Each day is a gift composed of twenty-four hours. How many do you spend thinking about what other people think of you? What if you stopped? If your life was free from the tedium of social convention and self-judgment, could you fill it like a jewelry box? In Madeleine Ryan's debut novel, the reader enters the captivating mind of a young woman as she embarks on an epic journey--to a house party. As a woman living with autism, Ryan's narrator perceives the world with documentary clarity. She wastes nothing and savors everything (including her ritual "post-party suppers"). A tantalizing, bingeworthy read, A Room Called Earth is the literary equivalent of sitting inside of a kaleidoscope.
Althea and her husband, Procter, have been sentenced to prison after committing fraud and stealing from their flood-recovering community. Their twin girls have been left in the care of Althea’s youngest sister, Lillian, who cannot handle managing the family’s old house as well as the effects of the town’s hatred towards the entire family. When the other siblings, Viola and Joe, come to stay and help, various buried family traumas can no longer be ignored. The Butler family must confront or drown, or else they’ll bring their nieces down with them. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is an emotionally compelling read that deals with a lot of complicated issues, but not without the assurance that while some issues cannot have a fairytale ending, they can offer a silver lining after the storm.
Seventeenth-century Salem gets a neon update in Barry’s novel about the meteoric rise of the 1989 Danvers High School Women's Varsity Field Hockey Team to championship material—after they make a pact with the devil. In this case, the devil’s book is a spiral notebook with Emilio Estevez grinning up from the cover. Following each member of the team as they win matches and go to increasing lengths to gain Emilio’s favor, We Ride Upon Sticks is chock full of '80s lingo and nostalgia and both darker and sweeter than expected.
