LibGuides: Booklists for Adults & Teens: Booklists for Adults & Teens

arab american

April is National Arab-American Heritage Month

Fiction & non-fiction

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher **A 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist** **A 2018 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Debut Fiction** "Nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written, Sadness Is a White Bird manages, with seeming effortlessness, to find something fresh and surprising and poignant in the classic coming-of-age, love-triangle narrative, something starker, more heartbreaking: something new." --Michael Chabon "Unflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexity." --Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where--four days after his nineteenth birthday--Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell, and recalls the series of events that led him there. Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state, which his grandfather--a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis--helped establish. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith--the twin daughter and son of his mother's friend. From that winter morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage and loyal to your people, while also feeling love for those outside of your own tribal family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever. Powerful, important, and timely, Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man's attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut * BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year * A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year * A Real Simple Best Book of the Year * A PopSugar Best Book of the Year All Written By Females * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March * A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer * A USA Today Best Book of the Week * A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel * A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month * A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month * A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors * An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 * A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2019 "Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum's debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice."   --Refinery 29 The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community. "Where I come from, we've learned to silence ourselves. We've been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of--dangerous, the ultimate shame." Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children--four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family--knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.
Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island. Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them. Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.
Conditional Citizens by Laila Lalami A New York Times Editors' Choice * Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, Bookpage, L.A. Times What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections. "Sharp, bracingly clear essays."--Entertainment Weekly Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, and gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today.   Lalami poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained that keeps the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people with whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.   Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together Lalami's own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.
The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter--radicalized by the online alt-right--attacks the school.As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother's dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father's oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman's life in a nation at odds with its ideals, an emotionally rich novel that encourages us to reflect on our shared humanity. If others take the time to really see us, to look into our face, they will find something indelibly familiar, something achingly beautiful gazing back.
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award--Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost The author of the "vivid and urgent...important and timely" (The New York Times Book Review) debut The Map of Salt and Stars returns with this remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother's ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother's sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's--and his grandmother's--in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn't and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar's signature "magical and heart-wrenching" (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat A "provocative and seductive debut" of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life (O, The Oprah Magazine). On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her. Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings--for love, and a place to call home.
Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat Winner, Arab American National Museum Book Award for Children's/YA Literature, among other awards and honors. "When a war ends it does not go away," my mother says."It hides inside us . . . Just forget!" But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginningof her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home. Transcending the particulars of politics, this illuminating and timely book provides a telling glimpse into a little-known culture that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that does for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home. The novel's voice is that of Amal, the granddaughter of the old village patriarch, a bright, sensitive girl who makes it out of the camps, only to return years later, to marry and bear a child. Through her eyes, with her evolving vision, we get the story of her brothers, one who is kidnapped to be raised Jewish, one who will end with bombs strapped to his middle. But of the many interwoven stories, stretching backward and forward in time, none is more important than Amal's own. Her story is one of love and loss, of childhood and marriage and parenthood, and finally the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has. Set against one of the twentieth century's most intractable political conflicts, Mornings in Jenin is a deeply human novel - a novel of history, identity, friendship, love, terrorism, surrender, courage, and hope. Its power forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining conflicts of our lifetimes.
A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached (Illustrator) When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it's just a normal part of life for her and her parents and little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina's parents don't return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it's comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safe--home.
Life Without a Recipe by Diana Abu-Jaber On one side, there is Grace: prize-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber's tough, independent sugar-fiend of a German grandmother, wielding a suitcase full of holiday cookies. On the other, Bud: a flamboyant, spice-obsessed Arab father, full of passionate argument. The two could not agree on anything: not about food, work, or especially about what Diana should do with her life. Grace warned her away from children. Bud wanted her married above all--even if he had to provide the ring. Caught between cultures and lavished with contradictory "advice" from both sides of her family, Diana spent years learning how to ignore others' well-intentioned prescriptions. Hilarious, gorgeously written, poignant, and wise, Life Without a Recipe is Diana's celebration of journeying without a map, of learning to ignore the script and improvise, of escaping family and making family on one's own terms. As Diana discovers, however, building confidence in one's own path sometimes takes a mistaken marriage or two--or in her case, three: to a longhaired boy-poet, to a dashing deconstructionist literary scholar, and finally to her steadfast, outdoors-loving Scott. It also takes a good deal of angst (was it possible to have a serious writing career and be a mother?) and, even when she knew what she wanted (the craziest thing, in one's late forties: a baby!), the nerve to pursue it. Finally, fearlessly independent like the Grace she's named after, Diana and Scott's daughter Gracie will heal all the old battles with Bud and, like her writer-mom, learn to cook up a life without a recipe.
Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye "In the current literary scene, one of the most heartening influences is the work of Naomi Shihab Nye. Her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life."-- William Stafford Dusk 'where is the name no one answered to' 'gone off to live by itself' 'beneath the pine trees separating the houses' 'without a friend or a bed' 'without a father to tell it stories' 'how hard was the path it walked on' 'all those years belonging to none' 'of our struggles drifting under' 'the calendar page elusive as' 'residue when someone said' 'how have you been it was' 'strangely that name that tried' 'to answer' Naomi Shihab Nye has spent thirty-five years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and inspire students of all ages. In her newest collection 'Transfer' she draws on her Palestinian American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her extensive travel experiences to create a poetry collection that attests to our shared humanity.Among her awards, Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and four Pushcart prizes. In January 2010, she was elected to the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.
Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea (Translator) A bold new voice from Saudi Arabia spins a fascinating tale of four young women attempting to navigate the narrow straits between love, desire, fulfillment, and Islamic tradition In her debut novel Rajaa Alsanea reveals the social, romantic, and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Originally released in Arabic in 2005, it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia because of the controversial and inflammatory content, while black-market copies of the novel were widely circulated. The daring originality of Girls of Riyadhcontinues to create a firestorm all over the Arab world, and the excitement has spread far beyond the Middle East-to date, rights to this novel have already been sold in eleven countries. The novel unfolds as every week after Friday prayers, the anonymous narrator sends an e-mail to the female subscribers of her online chat group. In fifty such e-mails over the course of a year, we witness the tragicomic reality of four university students-Qamra, Michelle, Sadim, and Lamis-negotiating their love lives, their professional success, and their rebellions, large and small, against their cultural traditions. The world these women inhabit is a modern one that contains "Sex and the City," dating, and sneaking out of their parents' houses, and this affluent, contemporary existence causes the girls to collide endlessly with the ancient customs of their society. The never-ending cultural conflicts underscore the tumult of being an educated modern woman growing up in the twenty-first century amid a culture firmly rooted in an ancient way of life. While this novel offers a distinctly Arab voice, it also represents the mongrel culture and language of a globalized world, reflecting the way in which the Arab world is being changed by new economic and political realities. Riyadh is the larger setting of the novel, but the characters travel all over the world shedding traditional garb as they literally and figuratively cross over into Western society. These women understand the Western worldview and experiment with reconciling pieces of it with their own. But this groundbreaking novel might be the very first that opens up their world to us-their culture, their struggles, their frustrations, their hopes, and their beliefs. With Girls of Riyadh, Rajaa Alsanea gives us a rare and unforgettable insight into the complicated lives of these young Saudi women whose amazing stories are unfolding in a culture so very different from our own.
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? by Moustafa Bayoumi The story of how young Arab and Muslim Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy Arab and Muslim Americans are the new, largely undiscussed aproblema of American society, their lives no better understood than those of African Americans a century ago. Under the cover of the terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the explosion of political violence around the world, a fundamental misunderstanding of the Arab and Muslim American communities has been allowed to fester and even to define the lives of the seven twentysomething men and women whom we meet in this book. Their names are Rami, Sami, Akram, Lina, Yasmin, Omar, and Rasha, and they all live in Brooklyn, New York, which is home to the largest number of Arab Americans in the United States. We meet Sami, an Arab American Christian, who navigates the minefield of associations the public has of Arabs as well as the expectations that Muslim Arab Americans have of him as a marine who fought in the Iraq war. And Rasha, who, along with her parents, sister, and brothers, was detained by the FBI in a New Jersey jail in early 2002. Without explanation, she and her family were released several months later. As drama of all kinds swirls around them, these young men and women strive for the very things the majority of young adults desire: opportunity, marriage, happiness, and the chance to fulfill their potential. But what they have now are lives that are less certain, and more difficult, than they ever could have imagined: workplace discrimination, warfare in their countries of origin, government surveillance, the disappearance of friends or family, threats ofvigilante violence, and a host of other problems that thrive in the age of terror. And yet How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? takes the raw material of their struggle and weaves it into an unforgettable, and very American, story of promise and hope. In prose that is at once blunt and lyrical, Moustafa Bayoumi allows us to see the world as these men and women do, revealing a set of characters and a place that indelibly change the way we see the turbulent past and yet still hopeful future of this country.
I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib "A portrait of growing up in America, and a portrait of family, that pulls off the feat of being both intimately specific and deeply universal at the same time. I adored this book."-Jonny Sun " A high-spirited graphical memoir . . . Gharib's wisdom about the power and limits of racial identity is evident in the way she draws."-NPR WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD . NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR . The New York Public Library . Kirkus Reviews I Was Their American Dreamis at once acoming-of-age storyand a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib'striumphant graphic memoir bringsto life her teenage antics and illuminatesearnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka'sstory is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. Praise for I Was Their American Dream "In this time when immigration is such a hot topic, Malaka Gharib puts an engaging human face on the issue. . . . The push and pull first-generation kids feel is portrayed with humor and love, especially humor. . . . Gharib pokes fun at all of the cultures she lives in, able to see each of them with an outsider's wry eye, while appreciating them with an insider's close experience. . . .The question of 'What are you?' has never been answered with so much charm."-Marissa Moss, New York Journal of Books "Forthright and funny, Gharib fiercely claims her own American dream."-Booklist "Thoughtful and relatable, this touching account should be shared across generations."- Library Journal "This charming graphic memoir riffs on the joys and challenges of developing a unique ethnic identity."- Publishers Weekly
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award   Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * Nylon * Kirkus Reviews * Bustle * BookPage   "Moving and beautifully written." -- Entertainment Weekly On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.  Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia's brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can't escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia's children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities.  Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand--one that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can't go home again.
The Home That Was Our Country by Alia Malek At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians-the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds-who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country. Restoring her family's home as the country comes apart, she learns how to speak the coded language of oppression that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about Syria's future. The Home That Was Our Country is a deeply researched, personal journey that shines a delicate but piercing light on Syrian history, society, and politics. Teeming with insights, the narrative weaves acute political analysis with a century of intimate family history, ultimately delivering an unforgettable portrait of the Syria that is being erased.
