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Me & Emma
By Elizabeth Flock. 2006
Narrated with simplicity and unabashed honesty, Elizabeth Flock's critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel Me & Emma is a…
vivid portrayal of a child's indomitable spirit, her incredible courage and the heartbreaking loss of innocence In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight-year-old-playing make-believe, going to school, dreaming of faraway places. But even in her imagination, she can't pretend away the hardships of her impoverished North Carolina home or protect her younger sister, Emma. As the big sister, Carrie is determined to do anything to keep Emma safe from a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather, Richard-abuse their momma can't seem to see, let alone stop. But after the sisters' plan to run away from home unravels, Carrie's world takes a shocking turn-and one shattering moment ultimately reveals a truth that leaves everyone reeling.Aviary
By Deirdre McNamer. 2021
From Deirdre McNamer, a masterful exploration of the rich and hidden facets of human character, as illuminated by the mysterious…
connections among the residents of a senior residence in Montana. At the deteriorating Pheasant Run, the occupants keep their secrets and sadnesses locked tight behind closed apartment doors. Kind Leo Umberti, formerly an insurance agent, now quietly spends his days painting abstract landscapes and mourning a long-ago loss. Down the hall, retired professor Rydell Clovis tries desperately to stay fit enough to restart a career in academia. Cassie McMackin, on the same floor, has seemingly lost everything—her husband and only child dead within months of each other—leaving her loosely tethered to this world. And a few doors away, her friend, Viola Six, is convinced of a criminal conspiracy involving the building’s widely disliked manager, Herbie Bonebright. Cassie and Viola dream of leaving their unhappy lives behind, but one woman’s plan is interrupted—and the other’s unexpectedly set into motion—when a fire breaks out in Herbie’s apartment. Called to investigate is the city’s chief fire inspector. With a gift and a passion for sorting out the mysteries of flame, Lander Maki finds the fire itself, and the circumstances around it, highly suspicious. Viola has disappeared. So has Herbie. And a troubled teen, Clayton Spooner, was glimpsed fleeing the scene. In trying to fit together the pieces of this complicated puzzle, Lander finds himself learning more than expected about human nature and about personal and corporate greed as it is visited upon the vulnerable. Beautifully written and long awaited, from a writer “with extraordinary emotional acuity and with a keen sense of the small detail that says it all” (Chicago Tribune), Aviary weaves a compelling tapestry of crisis, grief, and the mysteries of memory and old age.Human Matter: A Fiction (Latin American Literature in Translation)
By Rodrigo Rey Rosa. 2019
This prizewinning Guatemalan author&’s meta-novel delves into the secret police records and history of political violence in his homeland. …
In 2005, novelist Rodrigo Rey Rosa started visiting the Historical Archive of the Guatemala National Police, where millions of previously hidden records were being cataloged, bringing to light detailed evidence of crimes against humanity. In response, Rey Rosa crafted a meta-novel that weaves the language of arrest records and surveillance reports with the contemporary journal entries of a novelist (named Rodrigo) who is attempting to synthesize the stories of political activists, indigenous people, and others ensnared in a deadly web of state-sponsored terrorism. When Rodrigo&’s access to the archive is suspended, he proceeds to the General Archives of Central America and the Library of Congress, also collaborating with the son of the Identification Bureau's former head in a relentless pursuit of understanding. Human Matter is both a tour de force of fiction and a sobering meditation on the realities of collective memory, raising timely questions about how our history is recorded and retold.Water: A Novel (Bapsi Sidwha Ser.)
