The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone
returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed
edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable
results…
Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at
the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new
novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known
in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time
for a liaison with an underage girl,
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Hannah Payne’s life has been devoted to church and family. But after she’s convicted of murder, she awakens in a new body to a nightmarish new life. She finds herself lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home, for whom observing new Chromes–criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to match the class of their crime–is a sinister form of entertainment. Hannah is a Red for the crime of murder. The victim, says the State of Texas, was her unborn child, and Hannah is determined to protect the identity of the father,
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With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely
resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug
money ten years ago. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and
sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional
facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna
is now inmate #11187-424—one of the millions of women who disappear
“down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first
strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this
strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary
rules,
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For every young Chinese woman in 1930s Shanghai, following the path of duty takes precedence over personal desires.
For Feng, that means becoming the bride of a wealthy businessman in a marriage arranged by her parents. In the enclosed world of the Sang household—a place of public ceremony and private cruelty—fulfilling her duty means bearing a male heir.
The life that has been forced on her makes Feng bitter and resentful, and she plots a terrible revenge. But with the passing years comes a reckoning, and Feng must reconcile herself with the sacrifices and terrible choices she has made in order to assure her place in the family and society—even as the violent,
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“If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. But I didn’t, and I saw something fall from the rear deck of the opposite ferry: a small, wide-eyed human face, in one tiny frozen moment, as it plummeted toward the water.”
When she witnesses a small child tumbling from a ferry into Lake Champlain, Troy Chance dives in without thinking. Harrowing moments later, she bobs to the surface, pulling a terrified little boy with her. As the ferry disappears into the distance, she begins a bone-chilling swim nearly a mile to shore with a tiny passenger on her back.
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Beautiful and ambitious, Soo-Ja Choi attempts to find happiness in a land where wives have no rights and mothers own nothing, where love remains elusive, and the only way to survive is to live the lessons of Confucian tradition: perseverance, strength, loyalty, and grace. Charting her way through an ill-advised marriage, Soo-Ja must navigate the intrigue and dangers of living with her conniving in-laws, all the while longing for her true love of the past, the elusive Doctor Yul. And when he enters her life again, Soo-Ja is confronted with a final chance at happiness, but must make a mother’s ultimate choice.
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