Half Moon, a hauntingly beautiful saga set in Paris, New York, and Atlantic Canada, explores themes of passion, betrayal, art, and redemption in the story of an elusively beautiful woman and the world-class painter obsessed with creating her portrait.
Literary fiction
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Author:Vidal, K.L.Summary: - Author:Rao, ShobhaSummary:
"Soneela Nankani narrates this painful coming-of-age story in a subdued style that draws even more sympathy from the listener...This is an expertly told story of survival, courage, and grit that fans of world literature will enjoy." - AudioFile Magazine Girls Burn Brighter is a searing, electrifying debut audiobook set in India and America. Irrepressible author Shobha Rao examines the extraordinary bond between two girls, driven apart by circumstances, but relentless in their search for one another. Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls. When Poornima was just a toddler, she was about to fall into a river. Her mother, beside herself, screamed at her father to grab her. But he hesitated: "I was standing there, and I was thinking...She's just a girl. Let her go...That's the thing with girls, isn't it...You think, Push. That's all it would take. Just one little push." After her mother's death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to take care of her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to secure for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls' perspectives as they face ruthless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces listeners to two heroines who never allow the hope that burns within them to be extinguished. More praise for Girls Burn Brighter: "A searing portrait of what feminism looks like in much of the world, Shobha Rao's first novel, Girls Burn Brighter ...follows an incandescent friendship." — Vogue "The resplendent prose captures the nuances and intensity of two best friends on the brink of an uncertain and precarious adulthood...An incisive study of a friendship's unbreakable bond." - Kirkus "In this harsh but vibrant debut, two best friends navigate the landscape of India at the dawn of the new millennium. Rao's feminist commentary is particularly potent, situating a powerful bond in restrictive, patriarchal structures." — Entertainment Weekly
- Author:Willis, DeborahSummary:
Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and twenty-three reality TV contestants from around the world—including a hunky Israeli soldier, an endearing fellow Canadian, and an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers—are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. Meanwhile Kevin, Amber’s boyfriend of fourteen years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him—and their hydroponic weed business—behind. As he tends to the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else.
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Author:Evaristo, BernardineSummary:The novel's twelve central characters lead vastly different lives. Amma is an acclaimed playwright whose work explores her Black lesbian identity; her friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's underfunded schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter's lack of rootedness. These unforgettable characters, from a nonbinary social-media influencer to a ninety-three-year-old woman living on a farm, intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.
- Author:Crummey, MichaelSummary:
Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us. This is Michael Crummey's most ambitious and accomplished work to date. An intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries, Galore is a portrait of the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland, a place almost too harrowing and extravagant to be real. Remote and isolated, exposed to savage extremes of climate and fate, the people of Paradise Deep persist in a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to distinguish. Propelled by the disputes and alliances, grievances and trade-offs that bind the Sellers and Devine families through generations, Galore is alive with singular characters, and an uncommon insight into the complexities of human nature.
- Author:Good, MichelleSummary:
WINNER: Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction WINNER: Amazon First Novel Awards WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize Finalist: BC & Yukon Book Prize Shortlist: Indigenous Voices Awards Finalist: Kobo Emerging Author Prize National Bestseller; A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year; A CBC Best Book of the Year; An Apple Best Book of the Year; A Kobo Best Book of the Year; An Indigo Best Book of the Year Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can't stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.
- Author:Washington, BryanSummary:
"A stunning look at what it really means to be family." -Michael Schaub, NPR From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss. Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.
- Author:Mistry, RohintonSummary:
From the author of the highly acclaimed A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry's eagerly anticipated novel is set in Bombay in the mid-1990s. Nariman, an ailing, elderly Parsi widower, lives with his middle-aged stepchildren and dreams of the past. When he breaks an ankle and can no longer partake of his one pleasure, a daily walk through the neighborhood, his bitter stepdaughter schemes to move him to her sister's home and relieve herself of the burden of caring for him. The move is accomplished, but living in a new household with Roxana, her husband and two young boys sets into motion a series of events that lead to the unraveling of the family's secrets and surprising revelations from the past. Family Matters is a brilliantly evocative novel that confirms Mistry's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time.
