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No one is coming to save us
by Stephanie Powell Watts
A tale inspired by The Great Gatsby is set in the contemporary South and follows the difficulties endured by an extended black family with colliding visions of the American dream. A first novel by the author of We Are Taking Only What We Need.
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The Standard Grand
by Jay Baron Nicorvo
A homeless AWOL female soldier is embroiled in a violent land dispute involving a Vietnam veteran's halfway house on property coveted by a multinational company, a conflict that involves a host of diverse characters in sinister attacks and a decades-old murder. A first novel.
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The golden legend : a novel
by Nadeem Aslam
Hiding her past, Nargis feels her life crumbling around her when someone begins broadcasting local people’s secrets from the minaret of a local mosque. By the author of The Blind Man’s Garden.
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Startup : a novel
by Doree Shafrir
A first novel by a BuzzFeed senior culture writer finds a billion-dollar app developer, an ambitious young journalist and a burned-out literary mom swept up by a viral scandal that complicates their personal relationships in uproarious ways.
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Silver and salt
by Elanor Dymott
Haunted by a dark secret that destroyed her family and led her mother into madness, Ruthie returns to Greece after her father’s death to spend time with her sister but has her hard-won peace shattered by an English family next door.
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The sisters of Blue Mountain
by Karen Katchur
For Linnet, owner of a Bed and Breakfast in Mountain Springs, Pennsylvania, life has been a bit complicated lately. Hundreds of snow geese have died overnight in the dam near the B&B, sparking a media frenzy, threatening the tourist season, and bringing her estranged sister, Myna, to town. If that isn't enough, the women's father has been charged with investigating the incident. But when a younger expert is brought in to replace him on the case and then turns up dead on Linnet's B&B's property, their father becomes the primary suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the sisters will have to confront each other, their hidden past, and a side of Mountain Springs not seen before.
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| Things We Have in Common by Tasha KavanaghLonely, overweight Yasmin Doner is a high school outcast who desperately wants to fit in but lacks the social skills to do so. Shunned at school and criticized at home, she's built an elaborate fantasy life, which revolves around the most popular girl at school, Alice. After noticing a man lurking near their school, she constructs a new fantasy -- one in which Yasmin becomes a hero after saving Alice from abduction by this man. So Yasmin starts following the stranger, eventually forming a friendship with him. And then Alice actually does disappear. Combining the creep factor and unreliable narrator of classic psychological suspense with the desperately lonely adolescence of a YA novel, this dark tale is a good choice for fans of Sebastian Faulks' Engleby. |
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Music of the ghosts
by Vaddey Ratner
Returning to the Cambodian homeland she fled as a child refugee decades earlier, Teera finds herself in a country of survivors and perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge holocaust before bonding with a mysterious musician who claims to have known her late father. By the best-selling author of In the Shadow of the Banyan.
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Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
by Patty Yumi Cottrell
As single, childless, partially employed 32-year-old Helen Moran searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why her half-brother would kill himself, she will face her estranged family, her brother’s few friends and the overzealous grief counselor, Chad Lambo; and she may also discover what it truly means to be alive. A first novel.
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Temporary People
by Deepak Unnikrishnan
In the United Arab Emirates, the vast majority of the population consists of foreign nationals brought in to construct the towering monuments to wealth that bristle the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. This labor force works without the rights of citizenship, endures miserable living conditions, and, after enforced retirement, is required to leave the country. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called “guest workers” of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering book Temporary People, debut author Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs, and illuminates the ways in which temporary status affects psyches, families, memories, stories, and languages. Combining the irrepressible linguistic invention of Salman Rushdie and the darkly funny satirical vision of George Saunders, Deepak Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who’ve fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish—until they don’t, and found a rebel community in the desert.
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The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings
by Juan Rulfo
The legendary title novella from one of Mexico’s most influential writers is published here in English for the first time on the 100th anniversary of his birth. This lost masterwork, collected with his previously untranslated stories, marks a landmark event in world literature. Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), Mexico’s most important and influential author of the twentieth century, received numerous awards in his lifetime, including the esteemed Cervantes Prize, and his work served as the literary precursor of “magical realism.”
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The romance reader's guide to life
by Sharon L Pywell
Left with few options when the end of World War II costs them their jobs, two sisters—one flirtatious, the other bookish—launch a makeup business that is upended when one of them disappears on what may be a romantic adventure on the high seas. By the author of What Happened to Henry.
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Standard deviation : a novel
by Katherine Heiny
A first novel by the author of Single, Carefree, Mellow follows the marriage between a man and his spontaneous but exhausting second wife, a relationship that is further shaped by their Asperger's patient child and an effort to be friends with the man's very different first wife.
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Marlena : a novel
by Julie Buntin
Struggling to adapt to a new home in rural Michigan, 15-year-old Cat bonds with a pill-popping, manic young neighbor with whom she renders their desolate community into a kind of playground until suffering a tragedy that she confronts decades later.
