2023 Best Adult Fiction & Nonfiction (SCPL)

"A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that...

"Spring Break, 2009: Five days, three friends, and one big city. Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a bustling, intimidating metropolis...

"March 1919. Far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, its petitions ignored by heads of state as Korea's nationhood is erased. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed now, today-working toward...

"From the award-winning author comes a gripping account of one of the most scandalous murder in modern Irish history, at once a propulsive work of true crime and an act of literary subversion. Malcolm MacArthur was a well-known Dublin socialite and heir. Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate...

"From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter's squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them...

"The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies returns with her first short story collection since the publication of her number one New York Times bestseller, Unaccustomed Earth--a major literary event and a tour de force. Nine mesmerizing stories saturated in the details of Roman life that showcase Jhumpa Lahiri's extraordinary range and virtuosity. An immigrant family confronts the devastating aftershocks of racial violence. A young...

"From the New York Times best-selling author of The Nix, a witty and poignant new novel about modern marriage, the often baffling pursuit of health and happiness, and the stories that bind us together. When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago’s thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to...

"A riveting work about the woman who sacrificed her future for one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century and a probing look at what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world. Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, award-winning writer Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own. When she uncovers his forgotten wife,...

In the summer of 1894, two men collaborating on a book in defense of homosexuality, then a crime, must decide whether to continue with their project, risking social ostracism and imprisonment, when Oscar Wilde is arrested shortly before their book is to be published.

"Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front,...