It’s a new quarter and that means new fiction and nonfiction picks have been selected for you courtesy of Simply Held! Four fiction picks are available for you to choose from: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction. Four nonfiction picks are available for you to choose from: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime. Our fiction and nonfiction picks are chosen quarterly and are available in regular print only. If you would like to update your selections or are a new patron who wants to receive picks from any of those four categories, sign up for Simply Held through our website!
Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have selected for January from the following categories in ficiton: Diverse Debuts, Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction, and International Fiction and the following categories in nonfiction: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime.
FICTION PICKS
Diverse Debuts:
Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community.
Masquerade by Mike Fu
Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author’s name is the same as Meadow’s own in Chinese, Liu Tian—a coincidence that proves to be the first of many strange happenings. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks, a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover. And when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur.
Exploring social, cultural, and sexual identities in New York, Shanghai, and beyond, Mike Fu’s Masquerade is a skillfully layered, brilliantly interwoven debut novel of friendship, queer longing, and worlds on the brink, asking how we can find ourselves among ghosts of all kinds, and who we can trust when nothing—and no one—is as it seems. – TinHouse
Graphic Novel:
Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.
The Naked Tree by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
A delicate, timeless, and breathtaking coming-of-age classic, reimagined
Critically acclaimed and award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim returns with a stunning addition to her body of graphic fiction rooted in Korean history. Adapted from Park Wan-suh’s beloved novel, The Naked Tree paints a stark portrait of a single nation’s fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval and armed conflict. Fleshing out the characters in fresh, imaginative ways, and incorporating the original author into the story, Gendry-Kim breathes new life into this Korean classic.
The year is 1951. Twenty-year-old wallflower Lee Kyeonga ekes out a living at the US military Post Exchange where goods and services of varying stripes are available for purchase. She peddles hand-painted portraits on silk handkerchiefs to soldiers passing through. When a handsome, young northern escapee and erstwhile fine artist is hired despite waning demand, an unlikely friendship blossoms into a young woman’s first brush with desire against the backdrop of the Korean War at its most devastating.
Gendry-Kim brings a masterpiece of world literature to life with bold, expressive lines that capture a denuded landscape brutally forced into transition and the people who must find their way back to each other within it. The Naked Tree is exquisitely translated by award-winning expert Janet Hong. – Drawn & Quarterly
Historical Fiction:
Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community, with main character(s) from a marginalized community.
Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen
A stunning, deeply moving autobiographical novel about growing up in Beijing in the 1970s and 80s and taking part in the Tiananmen Square protests.
It is Beijing in the 1970s, and Lai lives with her parents, grandmother and younger brother in a small flat in a working-class area. Her grandmother is a formidable figure ‒ no-nonsense and uncompromising, but loving towards her granddaughter ‒ while her ageing beauty of a mother snipes at her father, a sunken figure who has taken refuge in his work.
As she grows up, Lai comes to discern the realities of the country she lives is: an early encounter with the police haunts her for years; her father makes her see that his quietness is a reaction to experiences he has lived through; and an old bookseller subtly introduces her to ideas and novels that open her mind to different perspectives. But she also goes through what anyone goes through when young ‒ the ebbs and flows of friendships; troubles and rewards at home and at school; and the first steps and missteps in love.
A gifted student, she is eventually given a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University; while there she meets new friends, and starts to get involved in the student protests that have been gathering speed. It is the late 1980s, and change is in the air…
A truly remarkable novel about coming to see the world as it is, Tiananmen Square is the story of one girl’s life growing up in the China of the 1970s and 80s, as well as the story of the events in 1989 that give the novel its name: the hope and idealism of a generation of young students, their heroism and courage, and the price that some of them paid. – Swift Press
International Fiction:
International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with main character(s) from marginalized communities.
Greek Lessons by Han Kang
“Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.”
In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.
Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.
Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.
Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive. – Hogarth
NONFICTION PICKS
Biography pick
From the Reservation to Washington : the rise of Charles Curtis by Debra Goodrich
The first person of color to serve as vice president, Charles Curtis was once a household name but has become a footnote in American history. As a mixed-race person who became a public figure in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his story is more relevant today than ever. He was constantly forced to choose whether to be Indian or white. Society would not let him be both. When his temper flared it was his “savage nature” coming through; when he presided over the United States Senate with an unprecedented knowledge of the rules and procedures, it was evidence of his “civilized” ancestry.
Charles Curtis was born into Bleeding Kansas and came of age during the most turbulent of times. His father participated in the violence, as a Kansas Redleg avenging the actions of Missouri bushwhackers. As Civil War evolved into the Plains Indian Wars, Curtis was an eyewitness as his own people were starving and even the most powerful of tribes were confined to reservations. These forces shaped his philosophy and perspective. To this day he holds the distinction of being the only person of Native American heritage to be elected the second highest office in the land. He served as the 31st vice president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 under Herbert Hoover. Private and pragmatic, he became a respected statesman championing citizenship for Native Americans and rights for women. But his path of inclusion was perceived by others as destroying tribal sovereignty. Perhaps he realized that. But in his experience the most powerful force on earth was the federal government, and he learned to play the government game and to be better at it than almost anyone else. – TwoDot
Cookbook pick
Italian American Forever : classic recipes for everything you want to eat by Alexandra Guarnaschelli
Food Network star Alex Guarnaschelli may be a French-trained chef, an Iron Chef, and a short-order-chef to her daughter, Ava, but at her core, she’s an Italian American home cook. Her mom’s heritage was Sicilian and her dad’s people were from Bari; she pledged allegiance to her father’s marinara on weekdays and to her mom’s on the weekend and grew up eating at many of the red-checked-tablecloth trattorias throughout New York City. She still stops in to chitchat with the shop owners in Little Italy, where she buys the milkiest fresh mozz, the most thinly sliced prosciutto, and the crunchiest biscotti.
These are the recipes that are favorites for so many of us, whether your family is from Italy or not. From Fettuccine Alfredo, Whole Chicken alla Diavola, and Carmella Soprano’s Lasagna (yes, that Carmella Soprano) to Stuffed Artichokes so big and bursting that they’re a main course unto themselves, these 120 recipes and 115 stunning photos are a celebration of garlic and tomatoes, Parmesan, pesto, and all the meatballs, sausages, and tiramisu in between. There are both simple weeknight suppers and slowly simmered Sunday sauces, and they represent the food we make to celebrate, commiserate, and just to be—it’s Italian, it’s American, it’s all of us. – Clarkson Potter
Social Justice pick
Year of the tiger : an activist’s life by Alice Wong
In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong.
Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy. – Vintage
True Crime pick
This house of grief : the story of a murder trial by Helen Garner
On the evening of Father’s Day, 2005, separated husband Robert Farquharson was driving his three young sons back to their mom’s house when the car veered off the road and plunged into a dam. Farquharson survived the crash, but his boys drowned. Was this a tragic accident, or an act of revenge? The court case that followed became a national obsession—a macabre parade of witnesses, family members, and the defendant himself, each forced to relive the unthinkable for an audience of millions.
In This House of Grief, celebrated writer Helen Garner tells the definitive and deeply absorbing story of it all, from crash to final verdict. Through a panoply of perspectives, including her own as a member of the public, Garner captures the exacting procedure and brutal spectacle of Australia’s criminal justice system. The result is a richly textured portrait—of a man and his broken life, of a community wracked by tragedy, and of the long and torturous road to closure.
Considered a literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s incisive nonfiction evokes the keen eye of the New Journalists. Brisk, candid, and never dismissive of its flawed subjects, This House of Grief is a masterwork of literary journalism. – Vintage
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