By Bapsi Sidhwa. 2006
The renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa and the equally renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta share a unique artistic relationship: Mehta adapted Sidhwa's…
novel Cracking India for her brilliant film Earth, and here, Sidhwa adapts Mehta's controversial film Water to the printed page.Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi's rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow's ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the widows's lives. When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram's delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption.Sealskin
By Su Bristow. 2017
Donald, a young fisherman, is overwhelmed when he comes across a group of exotic women dancing on the shore beneath…
the moonlight. They are selkies seals that shed their skin once a year and become human for a few hours. Overcome by their beauty and magic, Donald kidnaps one a choice that will determine his future. Now, back home in his close-knit Scottish village, he must take responsibility for what he has done. Donald has been bullied and isolated all his life, but thanks to his mother and his stolen selkie wife, he finds the courage to question, then change the culture of the town that has been mired in the past for generations. Yet despite their mutual happiness, he can never truly forgive himself for the thoughtless act that brought his wife to him. This enchanting story works its way to a surprising yet satisfying ending. Based on a beloved Scottish legend,Sealskin is a timeless tale of the responsibilities of love and the inner strength required to atone for terrible wrongs.Jewelweed: A Novel
By David Rhodes. 2013
When David Rhodes burst onto the American literary scene in the '70s, he was hailed as "a brilliant visionary" (John…
Gardner). In Driftless, his "most accomplished work yet" (Joseph Kanon), Rhodes made Words, Wisconsin, resonate with readers across the country. Now with Jewelweed this beloved author returns to the same out-of-the-way community and introduces a cast of characters who must overcome the burdens left by the past. After serving time for a dubious conviction, Blake Bookchester is paroled. As Blake attempts to adjust, he reconnects with Danielle Workhouse, a single mother whose son, Ivan, explores the woods with his precocious friend, August. While Danielle goes to work for Buck and Amy Roebuck in their mansion, Ivan and August befriend Lester Mortal, a recluse who lives in a melon field; a wild boy; and a bat, Milton. These characters - each flawed, deeply human, and ultimately universal - approach the future with a combination of hope and trepidation. Jewelweed offers a vision in which the ordinary becomes mythical, the seemingly mundane transformed into revelatory beauty.Meternity: A Novel
By Meghann Foye. 2016
Not quite knocked up... Like everyone in New York media, editor Liz Buckley runs on cupcakes, caffeine and cocktails. But…
at thirty-one, she's plateaued at Paddy Cakes, a glossy baby magazine that flogs thousand-dollar strollers to entitled, hypercompetitive spawn-havers. Liz has spent years working a gazillion hours a week picking up the slack for coworkers with kids, and she's tired of it. So one day when her stress-related nausea is mistaken for morning sickness by her bosses-boom! Liz is promoted to the mommy track. She decides to run with it and plans to use her paid time off to figure out her life: work, love and otherwise. It'll be her "meternity" leave. By day, Liz rocks a foam-rubber belly under fab maternity outfits. By night, she dumps the bump for karaoke nights and boozy dinners out. But how long can she keep up her charade...and hide it from the guy who might just be The One? As her "due date" approaches, Liz is exhausted-and exhilarated-by the ruse, the guilt and the feelings brought on by a totally fictional belly-tenant...about happiness, success, family and the nature of love.The Swallow's Nest: A Novel
By Emilie Richards. 2017
Three women fight for the chance to raise the child they've all come to love When Lilia Swallow's husband, Graham,…
goes into remission after a challenging year of treatment for lymphoma, the home and lifestyle blogger throws a party. Their best friends and colleagues attend to celebrate his recovery, but just as the party is in full swing, a new guest arrives. She presents Lilia with a beautiful baby boy, and vanishes. Toby is Graham's darkest secret-his son, conceived in a moment of despair. Lilia is utterly unprepared for the betrayal the baby represents, and perhaps more so for the love she begins to feel once her shock subsides. Now this unasked-for precious gift becomes a life changer for three women: Lilia, who takes him into her home and heart; Marina, who bore and abandoned him until circumstance and grief changed her mind; and Ellen, who sees in him a chance to correct the mistakes she made with her own son, Toby's father. A custody battle begins, and each would-be mother must examine her heart, confront her choices and weigh her dreams against the fate of one vulnerable little boy. Each woman will redefine family, belonging and love-and the results will alter the course of not only their lives, but also the lives of everyone they care for.The Shame: A Novel
