Book picks similar to
A Place Far Away by Vahan Zanoyan


human-trafficking
armenia
fiction
coming-of-age-finding-one-s-self

Face Of Our Father


G. Egore Pitir - 2014
    After winning the 2015 Best Indie Book Award for Action/Adventure and receiving the B.R.A.G. Medallion, FACE OF OUR FATHER was just awarded the Bronze Medal for Popular Fiction by the 2016 eLit Awards. This novel has it all. One part "The Bourne Identity," one part "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," and one part "The Notebook," this poignant tale leaves the reader haunted by its characters long after the novel's final page has turned. Stuart and Angela Pierce, like many disillusioned careerists, are busy reinventing their lives. Stu reduces his airline flying schedule to train for triathlons, while Angie escapes the daily horrors of a prosecutor’s job to pursue pro bono work. But death threats soon prove that the only thing Angie escaped was the protective arm of the District Attorney’s office. With a graphic photo of a ritual stoning Stu’s only tangible clue, he sets out to protect a wife who refuses to protect herself. Obsessed with catching a murdering rapist, Angie plunges them both into a web of global intrigue. But who, indeed what, is the real enemy? Honor. Love. Life. All are at stake as the Pierces struggle to uncover the truth, both the enemy’s, and their own. Sometimes the biggest enemy can be the one right next to you… FACE OF OUR FATHER is too literary to be a thriller, yet too thrilling to put down—a unique blend of action and intimacy—a thriller with a soul. How often does fiction change how we define integrity, prejudice, and evil? To get at all that, a novel needs a rollercoaster of a plot coupled with an acute understanding of identity, love, and where these intersect. Test your beliefs. Read it.

The Penmaker's Wife


Steve Robinson - 2019
    Angelica Chastain has fled from London with her young son, William. She promises him a better life, far away from the terrors they left behind.Securing a job as a governess, Angelica captures the attention of wealthy widower Stanley Hampton. Soon they marry and the successful future Angelica envisaged for William starts to fall into place.But the past will not let Angelica go. As the people in her husband’s circle, once captivated by her charm, begin to question her motives, it becomes clear that forgetting where she came from—and who she ran from—is impossible.When tragedy threatens to expose her and destroy everything she’s built for herself and William, how far will she go to keep her secrets safe? And when does the love for one’s child tip over into dangerous obsession?Alias Grace meets Peaky Blinders in this tale of obsession, ambition and murder in Victorian England.

A Good Enough Mother


Bev Thomas - 2019
    . .Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never "fit in," disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return. Enter a new patient, Dan--unstable and traumatized--who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon, her own complicated feelings, about how she has failed her own boy, cloud her professional judgement. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality....An utterly compelling drama with a timebomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering, and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.

The Apology Project


Jeanette Escudero - 2021
    She’s been fired for not compromising her principles in a high-profile case and then punching her partner in the nose for the misogynistic comment he made in retort (not her finest moment). Leaving a career that gave her purpose, Amelia can only ask, What next?Let it be better than her epic failure of a fortieth birthday party: an open bar full of no-shows except for John Ellis, a total stranger and the new associate at her ex-firm. As it turns out, though, he’s very good company—and a wake-up call. With the help of John and a lot of champagne, Amelia considers the people she’s wronged, from old besties to former boyfriends to coworkers. Amelia resolves to make amends—to those who really deserve it.One apology at a time, Amelia’s looking at the choices she’s made in the past, the new ones she’s making with John, and those she’s making for herself. What next? Maybe a second chance she never expected.

Complicit


Nicci French - 2009
    She is alone, except for the dead body lying in a pool of blood. What happened? What will she do? And is any or all of it her fault? Bonnie is a music teacher who has spent a long, hot summer in London rehearsing with a band. It was supposed to be fun, but the tricky knots of the band's friendships unravel with each passing day. What was meant to be a summer of happiness, music and love turns deadly as lovers betray, passions turn homicidal and friendship itself becomes a crime. Someone in the band must be a killer. Is it Bonnie? And if not - who is it?

Every Last Fear


Alex Finlay - 2021
    The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why.The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay's Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted.

Elevator Pitch


Linwood Barclay - 2019
    Each presses a button for their floor, but the elevator proceeds, non-stop, to the top. Once there, it stops for a few seconds, and then plummets.Right to the bottom of the shaft.It appears to be a horrific, random tragedy. But then, on Tuesday, it happens again, in a different Manhattan skyscraper. And when Wednesday brings yet another high-rise catastrophe, one of the most vertical cities in the world—and the nation’s capital of media, finance, and entertainment—is plunged into chaos.Clearly, this is anything but random. This is a cold, calculated bid to terrorize the city. And it’s working. Fearing for their lives, thousands of men in women working in offices across the city refuse leave their homes. Commerce has slowed to a trickle. Emergency calls to the top floors of apartment buildings go unanswered.Who is behind this? Why are they doing it? What do these deadly acts of sabotage have to do with the fingerless body found on the High Line? Two seasoned New York detectives and a straight-shooting journalist must race against time to find the answers before the city’s newest, and tallest, residential tower has its Friday night ribbon-cutting.

