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CLOSE YOUR EYES, HOLD HANDS

A Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year

In a voice that shifts from anguished to sarcastic,

heartbroken to hopeful, sixteen-year-old Emily

Shepard recounts her solitary odyssey after the

meltdown of a nuclear power plant near her home

in northern Vermont. Both her parents worked at

the plant: her father as chief engineer, her mother

as head of public relations. Her father had a reputation as a heavy drinker,

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COAL RIVER

In this vibrant new historical novel, the acclaimed

author of The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind

explores one young woman’s determination to put

an end to child labor in a Pennsylvania mining

town…

As a child, Emma Malloy left isolated Coal River,

Pennsylvania, vowing never to return. Now,

orphaned and penniless at nineteen, she accepts a

train ticket from her aunt and uncle and travels back to the rough-hewn

community. Treated like a servant by her relatives,

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ELIZABETH IS MISSING

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and

doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops

and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is

unrecognizable—or her daughter, Helen, seems a

total stranger.

But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend

Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells

her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going

on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

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FOR TODAY I AM A BOY

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

2015 PEN/Hemingway Award, Finalist

A fiercely assured debut novel about four second-generation

Chinese sisters, one of whom happens

to be a boy.

At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name

Juan Chaun, “powerful king.” To his parents, newly

settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted

only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant

father’s dreams of Western masculinity.

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THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone

survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks

solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of

Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri,

the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner

and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former

gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her

hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage

Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her

sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun

Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.”

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GIRL WAITS WITH GUN

One of our recommended books is Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Drunken Botanist comes an enthralling novel based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation’s first female crime fighters.

Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters from city to country fifteen years ago. When a powerful, ruthless factory owner runs down their buggy, a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks,

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