From the massively talented Gish Jen comes a barbed, moving, and stylistically dazzling new novel about the elusive nature of kinship. The Wongs describe themselves as a “half half” family, but the actual fractions are more complicated, given Carnegie’s Chinese heritage, his wife Blondie’s WASP background, and the various ethnic permutations of their adopted and biological children. Things get even more interesting with the arrival of Lanlan, Carnegie’s Mainland Chinese relative who comes courtesy of Carnegie’s mother’s will. Is Lanlan a very good nanny, a heartless climber, or a posthumous gift from a formidable mother who never stopped wanting her son to marry a nice Chinese girl?
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Despite their disastrous first meeting, complete with a ruined birthday cake and insulting remarks, it was obvious to bystanders, even then, that Morgan, aged 89, and Dixie, 79, were fated for each other. The two begin to date and ultimately move in together—for economic reasons, they agree. But the business-only relationship changes and strengthens as the couple unite to combat illness, scandal, and a near-fatal accident.
The story is about finding love at any age, but also reveals how past insecurities, humiliations, and fears can haunt a person throughout his days. Dixie fears intimacy. Morgan has concealed important details about his divorce,
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Tzippy Goldman was born for marriage. She and her mother had always assumed she’d graduate high school, be set up with the right boy, and have a beautiful wedding. But at twenty-two, Tzippy’s fast approaching spinsterhood. She dreams of escape; instead, she leaves for a year in Jerusalem. There she meets—remeets—Baruch, the son of her mother’s college roommate. When Tzippy last saw him, his name was Bryan and he wore a Yankees-logo yarmulke. Now he has adopted the black hat of the ultra-Orthodox, the tradition in which Tzippy was raised. Twelve weeks later, they’re engaged . . . and discovering that achieving a balance between desire and tradition,
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In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, New Jersey, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America—and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.
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Barcelona, 1945—A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax’s other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget,
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In the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft.
In the style of Griffin and Sabine.
In the woods of Northern Wisconsin . . .
A terrible darkness stirs.
Dr. Charles Marsh arrives at the Kriegmoor Psychiatric Institute in Bayfield Wisconsin, eager to take on his new duties as a means of distancing himself from a scandal that erupted at his previous post in Texas.
During Marsh’s first days at the Institute, he is assigned the case of Kari Hansen, a young girl teetering on the edge of madness, haunted by visions of shadows that only she can see.
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