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Fiction A to Z September 2019
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| The Warehouse by Rob HartThe setting: a near future world destroyed by climate change, in which nearly all aspects of life are controlled by a massive global corporation called Cloud.
What happens: Two Cloud employees discover that all is not as it seems behind the closed doors of the near-monopoly.
For fans of: Dave Eggers' The Circle, of course, as well as Netflix's Black Mirror, but also totalitarian classics like George Orwell's 1984. |
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A pure heart : a novel
by Rajia Hassib
"A powerful novel about two Egyptian sisters--their divergent fates and the secrets of one family Sisters Rose and Gameela Gubran could not have been more different. Rose, an Egyptologist, married an American journalist and immigrated to New York City, where she works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gameela, a devout Muslim since her teenage years, stayed in Cairo. During the aftermath of Egypt's revolution, Gameela is killed in a suicide bombing. When Rose returns to Egypt after the bombing, she sifts through the artifacts Gameela left behind, desperate to understand how her sister came to die, and who she truly was. Soon, Rose realizes that Gameela has left many questions unanswered. Why had she quit her job just a few months before her death and not told her family? Who was she romantically involved with? And how did the religious Gameela manage to keep so many secrets? Rich in depth and feeling, A Pure Heart is a brilliant portrait of two Muslim women in the twenty-first century, and the decisionsthey make in work and love that determine their destinies. As Rose is struggling to reconcile her identities as an Egyptian and as a new American, she investigates Gameela's devotion to her religion and her country. The more Rose uncovers about her sister's life, the more she must reconcile their two fates, their inextricable bond as sisters, and who should and should not be held responsible for Gameela's death. Rajia Hassib's A Pure Heart is a stirring and deeply textured novel that asks what it means to forgive, and considers how faith, family, and love can unite and divide us"
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We, the survivors
by Tash Aw
A man from a Malaysian fishing village who has completed a sentence for murder and a privileged young journalist whose life has taken an unexpected turn confront the systems of power, race and class that drove the former into violence.
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Akin : a novel
by Emma Donoghue
A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes a young great-nephew to the French Riviera in hopes of uncovering his own mother’s wartime secrets. By the best-selling author of Room. Read by Jason Culp. Simultaneous.
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The Sisters of Summit Avenue
by Lynn Cullen
Raising four daughters and running her family’s Depression-era Indiana farm for eight years after her husband is infected by a devastating sleeping sickness, a woman reconnects with her estranged, childless sister amid dark family secrets. 50,000 first printing.
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| Green by Sam Graham-FelsenWhat it's about: It's 1992, and sixth-grader Green is one of the few white students at Boston's Martin Luther King Middle School. After Marlon, a studious black kid from the housing projects nearby, stands up for him, a friendship is born. It's strong enough to weather the typical middle school problems, but it may not be strong enough to survive their differences -- or the increasingly bigger problems they face.
For fans of: stories about interracial friendships (and the strains they come under) or coming-of-age stories told by imperfect but likable narrators. |
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| The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee JohnsonFeaturing: naive teacher Molly Niccol, who's a mid-year replacement English teacher at a privileged Bay Area high school, and several of her students, all affected by a classmate's suicide.
Read it for: the shifting perspectives; the intensity of adolescence; the dark side of privilege.
Reviewers say: "this bleak, potent picture will scare the pants off readers" (Library Journal). |
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| How to Be Safe by Tom McAllisterWhat happens: Not long after high school teacher Anna Crawford is suspended for a classroom outburst, a shooting at the school leaves dozens dead and wounded. And Anna becomes a person of interest.
Why you might like it: Though the novel's catalyst is a horrific event that is all too common in the U.S., the violence is mainly off the page, Anna is a character who encourages empathy, and the trenchant observations that follow are an indictment of gun violence.
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| John Woman by Walter MosleyWhat it's about: a young man's reinvention of himself as a student and professor after his participation in a violent crime requires a new identity.
What happens: John Woman lands at a liberal college in the Southwest as a professor of deconstructionist history -- that history is found in the details not written down. And he finds that, ultimately, his own hidden history will be discovered.
Read it for: the characters; the exploration of how history shapes us. |
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| Dear Committee Members by Julie SchumacherWhat it is: a sly and satirical novel told entirely through the acidic letters of one overwhelmed college professor, who claims that the demands of academia require more letters of recommendation than published work.
Any other complaints? Budget cuts, staff eliminations, favoritism, and other small indignities find their way into the professor's endless stream of comical, frank, and sometimes passive-aggressive letters.
For fans of: Aaron Thiel's similarly biting, college-set Ghost Apple. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Culpeper County Library 271 Southgate Shopping Center Culpeper, Virginia 22701 540-825-8691
www.cclva.org
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