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OLGA DIES DREAMING

One of our recommended books is Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots­, all in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers.

Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can’t seem to find her own…until she meets Matteo,

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REELING

One of our recommended books is Reeling by Sarah Stonich

What stage of grief is it when your grandmother’s ghost keeps popping up on your electronic devices? Denial? For RayAnne that seems to be the stage for launching the second season of Fishing!—in New Zealand. Ready or not, she is taking public television’s first all-women fishing talk show on the road, putting the cold Minnesota winter in the rearview mirror—which, it turns out, Gran is haunting, too.

After a challenging first season, and RayAnne’s serendipitous ascension to host, there’s a lot at stake. With camera-wielding twins Rongo and Rangi along as crew and tour guides,

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SAVAGE TONGUES

One of our recommended books is Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

A new novel by PEN/Faulkner Award winner Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, “written with the intensity of early Marguerite Duras and Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment,” about a young woman caught in an affair with a much older man, a personal and political exploration of desire, power, and human connection (The Millions).

It’s summer when Arezu, an Iranian American teenager, goes to Spain to meet her estranged father at an apartment he owns there. He never shows up, instead sending her a weekly allowance, care of his step-nephew, Omar, a forty-year-old Lebanese man.

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THE SECOND MRS. ASTOR

One of our recommended books is The Second Mrs. Astor by Shana Abé

In 1910, Jack Astor was one of the richest men in the world. Madeleine Force was a beautiful teenaged debutante suddenly thrust into fame simply for falling in love with a famous man nearly three decades her senior. From their scandalous courtship to their catastrophic honeymoon aboard the Titanic—a tragedy that transformed a pregnant Madeleine into the American Princess Diana of her time—their love story is brought to life in this captivating work of historical fiction by New York Times bestselling novelist Shana Abé…

Madeleine Force is just seventeen when she attracts the attention of John Jacob “Jack” Astor.

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NOTHING BURNS AS BRIGHT AS YOU

One of our recommended books is Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk

From acclaimed author Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an impassioned story about queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship that will keep your heart racing, and breaking, until the very last page.

Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.

They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.

Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past,

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THE METAL HEART

One of our recommended books is The Metal Heart by Caroline Lea

In the dark days of World War II, an unlikely romance blossoms between a Scottish woman and an Italian prisoner of war in this haunting novel with the emotional complexity of The Boat Runner and All the Light We Cannot See—a powerful and atmospheric story of love, jealousy, and conscience that illuminates the beauty of the human spirit from the author of The Glass Woman.

In the wake of the Allies’ victory in North Africa, 1,000 Italian soldiers have been sent to a remote island off the Scottish coast to wait out the war.

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