With its tree-lined streets and curbside planters
brimming with spring bulbs, Amberley,
Massachusetts seems a good place for Cate Saunders
to start over. It’s been two years since her husband,
John, was killed in Iraq, and life has become
something to simply struggle through. Cate’s new
job as a caregiver doesn’t pay much, but the locals
are welcoming. Cate’s barely unpacked before she’s
drawn—reluctantly at first—into a circle of friends.
There’s Gaby, who nourishes her diner customers’ spirits as well as their
bodies;
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Set against the tumultuous background of apartheid South Africa, a powerful and moving debut about family, sacrifice, and discovering what it means to belong…
Celia Mphephu knows her place in the world. A black servant working in the white suburbs of 1960s Johannesburg, she’s all too aware of her limitations. Nonetheless, she has found herself a comfortable corner: She has a job, can support her faraway family, and is raising her youngest child, Miriam.
But as racial tensions explode, Celia’s world shifts. Her employers decide to flee the political turmoil and move to England—and they ask to adopt Miriam and take her with them.
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A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
A simmering literary thriller of the unbreakable
bonds between mothers and their children, The
Winter People showcases the spellbinding talent
that has made Jennifer McMahon a bestselling
storyteller. This tale of ghostly secrets and dark
choices takes us to rural West Hall, Vermont, a
town known for strange disappearances. The most
legendary victim is Sara Harrison Shea. In 1908, she was found dead in the
field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter,
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When India Hartley is accused of murder, she must uncover the deceptions of others to save
herself.
India Hartley, a famous and beautiful actress, is now alone after her father’s death and embarks
upon a tour of theaters across the South. Her first stop is Savannah’s Southern Palace. On the eve
of the second night’s performance, something goes horribly wrong. Her co-star, Arthur Sterling, is
shot dead on stage in front of a packed house, and India is arrested and accused of the crime.
A benefactor hires Philip Sinclair,
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When young Martha Long’s feckless mother hooks
up with Jackser (“that bandy aul bastard”), and
starts having more babies, the abuse and poverty
in the house grow more acute. Martha is regularly
sent out to beg and more often steal, and her wiles
(as a child of seven or eight) are often the only
thing keeping food on the table. Jackser is a master
of paranoid anger and outbursts, keeping the children in an unheated
tenement, unable to go to school, ready prey to his unpredictable rages.
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In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses our fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in our children’s air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, she suggests that we cannot immunize our children, or ourselves, against the world. As she explores the metaphors surrounding immunity, Biss extends her conversations with other mothers to meditations on the myth of Achilles, Voltaire’s Candide, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Susan Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors,
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