So far here is what I and my bookie friends have come up with:
Cain by José
Saramago:
"In this, his last novel, Saramago daringly reimagines
the characters and narratives of the Bible through the story of Cain. Condemned
to wander forever after he kills Abel, he is whisked around in time and space.
He experiences the almost-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, the Tower of Babel,
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Joshua at the battle of Jericho, Job's
ordeal, and finally Noah's ark and the Flood. And over and over again Cain
encounters an unjust, even cruel God. A startling, beautifully written, and
powerful book, in all ways a fitting end to Saramago's extraordinary
career."--
A Beautiful truth by
Colin McAdam
This is an edgy, epic, and heartfelt story about parenthood,
friendship, loneliness, and conflict, about the things we hold sacred as humans
and the facts that link us inevitably to a nature we often ignore. Told
simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, and in a way
that only a literary master such as Colin McAdam can, A Beautiful Truth is a
novel of great heart and wisdom that exposes the yearnings, cruelty, and
resilience of all great apes.
Caught by Lisa
Moore Fresh out of jail, Slaney sees the world with pin-bright clarity. As the
plot tightens like a pair of pincers, Lisa Moore's prose is worth lingering
over"
The Narrow Road to
the Deep North by Richard
Flanagan
The book tells the story of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian
doctor haunted by a wartime love affair with his uncle's wife. Post war, he
finds his growing celebrity as a war hero at odds with his sense of his own
failings and guilt.
Gone Girl by Gillian
Flynn On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and
Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations
are being made when Nick Dunne’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from
their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River.
The 100-year-old man
who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
Allan Karlsson is about to celebrate his hundredth birthday,
and a birthday party is planned at his retirement home. Allan is alert despite
his age, but not so interested in the party. Instead he steps out the window
and disappears. He gets hold of a suitcase of drug money and becomes chased by
both drug dealers and the police.
The good luck of
right now by Matthew
Quick
When
his mother dies, 38-year-old Bartholomew Neil, who doesn't know how to be on
his own, discovers a letter in his mother's underwear drawer that causes him to
write a series of highly intimate letters to actor Richard Gere, while
embarking on a quest to find out where he belongs.
The Husband's secret by Liane Moriarty
Discovering
a tattered letter that says she is to open it only in the event of her
husband's death, Cecelia, a successful family woman, is unable to resist
reading the letter and discovers a secret that shatters her life and the lives
of two other women. By the author of What Alice Forgot.
Before I go to sleep by S.J. Watson
Without
her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago
accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self
through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising
disturbing questions.
Us Conductors by Sean
Michaels
Us Conductors
takes us from the glamour of Jazz Age New York to the gulags and science
prisons of the Soviet Union. On a ship steaming its way from Manhattan back to
Leningrad, Lev Termen writes a letter to his “one true love”, Clara Rockmore,
telling her the story of his life. Imprisoned in his cabin, he recalls his
early years as a scientist, inventing the theremin and other electric marvels,
and the Kremlin’s dream that these inventions could be used to infiltrate
capitalism itself. Instead, New York infiltrated Termen – he fell in love with
the city’s dance clubs and speakeasies, with the students learning his strange
instrument, and with Clara, a beautiful young violinist.
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
Khaled
Hosseini's
novels have sold more than 38 million copies worldwide. Now, six years after A Thousand Splendid Suns debuted at #1,
spending fourteen consecutive weeks at #1 and nearly a full year on the
hardcover list, Hosseini returns with a book that is broader in scope and
setting than anything he’s ever written before.
The Stone Angel by
Margaret Laurence,
The Stone Angel, first published in 1964 by McClelland and
Stewart, is perhaps the best-known of Margaret Laurence's series of novels set
in the fictitious town of Manawaka, Manitoba. In parallel narratives set in the
past and the present-day (early 1960s), The Stone Angel tells the story of
Hagar Currie Shipley. In the present-day narrative, 90-year-old Hagar is
struggling against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of
death. The present-day narrative alternates with Hagar's looking back at her
life.
Montreal Stories
by Mavis Gallant,
Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James
called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of
people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their
own. The complexity of the very idea of home is alive in the stories Gallant
has written about Montreal. Montreal
Stories, Russell Banks’s new selection from Gallant’s work demonstrates
anew the remarkable reach of this writer’s singular art.
The Best Laid Plans
by Terri Fallis,
“This is a funny book that could only have been written by
someone with firsthand knowledge of politics in Canada, including its
occasionally absurd side. This is a great read for anyone thinking of running
for office, and especially reassuring for those who have decided not to.”
The Garden of Evening
Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Set during the Japanese occupation, The Garden of Evening
Mists follows young law graduate, Yun Ling Teoh, as she seeks solace among the
plantations of the Cameron Highlands. Here she discovers Yugiri, the only
Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the secretive Aritomo.
Aritomo agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon” so that
she can design a garden in memorial to her sister. But over time the jungle
starts to reveal secrets of its own…
Butterflies in
November by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttr.
From the Icelandic writer who brought us The Green House. "Anyone
who’s fallen inexplicably in love with a European road-trip story will be
vulnerable to this fictional journey around Iceland’s Ring Road."
Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguru. The Remains of
the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the
perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world postwar England.
The Headmaster's
Wager by Vincent Lam. The author takes full advantage of the inherent
suspense as the fall of Saigon looms and Chen finally realizes that he and his
family may not survive the violence of the Viet Cong.
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