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THE MEURSAULT INVESTIGATION

He was the brother of “the Arab” killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus’s classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling’s memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name—Musa—and describes the events that led to Musa’s casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.

In a bar in Oran, night after night, he ruminates on his solitude, on his broken heart, on his anger with men desperate for a god, and on his disarray when faced with a country that has so disappointed him.

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NATCHEZ BURNING

Raised in the southern splendor of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows of duty from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor has been accused of murdering the African American nurse with whom he worked in the dark days of the 1960s. Once a crusading prosecutor, Penn is determined to save his father, but Tom, stubbornly invoking doctor-patient privilege, refuses even to speak in his own defense.

Penn's quest for the truth sends him deep into his father's past, where a sexually charged secret lies. More chilling, this long-buried sin is only one thread in a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the vicious Double Eagles,

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A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD

Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize

Baileys Women's Prize Shortlist 2015

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations,

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BRIGHT LINES

• Short-listed for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

“A Brooklyn-by-way-of-Bangladesh Royal Tenenbaums.”—The Denver Post

A vibrant debut novel, set in Brooklyn and Bangladesh, follows three young women and one family struggling to make peace with secrets and their past

For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she’s always felt more at ease in nature than with people.

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CRENSHAW

One of our recommended books is Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate

In her first novel since winning the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience.

Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There’s no more money for rent. And not much for food, either. His parents, his little sister, and their dog may have to live in their minivan. Again. Crenshaw is a cat. He’s large, he’s outspoken, and he’s imaginary. He has come back into Jackson’s life to help him. But is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything?

Crenshaw proves in unexpected ways that friends matter,

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AND THE DARK SACRED NIGHT

Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with

twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—

and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a

strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has

never known the identity of his father—a mystery

that his wife insists he must solve to move forward

with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the

mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband,

Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There,

in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the

bittersweet decade when their families were joined.

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