Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (2022)
Mandel’s done it again with her followup to the bestselling The Glass Hotel. It’s science fiction that doesn’t feel like science fiction. Some of the characters have a little more technology than we do, but whether they’re on Vancouver Island in the early twentieth century or a future colony on the moon, they’re still human. What starts as three disparate threads — the exiled son of an earl, a famous writer trying to get home at the beginning of a pandemic, and a lonely detective from the future — coalesces into a moving theory of human interconnectedness.
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (2022)
Straub, the co-owner of Books are Magic (which just delighted Brooklyn book lovers with the announcement of its second location), uses her latest book to pay homage to her father. It’s a time travel tale about a woman who goes to sleep on her 40th birthday and wakes up as her 16 year old self in the ‘90s, but it’s really about examining the relationship adult children have with their aging parents. It’s a beach read with a surprisingly emotional punch.
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (2022)
A good writer admits when he’s been licked, and I can’t do this one any more justice than the book flap that nabbed me at Edgartown Books:
A propulsive novel in which a successful art dealer confesses the story of his rise to a former classmate in an airport bar — a story that begins with his rescue and resuscitation of a drowning man with whom he will become inextricably linked, to disturbing ends.