For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu

Published Mar 2015, 256 pages

To his Chinese parents, newly settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant father's dreams of Western masculinity. At the first opportunity, each of the girls lights out on her own. But for Peter, escape is not as simple as fleeing his parents' home. He knows he is really a girl. With the help of his far-flung sisters and the sympathetic souls he finds along the way, Peter inches ever closer to his own life, his own skin, in this darkly funny, emotionally acute debut.

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Hardcover (May 2015), 272 pages. Little Brown & Company
BookBrowse Rating: 4/5, Critics' Consensus:  4.5/5
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Reviewed by James Broderick

Pity the poor, contemporary Irish novelist. If he or she writes a political novel, reviewers will invariably drone on about how growing up in the wake of "The Troubles" has left an indelible mark on the writer's conscience. If the story is a fantasy, here come the critical bromides about "the little people," and the inescapable "enchantment of the Emerald Isle." If the author tells a comic tale, it's often attributed to the native "gift of gab" and the legendary Irish wit. And if dour or dyspeptic, the novelist is placed firmly in the tradition of nationalistic hardship: political ... continued

Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for The Black Snow:

The Black Snow is advertised as Paul Lynch's take on the "pastoral novel." Such a characterization presumes some familiarity with the term, though given the fairly infrequent use of the pastoral mode in contemporary fiction, it's likely some readers might be unfamiliar with precisely what that means - and even literary critics can't seem to agree, specifically, on what constitutes a "pastoral."

Generally, a pastoral work of literature concerns itself with the rural countryside, and the people who inhabit it. The pastoral mode is well established in the Western literary tradition, having found its first full expression in the works of Theocritus, who wrote in the third century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. In his case, a pastoral was most often associated with shepherds, either in duos or groups, engaging in dialogues, singing contests or expressing romantic love ... continued

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4. Editor's Choice

Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides:

In the Kingdom of Ice concerns an ill-fated 19th century expedition to the North Pole. There are actually two North Poles - a geographic North Pole and a magnetic one. The geographic North Pole is recognized as the northernmost point on the earth's surface, and is the axis point around which the earth spins. It's 450 miles north of Greenland in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The magnetic North Pole is approximately 100 miles south of the geographic pole and due north of Canada's Sverdrup Island. It is not fixed and moves on a daily basis ...continued

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Cynthia Barnett discusses Rain in which she explores the natural and cultural history of rain.

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Whatever your interests you can find the books that are just right for you by browsing and cross-referencing our recommended reading lists by genre, time period, setting and wide variety of themes. Members have full access, non-members can see limited results. Here is a selection from our Foreign Language Translation section. Click each book for info:

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Each month BookBrowse previews 80+ notable books. Here is a particularly interesting title from these upcoming books.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: Jun 2015
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alternate History, 400 pages

Critic's Opinion: 5/5
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Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and propelled by a plot that will shock you again and again, The Library at Mount Char is at once horrifying and hilarious, mind-blowingly alien and heartbreakingly human, sweepingly visionary and nail-bitingly thrilling - and signals the arrival of a major new voice in fantasy.

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A Killing in the Hills: Bell Elkins #1
by Julia Keller

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From the Jacket
What's happening in Acker's Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter.  Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker's Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?

One of the witnesses to the brutal incident was Carla Elkins, teenaged daughter of Bell Elkins, the prosecuting attorney for Raythune County, WV. Carla was shocked and horrified by what she saw, but after a few days, she begins to recover enough to believe that she might be uniquely placed to help her mother do her job.

After all, what better way to repair their fragile, damaged relationship? But could Carla also end up doing more harm than good - in fact, putting her own life in danger?


"Starred Review. A fictional debut for a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born and raised in West Virginia, whose love for the state, filled with natural beauty and deep poverty, pervades a mystery that has plenty of twists and turns and a shocking conclusion." - Kirkus Reviews

"A Killing in the Hills is a remarkably written and remarkably tense debut. I loved it." - Dennis Lehane


5 people will each win a paperback copy of A Killing in the Hills.
This giveaway is open to residents of the USA & Canada only, unless you are a BookBrowse member, in which case you are eligible to win wherever you might live.

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