Book picks similar to
Stones of the Wall by Houying Dai
fiction
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The Miracle Game
Josef Škvorecký - 1972
Moving between 1948, when our hero Danny Smiřický falls asleep in church while a miraculous event occurs, and 1968, when he observes the miracle of Prague Spring, The Miracle Game is a sharp look at the strange, sad, and silly things people do to survive.
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now
Sandra Tsing Loh - 1997
But just as the Bohemian life is wearing painfully thin, their fortunes change, catapulting them out of the world of practical problems and into the world of ethical ones.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet / Songs of Willow Frost: Two Bestselling Novels
Jamie Ford - 2014
Each in their own way, these New York Times bestsellers delve into the past, combining exquisite storytelling with heartfelt explorations of family, love, and heritage. Now both magnificent novels are together in one exclusive eBook bundle. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET “Mesmerizing and evocative . . . a tale of conflicted loyalties and timeless devotion.”—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants “A wartime-era Chinese-Japanese variation on Romeo and Juliet . . . The period detail [is] so revealing and so well rendered.”—The Seattle Times In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown, where the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. SONGS OF WILLOW FROST “Jamie Ford is a first-rate novelist, and with Songs of Willow Frost he takes a great leap forward and demonstrates the uncanny ability to move me to tears.”—Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides “Arresting . . . [with] the kind of ending readers always hope for, but seldom get.”—The Dallas Morning News
Seattle, 1934: Twelve-year-old William Eng, a Chinese American boy, has lived at Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. But now William, in a rare visit to the movies, has glimpsed an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that she is his mother. Determined to find her, William escapes from Sacred Heart with his friend Charlotte. The pair navigate the streets of Seattle, where they must not only survive but confront the mysteries of William’s past and his connection to Willow Frost . . . a woman whose story is far more complicated than any fantasy portrayed onscreen.
This Heavy Silence
Nicole Mazzarella - 2005
A sudden, inexplicable event leaves the daughter of her childhood friend in her care. Pressured by her community to allow her former fiancé to raise the child, Dottie must face the past she has worked fifteen years to forget.Spanning a decade, This Heavy Silence explores the power of the vows we make to others, and, more binding, those we make to ourselves. Evoking the hardship, spring-fed beauty, and the complexities of community in the rural Midwest, this award-winning, beautifully observed novel leads us to question our ideas about motherhood, faith, and the debts we owe. "Like the land she inhabits and the people she attends, Nicole Mazzarella offers a subtle and enduring beauty, born of intense interiority, and vision both broad and deep." -Scott Cairns, author of Philokalia: New & Selected Poems
The Mountains Sing
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai - 2020
Tran Dieu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. This is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel in English.
The Half-Life: A Novel
Jonathan Raymond - 2004
One hundred and sixty years later, Tina Plank, an unhappy teenager, meets Trixie, a girl with a troubled past, and the two become fast friends. But when two skeletons are accidentally unearthed from their common ground, the lives of Tina and Trixie, Cookie and Henry are brought together in unexpected and startling ways.
Oaklayne, A Civil War Saga
Maurine R. McCullah - 2010
Conflict threatens to dissolve the country in bitter strife if North and South cannot peacefully settle their differences. The calm serenity of life at Oaklayne Plantation near Richmond, VA is suddenly replaced with passionate friction between family members, as each person struggles through perilous situations encountered by each of them during a very difficult time in our nation’s history. Colonel Adam Layne is devastated but remains strong in his loyalty to the Union, despite being banished from the plantation by his father and deserted by his fiancée. The balance of his family stands strong with their father's Southern allegiance. "Oaklayne, a Civil War Saga" is a historically accurate portrayal of a man struggling to serve both his family and his nation in a time when those things are in conflict. The sequel to this book entitled "Oaklayne, The Reconstruction", is now available for purchase in print or e-book version!
A Stopover in Venice
Kathryn Walker - 2008
The novel opens on a train en route to Verona. A young American woman is on an Italian tour with her famous musician husband. In a moment of fury and despair at their lifeless marriage, she drags down a piece of her luggage and gets off the train in the countryside. Marooned and on her own for the first time in eight years, she returns to Venice, gets a room at the Hotel Gritti Palace, sets out to explore the city, and chances on a group of boys tormenting a small dog, which she rescues and smuggles into the hotel.The following day she is accosted by a man who claims that the dog belongs to his employer. Reluctantly she follows him to a Gothic palazzo and to the dog’s owner, an elderly contessa. The young woman becomes faint. The contessa insists that she stay the night . . .What started off as an impulsive act of defiance opens out into an adventure—and a mystery—that summons up centuries of the Venetian past, the discovery of a lost masterpiece, and the heroine’s reclamation of herself.
