Category: Fiction

Sacrifices For Kingdoms by Patricia D’Arcy Laughlin (EXCERPT)

Read an excerpt from Sacrifices For Kingdoms, a debut contemporary romance/women’s fiction novel featuring Elizabeth, a sophisticated activist and philanthropist from Trinidad, and Michael, a socially conscious European prince, who are irresistibly drawn to one another. As their love deepens, they must navigate dangerous secrets, political intrigue, and the struggle to reconcile their opposing loyalties. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/24/sacrifices-for-kingdoms-by-patricia-darcy-laughlin-excerpt/

Let The Dead Bury The Dead by Allison Epstein (EXCERPT)

Hi, readers! As we head into the weekend, let me gift you with an excerpt from Allison Epstein’s latest novel, Let The Dead Bury The Dead. The war is over – it’s 1812 and Russian forces have defeated Napoleon. Sasha, a self-made captain of the Imperial Army, is finally coming home to his lover, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/20/let-the-dead-bury-the-dead-by-allison-epstein-excerpt/

The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler

I’m not sure how it happened, but way too many Millennial women in the United States have been raised to be people-pleasers in a manner that horrifies my late Gen X/geriatric Millennial sensibilities. Somehow, they’ve been persuaded by “Lean In” and “yes and” culture (with a healthy dose of late-stage capitalism) to think that having …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/13/the-wife-app-by-carolyn-mackler/

Come Away From Her by Samuel W. Gailey

Cover art lately has been impressive all across the industry but y’all, look at this gorgeous thing. It’s even prettier than the Kiki Smith etching that inspired the book, in my opinion anyway. And in my opinion? Come Away From Her reads like Marilynne Robinson deciding to turn her hand at commercial fiction a la …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/01/26/come-away-from-her-by-samuel-w-gailey/

Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr

Softcore by Tordad Zolghadr

In Softcore a first-person narrator, annoyingly also named Tirday Zolghadr, relates the weeks and days before the opening of a new and arty nightclub in contemporary Tehran, interspersed with his remembrances of earlier times in and around Iran’s capital city. The book has some funny bits, such as a running gag about the splittist tendencies …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/27/softcore-by-tirdad-zolghadr/

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Finally reading The Sorrows of Young Werther closes a gap in my education as a German major, a mere thirty years or so after I earned my degree. Because my institution only had two professors of German, an upper-level course in Goethe was only offered periodically. And the one time it was offered when I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/15/die-leiden-des-jungen-werthers-by-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa, known in English as The House on the Embankment and with the original title Дом на набережной, poses a question that it doesn’t really answer, or at least not directly. On a hot August day in 1972 Vadim Glebow has traveled out to a distant corner of Moscow to get …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/13/das-haus-an-der-moskwa-by-yuri-trifonov/

Heisser Sommer by Uwe Timm

Heisser Sommer by Uwe Timm

I came to Heisser Sommer prepared not to like it. A book by a male author in his forties, looking back on his glorious youth twenty years previous. That Timm chose not to use quotation marks for characters’ speech added to my annoyance. Worse, it’s set in the overexposed late 1960s, featuring a male protagonist …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/07/heisser-sommer-by-uwe-timm/

Why We Fly by Kimberly Jones & Gilly Segal

Oof, this is a gut punch of a book, that tackles not only how racism affects high school athletes but also how relationships fade away as graduation and college loom nearer. Eleanor “Leni” Greenberg and Chanel “Nelly” Irons are best friends and members of their high school’s competitive cheerleading team. In the summer leading up …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/08/why-we-fly-by-kimberly-jones-gilly-segal/

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

I wish I could remember who recommended The Man Who Walked Through Walls to me, I owe them a great big thank you. It’s a book I would never have found on my own, and I was completely charmed. The Man Who Walked Through Walls was originally published in French in 1943, reprinting stories that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/12/the-man-who-walked-through-walls-by-marcel-ayme/