The Summer of New Beginnings


Bette Lee Crosby - 2018
    So when her father passes away unexpectedly, leaving behind his at-risk business, she steps up to save his legacy—even if that means putting her own dreams on hold.Tracy couldn’t be more different from her sister. She’s always been the rebellious type, without much direction in life. But in the wake of her latest romantic disaster, she finds herself moving back home as a single mother.As Tracy experiences the difficulties of new motherhood, Meghan faces her own struggle: trying not to fall for the stray puppy she rescued. This is no time for attachments—not to the adorable “Sox,” whose owner is bound to turn up any day, and certainly not to the handsome new vet in town. But as the summer unfolds, she discovers that, like Sox, she may need rescuing, too.As both sisters navigate unexpected challenges and exciting new relationships, they’ll find that putting the past to rest can make way for beautiful new beginnings.

The Triflers


Mumkey Jones - 2017
    It'll be a school shooting for the record books, his "Bloody Monday." "The Triflers" is the story of a young man's rampage told from three perspectives: The killer's, his best friend's, and a popular jock's. This is the debut novel of YouTube satirist Mumkey Jones.

The Point of Death


Peter Tonkin - 2001
    The opening night of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. But it is not just the young lovers in the play who are star-crossed. Mercutio is found murdered in the middle of the play - but it is real, not stage, blood that flows from his body. Tom Musgrove, is hired by the theatre owners to solve the murder case as quickly and quietly as possible. The theatre has only just reopened after two years of plagues, and they can’t afford a scandal on their doorstep. As Tom plunges into the mean streets of Elizabethan London he soon realises he has jumped blindly into a web of murderous intrigue, which has already claimed the lives of Kit Marlowe and Francis Walsingham. As the shattered remnants of England’s first Secret Service split into two lethally opposed camps, the blood begins to flow from the stinking sewers of Southwark to the gilded halls of Westminster. Can Musgrove track down the murderer and solve the mystery? Or will he end up being the one hunted to The Point of Death? ‘The Point of Death’ is a thrilling Elizabethan murder mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.

The Uttermost Farthing (a Savant's Vendetta)


R. Austin Freeman - 1914
    Austin Freeman was an early 20th century British writer of detective stories. . Freeman first used the inverted detective plot in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. Many of these stories include arcane scientific knowledge on such topics as tropical medicine, toxicology and metallurgy. The Red Thumb Mark, written in 1907 is the first of the Dr Throndkye novels. Dr Thorndyke was a medical/legal forensic investigator. The Uttermost Farthing, an unusual tale begins, "It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the sympathy of the reader but may even excite a certain amount of moral repulsion. But by those who knew him, his generosity to the poor, and especially to those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, will be an ample set-off to his severity and even ferocity towards the enemies of society.'

Orhan's Inheritance


Aline Ohanesian - 2015
    When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.  Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations. “Aline Ohanesian draws from her family’s own dark history to create a tender, powerful story of love and reclamation. Orhan’s Inheritance is a breathtaking and expansive work of historical fiction and proof that the past can sometimes rewrite the future.” —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train

Days Like These


Sue Margolis - 2016
    After all, she’s already raised one set of children—and quite successfully, if she may say so herself. But all it takes is a few days of private school functions, helicopter parents, video games, and never-ending Frozen sing-a-longs for Judy to feel she’s in over her head.   As weeks become months, Judy feels more and more like an outsider among all the young mothers with their parenting theories du jour, especially when she gets on the wrong side of the school’s snooty alpha mom. But finding a friend in another grandmother—and a man who takes her mind off all the stress—almost make it worthwhile. She just needs to take it one food allergy, one incomprehensible homework assignment, and one major meltdown at a time...

Everything Love Is


Claire King - 2016
    Moored on his houseboat on the edge of Toulouse, he helps his clients navigate the waters of contentment, yet remains careful never to make waves of his own.Baptiste is more concerned with his past than his future: particularly the mysterious circumstances of his birth and the identity of his birth mother. But Sophie, the young waitress in his local bar, believes it is time for Baptiste to rediscover passion and leads him into the world on his doorstep he has long tried to avoid. However, it is Baptiste’s new client who may end up being the one to change his perspective. Elegant and enigmatic, Amandine Rousseau is fast becoming a puzzle he longs to solve. As tensions rise on the streets of the city, Baptiste’s determination to avoid both the highs and lows of love begins to waver. And when his mother’s legacy finally reveals itself, he finds himself torn between pursuing his own happiness and safeguarding that of the one he loves.

A Murder to Die For


Stevyn Colgan - 2018
    The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain as the witnesses, suspects and victim are all dressed as Miss Cutter. And they all want to solve that crime too . . .