January 27, 2023
New Fiction
Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica – Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found. Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and co-worker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decided that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey – Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage lasted only 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcee. Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at four a.m., and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life – intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor, and asking herself tough questions along the way.
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns – Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometers away in the far reaches of Treaty 8. Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her sister and kokum before their untimely deaths. As Mackenzie’s life spirals into a living nightmare – crows follow her around and she receives texts from someone claiming to be her dead sister – it becomes clear that these dreams have terrifying, real-life consequences. Desperate for help, Mackenzie returns to her family in her small hometown in Alberta. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her.
You Must Remember This by Kat Rosenfield – On Christmas Eve, eighty-five-year-old Miriam Caravasios steps onto the ice that surrounds her seaside estate on Maine’s Mount Desert Island. As a younger woman, she used to steal out on winter nights to meet her lover. She knows the way – but not the year. Miriam, her mind clouded by dementia, doesn’t hear the snap of thin ice until it’s too late. Was it an accident? Suicide? Or worse: Did someone lure the old woman to her death? There are plenty of suspects; Miriam’s fractured and complicated family has gathered to celebrate what everyone believed would likely be the matriarch’s last Christmas. The guest include Delphine, Miriam’s granddaughter- a frightened and insecure young woman who adored her grandmother – and Miriam’s live-in aide, Adam, whom Delphine has been secretly dating. There is Miriam’s former housekeeper, Shelly Dyer, who left the family’s employment years ago under mysterious circumstances. There are Miriam’s children: Theodora, who gave up everything to assume the role of caretaker; Diana, who seems just a little too eager to inherit her share of the estate; and Richard, whose longtime grudge against his mother has curdled into gleeful contempt at her deterioration. But it’s Delphine who comes in for the greatest scrutiny when they learn the shocking news that Miriam’s will cut off her children, leaving her granddaughter almost everything. As tensions rise, Delphine is emboldened to start asking questions – not just about her grandmother’s death, but about her life. The trail will take her into the past, into dark places – and eventually onto thin ice.