- 621.Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible LifeSummary: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST - This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century --and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world "Simply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full." --Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of Horse At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue. "I've always loved Orwell," Funder writes, "his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on." So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936. O'Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell's work, but her practical common sense saved his life. But why and how, Funder wondered, was she written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she peeks behind the curtain of Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer--and what it is to be a wife. A breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the twentieth century, Wifedom speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Genre-bending and utterly original, it is an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.
- 622.Magic Hour: A NovelSummary: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an incandescent story about the resilience of the human spirit, the triumph of hope, and the meaning of home.
In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest--nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past. Having retreated to her western Washington hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr. Julia Cates is determined to free the extraordinary little girl she calls Alice from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. To reach her, Julia must discover the truth about Alice's past--although doing so requires help from Julia's estranged sister, a local police officer. The shocking facts of Alice's life test the limits of Julia's faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice--and for herself. "One of [Kristin Hannah's] most compelling and riveting novels."--Booklist - 623.
- 624.The Spectacular: A NovelSummary:
From the New York Times Bestselling Author of The Magnolia Palace: A thrilling story about love, sacrifice, and the pursuit of dreams, set amidst the glamour and glitz of Radio City Music Hall in its mid-century heyday.
New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to the life everyone has always expected they’d have together: a quiet house in the suburbs, Marion staying home to raise their future children. But instead, Marion finds herself feeling trapped. So when she comes across an opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes—the glamorous precision-dancing troupe—she jumps at the chance to exchange her predictable future for the dazzling life of a performer.
Meanwhile, the city is reeling from a string of bombings orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed the “Big Apple Bomber,” who has been terrorizing the citizens of New York for sixteen years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. With the public in an uproar over the lack of any real leads after a yearslong manhunt, the police turn in desperation to Peter Griggs, a young doctor at a local mental hospital who espouses a radical new technique: psychological profiling.
As both Marion and Peter find themselves unexpectedly pulled in to the police search for the bomber, Marion realizes that as much as she’s been training herself to blend in—performing in perfect unison with all the other identical Rockettes—if she hopes to catch the bomber, she’ll need to stand out and take a terrifying risk. In doing so, she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most. - 625.Absolution: A NovelSummary:
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue A riveting account of women's lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award. American women--American wives--have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to "do good" for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene's daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene's altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery--of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands' convictions--have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America's tragic interference in Southeast Asia. A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers, about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world. - 626.Family Family: A NovelSummary:
Join Zibby's Book Club this month to attend an exclusive Book Club Chat with the author on February 27, 2024. Click here to join the club!
"Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don't we ever get that movie?"India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.
Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there's more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do -- she tells a journalist the truth: it's a bad movie.
Soon she's at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help - and who better to call than family? But that's where it gets really messy because India's not just an adoptive mother...
The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn't blood. And it isn't love. No matter how they're formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.
- 627.The Fox Wife: A NovelSummary:
New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true.
- 628.One Italian Summer: A NovelSummary: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this "magical trip worth taking" (Associated Press), the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about the transformational love between mothers and daughters set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.When Katy's mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn't just Katy's mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy's father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother's spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life. And then Carol appears--in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn't understand what is happening, or how--all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue. "Rebecca Serle is known for her powerful stories that tug at the heartstrings--and her latest is just as unforgettable" (Woman's World) as it effortlessly shows us how to move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.
- 629.The Paris Agent: A Gripping Tale of Family SecretsSummary: From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say and The Warsaw Orphan, Kelly Rimmer--for fans of All the Light We Cannot See and The Tattooist of Auschwitz!
A "MOST ANTICIPATED TITLE" by- Harper's Bazaar
- B&N Reads
- BookBub
- Goodreads
- Fresh Fiction
"The author's research has captured the tension that those who lived through that time experienced at deep levels. Kelly Rimmer's scenes in both eras are fraught with anxiety, urging the reader to keep turning the page, anxious to learn about each character's experiences, right up to the very end." -- New York Journal of Books
For fans of fast-paced historical thrillers like Our Woman in Moscow and The Rose Code, Kelly Rimmer's dramatic new novel follows two female SOE operatives whose lives will be determined by a double agent in their midst.
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory--in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she even survived the war.
Moved by her father's frustration, Noah's daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the stories of Chloe and Fleur, the code names for two otherwise ordinary women whose lives intersect in 1943 when they're called up by the SOE for deployment in France. Taking enormous risks to support the allied troops with very little information or resources, the women have no idea they're at the mercy of a double agent among them who's causing chaos within the French circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives...and the war.
But as Charlotte's search for answers bears fruit, overlooked clues come to light about the identity of the double agent--with unsettling hints pointing close to home--and more shocking events are unearthed from the dangerous, dramatic last days of the war that lead to Chloe and Fleur's eventual fates.
For more by Kelly Rimmer, look for- The Things We Cannot Say
- Before I Let You Go
- Truths I Never Told You
- The Warsaw Orphan
- The German Wife
- 630.The Last Flight: A NovelSummary:
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY BESTSELLER, & INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER!
Look for The Lies I Tell, the next novel from Julie Clark, coming in June 2022!
"The Last Flight is thoroughly absorbing--not only because of its tantalizing plot and deft pacing, but also because of its unexpected poignancy and its satisfying, if bittersweet, resolution. The characters get under your skin."--The New York Times Book Review
Two women. Two flights. One last chance to disappear.
Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns bright and he's not above using his staff to track Claire's every move.
What he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish. A plan that takes her to the airport, poised to run from it all. But a chance meeting in the airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision.
The two women switch tickets, with Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. They believe the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when the flight to Puerto Rico crashes, Claire realizes it's no longer a head start but a new life. Cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.
For fans of Lisa Jewell and Liv Constantine, The Last Flight is the story of two women--both alone, both scared--and one agonizing decision that will change the trajectory of both of their lives.
Praise for The Last Flight:
"The Last Flight is a wild ride: One part Strangers on a Train, one part Breaking Bad, with more twists than an amusement park roller coaster! Julie Clark is a devilishly inventive storyteller."
--Janelle Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things
"The Last Flight is everything you want in a book: a gripping story of suspense; haunting, vulnerable characters; and a chilling and surprising ending that stays with you long after the last page."
--Aimee Molloy, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Mother
"The perfect combination of beautiful prose and high suspense, and an ending that I guarantee will catch you off guard."
--Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of Dear Wife and The Marriage Lie
"The Last Flight sweeps you into a thrilling story of two desperate women who will do anything to escape their lives. Both poignant and addictive, you'll race through the pages to the novel's chilling end. A must read of the summer!"
--Kaira Rouda, internationally bestselling author of Best Day Ever and The Favorite
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