Friday Reads: Literary Standouts

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TGIF! This weekend we recommend you soak up the sun while enjoying one of these recent literary standouts on shelves now:

A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN by Lucia Berlin
“[Lucia Berlin] may just be the best writer you’ve never heard of…” (Publishers Weekly, boxed & starred review) and her short story collection has received THREE starred reviews, is a Publishers Weekly Best of Summer 2015 selection, an O Magazine “Books to Curl Up With This Fall” pick, and has landed on “best of August” lists from BookRiot, Esquire, Flavorwire, Vulture, and more.

“Berlin’s stories are full of second chances. Now readers have another chance to confront them: bites of life, chewed up and spat out like a wad of tobacco, bitter and rich.” New York Times Book Review

“[Berlin’s stories are written] in sentences so bright and fierce and full of wild color that you’ll want to turn each one over just to see how she does it. And then go back and read them all again.” — Entertainment Weekly, A

LANDFALLS by Naomi J. Williams
Williams’ debut novel about the historic 1785 Laperouse expedition of 200 men who famously tried to circumnavigate the globe for France has two starred reviews and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

“LANDFALLS is intelligent and utterly human. Ms. Williams has written a seductive page-turner that, although we know the story ends tragically, draws the reader in and doesn’t let go.” — Wall Street Journal

“Downright dazzling… Williams has delivered a bona fide masterpiece.”
Seattle Times

A beautiful tale of adventure, anchored in tragedy.” Vanity Fair

THE LAST LOVE SONG by Tracy Daugherty
This in-depth and supremely well-researched biography of Joan Didion has THREE starred reviews and major media raving, including The New York Times (“Thoughtful and ambitious…”), the New Yorker (“Intelligent and elegant.”), Entertainment Weekly (A-), The Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Seattle Times. Much more to come, including the New York Times Book Review!

“In this engrossing biography of exceptional vibrancy, velocity, and perception, Daugherty astutely elucidates Didion’s ever-evolving artistic explorations and political critiques as she interrogates the meaning and ‘intelligibility’ of literature and life. He also portrays this intensely candid, searching writer as endlessly hardworking, brilliantly innovative, and as sensitive as a tuning fork or divining rod, trembling with the intensity of it all, perfect in pitch, stunning in revelation.” — Booklist, starred review

An eloquent work on the life of Joan Didion, fashioning her story as no less than the rupture of the American narrative….” Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A strong biography. Who wouldn’t want to read this ‘hot’ book?”
Library Journal, starred review

Share your #FridayReads with us @MacmillanLib. Happy weekend!

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