Book picks similar to
Far from Algiers by Djelloul Marbrook


poetry
4-stars
contemporary
less-than-1-000-reviews

Grace to Save (Serenity Landing Tuesdays of Grace #1)


Carol Moncado - 2016
    Fifteen years later, he and Cassie are getting along just fine and he's even fallen in love. The last thing he expects to find on his doorstep one Tuesday morning is Cassie's mom - the one person he thought he’d never see again - and she's asking the impossible. Circumstances, including her firefighter brother's death on 9/11, forced Abi Connealy into a decision she's spent years regretting and her daughter grew up without her. But now, a family crisis compels her to do the one thing she swore she never would: find the daughter she’d abandoned just a few days after birth. Shocked when Travis doesn’t send her packing, Abi prays to a God she doesn’t believe in that her relationship with her daughter will be restored. Travis plans to propose to his girlfriend, but their relationship hits the rocks as he and Abi both struggle with the long-dormant feelings that never had the chance to develop. When Cassie demonstrates incredible grace toward the grandfather who refuses to acknowledge her existence, Abi begins to learn the love of a Savior - a Savior who has more than enough Grace to Save.

The Flu Season and Other Plays


Will Eno - 2006
    His work is inventive, disciplined and, at the same time, wild and evocative. His ear is splendid and his mind is agile.”—Edward Albee“An original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged.”—GuardianWinner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut by an American playwright, The Flu Season is a reluctant love story, in spite of itself. Set in a hospital and a theater, it is a play that revels in ambivalence and derives a flailing energy from its doubts whether a love story is ever really a love story.Will Eno has been called “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation” (New York Times)—he is a playwright with an extraordinary voice and a singular theatrical vision. Also included in this volume are Tragedy: A Tragedy and Intermission.Will Eno is the author of Thom Pain (based on nothing), which ran for a year Off-Broadway and was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other works include Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions, The Flu Season, Tragedy: a tragedy, and Intermission.

Caught in the Quiet


Rod McKuen
    

Maya Angelou: Poems Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie/Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well/And Still I Rise/Shaker, Why Don't You Sing


Maya Angelou - 1993
    

In Love's Name


A. Marie Johnson - 2020
    For Leighanna and Janero what should've remained as a feud between neighbors quickly spirals into a mutual attraction they both find hard to deny, and when Leighanna finds herself needing a place to stay for three months Janero surprisingly becomes her safety net. Given their close proximity it doesn't take much for their once deniable attraction to turn into unavoidable true feelings. Before it's all said and done, both of them find themselves willing to do things they swore they'd never do in the name of love.

The Mercy


Philip Levine - 1999
    The book's mood is best captured in the closing lines of the title poem, which takes its name from the ship that brought the poet's mother to America: A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.

Awkward


Gurpreet Kaur - 2020
    This book could make you cringe with awkwardness or it could melt your heart. The chances of the latter happening are minute. Read at your own risk.** Comedy topped with a whole lot of awkwardness and a tiny-winy bit of romance.**

Run It Back: A Collection of Second Chance Shorts


Nicole Falls - 2021
    

In the Surgical Theatre


Dana Levin - 1999
    Each of Levin's poems is an astonishing investigation of human darkness, propelled by a sensuous syntax and a desire for healing."This is the language of a prophet: Levin's art, in this book certainly, takes place in a kind of mutating day of judgment: it means to wipe a film from our eyes. It is a dare, a challenge, and, for all its considerable beauty, the opposite of the seductive...Sensuous, compassionate, violent, extravagant: what an amazing debut this is, a book of terrors and marvels."-Louise Gluck, from the IntroductionDana Levin was raised in Lancaster, California, in the Mojave Desert. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Arts Council, and New York University, where she received her M.F.A. She lives in New Mexico and teaches Creative Writing at the College of Santa Fe.

The Men Who Sleep With My Husband


Alicia Coston - 2008
    Conspire with a hitwoman to murder my husband’s lovers.2. Frame my husband for their murders.3. Tell no one and to hell with the church.This is just the beginning of a vengeful to-do list for beautiful pastor’s wife and successful salon owner Lavender Wallace. After all, it’s not every night she finds her husband of almost twenty years, Pastor Quincy Wallace, with a prominent deacon kneeling before him in the pulpit—if only it were in prayer. With God taking entirely too long, Lavender satisfies her growing contempt by teaching her husband a malicious lesson that his faith never could. But trying not to fall for the detective investigating the case of her husband’s disappearing lovers proves difficult for a lonely and scorned wife. Shielding a doting teenaged son from his father’s secrets is even harder. As old lies are exposed and a deadly plot backfires threatening to destroy those she loves most, Lavender is forced to make a life-altering decision—the bible or the bullet?

Valhalla Cupcakes (The Cursed Painting #1)


Cassidy Cayman - 2016
    Now she’s got loansharks breathing down her neck for a hundred thousand dollars she doesn’t even owe, and her five hundred year old painting of a sexy Viking just came to life. Fortunately for her, he has to do whatever she says, and pretty soon, he’s stirring up more than just cupcake batter. A lighthearted, steamy standalone romance with no cliffhanger!

Untappable


Eve London - 2020
    CherryI’m sick of being the good girl and never getting what I want, especially when what I want more than anything is Carter.I know I’m not exactly his type but he’s my best friend’s brother and I’m just asking for one little favor – all he has to do is help me with my little virginity problem and move on.All I have to do is find the courage to ask him and cross my fingers he’ll say yes.CarterShe’s my best friend’s curvy little sister and she’s just asked me to take her V-card.There’s no way I can say yes but there’s no way in hell I’m letting someone else take it either.If I’m doing this I’m all in, I just need to convince her I’m worth more than a one-off, because I’m certainly not risking losing my buddy for a one-night stand.Untappable is fast sexy, brother's best friend romance featuring a shy heiress and a hot brewer.

Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part One; Poems


Yusef Komunyakaa - 2004
    In Taboo he examines the role of blacks in Western history, and how these roles are portrayed in art and literature. In taut, meticulously crafted three-line stanzas, Rubens paints his wife looking longingly at a black servant; Aphra Behn writes Oroonoko "as if she'd rehearsed it/for years in her spleen"; and in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson is "still/at his neo-classical desk/musing, but we know his mind/is brushing aside abstractions/so his hands can touch flesh." Taboo is the powerful first book in a new trilogy by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work never ceases to challenge and delight his readers.

Shirt in Heaven


Jean Valentine - 2015
    . . short poems so as to draw us into the doubleness and fluency of feelings."—The New York Times Book ReviewQuietly marked by elegy and memory, National Book Award winner Jean Valentine's thirteenth book is empowered by her signature clear music and compassion. Valentine leads us chronologically from childhood drawings and wartime memories to the present, where she addresses aging and the loss of loved ones. These poems of tender grace reflect on the small histories few ever fully see.Shirt in HeavenCome upon a snapshotof secret you, smiling like FDR, leaning on your crutches—come upon letters I thought I'd burned—I suppose you've got a place with lots of stairs.I'm at the end of something, you're at the beginning . . . —dearest, they told me a surgeon sat downin the hospital morgue, next to your body, & cried.He yelled at the aide to get out.His two sons had been your students.—me too, little-knowing—Jean Valentine is the current State Poet of New York and author of twelve books of poetry, including Door in the Mountain, which won the National Book Award. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Columbia University, and lives in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City.