Broader Bookshelf 2024 | Read a book by or about someone that identifies as ability diverse (Fiction)
Sarah C.
Sunday, April 07
Collection
Broaden your reading horizons with the Broader Bookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge! All these titles fulfill the prompt to read a book "by or about someone that identifies as ability diverse."
To keep herself occupied after recently losing her sight, Zinaida begins a diary in the summer of 1888. When a family rents a guesthouse on her family's estate, Zinaida meets and befriends Anton, the middle son, who is a doctor and a writer. As the summer progresses, Zinaida's diary becomes an intimate, intropective narrative of her singular relationship with Anton. More than a century later, Katya Kendall discovers Zinaida's diary, and in a last attempt to save her publishing business, she hires Ana to translate the diary. They soon realize that Zinaida's Anton is actually Anton Chekhov, the author and playwright, and that the diary points to the possibility that Chekhov used that summer to write a novel. As Katya and Ana delve deeper, they reflect on the events and forces which have steered them to where they are, and they discover that the manuscript is not the only mystery the diary holds. -- adapted from publisher website and Kirkus reviews.
"Raymundo Mata is a nightblind bookworm and a revolutionary in the Philippine war against Spain in 1896. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of the books of the man who becomes the nation's great hero José Rizal (Rizal, in real life, is executed by the Spaniards for writing two great novels that spark revolution-the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. At the time Rizal died, he was working on a third novel, Makamisa). Raymundo Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centered by another story: that of the development of the book. In the foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes, we see the translator Mimi C. Magsalin (a pseudonym), the rabid nationalist editor Estrella Espejo, and the neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic Dr. Diwata Drake make multiple readings of the Mata manuscript. Inevitably, clashes between these readings occur throughout the novel, and in the end the reader is on a wild chase to answer enduring questions: Does the manuscript contain Makamisa or is it Makamisa? Are the journals an elaborate hoax? And who is the perpetrator of the textual crime? In this story about the love of books, the story of a nation emerges. But what is a nation? What The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata imagines is that through acts of reading, a nation is born"-- Provided by publisher.
Learning that he does not have long to live and will need to figure out how to provide for his developmentally disabled adult son, a widower signs up as a census taker for a mysterious government bureau and leaves town with his son on a cross-country journey.
"This book will knock your socks off . . . A first novel that sings with talent."--Clyde Edgerton. In his phenomenal debut novel--a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small North Carolina town--Cash displays a remarkable talent for lyrical, powerfully emotional storytelling.
"An online community of millions follows with breathless anticipation as a young fugitive from injustice chronicles in real time an emotion-filled journey of escape and romance on his favorite medium and confessional: Yelp"-- Provided by publisher.
"A literary novel about adult siblings, a sister and her autistic brother, and what happens when the brother is accused of the murder of a local boy - who is truly responsible, and could it have been avoided if the brother had been treated differently by his parents, by his sister, by society?"-- Provided by publisher.
A tale imparted from the perspective of long-time imaginary friend, Budo, traces his awareness of his advancing age and constant thought of the inevitable day when eight-year-old Max, an autistic boy, will stop believing in him.
"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"-- Provided by publisher.
"It's 1997, and 14-year-old Juliet has it pretty good. But over the course of the next two years, she rapidly begins to unravel, finding herself in a downward trajectory of mental illness and self-destruction."-- Provided by publisher.
