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The Hired Man
by Sandra Dallas
The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect. It's been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. When Martha Helen's compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, she quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Full of period detail and Sandra Dallas's trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.
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Python's Kiss: Stories
by Louise Erdrich
Written over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. Accompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe--an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an opportunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers.
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Son of Nobody
by Yann Martel
From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar. A truly daring feat of imagination, SON OF NOBODY is a novel composed in two voices: the first, a series of fragments from antiquity that tell the story of Troy from a lost, alt-Homeric tradition; the second, the voice of a modern-day scholar, Harlow Donne, who assembles and comments on these fragments while navigating a conflict of his own. Obsessed with his discovery, Donne still can't seem to let go of his family's past-he weaves together the tale of uncovering ancient papyri, faded codices, and broken cuneiform tablets with memories of his daughter as a child and his wife before their separation. Donne translates and writes in the heartfelt modes of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, as the paralell stories offer a poignant glimpse into both the follies of failed relationships and of battle.
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The Tree of Light and Flowers
by Thomas Perry
Jane Whitefield is used to protecting vulnerable people, but after she gives birth, the fugitives she must rescue are her own family. A violent car crash brings on the premature birth of the baby that Jane Whitefield and her husband have hoped for, but it also shatters the period of calm in their lives like an earthquake triggering a tectonic shift. Within weeks, Jane’s peaceful time as a new mother in a safe, harmonious home starts to revert to her harrowing previous life. She had spent over a decade rescuing and sheltering people from dangerous foes, taking them to new locations, and teaching them to live under new identities. Suddenly the people requiring Jane’s special skills include not only multiple fugitives, but also Jane herself, her husband, and their newborn, as the danger she faces comes from people who know how to find her.
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Once and Again
by Rebecca Serle
From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and Expiration Dates, a novel following a family of women with a singular gift: the opportunity to redo one moment in their lives Lauren has spent a lot of her life waiting. She spent her childhood on her surfboard, waiting to catch the perfect wave. She waited a long time for her husband Leo. Now she and Leo are together waiting for those two lines on a pregnancy test that will tell Lauren she's finally pregnant. Lauren has also spent her life waiting to use the gift that only the women in her family have: the opportunity, just once, to turn back time and reverse a bad decision, or a moment of catastrophic luck. Lauren and Leo's marriage has been rock-steady for the three years they've been married, but their fertility journey is starting to wear on both of them. When Leo takes a six-week job in New York, Lauren temporarily moves back to her childhood house. What Lauren doesn't expect is to run into the love of her youth: fellow surfer Stone, back home for the first time in ten years. Since he left and broke Lauren's heart. Now Lauren's thinking about all the choices that have brought her to this moment in her life--and wondering if one of them should be undone.
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The News from Dublin: Stories
by Colm Toibin
From Colm Toibin, comes a brilliant collection of nine short stories, many never-before-published, set across Ireland, Spain, and America--about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love. The eleven stories transport readers across continents and eras. In The Journey to Galway, a mother who has learned of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in World War I, travels to Galway to inform his wife and their three now fatherless children. Sleep, originally published in The New Yorker, explores the rift between two lovers as one of them cannot reckon with his grief and fear after the death of his brother. Death, again, is a central character in the title story, The News from Dublin, as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin to try to save his younger brother who is dying of tuberculosis. Maurice must petition the health minister for access to a new experimental drug, and this is the only hope. Toibin's stories are rich with the complexities of family dynamics, the haunting pull of the past, and the quiet revelations that define our lives.
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The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness
by Arthur C. Brooks
From the bestselling author of From Strength to Strength, the definitive account of how the modern world makes meaning so hard to find--and a plan to discover your life's deepest purpose. Millions today describe a growing sense of emptiness, a lack of purpose and significance. And there's a reason: Rapid cultural, economic, and technological changes have rewired our brains, reducing their ability to perceive depth and purpose. In The Meaning of Your Life, social scientist and happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks shows you how to push back against these changes and find the meaning you need to live a happy, fulfilling life. Relying on cutting-edge science, he offers practical, evidence-based strategies for breaking free of the powerful trends and personal habits that dull your focus on the why of your life.
