Here are the notable new book releases for Tuesday, January 21st:
{{a href="external_link-18904899"}}American Dirt{{/a}} by Jeanine Cummins
One of the most anticipated novels of 2020! If you don’t believe me, believe Mamie: “I hope many of you have read Valeria Luiselli’s book,
Lost Children Archive. (She’s coming to QRB in March of 2020.) If the plight of the immigrant is something you care about, please read
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
Lydia and Luca have witnessed a terrible violence to their family and are trying to get to the US by riding trains and following a paid coyote. Along the way they befriend others who are also escaping from horrors. Although the Luiselli and Cummins books are fiction, they depict very realistically the desperation that drives these people to leave everything they know for the unknown, the fear that accompanies them on their journey, and the danger they face at every step. No one would take such a desperate action unless it was their only recourse.
The back cover of the advanced reading copy claims that it's one of the most anticipated books of 2020. My wish is that it is also one of the most talked-about.”
Get your signed copy at Quail Ridge Books today.
{{a href="external_link-18901838"}}A Long Petal of the Sea: A Novel{{/a}} by Isabel Allende
“Both an intimate look at the relationship between one man and one woman and an epic story of love, war, family, and the search for home, this gorgeous novel, like all the best novels, transports the reader to another time and place, and also sheds light on the way we live now. Isabel Allende is a legend and this might be her finest book yet.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of
Saints for All OccasionsGet a free magnet with your purchase while supplies last!
{{a href="external_link-18901839"}}Follow Me to Ground: A Novel{{/a}} by Sue Rainsford
A haunted, surreal debut novel about an otherworldly young woman, her father, and her lover that culminates in a shocking moment of betrayal—one that upends our understanding of power, predation, and agency. It already received starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly: “Brimming with dark folklore and underworld energy, Rainsford’s stellar debut features a memorable heroine chafing against her monstrous isolation…Rainsford excels in describing the grotesque beauty of…alternative medicine in which the humming healers feel their ‘way to the pitch of [the patient’s] hurt’…This is a subtle, unsettling novel in which desire is an ineradicable sickness that can be preferable to health.”
{{a href="external_link-18901841"}}What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She{{/a}} by Dennis Baron
Like trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are sparking a national debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Far more than a by-product of the culture wars, gender-neutral pronouns are, however, nothing new. Pioneering linguist Dennis Baron puts them in historical context, noting that Shakespeare used singular-they; women invoked the generic use of he to assert the right to vote (while those opposed to women’s rights invoked the same word to assert that he did not include she); and people have been coining new gender pronouns, not just hir and zie, for centuries. Based on Baron’s own empirical research,
What’s Your Pronoun? chronicles the story of the role pronouns have played—and continue to play—in establishing both our rights and our identities. It is an essential work in understanding how 21st-century culture has evolved.