House of Stone by Anthony Shadid "Evocative and beautifully written,House of Stone . . . should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the agonies and hopes of the Middle East." -- Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author ofCrossing Mandelbaum Gate "In rebuilding his family home in southern Lebanon, Shadid commits an extraordinarily generous act of restoration for his wounded land, and for us all." -- Annia Ciezadlo, author ofDay of Honey In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of fourNew York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut--where he lives-- or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled and where he was raised. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather's estate, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild. House of Stone is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent's jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. In this poignant and resonant memoir, the author of the award-winningNight Draws Nearcreates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house's renewal alongside his family's flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. In the process, Shadid memorializes a lost world, documents the shifting Middle East, and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape.House of Stone is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth, and the universal yearning for home.
Looking for Palestine by Najla Said The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Majla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. But while her father and brother shared a passion for debate about the politics of the Middle East and her mother held on deeply to her Lebanese roots, Said was satisfied to be her father's darling daughter, content with her life on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her home life was rich and embracing, but outside her apartment she felt entirely unsure about who she was supposed to be, and often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but in her own mind she grew up first as a WASP (baptized Episcopalian in Boston; attending Chapin, the wealthy Upper East Side girls' school), then as a teenage Jew, essentially denying her true roots, even to herself, until well into adulthood. The fact that her father was Edward Said - the famous intellectual, founding father of postcolonial thought, and outspoken advocate for the political and human rights of the Palestinian people - only made things more complicated. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with the countries they had come from, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and confirmity, where she felt her family was a cultural island all its own, she sought comfort by fitting in with ther peers, until, ultimately, the psychological toll of her self-hatred began to threaten her health. As she grew older, and made increased visits to Palestine and Beirut, Said's worldview shifted. The attacks on the World Trade Center, and some of the ways in which Americans responded, finally made it impossible for her to continue to pick and choose her identity, and allowed her to see herself and her passions more clearly. In Looking for Palestine, she shares the journey to this understanding and the experience of growing up in an immigrant family and learning to embrace its cultures. Praise for Looking for Palestine 'Najla Said's Looking for Palestineis a compassionate and candid book on her courageous coming-of-age in contemporary America. Said is a brilliant, talented, and sensitive artist with a larger-than-life, loving father.' Professor Cornel West 'A deeply penetrating, often hilarious, and occasionally devastating account of growing up Arab-American. After finally finding the conviction to be at peace with herself, Najla Said has written more than a memoir. Looking for Palestineis a survivor's guide for all of us who live with that feeling of being out of place wherever we are.' Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America 'Thoughtful, searching, and open-eyed, Looking for Palestinetakes readers on a journey into an Arab-American girl's search for identity . . . A haunting and singular life story.' Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent 'It can be a difficult story to tell- that of one's discontent in the midst of privilege. And yet with great skill, humor, and poignancy, Said accomplishes just that. In the end, she is her late father's great inheritor, ever journeying toward that elusive home.' Alicia Erian, author of Towelhead
Yes, I'm Hot in This by Huda Fahmy Popular Instagram cartoonist and Muslim-American Huda Fahmy presents a hilarious, relatable, and painfully honest new collection of comics that break down barriers and show how universal our everyday problems, worries, and joys actually are. At some point in our lives, we've all felt a little out of place. Huda Fahmy has found it's a little more difficult to fade into the crowd when wearing a hijab. In Yes, I'm Hot in This, Huda navigates the sometimes-rocky waters of life from the unique perspective of a Muslim-American woman, breaking down misconceptions of her culture one comic at a time. From recounting the many questions she gets about her hijab every day (yes, she does have hair) and explaining how she runs in an abaya (just fine, thank you) to dealing with misconceptions about Muslims, Yes, I'm Hot in This tackles universal feelings from an point of view we don't hear from nearly enough. Every one of us have experienced love, misunderstanding, anger, and a deep desire for pizza. In Yes, I'm Hot in This, Huda's clever comics demonstrate humor's ability to bring us together, no matter how different we may appear on the surface.
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD "5 UNDER 35" NOMINEE * NEW YORK'S "ONE BOOK, ONE NEW YORK" PICK   Named One of the Best Books of the Year: Washington Post * NPR * People * Refinery29 * Parade * BuzzFeed   "Mirza writes with a mercy that encompasses all things."--Ron Charles, Washington Post   Hailed as "a book for our times" (Christiane Amanpour), A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging. As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister's footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best? A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this family's life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is here, from Rafiq and Layla's own arrival in America from India, to the years in which their children--each in their own way--tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home. A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.
The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson The extraordinary story of an all-American girl's conversion to Islam and her ensuing romance with a young Egyptian man, The Butterfly Mosque is a stunning articulation of a Westerner embracing the Muslim world. When G. Willow Wilson--already an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East at just twenty-seven--leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course that leads to her shocking conversion to Islam and sends her on a fated journey across continents and into an uncertain future. She settles in Cairo where she teaches English and submerges herself in a culture based on her adopted religion. And then she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. They fall in love, entering into a daring relationship that calls into question the very nature of family, belief, and tradition. Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow records her intensely personal struggle to forge a "third culture" that might accommodate her own values without compromising the friends and family on both sides of the divide.
This Is What America Looks Like by Ilhan Omar Named a Best Political Book of the Year by The Atlantic "This Is What America Looks Like is the origin story of a leader who, finding no set path that would take a person like her to the places she wanted to go, was forced, and free, to chart her own." -The New York Times Book Review "Ilhan has been an inspiring figure well before her time in Congress. This book will give you insight into the person and sister that I see--passionate, caring, witty, and above all committed to positive change. It's an honor to serve alongside her in the fight for a more just world." --Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar--the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress. Ilhan Omar was only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia. The youngest of seven children, her mother had died while Ilhan was still a little girl. She was being raised by her father and grandfather when armed gunmen attacked their compound and the family decided to flee Mogadishu. They ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, where Ilhan says she came to understand the deep meaning of hunger and death. Four years later, after a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia. Aged twelve, penniless, speaking only Somali and having missed out on years of schooling, Ilhan rolled up her sleeves, determined to find her American dream. Faced with the many challenges of being an immigrant and a refugee, she questioned stereotypes and built bridges with her classmates and in her community. In under two decades she became a grassroots organizer, graduated from college and was elected to congress with a record-breaking turnout by the people of Minnesota--ready to keep pushing boundaries and restore moral clarity in Washington D.C. A beacon of positivity in dark times, Congresswoman Omar has weathered many political storms and yet maintained her signature grace, wit and love of country--all the while speaking up for her beliefs. Similarly, in chronicling her remarkable personal journey, Ilhan is both lyrical and unsentimental, and her irrepressible spirit, patriotism, friendship and faith are visible on every page. As a result, This is What America Looks Like is both the inspiring coming of age story of a refugee and a multidimensional tale of the hopes and aspirations, disappointments and failures, successes, sacrifices and surprises, of a devoted public servant with unshakable faith in the promise of America. 
The Weight of Ghosts by Laila Halaby The Weight of Ghosts is a circling of grief following the death of the author's older son when he was 21, a horror that was compounded by her younger son's drug use, the country's slow eruption as it dealt with its own brokenness, and reckoning the author had to do regarding her own story. Weight is a lyrical reclaiming and an insistence by the author that she own the rights to her story, which is American flavored with an unreleasing elsewhere. Weight is an immigrant story and a love story. While it is raw and honest and tragic, it is also a hopeful, funny, and original telling that demonstrates the strength of the human spirit, while offering a vocabulary for these most unmanageable human experiences.
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A Good Country by Laleh Khadivi A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California--about where identity truly lies, and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2011. Alireza Courdee, a 16-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels like an American teen. Life is smooth; even lying to his strict parents comes easily. But then he changes again, falling out with the bad boy surfers and in with a group of kids more awake to the world around them, who share his background, and whose ideas fill him with a very different sense of purpose. Within a year, Reza and his girlfriend are making their way to Syria to be part of a Muslim nation rising from the ashes of the civil war. Timely, nuanced, and emotionally forceful, A Good Country is a gorgeous meditation on modern life, religious radicalization, and a young man caught among vastly different worlds. What we are left with at the dramatic end is not an assessment of good or evil, east versus west, but a lingering question that applies to all modern souls: Do we decide how to live, or is our life decided for us?
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar Award-winning novelist Randa Jarrar's new story collection moves seamlessly between realism and fable, history and the present, capturing the lives of Muslim women and men across myriad geographies and circumstances. With acerbic wit, deep tenderness, and boundless imagination, Jarrar brings to life a memorable cast of characters, many of them "accidental transients"--a term for migratory birds who have gone astray--seeking their circuitous routes back home. Fierce and feeling, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali is a testament to survival in the face of love, loss, and displacement. Randa Jarrar is the author of a highly successful novel, A Map of Home, which received an Arab-American Book Award and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved to the United States after the first Gulf War. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, the Rumpus, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, and more. She blogs for Salon, and lives in California.
What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-Attisha A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, by a relentless physician who stood up to power. "Stirring . . . [a] blueprint for all those who believe . . . that 'the world . . . should be full of people raising their voices.'"--The New York Times "Revealing, with the gripping intrigue of a Grisham thriller." --O: The Oprah Magazine Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water--and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don't See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself--an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family's activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don't See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their--and all of our--children. Praise for What the Eyes Don't See "It is one thing to point out a problem. It is another thing altogether to step up and work to fix it. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a true American hero."--Erin Brockovich  "A clarion call to live a life of purpose."--The Washington Post "Gripping . . . entertaining . . . Her book has power precisely because she takes the events she recounts so personally. . . . Moral outrage present on every page."--The New York Times Book Review "Personal and emotional. . . She vividly describes the effects of lead poisoning on her young patients. . . . She is at her best when recounting the detective work she undertook after a tip-off about lead levels from a friend. . . . ‛Flint will not be defined by this crisis,' vows Ms. Hanna-Attisha."--The Economist "Flint is a public health disaster. But it was Dr. Mona, this caring, tough pediatrican turned detective, who cracked the case."--Rachel Maddow
Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah During a snowy Cleveland February, newlywed university students Muneer and Saeedah are expecting their first child, and he is harboring a secret: the word divorce is whispering in his ear. Soon, their marriage will end, and Muneer will return to Saudi Arabia, while Saeedah remains in Cleveland with their daughter, Hanadi. Consumed by a growing fear of losing her daughter, Saeedah disappears with the little girl, leaving Muneer to desperately search for his daughter for years. The repercussions of the abduction ripple outward, not only changing the lives of Hanadi and her parents, but also their interwoven family and friends--those who must choose sides and hide their own deeply guarded secrets.And when Hanadi comes of age, she finds herself at the center of this conflict, torn between the world she grew up in and a family across the ocean. How can she exist between parents, between countries?Eman Quotah's Bride of the Sea is a spellbinding debut of colliding cultures, immigration, religion, and family; an intimate portrait of loss and healing; and, ultimately, a testament to the ways we find ourselves inside love, distance, and heartbreak.
Call Number: eBook
Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin As seen on The Today Show! One of the best summer romance picks! One of Publishers Weekly Best Romance Books of 2019! A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. She lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is always being reminded that her flighty younger cousin, Hafsa, is close to rejecting her one hundredth marriage proposal. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn't want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid, who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. She is irritatingly attracted to someone who looks down on her choices and who dresses like he belongs in the seventh century. When a surprise engagement is announced between Khalid and Hafsa, Ayesha is torn between how she feels about the straightforward Khalid and the unsettling new gossip she hears about his family. Looking into the rumors, she finds she has to deal with not only what she discovers about Khalid, but also the truth she realizes about herself.

