Howdy, readers! When was the last time you moved every book you own? Because for me, it was yesterday, and every muscle in my body hurts. Halfway through the move, I thought, "I need to pare down." And yet, this new duplex has so much more room for books... Something tells me I'll be paring up.

This week, an upcoming event with a Next-Chapter-bookseller-turned-author, a bunch of recommendations from our star recommender Jean, a trail rations cookbook, a new Choose Your Own Adventure for adults, and an exploration of the literary trend that may define the 2020s...

All that and more, in this edition of the NCB Newsletter!

Get Lost In A Speculative Epic!

Today, I have a meandering recommendation for a meandering book, by way of discursion into a highly discursive literary trend. Vajra Chandrasekera's incredible The Saint of Bright Doors left me with one question, the one I ask after many debut novels, "So, is this as weird as this guy gets?" Folks, I am pleased to report: he gets weirder. Now I'm left with a different problem: how to describe, let alone advertise, a book as inventive and unconventional as Rakesfall. In order to (attempt to) do that, I must embark on a terribly long tangent...

In early 2022, when I was a newly minted Next Chapter bookseller and walking into a grocery store unmasked felt novel and daring, I noticed an interesting shift in high-profile new fiction. "Why is everyone writing Cloud Atlas?" I thought. Around this time last year, in our June 2023 newsletter, I offered the reader tongue-in-cheek directions to create their own "Atlaslike" by cutting up and duct-taping together several different novels. (I don't think anyone took me up on this, thankfully.) Prime examples of the trend I lovingly lampooned include Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land, Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, Hanya Yanigahara's To Paradise, and How High We Go In The Dark by the Twin Cities' own Sequoia Nagamatsu. Of course, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is the common ancestor here, if there is one. My personal favorite, Nick Harkaway's Gnomon, beat the crowd by several years. But other than that, most of the aforementioned novels were being written at the same time, which points to an interesting conflux of the collective imagination.

I wasn't the only one noticing the burgeoning current that was leading critics and publicists alike to wear out the word "kaleidoscopic." Novelist and essayist Lincoln Michel's own newsletter in January 2022 noted the emergence of what he labelled the "speculative epic" (I'm not sure how I feel about this term, but it sure beats "Atlaslike"). In an article for Esquire that July, Michel defines the speculative epic as a novel with (1) an epic scope -- spanning hundreds of years and many settings and characters -- that (2) blends (or bends) genres -- historical fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, literary fiction, and sometimes even nonfiction. I've been routinely surprised at just how sci-fi recent novels have become while still being shelved in plain ol' Fiction. "In 2022," Michel writes, "speculative fiction is realism" (needless to say, this hasn't gotten any less true since). I would add that speculative epics are formally unconventional, sometimes briefly becoming essays, plays, or articles, embedding stories within stories, or throwing their own canonicity into question.

Next, the speculative epic is (3) a form whose scale and complexity mirrors the scale and complexity of the systemic issues it seeks to confront, such as climate change, economic inequality, and racism, and which (4) grapples with postmodern concerns regarding metanarrative. A speculative epic is a grand narrative that doubts the reliability of grand narratives. In more optimistic entries, such as Cloud Cuckoo Land, stories (or art) might come out as a source of salvation, once readers have worked their way through the diffracted splinters of the book's own narrative. In pessimistic examples, stories are tools of propaganda or earthly illusions to be shed. In some entries, they are both. This puts the novel at odds with itself in a distinctly postmodern fashion.

I view the speculative epic as a nascent successor to the great postmodern genre of the 1980s-2010s: the systems novel, or maximalist novel, or mega-novel. These terms don't perfectly overlap, but they outline a then-new breed of book: ambitious, broad of scope, and meticulously researched, engaging with issues of authority, hegemony, technology, and complexity. These are the books that can only be read with an internet connection on hand for rampant Googling. You carry them around despite their unwieldy size, because they make you look smart. If you actually manage to finish one, you are very briefly able to comprehend the capitalist world-system in its entirety. I'm talking Gravity's Rainbow; I'm talking Infinite Jest; I'm talking Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, and Richard Powers. Yes, with some important exceptions such as 2666 and White Teeth, the systems novel is primarily the work of what Jonathan Franzen called "a canon of intellectual, socially edgy white-male American fiction writers." The more things change, the more etc. etc.

