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| Sandwich by Catherine NewmanRocky, her husband, her two kids, and her mom and dad have been going to the same Cape Cod rental for 20 years. This year, things feel different as Rocky navigates hot flashes, aging parents, nostalgia for her kids' youth, and old secrets in a funny, fast-paced, and moving novel that's perfect for beach reading. Read-alikes: Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore; A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi; Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. |
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| This Strange Eventful History by Claire MessudTouching on themes of identity and home, this buzzy book by an award-winning author follows an uprooted French Algerian pieds-noir family and their descendants as they move around the world between 1940 and 2010. "Brilliant and heart-wrenching" (Kirkus Reviews), this novel was inspired by the author's family. Read-alikes: The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter; My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar; French Braid by Anne Tyler. |
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| Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'ConnorManod is 18 years old in 1938 when a whale washes up on her remote Welsh island, drawing outside attention, including that of two Oxford ethnographers who want to study the 12 island families. Happy for a connection to the wider world, Manod agrees to help, a move she may regret. For other reflective and atmospheric novels, try Clear by Carys Davies or A Northern Light in Provence by Elizabeth Birkelund. |
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Wives Like Us
by Plum Sykes
In The Bottoms, tiny Cotswold villages on the English countryside, filthy rich Tata Hawkins is in a tizzy when her husband runs off with a bikini designer; her glamorous new neighbor, an American divorcée, refuses her overtures at friendship; and her two best friends are distracted by their own problems.
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| Godwin by Joseph O'NeillTwo incisive, connected storylines make up this "wonderous novel" (Booklist). Mark Wolfe, a technical writer at a Pittsburgh cooperative, heads to England to help his struggling soccer scout half-brother locate a young African phenom known only as Godwin. Back in the states, the co-op's steady cofounder, Lakesha, deals with major work problems. For fans of: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue; Selection Day by Aravind Adiga. |
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The Celestial Wife
by Leslie Howard
A young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960s in this captivating novel inspired by shockingly true events.
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| Enlightenment by Sarah PerryIn 1997 Essex, England, Thomas Hart is a secretly gay newspaper columnist and the godfather of 17-year-old Grace Macaulay. As the Comet Hale-Bopp approaches, he becomes enamored by both the sky and an old letter related to a ghostly legend, while Grace falls for a local boy in a novel that "magnificently evokes the wonder of the cosmos" (Publishers Weekly). Read-alikes: The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan; The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick. |
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Three Burials
by Anders Lustgarten
Meet Cherry, a bandit queen on the run, driving a pink soft-top convertible through the badlands of South-East England. She's never felt more Thelma & Louise in her life - except there are three of them in the car and one of them is dead. How did a head nurse and mother of two end up driving a handcuffed policeman and the corpse of a murdered refugee on a journey to find justice?
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Swift River
by Essie Chambers
In 1987, the only Black person in all Swift River after her Pop disappeared seven years ago, Diamond Newberry, receiving a letter from a relative she's never met, is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, gaining a sense of her place in the world and in her family.
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Things I Need You to Know
by Mark Lamprell
Birdie McBride has it all: a fulfilling job, five healthy daughters and a doting husband, Ned. But then Ned dies. He leaves behind a document for Birdie—‘Things I Need You To Know’—a guide to everything from household maintenance to each daughter’s emotional landscape. It’s his last act of fatherly devotion. Reading Ned’s manual, Birdie falls in love with her husband in a way she never did when he was alive. Yet the presence of his best friend, Marcello, complicates things.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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