What makes and unmakes a Jew? Julian Treslove, a middle-aged bachelor in London, grew up knowing just one Jew: his friend and rival Sam Finkler. Treslove secretly calls all Jews “Finklers” and wonders if he’ll ever understand “Finkler” humor or Middle East politics. While Treslove works as a celebrity double at parties, Sam Finkler is a celebrity—a pop philosopher, television personality, and bestselling author of self-help books. One night, Treslove and Finkler visit their mutual friend Libor Sevcik, a ninety-year-old Czech Jew. Finkler and Libor lost their wives in the same month, and now Treslove feels doubly excluded—he’s not a Finkler or a widower.
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David Carter is an obsessive collector, and the curator of the local history museum. In addition to overseeing the community’s archives, he has, since boyhood, diligently archived the items that tell his own life story: birth certificate, school report cards, movie and train tickets. But when a senile relative lets slip a long-buried family secret, David is forced to consider that his whole carefully cataloged life may be constructed around a lie. In fits and starts, his world begins to unravel.
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Sebastian Prendergast lives with his eccentric grandmother in a geodesic dome. His homeschooling has taught him much-but he’s learned little about girls, junk food, or loud, angry music. Then fate casts Sebastian out of the dome, and he finds a different kind of tutor in Jared Whitcomb: a chain-smoking sixteen-year-old heart transplant recipient who teaches him the ways of rebellion. Together they form a punk band and plan to take the local church talent show by storm. But when his grandmother calls him back to the futurist life she has planned for him, he must decide whether to answer the call-or start a future of his own.
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In this Pygmalion tale of a novelist turned bond trader, Martha McPhee brings to life the greed and riotous wealth of New York during the heady days of the second gilded age. India Palmer, living the cash-strapped existence of the writer, is visiting wealthy friends in Maine when a yellow biplane swoops down from the clear blue sky to bring a stranger into her life, one who will change everything. The stranger is Win Johns, a swaggering and intellectually bored trader of mortgage- backed securities. Charmed by India’s intelligence, humor, and inquisitive nature—and aware of her near-desperate financial situation—Win poses a proposition: “Give me eighteen months and I’ll make you a world-class bond trader.”
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Spanning four decades, and three continents, Picking Bones from Ash tells the story of Satomi and her daughter Rumi. Satomi, a talented pianist, lives with her mother in northern Japan. When her mother remarries and Satomi gains two stepsisters, she feels betrayed. Thirty years later, Rumi lives a sheltered life in San Francisco working as an art dealer with her father, but the ghosts of her past call her to visit her mother’s homeland.
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The remarkable heroines of Terry McMillan’s unforgettable novel are back—and are at a crossroads that will define their future. All four are learning to heal past hurts, and are more determined than ever to reclaim their lives and dreams. They’ve exhaled: now they are learning to breathe.
Now, McMillan revisits Savannah, Gloria, Bernadine, and Robin fifteen years later. Each is at her own midlife crossroads: Savannah has awakened to the fact that she’s made too many concessions in her marriage, and decides to face life single again-at fifty-one. Bernadine has watched her megadivorce settlement dwindle, been swindled by her husband number two,
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