American Literature

Four chronically homeless people - Amelia One Sky, Timber, Double Dick and Digger - seek refuge in a warm movie theater when a severe Arctic front descends on the city. During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world and, once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favor of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck.

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous, physical work, and the men take care of the children.

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife - a paper wife. On the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing. Dreams of a better life in America give Mei Ling the strength to endure the treacherous journey and detainment on Angel Island. But when she finally reaches San Francisco, she’s met with a surprise. Her husband, Chinn Kai Li, is a houseboy, not the successful merchant he led her to believe.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.

Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.

Alicia was born to the good life, she's entitled to the best, and she'll do anything to get it. Even if it means piling up thousands of dollars in debt. Even if it means denying to everyone - even herself - that her love of shopping has gotten way out of control.

This book is considered a prophetical novel foretelling the advent of nuclear weapons. A constant theme in Wells’ work, such as his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the role of energy and technological advance as a determinant of human progress. The novel opens with this: "The story of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal...."

Ten years ago, an FBI investigation was about to expose a scandal in the art world that would have been front-page news in New York and London. After a trail of fake paintings of astonishing quality led federal agents to art dealers, experts, and major auction houses, the investigation inexplicably ended, despite an abundance of evidence. The case was closed and the FBI file was marked “exempt from public disclosure”. Now that the statute of limitations on these crimes has expired and the case appears hermetically sealed shut by the FBI, this audiobook, Caveat Emptor, is that artist, Ken Perenyi’s, confession.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block - her neighbor, Theo. But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear.

Reservation "bad boy" Thomas Begay is found dead drunk under the La Plata Bridge, which is not unusual for him. What is unusual, however, is that beautiful BIA investigator Patsy Greyhorse is found lying beside him, not drunk or even a Navajo but very dead nonetheless. Charlie Yazzie, fresh from law school, risks his career and even his life to help his old friend. The answer seems to lie with the Yeenaaldiooshii...should one choose to believe in such things.

From New York Times best-selling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American-Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American-Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a vengeful way.

When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.

Owning the Stone-Chance Protection Agency has its perks. It’s a profitable company that allows Ramsey and Keilah Stone to enjoy the finer things in life; however, it has also added an element of danger to their otherwise normal lifestyle.

When Lily's blind dog, Lucky, slips his collar and runs away across the wide-open blueberry barrens of Eastern Maine, it's Salma Santiago who manages to catch him. Salma, the daughter of migrant workers, is in the small town with her family for the blueberry-picking season.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.

Blanche White returns to Farleigh, North Carolina for the summer to help her best friend with her catering business. It's a homecoming rich with the potential for new romance and fraught with the pain of facing the man who raped her at knife-point years ago but was never prosecuted for the crime. Shortly after Blanche arrives, a young woman is murdered and the clues point to the rapist. Blanche investigates, determined not to let him get away with another crime...nor is she willing to let his money-hungry sister marry a sweet, mentally-challenged man for his wealth.

Thirty-two-year-old Denise Jackson has everything a woman could ask for: a lovely home in the posh Dallas suburbs, a fancy car, a loving husband, and a beautiful nine-year-old daughter, Deandra. While seemingly having it all, Denise still feels incomplete. Her nine years of marriage to Jeff have been nothing more for her than a marriage of convenience to raise Deandra in a stable two-parent home. She pretends to be happily married, but allows her husband and best friend to carry on an affair, giving Denise time to get better acquainted with her multimillionaire client, Greg Adams.