brats

Third Culture Kids

April 30 is National Military Brats Day

"Coined by the American sociologist Ruth Useem in the 1950s, the term 'third-culture kid' was conceived for expatriate children who spend their formative years overseas, shaped by the multicultural, peripatetic spheres of their parents, many of whom are diplomats, military members or others working in foreign service. They relocate frequently and enroll their children in international schools, exposing them to miniature realms cultivated by peers from nations far and wide, whose customs, languages and mores coalesce, birthing hybrid or 'third' cultures that are globe-spanning, diverse, highly empathic and oftentimes difficult to translate outside these environments."

~"Finding a Place for Third-Culture Kids in the Culture" by Noor Brara

Many of the books on this list are included because, while not specifically about TCKs, they deal with the struggles of not feeling fully at home in any one place and with having to learn to adapt and relate to a surrounding culture that's different from your own.

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

A Map Is Only One Story by Nicole Chung (Editor); Mensah Demary (Editor) From rediscovering an ancestral village in China to experiencing the realities of American life as a Nigerian, the search for belonging crosses borders and generations. Selected from the archives ofCatapultmagazine, the essays inA Map Is Only One Storyhighlight the human side of immigration policies and polarized rhetoric, as twenty writers share provocative personal stories of existing between languages and cultures. Victoria Blanco relates how those with family in both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez experience life on the border. Nina Li Coomes recalls the heroines of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and what they taught her about her bicultural identity. Nur Nasreen Ibrahim details her grandfather's crossing of the India-Pakistan border sixty years after Partition. Krystal A. Sital writes of how undocumented status in the United States can impact love and relationships. Porochista Khakpour describes the challenges in writing (and rewriting) Iranian America. Through the power of personal narratives, as told by both emerging and established writers,A Map Is Only One Storyoffers a new definition of home in the twenty-first century.
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Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese translator William connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a northern nomad with whom he's fallen in love. Meanwhile, Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect to her unfamiliar homeland, and white midwestern aid worker Alex finds his plans thwarted by a changing climate and looming civil war. Dancing between the adults is Mustafa, a clever, endearing twelve-year-old, whose schemes to rise out of poverty set off cataclysmic events on the compound. Amid the paradoxes of identity, art, humanitarian aid, and a territory riven by conflict, William, Layla, Dena, Alex, and Mustafa must forge bonds stronger than blood or identity. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders--whether they be national, ethnic, or religious--and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver New York Times Bestseller * Pulitzer Prize Finalist * An Oprah's Book Club Selection "Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty." --Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. This special Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition features beautiful cover art on uncoated stock, French flaps, and deckle-edge pages, making it the perfect gift book. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters--the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.
My Invented Country by Isabel Allende A highly personal memoir of exile and homeland by bestselling author Isabel Allende In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today. The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author's past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.
Third Culture Kids 3rd Edition by Ruth E. Van Reken; Michael V. Pollock; David C. Pollock The absolute authority on Third Culture Kids for nearly two decades! In this 3rd edition of the ground-breaking global classic, Ruth E. Van Reken and Michael V. Pollock, son of the late original co-author, David C. Pollock, have significantly updated what is widely recognized as "The TCK Bible." Emphasis is on the modern TCK and addressing the impact of technology, cultural complexity, diversity and inclusion and transitions. Includes new advice for parents and others for how to support TCKs as they navigate work, relationships, social settings and their own personal development. New to this edition: · A second PolVan Cultural Identity diagram to support understanding of cultural identity · New models for identity formation · Updated explanation of unresolved grief · New material on "highly mobile communities" addressing the needs of people who stay put while a community around them moves rapidly · Revamped Section III so readers can more easily find what is relevant to them as Adult TCKs, parents, counselors, employers, spouses, administrators, etc. · New "stages and needs" tool that will help families and organizations identify and meet needs · Greater emphasis on tools for educators as they grapple with demographic shifts in the classroom
Third Culture Kids of the World by Priyanka Surio Disaster relief in Mexico. Sustainability classes in Bali. Desert camping in Morocco. English instruction in India. They're typical travel experiences for third culture kids and global citizens, members of a diverse travel class that values mindfulness and sustainability over comfort and convenience. Third Culture Kids of the World: Exploring Sustainable Travel Mindsets follows do-good globetrotter and third culture kid Priyanka Surio on an intercontinental odyssey to attain global citizenship. Guided by stories from international scholars and activists, travel industry experts and influencers, tour guides and tourists, this book explores and answers What truths can I uncover about the world and myself by traveling?How can I give back or leave more positive footprints behind?What is sustainable travel? And how do I do it?How can I share my expanded worldview with those at home?And more... If better travel is essential to building a better world for all cultures, Third Culture Kids of the World is an inspirational and instructional roadmap for our journey.
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The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee "Raise a glass: The first great book-club novel of 2016 has arrived." --USA Today, 4/4 stars "A female, funny Henry James in Asia, Janice Y. K. Lee is vividly good on the subject of Americans abroad." --The New York Times Book Review "Sex and the City meets Lost in Translation." --The Skimm Janice Y. K. Lee's New York Times bestselling debut, The Piano Teacher, was called "immensely satisfying" by People, "intensely readable" by O, The Oprah Magazine, and "a rare and exquisite story" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Now, in her long-awaited new novel, Lee explores with devastating poignancy the emotions, identities, and relationships of three very different American women living in the same small expat community in Hong Kong. Mercy, a young Korean American and recent Columbia graduate, is adrift, undone by a terrible incident in her recent past. Hilary, a wealthy housewife, is haunted by her struggle to have a child, something she believes could save her foundering marriage. Meanwhile, Margaret, once a happily married mother of three, questions her maternal identity in the wake of a shattering loss. As each woman struggles with her own demons, their lives collide in ways that have irreversible consequences for them all. Atmospheric, moving, and utterly compelling, The Expatriates confirms Lee as an exceptional talent and one of our keenest observers of women's inner lives.
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi; Anjali Singh (Translator) Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time.  "A stunning graphic memoir...a wholly original achievement in the form." --The New York Times Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up. Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom--Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.
Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941--a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world. Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.
Hopscotch by Julio. Cortázar "Cortazar's masterpiece ... The first great novel of Spanish America" (The Times Literary Supplement) * Winner of the National Book Award for Translation in 1967, translated by Gregory Rabassa Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. Hopscotch is the dazzling, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.
9 Rules of Engagement by Harris Faulkner The Emmy award-winning news anchor of Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner and co-host of the talk show Outnumbered shares the lessons she learned growing up in a military family paying homage to the military ideals that shaped her and showing how everyone can benefit from bringing the wisdom of military service into their lives. Born into a military family, Harris Faulkner revered her father, a decorated career officer who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and raised his children with the values and ideals of the U.S. military. Accompanying him from posting to posting, young Harris experienced firsthand how success in life was rooted in the knowledge, integrity, and leadership that came from her military surroundings. Indeed, these formative lessons in leadership and work ethic became the guiding principles for her career as a journalist, lessons she credits with her rise to become one of the top hosts on Fox News. Now, she shares the advice, wisdom, and tools that she absorbed through her military upbringing, examining how these ideals have shaped her professional and personal outlook and how everyone can incorporate them into their own lives. Using her father's career as the backdrop to her experience, she explores the lessons in courage, duty, patriotism, and responsibility that helped her succeed, demonstrating the truth to the axiom that in military families everyone serves--together. Along the way she also interviews current and former military families, generals and other officers, and tells stories from her father's career to illuminate how and why the message and mission of the military is so effective at changing lives both on and off the battlefield. Illustrated with sixteen pages of never-before-seen photos of her early life and career, this instructive book, part memoir, part motivational life guide, reminds us of our most important values--the keys to a successful life.
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir This Random House Reader's Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner! "Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America."--San Francisco Chronicle In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies?--a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey?--an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh's parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don't get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi). Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing--without an accent. Praise for Funny in Farsi   "Heartfelt and hilarious--in any language."--Glamour   "A joyful success."--Newsday   "What's charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture. It's the brilliance of true sophistication at work."--Los Angeles Times Book Review   "Often hilarious, always interesting . . . Like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures."--The Providence Journal   "A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love--of family, country, and heritage."--Jimmy Carter   "Delightfully refreshing."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   "[Funny in Farsi] brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American."--San Jose Mercury News
Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein Don't miss Elizabeth Wein's stunning new novel, Stateless Emilia and Teo's lives changed in a fiery, terrifying instant when a bird strike brought down the plane their stunt pilot mothers were flying. Teo's mother died immediately, but Em's survived, determined to raise Teo according to his late mother's wishes-in a place where he won't be discriminated against because of the color of his skin. But in 1930s America, a white woman raising a black adoptive son alongside a white daughter is too often seen as a threat. Seeking a home where her children won't be held back by ethnicity or gender, Rhoda brings Em and Teo to Ethiopia, and all three fall in love with the beautiful, peaceful country. But that peace is shattered by the threat of war with Italy, and teenage Em and Teo are drawn into the conflict. Will their devotion to their country, its culture and people, and each other be their downfall or their salvation? In the tradition of her award-winning and bestselling Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein brings us another thrilling and deeply affecting novel that explores the bonds of friendship, the resilience of young pilots, and the strength of the human spirit.
Call Number: Young Adult
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley A PRINTZ MEDAL WINNER! A MORRIS AWARD WINNER! AN AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH LITERATURE AWARD YA HONOR BOOK! A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB YA PICK An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller Soon to be adapted at Netflix for TV with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground. "One of this year's most buzzed about young adult novels." --Good Morning America A TIME Magazine Best YA Book of All Time Selection Amazon's Best YA Book of 2021 So Far (June 2021) A 2021 Kids' Indie Next List Selection An Entertainment Weekly Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Selection A PopSugar Best March 2021 YA Book Selection With four starred reviews, Angeline Boulley's debut novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, is a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, perfect for readers of Angie Thomas and Tommy Orange. Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi's hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug. Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims. Now, as the deceptions--and deaths--keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she's ever known.
The Expert Expatriate by Melissa Brayer Hess; Patricia Linderman This book not only covers the practical aspects of relocating; it enters unchartered territory, laying emotional and cultural groundwork to help the expatriate thrive.
Weird Culture Kids by Ng?c (Bi) Nguy?n Have you ever felt strangely out of place? Have you ever thought you didn't truly belong? Weird Culture Kids is a memoir about growing up in and between different cultures and experiencing the world through international lenses. It goes deep into the author's journey from birth to adolescence, navigating the different cultures she lived in, encountered, and consciously chose as part of her identity. Sprinkled with conversations with other, culturally-speaking, Weirdos, this book gives insights into coping mechanisms for relocation. Nguyễn explores questions around cultures, identities and belonging, such as: Can you be from a place?What happens when part of your identity disappears?What's the relationship between language and identity?What does the question "Where are you from" actually mean? You'll discover you don't have to belong to a physical man-made piece of land or a nation-state. You can belong to people, cities and memories. You can belong to a shared habit, a song or a dance routine. Can "Home" ever be the feeling of acceptance?
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I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib "A portrait of growing up in America, and a portrait of family, that pulls off the feat of being both intimately specific and deeply universal at the same time. I adored this book."-Jonny Sun " A high-spirited graphical memoir . . . Gharib's wisdom about the power and limits of racial identity is evident in the way she draws."-NPR WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD . NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR . The New York Public Library . Kirkus Reviews I Was Their American Dreamis at once acoming-of-age storyand a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib'striumphant graphic memoir bringsto life her teenage antics and illuminatesearnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka'sstory is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. Praise for I Was Their American Dream "In this time when immigration is such a hot topic, Malaka Gharib puts an engaging human face on the issue. . . . The push and pull first-generation kids feel is portrayed with humor and love, especially humor. . . . Gharib pokes fun at all of the cultures she lives in, able to see each of them with an outsider's wry eye, while appreciating them with an insider's close experience. . . .The question of 'What are you?' has never been answered with so much charm."-Marissa Moss, New York Journal of Books "Forthright and funny, Gharib fiercely claims her own American dream."-Booklist "Thoughtful and relatable, this touching account should be shared across generations."- Library Journal "This charming graphic memoir riffs on the joys and challenges of developing a unique ethnic identity."- Publishers Weekly
