The Bibliophile's Compass

2018 Watching You by Lisa Jewell | UK | 320 | 2022 Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman | UK | 327 | 🏆 2022 Harry Sylvester Bird by Chinelo Okparanta | US | 312 | 🏆 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield | UK | 240 | 🏆🏆🏆 2022 Crying in the Bathroom by Erika L. Sánchez | US | 256 | 🏆 💡 Did you know? ⭕ Julia Armfield’s masterfully eerie debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea draws on elements of deep-sea lore and gothic isolation to subvert traditional stories of grief, tracking a marine researcher who returns from a disastrous submarine mission profoundly altered. ⭕ Ned Beauman’s brilliantly dark, award-winning satirical sci-fi Venomous Lumpsucker centers its plot around a corporate battle over the extinction of a deceptively intelligent fish. ⭕ In the realm of prose and personal history, Erika L. Sánchez transitions from her bestselling young adult fiction to deliver Crying in the Bathroom , a deeply candid essay collection written with raw, unfiltered humor about growing up...

1818 "In the Cottage Where Burns is Born", "Lines Written in the Highlands", and "Gadfly" by John Keats | UK | 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | US | 323 | 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2017 Grace by Paul Lynch | Ireland | 368 | 🏆🏆🏆🏆 2020 The New Wilderness by Diane Cook | US | 416 | 🏆🏆🏆 2023 The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera | Sri Lanka | 360 | 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 2023 A Learning Curve by Jan Kaneen | UK | 112 | 🏆 2023 The Vegan by Andrew Lipstein | US | 256 | 2023 All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky | US | 304 | 🏆🏆🏆 2023 Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter | US | 280 | 🏆 💡 Did you know? ⭕ When John Keats composed In the Cottage Where Burns is Born during a grueling walking tour of Scotland, he was battling a severe throat infection that forced him home early but yielded some of his most raw, unfiltered imagery. ⭕ Decades later, Harper Lee grew so frustrated trying to balance the structural elements of To Kill a Mockingbird that she threw her e...

💡 Did you know? Sam Shepard wrote his powerhouse play True West during a residency at California's Magic Theatre, using the brutal, claustrophobic sibling rivalry between two estranged brothers to create an architectural masterpiece of modern American drama. Meanwhile, Rachel Hartman's stunning YA fantasy debut Seraphina completely upended traditional dragon lore by introducing a world where dragons can take human form to serve as scholars and musicians, demonstrating that the most unforgettable independent world-building honors intellectual curiosity just as much as epic conflict. Deborah Harkness drafted Shadow of Night , she directly channeled her real-world expertise as a prominent historian of science and alchemy into the narrative, allowing her to flawlessly drop her time-traveling protagonist right into the complex Elizabethan world of the historical School of Night. Whether navigating the fierce, desert-born psychological tensions of Sam Shepard’s iconic play True West...

Title : Black Water Author : Joyce Carol Oates Publication Year : 1992 Rating : ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫 Pages : 160 Source : physical book from the UNI library Genre : literary fiction, historical fiction Awards : Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Fiction (1993), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1992) Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates follows Kelly Kelleher, a young woman whose brief connection with a famous U.S. Senator leads to the final, devastating moments of her life. The novel is historical fiction, inspired by a real person, a real senator, and a deeply heartbreaking event. But Kelly is not only Kelly. She also becomes a symbol of larger national disillusionment. Her loss of faith in the idea of the United States after the recent elections feels strikingly familiar, which is both impressive and deeply depressing. Even in the 1990s, she embodied an image of a country sinking under the weight of its own political failures. The novel suggests that no one is coming to save it...