On the reading list this month we have more Murakami, an autobiography by the daughter of Steve Jobs, a thriller, a collection of short stories and a graphic novel as a bonus book!
I hope you guys enjoyed last months books, even if you were only able to read one, let me know what you thought on Instagram!
Sputnik Sweetheart
Haruki Murakami
Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamourous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels about her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.
Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished…
Small Fry
Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents- artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs- Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical, and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be.
Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s poignant story of childhood and growing up in disparate worlds. Scrappy, wise, and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide, marveling at the particular magic of growing up in this family, in this place and time, while grappling with her feelings of illegitimacy and shame. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling story by an insightful new literary voice.
The Wrong Heaven
Amy Bonnaffons
In The Wrong Heaven, Amy Bonnaffons draws us into a delightfully strange universe, in which her conflicted characters seek to solve their sexual and spiritual dilemmas in all the wrong places.
The title story’s heroine reckons with grief while arguing with Jesus and Mary lawn ornaments that come to life when she plugs them in. in ‘Horse’, we enter a world in which woman transform themselves into animals through a series of medical injections. In ‘Alternate’, a young woman convinces herself that all she needs to revive a stagnant relationship is the perfect poster of the Dalai Lama.
Intelligent, wry and crackling with energy, The Wrong Heaven is a stunning debut collection about the subtle mysteries beneath the surface of our lives and our power to transform.
Red Sparrow
Jason Matthews
In Present-Day Russia, intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a ‘Sparrow’, a trained seductress using the techniques of ‘sexpionage’. Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.
As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States. Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and-inevitably- forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads.
Page by Page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, this is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bad Girls
Alex De Campi & Victor Santos
‘Welcome to El Eden’
A gangster’s moll, a jazz singer, and a mambo queen all have their reasons for needing to escape El Eden casino in Havana. And during a tumultuous New Year’s Eve in 1958, when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the country and the nation falls to Fidel Castro’s Communists, they get their chance, thanks to the help of six suitcases filled with stolen dirty money. Of course, it’s one thing to get the cash- and quite another to get off the island alive… Acclaimed creators Alex de Campi and Victor Santos weave an unforgettable and glittering noir thriller… all wrapped up in the humid, fateful Caribbean nights that marked the very end of the great mob casinos.
Enjoy xx