And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle Flip doesn't think shell ever fit in at the Swiss boarding school. Besides being homesick for her father and Connecticut, she isn't sophisticated like the other girls, and discussions about boys leave her tongue-tied. Her happiest times are spent apart from the others, sketching or wandering in the mountains. But the day she's out walking alone and meets a French boy, Paul, things change for Flip. As their relationship grows, so does her self-confidence. Despite her newfound happiness, there are times when Paul seems a stranger to her. And since dating is forbidden except to seniors, their romance must remain a secret. With so many new feelings and obstacles to overcome in her present, can Flip help Paul to confront his troubled past and find a future?
Call Number: eAudiobook
The Yokota Officers Club by Sarah Bird “A GEM, POLISHED AND FACETED IN A WAY THAT PULLED ME INTO THE HEART OF IT WITH THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. . . . Important, touching, meaningful, and uplifting.” –JEANNE RAY Chicago Tribune After a year away at college, military brat Bernadette Root has come “home” to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, to spend the summer with her bizarre yet comforting clan. Ruled by a strict, regimented Air Force Major father, but grounded in their mother’s particular brand of humor, Bernie’s family was destined for military greatness during the glory days of the mid-’50s. But in Base life, where an unkempt lawn is cause for reassignment, one fateful misstep changed the Roots’ world forever. Yet the family’s silence cannot keep the wounds of the past from reemerging . . . nor can the memory fade of beloved Fumiko, the family’s former maid, whose name is now verboten. And the secrets long ago covered up in classic military style–through elimination and denial–are now forcing their way to the surface for a return engagement.
The Great Santini by Pat Conroy The piercing, iconic semi-autobiographical novel of a domineering father and ambitious son, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Prince of Tides   Step into the powerhouse life of Bull Meecham. He's all Marine--fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife--beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man. Ben's got to stand up, even fight back, against a father who doesn't give in--not to his men, not to his wife, and certainly not to his son. Bull Meecham is undoubtedly Pat Conroy's most explosive character--a man you should hate, but a man you will love.   Praise for The Great Santini   "Stinging authenticity . . . a book that won't quit."--The Atlanta Journal   "[Pat] Conroy has captured a different slice of America in this funny, dramatic novel."--Richmond News-Leader   "Conroy takes aim at our darkest emotions, lets the arrow fly and hits the bull's-eye almost every time."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   "Robust and vivid . . . full of feeling."--Newsday   "God preserve Pat Conroy."--The Boston Globe
Yes, I'm Hot in This by Huda Fahmy Popular Instagram cartoonist and Muslim-American Huda Fahmy presents a hilarious, relatable, and painfully honest new collection of comics that break down barriers and show how universal our everyday problems, worries, and joys actually are. At some point in our lives, we've all felt a little out of place. Huda Fahmy has found it's a little more difficult to fade into the crowd when wearing a hijab. In Yes, I'm Hot in This, Huda navigates the sometimes-rocky waters of life from the unique perspective of a Muslim-American woman, breaking down misconceptions of her culture one comic at a time. From recounting the many questions she gets about her hijab every day (yes, she does have hair) and explaining how she runs in an abaya (just fine, thank you) to dealing with misconceptions about Muslims, Yes, I'm Hot in This tackles universal feelings from an point of view we don't hear from nearly enough. Every one of us have experienced love, misunderstanding, anger, and a deep desire for pizza. In Yes, I'm Hot in This, Huda's clever comics demonstrate humor's ability to bring us together, no matter how different we may appear on the surface.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow "The Girl Who Fell from the Sky can actually fly." --The New York Times Book Review   Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop. Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It's there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity. This searing and heart-wrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society's ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.
Call Number: eBook
A House Called Askival by Merryn Glover James Connor, burdened with guilt from a tragedy during India and Pakistan's Independence and Partition, has dedicated his life to serving India. His estranged daughter, Ruth, believing she came second to her American parents' missionary calling, rebelled as a teenager. This triggered her own devastating experience during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. After 24 years away, she finally returns to Askival, the family home in the northern hill-station of Mussoorie in Uttarakhand, to tend to her dying father. There, both must confront the past and find forgiveness if they are to cross the chasm between them and be at peace. In this extraordinary and assured debut, Merryn Glover draws on her own upbringing in South Asia to create this sensitive, moving and panoramic journey through the turbulent history of India from Independence to the present day.
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White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway Summer 1967. The turmoil of the Maoist revolution is spilling over into Hong Kong and causing unrest as war rages in neighboring Vietnam. White Ghost Girls is the story of Frankie and Kate, two American sisters living in a foreign land in a chaotic time. With their war-photographer father off in Vietnam, Marianne, their beautiful but remote mother, keeps the family close by. Although bound by a closeness of living overseas, the sisters could not be more different -- Frankie pulses with curiosity and risk, while Kate is all eyes and ears. Marianne spends her days painting watercolors of the lush surroundings, leaving the girls largely unsupervised, while their Chinese nanny, Ah Bing, does her best to look after them. One day in a village market, they decide to explore -- with tragic results. In Alice Greenway's exquisite gem of a novel, two girls tumble into their teenage years against an extraordinary backdrop both sensuous and dangerous. This astonishing literary debut is a tale of sacrifice and solidarity that gleams with the kind of intense, complicated love that only exists between sisters.
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Child of the Jungle by Sabine Kuegler A #1 bestseller in Europe, CHILD OF THE JUNGLE tells the remarkable story of a childhood and adolescence spent caught between two modes of existence-jungle life and Western "civilization." Sabine Kuegler was five years old when her family-her German linguist-missionary parents and her siblings-moved to the territory of the recently discovered hunter-and-gatherer Fayu tribe of Papua New Guinea . The Fayu tribe is best known for being a Stone Age community untouched by modern times-they live an existence characterized by fear, violence, and atavistic ritual (including cannibalism in some regions)-but Sabine's family saw another side to them as well. Once the Kueglers were accepted by a clan chief, they found themselves becoming a part of a tightly knit and fiercely loyal community, and living the primal existence of the Fayu-one marked by the natural cycles of day and night, malaria and other diseases, and daily encounters with wildlife, from swims with crocodiles to dinners of worms. As the Kueglers changed, so did the Fayu people, learning from Sabine's family that there was a way out of their cycle of violence and that forgiveness can be sweeter than revenge. At the age of 17, Sabine found her life turned upside down when she left for Switzerland to attend boarding school and entered traditional society head-on. CHILD OF THE JUNGLE is the story of a life lived among the Fayu and the author's attempt to reconcile her feelings about "civilization" with those about a life she knew and loved.
Home Leave by Brittani Sonnenberg Chris Kriegstein is a man on the move, with a global career that catapults his family across North America, Europe, and Asia. For his wife, Elise, the hardship of chronic relocation is soothed by the allure of reinvention. Over the years, Elise shape-shifts: once a secretive Southern Baptist, she finds herself becoming a seasoned expat in Shanghai, an unapologetic adulterer in Thailand, and, finally, a renowned interior decorator in Madison. But it's the Kriegstein daughters, Leah and Sophie, who face the most tumult. Fiercely protective of each other--but also fiercely competitive--the two sisters long for stability in an ever-changing environment. With each new move, the girls find they can count on only one thing: the consoling, confounding presence of each other. When the family suffers an unimaginable loss, they can't help but wonder: Was it meant to be, or did one decision change their lives forever? And what does it mean when home is everywhere and nowhere at the same time? With humor and heart, Brittani Sonnenberg chases this wildly loveable family through the excitement and anguish of their adventures around the world.
The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck "Tuck is a genius."--Los Angeles Book Review Lily Tuck has had a wonderful and accomplished career as a National Book Award winning novelist, story writer, essayist and biographer. She is one of our most distinguished contributors to American literature. With The Double Life of Liliane, Tuck writes what may well be her crowning achievement to date, and, significantly too, her most autobiographical work. As the child of a German movie producer father who lives in Italy and a beautiful, artistically talented mother who resides in New York, Liliane's life is divided between those two very different worlds. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Mary Queen of Scots and an early Mexican adventurer, and pieces together their vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents. What unfolds is an astonishing and riveting metanarrative: an exploration of self, humanity, and family in the manner of W.G. Sebald and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Told with Tuck's inimitable elegance and peppered with documents, photos, and a rich and varied array of characters, The Double Life of Liliane is an intimate and poignant coming of age portrait of the writer as a young woman.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother. "This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over."--Newsweek "By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling."--The New Yorker Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is suffused with Fuller's endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller's debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller--known to friends and family as Bobo--grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor's story. It is the story of one woman's unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt. Praise for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight "Riveting . . . [full of] humor and compassion."--O: The Oprah Magazine   "The incredible story of an incredible childhood."--The Providence Journal
At Home Abroad by Nancy Henderson-James At Home Abroad is a stunning autobiography of Nancy Henderson-James's youth in Africa. Heart-wrenching is her uprooting at age 15 when the war for independence began, from Angola, whose natural world, people, customs, languages she so loved. Nancy bravely and articulately recounts a true saga of personal loss and bereavement. But out of the crucible of conflicts between herself and her parents, the Africa she loved and the America from which she felt estranged, comes crystalline strength, confidence, humor, and self-knowledge. Her journey to wholeness, with its exquisite analysis and detail, enlightens us, so that we, too, see our own lives with new understanding and compassion and recognize better our place in the 21st century as citizens of the world. Judy Hogan, Founding Editor of Carolina Wren Press, 1976-91. In this intimate and detailed autobiography, Nancy Henderson-James throws open the door on a room in the history of religion that has been locked and double-bolted: the life of a child of Christian missionaries in the 1950's in Africa. It is not another story of the children of a crazy preacher or an abusive father. Rather it is a story of the loneliness of a daughter of liberal Protestant missionaries who do (almost) everything right professionally, but are absent in crucial ways to the lives of their children. "I was dancing between complex alliances of race, nationality, gender and religion." Readers will wince at a wastebasket made from an elephant's foot, at a child going to a male teacher to tell a secret that belongs to a parent, at images of spacious homes and multiple servants in a village of poor dwellings - ." . . my life in white colonial Angola . . .in the midst of a system fast coming apart." But At Home Abroad is also the story of a young woman finding her own way to survival, to freedom, and to her own spiritual path. Pat Schneider, author: Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford University Press, 2003 Nancy Henderson-James has written a tremendous book. Her writing skillfully weaves the threads of a beautiful exotic setting, the discoveries and tensions of adolescence, the powerful shaping attachment to a very particular place, and the void of absence. I highly recommend her memoir to anyone exploring the mysterious terrain of childhood, the challenge of straddling vastly different worlds, or the way loss adds depth as well as pain to a thoughtful life. Mary Edwards Wertsch, author of Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress Henderson-James has written a wonderfully constructed memoir filled with honesty and tenderness describing an intriguing childhood life compelling her to straddle different cultures. And through its elegant prose, resonant images and informative commentaries, this gem of a book effectively presents a thoroughly engrossing and moving account of experiences that most of us would otherwise know very little about. Norm Goldman, Publisher and Editor, bookpleasures.com
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A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones Every page is a joy."--Sue Harrison, Self Magazine ". . . discerning, brightly written . . . Highly recommended."--Library Journal With a brand new author's introduction and a previously unpublished chapter. The inspiration for the Merchant Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey, a rich and poignant family story from the daughter of novelist James Jones (From Here to Eternity). Based on the author's early years in Paris with her famous father.
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Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? by Jay Ellis Jay Ellis, star of HBO's Insecure, tells the story of growing up with an imaginary best friend you will never forget--part Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, part Will Smith from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air--in this hilarious, vulnerable memoir. "So funny, poignant, and personal. I loved this and you will, too."--Mindy Kaling, author of Why Not Me? and Nothing Like I Imagined What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, and military brat hustling school to school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from his imaginary friend, Mikey. A testament to the importance of invention, trusting oneself, and making space for creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? is a memoir of a kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate parallel pop culture universes (like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews) to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas-season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides Ellis through tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target drive-by and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license. As his imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking inward to solve to some of life's biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homey.
Invisible Outsider by Casey E. Bales It's not every day you meet a white, blond, Midwest American kid who speaks English with a Japanese accent. But this is no ordinary kid. At the age of three, he'd relocated from Indiana to the neon-lit metropolis of 1980s Tokyo. As the only foreigner or 'gaijin' from Japanese kindergarten right through to high school in both Japan and the US, he'd battled to fit in. He'd fought his corner hard and found a degree of acceptance. Back in the US with his Japanese sensibilities, a new cycle of bullying began. People thought he talked 'funny, ' and for a young Casey Bales the trauma of culture shock hit hard. Invisible Outsider is a raw read into teenage 'becoming' that charts the ups and downs of Casey's emotional and inspirational journey: his life in Hawai'i, where he follows in the steps of Barack Obama's father; his continuing love affair with Japan; and his determination to build bridges between his Third Culture Kid (TCK) identity and multicultural America. With academic insight and a deep knowing, Invisible Outsider lays a path for other TCKs to follow. At its heart is a message of hope: cross-cultural experience can promote global literacy, harmony, and mutual understanding. As Casey navigates wildly different cultures and loses his bond with his homeland, he instead finds a connection with the wider human race.
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haiku

