| The last cruise by Kate ChristensenWhat it's about: the final voyage of the Queen Isabella, decked out to look as it did in 1957 on its luxurious maiden voyage. Yet neither above nor below decks is all smooth sailing.
Why you might like it: This literate comedy of manners illuminates divisions between the haves and have-nots -- but it also floats into territory fraught with danger as the ship begins having mechanical problems.
Reviewers say: "romantic, suspenseful, delightful, and nerve-wracking" (Library Journal). |
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| My year of rest and relaxation by Ottessa MoshfeghFeaturing: a 24-year-old unnamed narrator who's decided to literally hibernate, aided by prescription drugs that will enable her to sleep for days at a time.
What happens: Her plan succeeds in allowing her to avoid the life she doesn't much like -- but her unchecked drug regimen has consequences.
Is it for you? Yes, if you like brutal, in-depth character studies, dark humour, or existential novels. |
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| Confessions of the fox by Jordy RosenbergWhat it is: Peppered with extensive footnotes from the current day, this complex, creative novel is set primarily in the 18th century.
Featuring: infamous 18th-century transgender thief, Jack Sheppard, and Dr. Voth, the trans university professor who discovers Jack's memoirs, annotating them with professional and personal commentary as both his own and Jack's situation become increasingly untenable.
Who it's for: Readers of love stories, queer theory, academic satires, or historical novels set in the 18th century (or any combination of the above). |
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| What we were promised by Lucy TanWhat it's about: After two decades in the U.S., Wei and Lina Zhen return to China and begin a newly wealthy life in Shanghai. Housekeeper Sunny witnesses their discomfort and unhappiness, which increases with the arrival of Wei's brother Qiang, for whom Lina still pines.
You might also like: Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians (for a more exaggerated read), or Diksha Basu's The Windfall, which likewise deals with a family struggling with cultural conflicts and status. |
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Codex 1962: A trilogy
by Sjón
Jósef Loewe can recall the moment of his birth in August, 1962 and everything that has happened since; or so he claims to the woman listening to the tale of his life. He begins with his father, Leo, a starving Jewish fugitive in World War II Germany. In a small-town guesthouse, Leo discovers a kindred spirit in the maid who nurses him back to health; together they shape a piece of clay into a baby. Leo escapes to Iceland with the clay boy inside a hatbox, only to become embroiled in a murder mystery. It is not until 1962 that his son Jósef can be born. In modern-day Reykjavík, a middle-aged Jósef attracts the interest of a rapacious geneticist. Now, what lies behind Jósef's tale emerges. And as the story of genesis comes full circle, we glimpse the dangerous path ahead for humankind. In this epic novel, Sjón has woven ancient and modern material into a singular masterpiece encompassing genre fiction, history, theology, folklore, expressionist film, poetry, comic strips, myth, drama and, of course, the rich tradition of Icelandic storytelling.
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The family Tabor
by Cherise Wolas
Harry Tabor is about to receive the Man of the Decade award. As he enters his twilight years, this distinction seems like the culmination to a life well lived. A perfect life. A life spent helping Jewish refugees from all over the globe find a better life in America, giving them a second chance. Harry knows all about second chances. He has the perfect marriage; his wife, Roma, is an eminent child psychologist, and they tell each other almost everything. His three grown children, Phoebe, Camille, and Simon, are all accomplished. But his life could have very well taken a different turn if, seemingly a lifetime ago, he hadn’t uprooted everyone from their life in Connecticut and brought them out to the desert, literally, where they knew no one and he could start again. In The Family Tabor, Cherise Wolas examines the five members of the Tabor family as they prepare to celebrate Harry. Through each of their points of view, we see family members whose lives are built on lies, both to themselves and to others, and how these all come crashing down during a seventy-two-hour period.
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The summer wives
by Beatriz Williams
In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister; all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion, is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society. But beneath the island’s patrician surface, there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses. Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he’s determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph’s enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, Miranda’s caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility.
