Novels Now

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
325 pages
“They didn’t recognize me,” I repeat. 
He stops, in turn, my hand still on his arm. 
“It is because they have never seen you,” he says. (p. 303)
Renée is a concierge in a posh Paris apartment building. She is a recluse, quietly tending to the needs of her wealthy tenants. They consider [...]

The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga
276 pages
See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well kept, orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. … And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947 — the day [...]

Letter to my Daughter
Maya Angelou
166 pages        
Letter to my Daughter is a book of wisdom, a collection of 28 short works — mostly essays, and a couple of poems. Ms. Angelou doesn’t have a daughter (her only child is a son); this book is dedicated to women all around the world. Angelou plumbs the depths of [...]

A Mercy
Toni Morrison
167 pages
One afternoon a few months ago, I was sentenced to that purgatory that is a 2-hour drive on the New Jersey Turnpike. But then my spirits were lifted heavenwards by a National Public Radio interview with Toni Morrison. Ms. Morrison discussed her new book, A Mercy, and rewarded her audience with a reading. Sheer [...]

The Cellist of Sarajevo
Stephen Galloway
235 pages

She knows that twenty-two people died here and a multitude were injured, will not walk or see or touch again. Because they tried to buy bread. A small decision. Nothing to think about. You’re hungry, and come to this place where maybe they will have some bread to buy. … [...]

The Road Home
Rose Tremain
365 pages
Out of work and mourning the loss of his wife, Lev leaves his Eastern European homeland on a bus bound for London. Lev begins life in London homeless and nearly penniless. Lydia, a woman he met on the bus, uses her personal connections to help Lev secure inexpensive accommodation and employment [...]

Mosquito
Roma Tearne
299 pages
Life in this paradise, he felt, was exactly as the beautiful mosquito that lived here, composed in equal parts of loveliness and deadliness. (p. 284)
Theo Samarajeeva is a successful Sri Lankan writer, who returned from London to his homeland after his wife’s sudden death. He spends long, languorous days in his beach house, [...]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
277 pages
In 1946, Juliet Ashton is a London-based writer who has gained some degree of fame writing fictional accounts of wartime under an assumed name. Now, as London begins to rebuild and recover, Juliet is casting about for new material with which to continue her [...]

Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri
333 pages
Jhumpa Lahiri’s first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize. After writing a full-length novel (The Namesake), Lahiri has returned with a second short story collection. Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of 5 short stories and a novella. And it is absolutely fabulous.
Most of the stories are set in [...]