By Makenna Goodman. 2020
A “startlingly original” novel of “recursive loops through the mind of a woman who is breaking down from not making…
the art she absolutely must make” (Alexander Chee, Paris Review).Alma and her family live close to the land, raising chickens and sheep. While her husband works at a nearby college, she stays home with their young children, cleans, searches for secondhand goods online, and reads books by the women writers she adores. Then, one night, she abruptly leaves it all behind—speeding through the darkness, away from their Vermont homestead, bound for New York.In a series of flashbacks, Alma reveals the circumstances and choices that led to this moment: the joys and claustrophobia of their remote life; her fears and uncertainties about motherhood; the painfully awkward faculty dinners; her feelings of loneliness and failure; and her growing fascination with Celeste, a mysterious ceramicist and self-loving doppelgänger who becomes an obsession for Alma.A fable both blistering and surreal, The Shame is a propulsive, funny, and thought-provoking debut about a woman in isolation, whose mind—fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art—attempts to betray her.A Harvard Review Favorite Book of 2020, Selected by Miciah Bay GaultDon't Send Flowers
By Martín Solares. 2015
A gritty novel of Mexico’s volatile and violent narco-state. “A kind of Molotov cocktail that explodes in the hands of…
the reader.”—Forbes (Mexico) From a writer whose work has been praised by Junot Díaz as “Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest,” Don’t Send Flowers is a riveting novel centered on Carlos Treviño, a retired police detective in northern Mexico. A seventeen-year-old girl has disappeared after a fight with her boyfriend that was interrupted by armed men, leaving the boyfriend on life support and the girl an apparent kidnap victim. It’s a common occurrence in the region—prime narco territory—but the girl’s parents are rich and powerful, and determined to find their daughter at any cost. When they call upon Carlos Treviño, he tracks the missing heiress north to the town of La Eternidad, on the Gulf of Mexico not far from the U.S. border—all while constantly attempting to evade detection by La Eternidad’s chief of police, Commander Margarito Gonzalez, who is in the pockets of the cartels and has a score to settle with Treviño. A gritty tale of murder and kidnapping, crooked cops and violent gang disputes, Don’t Send Flowers is “a powerful, kaleidoscopic tale set in a society where there is no center to hold . . . another urgent and vital work from a writer to watch” (Booklist, starred review). “Rich in conception and execution . . . Don’t Send Flowers is full of odd twists and strange surprises.”—The Wall Street Journal“An excellent, frightening portrayal of the breadth and depth of Mexico’s cartel violence and systemic corruption.”—Publishers WeeklyAdua: A Novel (G - Reference, Information And Interdisciplinary Subjects Ser.)
By Igiaba Scego. 2019
“Utterly sublime . . . Aduatells a gripping story of war, migration and family, exposing us to the pain and…
hope that reside in each encounter” (Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King). Adua, an immigrant from Somalia, has lived in Italy nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of becoming a film star ended in shame. A searing novel about a young immigrant woman’s dream of finding freedom in Rome and the bittersweet legacies of her African past. “Lovely prose and memorable characters make this novel a thought-provoking and moving consideration of the wreckage of European oppression.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Igiaba Scego is an original voice who connects Italy’s present with its colonial past. Adua is an important novel that obliges the country to confront both memory and truth.” —Amara Lakhous, author of Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet “This book depicts the soul and the body of a daughter and a father, illuminating words that are used every day and swiftly emptied of meaning: migrants, diaspora, refugees, separation, hope, humiliation, death.” —Panorama “A memorable, affecting tale . . . Brings the decolonialization of Africa to life . . . All the more affecting for being told without sentimentality or self-pity.” —ForeWord Reviews “Deeply and thoroughly researched . . . Also a captivating read: the novel is sweeping in its geographical and temporal scope, yet Scego nonetheless renders her complex protagonists richly and lovingly.” —Africa Is a CountryButterflies in November (Books That Changed the World)
By Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. 2004
A novel of love, friendship, and self-reinvention: &“I can&’t remember the last time I was so enchanted . . . zany, surprising, full…
