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1) Torch
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When radio show host Teresa Rae Wood dies, her common-law husband and children, struggling to keep her memory alive, become isolated in grief just when they need one another the most.
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First published in 1989, this novel tells the story of two friends, John Wheelwright and Owen Meany, who grew up together as boys, but who have different backgrounds and appearances. Owen, for one thing, remains stunted at under five feet tall as an adult. He also believes he has a purpose to accomplish. Themes include the importance of faith, and the concept of fate.
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"When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on...
4) Swamplandia!
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This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her...
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A historical novel, based on a real-life event, follows the lives of two characters, a newly orphaned girl in 1629 who was shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia, and a lonely boy in 1989 who, over three hundred years later, arrives on the same island, discovering the story of an infamous shipwreck.
6) The cactus
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Even the prickliest cactus has its flower...For Susan Green, messy emotions dont fit into the equation of her perfectly ordered life. She has a flat that is ideal for one, a job that suits her passion for logic and an "interpersonal arrangement" that provides cultural and other, more intimate, benefits. But suddenly confronted with the loss of her mother and the news that she is about to become a mother herself, Susans greatest fear is realized. She...
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High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns.
and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While.
bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale.
by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his.
company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the.
darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination.
his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled.
into...
9) Oceans apart
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He failed his family only once, long ago, but they never knew about it. Now pilot Connor Evans's life and marriage are going great, until Connor finds himself face-to-face with his past in the form of a seven-year-old boy.
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"Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. In the wake of her mother's death, Kalyani, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that...
12) The mighty oak
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"Tim O'Connor is paid to be violent. He plays for the El Paso Storm in the West Texas Hockey League. People call him Oak. He's been an enforcer for longer than his hip or shoulder or back have been able to hold together. He is a broken machine of gristle and rage. And he has been away from home for too long. He's called back to Boston by his mother's death. There he confronts a life he failed to live, a daughter he doesn't know, and a body that is...
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"When former piano prodigy Saskia Kreis returns home to Milwaukee after her mother's unexpected death, she expects to inherit the family estate, the Elf House. But with the discovery that her mother's will bequeathed the Elf House to a man that Saskia shares a complicated history with, she is forced to reexamine her own past--and the romantic relationship that changed the course of her life--for answers. Can she find a way to claim her heritage while...
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Records the indelible marks a mother leaves on her son after she abandons their home in Italy for a business she's building in Romania. Lorenzo, just a young boy when his mother leaves, recalls the incisive fragments of their life - when they would playfully wrestle each other, watch the sunrise, or test out his mother's newest scientific creation. Now a young man, Lorenzo travels to Romania for his mother's funeral and reflects on the strangeness...
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"Life and a dismal last name are the only two things Beyah Grim's parents ever gave her. After carving her path all on her own, Beyah is well on her way to bigger and better things, thanks to no one but herself. With only two short months separating her from the future she's built and the past she desperately wants to leave behind, an unexpected death leaves Beyah with no place to go during the interim. Forced to reach out to her last resort, Beyah...
16) Housekeeping
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"Newly reissued as a Picador Modern Classic, Marilynne Robinson's brilliant, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning first novel Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake...
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In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with...
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"On the day of his mother’s funeral, a young boy conjures the very visitor he needs to see: a gorilla. Wise and gentle, the gorilla stays on to answer the heart-heavy questions the boy hesitates to ask his father: Where did his mother go? Will she come back home? Will we all die? Yet with the gorilla’s friendship, the boy slowly begins to discover moments of comfort in tending flowers, playing catch, and climbing trees. Most of all, the gorilla...
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Riveting and unconventional, The Last Story of Mina Lee traces the far-reaching consequences of secrets in the lives of a Korean immigrant mother and her daughter. Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can't understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother's past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented...