| Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani AkinolaEstranged eldest daughter Sola is back in Chicago after her influencer life implodes thanks to her now ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Sola's golden child brother worries about impending fatherhood, her physician sister isn't sure about her career or her love life, and her college student baby sister ponders who she is. This moving, funny debut takes place over two months and culminates at Thanksgiving with the siblings' Nigerian immigrant parents. Try this next: Terah Shelton Harris' Long After We Are Gone. |
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| Bumblebee Season by Eileen GarvinJake, who's paralyzed below his waist, can't gather all the honey from his dozens of hives alone. With locals uninterested, he takes on Flaco, an undocumented teen fleeing violence. In Oregon studying bumblebees, neurodivergent doctoral student Abigail and her research team members also agree to help with the harvest. Then, after a local politician causes trouble, they all band together in this sweet tale. Though Bumblebee Season continues Jake's story from The Music of Bees, it works well as a standalone. |
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| Good Joy, Bad Joy by Mikki BrammerAt 89, widowed Joy Bridport lives alone, though she has daily check-ins with her longtime best friend Hazel to make sure they are both still kicking. When cancer leaves adventurous Hazel with just months to live, it makes Joy question her own sedate life, leading to risk-taking, rule-breaking, and petty crime in this moving and heart-warming story about friendship, grief, and second chances. Read-alikes: Hillary Yablon's Sylvia's Second Act; Marianne Cronin's Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love. |
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| The Left and the Lucky by Willy VlautinKind-hearted Oregon house painter Eddie Wilkens tries to help others, like his three employees, one of whom struggles with addiction and isn't close to reliable. But his biggest impact may be on Russell, the neglected eight-year-old neighbor boy who's bullied by his violent teenage brother. Eddie and Russell develop a father-son dynamic, which helps them both in this authentic, heartfelt novel about grief, found family, and dealing with tough times. Try this next: Mary Lawson's A Town Called Solace. |
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The Unforgettable Mailman
by April Howells
1966, Chicago. Backlogged with millions of undelivered letters, the post office announces a temporary closure. But eighty-one-year-old Henry Walton can't stand idly by when there's mail waiting to be delivered. He believes letters are what keep people connected, and he's not about to let them get lost in the chaos. Plus, connection keeps the mind sharp--according to a note someone's pinned up in his kitchen. While the post office scrambles to get things under control, Henry races against time and forgetfulness. Taking it upon himself to deliver the mail, he discovers hatred and tragedy, triumph and joy in the letters he carries and the people he meets along the way. Inspired by true events, this delightful story will linger with readers long after they turn the last page--and might just inspire someone to write a letter, the old-fashioned way.
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The Library of Flowers
by L. C. Chu
For centuries, the Hua women have held sway over the courts of emperors and billionaires with their magical perfumes able to stir hearts and ensure fortunes. And in every fifth generation, an eldest daughter is born with the rarest gift of all: the ability to summon true love.As a long-awaited fifth daughter, Lucy was supposed to be the miracle her exacting mother had been waiting for. But when her magic failed, Lucy fled Vancouver, her legacy, and the expectations that had nearly broken her. Now, years later, she runs a tiny perfume shop tucked away in Toronto's Kensington Market--crafting beautiful, perfectly ordinary scents and keeping her extraordinary past firmly behind her. That is, until a death in the family brings her home...and saddles her with an unwelcome inheritance: the centuries-old Hua family register, brimming with secrets, formulas, and forgotten truths. As Lucy unravels the stories of the women who came before her--including the mother whose complicated heart she never could understand--she must confront the tangled threads of love, power, and identity...and ask herself whether her magic was ever truly gone, or simply waiting for her to decide for herself what it means to be a daughter of the House of Hua.
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The Jellyfish Problem
by Tessa Yang
Dr. Jo Ness prefers jellyfish to people. Her best friend, Aldo, was the exception, but he died seven months ago. So she spends her days hidden away at an underfunded aquarium with her specimens and a draft of the jellyfish guide she and Aldo had been working on together. His voice is alive in the notes in the margins, and it's enough. Almost. Until she receives a call from Nadia, one of the few other humans she's loved but whom she hasn't heard from in years, asking for her help. Nadia tells her a grand tale of a giant jellyfish terrorizing her tiny island off the coast of Maine and sends a grainy video of the creature. Frankly, the footage looks fake, but Jo drops everything to fly across the country to see Nadia again, and to find this supposed sea beast. She couldn't save Aldo, but perhaps she can help Nadia. But when Jo arrives on Shattering Point, Nadia is nowhere to be found, and the islanders she meets each have something different to say about the creature they've dubbed Clementine . . . a jellyfish who changes all who see it. At turns an ode to classic sea monster stories and a vibrant tale of human connection, The Jellyfish Problem is an unforgettable debut that announces a new talent.
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The May House
by Jillian Cantor
Three adult sisters inherit a beach house on the condition they spend one week together every May, leading to the discovery of family secrets, unexpected romance, and a new understanding of each other. No matter what's going on in the May sisters' lives, the one thing they can rely upon is seeing each other for one week in May at their grandmother's beachside home in gorgeous Coronado. As adults, Julia, Emily, and Nora aren't particularly close, their homes spread out across the country and the sisters busy with careers, relationships, and the minutia of life, but their promise to return each year keeps them anchored together. Until one May when Julia, the oldest and most dependable sister, doesn't show. Suddenly Nora and Emily start to question how much they truly know about their sister's life. Told in alternating points of view, spanning from their time together with Grandma Vera as kids into their adult lives, The May House explores how a decades-long family secret has unknowingly shaped each sister and, ultimately, how it brings them closer together. Funny, poignant, and brimming with heart, The May House is an irresistible story about the special bond between sisters who are figuring out what matters most in life, in all its ups and downs.
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Whistler
by Ann Patchett
When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn't seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It's a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.
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Contrapposto
by Dave Eggers
Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school--an experience of dubious value--and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart. Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something--and someone--else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. The novel spans the globe, from New York to Thailand, Indiana to Paris, and follows Cricket and Olympia through sickness and health, war and death. The novel is a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world, but chiefly it's about two friends who believe they can change that world, and bring new meaning to it, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals, and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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