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Joyful, Anyway
by Kate Bowler
New York Times bestselling author and Duke University professor Kate Bowler offers a profound, funny, and deeply human case for joy that doesn't depend on everything getting better. Joyful, Anyway is colorful and layered, unafraid of the occasional gut-punch of raw feeling and vulnerability--much like Kate Bowler herself. You can't always be happy, but you can be joyful, anyway. We live in a culture convinced that chasing happiness will optimize our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our lives. But in the meantime, bad news usually stays bad: illness, chronic pain, grief, and disappointment don't obey our timelines or vision boards. We are left wondering why, if we're doing everything right, life still feels so hard. Honest and bracingly tender, Joyful, Anyway proves that experiencing joy does not depend on resolving everything that makes life difficult. Drawing on a decade of living with serious illness and a lifetime studying America's obsession with progress, Kate Bowler shows why people so busy chasing happiness miss out on actual joy.
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Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life
by Alex Mayyasi
From the world's leading economics podcast comes an irresistible guide to the hidden world of everyday economics. Millions of listeners trust the world's leading economics podcast to explain the mysterious inner workings of the global economy and the forces that affect nearly every decision we make. Through expert research and delightful stories the Planet Money hosts help everyone see the world like an economist. For their first-ever book, longtime contributor Alex Mayyasi and the hosts of NPR's Planet Money present brand new stories and insights gathered from more than a decade of reporting that reveal ways AI might help you or replace you, demystify dating markets, and show how pro sports' "dumbest" contract holds the secret to building wealth.
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When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World
by Suzanne Simard
The author of Finding the Mother Tree offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature's deep-rooted cycles of renewal. Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, trailblazing ecologist Suzanne Simard has watched as timber companies leave forests at higher risk for wildfires, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration--from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones--that hold the key to protecting our forests. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions--particularly destruction of the overstory's mother trees--endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.
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Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
by Ian Buruma
An astonishing account of life under a murderous regime amid a great city's descent into utter annihilation. In 1939, when Ian Buruma's epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse. Buruma gives tender attention to the Jewish experience in Berlin during the war, weaving its thread into the broader fabric of this marvelously rich and vivid mosaic of urban life. The distillation of a broad-gauged reckoning with a vast trove of primary sources, including a surprising number of interviews with living survivors, the book is a study in extremes--depravity and resilience, moral blindness and moral courage, pious bigotry and unchecked hedonism. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. It's a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.
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Homesick Nomad: Settling Into an Untethered Life
by Brianna Madia
Brianna Madia considers putting down roots--but on her own terms--in this intimate and inspiring memoir addressing life's big questions, such as where and how to live, how to commit to a relationship and whether to become a mother. Brianna Madia is renowned for her honest and enthralling accounts of life in the wilderness, finding her own way by rejecting society's expectations, so what happens when she falls in love and has to reset the boundaries of her fierce independence? Homesick Nomad finds Bri splitting her time between her beloved wild desert in Utah and her boyfriend's cozy suburban home in the Pacific Northwest, reckoning with: a new urge to soften into the embrace of the comforts of homedefining her purpose and direction in life, including the big decision facing women, the question of motherhood, and the fear that committing to others means sacrificing independence. Balancing the liberation of the wilderness with the natural compromises of love, Bri navigates these familiar tensions by embracing her life in its wholeness, richer for both the stability of home and the profundity of wide open spaces.
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The Lost Daughter of Sparta
by Felicia Day
Felicia Day, actress and New York Times bestselling author returns with a stirring, beautifully illustrated hero's journey overflowing with heart and a wicked sense of humor (Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author) about the lost mythical character of Philonoe--Helen of Troy's sister. Helen of Troy. Clytemnestra. Timandra. Three sisters, infamously cursed by the goddess Aphrodite to betray their husbands, are known the world over. But few know about the fourth sister: Philonoe. Lost to historical record, ancient texts say she had a different fate than her sisters. But why and how did this happen? New York Times bestselling author Felicia Day and illustrator Rowan MacColl bring Philonoe to vivid life at last, in The Lost Daughter of Sparta. A magnificent hero's journey with a feminist twist, The Lost Daughter of Sparta fills in history's missing pieces with sparkling wit and pathos, thrilling adventure, and an empowering love story that won't soon be forgotten.