While speculative epics inherit a lot from systems novels, the most important distinction to my mind is the kind of person writing it, and the implicit point of view. Systems novels, in their effort to depict the present or recent past with visionary scope and detail, center the West and the Global North, and cast whiteness as value-neutral. The systems which they dissect are political, economic, and industrial, but they don't always engage with systems of racial or sexual oppression. Speculative epics, on the other hand, often center minority experiences, and their rise coincides with an increased interest in and bandwidth for marginalized perspectives in the mainstream. Moreover, by expanding their chronological scope to the distant past and/or far future, they often reveal the arbitrariness of our present culture's racial, sexual, and national identity constructs. Just as it explodes conventional literary fiction into a mélange of sci-fi, fantasy, and history, the speculative epic can explode white American cis-heteronormativity into any number of queer and/or nonwhite perspectives. At its best, it blows open genre, gender, time, space, and species.

I say that to say this: Vajra Chandrasekera's Rakesfall arrives as part of a fresh, exciting trend that has not yet existed long enough to be called a tradition. But it is also so unlike anything else that it took me a five-paragraph essay to even establish the necessary context to compare it to another book. And now that I have, I also need to add that Rakesfall might have as much in common with Hindu classics / folklore / mythology as it does with anything written in English. (One assumes David Mitchell also took inspiration from Hindu mythology in his depiction of reincarnation in Cloud Atlas). I'm sure a Sri Lankan reading Rakesfall would get so many references I missed, and I'm sure they would find it just as demanding as I did even so. 

At one point, Rakesfall references an 11th-century Sanskrit manuscript of collected stories called the Kathasaritsagara, or "the Ocean of Streams of Stories." This would also be an apt title for Rakesfall, more so even than its speculative epic kin. It is SFF acid-jazz. It is an odyssey and a challenge. It is a subaltern dissertation on power and deep time. It's also way funnier than that makes it sound. The text on the cover ("Will you follow me to the end?") isn't just a tagline; it's a dare. At times, you will lose the ocean for the streams, and you have to be okay with that, because even as speculative epics go, it isn't easy to follow. Chandrasekera favors synchesis over chiasmus, and poetry over exposition. But many chapters were published as short stories first, and stand on their own as diverse, entertaining fables, thanks to Chandrasekera's excellent prose, endless inventiveness, and often surprising sense of humor.

I don't know if I could tell you what Rakesfall is actually about. I don't know if I could recommend it to you without writing as much as I have written here. But I know we need more books like Rakesfall. Long live Vajra Chandrasekera, and long live the speculative epic!

In Mystery/Thriller

AVAILABLE NOW: STAFF PICK!

The God of the Woods — Liz Moore

One August morning in 1975, 15-year-old Barbara Van Laar is nowhere to be found. She’s missing from her bunk at the summer camp owned by her family. Fourteen years earlier her older brother, then 8 years old, disappeared under similar circumstances, never to be found. There begins an intricate and multi-layered tale of family relationships and secrets – everything needed for a can’t-put-down whodunnit. Loads of suspects who are eliminated one at a time –

or not. The reader is in the dark until the very end. A compelling and compulsive read.

-Jean

AVAILABLE JULY 9th: PREORDER NOW



A Refiner's Fire — Donna Leon

Early one morning, two teenage gangs are arrested after a violent clash in one of Venice's squares. Commissario Griffoni walks the last of the boys home after his father, Monforte, fails to pick him up. Coincidentally, Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy friend of the Vice-Questore to vet Monforte, who was once the celebrated hero of a devastating bombing of an Italian military compound in Iraq. Yet Monforte was never been awarded a medal. Brunetti and Griffoni delve into the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte's past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption. This is Donna Leon at her best: an elegant, sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become richer with each book.

In Fiction

AVAILABLE NOW: SIGNED COPIES!

Big In Sweden — Sally Franson

Paulie has never put much stock in the idea of family: she has her boyfriend Declan and best friend Jemma, and that’s more than enough for her. Yet one night, she lets Jemma convince her to audition for a Swedish TV show where Swedish-Americans compete to win a reunion with their Swedish relatives. To her shock, her drunken submission video wins her a spot, and against Declan’s advice, Paulie hops on a plane to Sweden and launches into the contest with seven other Americans. Grappling with long-held notions of family, friendship, and love—not to mention her feelings for the handsome Swedish cameraman who’s been assigned to follow her around—Paulie starts to reconsider her past and rethink what she wants for the future.

AVAILABLE JULY 9th: PREORDER NOW

All This And More — Peng Shepherd

Marsh just turned 45. Her career is stagnant, her marriage imploded, and her teenage daughter more distant by the day. So she can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to star on All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to let contestants revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right. But even as she becomes a famous lawyer and gets back together with her high school sweetheart, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises is too good to be true. Can Marsh make her life everything she wants it to be? Here’s the twist: the reader gets to decide what Marsh does next, in a playful homage to the Choose Your Own Adventure books of yore!