International Haiku Poetry Day

April 17

April is also National Poetry Month!

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

The Penguin Book of Haiku by Adam Kern (Translator, Editor, Introduction by) Now a global poetry, the haiku was originally a Japanese verse form that flourished from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Although renowned for its brevity, usually running over three lines in seventeen syllables, and by its use of natural imagery to make Zen-like observations about reality, in fact, the haiku is much more- it can be erotic, funny, crude and mischievous. Presenting over a thousand exemplars in vivid and engaging translations by Adam L. Kern, this anthology offers an illuminating introduction to this widely celebrated, if misunderstood art form.
Across the Windharp by Elizabeth Searle Lamb Born in 1917 in the American heartland of Topeka, Kansas, Elizabeth Searle Lamb has become one of the major voices in the world of English language haiku. As an advocate for a strong traditional basis while remaining open to experimentation, her writing has helped define its modern development. She has won more than 150 awards in the haiku field, and her work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Polish, French, and Spanish, among other languages. Haiku, more than almost any other form of poetry, is associated with a spiritual insight into the world. Originally, it draws profoundly from the Buddhist world view of change as an inevitable condition, and draws much of its beauty from a sense of the ephemeral. Lamb's frame of reference also includes Christian spirituality, drawing from her ecumenical Protestant background, and personal journeys.
Baseball Haiku by Cor van den Heuvel (Editor); Nanae Tamura (Editor) One of the most unusual baseball books of the 2007 season, this remarkable new collection, which includes poems from both America and Japan, captures perfectly the thrill of baseball--a double play, a game of catch, or the hushed pause as a pitcher looks in before hurling his pitch. Like haiku, the game is concerned with the nature of the seasons: joyous in the spring, thrilling in summer's heat, ripening with the descent of fall, and remembered fondly in winter. Featuring the work of Jack Kerouac, the king of the Beat writers, who penned the first American baseball haiku, and Alan Pizzarelli, a major American haiku poet, the collection also includes Masaoka Shiki, one of the four great pillars of Japanese haiku, who fell in love with baseball when he was a student in Tokyo. Baseball Haiku, a literary and baseball treasure, will make a marvelous gift for the baseball fan in your family.
Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg One of the world's foremost writing teachers invites readers on a joyful journey into the reading and origins of haiku A haiku is three simple lines. But it is also, as Allen Ginsberg put it, three lines that "make the mind leap." A good one, he said, lets the mind experience "a small sensation of space which is nothing less than God." As many spiritual practices seek to do, the haiku's spare yet acute noticing of the immediate and often ordinary grounds the reader in the pure awareness of now. Natalie Goldberg is a delightfully companionable tour guide into this world. She highlights the history of the form, dating back to the seventeenth century; shows why masters such as Basho and Issa are so revered; discovers Chiyo-ni, an important woman haiku master; and provides insight into writing and reading haiku. A fellow seeker who travels to Japan to explore the birthplace of haiku, Goldberg revels in everything she encounters, including food and family, painting and fashion, frogs and ponds. She also experiences and allows readers to share in the spontaneous and profound moments of enlightenment and awakening that haiku promises.
Japanese Death Poems by Yoel Hoffmann (Compiled by) "A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Compiler Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in translated English and romanized Japanese.
The Little Book of E by E. Ethelbert Miller; Rafi Ellenson (Translated with commentary by) The poet lives inside and outside of life. In the little book of e poet E. Ethelbert Miller embraces the Japanese poetic form of haiku to comment on our contemporary world. Written during the pandemic Miller's poems follow in the tradition of Basho and Richard Wright. the little book of e is a collaboration with translator Rafi Ellenson. Haiku presented in English and Hebrew is symbolic of how language can bring people together. Miller and Ellenson have given us a book that shows how Black and Jewish relations can continue to be a beacon of hope. This book is filled with words that blossom like flowers.
Shop Cats of China by Marcel Heijnen; Catharine Nicol (Foreword by) China's shop cats are little emperors of their own retail kingdoms, keeping rodents at bay and enticing customers inside. And now they are also the stars of this delightful little book, the companion to Shop Cats of Hong Kong. Marcel Heijnen's compelling photographs take you from shop to shop across the provinces of China, where traditional retail and street life merge, rolling back the shutters on a little bit of Chinese culture and a whole lot of moggy charm. Meanwhile, Ian Row's intuitive haiku and stories invite you into the cats' innermost thoughts - sometimes catty, sometimes sweet, but always with a whisker or two of love. With 90 illustrations in colour
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho; Nobuyuki Yuasa (Introduction by, Translator) In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism setting off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment. He wrote of the seasons changing, of the smell of the rain, the brightness of the moon and the beauty of the waterfall, through which he sensed the mysteries of the universe. These travel writings not only chronicle Basho's perilous journeys through Japan, but they also capture his vision of eternity in the transient world around him
Eaves by Zachary Succardi poetry collection
I Am Still Your Negro by Valerie Mason-John Social Justice PoetrySpoken-word poet Valerie Mason-John unsettles readers with potent images of ongoing trauma from slavery and colonization. Her narratives range from the beginnings of the African Diaspora to the story of a stowaway on the Windrush, from racism and sexism in Trump's America to the wide impact of the Me Too movement. Stories of entrapment, sexual assault, addictive behaviours, and rave culture are told and contrasted to the strengthening and forthright voice of Yaata, Supreme Being. I Am Still Your Negro is truth that needs to be told, re-told, and remembered. Foreword by George Elliott Clarke.I was your NegroCaptured and sold I am still your negroArrested and killed--from "I Am Still Your Negro"
Ten Windows by Jane Hirshfield A dazzling collection of essays on how the best poems work, from the master poet and essayist   "Poetry," Jane Hirshfield has said, "is language that foments revolutions of being." In ten eloquent and highly original explorations, she unfolds and explores some of the ways this is done--by the inclusion of hiddenness, paradox, and surprise; by a perennial awareness of the place of uncertainty in our lives; by language's own acts of discovery; by the powers of  image, statement, music, and feeling to enlarge in every direction. The lucid understandings presented here are gripping and transformative in themselves. Investigating the power of poetry to move and change us becomes in these pages an equal investigation into the inhabitance and navigation of our human lives. Closely reading poems by Dickinson, Bashō, Szymborska, Cavafy, Heaney, Bishop, and Komunyakaa, among many others, Hirshfield reveals how poetry's world-making takes place: word by charged word. By expanding what is imaginable and sayable, Hirshfield proposes, poems expand what is possible. Ten Windows restores us at every turn to a more precise, sensuous, and deepened experience of our shared humanity and of the seemingly limitless means by which that knowledge is both summoned and forged.
Iron Goddess of Mercy by Larissa Lai Iron Goddess of Mercy by Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel The Tiger Flu) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dance with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term 'Asian' can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. Iron Goddess of Mercy is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble. Presented in sixty-four fragments to honour the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights. Finally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin. Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.
Collected Poems by Sonia Sanchez A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning 4 decades of her literary career. Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez's poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women's rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults. As Maya Angelou so aptly put it- "Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature's forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly."
Haiku by Richard Wright; Yodhinobu Hakatuni; Robert L. Tener "As good a haiku poet as this country has ever produced."--Seattle WeeklyLike all great writers, Richard Wright never failed to create works of breathtaking originality, depth, and beauty. With Native Son he gave us Bigger Thomas, still one of the most provocative and controversial characters in fiction. With Black Boy he offered a candid and searing depiction of racism and poverty in America. And now, forty years after his death, he has bestowed us with one of the finest collections of haiku in American literature.Wright became enamored of haiku at the end of his life, and in this strict, seventeen-syllable form he discovered another way of looking at the world. He rendered images of nature and humanity that raised questions and revealed strikingly fresh perspectives. The publication of this collection is not only one of the greatest posthumous triumphs of American letters but also a final testament to the noble spirit and enduring artistry of Richard Wright.
The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson The Haiku Handbook is the first book to give the reader everything needed to begin writing or teaching haiku. It presents haiku poets writing in English, Spanish, French, German, and five other languages on an equal footing with Japanese poets. Not only are the four great Japanese masters of the haiku represented (Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki) but also several major Western authors not commonly known to have written haiku. The book presents a concise history of the Japanese haiku, including the dynamic changes throughout the twentieth century as the haiku has been adapted to suburban and industrial settings. Full chapters are offered on form, the seasons in haiku, and haiku craft, plus background on the Japanese poetic tradition, and the effect of translation on our understanding of haiku. Other unique features are the lesson plans for both elementary and secondary school use; and lists of haiku publishers and magazines (in several languages). The Handbook concludes with a full reference section of haiku-related terms, bibliography, and a comprehensive season-word list to aid in understanding and appreciating Japanese haiku.