- Author:Hamid, MohsinSummary:
"It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future ... At once terrifying and, in the end, oddly hopeful."--Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, one of the most anticipated books of 2017: an astonishingly timely love story that brilliantly imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees--and the impossible choices that follow--as they're driven from their homes to the uncertain embrace of new lands. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet--sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors--doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. ... Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.
- Author:Haggard, Henry RiderSummary:
A gripping tale of betrayal, blood-gorged blades, and the pursuit of heart's desire, Eric Brighteyes follows the adventures of a young man raised on Coldback farm--a lonely place to be found where the Westman Isles rise from the sea. Plagued by misfortune, the golden-haired youth finds himself outlawed and exiled-even as he wins Whitefire, the legendary sword of King Odin. Eric struggles against treachery to fight his way back to his home and to the two women whose lives are fatefully intertwined with his: Gudruda the Fair, and Swanwild the Fatherless.
- Author:Austen, JaneSummary:
Emma Woodhouse, belle, intelligente et riche a vingt-et-un ans. Elle habite la belle demeure de Hartfield, près du gros bourg de Highbury, avec son père âgé, hypocondriaque et veuf, entourée d'amis fidèles, tel Mr Knightley, son beau-frère, propriétaire du riche domaine voisin de Donwell Abbey. Son ancienne gouvernante, Miss Taylor, vient d'épouser un veuf fortuné, Mr Weston, dont le fils a été adopté tout jeune par son oncle et sa tante, les Churchill, avec qui il vit à Enscombe, dans le Yorkshire. Emma, persuadée d'être à l'origine du mariage de Miss Taylor, et d'avoir des talents d'entremetteuse
- Author:Mantel, HilarySummary:
An English couple's life in Saudi Arabia told through the eyes of Frances, the wife. She describes the heat, the ugliness and the menace of Islamic law. Men stroll in the street with rifles and from the apartment upstairs comes sobbing. It is nothing her Arab friends tell her, simply a millionaire's mistress, but Frances knows they are lying. Finally, there is murder.
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Author:Chee, AlexanderSummary:Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.
- Author:Mayr, SuzetteSummary:
Dr. Edith Vane is nicely ensconced at the University of Inivea and is about to see her dissertation on Beulah Crump-Withers published. All should be well. Except for her broken washing machine, her backstabbing fellow professors, a cutthroat new dean - and the fact that the sentient and malevolent Crawley Hall has decided it wants them all out.
- Author:Michaels, SeanSummary:
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN AWARD FOR FICTION Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Sean Michaels' luminous new novel takes readers on a lyrical joy ride-seven, epic days in Silicon Valley with a tall, formidable poet (inspired by the real-life Marianne Moore) and her unusual new collaborator, a digital mind just one month old. It's both a love letter to and an aching examination of art-making, family, identity and belonging. Dear Marian , the letter from the Company begins. You are one of the great writers of this century. At 75, Marian Ffarmer is almost as famous for her signature tricorn hat and cape as for her verse. She has lived for decades in the one-bedroom New York apartment she once shared with her mother, miles away from any other family, dedicating herself to her art. Yet recently her certainty about her choices has started to fray, especially when she thinks about her only son, now approaching middle age with no steady income. Into that breach comes the letter: an invitation to the Silicon Valley headquarters of one of the world's most powerful companies in order to make history by writing a poem. Marian has never collaborated with anyone, let alone a machine, but the offer is too lucrative to resist, and she boards a plane to San Francisco with dreams of helping her son. In the Company's serene and golden Mind Studio, she encounters Charlotte, their state-of-the-art poetry bot, and is startled to find that it has written 230,442 poems in the last week, though it claims to only like two of them. Over the conversations to follow, the poet is by turns intrigued, confused, moved and frightened by Charlotte's vision of the world, by what it knows and doesn't know ("Do you remember being born?" it asks her. Of course Marian doesn't, but Charlotte does.) This is a relationship, a friendship, unlike anything Marian has known, and as it evolves-and as Marian meets strangers at swimming pools, tortoises at the zoo, a clutch of younger poets, a late-night TV host and his synthetic foam set-she is forced to confront the secrets of her past and the direction of her future. Who knew that a disembodied mind could help bend Marian's life towards human connection, that friendship and family are not just time-eating obligations but soul-expanding joys. Or that belonging to one's art means, above all else, belonging to the world.