"Arlo Dilly is young, handsome and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah's Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none. And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life-a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever. Or so Arlo thought. After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again. No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life's joyful possibilities"-- Provided by publisher
"Mab is the "normal" one, never mind Bourne Memorial High School has banned that term, and besides, she's a stickler for words and definitions and knows normal isn't normal in Bourne. Monday is a stickler for everything else. She doesn't like abbreviations, contractions, lies, typos, or wearing green clothes on yellow days. When the Bourne library shut down-funds desperately needed elsewhere-she stashed the books under her bed, behind the sofa, along the stairs, inside the microwave, and lends them from home. Mirabel's the smart one, the slow one, the stuck one. Much of her body requires augmentation-she needs a wheelchair to navigate the world, a voice app to speak to it-but her right arm and hand work flawlessly. And so do her brain and her heart. Nora gave her girls "M" names with escalating syllables so she'd be able to keep them straight. As if single parenting sixteen-year-old triplets weren't enough, her two jobs-Bourne's only therapist and its only bartender-are both in unusually high demand. And then there's the job she can't let go-lead plaintiff in Bourne's class-action lawsuit against Bison Chemical. Seventeen years ago, the Bison plant was pumping toxic chemicals into Bourne's river. Flowers stopped blooming. Pets got sick, then their owners did too. A generation was born not quite whole. Nora assures her daughters they're perfect just the way they are, but she's still spent their whole lives fighting to make Bison pay. When a new student at Bourne Memorial High turns out to be the grandson of Bison's CEO, everyone realizes that in a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything has. And when Bison announces plans to reopen the plant, the girls take up their mother's cause in a race to find what Bison is hiding and to stop them. Part small-town mystery, part girl-superhero story, One Two Three is Laurie Frankel's specialty, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry and laugh again"-- Provided by publisher.
Just before his death, Sanford Friedman completed this, his final novel, something entirely different from anything he, or for that matter anyone, had written before - Conversations with Beethoven, a moving meditation on greatness and pettiness, vulnerability and genius, that is as elegiac as it is witty and engaging.
"Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, living a quiet life away from neighbors' stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up during the Troubles. But underneath her seemingly predictable existence, she doesn't know where her father is, and every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella's grandmother dies, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town"-- Provided by publisher.
Annika (rhymes with Monica) Rose is an English major at the University of Illinois. Anxious in social situations where she finds most people's behavior confusing, she'd rather be surrounded by the order and discipline of books or the quiet solitude of playing chess.
A middle-aged autistic resident of a therapeutic community where he was sent as a young child rebels against changes in his environment by attempting to return to a family home and younger sibling he only partially remembers.
"In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence. Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish-the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity-their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression"-- Provided by publisher.
Augustin, a deaf mute and the cook's son at the manor house at Poiana, where Safta was the privileged daughter, is found on the steps of the hospital in Iaşi, Romania, where she works and remembering him, Safta brings him paper and pencil so he may draw, which brings the two of them back together again in a friendship that bypasses social classes.
"The celebrated author of Single, Carefree, Mellow, returns with her debut novel--a rueful, funny examination of love, marriage, infidelity, and origami. Divorcing his wife to marry his girlfriend, Audra, is the one impulsive thing Graham Cavanaugh has ever done. Audra is charming and spontaneous and fun, but life with her can be exhausting, constantly interrupted by phone calls, burdened by houseguests, and populated by old men with backpacks full of origami paper. As Graham and Audra struggle to define their marriage and raise a child with Asperger's, they decide to establish a friendship with his first wife, Elspeth. But former spouses are hard to categorize--are they friends, enemies, old flames, or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice? A novel as poignant as it is hilarious, Standard Deviation never deviates from superb"-- Provided by publisher.
"Twelve letters. That's what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she's dying. Twelve letters to see him through the first year without her, and to lead him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in the new novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins."-- Provided by publisher.
"Ways the World Could End is a story of grief, friendship, and love--the love between parents and children, between spouses, between teenagers, between strangers. It is a story that asks us to consider what we can and cannot forgive, and reminds us that often the hardest thing to forgive is ourselves"-- Provided by publisher.
"From the author of the international bestseller Papa Hemingway, based on his own experiences: the story of a man struggling to overcome a rare syndrome that causes terrifying hallucinations, who eventually, despite the odds, finds love. AN ANCHOR ORIGINAL. Chet Tremaine is living his best life. A successful lawyer with a loyal best friend, the arts and culture of New York City at his doorstep, and a peaceful retreat in Connecticut, Chet has it figured out. Even when a freak tennis accident leaves him blind in one eye, Chet is confident he'll be able to bounce back. But then he starts hallucinating: unknown children playing in his living room, pine needles seasoning his salad, wire grids barring access to his bathroom. His doctor allays his worst fears, only to deliver an even more shocking diagnosis: Chet's eye injury has left him with Charles Bonnet syndrome, and this rare disease is incurable. Chet is going to be plagued by these hallucinations for the rest of his life. His social life impaired, his job in jeopardy, Chet is close to becoming a recluse when he helps a woman who's collapsed on a Manhattan street corner. She turns out to be Emma Vicky, a warm and witty British actress who suffers from Maenière's disease, a condition that causes severe vertigo. Like Chet, she feels restrained by her chronic illness and terribly isolated--until their meeting renews her desire to open up, let another person in. But Chet can't make the same leap. Instead, he decides to make a final Hail Mary attempt to finda cure, embarking on a spiritual quest that will take him all the way to the mountains of Nepal. By turns funny, harrowing, and inspirational, Kissing the Wind is A. E. Hotchner's final, and finest, achievement"-- Provided by publisher.
