Ducks, Newburyport

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Salman Rushdie

"Quichotte, an aging traveling salesman obsessed with the "unreal real" of TV, falls in impossible love with a queen of the screen; while obsessively writing her love letters, he wishes an imaginary son, Sancho, into existence. Together they set off across America in Quichotte's trusty Chevy Cruze to find her and convince her of his love. Meanwhile, Quichotte's tragicomic story is being told by the author who created him: Brother, a mediocre spy novelist in the midst of a midlife crisis. As their stories intertwine, we are taken on a wild, picaresque journey through a country on the edge of moral and spiritual collapse. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie brings us a new twist on a classic. Quichotte is a profoundly human love story and a wickedly entertaining satire of a corrupt age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. With unforgettable characters and riveting suspense, this dazzling novel showcases an essential storyteller at his brilliant best"--

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Valeria Luiselli

In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family’s crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained–or lost in the desert along the way.

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Chigozie Obioma

"A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks. Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from an educated and wealthy family. When her family objects to the union on the grounds that he is not her social equal, he sells most of his possessions to attend college in Cyprus. But when he arrives in Cyprus, he discovers that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements for him. Penniless, homeless, we watch as he gets further and further away from his dream and from home."--Publisher's description.

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George Saunders

The very persistent gappers of Frip is a celebrated work by George Saunders (Booker Prize Winner, MacArthur Fellow), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.