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13 Days to Die : A Novel
by Matt Miksa
Joining a Chinese research team to investigate the outbreak of a devastating epidemic in a remote Tibetan village, an undercover American intelligence officer uncovers a conspiracy to ignite a war between world superpowers. A first novel.
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| Raft of Stars by Andrew J. GraffWhat it is: an atmospheric and suspenseful coming-of-age story with shades of the film Stand By Me.
What happens: Thinking that they've killed a man, ten-year-old Fish and his best friend Bread flee into the deep Wisconsin forest and are tracked by four adults desperate to save them and each seeking answers of their own.
Reviewers say: debut author Andrew Graff "depicts the harsh Northwoods setting and his misfit characters’ inner lives with equal skill" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo MbueThe situation: Since the 1980s, the fictional African village of Kosawa has been poisoned by an American oil company's leaking pipelines. After many requests for help are ignored, a small act of rebellion leads to decades of revolution.
What happens: Nothing much changes in Kosawa, as both the nation's despotic regime and the oil company ignore the villagers' pleas. Then Thula, who grew up in Kosawa in the '80s, returns from the U.S. determined to fight back.
Read it for: the links between environmental degradation and human rights. |
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Body of stars : a novel
by Laura Maylene Walter
A debut novel by an award-winning short-story writer imagines a dangerously psychic alternate-reality world where the birthmarks, freckles and moles on a woman’s body determine her future role and security. Illustrations.
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Tin man
by Sarah Winman
"Shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award "This is an astoundingly beautiful book. It drips with tenderness. It breaks your heart and warms it all at once."--Matt Haig, author of How to Stop Time From internationally bestselling author Sarah Winman comes an unforgettable and heartbreaking novel celebrating love in all its forms, and the little moments that make up the life of one man. This is almost a love story. But it's not as simple as that. Ellis and Michael are twelve-year-old boys whenthey first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more. But then we fast-forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question: What happened in the years between? With beautiful prose and characters that are so real they jump off the page, Tin Man is a love letter to human kindness and friendship, and to loss and living"
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The mere wife
by Maria Dahvana Headley
A modern retelling of Beowulf recasts classic themes from the perspectives of the attackers and finds a suburban housewife and a battle-hardened veteran navigating dark realities to protect the sons they love. By the best-selling author of Aerie
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| Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoWhat it is: a much-lauded portrayal of the broadness of the Black British experience through the stories of 11 women and one nonbinary person whose lives intertwine in sometimes surprising ways.
Read it for: vivid, unique characters; a finely tuned exploration of intersectionality; a mixture of prose and poetry; a history lesson.
Book buzz: This co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize landed on too many "best of" book lists to count and also won Fiction Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. It's currently being adapted for television. |
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The gone dead : a novel
by Chanelle Benz
Returning to her ramshackle home in the Mississippi Delta after 30 years, Billie investigates the accident that killed her famous poet father as well as rumors that she went missing the day he died. A first novel. 100,000 first printing.
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| The Long Take: A Noir Narrative by Robin RobertsonWhat it is: an award-winning novel, written mostly in free verse and set in 1946 Los Angeles; a post-war portrait of that city; a Canadian veteran's disillusionment with himself and, even more so, the societal values he fought to protect.
For readers interested in: noir films; mid-century urban planning; novels of place (especially of LA and NYC); stark language; the history of nativism in the U.S.; the post-war years in general. |
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| Conversations with Friends by Sally RooneyStarring: college students Frances, a poet, and Bobbi, her best friend and former lover, who fall in (and in love) with an older heterosexual couple, photographer Melissa and actor Nick.
It's complicated: Frances' secret (but "ironic") affair with Nick affects her relationship with Bobbi; the harm she's doing to herself by refusing to be vulnerable is only slowly revealed.
For more novels featuring poets: Chanelle Benz' The Gone Dead; Danzy Senna's New People. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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