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AGNES SHARP AND THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME

One of our recommended books is Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime by Leonie Swann

This highly anticipated follow-up to The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp finds Agnes and her octogenarian friends face-to-face with a killer after winning a trip to a beautiful hotel in the seaside town of Cornwall.

The year is rapidly drawing to an end, Hettie the tortoise is hibernating and Agnes, Charlie, Marshall, and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. They’ve had enough of the broken boiler, draughty bedrooms, and Christmas jingles on the radio. And to top it all off, another series of murders is rocking the hamlet of Duck End. It seems like every villager and his dog is trying to make up for all of the thwarted murders of the past thirty years.

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RICKY & OTHER LOVE STORIES

One of our recommended books is Ricky & Other Love Stories by Whitney Collins

From Whitney Collins, the award-winning author of Big Bad, arrives a new collection of dark, derelict, and hilarious tales about—you guessed it—love.

With Ricky, Collins applies her sharp eye, black humor, and generous heart to love stories (and the stories we tell ourselves about love). Among the wacky, tacky, lovesick, and lovelorn characters are: Ilona, the misanthropic mother and unhappy fiancé who is increasingly transfixed by a rash of local shark attacks; Imogen, the sperm bank client who cultivates the love she madly desires inside herself; and Aurora Flood, the coma survivor on a mission to plant a sacred seed from the Olive Garden.

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WHY WE READ

One of our recommended books is Why We Read by Shannon Reed

A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile and Thurber Prize finalist.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human.

Shannon Reed, a long-time teacher, lifelong reader and The New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind,

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UNRULY

One of our recommended books is Unruly by David Mitchell

A rollicking history of England’s kings and queens from Arthur to Elizabeth I, a tale of power, glory, and excessive beheadings by award-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects’ destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits.

Taking us back to King Arthur (spoiler: he didn’t exist),

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THE LAST SUPPER CLUB

One of our recommended books is The Last Supper Club by Matthew Batt

During a year on sabbatical from his university position, Matthew Batt realized he needed money—fast—and it just so happened that one of the biggest breweries in the Midwest was launching a restaurant and looking to hire. So it was that the forty-something tenured professor found himself waiting tables at a high-end restaurant situated in a Minneapolis brewery. And loving it. Telling the story of Batt’s early work in restaurants, from a red sauce joint possibly run by the mob to an ill-conceived fusion concept eatery, The Last Supper Club then details his experiences at the fine dining restaurant,

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DEARBORN

One of our recommended books is Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine

A sharp, tender, and uproariously funny portrait of the lives of Arab American community members in Dearborn, Michigan.

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool,

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