Book picks similar to
Kitchen Boy by Sanford Phippen


fiction
historical-fiction
maine
literary-fiction

The Tumor


John Grisham - 2015
    In this short book, he provides readers with a fictional account of how a real, new medical technology could revolutionize the future of medicine by curing with sound. THE TUMOR follows the present day experience of the fictional patient Paul, an otherwise healthy 35-year-old father who is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Grisham takes readers through a detailed account of Paul’s treatment and his family’s experience that doesn’t end as we would hope. Grisham then explores an alternate future, where Paul is diagnosed with the same brain tumor at the same age, but in the year 2025, when a treatment called focused ultrasound is able to extend his life expectancy. Focused ultrasound has the potential to treat not just brain tumors, but many other disorders, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and prostate, breast and pancreatic cancer. For more information, you can visit The Focused Ultrasound Foundation’s website. Here you will find a video of Grisham on the TEDx stage with the Foundation’s chairman and a Parkinson’s patient who brings the audience to its feet sharing her incredible story of a focused ultrasound “miracle.” Readers will get a taste of the narrative they expect from Grisham, but this short book will also educate and inspire people to be hopeful about the future of medical innovation.

Baby Bumps: The Almost, Barely, Not-Quite-True Story of Pregnancy, Bed Rest and One Batshit Crazy Family


Amy Sprenger - 2012
    Wearing her highest heels and hottest pregnancy jeans, Amy Sprenger marched into her doctor's office, latte in hand, ready to finally see whether her baby was a boy or a girl. Sure, sure, this appointment was supposed to be about checking the health of the baby, but everyone who's ever been there knows it's really about looking for what lays, or doesn't lay, between the legs. So when the doctor tells her she has an incompetent cervix, Amy does what any woman would do. She becomes immediately offended. Is that a politically correct way of saying her cervix sucks? Unfortunately, as she's soon to learn, it's a lot more than that. The only way to keep that baby from falling out on the sidewalk (probably in front of Starbucks) is for her doctor to stitch her cervix closed and for Amy to stay in bed for the next four months. Four months that are carefully detailed in this "memoir." A memoir that, while basically true, has been embellished with Amy's signature brand of humor and hilarity. With more time off than a castoff contestant on "The Bachelor," Amy took pen to paper and settled in for the ride. But instead of sitting around eating bonbons, she's popping hypertension drugs to stave off preterm labor. And complications? Oh, she's got your complications. She's gut-rehabbing her house. Her mother moves in to care for her. Her husband takes a "mancation" while she's stuck in the hospital. And every time she has a contraction, she's convinced it's The Big One. Living by the adage that laughter is the best medicine, Amy fumbles her way through a series of sometimes serious and usually embarrassing situations. And just to be clear, using a bedpan qualifies as both serious and embarrassing. "Amy Sprenger's foray into factual fiction is a hilarious (and sometimes poignant) look at high-risk pregnancy from her view at the end of the bed. Sprenger offers a fresh and funny voice that readers will love!" --New York Times bestselling author Jen Lancaster

The Drought


Lily White - 2012
    Reserves are drying up, local officials have failed to enforce water-rationing regulations, and the relentless heat is causing panic and unrest among the town's citizens.The Drought follows an eclectic cast of characters through a volatile two weeks of greed, lust, and violence, leading to an inevitable and extraordinary climax no one will see coming.And it all begins with Willie Strasbourg stealing a pair of underwear from the girl next door . . .

Eat the Document


Dana Spiotta - 2006
    A National Book Award finalist, Eat the Document is a riveting portrait of two eras and one of the most provocative and compelling novels of recent years.

Lost Children Archive


Valeria Luiselli - 2019
    Their destination: Apacheria, the place the Apaches once called home.Why Apaches? asks the ten-year-old son. Because they were the last of something, answers his father.In their car, they play games and sing along to music. But on the radio, there is news about an "immigration crisis": thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States, but getting detained--or lost in the desert along the way.As the family drives--through Virginia to Tennessee, across Oklahoma and Texas--we sense they are on the brink of a crisis of their own. A fissure is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. They are led, inexorably, to a grand, harrowing adventure--both in the desert landscape and within the chambers of their own imaginations.Told through several compelling voices, blending texts, sounds, and images, Lost Children Archive is an astonishing feat of literary virtuosity. It is a richly engaging story of how we document our experiences, and how we remember the things that matter to us the most. With urgency and empathy, it takes us deep into the lives of one remarkable family as it probes the nature of justice and equality today.

All That's True


Jackie Lee Miles - 2010
    Then my mother started drinking and my father started having sex with Donna, my best friend's stepmother. She's not even thirty years old." With an equal mix of joy and sorrow, All That's True follows Andi's poignant-and sometimes laugh out loud-journey to young adulthood, where she struggles with the elusive nature of truth and the devastating consequences of deception. "Jackie Lee Miles is a wise and perceptive writer with a keen understanding of human frailties." –Julie Cannon, author of Truelove and Homegrown Tomatoes "Perfect in voice and detail, chock full of girl talk and seat-of-the pants crises, Miles' book is a winner." -Rosemary Daniell, award-winning author of Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women's Lives "Miles is a fascinating new voice in Southern fiction. Readers will rejoice." -Karin Gillespie, author of Bet Your Bottom Dollar "For those of us looking for relationships that feel authentic, you will find them in this novel!" -Edward Mooney, Jr. author of The Pearls of the Stone Man (20100629)

A Brief History of Seven Killings


Marlon James - 2014
    The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years.Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts—A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James’ place among the great literary talents of his generation.

