Christmas Events and Holiday Hours
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| Beatlebone: a novel by Kevin BarryIf you're familiar with author Kevin Barry's previous work (the noirish, near-future City of Bohane, for one), prepare for something a little different. Beatlebone is set in an imaginary past: John Lennon has escaped Beatles-crazed New York and is trying to get to an island off the coast of Ireland in order to regain his creative equilibrium. As the press pursues Lennon, his driver, the eccentric Cornelius O'Grady, hides him in various strange locales (a haunted pub, a primal-scream therapy commune). An unusual, philosophical book, Beatlebone reads a bit like a fable. |
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Darkness the color of snow
by Thomas Cobb
When a fatal drunk-driving incident involving a young patrolman and his former best friend is exploited by local troublemakers, police chief Gordy Hawkins struggles to protect the young officer's reputation. By the author of Crazy Heart.
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The foundling's war
by Michel Déon
In July 1940, ex-soldier Jean Arnaud hides in a brothel with his best friend and falls for a beautiful young woman; the three then head to Paris as the French capital struggles to maintain normality under German occupation
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| The mare by Mary GaitskillVelvet Vargas is 11 years old when she first visits upstate New York, thanks to the Fresh Air Fund. It's very different from her inner-city Brooklyn home, and her host family is very different from her unstable Dominican mother, who resents them and resists their role in Velvet's life. As she continues to visit over the next three years, she builds relationships with her host mum, an artist and former addict, and her host father, a professor, as well as with a mistreated horse nearby. But none of these adults are able to support her during a rocky transition into adolescence. Voiced by multiple characters, this novel treats complex subjects with delicacy. |
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Thirteen ways of looking
by Colum McCann
A new story collection by the best-selling author of Let the Great World Spin includes the title novella, in which an octogenarian retired judge's musings on his life are interrupted by police updates about his murder later that afternoon.
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The unfriended
by Jane McLoughlin
An epic coming of age novel about a generation of women, played out in Ireland, where what happens during and after the troubles becomes a metaphor for the women's struggle to make peace with one another. Set in the swinging sixties, theirs was the first generation free to claim womanhood as anything they wanted it to be. The novel follows the four women through the highs and lows of interwoven later lives until they discover that only by redefining the terms of female friendship can they take their place in the history they all helped to create.
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Under the udala trees
by Chinelo Okparanta
A young Nigerian girl, displaced during a civil war, begins a powerful love affair with another refugee girl from a different ethnic community until the pair are discovered and must learn the cost of living a lie amidst taboos and prejudices.
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The mountain shadow
by Gregory David Roberts
A sequel to Shantaram continues Australian fugitive Lin's search for love and faith in a Bombay that has come under the rule of a new generation of mafia dons and where Lin becomes trapped by his married soulmate and an increasingly violent mission.
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Scarlet lies
by Lani Wendt Young
Lies are beautiful - when the truth hurts. Sixteen years ago, Scarlet's family sent her away in disgrace. She's been back once - with disastrous consequences. Now, her little sister is getting married and Scarlet's headed home once more. Intriguing Samoan novel.
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"James is what I call him. His other daughter, Chaurisse, the one who grew up in the house with him, she calls him Daddy, even now." ~ from Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow
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| The girl who fell from the sky: a novel by Heidi W. DurrowLike the author, the main character in this melancholy debut novel has an African-American father and a Danish mother. Blue-eyed and light-skinned, 11-year-old Rachel is orphaned by a family tragedy and moves to her paternal grandmother's mostly black community in Portland, Oregon. Still grieving, she is confused by the needs of others to label her with one race or another, and for the first time becomes aware of race and racial identity. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky won the PEN/Bellwether Prize in 2008. |
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| Silver sparrow: a novel by Tayari JonesDana Yarboro's father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist. Though both Dana and her mother have always known this, James goes to great lengths to protect his other, first family from the truth. And despite her mother's tendency to spy on the other wife, Dana is kept from her half-sister by the simple rule that Chaurisse picks first (summer camp, summer job, college), and Dana gets what's left. After the two meet accidentally and Dana pursues a friendship with her unsuspecting half-sister, James' secrets inevitably unravel. Set in Atlanta's middle-class African-American community in the 1980s, this novel and its complex, believable characters are likely to appeal as much to teenaged girls as to their grown-up counterparts. |
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| The fields: a novel by Kevin MaherDublin, 1984. At 13, Jim Finnegan was abused by the local parish priest. At 14, he has fallen in love for the first time, with a beautiful 17-year-old who shortly falls pregnant. They're soon off to London in search of an abortion, which is when Jim gets involved in astral healing. Written in a lively, slang-filled Irish vernacular, and mixing plenty of comedy with more than a little bit of tragedy, this book offers a charming protagonist and an engaging writing style, even if the end, when it comes, is a surprise. |
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| 1Q84 by Haruki MurakamiHaruki Murakami fans who prefer his big, intricately plotted epics will be most pleased by this imaginative opus. (Readers new to the author may want to start with something a little more approachable. Perhaps A Wild Sheep Chase). At over 1,100 pages 1Q84 is something of a commitment, and has a plot, a parallel world, and characters so complex that they defy description. Alternating perspectives provide three different outlooks on the two-mooned parallel world that appears in 1984 Tokyo, called 1Q84. Strange and convoluted, this book landed on multiple "Best of" lists in 2011. |
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| I curse the river of time by Per PettersonNorwegian-born Arvid Jansen is 37 when both the Communist empire and his marriage collapse. Despite the chance at a college education, he works in a factory; this is a choice that his mother, who's now dying of cancer, never approved of. Facing so many changes -- and very aware of the continuous passage of time -- Arvid feels the need to reconnect with his mother and reflect upon his own life. Taking place mostly in 1989 but with flashbacks to the summers Arvid spent in Denmark as a child, this character-driven novel will appeal to readers familiar with the need to question one's place in the world. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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