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The dressmaker's dowry
by Meredith Jaeger
A modern-day writer in San Francisco stumbles across the story of a local, immigrant dressmaker in 1876 who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and who may be connected to her through an heirloom engagement ring in her husband’s family.
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Woman No. 17
by Edan Lepucki
Hiring a live-in nanny to attend her family's needs while she attempts to finish writing her book, Lady begins questioning the young woman's agenda when the latter instantly connects with the family and begins acting in suspicious ways. By the best-selling author of California
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The Beach at Painter's Cove
by Shelley Noble
The Whitaker family’s Connecticut mansion, Muses by the Sea, has always been a haven for artists, a hotbed of creativity, extravagances, and the occasional scandal. Art patrons for generations, the Whitakers supported strangers but drained the life out of each other. Now, after being estranged for years, four generations of Whitaker women find themselves once again at The Muses. Leo, the Whitaker matriarch, lives in the rambling mansion crammed with artwork and junk. She plans to stay there until she joins her husband Wes on the knoll overlooking the cove and meadow where they first met. Her sister-in-law Fae, the town eccentric, is desperate to keep a secret she has been hiding for years. Jillian, is a jet setting actress, down on her luck, and has run out of men to support her. She thinks selling The Muses will make life easier for her mother, Leo, and Fae by moving them into assisted living. The sale will also bring her the funds to get herself back on top. Issy, Jillian’s daughter, has a successful life as a museum exhibit designer that takes her around the world. But the Muses and her grandmother are the only family she’s known and when her sister leaves her own children with Leo, Issy knows she has to step in to help. Steph, is only twelve-years-old and desperately needs someone to fire her imagination and bring her out of her shell. What she begins to discover at the Muses could change the course of her future. As Issy martials the family together to restore the mansion and catalogue the massive art collection, a surprising thing happens. Despite storms and moonlight dancing, diva attacks and cat fights, trips to the beach and flights of fancy, these four generations of erratic, dramatic women may just find a way to save the Muses and reunite their family.
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Recent Short Story Collections
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| For a Little While: New and Selected Stories by Rick BassAuthor Rick Bass' many skills include a gift for establishing place -- most of his stories are set in the mountains of the West or in the Deep South, in rough little towns or windswept plains or not-so-tidy suburbia. His depictions of the forces of nature (another favorite topic) range from sudden blizzards to runaway horses, each offering a different kind of danger. His characters are finely nuanced, whether he's writing about grieving middle-aged men or skittish young women. And while this collection offers 18 previously published stories, there are also seven new ones waiting to be discovered. |
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| A Natural History of Hell: Stories by Jeffrey FordAuthor Jeffrey Ford explores the underlying darkness of daily life via the 13 alarming, thought-provoking stories collected in A Natural History of Hell. Using humor, literary allusions, folklore tropes, and science fiction settings, Ford lets his imagination shine in ways designed to unsettle. He satirizes parenting in an account of a teenager's exorcism ("The Blameless"), chillingly depicts a required-open-carry high school ("Blood Drive"), and invents a world in which angels offer protection -- at a cost ("The Angel Seems"). Fans of Aimee Bender's equally inventive and darkly comic short stories or of Neil Gaiman's work in general will enjoy these twisty, creepy, and sometimes disturbing thrills. |
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| The Pier Falls: And Other Stories by Mark HaddonAnd now for something completely different. (Or at least that may be what you'll be saying to yourself as you move between stories set in the Victorian era, a Martian settlement, and a remote island, among other locales.) Stranded princesses, beachside disasters, junk-food addictions, mysterious strangers -- no matter the vehicle, author Mark Haddon depicts violence, horror, or despair with distinctly dark British humor. If you don't mind a few unhappy endings, or elements of science fiction, fantasy, or horror, this collection is undeniably entertaining. |
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| What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours: Stories by Helen OyeyemiIn this "beguiling" (Booklist) collection, the stories seem as if they could be modern fairy tales or folklore, so magical are some of their settings: there are echoes of Pinocchio in "Is Your Blood as Red as This?"; "Dornicka and the St. Martin's Day Goose" is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Along with striking imagery and surreal occurrences, the collection has a shared theme of locks and keys that winds throughout the loosely connected stories, which offer a diverse array of characters, each seeking something they may never be able to find. |
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| The Best Place on Earth: Stories by Ayelet TsabariStarring Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent in Israel, Canada, and elsewhere, this award-winning debut collection takes on the search for home among immigrants, travelers, and even those who have never left home (but still don't feel "at home"). Seeming contradictions are everywhere in these down-to-earth stories, from "Arab Jews" to an Orthodox Yemeni woman who feels more comfortable in India than does her half-Indian boyfriend ("A Sign of Harmony"), and Kirkus Reviews says that the characters are "complex, conflicted, prickly people you'll want to get to know better." |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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