Spring is finally here, so is our bi-monthly round up of new fiction! Highlights from the presentation on March 20^th are listed below. Hover your cursor over each book cover to view a brief description. Click on the image to go to the item in our catalog. The full list of books is available on our website. Join us for our next presentation, in two months, on May 22.

I learned this week, thanks to an article in the Wall Street Journal, that I actually have a favorite genre. Technically, it’s not a genre; it’s more of a technique or style, but being a reader who has never before been able to claim a more specific taste profile than “general fiction,” I could now say that I’m a fan of Slipstream. This term, while not really new, has recently been gaining more of an audience. Slipstream was actually coined back in 1989, by critic and author Bruce Sterling, in an essay addressing the evolution of his genre. He was eager to separate what he considered to be true science fiction, from the stories that simply incorporated elements of the genre. So he called this area of science fiction “slipstream.” He explains the genre thus:

It seems to me that the heart of slipstream is an attitude of peculiar aggression against “reality.” These are fantasies of a kind, but not fantasies which are “futuristic” or “beyond the fields we know.” These books tend to sarcastically tear at the structure of “everyday life.”

And he goes on to describe other characteristics. The whole essay is available online here.

Before, I would often apply the term magical realism, or realistic fantasy to the stories I preferred to read most, but that never quite seemed adequate. Sometimes the stories would contain charming supernatural creatures, mysterious plant life or visitors from another time or dimension. Other times the stories simply presented a reality that was slightly off kilter, creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere, and would make little attempt to directly address the dissonance. Kelly Link, in a recent NPR interview, describes her stories, many of which are written in this way, as adhering to a “night time logic”, similar to the way the mind, while asleep, sort of accepts the events in a dream, events that would confound us when awake.

I’ve collected some of the titles that fit this type into a Pinterest board on our Chelmsford Library Pinterest page,and included links for a few recent examples above. So, the next time you’re feeling a bit mischievous or playful, or would like to read something a little more out of the ordinary, try one of these books.

What better way to spend a snowy afternoon than with a really great page-turner. Here a few suggestions to help eat up those hours indoors:

The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins: TGOTT is being heavily marketed as the next Gone Girl – it’s even been  optioned for film by Dreamworks. This fast-paced thriller follows Rachel, a thirty something Brit whose life is descending into shambles, due to being jilted by her husband and a developing drinking problem. After a few devastating misjudgments, Rachel finds herself embroiled in a mysterious disappearance rife with timeline gaps and unexpected suspects. As with Gone Girl, the book relies on the accounts of different characters to tell the full story, those accounts are mostly unreliable, and the plot of the novel is full of twists that catch the reader off-guard.

Her by Harriet Lane: Set in London, and full of sharp social and psychological insight, the narrative unfolds from the alternating perspectives of Nina and Emma, two thirty-something women whose lives have led them down very different paths. On the surface, Nina is a trendy artist and Emma is a harried mother of two. Nina knows Emma somehow, but Emma shows no indication that she knows Nina when they meet. What is the connection between these women, and why does Nina suddenly take such an interest in Emma? Motivations are revealed and the result will not disappoint.

Another title to watch out for is called The Kind Worth Killing, by Chelmsford native, author Peter Swanson. His first book, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, is a gripping mystery that takes place in Boston and the North Shore, and was hailed as one of the best first novels of 2014 by the Washington Post. His latest, a re-imagining of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, begins on an overnight flight from Boston to London, where two strangers form a dark bond over a plot to commit murder. Nelson DeMille calls it “an extraordinarily well-written tale of deceit and revenge told by a very gifted writer…The twists are not just in the plot; they are also in the heads of the plotters.”