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RENTAL PERSON WHO DOES NOTHING

One of our recommended books is Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto

In June of 2018, 35-year-old Shoji Morimoto posted on Twitter offering one simple service: he will do nothing, for a fee. Any and all requests are fair game—seeing you off when moving, sharing a soda with you, being present alongside you when submitting divorce papers, joining you at a baseball game—so long as it conforms to his one and only requirement that he “do nothing.” Since then, Morimoto has been hired by over 4,000 patrons across Japan, officially rebranding himself as Rental Person.

Rental Person’s clients are often desperate, their requests funny, poignant, mysterious and baffling—but never short of fascinating.

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ALL THE LITTLE BIRD-HEARTS

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, this poetic and often funny debut — “a motherhood story unlike any other” (Booklist) — a by an author with autism is written from the point of view of an autistic woman as she and her headstrong adolescent daughter are befriended by a glamorous, charismatic couple with dark ulterior motives.

I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards.

Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people.

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ABOVE THE SALT

One of our recommended books is Above the Salt by Katherine Vaz

An irresistible and sweeping love story that follows two Portuguese refugees who flee religious violence and reignite their budding romance in Civil-War America.

John Alves, son of a famous Presbyterian martyr on the Portuguese island of Madeira, spends his childhood in jail and in poverty. When he meets Mary Freitas—though the adopted daughter of a master botanist, her true lineage is the subject of dangerous rumor—a spark kindles a lasting bond. But soon their families must confront the rising blood tide of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. Fleeing with only what they can carry, John and Mary are separated and arrive at different times and places in a rapidly growing and changing mid-nineteenth-century Illinois.

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TOM LAKE

One of our recommended books is Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

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GONE TONIGHT

One of our recommended books is Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen

This audiobook is read by actress Kate Mara

Nothing is as it seems in New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen’s Gone Tonight, a novel about a mother’s secrets to protect her daughter and what happens when they begin to unravel…

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ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH

One of our recommended books is One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris

A compelling debut that glows with bittersweet heart and touching emotion, deeply interrogating questions of family, redemption, and unconditional love in the sweltering summer heat of Savannah, as two people discover what it means to truly forgive.

It’s been eight years since Sara Lancaster left her home in Savannah, Georgia. Eight years since her daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara’s father falls ill, she’s forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past.

While caring for her father and running his bookstore,

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