|
Explore real and fantastical places in works of fiction and nonfiction.
|
|
|
One hundred years of solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
A celebration of the endless variety of life in the mythical village of Macondo chronicles the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of the small South American town.
|
|
|
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question.
|
|
|
The kite runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day
|
|
|
The house of the spirits : a novel
by Isabel Allende
"The unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted and imaginative storytellers. The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future. One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate"
|
|
|
The alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
A fable about undauntingly following one's dream, listening to one's heart, and reading life's omens.
|
|
|
The library book
by Susan Orlean
The acclaimed best-selling author of Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution—our libraries.
|
|
|
Braiding sweetgrass : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise.
|
|
|
The ghost bride
by Yangsze Choo
When she agrees to become a ghost bride for the wealthy Lim family's son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances, Li Lan must dive into a shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife to find the truth and, once there, must decide if she wants to return to the world of the living.
|
|
|
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
by Azar Nafisi
Describes growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the group of young women who came together at her home in secret every Thursday to read and discuss great books of Western literature, explaining the influence of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and other works on their lives and goals.
|
|
|
World travel : an irreverent guide
by Anthony Bourdain
A guide to some of the world’s most interesting places, as seen and experienced by writer, television host and relentlessly curious traveler Anthony Bourdain.
|
|
|
Convenience store woman
by Sayaka Murata
A Japanese woman who has been working at a convenience store for 18 years, much to the disappointment of her family, finds friendship with an alienated, cynical and bitter young man who becomes her coworker.
|
|
|
The city we became
by N. K. Jemisin
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's not the only one. All across the boroughs, strange things are happening. Something is threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
|
|
|
The shadow of the wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.
|
|
|
Ninefox gambit
by Yoon Ha Lee
Given the opportunity to redeem herself for past crimes, Captain Kel Cheris is tasked with retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress under the control of heretics, a mission that requires her to partner with an untrustworthy ally.
|
|
|
Black sun
by Rebecca Roanhorse
Xiala, a disgraced Teek who can calm waters or cause madness with her song, arrives and disrupts the holy city of Tova during the winter solstice in the first novel of a new trilogy.
|
|
|
Norse mythology
by Neil Gaiman
The New York Times best-selling author of A View From the Cheap Seats presents a bravura rendering of the major Norse pantheon that traces the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and the exploits of its characters, illuminating the characters and natures of iconic figures Odin, Thor and Loki.
|
|
|
A discovery of witches
by Deborah E. Harkness
Discovering a magical manuscript in Oxford's library, scholar Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches who has rejected her heritage, inadvertently unleashes a fantastical underworld of daemons, witches and vampires whose activities center around an enchanted treasure.
|
|
|
The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
by Stuart Turton
Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden Bishop must solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle in order to escape the curse, in a world filled with enemies where nothing and no one are quite what they seem.
|
|
|
Life on Mars : poems
by Tracy K. Smith
Presents the third collection of new poems by the Pulitzer-prize-winning poet.
|
|
|
Himself : a novel
by Jess Kidd
Twenty-six years after he was abandoned at an orphanage, Mahony returns to the rural Irish village he was born in, determined to discover the truth after receiving a mysterious note suggesting his mother met foul play
|
|
|
An American Sunrise : Poems
by Joy Harjo
In this stunning collection, Joy Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where the Mvskoke people, including her own ancestors, were forcibly displaced. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.
|
|
|
The bells of old Tokyo : meditations on time and a city
by Anna Sherman
The Bells of Old Tokyo is a remarkable literary debut by Anna Sherman that is an elegant and insightful tour of Tokyo and its residents, as well as a meditation on Japanese culture and society. The book is structured around Anna's search for the eight lost bells that once surrounded the city. These bells marked the city's neighborhoods and kept time for its inhabitants before the introduction of Western-style clocks. The bells are tangible vestiges of a much older Japan--one that believed in time as represented by animals, rather than minutes and hours, a circle rather than a forward line. Similarly, the book moves in and out of time as we are introduced to Tokyo residents past and present: An aristocrat who makes his way through Tokyo's sea of ashes after WWII's firebombs. A shrine priest who remembers Yukio Mishima praying before his infamous death. A scientist who has built the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa house,the family that used to rule Tokyo, reflecting on the destruction of his grandfathers' city ('A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness'). And woven throughout is Anna's deep friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite coffee shop who believes that if you make coffee just right, and allow people the time to enjoy it, they will return to their 'true selves.' The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer as she presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people.
|
|
|
Monster, she wrote : the women who pioneered horror & speculative fiction
by Lisa Kröger
Weird fiction wouldn't exist without the women who created it. Meet the female authors who defied convention to craft some of literature's strangest tales. And find out why their own stories are equally intriguing. Monster, She Wrote shares the stories of women past and present who invented horror, speculative, and weird fiction and made it great. You'll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V.C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Coltor, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today's vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). And eachprofile includes a curated reading list so you can seek out the spine-chilling tales that interest you the most.
|
|
|
|
|
|