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Fiction A to Z January 2021
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Anxious People : A Novel (ebook and Audiobook)
by Fredrik Backman
Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers--including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages, and a plucky octogenarian--discover their unexpected common traits.
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| Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Audiobook) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi; translated by Geoffrey TrousselotIs time travel possible? It is in a tiny Tokyo café, where one particular chair allows its occupants to visit past experiences (though several rules apply).
Is it for you? The physics of time travel is not addressed here; instead, four characters simply get a second chance to revisit lost loved ones.
Book buzz: This English-language debut by Japanese playwright Toshikazu Kawaguchi was a bestseller in Japan. |
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One Night Two Souls Went Walking (ebook)
by Ellen Cooney
“I believe in expecting light. That’s my job.” A hospital chaplain offers compassion to her patients over the course of one eventful night shift, and finds some for herself, too. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney (The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances) returns with a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility. Original.
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Madrid Again (ebook)
by Soledad Maura
"Madrid, 1960s. Marieta is a brilliant young student who is spirited across the Atlantic to the United States by a magnetic professor. Romance ensues, and a baby is born. But the professor disappears from Marieta's life as mysteriously as he appeared. Left alone with her little girl, Lola, Marieta must decide whether to forge ahead in a new country or to return to her strict, upper-class Catholic family in Spain with her daughter," (Hoopla, 2020).
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| The Girl with the Louding Voice (ebook and Audiobook) by Abi DaréStarring: Adunni, a 14-year-old rural Nigerian girl who longs for an education in a place where girls are meant to marry young and serve their husbands.
What happens: When Adunni flees her marriage and escapes to Lagos, she finds more degradation and abuse, but is just as determined to find her way.
For fans of: compelling, hopeful stories about fearless young women, like Shobha Rao's Girls Burn Brighter. |
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| Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo FordWhat it is: the first collection of stories by Plimpton Prize-winning Cherokee writer Kelli Jo Ford that traces four generations of Cherokee women as they navigate cultural dynamics, disappointing men, and their relationships with each other.
Want a taste? "She’s survived a lifetime of these miracles, which trace back to Daddy emptying the bank account and leaving her with three girls and half an art education degree to pay the bills."
Reviewers say: "a stunner" (Publishers Weekly); "riveting" (Booklist). |
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The Talking Drum : A Novel (ebook)
by Lisa Braxton
"It is 1971 and Bellport, Massachusetts is a dying factory town. But the coming urban redevelopment will have even more implications for the residents. Sydney Stallworth has left her law studies to support her husband's dream of opening a business in the heart of the black community. For Omar Bassari, a drummer from Senegal, Bellport will be the launching pad from which he hopes to spread African culture across the world. Della Tolliver has built a fragile sanctuary for herself, her boyfriend, and her daughter Jasmine, a troubled child prone to nightmares and outbursts," (Hoopla, 2020).
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Pale (ebook and Audiobook)
by Edward A. Farmer
""Some things just don't keep well inside this house ..." The summer of 1966 burned hot across America but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position as a black woman living alone, Bernice accepts her brother Floyd's invitation to join him as a servant for a white family and she enters the web of hostility and deception that is the Kern plantation household," (Hoopla, 2020).
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| The Cactus League by Emily NemensAt the plate: star left-fielder Jason Goodyear, who's at his peak but is spiraling out of control.
What happens: Narrated by an unnamed sportswriter, we follow along as the 2011 spring training season in Scottsdale, AZ unfolds -- and the cast is full with players, owners, trainers, wives, girlfriends, and assorted fans and hangers-on, all with their own flaws and fallibilities.
Reviewers say: "Like the best sportswriting, this bighearted, finely observed novel is about far more than the game" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| Sharks in the Time of Saviors (also on Audiobook) by Kawai Strong WashburnThen: As a child, Nainoa fell overboard and was retrieved and returned by a pack of sharks, entering local Hawaiian lore.
Now: Nainoa is a paramedic in Oregon, his sister and brother similarly scattered. After he fails to save a young mother and her child, Nainoa returns to Hawaii and disappears.
Why you might like it: Covering 14 years and narrated in alternating sections by four of the five members of Nainoa's Filipino Hawaiian family, this lush debut tinged with magical realism explores the difficulties of modern Hawaiian life. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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