Best Reads 2022 at BCIT Library: Fiction

"In Lessons, Ian McEwan’s hapless hero combs his life trajectory from childhood to old age, seeking an overarching thread that makes sense of it all. Despite the novel’s many autobiographical elements, Roland Blaine, unlike McEwan, feels he never lived up to his potential – careerwise or otherwise. Set against a backdrop of 70 years of global cataclysms, his focus is on damaging wrong turns, including an aberrant adolescent affair with a predatory boarding school teacher, and abandonment by his wife, who left him and their infant son without notice in order to give her all to her writing." From NPR

"Ann-Marie MacDonald’s first novel in eight years, Fayne, is a reinvention for the bestselling author, who turns her attention away from the Canadian locales of her previous works to the wild borderlands of the British Isles. In this doorstopper of a book – which runs to 736 pages – we follow a young person named Charlotte Bell who comes of age in Fayne, a secluded estate situated on the border between England and Scotland.' From Quill & Quire

"Retelling the story of Doctor Moreau through his daughter’s eyes, this reworking of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau should satisfy readers who loved the original, as well as those who’ve never encountered it." From Library Journal

"In someone else’s rom-com, literary agent Nora Stephens is the villain — a city-slicker-workaholic the hero dumps for a small-town love. That script is flipped when Nora’s sister drags her to Sunshine Falls, an idyllic, small town in North Carolina. Nora’s vacation is off to a great start, until she runs into cold-hearted New York book editor Charlie Lastra, whose family owns the failing local bookshop. Their chemistry crackles as they try to outwit each other with taunts, teases and maybe flirts." From NPR

Coming soon.
"You know that feeling when you finally beat a video game? Emotional catharsis floods your mind and body and, drained, you set down the controller with a sigh. If you’re not much of a gamer, but you still crave that emotional release, Gabrielle Zevin’s brilliant novel about two friends’ journey to video game stardom is the perfect substitute." From NPR

"This new doorstopper of a historical fantasy novel reimagines the rise of the British empire as intrinsically intertwined with the colonization and consolidation of magic. Robin, stolen from his home in Canton and brought to Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation in the mid-19th century, finds himself at the center of a plot to bring down the imperial machine." From NPR