Banda, the protagonist, sets off to sell the year's cocoa harvest to earn the bride price for the woman he has chosen to wed. Due to a series of misfortunes, Banda loses both his crop and his bride to be.

Making his way to the city, Banda is witness to a changing Africa, and as his journey progresses, the novel mirrors these changes in its style and language.

Published here with the author's essay “Romancing Africa,” the novel signifies a pivotal moment in African literature, a deliberate challenge to colonialism, and a new kind of African writing.

”A persuasive, even gripping study of a spiteful, naïve character.” ―Kirkus Reviews

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A Long Way from Doula

Bursting with local color, this hilarious, heartwarming coming-of-age tale follows two friends on a raucous journey across Cameroon as they grapple with grief, sexuality, and dreams of leaving. 

After their father’s sudden death, Jean’s older brother Roger decides he’s had enough of their abusive mother and their city. He runs away to try his luck crossing illegally into Europe, in the hope of becoming a soccer star abroad. When no news of him reaches the family, and the police declare that finding some feckless brat isn’t worth their time, Jean feels he has to act. Aiming to catch up with Roger before he gets to the Nigerian border, Jean enlists the help of the older Simon, a close neighborhood friend, and the two set out on the road. 

Through a series of joyful, sparky vignettes, Cameroon life is revealed in all its ups and downs. Max Lobe insightfully touches on grave, complex issues, such as the violence Boko Haram has inflicted on the region, yet still recounts events with remarkable humor and levity.

Artfully constructed and absorbing…Lobe has the ability to summon up whole worlds in a careful economy of phrase, bringing individuals and communities to life beyond the photogenic opportunism of breaking news.” —Irish Times
 
“Max Lobe has emerged as a name to watch…for his topical, rip-roaring explorations of life, society and politics in both his birth and adopted countries…There’s a lot to like about his straight-talking prose and sparky, Camfranglais-sprinkled dialogues, and I’d happily have stayed on board for longer.” —European Literature Network
 
“Lobe is a brilliant young talent…This defiant and uplifting immigrant’s story is powerful and persuasive…[a] stylish and colorful tale, rich and insightful.” —NB Magazine

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Mount Pleasant

A majestic tale of colonialism and transformation, Patrice Nganang's Mount Pleasant tells the astonishing story of the birth of modern Cameroon, a place subject to the whims of the French and the Germans, yet engaged in a cultural revolution.

In 1931, Sara is taken from her family and brought to Mount Pleasant as a gift for Sultan Njoya, a ruler cast into exile by French colonialists. Merely 9 years old, she is on the verge of becoming the sultan’s 681st wife. But when she is dragged to Bertha, the long-suffering slave charged with training Njoya’s brides, Sara’s life takes a curious turn. Bertha sees within this little girl her son Nebu, who died tragically years before, and she saves Sara from her fate by disguising her as her son. In Sara’s new life as a boy she bears witness to the world of Sultan Njoya—a magical yet vulnerable community of artists and intellectuals—and learns of the sultan’s final days and the sad fate of Nebu, the greatest artist their culture had ever seen.

Seven decades later, a student returns home to Cameroon to learn about the place it once was, and she finds Sara, silent for years, ready to tell her story. But her serpentine tale, entangled by flawed memory and bursts of the imagination, reinvents history anew.

“Nganang’s dazzling novel [stands] in a league of its own, so different from the great majority of novels by African writers in the past fifty or sixty years.” —Counterpunch

”Nganang delivers a modern epic, tinged with liberal doses of magical realism, of life in his country's colonial era . . . An elegantly drawn and engaging world of a sort unknown to most readers—but one they'll be glad to have visited.” —Kirkus Reviews

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Your Madness, Not Mine

Women's writing in Cameroon has so far been dominated by Francophone writers. The short stories in this collection represent the yearnings and vision of an Anglophone woman, who writes both as a Cameroonian and as a woman whose life has been shaped by the minority status her people occupy within the nation-state.

The stories in Your Madness, Not Mine are about postcolonial Cameroon, but especially about Cameroonian women, who probe their day-to-day experiences of survival and empowerment as they deal with gender oppression: from patriarchal expectations to the malaise of maldevelopment, unemployment, and the attraction of the West for young Cameroonians.

