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If you'd like personalized book recommendations, check out our Tailored Titles services for both fiction and nonfiction books. |
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First Frost
by Sarah Addison Allen
A tale set 10 years after the events in Garden Spells finds Claire's happy contentment shattered by her father's revelations, which challenge everything she ever believed about herself.
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The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.
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The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden
A novel inspired by Russian fairy tales follows the experiences of a wild young girl who taps the mysterious powers of a precious necklace given to her father years earlier to save her village from dark and dangerous forces.
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The Scent Keeper
by Erica Bauermeister
A young woman raised on a remote island with a father who identifies the scents of the natural world makes illuminating discoveries about her identity and a mysterious cache of fragrances.
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The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
A fable about undauntingly following one's dream, listening to one's heart, and reading life's omens, features dialogue between a boy and an unnamed being.
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Claire of the Sea Light
by Edwidge Danticat
When a vibrant 7-year-old disappears from her Haitian community at the same time her father agonizingly decides to give her up so that she can have a better life, an ensuing search reveals the painful stories of neighbors whose lives the child touched.
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An Almond for a Parrot
by Wray Delaney
A woman in prison describes her life story growing up on the backstreets of 18th-century London where she was trained to be a courtesan at her stepmother’s Fairy House before a magician discovers she has powers similar to his own.
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
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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Things We Lost in the Fire
by Mariana Enriquez
A U.S. release of an anthology of stories by a debut writer from Buenos Aires explores macabre dimensions of life in contemporary Argentina, from women who set themselves on fire to protest domestic violence to a 9-year-old serial killer who acts out in gruesome ways in her classroom.
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Love Medicine
by Louise Erdrich
The lives and destinies of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines intertwine on and around a North Dakota Indian reservation from 1934 to 1984, in a tale of survival, tenacity, tradition, injustice, and love.
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The Winemaker's Wife
by Kristin Harmel
Champagne, 1940: As the danger from invading Germans mounts, champagne house owner Michel turns his back on his marriage to Inès to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. For Céline, the half-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater. When Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love—and the champagne house that ties them together.
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The King of Infinite Space
by Lyndsay Faye
After his Broadway theater baron father dies mysteriously, Ben Dane, his best friend Horatio and his artist ex-fiancé Lia, on one explosive night, are drawn into otherworldly events where the only outcome is death.
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American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
Just released from prison, Shadow encounters Mr. Wednesday, an enigmatic stranger who seems to know a lot about him, and when Mr. Wednesday offers him a job as his bodyguard, Shadow accepts and is plunged into a dark and perilous world
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez
The Nobel laureate weaves a story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents in disgrace, her brothers' resolve to seek revenge on her corruptor, and the townspeoples' refusal to depart from routine.
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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
by Imogen Hermes Gowar
One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock finds one of his captains waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.
As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr. Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on... and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course.
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The Charmed Wife
by Olga Grushin
Cinderella married the man of her dreams--the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, two children and thirteen and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming.
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Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Two half sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations
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Boys of Alabama
by Genevieve Hudson
In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.
In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he’s “playing dress-up.” That is until he meets Pan, the school “witch,” in Physics class: “Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up.” Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their true selves, or staying true in Alabama.
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Caul Baby
by Morgan Jerkins
A fiction debut by the author of Wandering in Strange Lands finds a would-be mother rendered the unexpected caregiver of a niece’s unplanned baby, who a matriarch predicts will restore their family’s prosperity.
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Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop
by Roselle Lim
Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people's fortunes-or misfortunes-in tea leaves. Ever since she can remember, Vanessa has been able to see people's fortunes at the bottoms of their teacups. To avoid blurting out fortunes, she converts to coffee, but somehow the fortunes escape and find a way to complicate her life and the lives of those around her. To add to this plight, her romantic life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai. After her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa sees death for the first time. She decides that she can't truly live until she can find a way to get rid of her uncanny abilities. When her eccentric aunt Evelyn shows up with a tempting offer to whisk her away, Vanessa says au revoir to California and bonjour to Paris. There, Vanessa learns more about herself and the root of her gifts, and realizes one thing to be true: Knowing one's destiny isn't a curse, but being unable to change it is.
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Gods of Jade and Shadow
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore is set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age in Mexico's underworld, where a young dreamer is sent by the Mayan God of Death on a life-changing journey.
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Paradise
by Toni Morrison
The Nobel Prize-winning author of The Bluest Eye captures the dreams, memories, conflicts, and complex interior lives of the citizens of a small, all-black town as four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near the town during the 1970s, in a novel that blends past, present, and future.
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Peaces
by Helen Oyeyemi
Honeymooning aboard a historic former tea-smuggling train, newlyweds Otto and Xavier enjoy the locomotive’s fantastical accommodations before encountering a secretive fellow passenger, who imparts a surprising message.
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The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki
One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understandwhat these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.
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The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
In 1969 Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment. Winner of the Booker Prize.
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Gold Diggers
by Sanjena Sathian
A satirical coming-of-age story follows the experiences of an Indian-American teen in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, who joins his crush’s plot to use an ancient alchemical potion to meet high parental expectations, triggering devastating consequences.
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Once Upon a River
by Diane Setterfield
After a mysterious stranger bearing a dead infant dies on the doorstep of an ancient inn on the river Thames and that infant miraculously returns to life the locals puzzle to discern where the child came from and what her apparent resurrection means.
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The Chosen and the Beautiful
by Nghi Vo
Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society--she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
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Sharks in the Time of Saviors
by Kawai Strong Washburn
When a child falls overboard and is returned safely to his mother by a shark, his miraculous rescue is hailed as a sign from ancient Hawaiian gods, complicating his family’s troubles amid a collapsing sugarcane industry.
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South of the Buttonwood Tree
by Heather S. Webber
A young woman with a knack for finding lost things and the despairing daughter of an impossible-to-please mother uncover long-held secrets about their identities and their family beliefs when they discover an abandoned newborn in the woods.
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Avon Lake Public Library 32649 Electric Blvd. Avon Lake, Ohio 44012 440-933-8128alpl.org |
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