"Stacking the Shelves" was a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews. It seems the blog is gone though, so I will just continue to post a "What's New? post whenever I receive new books.
For Review: I received a box from Levine Quarto this week! Their arcs are so beautiful! All of their authors' pics are featured on the back cover. The front cover features a mock-up photo of the "book." Best of all, the team lists reasons why they love the book. It really feels like LQ invests wholly in each title in the line.
High Spirits by Camille Gamera-Tavarez. 224 p. Levine Querido, April 5, 2022. 9781646141296.
Publisher synopsis: High Spirits is a collection of eleven interconnected short stories from the Dominican diaspora, from debut author Camille Gomera-Tavarez.
It is a book centered on one extended family – the Beléns – across multiple generations.
It is set in the fictional small town of Hidalpa – and Santo Domingo and Paterson and San Juan and Washington Heights too.
It is told in a style both utterly real and distinctly magical – and its stories explore machismo, mental health, family, and identity.
But most of all, High Spirits represents the first book from Camille Gomera-Tavarez, who takes her place as one of the most extraordinary new voices to emerge in years.
Aviva and the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe. 176 p. Levine Querido, February 8, 2022. 9781646141258.
Publisher synopsis: A long ago “accident.” An isolated girl named Aviva. A community that wants to help, but doesn’t know how. And a ghostly dybbuk, that no one but Aviva can see, causing mayhem and mischief that everyone blames on her.
That is the setting for this suspenseful novel of a girl who seems to have lost everything, including her best friend Kayla, and a mother who was once vibrant and popular, but who now can’t always get out of bed in the morning.
As tensions escalate in the Jewish community of Beacon with incidents of vandalism and a swastika carved into new concrete poured near the synagogue…so does the tension grow between Aviva and Kayla and the girls at their school, and so do the actions of the dybbuk grow worse.
Could real harm be coming Aviva’s way? And is it somehow related to the “accident” that took her father years ago?
Aviva vs. the Dybbuk is a compelling, tender story about friendship and community, grief and healing, and one indomitable girl who somehow manages to connect them all.
The Lost Ryū by Emily Watanabe Cohen. 224 p. Levine Querido, June 7, 2022. 9781646141326.
Publisher synopsis: Kohei Fujiwara has never seen a big ryū in real life. Those dragons all disappeared from Japan after World War II, and twenty years later, they’ve become the stuff of legend. Their smaller cousins, who can fit in your palm, are all that remain. And Kohei loves his ryū, Yuharu, but…
…Kohei has a memory of the big ryū. He knows that’s impossible, but still, it’s there, in his mind. In it, he can see his grandpa — Ojiisan — gazing up at the big ryū with what looks to Kohei like total and absolute wonder. When Kohei was little, he dreamed he’d go on a grand quest to bring the big ryū back, to get Ojiisan to smile again.
But now, Ojiisan is really, really sick. And Kohei is running out of time.
Kohei needs to find the big ryū now, before it’s too late. With the help of Isolde, his new half-Jewish, half-Japanese neighbor; and Isolde’s Yiddish-speaking dragon, Cheshire; he thinks he can do it. Maybe. He doesn’t have a choice.
In The Lost Ryū, debut author Emi Watanabe Cohen gives us a story of multigenerational pain, magic, and the lengths to which we’ll go to protect the people we love.
The Days of Bluegrass Love by Edward van de Vendel. Translated by Emma Rault. 208 p. Levine Querido, May 17, 2022. 9781646140466.
Publisher synopsis: Tycho Zeling is drifting through his life. Everything in it – school, friends, girls, plans for the future – just kind of … happens. Like a movie he presses play on, but doesn’t direct.
So Tycho decides to break away from everything. He flies to America to spend his summer as a counselor at a summer camp, for international kids. It is there that Oliver walks in, another counselor, from Norway.
And it is there that Tycho feels his life stop, and begin again, finally, as his.
The Days of Bluegrass Love was originally published in the Netherlands in 1999. It was a groundbreaking book and has since become a beloved classic throughout Europe, but has never been translated into English. Here, for the first time, it is masterfully presented to American readers – a tender, intense, unforgettable story of first love.
Tronhead or Once a Young Lady by Jean-Claude van Rijekeghem. Translated by Kristen Gehrman. 432 p. Levine Querido, February 15, 2022. 9781646140480.
Publisher synopsis: Eighteen-year-old Constance is not interested in marriage or in being a “young lady.” But for a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s, that’s just about all that’s available to her. When her parents arrange her a marriage with a man more than twice her age, she’s powerless to resist. Stance couldn’t possibly find her newfound husband less appealing, but what can she do?
Here’s what:
Four months into the marriage, she can slip out of their bed in the middle of the night, and she can put on his clothes. She can look in the mirror and like what she sees. She can sneak out of the house before dawn and visit the baker’s scrawny son, who has just been drafted into the army, and offer to take his place. Vive l’Empereur!
Hot on Stance’s tail all the while is her younger brother Pieter, determined to bring Stance back home to Ghent where she belongs. (The battlefield is no place for a young lady, after all.)
Ironhead, or, Once A Young Lady is the riotous and powerful story of a fierce renegade, and the silly men who try to bring her down.
Purchased: I received some AZ gift cards from students and ordered some books for the library. They ought to arrive sometime this week.
What's in your mailbox this week?
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