Spot-Lit for September 2015

Love-him-or-love-to-hate-him, the “Great American Novelist,” Jonathan Franzen is back with Purity, a novel of family secrets, complex characters and questionable intentions.

In other family-centered storytelling, Lauren Groff takes a hard, clear look at the surfaces and undercurrents of a decades-long marriage.

Fans of tell-all auto-fiction in the vein of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series will want to check out Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels – The Story of the Lost Child, the series closer, is due out this week.

In dystopian novels, Margaret Atwood returns with a frightening story of economic collapse and totalitarianism, and Claire Watkins spins a dark tale about the changed social and physical landscape brought on by a near-future California drought.

Northwest authors Jonathan Evison and J.A. Jance have new books forthcoming. And a couple of first novels feature Northwest settings – Jimmy Bluefeather (Alaska) and Dryland (Portland).

Among other standout first novels there’s Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (woman loses everyone and everything she loves in a house fire), and After the Parade by Lori Ostlund (setting out on one’s own after being paralyzed by loss and grief).

In the crime realm, look for the familiar-sounding The Girl in the Spider’s Web – a follow-up to the immensely popular Stieg Larsson books. And advance praise is raining down on The Killing Lessons, The Scribe and The Child Garden.

Fantasy fans will want to know that Jim Butcher’s starting a new series and might also want to take a look at Seth Dickinson’s Traitor Baru Cormorant. For readers of the supernatural, try Tananarive Due’s Ghost Summer.

Click the book cover montage below to see this list of titles in the library catalog, read reviews, or place holds.

Notable New Fiction 2015 (to date) | All On-Order Fiction.