|
|
In Media Res: A Narrative That Begins in the Middle of a Story |
|
|
|
White teeth : a novel
by Zadie Smith
Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.
|
|
|
|
Their eyes were watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
When Janie Starks returns home, the small black community buzzes with gossip about the outcome of her affair with a younger man.
|
|
|
|
Wolf Hall : a novel
by Hilary Mantel
Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.
|
|
|
|
Little fires everywhere : a novel
by Celeste Ng
Fighting an ugly custody battle with an artistic tenant who has little regard for the strict rules of their progressive Cleveland suburb, a straitlaced family woman who is seeking to adopt a baby becomes obsessed with exposing the tenant's past, only to trigger devastating consequences for both of their families.
|
|
|
|
Your absence is darkness
by Jâon Kalman Stefâansson
"A man comes to awareness in a cold church in the Icelandic countryside, not knowing who he is, why he's there or how he arrived, with a stranger staring mockingly from a few pews back. Startled by the man's cryptic questions, he leaves-and plunges into a history spanning centuries, a past pressed into his genes that sinks him closer to some knowledge of himself. A city girl is drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze, and a generation earlier, a farmer's wife writes an essay about earthworms that changes the course of lives. A pastor who writes letters to dead poets falls in love with a faraway stranger, and a rock musician, plagued by cosmic loneliness, discovers that his past has been a lie. Faced with the violence of fate and the effectsof choices, made and avoided, that cascade between them, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart. Incandescent and elemental, hope-filled and humane, Your Absence Is Darkness is a comedy about mortality, music, and the strange salve of time, and a spellbinding saga of death, desire, and the perfect agony of star-crossed love."
|
|
|
|
All the light we cannot see : a novel
by Anthony Doerr
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work."
|
|
|
|
Grey bees
by Andreæi Kurkov
Sergey Sergeyich is one of the last residents of a Ukrainian village in the "Grey Zone," a no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces in Crimea. Sergeyich's one pleasure in life is taking care of his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he mustmove the bees to a place they can safely collect pollen. On his journey, he will meet people on both sides of the battle lines in a country torn by war and chaos.
|
|
|
|
The trees : a novel
by Percival Everett
After a series of brutal murders in a rural Mississippi town, investigators arrive and discover a large number of similar cases that all have roots in the past.
|
|
|
|
Night boat to Tangier : a novel
by Kevin Barry
Two Irish drug-smuggling partners reevaluate a career marked by violence, betrayal and exile during a nocturnal vigil in a sketchy Spanish ferry terminal where one of them would reconnect with an estranged daughter. By the award-winning author of Beatlebone.
|
|
|
|
No country for old men
by Cormac McCarthy
Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash during a hunting trip near the Rio Grande, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation in which their only hope of survival is local sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Reader's Guide available.
|
|
|
|
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
"The visionary author's masterpiece pulls us-along with her Black female hero-through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now."
|
|
|
|
Drive your plow over the bones of the dead
by Olga Tokarczuk
When her neighbor turns up dead, and then other bodies turn up under strange circumstances, Janine, a recluse in a remote Polish village who prefers the company of animals over humans, inserts herself into the investigation, certain she knows whodunit.
|
|
|
|
The plot against America
by Philip Roth
In a novel of alternative history, aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, negotiating an accord with Adolf Hitler and accepting his conquest of Europe and anti-Semitic policies.
|
|
|
|
The name of the rose
by Umberto Eco
"Italy, 1347. While Brother William of Baskerville is investigating accusations of heresy at a wealthy abbey, his inquiries are disrupted by a series of bizarre deaths. Turning his practiced detective skills to finding the killer, he relies on logic (Aristotle), theology (Thomas Aquinas), empirical insights (Roger Bacon), and his own wry humor and ferocious curiosity. With the aid of his young apprentice, William scours the abbey, from its stables to the labyrinthine library, piecing together evidence, and deciphering cryptic symbols and coded manuscripts to uncover the truth about this place where "the most interesting things happen at night." First published in 1980, The Name of the Rose became an international sensation, beguiling readers around the world with its mix of history, humor, and intellectual heft. This beautifully designed modern edition, illustrated with exclusive original drawings created by Umberto Eco, will enchant a new generation of readers and entice old fans to fall under its spellonce again."
|
|
|
|
The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles
A new edition the influential novel first published in 1949 follows three Americans as they endure the dangers of the North African desert, losing their smug superiority in the face of a strange and difficult world and their encounters with the limits of human existence and a people utterly alien to them.
|
|
|
|
2001: a space odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
Two astronauts find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary computer named Hal.
|
|
|
|
A goat's song
by Dermot Healy
Traces the imaginary attempts of an alcoholic playwright to restore his ex-lover, attempts that encompass the Protestant and Catholic sides of Ireland.
|
|
|
|
Year of wonders : a novel of the plague
by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England.
|
|
|
|
This is how you lose the time war
by Amal El-Mohtar
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and soon fall in love.
|
|
|
|
Age of vice
by Deepti Kapoor
After a speeding car kills five people late at night in New Delhi, the driver, a shell-shocked servant is unable to explain the series of strange events that lead to the crime.
|
|
|
|
|
|