NPR's Nancy Pearl gives a boost to some terrific under-the-radar fiction

According to librarian Nancy Pearl on NPR's Morning Edition, there's some great fiction out there just below the blockbuster bellowing radar. Among her favorites, Blood Harvest, a "spine-tingling gothic thriller" by S.J. Bolton, Under Heaven, a genre-defying historicalish kinda literary scifi/fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay ("superb...gorgeously written and thoroughly researched"), and Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel.

Pearl had picked up the freshly minted Montreal paperback at the library, then searched out ESJM's latest, The Singer's Gun...

"I've been trying to think of what metaphor to use in order to convey my experience with both these outstanding novels. To me, reading them was like watching through the lens of a camera as its focus gradually widens from a close — up shot; with each page the camera pulls farther and farther back, and we see more and more detail about how that initial view (person, event) fits in the larger picture. Or, alternatively, reading Mandel's books is akin to watching the ripples spread out from the initial "plunk" of a pebble tossed into a pond."

Click here to read/listen to the rest.

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