"From an act of political violence that tears apart a family's faith and community, S. M. Hulse crafts a compelling novel that mines the deep rifts that come when the reach of the government clashes with individual freedom"-- Provided by publisher.
A sparkling talent makes her fiction debut with this infectious novel that combines the charming pluck of Eloise, the poignant psychological quirks of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the page-turning spirit of Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Reclusive literary legend M. M. "Mimi" Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time in decades, and to ensure the timely delivery of her manuscript, her New York publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. The prickly Mimi reluctantly complies?with a few stipulations: No Ivy-Leaguers or English majors. Must drive, cook, tidy. Computer whiz. Good with kids. Quiet, discreet, sane. When Alice Whitley arrives at the Banning mansion, she's put to work right away?as a full-time companion to Frank, the writer's eccentric nine-year-old, a boy with the wit of Noel Coward, the wardrobe of a 1930s movie star, and very little in common with his fellow fourth-graders. As she slowly gets to know Frank, Alice becomes consumed with finding out who Frank's father is, how his gorgeous "piano teacher and itinerant male role model" Xander fits into the Banning family equation?and whether Mimi will ever finish that book. Full of heart and countless "only-in-Hollywood" moments, Be Frank with Me is a captivating and unconventional story of an unusual mother and son, and the intrepid young woman who finds herself irresistibly pulled into their unforgettable world.
Charles Morrow, a high school English teacher who finds it difficult to connect with his autistic son, his college-bound daughter, or his ex-wife, begins to rise out of the rut his life has fallen into with the help of an art student and an Italian-speaking nun.
"A boy with an uncanny ability to find lost objects must embark on his most important search yet in order to save his mother's enchanted dessert shop, the only place he's ever called home. There's only one place in the world that lonely twelve-year-old Walter Lavender Jr. feels at home: The Lavenders, his mother's unusual West Village dessert shop ... When the mysterious and magical Book at the heart of the shop vanishes and a landlord threatens closure, it's up to Walter to find the Book and save the shop. Despite--or because of--a communication disorder that renders him speechless and friendless, Walter has a special ability to find lost things. In fact, the only thing he's failed to find is his father, a pilot lost in a presumed plane crash at sea before Walter was born. Accompanied by Milton, his best friend and overweight golden retriever, Walter's quest will take him around and under New York City, into subway tunnels and soaring over Central Park, from bottle collecting in Chinatown to racing through the Met, and introduce him to the extraordinary and forgotten people of this fantastical city. Along the way he will discover his voice and learn what it means to truly be found"-- Provided by publisher.
"Meet Ollie. He's eleven years old. He loves rules, has memorized every world capital and every soccer player in the Premier League, and hasn't yet met a Killer Sodoku puzzle he can't solve. He hates being asked two questions at once, or when grown-ups use words with double meanings. He loves his family fiercely, but sometimes he cannot control his temper. And now, he must face a sudden tragedy for which there is no solution. When Ollie's happy-go-lucky, larger-than-life father, Rich, dies of brain cancer, Ollie's life is thrown into disarray. His mother, Ruth, won't get out of bed. His aunt Nessa, Rich's best friend, tries to take charge in her forceful, no-nonsense way, but to no avail. His eccentric grandmother, who lives in a ramshackle cottage in the woods, wants them to move in with her. His other grandparents are struggling with their own health issues as they mourn the loss of their only son. The only thing that makes sense to Ollie is the puzzle he's convinced his dad left behind for him to solve: six gifts, one for each member of the family, that will spell out the secret he's sure his dad figured out right before he died: what it means to be alive. Alternating between Ollie's point of view and the five other members of his family, this beautiful, touching novel paints a portrait of a family who must learn to come together in their grief. How these six characters each undertake this journey of healing is at the heart of this deeply poignant yet ultimately uplifting read"-- Provided by publisher.
