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Our Picks for April, 2023
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The covenant of water : a novel
by Abraham Verghese
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, and set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, an epic of love, faith and medicine follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.
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Chain-Gang All-Stars
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The star of a popular, but controversial for-profit program in the private prison industry that basically turns prisoners into gladiators contemplates freedom, in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Friday Black.
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The ferryman : a novel
by Justin Cronin
A ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process?—?and, when necessary, enforcing it?—?Proctor Bennet, of the Department of Social Contracts, receives a disturbing and cryptic message from his father, while The Support Staff, who keep Prospera running, organize a revolution that causes Proctor to question everything he once believed.
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The salt grows heavy
by Cassandra Khaw
On the run, a mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own and when they stumble upon a village of ageless children thirsty for blood, they must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature to survive.
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Lost places : stories
by Sarah Pinsker
"A half-remembered children's TV show. A hotel that shouldn't exist. A mysterious ballad. A living flag. A group of girls goes camping. Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker's second collection brings together her touchstones of music and memory, secret subversions and hidden messages"
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Did you hear about Kitty Karr? : a novel
by Crystal Smith Paul
After a silver screen icon dies and leaves her huge estate to three sisters, one of them discovers that the actress was really their grandmother, a black woman who had“passed” for white for over 60 years. 100,000 first printing.
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Our hideous progeny : a novel
by C. E. McGill
Determined to follow in the scientific footsteps of her great uncle Victor Frankenstein, Mary Saville and her husband, desperate to be accepted into the scientific community, construct their Creature and Mary finds herself contemplating disturbing questions and unexpected feelings for the hideous progeny she's grown to love. 60,000 first printing.
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When the heavens went on sale : the misfits and geniuses who put space within reach
by Ashlee Vance
With singular access to this strange and unprecedented moment in history, the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk chronicles the new business of space tourism and what happens when the idealistic, ambitious minds of Silicon Valley set their sights on the limitless expanse of the stars. 200,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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The nightingale affair : a novel
by Timothy Mason
Twelve years after the death of the serial killer he believed was terrorizing Florence Nightingale and her nurses in Crimea in 1855, Inspector Charles Field discovers a victim with the killer's signature embroidered rose, and must figure out he's dealing with a copycat?—?or something far worse?—?before it's too late.
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Arrangements in blue : notes on loving and living alone
by Amy Key
"When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love--and Joni Mitchell's album Blue was her inspiration. "Blue became part of my language of intimacy," she writes, recalling the dozens of times she played the record as a teen,"an intimacy of disclosure, vulnerability, unadorned feeling that I thought I'd eventually share with a romantic other." As the years ticked by, she held on to this very specific idea of romance like a bottle of wine saved for a special occasion. But what happens when the romance we are all told will give life meaning never presents itself? Now single in her forties, Key explores the sweeping scales of romantic feeling as she has encountered them, using the album Blue as an expressive anchor: from the low notes of loss and unfulfilled desire--punctuated by sharp, discordant feelings of jealousy and regret--to the deep harmony of friendship, and the crescendos of sexual attraction and self-realization"
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Professor Schiff's Guilt
by Agur Schiff
A stellar novel rendered into a darkly comic, unforgettable narrative by Booker International Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen. An Israeli professor travels to a fictitious West African nation to trace a slave-trading ancestor, only to be imprisoned under a new law barring successive generations from profiting off the proceeds of slavery. But before departing from Tel Aviv, the protagonist falls in love with Lucile, a mysterious African migrant worker who cleans his house. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this satire of contemporary attitudes toward racism and the legacy of colonialism examines economic inequality and the global refugee crisis, as well as the memory of transatlantic chattel slavery and the Holocaust. Is the professor's passion for Africa merely a fashionable pose and the book he's secretly writing about his experience there nothing but a modern version of the slave trade?
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King : a life
by Jonathan Eig
Drawing on recently declassified FBI files, this first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon reveals the courageous and often emotionally troubled man who demanded peaceful protest but was rarely at peace with himself, while showing how his demands for racial and economic justice remain just as urgent today. Illustrations.
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Dances : a novel
by Nicole Cuffy
Promoted to the principal at the New York City Ballet, Cece Cordell, a young black woman, still feels like she doesn't belong, and, despite her dream achievement, is faced with a choice that may derail her career.
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The three of us : a novel
by Ore Agbaje-Williams
Told from three different viewpoints over the course of one day, this domestic comedy follows a wife, her husband and her best friend as long-standing tensions between all of them come to a breaking point, throwing everyone's integrity into question and their relationships into chaos.
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The book proposal
by K. J. Micciche
Forging an unlikely friendship with her long ago high-school crush, romance writer Gracie Landing uses his tales of his break-up as a source of material for her current work-in-progress, risking her career and chance at happiness when chaos ensues. Original.
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The guest : a novel
by Emma Cline
After a misstep at a dinner party makes her no longer welcome in Long Island, Alex, gifted with the ability to navigate the desires of others, sticks around, spending the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.
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Yellowface : a novel
by R. F. Kuang
After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers just how far she'll go to keep what she thinks she deserves. 150,000 first printing.
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The lie maker : a novel
by Linwood Barclay
Recruited by the U.S. Marshals to create false histories for people in witness protection, like his father, writer Jack Givins uses this opportunity to find his dad?—?a man who has done terrible things and made deadly enemies who wouldn't think twice about using his own son against him. 100,000 first printing.
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Summer Stage
by Meg Mitchell Moore
Working together to ensure their summer production at a storied Block Island theater is a success, former aspiring playwright Amy Trevino, her daughter Sam and her brother, a well-loved Hollywood actor, must grapple with their desires for fame and fortune and discover what they really want out of life.
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Sing her down : a novel
by Ivy Pochoda
When an expected reprieve frees them both from an Arizona women's prison, Diosmary Sandoval's fixation on her former cellmate Florida Baum turns into a dangerous obsession, resulting in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles.
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Mrs. Nash's Ashes
by Sarah Adler
Reluctant travel companions, starry-eyed romantic Millicent and cynical writer Hollis take the road trip of a lifetime to deliver the ashes of Millicent's elderly best friend to the woman she fell in love with nearly 80 years ago, upending what they both believe about true love. Original.
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Bad summer people
by Emma Rosenblum
Two Fire Island queen bees and their single friend who meant to spend summertime relaxing and gossiping discover a body face down off the side of the boardwalk and in addition to uncovering the murderer also reveal infidelity and backstabbing.
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Women We Buried, Women We Burned
by Rachel Louise Snyder
An award-winning journalist, in this necessary story of family struggle, female survival and the passionate drive to bear witness, relates her personal journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of violence against women. 100,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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The Celebrants
by Steven Rowley
Reuniting in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living“funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves life is worth living?—?and living well?—? five friends find their pact upended when one of them reveals a shocking secret.
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Good Night, Irene
by Luis Alberto Urrea
After D-Day, two heroic Red Cross women, Irene Woodward and Dorothy Dunford join the Allied soldiers streaming into France where they are embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald, and where Irene learns to trust again through their friendship. 100,000 first printing.
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The Wishing Game
by Meg Shaffer
Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children's author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner's life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.
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Once more with feeling : a novel
by Elissa Sussman
Leaving her pop star image in the past after one unforgettable night blows up her whole life, Katee Rose, when Cal Kirby, who destroyed her career, offers her the opportunity of her dreams, reluctantly agrees to star in his musical and finds their still-smoldering attraction taking center stage. Original.
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The housemate
by Sarah Bailey
Once again assigned to the story of the Housemate Homicide after a body is discovered, Melbourne-based journalist Olive Groves unearths new facts about the three housemates, revelations that force her to confront past traumas and insecurities as she relentlessly searches for the killer.
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The light at the end of the world
by Siddhartha Deb
In Delhi, in the near future, Bibi, a low-ranking employee at a global consulting firm, is tasked with finding a man who has documents that are rumored to reveal the secrets of the Indian government, in this sweeping tale of rebellion, courage and brutality set across three separate timelines.
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