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Orchid and the wasp
by Caoilinn Hughes
A tough, thoughtful, and savvy opportunist, Gael is determined to live life on her own terms. Raised in Dublin by single-minded, careerist parents, Gael learns early how a person's ambitions and ideals can be compromised, and she refuses to let her vulnerable, unwell younger brother, Guthrie, suffer such sacrifices. When Gael's financier father walks out on them during the economic crash of 2008, her family fractures. Her mother, a once-formidable orchestral conductor, becomes a shadow. And a fateful incident prevents Guthrie from finishing high school. Determined not to let her loved-ones fall victim to circumstance, Gael leaves Dublin for the coke-dusted social clubs of London and Manhattan's gallery scene, always working an angle, but beginning to become a stranger to those who love her. Written in electric, heart-stopping prose, Orchid & the Wasp is a novel about gigantic ambitions and hard-won truths, chewing through sexuality, class, and politics, and crackling with joyful, anarchic fury. It challenges bootstraps morality with questions of what we owe one another and what we earn.
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Let is snow let it snow let it snow |
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One clear, ice-cold January morning at the beginning of the twenty-first century
by Roland Schimmelpfennig
One clear, ice-cold January morning shortly after dawn, a wolf crosses the border between Poland and Germany. His trail leads all the way to Berlin, connecting the lives of disparate individuals whose paths intersect and diverge. On an icy motorway eighty kilometres outside the city, a fuel tanker jack-knifes and explodes. The lone wolf is glimpsed on the hard shoulder and photographed by Tomasz, a Polish construction worker who cannot survive in Germany without his girlfriend. Elisabeth and Micha run away through the snow from their home village, crossing the wolf's tracks on their way to the city. A woman burns her mother's diaries on a Berlin balcony. And Elisabeth's father, a famous sculptor, observes the vast skeleton of a whale in his studio and asks: What am I doing here? And why? Experiences and encounters flicker past with a raw, visual power, like frames in a black and white film. Those who catch sight of the wolf see their own lives reflected, and find themselves searching for a different path in a cold time.
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Travelling in a strange land
by David Park
The world is shrouded in snow. Transport has ground to a halt. Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and is forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret. Written in spare, crystalline prose by one of the most important voices in contemporary Irish writing, Travelling in a Strange Land is a work of exquisite loss and transformative grace. It is a novel about fathers and sons, grief, memory, family and love; about the gulfs that lie between us and those we love, and the wrong turns that we take on our way to find them.
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After the snow
by Susannah Constantine
Christmas morning, 1969. Eleven year old Esme Lonsdale is opening her stocking. Its contents are thoughtless and wrapped in a bizarre concoction of birthday paper and wet towels, yet Esme is filled with wonder that Father Christmas could have been so ingenious. In reality, Father Christmas is Diana, Esme's mother, a woman wracked with manic depression, an embarrassing ailment to which her husband, Colin, turns a blind eye. So when Diana goes missing in the snow, only Esme and a close family friend, the Duke of Cluny, are worried. But Diana is soon found in the stables, happily drunk and rescued from the blizzard by Jimmy, the irreverent stableboy. By Boxing Day morning, life changes forever for little Esme, when Colin discovers his wife in a passionate embrace with the Duke. And as the family are dragged home in a mess of tears and rage, it's clear that the affair is only the first skeleton to come tumbling out of the closet.
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The snow queen: A novel
by Michael Cunningham
A vision appears in the sky above wintry New York and seems to exert an influence over two brothers, in this luminous, compassionate novel from the author of 'The Hours'. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up; in the sky he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. Barrett doesn't believe in visions-or in God-but he can't deny what he's seen. At the same time, in nearby Brooklyn, Tyler, Barrett's older brother, a struggling musician, is trying to write a song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. Tyler is determined to write a wedding song that will not be merely a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of love. Barrett, haunted by the light, turns unexpectedly to religion, while Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers. Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence. In subtle, lucid prose, he demonstrates a profound empathy for his conflicted characters and a singular understanding of the human soul.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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