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DESCENT

A New York Times Bestseller

“A riveting literary thriller of the can’t-stop-turning-the-page, stay-up-all-night variety.” —Alice LaPlante, author of A Circle of Wives

“Outstanding . . . The days when you had to choose between a great story and a great piece of writing? Gone.” —Esquire

“Tim Johnston’s high-wire literary thriller . . . will leave you gasping.” —Vanity Fair

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college.

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BEING MORTAL

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande is one of our book group favorites for 2018

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Atul Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they can eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.

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THE STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SORROWS OF AVA LAVENDER

One of our recommended books is The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.

Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows,

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ORHAN’S INHERITANCE

A #1 Indie Next Pick

A Library Journal Editor’s Pick

A B&N Discover Great New Writers Selection

When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather,

who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs, is

found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan

inherits the decades-old business. But his

grandfather has left the family estate to a stranger

thousands of miles away, Seda, an aging woman in a retirement home in

Los Angeles.

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EGG & SPOON

One of our recommended books is Egg & Spoon by Gregory Maguire

In this tour de force, master storyteller Gregory Maguire offers a dazzling novel for fantasy lovers of all ages.

Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina,

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FLORA & ULYSSES

Flora and Ulysses

Holy unanticipated occurrences! A cynic meets an unlikely superhero in the Newbery award winning novel by master storyteller Kate DiCamillo.

It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength,

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