letter writing

Here are some reads to get you in the mood for tackling your correspondence for National Card & Letter Writing Month!

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Letter Writing

The Lost Art of Letter Writing by Menna Van Praag Some letters will never leave you...
To the Letter by Simon Garfield The New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type and On the Map offers an ode to letter writing and its possible salvation in the digital age. Few things are as exciting—and potentially life-changing—as discovering an old letter. And while etiquette books still extol the practice, letter writing seems to be disappearing amid a flurry of e-mails, texting, and tweeting. The recent decline in letter writing marks a cultural shift so vast that in the future historians may divide time not between BC and AD but between the eras when people wrote letters and when they did not. So New York Times bestselling author Simon Garfield asks: Can anything be done to revive a practice that has dictated and tracked the progress of civilization for more than five hundred years? In To the Letter, Garfield traces the fascinating history of letter writing from the love letter and the business letter to the chain letter and the letter of recommendation. He provides a tender critique of early letter-writing manuals and analyzes celebrated correspondence from Erasmus to Princess Diana. He also considers the role that letters have played as a literary device from Shakespeare to the epistolary novel, all the rage in the eighteenth century and alive and well today with bestsellers like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. At a time when the decline of letter writing appears to be irreversible, Garfield is the perfect candidate to inspire bibliophiles to put pen to paper and create “a form of expression, emotion, and tactile delight we may clasp to our heart.”
Kind Regards by Liz Williams All the signs show that the worthy art of letter writing is in decline. One third of 16-year-olds have never written a letter, and in the next ten years it is predicted that first-class mail will drop by 37%. Emails and texts have overtaken the humble pen and paper as the most popular method of communication. In Kind Regards, Liz Williams explores the popular history of letter writing and how it has shaped the world today - from the early Greek philosophers, to the great letter writers Byron and Walpole and famous letters that changed the world. It also covers the invention of the fountain pen and the growth of the mail delivery system. This is the fascinating story of how a simple piece of paper revolutionized global communication and how, despite the ever-growing influence of technology, handwritten letters are regaining their value, meaning and popularity.
Call Number: eBook
For the Love of Letters by Samara O'Shea Have you ever wanted to write a thank-you note and suffered writer's block? Considered penning a passionate letter to your beloved, but had no idea where to begin? Needed to send a sympathy message, but couldn't find the right words? Fear not. Professional letter writer Samara O'Shea is here to spark your creativity and answer all your letter-writing questions in this charming guide. For the Love of Letters is an anecdotal primer on letter writing, with tips on how to write all types of notes: love letters, break-up letters, apology letters, thank-you letters, erotic letters (oh yes!), and more. It's filled with moving, funny, and embarrassing stories about letters Samara has written and received, including an apology from a guy who addressed her by the wrong name, a good-riddance e-mail to a capricious boyfriend, and multiple apology letters after getting fired from an internship at O: The Oprah Magazine. With a fresh, contemporary approach, Samara weighs in on appropriate methods for every situation--for example, when to handwrite, type, or e-mail (yes, e-mail) your letter. There is also a fascinating collection of engaging personal letters written by historical and literary icons such as Marie Antoinette, Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Susan B. Anthony, and Emily Post. For the Love of Letters will show anyone who has ever shuddered at the idea of sitting down and putting pen to paper--or fingertips to keyboard--how to craft persuasive, interesting, and memorable letters.
Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters by Harold E. Meyer With more than 800 sample letters and 300 model sentences, this revised and expanded version of the bestselling handbook makes writing personal and business letters a snap. Categories include: requesting favors, fund raising, collection, complaints, apologies, congratulations, and more.
The Art of Correspondence by Melissa Lester (Editor) The editors of Victoria cordially invite you to savor quiet moments of bliss as you discover kinship and joy in The Art of Correspondence. Since its inception, Victoria magazine has embraced the pursuit of loveliness through composing letters and journaling. In this hardcover volume, leadoff chapters "Sincerely Yours" and "Room for Writing" encourage readers to create space in both their calendars and homes for putting pen to paper, with ideas for arranging a full-size or lap desk with necessities, such as stationery, as well as intriguing collectibles, including inkwells and letter openers. "Artful Expressions" celebrates the treasured traditions of calligraphy, letter press, and wax seals. Like satin streamers unfurled back and forth across the miles, missives exchanged over the course of time tug gently at the heartstrings, pulling loved ones closer as each handwritten note further entwines the lives of sender and receiver. Reflecting on the beauty of pouring one's deepest feelings onto the page, The Art of Correspondence offers inspiration for creating meaningful connections through writing letters. With personal essays on the value of this practice, features highlighting exquisite accoutrements, and tips for expressing one's thoughts in every situation, this book will delight and inform. "We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lamented, "and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others." In this title, glean helpful advice for sharing sentiments for each holiday, occasion, or circumstance. Find inspiration in the personal communications of a coterie of literature's best-known authors, and explore postcards from the past--some heirlooms affixed with a postage stamp and many jotted in the ephemera of daily routines or imprinted in memory.

