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Phone
by Will Self
'WHATEVER YOU DO hang on to the phone...! ...! Feel the smoothness of its bevelled screen ...! ...! Place your thumb in the soft depression of its belly-button - turn it over and over...! ...! A five hundred-quid worry bead - and all I worry about is losing the bloody thing...! ...!' For the four characters at the heart of Will Self's brilliantly acute novel of our times the five hundred-quid worry bead in their pocket may be both a blessing and a curse. And when technology, love and violence finally converge in the wreckage of postwar Iraq, the Colonel and the Spy's dalliance will determine the destiny of nations.
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| Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur JaswalGiven the title, you should expect some stories of a saucy nature, but this novel, set in a Punjabi community in Southall, London, is less concerned with titillation and more interested in upending biases towards widowed women, illuminating multicultural life in England, and exploring the push/pull of tradition and modernity. With warm, engaging characters, plenty of humor, and descriptive details of the community, this story of a group of Punjabi widows who turn their writing class into an opportunity to tell stories and build community has already been optioned by Hollywood. |
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When Light is like Water
by Molly McCloskey
Alice, a young American on her travels, arrives in the West of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments - except to her beloved mother, who raised her on her own. She falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose codes she struggles to crack. And then, in the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course. After years working in war zones around the world, and in the immediate aftermath of her mother's death, Alice finds herself back in Ireland and contemplating the forces that led her to put down roots and then tear them up again.
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Walking on my Grave
by Carolyn Hart
Annie's friend and fellow shop owner Ves Roundtree is a very wealthy woman. Her rich brother entrusted her with his estate, and upon her death, his fortune is to be divided. Several cash-strapped islanders are in line to collect life-changing inheritances. The problem is, Ves is very much alive. Ves hosts a dinner for the prospective beneficiaries and feels a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the wintry season. Not long after, she suffers a bad fall that was no accident. Everyone at the table had a motive but not a shred of evidence was left behind. When one of the suspects is found floating in the harbor and Ves disappears, Annie and her husband Max spring into action to catch a calculating killer before greed takes another life.
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Sorry to Disrupt Your Peace
by Patty Yumi Cottrell
Helen Moran is thirty-two years old, single, childless, college-educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a delivery from IKEA in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news that Helen's adoptive brother is dead. Helen knows what she must do, and purchases a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, as she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother's few friends, and the overzealous grief counselor Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.
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Dear Reader
by Mary O'Connell
For Flannery Fields, the only respite from the mean girls at school is Miss Sweeney's English class. But when Miss Sweeney doesn't show up to teach her favourite book, Wuthering Heights, Flannery knows something is wrong. When the police are called, Flannery surrenders everything except for Miss Sweeney's precious dog-eared, annotated copy of Wuthering Heights. When she opens it later, it has transformed into her teacher's real-time diary. It appears Miss Sweeney is in New York City and she's in trouble. So Flannery does something very unFlannery-like: she skips school and sets out for Manhattan, the diary as her guide.
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New Boy: Othello Retold
by Tracy Chevalier
She noticed him before anyone else...Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat's son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day - so he's lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can't stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players - teachers and pupils alike - will never be the same again. The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970s suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers.
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Stay With Me
by Ayobami Adebayo
Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. It is all her husband wants, all her mother-in-law wants, and she has tried everything - arduous pilgrimages, medical consultations, dances with prophets, appeals to God. But when her in-laws insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear. It will lead to jealousy, betrayal and despair. Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 80s Nigeria, Stay With Me sings with the voices, colours, joys and fears of its surroundings. Ayobami Adebayo weaves a devastating story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the wretchedness of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood.
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To Become A Whale
by Ben Hobson
To Become a Whale tells the story of 13-year-old Sam Keogh, whose mother has died. Sam has to learn how to live with his silent, hitherto absent father, who decides to make a man out of his son by taking him to work at Tangalooma, then the largest whaling station in the southern hemisphere. What follows is the devastatingly beautiful story of a gentle boy trying to make sense of the terrible reality of whaling and the cruelty and alienation of his new world, the world of men.
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The Awkward Age
by Francesca Segal
After five years of widowhood, Julia is deeply, unexpectedly in love. If only her beloved daughter, Gwen, didn't hate James so much. At the very least, she could be civil to his son, Nathan. Bringing together two households was never going to be easy, but Gwen's struggle for independence, and the teenagers' unexpected actions, will threaten Julia's new happiness. The Awkward Age is about the blended family; about starting over and the attempt to build something beautiful amid the mess and complexity of what came before. It is a story about standing by the ones we love, even while they hurt us. We would do anything to make our children happy, wouldn't we?
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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