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The Woodchipper
by Joe Ollmann
An award-winning cartoonist confronts anxiety and regret. A long-time city maintenance worker keeps pulling an accident prone newbie's fat out of the fire or maybe in this case, an arm and another arm and a leg out of the woodchipper. What happens when NOTHING HAPPENS? Can a disaster averted still be a disaster? In Nestled All Snug, frazzled bookstore clerk Sasha prepares to close the store and head home to watch Hallmark Christmas specials after a fight with her boyfriend means she's home alone for the holidays. Hmm, that stack of boxes outside the bathroom seems a little precarious. Maybe Sasha will do returns when she gets back to work post-holidays. FWUMP FWUMP FWUMP. Guess someone is going to regret leaving their phone by the register before going to the bathroom. In The Woodchipper, Joe Ollmann, cartoonist of the groundbreaking Governor General Award finalist Fictional Father, returns with a suite of comic short stories focused on his trademark nervous wreck characters caught in a series of escalating personal disasters. Everybody's doing their best. Everybody's just trying to get through the day.
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Olympos: Nullhunter: A Cyberpunk Retelling of Hercules
by Michael Walsh
A neon-infused cyberpunk retelling of the classic Greek myth, Labors of Hercules, set amongst the stars. In Olympos: Nullhunter, Clay is a war hero who faces unspeakable tragedy after returning home. Seeking justice, he's forced into service for his estranged father's powerful company, Olympos. His first mission takes him to faraway N3M-3A on the trail of a hijacked shipment of war lions. Embarking on a series of deadly assignments, Clay travels deeper into Nullspace -- and closer to discovering the truth. Olympos: Nullhunter is a showcase of 80s-inspired dystopian storytelling and art, in the same vein as fan favourites like Ronin and Blade Runner. From acclaimed creator Michael Walsh (The Silver Coin, Universal Monsters: Frankenstein) and with art by rising star Gustaffo Vargas (Marvel's Voices), the story is a full-throttle, cybernetic reimagining of the classic mythological tale.
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The Crossroads
by C. J. Box
Game warden Joe Pickett fights for his life as his daughters try to uncover who shot him and left him for dead in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C. J. Box. Marybeth Pickett gets the call she has always dreaded: her husband Joe is in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Joe was found in his pickup at Antler Creek Junction, a crossroads connecting three ranches. Each road leading to a dangerous family. Each family with a different bone to pick with the local game warden. Marybeth and the new sheriff assume that Joe was ambushed by one of the families, but they have no idea which one since Joe didn't say where he was going or why. With Joe unconscious and fighting for his life with Marybeth at his side, Sheridan, April, and Lucy split up and investigate each of the families to uncover the truth of what happened to their father, before it's too late.
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The Astral Library
by Kate Quinn
From New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn comes a gorgeously written fantastical adventure which poses the question: Have you ever wished you could live inside a book? Welcome to the Astral Library, where books are not just objects, but doors to new worlds, new lives, and new futures. Alexandria Alix Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books. The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect.
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A Far-Flung Life
by M. L. Stedman
From the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Light Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia--about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love. When we do something that can't be undone or mended, how do we go on living? How do we find our North Star when there is no right answer? These are the questions at the center of M. L. Stedman's unforgettable and magisterial new novel, A Far-flung Life. This is a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades. .A Far-flung Life is a tale about family and belonging, fate and time. It is about people trying to do their best, and each, for private reasons, seeking shelter from the storm of life. Can a fleeting moment unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably? Can compassion, resilience and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections? These are the questions Stedman asks in A Far-flung Life, her profoundly moving, uplifting, and luminous new novel about what the heart can endure for the sake of love.
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Rental Family /
In this heartfelt film, Brendan Fraser portrays an American actor in Tokyo struggling to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig with a Japanese “rental family” agency playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients’ worlds, he forms genuine bonds and rediscovers purpose and the quiet beauty of human connection.
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Mr Nobody Against Putin /
At his primary school in Karabash, Russia, teacher Pavel Talankin was also the staff videographer-which, after the invasion of Ukraine, made him the choice to operate the camera as the government sought to indoctrinate his students into support for the conflict. Appalled but galvanized, Talankin covertly documented hundreds of hours of Putin's propaganda machine at work-and handed off the video to Denmark-based documentarian David Borenstein for this sobering effort.
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Is This Thing on
As their marriage quietly unravels, Alex faces middle age and an impending divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene, while Tess confronts the sacrifices she made for their family—forcing them to navigate co-parenting, identity, and whether love can take a new form.
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Killers of the Flower Moon /
When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one - until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
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