To get an idea of what 2016 has in store for booklovers, Shelf Awareness has reached out to both publishers and booksellers to compile this list of buzz books, many of which will be featured at the ABA's Winter Institute, which starts Saturday, January 23, in Denver, Colo. Today's first installment, fiction, features half a dozen debut authors and a host of returning favorites. Installments on nonfiction, YA and middle grade, and children's and early readers will run in the next few issues.
Debut Novels
Set in Northern California in the late 1960s, Emma Cline's debut novel, The Girls, follows a lonely teenager named Evie Boyd as she falls in with a mysterious, alluring group of older girls at the start of her summer vacation. Desperate to belong and completely infatuated with one of them, Evie is quickly drawn into a family of young women and teenage girls led by a charismatic, Manson-esque figure. As the summer goes on and Evie increasingly dissociates from her previous life, the family's behavior becomes more and more dangerous. Hilary Gustafson, the co-owner of Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Mich., said she was blown away by The Girls. Explained Gustafson: "I love how the characters stare into a blank reality, then squint to make it into something deliriously grand or hallucinogenically frightening. A literary page-turner that is a masterwork." The Girls will arrive in stores on June 14 from Random House.
Another hotly anticipated debut novel is Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss. Due out April 5 from Scout Press, the book is set in the SoHo arts scene of the 1980s. The lives of James Bennett, an art critic for the New York Times, and Raul Engales, a painter in exile after the 1976 military coup in Argentina, are intertwined by a woman named Lucy Olliason and an orphan boy from Raul's home country. Gayle Shanks, co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstores in Phoenix, Ariz., called Tuesday Nights one of her two most anticipated books for 2016, while Sarah Bagby, owner of Watermark Books in Wichita, Kan., called the novel a quick, very interesting read and extolled Prentiss's prose. "She can write a sentence so well," said Bagby. "Every sentence is a double-edged sword."
Elizabeth J. Church's debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love (Algonquin), will be in stores on May 3. It tells the story of Meridian Wallace, a driven young woman who has dreamed of getting a Ph.D. in ornithology since she was a young girl. While pursuing her degree, however, she falls in love with her physics professor. The two marry, and during World War II,nMeridian sets aside her dreams of being a scientist when her husband gets recruited to for a top-secret project in Los Alamos, N.Mex. Years later, a relationship with a Vietnam War veteran makes Meridian reconsider all that she's given up. Anne Holman, co-owner of the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, loved the book, calling it a likely contender for the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association's Reading the West Book Awards.
Manuel Gonzales, author of the 2014 short story collection The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories, will make his novelistic debut on April 12 with the sci-fi novel The Regional Office Is Under Attack! (Riverhead). Led by a mysterious and powerful woman named Oyemi, the Regional Office uses oracles to track down evil-doers and a corps of female assassins to accomplish its goals. And after a prophecy foretells that someone will bring down the Regional Office from within, it is suddenly under attack. The narrative follows the intersecting paths of two women: one is Rose, an assassin leading the attack on the Regional Office, and the other is Sarah, devoted to protecting the regional office. Suzanna Hermans, co-owner of Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck and Millerton, N.Y., named it as one of her favorite reads of 2016.
Due out on February 2 from William Morrow, Julia Claiborne Johnson's Be Frank with Me is another highly anticipated debut novel. After losing nearly all of her money in a Ponzi scheme, reclusive literary legend M.M. "Mimi" Banning must write a new book for the first time in years. In the hope that it will help Mimi actually deliver the manuscript, her publisher sends a woman named Alice Whitley to the author's Bel Air mansion to serve as her assistant. Alice quickly becomes the constant companion of Mimi's nine-year-old son, Frank, who could not be more different from the average boy his age. Anne Holman called Be Frank with Me a "great novel about a kid who's 'different,' and the way he shapes the world and the people around him."
The sixth and final debut novel on this list is Shelter by Jung Yun. Due out on March 15 from Picador, it tells of a young father named Kyung Cho. Kyung and his wife, Gillian, are deeply in debt and Kyung is incessantly anxious about his family's future. Kyung's parents live nearby, and though they are well-off, Kyung can't bring himself to ask for their help due to longstanding resentments. After an act of violence leaves Kyung's parents unable to live on their own, Kyung must take them in. It is not long before old tensions quickly mount. Sarah Bagby highlighted this novel about "violence within a family and violence done to a family.... It reads like a thriller but has the depth of the greatest literary fiction."
Fiction
Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez will make a rare appearance at Winter Institute this year. His last book, The Sound of Things Falling, was a bestseller and winner of the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His next novel, Reputations, will be out this fall from Riverhead. The story focuses on a Colombian political cartoonist whose drawings can influence politics at the nation's highest level and what happens when his early, explosive work is suddenly reevaluated. Robert Sindelar, managing partner of Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park and Ravenna, Wash., picked it as one of his most anticipated novels of the year. Said Sindelar: "[Vásquez] is one of my favorite living writers and is one of the best kept secrets in contemporary fiction."
In Dana Spiotta's upcoming novel Innocents and Others (March 8, Scribner), best friends Meadow and Carrie both become filmmakers after growing up together in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Their lives are upended when they meet a mysterious older woman named Jelly, who calls powerful men she's never met and convinces them to divulge their secrets. Mark Laframboise, buyer at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., called it a "great novel about filmmakers," and Hilary Gustafson of Literati Bookstore said, "It's strange in all the right ways, and has snappy prose that is fun in the most literary sense. I feel like this could be a real breakout book for her."
One of the biggest books of 2016 will likely be Zero K, Don DeLillo's first novel in six years. Due out from Scribner on May 10, the book follows the wealthy Lockhart family. Billionaire Ross Lockhart's young wife, Artis, is very ill, and Ross happens to be the main investor in a cryogenic facility that preserves bodies until medical science advances enough to cure any infirmity. Ross's son Jeffrey, the book's narrator, joins his father and Artis at the facility to say goodbye. Linda Marie Barrett, general manager of Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe in Asheville, N.C., expects the book to be a hit, while Mark Laframboise said the novel "raises big questions about life, identity, mortality, family."
The final book on today's list is Barkskins, Annie Proulx's first novel in 14 years. An epic spanning some 300 years, Barkskins begins with two poor Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arriving in New France in the late 1600s and follows their descendants across the world over the next centuries. Wherever and whenever they live, they exploit the natural world, with Duquet's and Sel's modern descendants witnessing an unprecedented ecological catastrophe. Proulx's past works have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Barkskins is coming from Scribner on June 14. --Alex Mutter