Correspondence Collections

Letters of Note by Shaun Usher (Compiled by) This spectacular collection of more than 125 letters offers a never-before-seen glimpse of the events and people of history--the brightest and best, the most notorious, and the endearingly everyday. Entries include a transcript of the letter; a short contextual introduction; and, in 100 cases, a captivating facsimile of the letter itself. The artfulness of Shaun Usher's eclectic arrangement creates a reading experience rich in discovery. Mordant, hilarious, poignant, enlightening--surprise rewards each turn of the page. Colorfully illustrated with photographs, portraits, and relevant artworks, this handsome hardcover is a visual treat too, making Letters of Note an utterly distinctive gift, and an instant classic.
Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon From the author of A Book of One’s Own and Stolen Words comes a delightful and wide-ranging investigation of the art of letter writing. Yours Ever explores the offhand masterpieces dispatched through the ages by messenger, postal service, and BlackBerry. Thomas Mallon weaves a remarkable assortment of epistolary riches into his own insightful and eloquent commentary on the circumstances and characters of the world’s most intriguing letter writers. Here are Madame de Sévigné’s devastatingly sharp reports from the court of Louis XIV, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tormented advice to his young daughter, the besotted midlife billets-doux of a suddenly rejuvenated Woodrow Wilson, the casually brilliant spiritual musings of Flannery O’Connor, the lustful boastings of Lord Byron, the cries from prison of Sacco and Vanzetti. Along with the confessions and complaints and revelations sent from battlefields, frontier cabins, and luxury liners, a reader will find Mallon considering travel bulletins, suicide notes, fan letters, and hate mail–forms as varied as the human experiences behind them. Yours Ever is an exuberant reintroduction to a vast and entertaining literature–a book that will help to revive, in the digital age, this glorious lost art.
The Letters of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson; Laurence Jackson Hyman (Editor); Bernice M. Murphy (Contribution by) A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House "Thisbiography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson's legacy."-Joyce Carol Oates Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction- flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad. i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story-with as many levels as grand central station-with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet. Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday- raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories- entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson's writing over nearly three decades. The novel is getting sadder. It's always such a strange feeling-I know something's going to happen, and those poor people in the book don't; they just go blithely on their ways. Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson's own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson-writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife-up to the light.
Dear Highlights by Christine French Cully; Amy Dickinson (Foreword by) A unique, inside look at American childhood through the conversations between Highlights magazine and its young readers and a call to grown-ups to make time to actively listen to the children in their lives. Every year, tens of thousands of children write to Highlights magazine, sharing their hopes and dreams, worries and concerns, as if they were writing to a trusted friend. From the beginning, the editors at Highlights have answered every child individually. Longtime editor in chief Christine French Cully has curated a collection of this remarkable correspondence (letters, emails, drawings, and poems) in Dear Highlights--revealing an intimate and inspiring 75-year conversation between America's children and its leading children's magazine. From the timeless, everyday concerns of friendship, family, and school, to the deeper issues of identity, sexuality, divorce, and grief, here is a unique time capsule of American childhood in the voices--and the very handwriting--of children themselves. The book captures a child's-eye view of some of the most important events of the past 75 years- the COVID-19 pandemic, 9/11, the Challenger Disaster, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cully's insightful narrative becomes a call to action for adults to lean in and listen to children, to make sure our kids know that they matter and what they think matters, and to assure them that they have the power to become people who change the world. By turns funny, heartbreaking, moving, and enlightening, Dear Highlights will cause readers to reflect, to listen, and to embrace the children in their lives. From the foreword by nationally syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson- "In times of great stress or trouble, Mr. Rogers advised children- 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' That's exactly what children writing to 'Dear Highlights' find when they put pen to paper- helpers whose open-minded trust and kindness surely has made our world a better place."
Love in the Blitz by Eileen Alexander On July 17th 1939, Eileen Alexander, a bright young woman recently graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, begins a brilliant correspondence with fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen that lasts five years and spans many hundreds of letters. But as Eileen and Gershon's relationship flourishes from friendship and admiration into passion and love, the tensions between Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe reach a crescendo. When war is declared, Gershon heads for Cairo and Eileen forgoes her studies to work in the Air Ministry. As cinematic as Atonement, written with the intimacy of the Neapolitan quartet, Love in the Blitz is an extraordinary glimpse of life in London during World War II and an illuminating portrait of an ordinary young woman trying to carve a place for herself in a time of uncertainty. As the Luftwaffe begins its bombardment of England, Eileen, like her fellow Britons, carries on while her loved ones are called up to fight, some never to return home. Written over the course of the conflict, Eileen's letters provide a vivid and personal glimpse of this historic era. Yet throughout the turmoil and bloodshed, one thing remains constant: her beloved Gershon, who remains a source of strength and support, even after he, too, joins the fighting. Though his letters have been lost to time, the bolstering force of his love for Eileen is illuminated in her responses to him. Equal parts heartrending and heartwarming, Love in the Blitz is a timeless romance and a deeply personal story of life and resilience amid the violence and terror of war.
Letters from Tove by Tove Jansson; Boel Westin (Editor); Helen Svensson (Editor); Sarah Death (Translator) A virtual memoir in letters by the beloved creator of the Moomins Tove Jansson's works, even her famed Moomin books, fairly teem with letters of one kind or another, from messages bobbing in bottles to whole epistolary novels. Fortunately for her countless readers, her life was no different, unfolding as it did in the letters to family, friends, and lovers that make up this volume, a veritable autobiography over the course of six decades--and the only one Jansson ever wrote. And just as letters carry a weight of significance in Jansson's writing, those she wrote throughout her life reflect the gravity of her circumstances, the depth of her thoughts and feelings, and the critical moments of humor, sadness, and grace that mark an artist's days. These letters, penned with characteristic insight and wit, provide an almost seamless commentary on Jansson's life within Helsinki's bohemian circles and on her island home. Shifting between hope and despair, yearning and happiness, they describe her immersion in art studies and her ascension to fame with the Moomins. They speak frankly of friendship and love, loneliness and solidarity, and also of politics, art, literature, and society. They summon a particular place and time reflected through a mind finely attuned to her culture, her world, and her own nature--all clearly put into biographical and historical context by the volume's editors, both longtime friends of Tove Jansson--and, in the end, draw a complex, intimate self-portrait of one of the world's most beloved authors.
Letters from Hollywood by Rocky Lang; Barbara Hall Rarenotes, memos, and telegrams from Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Jane Fonda, and moreLetters from Hollywood reproduces in full color scores of entertaining and insightful pieces of correspondence from some of the most notable and talented film industry names of all time-from the silent era to the golden age, and up through the pre-email days of the 1970s. Culled from libraries, archives, and personal collections, the 135 letters, memos, and telegrams are organized chronologically and are annotated by the authors to provide backstories and further context. While each piece reveals a specific moment in time, taken together, the letters convey a bigger picture of Hollywood history. Contributors include celebrities like Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Cary Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Tom Hanks, and Jane Fonda. This is the gift book of the season for fans of classic Hollywood.
The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1 by Sylvia Plath A major literary event: the first volume in the definitive, complete collection of the letters of Sylvia Plath--most never before seen. One of the most beloved poets of the modern age, Sylvia Plath continues to inspire and fascinate the literary world. While her renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, Plath was also one of its most captivating correspondents. The Letters of Sylvia Plath is the breathtaking compendium of this prolific writer's correspondence with more than 120 people, including family, friends, contemporaries, and colleagues. The Letters of Sylvia Plath includes her correspondence from her years at Smith, her summer editorial internship in New York City, her time at Cambridge, her experiences touring Europe, and the early days of her marriage to Ted Hughes in 1956. Most of the letters are previously unseen, including sixteen letters written by Plath to Hughes when they were apart after their honeymoon. This magnificent compendium also includes twenty-seven of Plath's own elegant line drawings taken from the letters she sent to her friends and family, as well as twenty-two previously unpublished photographs. This remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote. Intimate and revealing, this masterful compilation offers fans and scholars generous and unprecedented insight into the life of one of our most significant poets.
Dear Friend by Gina L. Mulligan A beautiful collection of handwritten letters that offer strength, encouragement, and comfort to women living with breast cancer. Brimming with warm messages and words of wisdom for when it's needed most: Written by compassionate strangers--many of whom have gone through their own health battles--these heartfelt letters contain empathy, inspiration, and humor to help you overcome difficult moments. They were gathered by Girls Love Mail, an organization that provides support to people diagnosed with breast cancer. * Contains many beautiful illustrations to match the handwritten notes by other women who have had their own health struggles * A book that brings light to dark moments and makes readers feel less alone during stressful and hard times * Gina L. Mulligan is a writer and the founder of Girls Love Mail. She founded the organization after her own diagnosis in 2011 and the charity has sent out over 100,000 handwritten letters of encouragement to women with breast cancer across the country A handwritten letter is a powerful healing tool that is a cherished gift for a woman going through a difficult time. Dear Friendmakes a heartwarming and motivational gift for a loved one recently diagnosed with breast cancer to remind them that they aren't alone, and that they are strong enough to keep fighting.
Radical Hope by Carolina De Robertis (Editor) Radical Hope is a collection of letters--to ancestors, to children five generations from now, to strangers in grocery lines, to any and all who feel weary and discouraged--written by award-winning novelists, poets, political thinkers, and activists. Provocative and inspiring, Radical Hope offers readers a kaleidoscopic view of the love and courage needed to navigate this time of upheaval, uncertainty, and fear, in view of the recent US presidential election. Including letters by Junot Díaz, Alicia Garza, Roxana Robinson, Lisa See, Jewelle Gomez, Hari Kunzru, Faith Adiele, Parnaz Foroutan, Chip Livingston, Mohja Kahf, Achy Obejas, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Cherríe Moraga, Kate Schatz, Boris Fishman, Karen Joy Fowler, Elmaz Abinader, Aya de León, Jane Smiley, Luis Alberto Urrea, Mona Eltahawy, Jeff Chang, Claire Messud, Meredith Russo, Reyna Grande, Katie Kitamura, iO Tillett Wright, Francisco Goldman, Celeste Ng, Peter Orner, and Cristina García.
Home and Away by Karl Ove Knausgaard; Fredrik Ekelund; Don Bartlett (Translator); Seán Kinsella (Translator) Two world-class writers reveal themselves to be the ultimate soccer fans in these collected letters Karl Ove Knausgaard is sitting at home in Skåne with his wife, four small children, and dog. He is watching soccer on TV and falls asleep in front of the set. He likes 0-0 draws, cigarettes, coffee, and Argentina. Fredrik Ekelund is away, in Brazil, where he plays soccer on the beach and watches matches with others. Ekelund loves games that end up 4-3 and teams that play beautiful soccer. He likes caipirinhas and Brazil. Home and Away is an unusual soccer book, in which the two authors use soccer and the World Cup in Brazil as the arena for reflections on life and death, art and politics, class and literature. What does it mean to be at home in a globalized world? This exchange of letters opens up new vistas and gives us stories from the lives of two creative writers. We get under their skin and gain insight into their relationships with modern times and soccer's place in their lives, the significance the game has for people in general, and the question Was this the best soccer championship ever?
The Mitfords by Charlotte Mosley The great wits and beauties of their age, the Mitford sisters were immoderate in their passions for ideas and people, counting among their diverse friends Adolf Hitler and Queen Elizabeth II, Cecil Beaton and President Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh and Givenchy. As editor Charlotte Mosley notes, not since the Brontës have the members of a single family written so much about themselves, or have been so written about. The Mitfords offers an unparalleled look at these privileged sisters: Nancy, the scalding wit who transformed her family life into bestselling novels; Pamela, who craved nothing more than a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed with her husband, Oswald Mosley, during World War II; Unity, a suicide, torn by her worship of Hitler and her loyalty to home; Jessica, the runaway Communist and fighter for social change; and Deborah, the genial socialite who found herself Duchess of Devonshire. Spanning the twentieth century, the magically vivid letters of the legendary Mitford sisters constitute not just a superb social and historical chronicle; they also provide an intimate portrait of the stormy but enduring relationships between six beautiful, gifted, and radically different women who wrote to one another to confide, commiserate, tease, rage, and gossip--and above all to amuse.
Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl; Max Ritvo A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2018 In 2012, Sarah Ruhl was a distinguished author and playwright, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Max Ritvo, a student in her playwriting class at Yale University, was an exuberant, opinionated, and highly gifted poet. He was also in remission from pediatric cancer. Over the next four years--in which Ritvo's illness returned and his health declined, even as his productivity bloomed--the two exchanged letters that spark with urgency, humor, and the desire for connection. Reincarnation, books, the afterlife as an Amtrak quiet car, good soup: in Ruhl and Ritvo's exchanges, all ideas are fair, nourishing game, shared and debated in a spirit of generosity and love. "We'll always know one another forever, however long ever is," Ritvo writes. "And that's all I want--is to know you forever." Studded with poems and songs, Letters from Max is a deeply moving portrait of a friendship, and a shimmering exploration of love, art, mortality, and the afterlife.

