|
|
Multicultural Authors Jun-Jul 2086 |
|
|
|
|
|
Crazy Genie
by Inès Cagnati
Marie lives with her mother, Genie, in a ramshackle house by a willow-lined river in rural France. Every morning, Genie walks to the neighboring farms to do what work there is to be done. When farmers and villagers greet her, she says nothing, and keeps walking. Once, she was a lighthearted girl from the best family in the valley; now they all call her Crazy Genie. While her mother works, Marie waits, yearning for her mother to notice her, longing for the moment when they will be back in their lonely house by the river. Told in Marie's ingenuous, straightforward voice, Crazy Genie is the second novel by Cagnati.
|
|
|
|
Autobiography of Cotton
by Cristina Rivera Garza
A novel about how cotton workers transformed the Mexico-US borderlands, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
|
|
|
|
This Is Not about Us: Fiction
by Allegra Goodman
Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way. When their beloved older sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives-divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals-their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible. With This is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers.
|
|
|
|
The Pohaku
by Jasmin Iolani Hakes
From the award-winning author of Hula, a dazzling saga that moves from Hawaii to California and back, about the generations of women tasked with protecting the history and place that made them.
|
|
|
|
Where the Wildflowers Grow
by Terah Shelton Harris
Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die. Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts her, Leigh carries on, because survival is in her blood. So, when the transport bus taking her to prison careens off the road, killing everyone onboard except her, she does what's in her nature. She survives. While searching for a place to hide, Leigh stumbles upon an unexpected sanctuary: a flower farm in rural Alabama tucked away from the world. What Leigh doesn't expect is the found family there who have built something from the wreckage of their own lives. Especially Jackson, the farm's owner, who sees through Leigh's defenses, offers her small moments of tenderness, encourages her to face her own tragedies. Slowly, Leigh finds peace with the hard pace and soft nature of the farm, taking comfort in the life blooming around her. Maybe she's not beyond redemption, not too broken for something good. And maybe, just maybe, Leigh starts to heal.But the past isn't so easily buried.No matter how far she runs, the truth of who she is and the ghosts of the Wildes follow. And when those secrets catch up to her, threatening everything she's come to love, Leigh will have to truly face what she can survive.
|
|
|
|
Soyangri Book Kitchen
by Kim Jee Hye
Yoojin, who grew up in Seoul, opened the Book Kitchen by chance in Soyangri, a village two hours from Seoul by car. The Book Kitchen functions as a bookshop and cafe. The second function of the Book Kitchen is a Book Stay, where one can stay overnight in one of the building's four complexes. Over the course of one year, multiple characters each find comfort and hope at Yoojin's Book Kitchen. From a music idol facing an identity crisis, to a promising lawyer beset by an unsettling medical diagnosis, to a young, failed music director who has had to rein in his dreams, they happen upon Soyangri at pivotal moments in their lives.
|
|
|
|
Sisters in Yellow
by Mieko Kawakami
Hana has nothing - she's fifteen years old and living in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears. Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana's dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible. But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana's hope, her optimism, and her drive will be pushed to the limit.
|
|
|
|
Room 706
by Ellie Levenson
A married woman is trapped with her lover in a hotel under siege: If she knew it would end this way, would it ever have begun? Kate's children and her husband are her whole world. Since marrying young, she's dedicated her life to making her little family grow. But in the last few years, she's carved out something just for herself: hours stolen away with another man. After one midday tryst with her lover, Kate's double life is thrown into chaos when she turns on the TV to find their hotel has been overtaken by an unnamed, dangerous group. As Kate's life hangs in the balance, she is faced with a gripping exploration of the murky grey areas of marriage, relationships, and womanhood.
|
|
|
|
Bad Asians
by Lillian Li
Diana, Justin, Errol, and Vivian were always told that success is guaranteed by following a simple checklist. They worked hard, got A's, and attended a good university--only to graduate into the Great Recession of 2008. Now, despite their newly minted degrees, they're unemployed and stuck again under their parents' roofs in a hypercompetitive Chinese American community. So when Grace--once the neighborhood golden child, now a Harvard Law School dropout--asks to make a documentary about the crew, they agree. It's not like her little movie will ever see the light of day. But then the video, Bad Asians, goes viral on an up-and-coming media platform (YouTube, anyone?). Suddenly, millions of people know them as cruel caricatures, each full of pent-up frustrations with the others. And after a desperate attempt at spin control further derails their plans for the lives they'd always imagined, the friends must face harsh truths about themselves and coming of age in the new millennium.
|
|
|
|
Whidbey
by T. Kira Madden
Birdie Chang didn't know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She's a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend's eyes--and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who's now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution and plan for revenge. But Birdie isn't the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There's also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book's spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin's loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin's death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers. A complex whodunit told from alternating points of view, Whidbey is searingly perceptive and astonishingly original. Exploring the long reach of violence and our flawed systems of incarceration and rehabilitation, this is a tense and provocative debut that's sure to incite crucial questions about the pursuit of justice and who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it?
|
|
|
|
How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder
by Nina McConigley
A bold, inventive, and fiercely original debut novel that begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece's private confession to the reader-she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British.
|
|
|
|
The Calico Cat at the Chibineko Kitchen
by Yuta Takahashi
If you could speak one last time to someone you've lost, what would you tell them? One sunny morning, the Chibineko Kitchen opens its doors to Nagi, a young woman facing an impossible choice: Should she marry her boyfriend, despite knowing she has only a few years left to live? Desperate for advice from her mother, who died years ago, she hopes that one of the Chibineko Kitchen's fabled meals will work its magic. Such is the promise that attracts three others to the restaurant: an anxious man rebuilding his life after shutting himself away for years, a lonely widow unaware that she is surrounded by friends, and a theater director hoping to rekindle his career after abandoning it following a tragic accident. In the company of Kai, the Chibineko Kitchen's chef; Kotoko, who has experienced the miracle of the restaurant and now works there; and Chibi, the resident kitten, each sits down to a meal of uncanny personal meaning that has the potential to reunite them with a departed love one for one last conversation--and to remind them what matters most in life.
|
|
|
Contact Your Librarian for More Great Reads
|
|
|
Centerville Library
111 W. Spring Valley Rd
Centerville, OH 45458
(937) 433‑8091
Woodbourne Library
6060 Far Hills Ave
Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 435‑3700
Creativity Commons
895 Miamisburg Centerville Rd
Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 610‑4425
|
|
|