March Break-Out: Adult Escapist Fiction

You’re likely facing one of three scenarios when March Break kicks off next week:

1. You’re stuck at home with your terrible children. We’re kidding! – we know they’re wonderful and you love them a ton – however, you will nonetheless be saddled with a lot of kid-u-tainment in the week ahead.
2. You’re on a vacation with your kids/your spouse/yourself. You’ll have some scheduled trips to the aquarium/local sport venue/notable landmark (notice how aquarium is the only specific example, there?), but a lot of in-between time where you’ll just be spinning your gears.
3. You don’t get March Break off and you’ll just be going to work, as per usual. Fun, wow.

In any of these three scenarios, we’re sure you’ll be looking for a little escape. With these seven escapist reads for seven days (grown-ups, only!), we’ve got you covered. Pretend to be an aristocrat like the mysterious X in Trifonova’s debut novel. A mystery set in a branch of the Parisian public library, history professor Bruno Leblon is searching for clues to his aristocratic family’s past. He encounters another library patron – “X” – who has been deliberately altering archival photographs of his family, fashioning themselves noble. Leblon becomes obsessed with investigating “X”, just as you will be obsessed with this intellectual thriller. In this collection of poems, McGrath looks beyond the surface of mundane domesticity – through events and objects like telemarketer calls and junk mail – to meditate on how they reflect our innermost thoughts and feelings. Use it as a guide to see past the frustration of the dry turkey sandwich at the March Break museum Druxy’s, the airport customs line, or (sucker! you’re at work like me!) your commute. Your holiday will certainly fare better (even if you didn’t go anywhere!) than the Namibia tour group in The Witchdoctor’s Bones, who pitch murder, greed, and want against their destination’s history, folklore, and witchcraft. What was once a holiday becomes a test of moral character in this dark comedy from de Nikoltis. The Hanged Man unfolds through a series of diary entries by its protagonist, Glen Harrison, a PhD candidate who proposes researching the origins of the earliest-known tarot deck. The Visconti-Sforza cards, believed by Glen to have been commissioned by Italian nobility, take him on a journey from New York to the innermost reaches of West Africa, where the story behind the cards is not the only mystery on Glen’s plate. This March Break we will listen to Rush, only Rush. The Canadian holy trinity of rock’s 2012 album, Clockwork Angels, inspired this steampunk fantasy adventure novel of the same name, penned in full by sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson. The young protagonist at the heart of the novel is pitched between the forces of order and chaos as a Watchmaker attempts to impose precision on every aspect of daily life. In this Kafkaesque classic we dug from our backlist garden, a man gets turned into a termite. The Fungus Garden is all-three a meticulously-researched insight into termite coloinies, as well as gripping political commentary and a probing look at what it means to be human. Brett uses his poetry background to good use: lending a prosical air to the genre of speculative fiction. Anna Gareau and Collie Kostyna, – a psychic and a PR expert, respectively – are what separate the rest of the world from the activities of their local magic community. When their largest client, underground supernatural society The Embassy, finds one of their own murdered in a previosuly-thought unenterable house, their suspicions turn immediately to Anna and Collie’s newest client – a man whose skills include suppressing magic.