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| The Great Believers by Rebecca MakkaiWhat it's about: Set in Chicago during the height of the AIDS crisis as well as in modern-day Paris, this thoughtful novel is a powerful portrayal of loss, life, friendship, and family.
Why you might like it: Empathetic characters; moving details of the AIDS epidemic; an emphasis on the families you choose.
Read it if: you enjoyed the scope and subject matter of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara but want something a little more uplifting. |
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| Bearskin by James A. McLaughlinWhat it's about: Obsessed with catching the poachers intruding on a private preserve, caretaker Rice Moore runs into trouble with vicious locals, a drug cartel, and U.S. law enforcement.
Why you might like it: With a flawed and damaged hero, bursts of violence, and an atmospheric setting in Virginia's Appalachian forests, this visceral, literary debut shows that it's not just nature that's red in tooth and claw... |
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| There There by Tommy OrangeWhat it is: a debut by a Native American author; vignettes in the lives of 12 different characters as they prepare for the upcoming Big Oakland Powwow in Oakland, California.
Why you might like it: With characters whose motivations run the gamut, this is a wide-ranging, multifaceted portrait of a complex and sometimes only tangentially connected community -- that of urban Native Americans.
Reviewers say: "a new kind of American epic" (The New York Times); "white-hot" (The Washington Post); "kaleidoscopic" (Kirkus Reviews).
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| The Book of M by Peng ShepherdWhat it's about: Sometime in the near future, people are losing their shadows -- a precursor to losing all of their memories. Chaos ensues, and Ory and his wife Max flee to a mountain cabin to escape the violence -- and then Max loses her shadow and runs away.
Why you might like it: You can't get enough cross-country dystopian fiction, like Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. |
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| The Shepherd's Hut by Tim WintonWhat it's about: After the sudden death of his violent father, teenager Jaxie Clackton takes off across the rough and dangerous landscape of Western Australia in hopes of reaching the girl he loves.
Read it for: Jaxie's journey across the unforgiving wilderness; the compelling and gritty writing; and Jaxie himself -- as rough as his language, he's not always easy to feel sympathy for, despite his brutal upbringing.
Be aware of: a fair amount of blood and violence, including cruelty to animals. |
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Providence: A Novel
by Caroline Kepnes
"A journey of two best friends that is part love story, part detective story, and part supernatural thriller, from the acclaimed author of YOU, whose work Stephen King describes as "hypnotic and totally original." Growing up as best friends in small-town New Hampshire, Jon and Chloe are the only ones who truly understand each other and their intense connection. But just when Jon is ready to confess the depth of his feelings, he's kidnapped by his substitute teacher, a discredited scientist who is obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and has a plot to save humanity. After four years in captivity, Jon finally escapes, only to discover that he now has an uncontrollable power that endangers anyone he has intense feelings for. He runs away to Providence to protectChloe while he searches for answers. Across town from Jon, Detective Charles "Eggs" DeBenedictus is fascinated by a series of strange deaths--young, healthy people whose hearts just. stop. Convinced these deaths are a series of connected, vigilante killings, he jeopardizes his job and already strained marriage to uncover the truth. With heart, insight, and a keen eye on human frailty, Kepnes whisks us on a journey through New England and crashes these characters' lives together in the most unexpected ways, exploring the complex relationship between the powerful and the powerless, love and identity, self-preservation and self-destruction, and how the lines are often blurred between the two"
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The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick After escaping from a private sanitarium, Adelaide Blake arrives in Burning Cove, California, desperate to start over. Working at an herbal tea shop puts her on the radar of those who frequent the seaside resort town: Hollywood movers and shakers always in need of hangover cures and tonics. One such customer is Jake Truett, a recently widowed businessman in town for a therapeutic rest. But unbeknownst to Adelaide, his exhaustion is just a cover. In Burning Cove, no one is who they seem. Behind facades of glamour and power hide drug dealers, gangsters, and grifters. Into this make-believe world comes psychic to the stars Madame Zolanda. Adelaide and Jake know better than to fall for her kind of con. But when the medium becomes a victim of her own dire prediction and is killed, they'll be drawn into a murky world of duplicity and misdirection. Neither Adelaide or Jake can predict that in the shadowy underground they'll find connections to the woman Adelaide used to be--and uncover the specter of a killer who's been real all along...
