Contemporary Fiction Book Club

January 8th - Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty -- A woman upends strangers' lives by predicting their deaths in the powerful latest from bestseller Moriarty (Apples Never Fall). Travelers aboard a delayed flight from Hobart, Australia, to Sydney are already on edge when a woman stands, points at a fellow passenger, and pronounces, "I expect catastrophic stroke. Age seventy-two." She moves down the aisle, foretelling the causes and ages of death of several more passengers before the cabin crew intervenes. She then sleeps until landing and disembarks as though nothing had happened. Most assume the "soothsayer" has mental health problems--until one of her prognostications comes true three months later.  The exquisitely rendered characters earn readers' full investment as they contemplate how much credence to give the Damoclean sword hanging over their heads, and the pinwheeling narrative maintains near-constant tension. -Publishers Weekly

February 12 - So Far Gone by Jess Walter -- ...a rollicking and heartrending adventure about a broken man determined to set things right in an increasingly divided America. Rhys Kinnick, a retired environmental reporter, has been estranged from his family for several years after punching his Christian nationalist son-in-law, Shane, during a heated exchange over the latter99 9, Leah and Asher, now 13 and 9. Bethany, their mother, has disappeared, leaving behind a note for her neighbor to take the kids to Rhys. Shane, who's off looking for Bethany, has dispatched two members of the Army of the Lord, a militia affiliated with the family's new church, to retrieve Leah and Asher. -Publishers Weekly

March 12 - Flashlight by Susan Choi --  The story begins with a walk on the beach--10-year-old Louisa and her father talking as they stroll by the water, guided by the father's flashlight. Readers get the briefest glimpse of their conversation: the father telling Louisa that her mother gave her a gift in teaching her to swim. The next morning, in the next narrative moment, he has disappeared, and Louisa has washed up on the shore, barely alive. As the story rolls in and out with both tidal force and quiet currents, it shifts between past and present, each wave receding to reveal cultural and generational dislocation, all of which converges when past crashes into present.

April 9 - Jellyfish Have No Ears by Adele Rosenfeld -- Ever since she was a child, Louise has been not quite hearing and not quite deaf. After an audiology test shows that almost all her hearing is gone, her doctor suggests a cochlear implant. This irreversible operation would give Louise a new sense of hearing, but it would come at the expense of her natural hearing, which has shaped her relationship with the world, full of whispers and shadows." --publisher

May 14 - Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall --  One day on the farm, Beth and Frank are working with their sheep when a dog comes out of nowhere, killing three ewes in minutes. Desperate to stop the carnage, Frank shoots the dog, and minutes later, a little boy named Leo arrives, horrified at the death of his pet. Beth is even more horrified, however, because the boy's father is an old flame from her teenage years, and she never stopped loving him. Thus begins a terrifying chain of events that ends with Frank on trial for murder and the verdict impending. Broken Country is at its heart a novel about love and loss, about selfishness and selflessness, and about the consequences of decisions made for these reasons. Each decision is driven by the one before it, and Beth, especially, is stretched to her breaking point. Both aching and thrilling, Broken Country is a masterful book by an accomplished author.--Booklist