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The girl with the dragon tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle, convinced that she had been murdered by someone from her own deeply dysfunctional clan, hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.
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The kite runner
by Khaled Hosseini
The best-selling first novel traces the period between the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the horrific rule of the Taliban and follows the unlikely friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy and the son of his father's servant.
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The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
by Mark Haddon
After stumbling upon his neighbor's dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork and being blamed for the killing, fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone, an autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, decides to track down the real killer and turns to his detective hero to help him with the investigation, which brings him face to face with a family crisis.
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Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
by J. K. Rowling
A winner of England's National Book Award, the acclaimed debut novel tells the outrageously funny, fantastic adventure story of Harry Potter, who escapes a hideous foster home thanks to a scholarship to The Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.
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The secret history
by Donna Tartt
A transfer student from a small town in California, Richard Papen is determined to affect the ways of his Hampden College peers, and he begins his intense studies under the tutelage of eccentric Julian Morrow.
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Bastard out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
Tired of being labeled white trash, Ruth Anne Boatwright--a South Carolina bastard who is attached to the indomitable women in her mother's family--longs to escape from her hometown, and especially from Daddy Glen and his mean-spirited jealousy.
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Behold the dreamers : a novel
by Imbolo Mbue
Two marriages, one immigrant working class and the other from the top one percent, are shaped by financial circumstances, infidelities, secrets and the 2008 recession.
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Everything I never told you
by Celeste Ng
A first novel by a Pushcart Prize-winning writer explores the fallout of a favorite daughter's shattering death on a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio.
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A man called Ove : a novel
by Fredrik Backman
A curmudgeon hides beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior a terrible personal loss while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.
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The mothers : a novel
by Brit Bennett
In a contemporary black community, 17-year-old Nadia Turner mourns the suicide of her mother, leading her to take up with the local's pastor's son; but when she gets pregnant, the pregnancy and the subsequent cover-up will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth.
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Lincoln in the Bardo : a novel
by George Saunders
A long-awaited first novel traces a night of solitary mourning and reflection as experienced by the 16th President after the death of his 11-year-old son at the dawn of the Civil War.
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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughter's memories and feelings.
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White teeth: a novel
by Zadie Smith
Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.
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Geek love
by Katherine Dunn
Aloysious and Lillian Binewski, proprietors of a traveling carnival, attempt to reduce overhead by breeding their own freak show, with tragic results.
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The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
by Junot DÃaz
Living with an old-world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and believes that a long-standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness.
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We the animals : A Novel
by Justin Torres
The Brooklyn childhoods of three brothers are marked by their parents' volatile passions and their own destructive antics, in the story of a chaotic family that explores the ways in which a youth's coming-of-age profoundly shapes his world view.
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
In nineteenth-century England, all is going well for rich, reclusive Mr Norell, who has regained some of the power of England's magicians from the past, until a rival magician, Jonathan Strange, appears and becomes Mr Norrell's pupil.
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Carrie
by Stephen King
An introverted girl with remarkable powers of telekinesis faces the horrors of teenage life and unleashes a few horrors of her own when she attends the high school prom.
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The namesake [electronic resource] : A Novel
by Jhumpa Lahiri
An incisive portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life, in a debut novel that spans three decades, two continents, and two generations.
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Goodbye, vitamin : a novel
by Rachel Khong
Struggling with disillusionment in the aftermath of a broken engagement, Ruth moves back home with her parents to discover that her professor father's erratic memory loss and her mother's eccentricity are manifesting in near-comical ways that help Ruth transform her grief.
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The leavers : a novel
by Lisa Ko
An award-winning debut novel follows the experiences of a Chinese youth who when his undocumented worker mother fails to return home is adopted by a family that attempts to make him over as an American teen while he struggles to reconcile his new life with memories of the family he left behind.
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The world of tomorrow
by Brendan Mathews
Fleeing Ireland for New York City after stealing a small fortune from the IRA, three brothers immerse themselves in the cultural and political tensions of 1939, only to find their lives falling apart when they are tracked down by a hired assassin.
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See What I Have Done
by Sarah Schmidt
A reimagining of the infamous Lizzie Borden murder case profiles a volatile and loveless Borden home where the events surrounding the shocking murders of the parents are presented from the viewpoints of Lizzie, her elder sister, their housemaid and an enigmatic stranger.
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Stay with me
by Ayobami Adebayo
Secure in the love of her husband in spite of cultural pressures for him to have a polygamous marriage, Yejide is overwhelmed by shock and pain when her initial inability to become pregnant compels her husband to take a second wife, a situation that leads to her own desperate and fateful quest to conceive a child.
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The Martian
by Andy Weir
Stranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways.
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Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine
by Gail Honeyman
A socially awkward, routine-oriented loner teams up with a bumbling IT guy from her office to assist an elderly accident victim, forging a friendship that saves all three from lives of isolation and secret unhappiness.
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The girl on the train
by Paula Hawkins
Obsessively watching a breakfasting couple every day to escape the pain of her losses, Rachel witnesses a shocking event that inextricably entangles her in the lives of strangers.
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The Rosie project
by Graeme C. Simsion
A socially awkward genetics professor who has never been on a second date sets out to find the perfect wife, but instead finds Rosie Jarman, a fiercely independent barmaid who is on a quest to find her biological father.
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Tell the wolves I'm home [electronic resource] : a novel
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, 14-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship.
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Ready player one
by Ernest Cline
Immersing himself in a mid-21st-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's super-wealthy creator, who has promised that the winner will be his heir.
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Sharp objects : a novel
by Gillian Flynn
Reluctantly returning to her hometown after an eight-year absence to investigate the murders of two preteen girls, reporter Camille Preaker is reunited with her neurotic mother and enigmatic, thirteen-year-old half-sister as she works to uncover the truth about the killings, a probe that leads her all too close to the secrets of her own past.
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Song of a captive bird : a novel
by Jasmin Darznik
A first novel by the best-selling author of The Good Daughter reimagines the life of rebel poet Forugh Farrokzhad, who is depicted as a passionate young writer in search of freedom and independence from the restrictions imposed on women in mid-20th-century Iran.
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Heather, the totality : a novel
by Matthew Weiner
A debut novel by the Emmy Award-winning creator and writer of Mad Men presents the story of a collision course between a dangerous young man and a privileged couple who compete for their daughter's attention.
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The city of brass
by S. A. Chakraborty
A young con artist of unsurpassed talent inadvertently summons a mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, revealing the existence of true magic before the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom falls into her hands.
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