Dillon
Linda Ford - 2021
She found Dillon down on his luck and gave him, and five other young men, a home and trains them. Seven years later she is set on finding brides for all of the young men. Dillon’s not interested. He was robbed of everything by Slick McCall—someone he trusted. A girl he loved has also treated him poorly. He doesn’t intend to open his heart to anyone. His plan is to stay right there on the ranch and take care of Maude and John.Abigail has been duped by a slick-talking charmer and is now expecting a baby with no ring on her finger. Posing as a widow, she flees west, intending to start over and create a new life for herself and her unborn baby. However she arrives at Logan Crossing and discovers her money is missing—stolen. She has nothing. Maude offers her a job on the ranch, thinking this pretty young widow will be suitable for one of the boys.Abigail eagerly helps at the ranch house, determined to make a temporary home for herself and the baby. Dillon is always ready to take her for a walk or otherwise entertain her. The baby’s birth creates a new level of attraction and intimacy between them. He tells her of how a certain Slick McCall has stolen everything and a former girlfriend hurt him, teaching Dillon to guard his heart.Slick McCall was the man who sweet talked her into making Abby’s baby. She was prepared to tell Dillon the truth about being an unwed mother but hearing his words makes her realize she must guard her secret.But how long can she hide the truth when she and Dillon are falling in love? Will Dillon still love her when the truth comes out? Most of all, will her newborn son ever be accepted?
The Appomattox Saga Collection 3
Gilbert Morris - 2009
The end of the United States’ most terrible war is the backdrop for adventure, romance, and power of God to move amidst tragedy. Two women seek answers in Virginia to secrets in their pasts, finding the love of noble men along the journey. Two soldiers in Mississippi struggle against the evils of war and in its midst find women who are worth fighting for.
First Confession
Montserrat Fontes - 1992
Their theft tragically unleashes a series of events, among them murder and suicide.
My Life as Emperor
Su Tong - 1992
In this chilling yet enormously entertaining tale by acclaimed Chinese writer Su Tong, a pampered and naïve 14-year-old prince finds himself, suddenly and unexpectedly, named Emperor and placed in the position of lord and ruler over an entire nation. A boy of few talents and limited interests, he soon grows drunk on his own power and learns to wield an iron fist in dealing with subjects inside and outside the palace. Narrated in retrospect by the ex-Emperor, this is a mesmerizing story of cruelty and decadence, of concubines and eunuchs, of lethal imperial rivalries and royal court intrigue. Su Tong is one of the most celebrated Chinese writers today. The New York Times calls him "an imaginative and skillful storyteller." The publication of this book--his first in almost ten years--was an international literary event. His innovative, deftly constructed novels remain at the forefront of a growing body of work by a coterie of writers who have exposed new facts about China's past and posed vital questions regarding the country's future.
Half of Man Is Woman
Zhang Xianliang - 1985
After he marries a woman he had seen eight years earlier, the story becomes, on one level, an analogy between his temporary sexual impotence and the position of intellectuals. A year later he is ready to abandon his wife and escape from the camp. Cameo appearances by philosophic and literary figures (Marx and Meng-tz, Othello and Song Ji) and discussing China and sex allow the incorporation of non-novelistic elements while indulging in gallows humor.
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish
Elise Blackwell - 2007
On the verge of manhood and a stone’s throw of the rising Mississippi River, Louis Proby is pulled between his love of the natural world and the glittering temptations of New Orleans, between the beautiful Nanette Lançon and a father who no longer seems larger-than-life, between the simplicity of childhood and the complicated decisions of adulthood.Louis comes of age at a time when the country is coming of age. In Louisiana, it’s a time when the powerful prove themselves willing to sacrifice the poor to protect their position. As the people of Cypress Parish go about their daily lives, bankers in New Orleans are plotting to alter those lives irrevocably. Like so many calamities, the one that befalls Cypress Parish has both natural and human causes.Based on historical events and narrated on the eve of another disaster, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish tells the story of a young man growing up in a time and place not quite like any other.
Pursuit of Justice
Freya Atwood - 2021
A stubborn lawyer. And a deadly race against time.When news of The Golden Lake Killer rise, the police quickly claim they caught their suspect. Refusing to pay mind to it, Sam is met with a surprise once a man is begging her to defend his brother; the man believed to be the culprit.The proof against him is staggering, yet Sam refuses to give up. And as the evidence against him heightens, Sam has no other choice but to take the law in her hands…Pursuit of Justice is Freya's 1st novel in the Sam Spencer series of blood-pumping legal thrillers. If you are an avid fan of strong female leads, action-packed courtroom drama, riveting characters and mind-blowing murder mystery, then you'll love Freya's intriguing story.