January’s coming to a close, and if you’ve been following literary channels across social media then you know it’s been an especially bumpy ride in this very young year. Luckily, we’ve got some new releases to take the sour taste out of our mouths — the likes of which include a pair of #ownvoices stories and brilliant piece of adult fantasy from an old favorite. Check out what we’ve got this week below!
Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon
Now in stock: the brand new novel from Paul Yoon! Run Me to Earth is the beautiful, aching chronicle of three boys orphaned in 1960s Laos, a story touted by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Hernan Diaz, as “one of those rare novels that stays with us to become a standard with which we measure other books.”
Alisak, Prany, and Noi—three orphans united by devastating loss—must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of their native land. In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang, a doctor they meet along the way, secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences—and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world.
Spanning decades and magically weaving together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a gorgeous story that is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.
Hear more about this breathtaking novel on February 20th at 7PM when Paul Yoon joins us at BookPeople for a very special conversation with novelist, Laura van den Berg!
Highfire by Eoin Colfer
New York Times bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer, has a hilarious and high-octane adult novel out today! Highfire follows a vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon who lives an isolated life in the bayous of Louisiana—and the raucous adventures that ensue when he crosses paths with a fifteen-year-old troublemaker on the run from a crooked sheriff.
In the days of yore, he flew the skies and scorched angry mobs—now he hides from swamp tour boats and rises only with the greatest reluctance from his Laz-Z-Boy recliner. Laying low in the bayou, this once-magnificent fire breather has been reduced to lighting Marlboros with nose sparks, swilling Absolut in a Flashdance T-shirt, and binging Netflix in a fishing shack. For centuries, he struck fear in hearts far and wide as Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie—now he goes by Vern. However…he has survived, unlike the rest. He is the last of his kind, the last dragon. Still, no amount of vodka can drown the loneliness in his molten core. Vern’s glory days are long gone. Or are they?
Populated by a wacky cast of creatures and characters, our booksellers lauded this return to form from Colfer, “The best crime story with a dragon I’ve ever read,” (Rachel R.); it’s a triumphant genre-bending fantasy that is effortlessly clever and a relentlessly funny tour-de-force of comedy and action. Act quickly to reserve a signed copy of this brand new title!
Hi Five by Joe Ide
Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
We’re thrilled to carry this unforgettable, #ownvoices memoir from Marcelo Hernandez Castillo about growing up undocumented in the United States. He recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man’s attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence.
When Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary.
With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family’s encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father’s deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother’s heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor.
Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
Blue Flowers by Carola Saavedra
We’re kind of obsessed with Riverhead releases here at BookPeople, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the excitement surrounding this title, a newly translated novel from one of Brazil’s most exciting writers!
The plot: Marcos has just been through a divorce and moved into a new apartment. He feels alienated from his ex-wife, from his daughter, from society; everything feels flat and fake to him. He begins to receive letters at his new address from an anonymous troubled woman who signs off as A. and who clearly believes she is writing to the former tenant, her ex-lover, in the aftermath of a violent heartbreak. Marcos falls under the spell of the manic, hypnotic missives and for the first time in years, something moves him.
Blue Flowers alternates between the letters detailing the dissolution of A.’s relationship, and Marcos’ growing fixation with this damaged person. The letters become a kind of exorcism as both A.’s epistolary affair and Marcos’ personal life reach a crisis point. Possessed by A., he is driven to discover her true identity.
Blue Flowers is a dark portrait of desire, undermining accepted truths about love and sex, violence and fear, men and women.
You can find these and other amazing titles in-store and online now! And be sure to follow up with us next week when we present some of February’s most exciting titles!
BookPeople 