Books You May Have Missed 2022: Adult Fiction

"''I have more privilege than any person in my family. And I'm still screwed.' From award-winning author Olivia Wenzel comes a captivating and unsettling literary debut about race, politics, feminism, motherhood, nationality and enduring love. A young woman attends a play about the Berlin Wall coming down and is the only Black person in the audience. She is sitting with her boyfriend by a bathing lake and four neo-Nazis show up. In New York, she witnesses...

After calling off her engagement, Mira escapes on an all-expense paid business trip to Paris. Even there she can't forget the ache of leaving her fiancé behind or the fact that she's just blown up her personal life. Mira is used to being in control, but now she is at the mercy of the travel gods, and they are not acting in her favor. Subways are missed. Trains don't run. Flights are overbooked. When she arrives at the airport to go home, there are...

"The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters' lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator's ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form...

A brilliant and suspenseful follow-up to the Booker-nominated graphic novel Sabrina. "Every single person has something unique to them which is impossible to re-create, without exception." --John Smith, acting coach. From the acclaimed author of Sabrina, Nick Drnaso's Acting Class creates a tapestry of disconnect, distrust, and manipulation. Ten strangers are brought together under the tutelage of John Smith, a mysterious and morally questionable...

Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she's become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There's the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn't resist going to see where it led. Sometimes a door will open into a new...

"From award-winning editorial team Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. A group of cabinet ministers query a supercomputer containing the minds of the country's ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendent of a rain goddess inherits...

"Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories unfold. This is Alys's. When her brother is murdered, a petty thief from the slums of Longhill sets out to discover who killed him and why. But the more she discovers about him, the more she learns about herself, and the truths she finds are more dangerous than knives. Swept up in an intrigue as deep as the roots...

"After moving cross-country with her son and accepting a filmmaker's mentorship, Val Locklier is caught between her insecurities and new possibilities. Miles McKenzie returns home to find a new tenant is living upstairs and he's been banished to a ministry on life support. As sparks fly, they discover that authentic love and sacrifice must go hand in hand"--

"When a baby is discovered floating in a basket along the canals of 1807 Venice, a guild of artisans takes him in and raises him as a son, skilled in each of their trades. Although the boy, Sebastian Trovato, has wrestled with questions of his origins, it isn't until a woman washes ashore his lagoon island that answers begin to emerge. In hunting down his story, Sebastian must make choices that could alter not just his own future, but that of the...

"On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast, a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small. One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped,...