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Operator Down: A Pike Logan Thriller
by Brad Taylor
Veteran operator Pike Logan and his team embark on a high-risk search for an undercover Mossad agent only to stumble on a ruthless military coup in Africa, a situation that tests his Taskforce loyalties. By the best-selling author of Ring of Fire.
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Collusion by De'nesha DiamondFramed for a high-profile murder, Abrianna Parker finds herself hurtling down a conspiracy rabbit hole in a desperate attempt to clear her name. Her only way out is to go after the most powerful man in the country. But the powers that be play dirty—and expose her billionaire adoptive father, Cargill Parker, and his criminal activity. With charges of collusion swirling on Capitol Hill, police and Federal agencies force Abrianna off the grid. But she’s not alone. By her side is ex-con turned private investigator Kadir Kahlifa, a man as seductive as he is dangerous. While battling a fiery passion, they team up with their band of street rebels and digital revolutionaries to burn through deception and spin to uncover the truth before it costs more innocent lives—mainly their own.
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Flamingo Diner
by Sherryl Woods
Returning home to Winter Cove, Florida after her father's mysterious death, Emma Killian, while trying to keep the family's Flamingo Diner in business, finds herself saddled with a pair of aging sleuths and unmanageable relatives, leading her into the arms of Winter Cover police chief Matt Atkins. Original.
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Agent in Place
by Mark Greaney
Taking a contract to abduct the mistress of a Syrian dictator to obtain any information she may possess, Court Gentry learns that the woman has given birth to the dictator's only son and that in order to secure her cooperation, he must retrieve the child safely out of Syria. By the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Gunmetal Gray.
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The Rising Sea: A Novel From the NUMA Files
by Clive Cussler
Investigating an alarming rise in the world's sea levels, Kurt, Joe and the rest of the NUMA scientific team uncover a diabolical plot to upset the Pacific balance of power by triggering natural disasters to displace billions of people.
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| How to Behave in a Crowd by Camille BordasStarring: 11-year-old Isadore Mazal, the youngest and least obviously talented among six overachieving and gifted siblings.
What it's about: three years in the life of this young misfit, who proves that while he may not have academic gifts nor musical talents, he has his own special way of seeing the world.
For fans of: coming-of-age stories with complex, well-developed child narrators. |
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| How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica HenryWhat it's about: After the death of her father, Emilia struggles to fill the role he played in his small Cotswolds town while also keeping his beloved bookshop afloat.
Why you might like it: There's a warm and welcoming community, a bit of romance, and a number of obstacles for Emilia (and others) to overcome.
For fans of: neighborly, book-centric novels like Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Jenny Colgan's The Bookshop on the Corner, or Katarina Bivald's The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. |
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| How to Build a Girl by Caitlin MoranStarring: awkward 14-year-old misfit Johanna Morgan, whose family is on the dole and who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde, a hard-charging partier who makes a name for herself as a hard-to-please rock critic.
Why you might like it: England in the 1990s (and its music scene) is vividly depicted; the writing is clever, observant, and often hilarious; your awkward teen years are comfortably far behind you.
Look for: the sequel, How to Be Famous, publishing this month. |
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| How to Be Both by Ali SmithWhat it is: an inventive, genre-blending combination of historical and contemporary stories, in a highly unusual format -- chapters are arranged in a different order from copy to copy, so readers will experience the book differently depending on what they hold in their hands.
Starring: a Renaissance-era artist and a grieving modern-day teen.
Why you might like it: With thought-provoking explorations of gender and art, plus the creative layout, How to Be Both offers plenty of fodder for discussion. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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