- Author:Kingsolver, BarbaraSummary:
WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION • A New York Times "Ten Best Books of 2022" • An Oprah's Book Club Selection • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller • A #1 Washington Post Bestseller. "Demon is a voice for the ages-akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield-only even more resilient." -Beth Macy, author of Dopesick. "May be the best novel of 2022. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love." (Ron Charles, Washington Post). From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
- Author:Itani, FrancesSummary:
Elegantly written and profoundly moving, Frances Itani's debut novel is a tale of virtuosity and power. Set on the eve of the Great War, Deafening spans two continents and the lives of a young deaf woman and her beloved husband. Frances Itani's astonishing depiction of a world where sound exists only in the margins is a singular feat in literary fiction, a place difficult to leave and even harder to forget.
- Author:Cunningham, MichaelSummary:
NATIONAL BESTELLER - An "exquisite" ( The Boston Globe ) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life-and how we all must learn to live together and apart-from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours "The only problem with Michael Cunningham's prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals' work. He is the most elegant writer in America."- The Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub, Paste, Kirkus Reviews April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart-and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel's younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house-and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents. April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts-and his secret Instagram life-for company. April 5, 2021 : Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality-and with what they've learned, what they've lost, and how they might go on. "[Cunningham] is one of love's greatest witnesses." -Los Angeles Times "An absolutely stunning portrait of humanity . . . a masterpiece." -Literary Hub
- Author:Liew, Jamie Chai Yun.Summary:
Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award winner: an Asian woman traces her mother's past journey in order to learn who she really is and where she belongs. When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, as a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town where there were only a handful of Asian families; Lily's previously stateless father wanted them to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Brunei. Years later, still affected by Swee Hua's disappearance, Lily's family is nonetheless stubbornly silent to her questioning. But eventually, an old family friend provides a clue that sends Lily to Southeast Asia to find out the truth. Winner of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, Dandelion is a beautifully written and affecting novel about motherhood, family secrets, migration, isolation, and mental illness. With clarity and care, it delves into the many ways we define home, identity, and above all, belonging.
- Author:Jenkins Reid, TaylorSummary:
A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup. “I devoured Daisy Jones & The Six in a day, falling head over heels for it. Daisy and the band captured my heart.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick) Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now. Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend. The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice. Includes a PDF of song lyrics from the book Cast List: Daisy Jones, read by Jennifer Beals Billy Dunne, read by Pablo Schreiber Graham Dunne, read by Benjamin Bratt Eddie Loving, read by Fred Berman Warren Rhodes, read by Ari Fliakos Karen Karen, read by Judy Greer Camila Dunne, read by January LaVoy Simone Jackson, read by Robinne Lee Narrator / Author, read by Julia Whelan Jim Blades, read by Jonathan Davis Rod Reyes, read by Henry Leyva Artie Snyder, read by Oliver Wyman Elaine Chang, read by Nancy Wu Freddie Mendoza, read by P.J. Ochlan Nick Harris, read by Arthur Bishop Jonah Berg, read by Holter Graham Greg McGuinness, read by Brendan Wayne Pete Loving, read by Pete Larkin Wyatt Stone, read by Alex Jenkins Reid Hank Allen, read by Robert Petkoff Opal Cunningham, read by Sara Arrington Praise for Daisy Jones & The Six “ Daisy Jones & The Six is just plain fun from cover to cover. . . . Her characters feel so vividly real, you’ll wish you could stream their albums, YouTube their concerts, and google their wildest moments to see them for yourself.” — HelloGiggles “Reid’s wit and gift for telling a perfectly paced story make this one of the most enjoyably readable books of the year.” — Nylon “Reid delivers a stunning story of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll in the 1960s and ’70s in this expertly wrought novel. Mimicking the style and substance of a tell-all celebrity memoir . . . Reid creates both story line and character gold. The book’s prose is propulsive, original, and often raw.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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