Literature/fiction

Days of Afrekete

Days of Afrekete
$19.50
$7.00
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by Asali Solomon

Discussion Date: October 27


 

"I didn't feel like I was reading this novel--I felt like I was living it." --Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

From award-winning author Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete is a tender, surprising novel of two women at midlife who rediscover themselves--and perhaps each other, inspired by Mrs. Dalloway, Sula, and Audre Lorde's Zami

Liselle Belmont is having a dinner party.

It seems a strange occasion--her husband, Winn, has lost his bid for the state legislature--but what better way to thank key supporters than a feast? Liselle was never sure about her husband becoming a politician, never sure about the limelight, never sure about the life of fundraising and stump speeches. Then an FBI agent calls to warn her that Winn might be facing corruption charges. An avalanche of questions tumbles around her: Is it possible he's guilty? Who are they to each other; who have they become? How much of herself has she lost--and was it worth it? And just this minute, how will she make it through this dinner party?

Across town, Selena Octave is making her way through the same day, the same way she always does--one foot in front of the other, keeping quiet and focused, trying not to see the terrors all around her. Homelessness, starving children, the very living horrors of history that made America possible: these and other thoughts have made it difficult for her to live an easy life. The only time she was ever really happy was with Liselle, back in college. But they've lost touch, so much so that when they ran into each other at a drugstore just after Obama was elected president, they barely spoke. But as the day wears on, memories of Liselle begin to shift Selena's path.

Inspired by Mrs. Dalloway and Sula, as well as Audre Lorde's Zami, Asali Solomon's The Days of Afrekete is a deft, expertly layered, naturally funny, and deeply human examination of two women coming back to themselves at midlife. It is a watchful celebration of our choices and where they take us, the people who change us, and how we can reimagine ourselves even when our lives seem set.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780374140052
Publication Date: 
October 19, 2021
Author: 

Ceremony

Ceremony
$14.40
$18.00
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by Leslie Marmon Silko

Discussion Date: November 17


 

The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit

More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power. The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition contains a new preface by the author and an introduction by Larry McMurtry.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780143104919
Publication Date: 
January 1, 2007
Publisher: 

America Fantastica

America Fantastica
$32.00

An American Master returns: The author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery by a disgraced journalist sparks a cross-country chase through a nation corroded by shameless delusion and deceit.

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in northern California.

"How much is on hand, would you say?" he asked the teller. "I'll want it all."

"You're robbing me?"

"Not you, " Boyd replied, revealing a Temptation .38 Special.

Angie Bing, the teller, scraped together $81,000.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag. "I'm sorry about this," he said, "but I'll have to ask you to take a ride with me. ..."

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson--star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JC Penny manager--and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday Boyd and Angie reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd's past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.

America Fantastica marks the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. Just as O'Brien's modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063318502
Publication Date: 
October 24, 2023
Author: 
Publisher: 

Big Meal (acting edition)

$7.48
$14.95
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ISBN/SKU: 
9780573700620
Publication Date: 
March 12, 2015
Author: 
Publisher: 

Blue Hour

Blue Hour
$15.95
A Barack Obama 2023 Summer Reading selection

What is motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma, and an unraveling America? What it's always been--a love song.

Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by the grief of a recent devastating miscarriage and Noah's fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having a child, no longer wants to bring a Black body into the world. Yet her husband Asher--contributing white, Jewish genes alongside her Black-Japanese ones for any potential child--is just as desperate to keep trying.

Throwing herself into a new documentary on motherhood, and making secret visits to Noah in the hospital, this when she learns she is, impossibly, pregnant. As the future shifts once again, she must decide yet again what she dares hope for the shape of her future to be. Fearless, timely, blazing with voice, Blue Hour is a fragmentary novel with unignorable storytelling power.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781593767495
Publication Date: 
April 4, 2023
Publisher: 

Bride of the Sea

Bride of the Sea
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$16.95
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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.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781951142452
Publication Date: 
January 26, 2021
Author: 
Publisher: 

Brooklyn

Brooklyn
$16.99
$12.00
$12.00 - $16.99
Colm Tóibín's New York Times bestselling novel--now an acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan and Jim Broadbent nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture--is "a moving, deeply satisfying read" (Entertainment Weekly) about a young Irish immigrant in Brooklyn in the early 1950s.

"One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

Author "Colm Tóibín...is his generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power" (Los Angeles Times). "Written with mesmerizing power and skill" (The Boston Globe), Brooklyn is a "triumph...One of those magically quiet novels that sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations" (USA TODAY).

ISBN/SKU: 
9781439148952
Publication Date: 
March 2, 2010
Author: 
Publisher: 

BURIED CHILD (REV) (P)

$4.50
$9.00
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Sam Shepard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than forty-five plays. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection "Great Dream of Heaven," " "and he has also written the story collection "Cruising Paradise," " "two collections of prose pieces, "Motel Chronicles "and "Hawk Moon," " "and "Rolling Thunder Logbook," " "a diary of Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Review tour. As an actor he has appeared in more than thirty films, including "Days of Heaven," " Crimes of the Heart," " Steel Magnolias," " The Pelican Brief," " Snow Falling on Cedars," " All the Pretty Horses," " Black Hawk Down," " "and "The Notebook."" "He received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for his performance in "The Right Stuff." His screenplay for "Paris, Texas" won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, and he wrote and directed the film "Far North "in 1988 and co-wrote and starred in Wim Wenders' "Don't Come Knocking "in 2005. Shepard's plays, eleven of which have won Obie Awards, include "The God of Hell," " The Late Henry Moss," "Simpatico," "Curse of the Starving Class," " True West," " Fool for Love," and "A Lie of the Mind," " "which won a New York Drama Desk Award. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Shepard received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. He lives in New York.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

ISBN/SKU: 
9780822215110
Publication Date: 
December 1, 1997
Author: 

Cambodian Rock Band

Cambodian Rock Band
$4.98
$9.95
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In 1978, Chum fled Cambodia and narrowly escaped the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. Thirty years later he returns in search of his wayward daughter, Neary. Jumping back and forth in time, thrilling mystery meets rock concert as both father and daughter are forced to face the music of the past.

From playwright Lauren Yee (King of the Yees, The Great Leap) comes a story filled with horror, humor, pathos, and songs by the best unknown rock band in Cambodia!

ISBN/SKU: 
9780573707247
Publication Date: 
November 1, 2019
Author: 
Publisher: 

Comme deux freres

$16.00
ISBN/SKU: 
9782872825844