Jaz and Lisa Matharu are plunged into a surreal public hell after their son, Raj, vanishes during a family vacation in the California desert. However, the Mojave is a place of strange power, and before Raj reappears inexplicably unharmed--but not unchanged--the fate of this young family will intersect with that of many others, echoing the stories of all those who have traveled before them. Driven by the energy and cunning of Coyote, the mythic, shape-shifting trickster, Gods Without Men is full of big ideas, but centered on flesh-and-blood characters who converge at an odd, remote town in the shadow of a rock formation called the Pinnacles. Viscerally gripping and intellectually engaging, it is, above all, a heartfelt exploration of the search for pattern and meaning in a chaotic universe.
Meet Ginny Moon. She's mostly your average teenager--she plays flute in the high school band, has weekly basketball practice, and reads Robert Frost poems in English class. But Ginny is autistic. And so what's important to her might seem a bit... different: starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, her baby doll, and crafting a secret plan of escape. After being traumatically taken from her abusive birth mother and moved around to different homes, Ginny has finally found her "forever home"--a safe place with parents who will love and nurture her. This is exactly what all foster kids are hoping for, right? But Ginny has other plans. She'll steal and lie and exploit the good intentions of those who love her--anything it takes to get back what's missing in her life. She'll even try to get herself kidnapped. Told in an extraordinary and wholly original voice, Ginny Moon is at once quirky, charming, heartbreaking, and poignant. It's a story about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and about making sense of a world that just doesn't seem to add up. Taking you into the mind of a curious and deeply human character, Benjamin Ludwig's novel affirms that fiction has the power to change the way we see the world.
"With beguiling wit and undeniable passion, Lush Lives is a deliciously queer and sexy novel about bold, brilliant women unafraid to take risks and fight for what they love. An unabashedly charged love story set in the evocative and high-stakes world of art and auction in New York City. For Glory Hopkins, inheriting her aunt Lucille's Harlem brownstone feels more like a curse than a blessing. As a restless artist struggling to find gallery representation, Glory doesn't have the money, time, or patience to look after the aging house of an aunt she barely knew. But when she stumbles into Parkie de Groot, a savvy, ambitious auction house appraiser on the verge of a coveted promotion, her unexpected inheritance begins to look more promising. Glory and Parkie form an unlikely alliance and work to unearth the origins of a rare manuscript hidden in the brownstone's trove. In doing so, they uncover not only the well-kept secrets of Lucille's life but also the complex relationships between Harlem and its distinguished residents. Undeniable as their connection may be, complications arise that threaten to tear apart their newly forged relationship. Between Parkie's struggle to overcome the heartache of past romances and professional problems that threaten to end her rising career, and Glory's unbridled and all-consuming drive, they begin to keep secrets from each other. The deeper they dig into the mysteries of the Harlem brownstone, the more fraught their relationship becomes. Lush Lives is an unforgettable novel of queer love, ambition, and the forgotten histories that define us"-- Provided by publisher.
"Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The narrator, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary--her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties--and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother's nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal. The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away"--Dust jacket flap.
"After a car accident Jarred discovers he'll never walk again. Confined to a 'giant roller-skate', he finds himself with neither money nor job. Worse still, he's forced to live back home with the father he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Add in a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and the fact that total strangers now treat him like he's an idiot, and it's a recipe for self-destruction. How can he stop himself careering out of control? As he tries to piece his life together again, he looks back over his past - the tragedy that blasted his family apart, why he ran away, the damage he's caused himself and others - and starts to wonder whether, maybe, things don't always have to stay broken after all"--Publisher
"True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both at the same time. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another-and changed forever. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection"-- Provided by publisher.
The residents at a facility for disabled young people in Chicago build trust and make friends in an effort to fight against their living conditions and mistreatment.