of twists and turns&” (Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle and Something Blue). A translator of Icelandic, the unnamed young woman who narrates Butterflies in November is perhaps more at home in the world of language than the actual world. After a day of being dumped—twice—and accidentally killing a goose, she yearns to escape from the chaos of her life. Instead, her best friend&’s four-year-old deaf-mute son is unexpectedly left in her care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two set off from Reykjavik along Iceland&’s Ring Road on a journey of discovery. Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance. What begins as a spontaneous adventure will unexpectedly and profoundly change the way she views her past and charts her future. Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.The Story of a Goat: A Novel
By Perumal Murugan. 2018
“Fantastical . . . Through the thoughts of a rare black goat and the couple who adopt it, readers witness famines, death, and…
moments of beauty.” —National GeographicLonglisted for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureAs he did in the award-winning One Part Woman, Perumal Murugan explores a side of India that is rarely considered in the West: the rural lives of the country’s farming community. He paints a bucolic yet sometimes menacing portrait, showing movingly how danger and deception can threaten the lives of the weakest through the story of a helpless young animal lost in a world it naively misunderstands.As the novel opens, a mysterious stranger offers a farmer in Tamil Nadu a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and growing at a rate they think miraculous for such a small animal. Intoxicating passages from the goat’s perspective offer a bawdy and earthy view of what it means to be an animal and a refreshing portrayal of the natural world. But Poonachi’s life is not destined to be a rural idyll—dangers can lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to protect the weak and needy. Is this little goat too humble a creature to survive such a hostile world?“The title character of Murugan’s elegant new novel is indeed a joy . . . through Poonachi’s tale we are reminded how much bonds us with the animal world.” —USA TodayThe Core of the Sun
By Johanna Sinisalo, Lola Rogers. 2017
From the author of the Finlandia Award-winning novel Troll: A Love Story, The Core of the Sun further cements Johanna…
Sinisalo’s reputation as a master of literary speculative fiction and of her country’s unique take on it, dubbed "Finnish weird.” Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy”-an extreme welfare state-that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state.The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labor and sterilized so that they do not carry on their "defective" line. Vanna, raised as an eloi but secretly intelligent, needs money to help her doll-like sister, who has disappeared. Vanna forms a friendship with a man named Jare, and they become involved in buying and selling a stimulant known to the Health Authority to be extremely dangerous: chili peppers. Then Jare comes across a strange religious cult in possession of the Core of the Sun, a chili so hot that it is rumored to cause hallucinations. Does this chili have effects that justify its prohibition? How did Finland turn into the North Korea of Europe? And will Vanna succeed in her quest to find her sister, or will her growing need to satisfy her chili addiction destroy her?Johanna Sinisalo’s tautly told story of fight and flight is also a feisty, between-the-lines social polemic-a witty, inventive, and fiendishly engaging read.The Antiquarian (Books That Changed the World)
By Gustavo Faverón Patriau. 2010
“Riddle by riddle, a murder confession unspools” in this “delightfully macabre” literary thriller of madness, mystery, and antique books (The…
New York Times). Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend, Daniel, who has been interned in a psychiatric ward after brutally murdering his fiancée and attempting suicide. When Daniel unexpectedly calls to confess the truth behind the crime, Gustavo’s long buried fraternal loyalty draws him into the center of a quixotic, mystifying investigation through an underground network of antiquarian dealers.While Daniel reveals his unsettling story using fragments of fables, novels, and historical allusions, Gustavo begins to retrace the past for clues: from their early college days exploring dust-filled libraries and exotic brothels to Daniel’s intimate attachment to his sickly younger sister and his dealings as a book collector. Soon, Gustavo must deduce a complex series of events from allegories that are more real than police reports and metaphors more revealing than evidence. And when a woman in the ward is found murdered, Daniel is declared the prime suspect, and Gustavo plummets deeper into the mysterious case.“An ambitious, complex novel…those who read by simultaneously working with the writer, fantasizing alongside him, capable of enjoying the subtleties and secrets of a text as rich and profound as the text of this novel, will never forget it.” —Mario Vargas LlosaThe Hole We're In: A Novel
By Gabrielle Zevin. 2010
With The Hole We’re In-a bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even…
more troubled America-award-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents. Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she’s been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they’ve dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children-especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We’re In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin’s deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.Bright Air Black: A Novel
By David Vann. 2017
A writer to read and reread.”The Economist Following the success of Aquarium which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice…
and garnered numerous rave reviews, David Vann transports us to 13th century B.C. to give a nuanced and electric portrait of the life of one of ancient mythology’s most fascinating and notorious women, Medea. In brilliant poetic prose Bright Air Black brings us aboard the ship Argo for its epic return journey across the Black Sea from Persia’s Colchis where Medea flees her home and father with Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece. Vann’s reimagining of this ancient tale offers a thrilling, realist alternative to the long held notions of Medea as monster or sorceress. We witness with dramatic urgency Medea’s humanity, her Bronze Age roots and position in Greek society, her love affair with Jason, and her tragic demise. Atmospheric and spellbinding, Bright Air Black is an indispensable, fresh and provocative take on one of our earliest texts and the most intimate and corporal version of Medea’s story ever told.The Delivery Man: A Novel (Books That Changed the World)
By Joe McGinniss Jr.. 2008
&“A gripping literary thriller and an auspicious debut&” set against the surreal excess of Las Vegas from the author of…
Carousel Court (George Pelecanos, author and award-winning writer/producer of The Wire). After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer, they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation. At once stark and electrically atmospheric, horrifying and hopeful, The Delivery Man is an ambitious literary novel as well as a fast and absorbing page-turner—and a powerful indictment of a society in which personal responsibility has been abandoned, lust is increasingly mistaken for love, and innocence is an anachronism. &“A dead-of-night story surehandedly told in a pared-down, teeth-bared style reminiscent of Joan Didion.&” —Janet Fitch, New York Times–bestselling author of White Oleander &“[A] brisk, bleak debut novel . . . offers unflinching glimpses at mores in free fall . . . searing . . . memorable . . . not for the faint of heart.&” —The New York Times Book Review &“McGinniss offers a fresh take on the seamy side of Vegas by focusing on the wasted lives of burned-out teens hooked on drugs and money.&” —USA Today &“It&’s sex, drugs, and a slew of lost souls . . . engrossing . . . Could The Delivery Man be this decade&’s Less Than Zero?&” —Marie Claire &“Grim, convincing, and compelling . . . The Delivery Man really delivers.&” —The Washington PostStudies in the Hereafter: A Novel
By Sean Bernard. 2015
&“A whimsical debut novel in which Bernard makes heaven the setting for a story of love and self-actualization . .…
. highly enjoyable.&” —Kirkus Reviews A disillusioned office bureaucrat in the afterlife has come to realize that maybe heaven isn&’t all it&’s cracked up to be. Bored by the endless routine of work, golf, and vegan food, he finds his one saving grace in his Field Studies: detailed reports he compiles on the living in order to determine their best fit in his world. While working on his sixty-second field study, he begins to fall for Tetty, a detached Basque-American beauty living in Nevada, while struggling to understand what she sees in Carmelo, a clumsy scholar obsessed with the elusive Basque culture. When people start going missing from heaven for no apparent reason, the narrator learns that Field Study 62 may hold the key to explaining the disappearances. &“A soaring tribute to any human life, in all its flawed glory.&” —Diagram &“A novel that makes us laugh while breaking our hearts.&” —Christopher Coake, author of You Would Have Told Me Not To &“Wild and imaginative.&” —Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown &“Welcomingly comic . . . permeated with a sense of intrigue.&” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead &“Blends two well-crafted and charming stories together—on one side you have the darkly humorous mystery and on the other a deeply introspective journey of human nature. A quirky but enjoyable read.&” —BlotteratureDisappearances: A Novel (Center Point Premier Fiction (large Print) Ser.)
By Howard Frank Mosher. 1977
Winner of the New England Book Award, Howard Frank Mosher's endearing first novel is both a heroic adventure and a…
thrilling coming-of-age story. It is the memorable tale of a young man named Wild Bill Bonhomme, his larger-than-life father, Quebec Bill, and their whiskey-smuggling exploits along the Vermont-Canada border in 1932. On an epic journey through the wilderness, Bill and his father encounter a cast of wild characters--and live out magical escapades as they carve their way into legend.