Psychological thriller set around BATON ROUGE, Louisiana
New books that are strong on location – November 2021
26th October 2021
Here are our three top recommendations for books to be published in November 2021. It really is a bumper month!
The Gardener by Salley Vickers – set on the ENGLAND / WALES border
Artist, Hassie Days, and her sister, Margot, buy a run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued, Miss Foot, who recommends, Murat, an Albanian migrant, made to feel out of place among the locals, to help Hassie in the garden.
As she works the garden in Murat’s peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions.
But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds.
In her haunting new novel, Salley Vickers, the bestselling author of The Librarian and The Cleaner of Chartres, writes with the profound psychological insight and sense of the numinous power of place that is the hallmark of all her novels.
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson – set in CHARLOTTESVILLE
At a time of rolling blackouts and terrible storms battering America, the neighbourhood of First Street, Charlottesville comes under attack by violent white supremacists. A group of friends, families and strangers flee together in an abandoned bus and head for the hills above town.
Led by Da’Naisha Love, they arrive at Monticello, the historic plantation-home of Thomas Jefferson, deserted but for its ghosts. As a young Black descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Da’Naisha has a complex relationship with the house. Tentative at first, the group explores rooms, forages on the grounds, and finds a kind of shelter. But the terror from their town is coming closer, and soon they have an impossible decision to make.
My Monticello is the story of nineteen heart-stopping days of refuge and reclamation, told by Da’Naisha with courage and with grace. This deeply moving novel is a searing indictment of racism past and present, and a powerful vision of resistance, community and hope.
Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult – set in the GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS
Diana O’Toole’s life is going perfectly to plan. At twenty-nine, she’s up for promotion to her dream job as an art specialist at Sotheby’s and she’s about to fly to the Galápagos where she’s convinced her surgeon boyfriend, Finn, is going to propose.
But then the virus hits New York City and Finn breaks the news: the hospital needs him, he has to stay. But you should still go, he insists. And reluctantly, she agrees.
Once she’s in the Galápagos, the world shuts down around her, leaving Diana stranded – albeit in paradise. Completely isolated, with only intermittent news from the outside world, Diana finds herself examining everything that has brought her to this point and wondering if there’s a better way to live.
But not everything is as it seems…
And here are some more November books you might like that are strong on location:
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett – set in the UNITED STATES
An irresistible collection of essays and memoir from the internationally bestselling, Women’s Prize-winning author of The Dutch House
Any story that starts will also end.’ As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this as she explores family, friendship, marriage, failure, success, and what it all means.
Ranging from the personal – her portrait of the three men she called her fathers; how a chance encounter with Tom Hanks led to one of the most important friendships of her life; how to answer when someone asks why you don’t have children – to the sublime – the unexpected influence of Snoopy; the importance of knitting; the pleasure to be found in children’s books – each essay transforms the particular into the universal, letting us all see our own worlds anew.
Illuminating, penetrating, funny and generous, These Precious Days is joyful time spent in the company of one of our greatest living authors.
Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon – set in NORTH CAROLINA
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising of 1745, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.
It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible.
Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s tea-kettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his own tenants are split and the war is on his doorstep. It’s only a matter of time before the shooting starts.
Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity – and thus his own. Lord John Grey also has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own.
Meanwhile, the Southern Colonies blaze, and the Revolution creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And Claire, the physician, wonders how much of the blood to be spilt will belong to those she loves.
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart – set in NEW YORK STATE
It’s March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaulate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters include: a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a young flame-thrower of an essayist, originally from the Carolinas; and a movie star, The Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family. In a remarkable literary feat, Gary Shteyngart has documented through fiction the emotional toll of our recent times: a story of love and friendship that reads like a great Russian novel set in upstate New York. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller, Super Sad True Love Story.
Noor by Nnedi Okorafor – set in NIGERIA
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt…natural, and that’s putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was wrong. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist and the saga of the wicked woman and mad man unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn’t so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.
Enjoy your November reading!
Tony for the TripFiction team
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