Motherhood


Sheila Heti - 2018
    In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home.Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

A Tale of Love and Darkness


Amos Oz - 2002
    The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and its community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children. The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.(back cover)

The Orphans of Race Point


Patry Francis - 2014
    Their friendship evolves into an enduring and passionate love that will ask more of them than they ever imagined.On the night of their high school prom, a terrible tragedy devastates their relationship and profoundly alters the course of their lives. And when, a decade later, Gus—now a priest—becomes entangled with a distraught woman named Ava and her daughter Mila, troubled souls who bring back vivid memories of his own damaged past, the unthinkable happens: he is charged with murder. Can Hallie save the man she’s never stopped loving, by not only freeing him from prison but also—finally—the curse of his past?Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point illuminates the transformative power of love and the myriad ways we find meaning in our lives.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers


Tom Rachman - 2014
    What follows is an abduction, heated political debate, glimpses into strangers’ homes, and travel around the globe. It’s a novel of curious personalities, mystery, and lots of books: volumes that the characters collect, covet, steal.Tooly Zylberberg, owner of a bookshop in the Welsh countryside, spends most of her life reading. Yet there’s one tale that never made sense: her own life. In childhood, she was spirited away from home, then raised around Asia, Europe and the United States. But who were the people who brought her up? And what ever happened to them?There was Humphrey, a curmudgeon from Russia; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who hailed from Kenya; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader who transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he vanished.Years later, she has lost hope of ever knowing what took place. Then, the old mysteries stir again, sending her – and the reader – on a hunt through place and time, from Wales to Bangkok to New York to Italy, from the 1980’s to the Year 2000 to the present, from the end of the Cold War, to the rise and wobbles of U.S. power, to the digital revolution of today.Gradually, all secrets are revealed…

Designer You


Sarahlyn Bruck - 2018
    
 
When Nate dies in a freak accident, Pam becomes a 44-year-old widow, at once too young and too old—too young to be thrust into widowhood and too old to rejoin the dating pool. 
 
Now the single mother of a headstrong and grief-stricken teenager, Pam’s life becomes a juggling act between dealing with her loss and learning how to parent by herself. On top of all that she also must reinvent herself or lose the empire that she and Nate had built so carefully.
 
It is time for Pam to seize the opportunity to step up as a mother, come out from behind Nate’s shadow, and rise as the sole face of the Designer You brand, and maybe, possibly, hopefully, find love again.

Crow Hollow


Michael Wallace - 2015
    She’s convinced her daughter is alive but cannot track her into the wilderness alone. Help arrives in the form of James Bailey, an agent of the crown sent to Boston to investigate the murder of Prudence’s husband and to covertly cause a disturbance that would give the king just cause to install royal governors. After his partner is murdered, James needs help too. He strikes a deal with Prudence, and together they traverse the forbidding New England landscape looking for clues. What they confront in the wilderness—and what they discover about each other—could forever change their allegiances and alter their destinies.

Wading Home


Rosalyn Story - 2010
    But when Katrina’s waters rise and the city’s broken levees cause devastating floods, Simon disappears.His son, Julian, a celebrated but down-on-his-luck trumpeter, rushes home to the city he left years before to search for a father with whom he’d been on difficult terms over preparing for the hurricane. Julian’s return to New Orleans brings him back in touch with figures from his past, loves and enemies both, and as his search for Simon takes him to the rural plot where Simon grew up, Julian is drawn deep into his troubles. As he comes to grips with his father’s likely fate and struggles to regain his trumpet chops, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of both his father and their shared heritage.Wading Home is an important book about one of America’s most important cities, veiled in the form of a captivating page-turner. Lyrical, accessible, compelling, and populated by a broad, fully realized cast of supporting characters, its timeless story tells how this son strives to save his father. Shaken to the core by the devastation of a city, Julian discovers the true meanings of home, family, and history.

The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball


Frank Deford - 2007
    He wascursed with that worst of professional maladies, the ill fortune of almost. Now after years of struggling up the coaching ladder, Howie's finally been given his shot: as manager of the Cleveland Indians. But America's pastime has changed. Whether Howie can spot a small flaw in a batter's swing won't matter if he can't manage his superstar outfielder Jay Alcazar, a slugger with enormous talent (and an ego to match). No crisis on the field fazes Jay and no woman off the field ever rejects him. But one night at the hotel Howie sees something at Jay's door he wishes he hadn't...and it leaves Howie with an impossible choice. From six-time National Sportswriter of the Year and NPR commentator Frank Deford comes a richly detailed, page-turning tale that takes you deep into America's game. From the dugouts to the tabloid scandals, from the lights of the field to the glare of the media, The Entitled is the great novel of baseball's modern era. "The Entitled is a baseball masterpiece, like The Natural and Field of Dreams; the difference is the plot and the characters depict the true inside world of baseball. Frank Deford writes like he played in the majors for ten years. If you have a passion for baseball, this is a must read."-Mike Schmidt, Baseball Hall of Fame "Frank Deford is not just an immensely talented sportswriter, he's an immensely talented American writer. The Entitledis his wise andpleasurable portrait of a Willy Loman-like baseball manager finally getting his chance in the Bigs late in his career."-David Halberstam "Engrossing...Readers are exposed to a richly textured understanding of baseball and, no less, of estrangement, ambition, mendacity and the search for one's destiny-notwithstanding the cost in human or financial terms."-Library Journal "I loved The Entitled and could not put it down. It was a great read from start to finish with characters that reminded me of the many people I've known and played with-pure baseball."Lou Piniella, Manager, Chicago Cubs " The Entitled contains all of the keen insider knowledge one expects of America's premier sports journalist. It also displays Frank Deford's gifts for dialogue and intricate plotting and his poignant grasp of character. It proves once again that Deford can play at the highest level in any league."-Michael Mewshaw, author of Year of the Gun "Deford scores another hit with this novel of athletes behaving badly...tackles timely and provocative issues without flinching."-Publishers Weekly