Coming Soon – great new fiction

Earlier this year I had a lot of fun putting together a list of upcoming Canadian fiction set for spring release (in two parts – here and here). I thought I’d dig around and find a few other upcoming releases that readers should keep their eyes peeled for in the next month or so.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy (April)

You may remember Levy from her 2004 Orange Prize winning novel Small Island. It’s success propelled Levy – who had been publishing for a number of years – into the spot light. In the Long Song she explores the life of July, a Jamaican slave through periods of turmoil in Jamaica’s history. With it’s focus on a female character and on the history of the slave trade, it may be a book that will be of interest to those who liked Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes.

The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle (May)

Mentioned in our St. Patrick’s Day post – but I think worth mentioning again – the third installment of the Last Roundup series which has thus far followed the adventures of Henry Smart from the Irish Easter Uprising, through the American Jazz era. In the Dead Republic, Henry returns to Ireland. The novel opens in the early 1950s and we can be sure that Henry will be mixed up in the major events of those times.

The Passage by Justin Cronin (June)

Although its release is still two months away, I’ve been reading hype about this new book from Justin Cronin for several months already. The publisher describes the book as “The Andromeda Strain meets The Stand in this startling and stunning thriller that brings to life a unique vision of the apocalypse and plays brilliantly with vampire mythology, revealing what becomes of human society when a top-secret government experiment spins wildly out of control“, but an author who has won or been nominated for several major literary prizes, this seems
like a thriller that’s sure to be in a class of its own.

Husband and Wife: a novel by Leah Stewart (May)

From the publisher “A young mother discovers that her husband’s novel about infidelity might be drawn from real life.” Leah Stewart’s previous titles include The Myth of You and Me, a 2005 title of popular women’s fiction. In a review of this latest title, Booklist magazine called Stewart “a perceptive writer with a keen grasp of contemporary culture and domestic life whose depictions of marriage and motherhood are pitch-perfect in tone and detail“.

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (June)

Less Than Zero has become an American classic of the 1980s – both as a book written during the decade and set there. Ellis’ latest revisits the characters from the earlier book – seeing how they’ve grown and changed … or maybe not.