Contemporary Fiction

The Grand Scheme of Things by Warona Jay Genres: Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction Published by Washington Square Press on February 25, 2025 Format: ARC, eBook Pages: 288 Source: Netgalley Two unlikely friends hatch an extraordinary scheme to expose the theater world in this wildly entertaining and sharply observed debut novel exploring perception, redemption, and how success shapes us all.  Meet Relebogile Naledi Mpho Moruakgomo. Or, for short, an aspiring playwright who dreams of making it big in London’s theater world. But after repeated rejections from white talent agents, Eddie suspects her non-white sounding name might be the problem.  Enter Hugo Lawrence Smith: good looking, well-connected, charismatic and…very white. Stifled by his law degree and looking for a way out of the corporate world, he finds a kindred spirit in Eddie after a chance encounter at a cafe.  Together they devise a plan, one which will see Eddie’s play on stage and Hugo’s name in lights. They send out her script under his name and vow to keep the play’s origins a secret until it reaches critical levels of success. Then they can expose the theater world for its racism and hollow clout-chasing. But as their plan spins wildly out of …

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard Genres: Adult, Coming of Age, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Time Travel Published by Atria Books on February 27, 2024 Format: Hardcover Pages: 304 A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future.  Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town–except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.  When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed …

The Possession of Mr. Cave by Matt Haig Genres: Psychological Horror, Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Suspense Published by Penguin on March 19, 2009 Format: eBook Pages: 241 Terence Cave, owner of Cave Antiques, has already experienced the tragedies of his mother’s suicide and his wife’s murder when his teenage son, Reuben, is killed in a grotesque accident. His remaining child, Bryony, has always been the family’s golden girl and Terence comes to realise that his one duty in life is to protect her from the world’s malign forces, whatever that may take.  But as he starts to follow his grieving daughter’s movements and enforce a draconian set of rules, his love for Bryony becomes a possessive force that leads to destruction. Unsettling, disturbing, and brilliant in a twisted way, The Possession of Mr. Cave by Matt Haig is an intense read that fully commits to its narrative. Whether most readers are prepared for what that entails is an entirely different discussion (definitely check trigger warnings before hand). The “horror” moniker gets tossed around quite loosely these days, ranging from slashers to psychological insanity to anything that is vaguely related to the supernatural. This book however taps into the quiet, heavy, …

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig Genres: Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Magical Realism, Mystery Published by Viking on Sept 3, 2024 Format: eBook Pages: 324 The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide  “What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”  When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.  Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.  Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning. This is my fourth Matt Haig novel that I’ve read (though I have another three that I already own but keep putting off) and The Life Impossible is both …

The Wedding People by Alison Espach Genres: Adult, Chick Lit, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Romance Published by Henry Holt and Company on July 30, 2024 Format: eBook Pages: 384 A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.  It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.  In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding …