Kirt’s Suggestions

The Sisters Brothers

By Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt spins a violent, lustful, hung-over and humorous odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier.

Black Hills

By Carsten Jensen

Paha Sapa, a young Sioux warrior, first encounters General George Armstrong Custer as Custer lies dying on the battlefield at Little Bighorn. He believes, as do the holy men of his tribe, that the legendary general's ghost entered him at that moment and will remain with him until Paha Sapa convinces him to leave.

In Black Hills, Dan Simmons weaves the stories of Paha Sapa and Custer together seamlessly, depicting a violent and tumultuous time in the history of Native Americans and the United States Army. Haunted by the voice of the general his people called "Long Hair," Paha Sapa lives a long life, driven by a dramatic vision he experiences in the Black Hills that are his tribe's homeland. As an explosives worker on the massive Mount Rushmore project, he may finally be rid of his ghosts--on the very day FDR comes to South Dakota to dedicate the Jefferson face.

Super Sad True Love Story

By Gary Shteyngart

In the near future, America is crushed by a financial crisis and its patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Then Lenny Abramov, son of a Russian immigrant janitor, and an ardent fan of "printed, bound media artifacts" (aka books), meets Eunice Park, an impossibly cute Korean American woman with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. Could falling in love redeem a planet falling apart?