In Cooking

AVAILABLE NOW

New Camp Cookbook on the Trail— Emily Vikre

Make your next hike your best hike with recipes for drinks, snacks, and even meals that are completely portable and completely delicious. After a long day outdoors, there’s nothing better than a cold drink or hot meal as the sun starts to set. And there’s also something special about that midday meal on the go, whether your view is the mountains or the sea. In New Camp Cookbook On the Trail, Emily Vikre shares dozens of all-new recipes, as well as a few greatest hits and remixes from Camp Cocktails and The Family Camp Cookbook, so you’re sure to find just what you are craving for your next trip. Add to that a quick and easy guide to using a dehydrator, with recipes for jerky, fruit leathers, and dehydrated fruits and veggies, you can add flavor to any outdoor adventure!

In Sci-Fi/Fantasy

AVAILABLE JULY 9th: PREORDER NOW

Navola — Paolo Bacigalupi

In the city-state of Navola, business is power, and power is everything. The di Regulai family head a mercantile empire that has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will take the reins of power and enter into the games of Navolese diplomacy: knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies behind a smile. But ancient currents run beneath the gilt and grandeur. Davico's fate depends on an eldritch family heirloom--a fossilized dragon eye--and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister Celia, whose family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.

In Memoir

AVAILABLE JULY 9th: PREORDER NOW

True Gretch — Gretchen Whitmer

From trailblazing Michigan governor and rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer comes an unconventionally honest, personal, and funny account of her life and career, full of insights that guided her through a global pandemic, showdowns with high-profile bullies, and even a kidnapping and assassination plot. Whitmer reveals the principles and instincts that have shaped her career, from her early days as a lawyer and legislator, to the bold and innovative actions that led Michigan through a series of unprecedented crises. Written with Whitmer’s straight-shooting style, True Gretch is not only a compelling account of her remarkable journey, but a blueprint for anyone who wants to make a difference in their community, their country, or the world.

Meet Great Authors at NCB

Andrew DeYoung (The Day He Never Came Home)

In Conversation With Tony Wirt

Thursday, July 11th at 6:00pm

Regan knows her husband John wants to give her and their children a good life. The long hours he puts in as a financial advisor prove his dedication. Until one day, John doesn't come home, and the FBI shows up at their door instead, telling Regan her husband is mixed up with dangerous criminals and has been living under an assumed identity. Regan must make a split-second decision about what to tell the suits and what to withhold. But as her lies of omission begin to raise questions, Regan becomes embroiled in John's crimes, and learns just what she is capable of to protect herself, her children, and their future.

Andrew DeYoung is the author of The Temps. He works as an editor at a children's book publishing company, and he lives with his wife and two children in the Twin Cities area. The Day He Never Came Home is his first domestic thriller. Tony Wirt is the bestselling author of Just Stay Away and the forthcoming Pike Island. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he spent nine years doing media relations for the Hawkeyes before moving to Rochester, MN, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

Georgia Cloepfil (The Striker and the Clock)

In Conversation With Kathryn Savage

Thursday, July 18th at 6:00pm

Georgia played professional soccer for six years, on six teams, in six countries. In those years, the sport became more than a game--it was a way of life. She lived out of a single suitcase, chasing better opportunities and the euphoria of playing well. The Striker and the Clock is a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athletics. It's also an eye-opening look at the still-developing world of professional women's soccer. Written in ninety short passages--reflecting the ninety minutes of a soccer match--the book is a love letter to a maddening sport and a reflection on the way it has shaped a life.

Georgia Cloepfil is a writer and former professional soccer player from Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, The New York Times Magazine, n+1, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and works at Whitman College. Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass explores topics of environmental justice and links between pollution and public health. Groundglass was named a best read of the year by the Sydney Morning Herald, a Yale Review Favorite Cultural Artifact, and an EcoLit Books Best Environmental Book of 2022. Her other writing has recently appeared in Ecotone, Guernica, and VQR, and she is a frequent book review contributor to World Literature Today. Savage is an assistant professor of creative writing at MCAD.

Juneau Black (Summers End)

In Conversation With Mindy Mejia

Friday, July 26th at 6:00pm

It's late August in Shady Hollow, and intrepid reporter Vera Vixen agrees to chaperone the school’s field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture. Naturally, her good friend Lenore Lee tags along. But one morning, the group finds a corpse that is distinctly more modern than expected. Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in the recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues—including Lenore’s sister, Ligeia. Now fox and raven must delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to clear Ligeia’s name. Someone thought they could get away with the perfect murder. Can Vera and Lenore unearth the truth in time? 