"From the first line of Just by Looking at Him, you'll know this story is so much more than boy meets boy. First, there's the humor. Elliot is a writer who spends his days navigating the back stabbing, the pressure, and the day to day snark of writing aggressively average television. In laugh out loud detail, we're immediately with him on his journey to try to get his lines onto the screen. But there's a deeper, and more poignant, story beating at the heart of this would be rom com. Instead of the usual boy meets boy, the person you really fall in love, the one you're rooting for until the end, is the protagonist himself. As a gay man with cerebral palsy, Elliot has always searched for the one, and he thought he found that person in Gus, his doting boyfriend. And yet, he can't seem to stop cheating. Elliot falls into a rabbit hole of sex, drinking, and addiction, and ultimately learns that the person he truly needs to learn to accept is himself. As incisive commentary on gay life today, a heart centered, laugh out loud exploration of self and a rare insight into life as a person with disabilities who refuses to be a victim, critics and readers alike will fall in love with this story"-- Provided by publisher.
"Water for Elephants meets The Night Circus in this World War II debut about a magnificent travelling circus, a star-crossed romance, and one girl's coming-of-age during the darkest of times"-- Provided by publisher.
"As a full moon rises over Melbourne, Australia, a young woman gets ready for a party. She is autistic, yet within her mind, she is whoever she wants to be. What appears to an ordinary night out is - through the prism of her singular perspective - extraordinary. As the evening unfolds, each encounter reveals the vast discrepancies between what she is thinking and feeling, and what she is able to say. And there's so much she'd like to say. So when she meets a man and the possibility of intimacy and genuine connection occurs, it's nothing short of a miracle. However, it isn't until she invites him home that we come to appreciate the humanity beneath the labels we cling to, and we can grasp the pleasure of what it means to be alive"--Publisher
"A powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and The Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together"-- Provided by publisher.
"The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is comic and staggeringly tragic, often both in a single sentence ... A grittier, Eastern European, more grown-up The Fault in Our Stars."--Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child. Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. Born deformed, yet mentally keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong intellect, and a voracious appetite for books, Ivan is forced to interact with the world through the vivid prism of his mind. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement. That is until a new resident named Polina arrives at the hospital. At first, Ivan resents Polina. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. She is exquisite. But soon, he cannot help being drawn to her and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of. Before, he survived by being utterly detached from things and people. Now, Ivan wants something more: Ivan wants Polina to live. "Ivan Isaenko is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and hilarious novel whose closest literary relative might be One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ... will appeal to any reader with a beating heart - a true gem." --Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs "-- Provided by publisher.
The first time Isabel meets her father-in-law, Omar, he's already dead--an apparition appearing uninvited on her wedding day. Her husband, Martin, still unforgiving for having been abandoned by his father years ago, confesses that he never knew the old man had died. So Omar asks Isabel for the impossible: persuade Omar's family--especially his wife, Elda--to let him redeem himself. Isabel and Martin settle into married life in a Texas border town, and Omar returns each year on the celebratory Day of the Dead. Every year Isabel listens, but to the aggrieved Martin and Elda, Omar's spirit remains invisible. Through his visits, Isabel gains insight into not just the truth about his disappearance and her husband's childhood but also the ways grief can eat away at love. When Martin's teenage nephew crosses the Mexican border and takes refuge in Isabel and Martin's home, questions about past and future homes, borders, and belonging arise that may finally lead to forgiveness--and alter all their lives forever.
Follows the immigration experience of a young Vietnamese girl who comes of age in a hardscrabble Quebec community before earning an education and pursuing a career and her literary ambitions, in a story constructed as a series of short vignettes.
"Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bondthan cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter--like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise"-- Provided by publisher.
"A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA's Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry"-- Provided by publisher.
"Every family has its fault lines, and when Maggie gets a call from the ER in Maryland where her older sister lives, the cracks start to appear. Ginny, her sugar-loving and diabetic older sister with intellectual disabilities, has overdosed on strawberry Jell-O. Maggie knows Ginny really can't live on her own, so she brings her sister and her occasionally vicious dog to live near her in upstate New York. Their other sister, Betsy, is against the idea but as a professional surfer, she is conveniently thousands of miles away. Thus, Maggie's life as a caretaker begins. It will take all of her dark humor and patience, already spread thin after a separation, raising two boys, freelancing, and starting a dating life, to deal with Ginny's diapers, sugar addiction, porn habit, and refusal to cooperate. Add two devoted but feuding immigrant aides and a soon-to-be ex-husband who just won't go away, and you've got a story that will leave you laughing through your tears as you wonder who is actually taking care of whom"-- Provided by publisher