Fiction
Read It Forward features some of the finest fiction around, from international bestsellers to hot debuts. For readers who love contemporary, voice-driven, character-rich books.
Congrats to Jennifer V., Heidi B., Debra A., Aimee D., Alyssa K., and 195 other members of the Read It Forward community!
Their entries were selected at random to win an Advance Reader’s Copy of Kristiana Kahakauwila’s short story collection This Is Paradise.
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Meanwhile, why not click around and get your first look at the next great book!
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“I wished to draw out Hawai`i’s complicated nature,” says Kristiana Kahakauwila. “Its anger, its sadness, its generosity, and its sense of history reverberating into the present.”
Kristiana Kahakauwila talks about returning to Hawai`i to get to know the island home she’d left many years before. “I realized how far I had drifted away from the part of me that was Native,” she says. “I didn’t remember much Hawaiian history; I couldn’t recognize words in the Hawaiian language. I hadn’t eaten poi (pounded taro root) in several years. And mostly, I felt culturally separate from my paternal family, despite their efforts to re-introduce our traditions to me.”
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On June 4, 2013, Read It Forward enjoyed a live video chat with bestselling authors Nichole Bernier, Jenna Blum, and J. Courtney Sullivan and we’re delighted to share it with you!
Perfect for book club members – and all voracious readers of fiction – who want to connect with bestselling authors. Think of it as a big virtual book signing. Thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed to a great conversation.
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“Odd, dark, comical, confusing,” says RIFer Sharon. “It brought to mind Steve Erickson and David Foster Wallace.
The city of San Francisco is a character in the melee, and the most vivid one at that. I need to read it again and make a flow chart!”
Now in paperback wherever books are sold, The Dead Do Not Improve is the anticipated debut from Grantland editor Jay Caspian Kang. Named a #1 Critics Pick by Time Out New York.
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“The story was so very well-written that it stayed in my head after I was done,” says RIFer Elizabeth. “I actually went back and read the last chapter again the following day. I look forward to hearing more from Anthony Marra.”
Keep your eyes out for this book. In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.
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Read It Forward talks with author Kevin Kwan about Crazy Rich Asians, the outrageously funny debut novel that bestselling author Plum Sykes says is “like a Chinese Dallas meets Pride and Prejudice.”
Crazy Rich Asians is about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.
Kevin Kwan talks about the “Crazy Rich Asian consumer” and his years as a fashion student and spectator.
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