Makuchi has given us powerful portraits of the people of postcolonial Africa in the so-called global village who too often go unseen and unheard. 

“The characters Makuchi creates are survivors; they are scrappy and they are strong, especially the women. As we enter their world and see the neocolonial forces of gargantuan proportions that shape their daily living, Makuchi's pen guides us into a new literary space. She wields her pen like a pioneer's axe in the forest, clearing new spaces…that invite us to consider realities we would otherwise never know.” —Eloise A. Briere

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Never Whistle at Night

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A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: “Are you ready to be un-settled?”

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

Featuring stories by: Norris Black • Amber Blaeser-Wardzala • Phoenix Boudreau • Cherie Dimaline • Carson Faust • Kelli Jo Ford • Kate Hart • Shane Hawk • Brandon Hobson • Darcie Little Badger • Conley Lyons • Nick Medina • Tiffany Morris • Tommy Orange • Mona Susan Power • Marcie R. Rendon • Waubgeshig Rice • Rebecca Roanhorse • Andrea L. Rogers • Morgan Talty • D.H. Trujillo • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Richard Van Camp • David Heska Wanbli Weiden • Royce Young Wolf • Mathilda Zeller

“Never failed to surprise, delight, and shock.” —Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and Little Heaven

(A special thank you to book club member, Amanda Foxman for the suggestion.)

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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

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Free to buy on Kindle! Make sure to click “buy”, not the Kindle Unlimited link.

In the twentieth-century literature of the supernatural, the single most important book, in the opinion of most scholars and enthusiasts, is Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M.R. James.

First printed in 1904, it is the landmark book that established the modern horror story. It has been reprinted more times than any other book in this field, and it contains several of the best ghost stories in the English language.

The antiquary here is M. R. James, Provost of Eton, one of the most formidable scholars that England has ever produced, who has drawn upon an unmatched knowledge of the hidden byways of the past to form a series of inimitable stories.

“These are stories meant to be read aloud at night, preferably by candlelight, when the shadows in the corners of our rooms could be hiding horrors. M. R. James has a well-deserved reputation for terrifying his readers. Most of his ghosts are only sketchily described, often only seen in brief glimpses, out of the corners of our eyes, yet the stories are more terrifying than any ‘slasher’-type horror movies. No one has ever told a better ghost story.” —Classic Mysteries

(A special thank you to book club member, Christine Jensen for the suggestion.)

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Gods of Jade and Shadow

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Nebula Award Finalist & Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Tor, the NY Public Library, & Book Riot

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty, small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it–and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan God of Death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey, from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City–and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

“A spellbinding fairy tale rooted in Mexican mythology . . . Gods of Jade and Shadow is a magical fairy tale about identity, freedom, and love, and it's like nothing you've read before.” —Bustle

(A special thank you to book club member, Carol Weldon for the suggestion.)

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Grave Goods

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Renowned writer, philologist, and critic Miguel Garcia Posada says of this book: “It’s not a stretch to consider it one of the most notable revelations of recent Latin American literature.”

This is not a book of gore. Rather, the majority of these stories are creepy with touches of humor and twists at the end that will make you gasp or laugh in surprise and shock. It takes true talent to convey a solid micro-story and these are incredibly rich and well written for all their brevity. The author leaves much to the imagination which somehow adds more to the story and ups the creep factor.

A slim book, Grave Goods contains 98 pieces of flash fiction from one of Peru's best contemporary writers. While Fernando Iwasaki's stories—like all good horror stories—are intended to disconcert his readers, they are also often humorous in nature. Some re-create or re-envision urban legends, some come from dreams, and some are pure inventions of Iwasaki's remarkable mind.

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

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Hallowe'en Party

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At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen-year-old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub.

That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer. And was it even true that she once witnessed a murder? Unmasking a murderer isn't going to be easy for Hercule Poirot—there isn't a soul in Woodleigh who believes this little storyteller was even murdered.

Hallowe'en Party is the 36th book in the Poirot series of detective novels, however, they do not need to be read in order.

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages.

(A special thank you to book club member, Julie Griffin for the suggestion.)

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