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THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

After Middle Eastern war correspondent Caddie Blair loses her colleague and lover in an ambush, she is devastated by grief and unmoored by the sudden loss of her journalistic detachment. Operating without her normal instinct and internal compass, Caddie becomes a member of the community, no longer an outsider, and therefore increas­ingly vulnerable and volatile, especially in the face of her growing desire for revenge. Illuminating and perceptive, The Distance Between Us is as relevant and timely as it is powerful and gripping.

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DANIEL ISN’T TALKING

When Melanie Marsh learns that her son Daniel is autistic, she becomes determined to fight to teach Daniel to speak, play, and become as normal as possible. Melanie’s enchanting disposition has helped her weather some of life’s storms, but Daniel’s autism may just push her over the brink, destroying her resolute optimism and bringing her unsteady marriage to its end. Surprisingly funny yet deeply moving, Daniel Isn’t Talking is the story of a mother and a family in crisis. What sets it apart from most novels about difficult subjects is Marti Leimbach’s ability to write about a sad and frightening situation with a seamless blend of warmth,

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THE LOST MOTHER

It is the Great Depression. Abandoned by his beautiful wife, Henry and his two young children, Thomas and Margaret, spend that summer in a tent on the edge of Black Pond. Henry, an itinerant butcher, struggles to provide for his children but often must leave them alone as he travels the county in search of work. And while Henry loves his children deeply, he is devastated by their mother’s desertion, refusing to tell them why she left or if she’ll return. When Mrs. Phyllis Farley, a prosperous neighbor, begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son,

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THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER

One of our recommended books is The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down’s syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives,

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SWEETNESS IN THE BELLY

An evocative and richly imagined story of a British Muslim woman’s search for love and belonging in two very different worlds.

When Lilly is eight years old, her pot-smoking hippy British parents leave her at a Sufi shrine in Morocco and inform her they will be back to collect her in three days. Three weeks later, she learns they’ve been murdered. Lilly fills that haunted hollow in her life with the intense study and memorization of the Qur’an under the patient care of the Sufi saint’s disciple she was entrusted to. Years later, her journey from Morocco to Harar,

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THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

A spare, lucid, and remarkably moving examination of the year following her husband’s sudden death just before their fortieth anniversary, The Year of Magical Thinking is the story of Didion’s search for answers, for relief, and above all for the chance to change the course of events.

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