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"I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month." ~ Joan Didion, American author
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New and Recently Released!
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| Meeting the English by Kate ClanchySet in London during the sweltering summer of 1989, this tart, funny debut novel stars famous Welsh playwright Phillip Prys, who has been felled by a stroke. Since his family doesn't seem to care much about him, he needs a caretaker, and gifted Scottish 17-year-old Struan Robertson has applied on the suggestion of a teacher. Thrown not just by the discord in the family but by London itself (it seems to be home to very few actual English), the earnest Struan is just as perplexing to the various self-absorbed Pryses. "Richly conceived, original and very entertaining," says The Guardian of this social comedy. |
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| Crow Fair: Stories by Thomas McGuaneSet in a striking and sometimes-still-wild Montana, the short stories in this collection star solitary men, irresponsible teenagers, and aging cowboys, though there are memorable women, too. Author Thomas McGuane makes these fallible characters his own through biting humor, dark irony, and an overarching theme of the ways that lives go bust. These aren't gentle stories, but they're not violent either -- they're sharp but sympathetic, and will appeal to readers who enjoy character studies and "glum, gleeful, brilliant" (Booklist) stories. |
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| A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire MitchellAs the end of 1999 (and the 20th century) nears, the Alter sisters (Lady, Vee, and Delph) finalize their plans to follow family tradition by committing suicide. Haunted by their personal bad luck and burdened by their family's dark and guilty history, the sisters nevertheless share an abiding love for each other. Smart and funny despite the serious subject matter, this book has been garnering lots of attention; it's also inspired (in part) by the story of troubled Nobel Prize-winner Fritz Haber, a creator of weaponized gases during World War I. |
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| Blue Stars by Emily Gray TedroweThere have been quite a few books published lately about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, concentrating mostly on those who serve and their often difficult returns home. In Blue Stars, however, we see the effect of the Iraq war on those left behind. It stars two women -- Ellen, a Midwestern literature professor whose legal ward is a Marine, and Lacey, an Army wife and young mother -- who form an unlikely friendship at the Walter Reed Army Hospital as they each care for their wounded soldiers and face a new and terrifying reality. Loosely based on the 2007 scandal at Walter Reed, this moving novel illuminates the challenges of the modern-day home front, and will appeal to those who read Siobhan Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone. |
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| Aquarium by David VannThe only child of a single mother with no other family, 12-year-old Caitlin fills her after-school hours at the Seattle aquarium. There, she meets an elderly man with whom she begins a cautious friendship based on their shared passion for fish. Her mother, Sheri, suspecting a pedophile, is instead shocked to find that the old man is actually her own father, who had abandoned her and her dying mother decades before. Sheri's long-held rage and inability to forgive threatens to destroy not only her daughter's only friendship, but her own relationship with Caitlin -- never tender, Sheri soon turns toxic. Relentless and sometimes heartbreaking, this novel offers a brave and vulnerable heroine. |
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| Secrets to Happiness: A Novel by Sarah DunnNew York, New York. What a wonderful town -- unless you happen to be a newly single woman devastated by a divorce from the philandering husband you still love. When screenwriter Holly Frick finds herself in just that situation, she occupies herself by interfering -- er, trying to do the right thing -- in the lives of her closest friends, which has her meeting her married best friend's lover and adopting a dog with a brain tumor. She's also looking for love, but Secrets to Happiness focuses on all sorts of relationships, not just the one between a single girl and the man she hopes to find. Both witty and touching, this novel lands on the sophisticated side of chick lit. |
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Chronic City
by Jonathan Lethem
Exchanging rapturous love letters with a fiancée who is trapped on the Space Station, former child star Chase Insteadman apathetically attends social engagements before marijuana-smoking pop critic Perkus Tooth introduces him to a side of Manhattan that causes Chase to question everything he believes. By the MacArthur Fellowship-recipient author of The Fortress of Solitude.
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Heroic measures
by Jill Ciment
A Manhattan couple hosting an open house to sell their apartment experience even more stress, chaos, and confusion when they also have to rush their beloved dachshund to the vet in the middle of what may be a terrorist attack
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| Someone by Alice McDermottMarie Commeford and her older brother Gabe grew up in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn; just children in the 1920s, their next 60-odd years are chronicled here, covering their good but ordinary lives and the changing nature of the neighborhood and the world itself. Marie, who is the center of Someone, eventually moves away, but Gabe, who leaves the priesthood after the death of their father, remains. Readers of reflective, observant novels that explore individual lives and celebrate family, such as Anita Diamant's The Boston Girl, should enjoy this most recent novel from author Alice McDermott. |
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| Cutting for Stone: A Novel by Abraham VergheseIn 1954, conjoined twin boys are born in a hospital in Ethiopia, but their mother, an Indian nun, cannot be saved. Surgically separated, the boys are raised in the hospital by an Indian gynecologist after their father (a British surgeon) disappears. The practice of medicine -- and several medical emergencies -- serves to bring characters together and drive them apart as the twins grow up to work in medicine themselves, in Ethiopia and in New York's inner city. In addition to this absorbing novel, author Abraham Verghese is known for his memoir, My Own Country, about his time in Tennessee treating AIDS patients. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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512-218-5400, 221 E. Main Street Round Rock, Texas 78664
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