Book picks similar to
Laritza by Kristy Placido


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The Mum Hunt


Gwyneth Rees - 2003
    Her own mother died when she was just a baby, and her father is still heartbroken over it. Plus he works far too much and hasn’t gone out in ages. By Esmie’s reckoning he needs help—whether he’s asked for it or not. So Esmie, her older brother Matthew, and their French nanny, Juliette, place an advert in the Lonely Hearts column of the newspaper. But what they’re looking for and what Esmie’s father is looking for might not be the same thing. Just whose hunt is this anyway?From the Hardcover edition.

Travel Team & the Big Field


Mike Lupica - 2011
    In The Big Field, the baseball league championship is on the line, but just how far is reluctant second-baseman Hutch willing to bend to be a good teammate?

Ordinary People


Judith Guest - 1976
    Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have one. In this memorable, moving novel, Judith Guest takes the reader into their lives to share their misunderstandings, pain...and ultimate healing. (back cover)

Seasons of Grace (Seasons of Grace, #1-3)


Beverly Lewis - 2010
    All 3 autographed with personalized inscription.

Broken Soup


Jenny Valentine - 2008
    But next moment he's gone, lost in the crowd of bustling shoppers. And she can't afford to lose her place in the checkout queue – after all, if she doesn't take the groceries home, nobody else will.Rowan has more responsibilities than most girls her age. These days, she pretty much looks after her little sister single-handedly – which doesn't leave much time for friends or fun. So when she finds out that Bee from school saw the whole thing, it piques her curiosity. Who was the mysterious stranger? Why was he so insistent that the negative belonged to Rowan?Bee invites Rowan to her house where they make a print of the negative. And the face that appears in front of Rowan's eyes is that of her dead brother Jack…

The Best and Hardest Thing


Pat Brisson - 2010
    And she's sick of herself. So when she spots mysterious bad boy Grady Dillon, she devises a plan to make herself over into someone new, someone who will attract Grady's attention. She succeeds but a little too well. When Molly discovers she's pregnant, she's forced to make the hardest choice of her life. This addictive readable portrayal of Molly's struggle to accept her pregnancy and the fact that her life will never be the same is told entirely in poetry, from sonnets to haiku.

Yellow Line


Sylvia Olsen - 2005
    White kids on one side, Indiands, or First Nations, on the other. Sides of the room, sides of the field, the smoking pit, the hallway, the washrooms; you name it. We're on one side and they're on the other. They live on one side of the Forks River bridge, and we live on the other side. They hang out in their village, and we hang out in ours.

The Jerk Magnet


Melody Carlson - 2012
    But her hot new look has a downside. She's attracting lots of guys who all have one thing in common: they're jerks. And stealing the attention of all the guys in school doesn't endear her to the girls either.Chelsea finally finds a true friend in Janelle Parker, and a non-jerk, Nicholas, catches her eye. Janelle keeps telling her to be herself, but Nicholas is the only guy around who doesn't give her a second look. Can Chelsea and Janelle come up with a plan to get his attention? Or will Chelsea's new image ruin everything?Teen favorite and bestselling author Melody Carlson helps girls uncover the real source of beauty in this true-to-life story of young love, friendship, and being yourself.

The Madonnas of Echo Park


Brando Skyhorse - 2010
    In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife.The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." Heralding a new young ethnic literary talent: Brando Skyhorse's first novel gives voice to the Mexican-American community in Echo Park, CA.

The Flick


Annie Baker - 2014
    With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist


Mohsin Hamid - 2007
    As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter…Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.

The Soloist


Mark Salzman - 1994
    Now, years later, his life suddenly is altered by two events: he becomes a juror in a murder trial for the brutal killing of a Buddhist monk, and he takes on as a pupil a Korean boy whose brilliant musicianship reminds him of his own past.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas


John Boyne - 2006
    (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one.

Alexandria of Africa


Eric Walters - 2008
    Being glamorous and rich is simply what she was born to be. When Alexandria is arrested for shoplifting, having to drag herself into court to face a judge just seems like a major inconvenience. But Alexandria has been in trouble before–and this time she can’t find a way to scheme out of the consequences. Before she knows it, she’s on a plane headed to Kenya where she has been ordered to work for an international charity. Over 7,000 miles away from home with no hot water, no cell phone reception, no friends or family, Alexandria is confronted with a land as unfamiliar as it is unsettling. Over the course of her month in Africa, Alexandria will face a reality she could never have imagined, and will have to look inside herself to see if she has what it takes to confront it.

The Natural


Bernard Malamud - 1952
    In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."