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| NONFICTION |
Brother, I'm Dying
by Edwidge Danticat
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1400041155
Amazon Price: $16.29
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing
for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation
deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying
tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control.
Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee
his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way
to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe.
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Body of Work
by Christine Montross
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594201250
Amazon Price: $16.47
Body of Work is a mesmerizing, rarely seen glimpse into the
day-to-day life of a medical student-yet one that follows naturally
in the footsteps of recent highly successful literary renderings
of the mysteries of medicine such as Atul Gawande's Complications:
A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science.
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My Grandfather's Son
by Clarence Thomas
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060565551
Amazon Price: $16.17
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces
of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices
he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate
hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression
and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those
closest to him.
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One Drop
by Bliss Broyard
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0316163503
Amazon Price: $16.49
In her remarkable memoir, Bliss Broyard examines her father's
choices and the impact of this revelation on her own life. Seeking
out unknown relatives in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans,
she uncovers the 250- year history of her family in America, and
chronicles her own evolution from privileged Wasp to a woman of
mixed-race ancestry.
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When She Was White
by Judith Stone
Publisher: Miramax
ISBN: 0786868988
Amazon Price: $16.29
In this remarkable narrative, veteran journalist and author Judith
Stone takes us on her own eye-opening journey as she and Sandra
explore the mysteries of Sandra's past and piece together the
fractured life of one of aprtheid's many victims. As the devastating
circumstances of Sandra's life are revealed, Stone comes to understand
and admire her for the flawed -- yet enduring -- survivor she
is.
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| FICTION |
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1594489580
Amazon Price: $14.97
D’az immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the
history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth
and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American
experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere
in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of
the best and most exciting voices of our time.
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Run
by Ann Patchett
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0061340634
Amazon Price: $15.57
Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired
Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds
of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from
each other, and how family can include people you've never even
met.
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Cion
by Zakes Mda
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0312427069
Amazon Price: $11.20
The hero of Zakes Mda's beloved Ways of Dying, Toloki, sets down
with a family in Middle America and uncovers the story of the
runaway slaves who were their ancestors.
Toloki, the professional mourner, has come to live in America.
Lured to Athens, Ohio, by an academic at the local university,
Toloki makes friends with an angry young man he meets at a Halloween
parade and soon falls in love with the young man's sister. Toloki
endears himself to a local quilting group and his quilting provides
a portal to the past, a story of two escaped slaves seeking freedom
in Ohio.
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MVP: A Novel
by James Boice
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 0743292995
Amazon Price: $10.20
Superstar Gilbert Marcus rapes and kills a young woman in a hotel
room during the off-season. That's the prologue. MVP is Marcus's
life story from conception to his act of incredible violence.
Raised an only child -- the son of a difficult and demanding father
-- Gilbert Marcus, a basketball player with extraordinary skill,
is expected to be the greatest.
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Up High in the Trees
by Kiara Brinkman
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080211847X
Amazon Price: $15.64
This is an exquisite debut novel about a family in turmoil, told
in the startling, deeply affecting voice of a nine-year-old, autistic
boy.
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| FICTION |
What You Call Winter
by Nalini Jones
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1400042763
Amazon Price: $15.61
With this collection of beautifully written, interconnected stories,
Nalini Jones establishes herself as a strong, new voice in contemporary
fiction.
Gracefully and with deep emotional intelligence, Jones vividly
evokes the ebb and flow of life across several generations and
continents. What You Call Winter is a resonant, beguiling fiction
debut.
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Song for Night
by Chris Abani
Publisher: Akashic
ISBN: 1933354313
Amazon Price: $10.36
Written in a ghostly voice, each chapter is headed by a line of
the unique sign language these children invented. This book is
unlike anything else ever written about an African war.
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The Pirate's Daughter
by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Publisher: Unbridled
ISBN: 1932961402
Amazon Price: $16.47
In 1946, a storm-wrecked boat carrying Hollywood’s most
famous swashbuckler shored up on the coast of Jamaica, and the
glamorous world of 1940’s Hollywood converged with that
of a small West Indian society.
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New England White
by Stephen L. Carter
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375413626
Amazon Price: $17.79
When The Emperor of Ocean Park was published, Time Out declared:
“Carter does for members of the contemporary black upper
class what Henry James did for Washington Square society, taking
us into their drawing rooms and laying their motives bare.”
Now, with the same powers of observation, and the same richness
of plot and character, Stephen L. Carter returns to the New England
university town of Elm Harbor, where a murder begins to crack
the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town’s
past, the secrets of a prominent family, and the most hidden bastions
of African-American political influence.
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Not Yet Drown'd
by Peg Kingman
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 0393065464
Amazon Price: $16.47
Catherine MacDonald is astonished to receive from her twin brother—who
had reportedly drowned a year earlier, in the monsoon floods of
1821—a kashmiri shawl, a caddy of unusual tea, and a sheaf
of traditional bagpipe music in his handwriting. When had he sent
it? And why had he retitled a certain tune “Not Yet Drown’d”?
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