Fiction Five: Trailblazing new narratives

What if…? How different would my life have been if only…? Great fiction often presents its characters with a choice. How much can one simple decision change the course of someone’s life? These new releases explore this question in profound or reflective ways. Here are five novels I anticipate readers will be talking about this summer. Which one will you choose to read first?

The Names by Florence Knapp

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her 9-year-old daughter to register her son's birth. Her husband, a local doctor who is respected in the community but is a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates.

Spanning 35 years, what follows are three alternate versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

“The Names is a truly gorgeous, heart-opening novel. I couldn’t put it down, and I’m grateful to have Cora and her children living inside my heart now. What a wonderful book!” — Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

32 Days in May by Betty Corrello

After a shocking lupus diagnosis turns her life upside down, Nadia wants to lose herself in the Jersey Shore town where she grew up vacationing with her family. She plans on keeping her life small and boring, while continuing to ignore her sister’s relentless questioning.

When her rheumatologist not-so-subtly sets her up with his former-actor cousin, Marco, Nadia is skeptical. But Marco is gorgeous—despite carrying his own baggage from a very public burnout. After a messy (but fun) first date, they decide a May-long fling could be just what the doctor ordered: no commitment, no strings, a month of escape.

Their undeniable chemistry starts to feel a lot like something more. While Marco pulls Nadia deeper into his life, she is determined to keep her diagnosis from him. But there are only so many days in May and only so much pretending she can do. As the stress of their whirlwind romance takes its toll on Nadia’s health, she’s must decide if a chance at love is worth the risk of trusting someone new.

“Betty Corrello flawlessly weaves the struggles of chronic illness with the magic of falling in love in her absolute terrific and captivating sophomore novel. Corrello’s combination of charm, wit, and vulnerability is truly unmatched.”  — B.K. Borison, author of Lovelight Farms

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump. Then he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak.

Following the cycles of history, memory and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways love, labor and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Vuong’s latest is a story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

“The Emperor of Gladness is a poetic, dramatic and vivid story. Epic in its sweep, the novel also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality. Hai and Grazina are taken from the margins of American life by Ocean Vuong and, by dint of great sympathy and imaginative genius, placed at the very center of our world.” —Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island and Brooklyn

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei

Before Arin, Genevieve was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears. Arin is the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they navigate the intensity of life in a place where the insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.

“Jemimah Wei’s debut The Original Daughter goes for all the big stuff: ambition, time, family, forgiveness, constructing the self. Thrilling, to find a new author with an appetite for the whole spectrum of living, and the skill to get it down true. A contract of sisterhood is signed, then life, then ambition, then disappointment and heartbreak and and and. Wei’s prose is delicious, propulsively hurdling us through the lives of Gen and Arin, who will live in my marrow forever. The Original Daughter is so much the real deal.” — Kaveh Akbar, bestselling author of the National Book Award nominee Martyr!

Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis

Forty-three-year-old Abe Jacobs has been told by his doctors that he’s dying— and fast. Having exhausted his doctors’ regimens, he begins to contemplate the one path he thought he’d never pursue — a healing at the hands of his great uncle Budge. His uncle still lives on the Ahkwesáhsne reservation where Abe was raised. More than two decades after leaving Abe reluctantly returns home.

Budge, a wry, unceremonious, recovered alcoholic, is not the least bit sentimental about his gift. This satisfies Abe as his last-ditch attempt to be healed is just that: a fragile hope, one of which he is thoroughly skeptical. To find both faith and himself again, Abe will need to confront how leaving the reservation at 18 affected him, and the loves and fears that kept him far from home ever since.

Delivered with crackling wit, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the power and secrets of family, the capacity for healing and catharsis, and the ripple effects of history and culture.

“This is my favorite kind of storytelling: chock-full of humor and grief, packed with intriguing family lore, and written with a tremendous amount of heart. Aaron John Curtis has crafted something powerfully complex here; a novel that invites you to sit down, take a beat, and share space. This book is a feast for the senses―it’s an incredible meal you’ll want to share with your friends. Old School Indian is exceptional.” ― Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things