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Beartown
Fredrik Backman - 2016
A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
Then Came You
Jennifer Weiner - 2010
Each woman has a problem: Princeton senior Jules Wildgren needs money to help her dad cure his addiction; Pennsylvania housewife Annie Barrow is gasping to stay financially afloat; India Bishop yearns to have a child, an urge that her stepdaughter Bettina can only regard with deeply skepticism until she finds herself in a most unexpected situation. Interlocking dramas designed to ensnare; bound to be a bestseller.
Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult - 2016
During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene? Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong. With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.
The Center of Everything
Laura Moriarty - 2003
Living with her single mother in a small apartment, Evelyn Bucknow is a young girl wincing her way through adolescence. With a voice that is as charming as it is recognizable, Evelyn immerses the reader in the dramas of an entire community. The people of Kerrville stuck at once in the middle of nowhere but also at the center of everything, are the source from which Moriarty draws on universal dilemmas of love and belief to render a story that grows in emotional intensity until it lifts the reader to heights achieved only by the finest of fiction.
Before We Were Yours
Lisa Wingate - 2017
Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
Breeders
Anita Burgh - 1996
What is Tom White's secret and sinister trade? Why does a champion dog breeder find her reputation and livelihood under threat? When the vet spurns his housekeeper's affections, what terrible revenge does she plan? Anita Burgh's blockbusting new novel is peopled with a vivid cast of characters that will ensure Breeders a special place in the heart of readers everywhere.
The Tuscan Child
Rhys Bowen - 2018
Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal.Nearly thirty years later, Hugo’s estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father’s funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.Still dealing with the emotional wounds of her own personal trauma, Joanna embarks on a healing journey to Tuscany to understand her father’s history—and maybe come to understand herself as well. Joanna soon discovers that some would prefer the past be left undisturbed, but she has come too far to let go of her father’s secrets now…
The Hangman's Daughter - chapters 1-3
Oliver Pötzsch - 2010
Exclusive to Kindle: a free sample of The Hangman's Daughter
Fork in the Road
Denis Hamill - 2000
When Colin Coyne, a young American filmmaker seeking aesthetic inspiration in Ireland, catches a pickpocket red-handed in a hotel pub, all it takes is one look into her dazzling eyes for him to fall hard. Purely for the sake of research -- or so he tells himself -- he hurtles headlong into the bewitching world of Gina Furey, a stunningly beautiful, iron-willed denizen of Dublin's gypsy criminal underground. Before he knows what's happening, he finds himself a star player in a Pygmalion-like relationship rich with dramatic film possibilities: the earnest Yankee auteur woos and wins the dangerous gypsy thief. But the tenuous lines separating art and reality soon dissolve and the neatly linear screenplay unfolding inside Colin's head is eclipsed by the brutal chaos and unpredictability of true life. By turns devastating and hopeful, bittersweet and hilarious, Fork in The Road is both a tragic love story and the riveting drama of one man's heartbreaking journey from exhilaration to desolation.
Ten Women
Marcela Serrano - 2004
They all have one person in common, their beloved therapist Natasha who, though central to the lives of all of the women, is absent from their meeting. The women represent the many cultural and social groups that modern Chile is comprised of—from a housekeeper to celebrity television personality. They are of disparate ages and races and their lives have been touched by major political events from the dictatorship of Pinochet to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But despite their differences, as the women tell their stories, unlikely bonds are formed, and their lives are transformed in this intricately woven, beautifully rendered tale of the universal bonds between women from one of Latin America’s most celebrated novelists.
Making Lemonade
Kate Langdon - 2007
Before she can come to terms with being unemployed (yet again), she finds herself up the duff, father unknown. Is it her charming, arrogant and married ex-boss? Or is it the man-child she met one drunken night at the Irish pub. If only she could remember his name… Sally is married to Vincent, a self-absorbed televangelist, obsessed with his TV show and beauty treatments. She spends her days working, ferrying her three children around and listening to her husband preach. How could her hopes and dreams have been so unimportant she waved them goodbye without a second thought? Kat has the perfect life all mapped out: the perfect job, the perfect husband, the perfectly renovated home and the soon-to-come perfect children. But when her suspicions that her husband is having an affair are proved to be correct, she suddenly finds herself single with a handbag full of broken dreams. Can they find their way back to the dreams of their youth – or is it time to accept life’s lemons and start making lemonade?
The Woods at Barlow Bend
Jodie Cain Smith - 2014
At the age of fourteen, Hattie learns that her mother, Addie, is dead, and her father, Hubbard, stands accused of Addie's murder, along with countless other shocking betrayals. Overnight, Hattie becomes mother to her three siblings while still very much a child herself. The life she had dreamt of now seems impossible to achieve. How will Hattie break away from the father who prevents her from living the life she desperately wants? Will her heart ever be able to heal in the height of The Great Depression?
The Two-Family House
Lynda Cohen Loigman - 2016
They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear and their once deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost but not quite wins.From debut novelist Lynda Cohen Loigman comes The Two-Family House, a moving family saga filled with heart, emotion, longing, love, and mystery."Two families, both living in one house, drive an exquisitely written novel of love, alliances, the messiness of life and long buried secrets. Loigman's debut is just shatteringly wonderful and I can't wait to see what she does next." - Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You"No good deed goes unpunished. In a single, intensely charged moment, two women come to a private agreement meant to assure each other's happiness. But as Lynda Cohen Loigman deftly reveals, life is not so simple, especially when it involves two families, tightly intertwined. The Two-Family House is sympathetically observed and surely plotted all the way through to its deeply satisfying conclusion." - Christina Schwarz, author of Drowning Ruth (an Oprah's Book Club pick) and national bestseller The Edge of the Earth
Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff - 2015
Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.