Epistolary Fiction

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar; Max Gladstone HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters--and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked "Burn before reading. Signed, Blue." So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space. Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common--save that they're the best, and they're alone. Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning's what you do in war. Isn't it? A tour de force collaboration from two powerhouse writers that spans the whole of time and space.
Undiscovered Country by Kelly O'Connor McNees An extraordinary novel portraying one of the greatest untold love stories in American politics. In October 1932, at the end of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first presidential campaign, Eleanor Roosevelt took an overnight train from Potsdam to Albany with Lorena "Hick" Hickok, one of the top Associated Press reporters in the country. That train ride marked the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that would last the rest of Hick and Eleanor's lives. In Undiscovered Country, Kelly O'Connor McNees adroitly mixes fact and fiction to present an intimate portrait of the love that bloomed between these two women, hidden in plain sight. Using historical records (including the more than three thousand letters the pair exchanged over a span of thirty years), McNees portrays their relationship from their introduction as reporter and subject through their intense first meetings, their burgeoning affair, and the conflicts that arose as journalist Hick's ethics were hopelessly compromised by her affection for the woman she was supposed to be covering. A remarkable portrait of Depression-era America (including Hick and Eleanor's work on the founding of Arthurdale, the federal housing project in West Virginia for homeless ex-miners), Undiscovered Country is an extraordinary portrayal of one of the greatest unknown love stories in American politics.
Violeta [English Edition] by Isabel Allende This sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
Confessions of a Curious Bookseller by Elizabeth Green A heartening and uproariously funny novel of high hopes, bad choices, book love, and one woman's best--and worst--intentions. Without question, Fawn Birchill knows that her used bookstore is the heart of West Philadelphia, a cornerstone of culture for a community that, for the past twenty years, has found the quirkiness absolutely charming. When an amicable young indie bookseller invades her block, Fawn is convinced that his cushy couches, impressive selection, coffee bar, and knowledgeable staff are a neighborhood blight. Misguided yet blindly resilient, Fawn readies for battle. But as she wages her war, Fawn is forced to reflect on a few unavoidable truths: the tribulations of online dating, a strained relationship with her family, and a devoted if not always law-abiding intern--not to mention what to do about a pen pal with whom she hasn't been entirely honest and the litany of repairs her aging store requires. Through emails, journal entries, combative online reviews, texts, and tweets, Fawn plans her next move. Now it's time for her to dig deep and use every trick at her disposal if she's to reclaim her beloved business--and her life.
Holy Lands by Amanda Sthers A witty, heartwarming, and heart-wrenching epistolary novel, soon to be a major motion picture starring James Caan, Rosanna Arquette, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, about a dysfunctional family--led by a Jewish pig farmer in Israel--struggling to love and accept each other. As comic as it is deeply moving,Holy Lands chronicles several months in the lives of an estranged family of colorful eccentrics. Harry Rosenmerck is an aging Jewish cardiologist who has left his thriving medical practice in New York--to raise pigs in Israel. His ex-wife, Monique, ruminates about their once happy marriage even as she quietly battles an aggressive illness. Their son, David, an earnest and successful playwright, has vowed to reconnect with his father since coming out. Annabelle, their daughter, finds herself unmoored in Paris in the aftermath of a breakup. Harry eschews technology, so his family, spread out around the world, must communicate with him via snail mail. Even as they grapple with challenges, their correspondence sparkles with levity. They snipe at each other, volleying quips across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Europe, and find joy in unexpected sources. Holy Lands captures the humor and poignancy of an adult family striving to remain connected across time, geography, and radically different perspectives on life.
Letters to Memory by Karen Tei Yamashita Praise for Karen Tei Yamashita: "It's a stylistically wild ride, but it's smart, funny and entrancing." --NPR "Fluid and poetic as well as terrifying." --New York Times Book Review With delightful plays of voice and structure, this is literary fiction at an adventurous, experimental high point." --Kirkus "Magnificent. . . . Intriguing." --Library Journal "This powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative." --Publishers Weekly(starred review) Letters to Memory is an excursion through the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties. Historians, anthropologists, classicists--their disciplines, and Yamashita's engagement with them, are a way for her explore various aspects of the internment and to expand its meaning beyond her family, and our borders, to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, Orientalism, and community. Karen Tei Yamashita is the author ofThrough the Arc of the Rain Forest,Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, andAnime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press.I Hotelwas selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.
Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay Samantha's only friends were characters in books, but her real life takes an extraordinary turn when a mysterious "Mr. Knightley" offers her a full journalism scholarship--on the condition that she write to him regularly. Will their long-distance friendship unlock her heart Sam is, to say the least, bookish. An English major of the highest order, her diet has always been Austen, Dickens, and Shakespeare. The problem is that both her prose and conversation tend to be more Elizabeth Bennet than Samantha Moore. But life for the twenty-three-year-old orphan is about to get stranger than fiction. An anonymous, Dickensian benefactor calling himself Mr. Knightley offers to put Sam through Northwestern University's prestigious Medill School of Journalism. There is only one catch: Sam must write frequent letters to the mysterious donor, detailing her progress. Sam's letters to Mr. Knightley become increasingly confessional as she begins to share everything from her painful childhood memories to her growing feelings for eligible novelist Alex Powell. While Alex draws Sam into a world of warmth and literature that feels like it's straight out of a book, old secrets are drawn to light. And as Sam learns to love and trust Alex and herself, she learns once again how quickly trust can be broken. Reminding us all that our own true character is not meant to be hidden, Katherine Reay's debut novel follows a young woman's journey as she sheds her protective persona and embraces the person she was meant to become. Praise for Dear Mr. Knightley: "Katherine Reay's Dear Mr. Knightley kept me up until 2:00 a.m.; I simply couldn't put it down."--Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author of Once Upon a Tower "Sprinkled with classic literary references and filled with poignant characterizations, Katherine Reay's modern retelling of Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs is both reverently crafted and delightfully surprising."--Lauren Ann Nattress, Austenprose.com "Katherine Reay's touching debut novel made me cry in all the right places. For joy."--Laurie Viera Rigler, author of Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict Sweet, stand-alone contemporary romance Includes discussion questions for book clubs, a Q&A with the author, and Sam's reading list
Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor; Heather Webb From Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, the bestselling authors of Meet Me in Monaco, comes a coming-of-age novel set in pre-WWII Europe, perfect for fans of Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Kate Quinn.   Three cities, two sisters, one chance to correct the past . . . New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe--together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn't seen since traveling to Europe forty years earlier; a journey inspired by famed reporter, Nellie Bly. Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it's also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler's Nazi party and Mussolini's control in Italy. Constantly at odds with each other as they explore the luxurious Queen Mary, the Orient Express, and the sights of Paris and  Venice,, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can fulfil Violet's wish, until a shocking truth about their family brings them closer together. But as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again. As political tensions rise, and Europe feels increasingly volatile, the pair are glad to head home on the Hindenburg, where fate will play its hand in the final stage of their journey.
Love Letters from Montmartre by Nicolas Barreau For fans of Nina George, Elena Ferrante, and Valentina Cebeni, a charming, uplifting novel about a man who sets out to fulfil his dead wife's last wish.   Julien Azouly, the famous French writer of beautiful romance novels, has stopped believing in love. When his beloved wife, Hélène, dies at the age of thirty-three, leaving him alone to raise their young son, Arthur, he is so devastated that he loses faith in the happier side of life--and along with that his ability to write.   But Hélène was clever. Before her death, she made her husband promise to write her thirty-three letters, one for each year of her life. Six months after the funeral, Julien finds himself standing in the most famous cemetery in Paris, the painful first letter in his hand. Little does he know that something strange--and wonderful--is about to happen.   An ode to love, Paris, and joie de vivre, Love Letters from Montmartre brings the reader down narrow streets, past the cozy red bistro on Rue Gabrielle, and all the way to Montmartre cemetery with its beautiful stone angels, where we will discover the truth we all hope to find: that love is real, that miracles can happen and that--most of all--it's never too late to rediscover your dreams. Empathetic and wise, this is the deeply profound yet very human story of a man who finds love just when he thinks all is lost.
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary." Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.
Goodnight June by Sarah Jio The New York Times bestselling author of Always and Blackberry Winter takes Goodnight Moon as inspiration for this remarkable story of friendship, love, and the mystery behind this beloved classic. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Songs) is an adored childhood classic, but its real origins are lost to history. In Goodnight June, Sarah Jio offers a suspenseful and heartfelt take on how the "great green room" might have come to be. June Andersen is professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby's estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children's bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s. Amidst the store's papers, June stumbles upon letters between her great-aunt and the late Margaret Wise Brown--and steps into the pages of American literature.
Paper Chains by Nicola Moriarty From the acclaimed author of The Fifth Letter and Those Other Women comes this touching story of secrets, friendship, family, and forgiveness--and the serendipitous twists of fate that shape our lives. Accept a letter... Hannah has been running--literally and figuratively--from her life back in Australia. Whenever she's not working, she's pounding London's streets, putting the past behind her. Then she meets a fellow Australian named India, and Hannah's entranced. For India is confident, exotic, and charming--qualities that Hannah feels she's desperately lacking. Pass it on... India has a secret, too - one beyond any remedy. For it's a secret that is currently sealed in a love letter and is making its journey across Europe in the most unconventional way--through the hands of strangers as they pass on the street. And who knows where it will lead... Before the letter with India's deepest, darkest secret reaches its destination, can the women find the connection that will take each of them exactly where they need to go....  
Blue Flowers by Carola Saavedra Marcos feels alienated from his ex-wife, from his daughter, from society; everything feels flat and fake to him. When he begins to receive letters at his new address from an anonymous troubled woman who signs off as A. and who clearly believes she is writing to the former tenant, her ex-lover, Marcos falls under the spell of the manic, hypnotic missives. The letters become a kind of exorcism as both A.'s epistolary affair and Marcos' personal life reach a crisis point. Possessed by A., he is driven to discover her true identity.
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award "The charmer of the summer." --NPR "Warm-hearted, clear-minded, and unexpectedly spellbinding, Meet Me at the Museum is a novel to savor." --Annie Barrows, co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over. Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney's famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina's letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?