New fiction for November 2021
by Brandon King
Take a look at our latest fiction titles for November 2021.
The every, by Dave Eggers
When the world's largest search engine / social media company merges with the planet's dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous - and, oddly enough, most beloved - monopoly ever known: The Every. Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Kavakian, they look for the company's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save?
The gardener, by Salley Vickers
Artist Hassie Day and her sister Margot, buy a rambling, run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued, Miss Foot, who recommends, Murat, an Albanian migrant, out of place in the village, to help Hassie in the garden. As Hassie works in the garden alongside Murat, she begins to ruminate on her past life, her hostile mother, her diffident father, and the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood. Most of all, she begins to analyse the love affair that ended leaving her with painful, unanswered questions.
Dolphin junction, by Mick Herron
Michelle Wallace leaves her husband David a note on a postcard and disappears. But the note is signed with a hated nickname, and the postcard is from a happy holiday they spent together.
Lily: a tale of revenge, by Rose Tremain
Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret. Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?
Borrow Lily: a tale of revenge →
The city of mist, by Carlos Zafón Ruiz
A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his inventions hold the power to entice the rich girl who has stolen his heart. An architect flees Constantinople with plans for an impregnable library. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book that has never existed. And Gaudí, sailing to a mysterious rendezvous in New York, delights in a spectacle of light and steam, the stuff that cities should be made of. Gathered here for the first time - and some never before published in English - these stories showcase the talents of Carlos Ruiz Zafón, a writer beloved by millions of readers and a master who has left us too soon.
Mercy, by David Baldacci
FBI agent Atlee Pine is at the end of her long journey to discover what happened to her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted when the girls were just six years old - an incident which destroyed her family and left Atlee physically and mentally scarred. She knew her sister and parents were out there somewhere. And she had to find them. Dead or alive. Atlee and her assistant, Carol Blum, discover the truth. But the truth hurts. And hurt makes you tough. So how tough do you have to be to forgive? As they uncover a shocking trail of lies, greed, fear and revenge, they must face one final challenge.
The dark hours, by Michael Connelly
There's chaos in Hollywood on New Year's Eve. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD Detective Renée Ballard seeks shelter at the end of the countdown to wait out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. As reports start to roll in of shattered windshields and other damage, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party. It doesn't take long for Ballard to determine that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky. Ballard's investigation leads her to look into another unsolved murder - a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch. Ballard and Bosch team up once again to find out where the old and new cases intersect. All the while they must look over their shoulders. The killer who has stayed undetected for so long knows they are coming after him.
Game on: tempting twenty-eight, by Janet Evanovich
When Stephanie Plum is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in her apartment, she wishes she didn't keep her gun in the cookie jar in her kitchen. And when she finds out the intruder is fellow apprehension agent Diesel, six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude whom she hasn't seen in more than two years, she still thinks the gun might come in handy. Turns out Diesel and Stephanie are on the trail of the same fugitive: Oswald Wednesday, an international computer hacker as brilliant as he is ruthless. Stephanie may not be the most technologically savvy sleuth, but she more than makes up for that with her dogged determination, her understanding of human nature, and her willingness to do just about anything to bring a fugitive to justice.
Borrow Game on: tempting twenty-eight →
Wish you were here, by Jodi Picoult
It's Friday the 13th and Diana is an ambitious young appraiser at Sotheby's in New York. She's about to go on a long-awaited holiday, where she knows Finn, her surgeon boyfriend, will propose and the next stage of her carefully planned life will begin.But it is Friday the 13th of March 2020. The new virus hits. Finn can't leave the city, and suggests she goes without him. In the Galapagos, unable to get back to her real life, Diana learns about the devastation hitting the world as she hears intermittently from her boyfriend. She's discovering a new side to herself and a new kind of life, when everything changes.
Deadlock, by Quintin Jardine
A guide through a world of tangled family politics, hostile takeovers, government-sanctioned killing, extortion and the seedier side of publishing.
My Monticello, by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Families, friends, and strangers flee for their lives in an abandoned bus, taking refuge in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's historic plantation home in the hills above town. Over nineteen heart-stopping days the group find ways to care for and sustain one another as the world burns beneath them. Told by Da'Naisha Love, a young Black descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 'My Monticello' is a searing indictment of racism past and present, and a powerful vision of resistance, hope, and love.
The Pimlico murder, by Mike Hollow
Armistice Day 1940. A young man, Terry Watson, has been found in a back-yard Anderson shelter, battered about the head, and with two white poppies in his pocket and it will take all Jago and his assistant DC Craddock skills to uncover the truth behind the pacifist's brutal death.