by Iris When I came across the term "campus novel" for the first time, I was reading a review to gather Blind Book Date clues for The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach — one of our first BBDs. Something about the phrase just clicked: I loved this subgenre, but hadn't [...]
The Guncle by Steven Rowley Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. [...]
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and [...]
Orbital by Samantha Harvey In Orbital, six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past [...]
Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada From the acclaimed author of The Hole and The Factory, a thrilling and mysterious work that explores fertility, masculinity, and marriage in contemporary Japan. In these three interconnected stories, Hiroko Oyamada revisits the same set of characters at different junctures in their lives. [...]
In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu The city of Ora is watching. Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima [...]
Bearer of Bad News by Eisabeth Dini For someone who hates secrets, Las Vegas hairdresser Lucy Rey is about to be faced with a whole bunch of them. After discovering that her fiancé has been cheating on her with someone from his improv class, Lucy finds herself short on funds [...]
Source Code by Bill Gates Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious [...]
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. by Damla “You take delight not in a city's [...]
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his [...]