Juneau Black is the pen name of authors Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel. They share a love of excellent bookshops, fine cheeses, and good murders (in fictional form only). Though they are two separate people, if you ask either of them a question about their childhood, you are likely to get the same answer. This is a little unnerving for any number of reasons. Mindy Mejia is a CPA and a graduate of the Hamline MFA program. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family, and is the author of Strike Me Down, Everything You Want Me to Be, and Leave No Trace. To Catch a Storm is the start of her first series.

Cancer Season is here already? Check out great authors born under the Sign of the Crab on the latest iteration of our rotating zodiac display -- George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Octavia Butler, and more!

June 25th saw the first publication of new small press Spade & Scroll, the latest addition to the Twin Cities' amazing literary scene. Their first book is Ryan Lucas Henderson's short story collection West From the Fallen Wall, and we'll have signed copies here, while supplies last! 

Thanks to our author liaison Emily, more authors have been stopping by Next Chapter to sign their books! Pictured, we have Sally Franson (author of Big in Sweden) and Meryl Wilsner (of Something to Talk About, Mistakes Were Made, and Cleat Cute)! Not pictured, Nathan Hill also came by to sign Wellness, which is now in paperback.

STAFF & CUSTOMER FAVORITE!

JEAN FAVORITE; SIGNED COPIES (while supplies last)

AVAILABLE NOW: STAFF PICK!

Kala — Colin Walsh

Years after 15-year-old Kala disappeared from her hometown on the Irish coast, a wedding brings her old friends together again. When skeletal remains are found, and two more teen girls go missing, past and present come together in this tension-filled thriller.

-Jean

JEAN FAVORITE!

EMILY FAVORITE!

Manga Club: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, vol. 1

Saturday, July 13 at 5:00pm

Come to Next Chapter Booksellers at 5pm on the second Saturday of every month to eat some Japanese snacks and talk manga with other otaku! Hosted by our resident manga expert Graham, the Manga Club (マンガクラブ, lit. manga kurabu) provides a forum to casually discuss a new title every month. For our July meeting, a title redolent with midsummer nostalgia: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, by Hitoshi Ashinano! Our conversation will cover the first volume of the deluxe/omnibus edition. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (lit. 'Yokohama Shopping Log') is a fine vintage, a 90s-00s slice-of-life sci-fi which prefigures the sort of 'cozy apocalypse' stories that have become more common in the past few years. We follow Alpha, an ageless android who runs an oceanside café in the twilight of the Anthropocene, finding wonder, connection, and fulfillment in the small tasks of daily life.

Enemies To Readers: The Art of Catching Feelings

Thursday, July 25th at 5:00pm

Whether or not you are already in love with romance novels, or are seeking a new relationship with the genre, Enemies to Readers invites you to join us every last Thursday at 5pm to discuss the latest read, as well as our continuing passion for tropes and spicy reads. Knock your next read out of the park with July's pick: The Art of Catching Feelings! A professional baseball player and his heckler prove that true love is worth going to bat for in this swoony romance by USA Today bestselling author Alicia Thompson.

First Chapter Story Time

Every Saturday at 10:30am

Join us for First Chapter Story Time Saturdays at 10:30am, when Michael or a special guest reader will share a couple favorite picture books from our children’s section, followed by an activity related to the story! Children of all ages are invited. Enjoy a story, browse our books, and instill a love of reading in your tykes! This week, Summer is Here by Renee Watson and Bea Jackson, and Buffalo Fluffalo by Bess Kalb and Erin Kraan!

Staff Pick Spotlight:

Code Noir — Lelani Lewis

Check out the corn ribs with scallion-jalapeno butter! I also recommend treating yourself to the tepache featured here (especially during a hot summer day)!

-Milan

Opening Lines:

"The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph

records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags -- onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.

I've witnessed this spectacle every September for twenty-one years. It is a brilliant event, invariably. The students greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures, as always. The parents stand sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in every direction. The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people's names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage. This assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of the year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation."

-White Noise, Don DeLillo

We Are Open!

Three ways to shop with Next Chapter Booksellers:

1. Come in the store and browse. Talk to a bookseller or peruse the shelves, as you prefer.

2. Order online or over the phone (at 651-225-8989) for in-store pickup. We'll let you know when your books are ready, then you can swing by and pick them up at your leisure.

3. We can mail your books (at no additional charge for orders over $75). This option is available for web, phone, or in-store orders.

We're here 10am to 5pm Monday through Saturday and noon to 5pm on Sunday.