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Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker! "Cultural clashes, political satire, Oedipal conflicts, elegant prose--they're all here in this romp of a book." --Oprah Daily A Phenomenal Book Club Pick and a New York Times Book Review Group Text Selection, Love Marriage is a glorious moving novel from Booker Prize shortlisted Monica Ali, who has "an inborn generosity that cannot be learned" (The New York Times Book Review). In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe. As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin's relationship and that of her parents, a "love marriage," according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life. A gloriously acute observer of class, sexual mores, and the mysteries of the human heart, Monica Ali has written a "riveting" (BookPage, starred review) social comedy and a moving, revelatory story of two cultures, two families, and two people trying to understand one another that's "sure to please Ali's fans and win some new ones" (Publishers Weekly).
Roxanne says: An excellent relationship fiction book centered on a pre-med student on the doctor fast track. The main character Yasmin begins to questions her career path and relationship. Was she pressured by her doctor father or is this really her true calling? Is her relationship with another doctor simply something that appears model perfect or does it really meet her needs?
This "spectacular... absorbing and distinguished work...is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America" (The New York Times Book Review). The House of the Spirits, which introduced Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future. One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate.
In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father--and herself. In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man's pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan. As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny. A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name Is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.
![Violeta [English Edition]](https://shop.sarasotabooks.com/sites/shop.sarasotabooks.com/files/imagecache/product_list/isbn_images/9780593496220.jpg)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - This sweeping novel from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. "An immersive saga about a passion-filled life."--People ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Real Simple, Reader's Digest Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration" (People), from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta
"Allende's storytelling walks a lyrical romanticism on roads imposed by social and political turmoil."--NPR Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht--the night his family loses everything. As her child's safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers--and never stop dreaming.
"Allende's storytelling walks a lyrical romanticism on roads imposed by social and political turmoil."--NPR Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht--the night his family loses everything. As her child's safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers--and never stop dreaming.
Literary icon and great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.
"Only an alchemist as wise and sure as Alvarez could swirl the elements of folklore and the flavor of magical realism around her modern prose and make it all sing . . . Lively, joyous . . . often witty, occasionally somber and elegiac." --Luis Alberto Urrea, The New York Times Book Review "Engaging and written in a playful, crystal-clear prose, this novel explores friendship, love, sisterhood, living between cultures, and how people can be haunted by the things they don't finish . . . Entertaining . . . Heartwarming." --Gabino Iglesias, The Boston Globe **Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, B&N Reads, Literary Hub, HipLatina, BookPage, BBC.com, Zibby Mag, and more** Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
Masterfully evoking the breathtaking beauty of India, Manisha Jolie Amin's lyrical debut novel follows a young boy whose life takes an unexpected turn when he is sent to live with a reclusive but renowned musician. "Kalu picked up the flute by his side and started to play. The sound was deep and full, as if he were translating his thoughts into music. It stayed in the air like dust floating on the sunlight, and each note held the promise of something not quite spoken but maybe heard in the darkness of a dream." Abandoned as a young child, Kalu, a cheeky street kid, has carved out a life for himself in rural India. In the quiet village of Hastinapore, Kalu has also found friends: Bal, the solitary boy who tends the local buffaloes, and Malti, a gentle servant girl, who with her mistress, Ganga Ba, has watched over Kalu since he first wandered into the small town. One day, perched high in the branches of a banyan tree, Kalu chooses a leaf, rolls it tightly, and as he's done for as long as he can remember, blows through it. His pure, simple notes dance through the air and attract a traveling healer, whose interest will change Kalu's life forever, setting him on a path he would never have dreamt possible and testing his belief in himself and his sense of identity. Rich in texture and atmosphere, Dancing to the Flute is a heartwarming story of a community's joys and sorrows, the transformative powers of music, the many faces of friendship, and a boy's journey, against all odds, to become a man.
From one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time, an autobiographical novel that's a tender, witty exploration of the hardest questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die "[A] charismatic compound of fact and fiction...Martin Amis has retained the power to surprise." --The New York Times This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the latest literary gossip (not to mention ideas, books, and where to lunch), Hitch was Amis's wingman and adviser, especially in the matter of the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps--an obsession Amis must somehow put behind him if he is ever to find love, marriage, a plausible run at happiness. Other figures competing as Amis's main influencers are his literary fathers--Kingsley, of course; his hero Saul Bellow; the weirdly self-finessing poet Philip Larkin--and his significant literary mothers, including Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard. Moving among these greats to set his own path, he winds up surveying the horrors of the twentieth century, and the still-unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks on the twenty-first--and considers what all of this has taught him about how to live and how to be a writer. The result is a love letter to life--and to the people in his life--that achieves a new level of confidentiality with his readers, giving us the previously unseen portrait of his extraordinary world.
Named one of Time's 100 best novels in the English language, Money is "savagely hilarious. It risks, it boils with energy . . . it even manages to shock" (The Washington Post).
Including a new introduction by Lorrie Moore, author of I Am Homeless If This Is Not My HomeOriginally published in 1984, Martin Amis's classic novel Money is a searing critique of late-stage capitalism that remains a poignant and relevant commentary on the trappings of materialism and the illusions of success. Money is everything. Especially to John Self, a successful commercial director from London. He spends his days steeped in booze and pornography and prostitutes, lost in the hedonistic lifestyle of his peers. But John has bigger dreams, and he sets off for America on the invitation of the filmmaker Fielding Goodney in the hope of getting his first feature film, titled Good Money, off the ground. It is in America where John must contend with his degenerative proclivities, or risk the life he's built. Money is Martin Amis at his very best: a hilarious, razor-sharp, and wholly singular storyteller.
Newly reissued for the modern reader, Martin Amis's Success is "a terrifying, painfully funny, Swiftian exercise in moral disgust" (The Observer).
Foster brothers Terence Service and Gregory Riding could not be more different from one another--Terry "a quivering condom of neurosis and ineptitude" and Greg a "bundle of contempt, vanity and stock-response." After the shocking killing of Terry's child sister, he is taken in by the aristocratic and wealthy Riding family and introduced to his new foster brother and sister, Greg and Ursula. As adults, the two boys unhappily share a tiny apartment in London. Greg spends his days tormenting Terry and engaging in plenty of messy, meaningless sex, while Terry suffers through a dead-end job and exists wholly in his brother's cold and looming shadow, licking his wounds from a lifetime of romantic and social failures. Told throughout the course of one year in Terry and Greg's lives, Success shows just how fickle luck can be, and how quickly one's life can be totally, horribly changed. With caustic, searing prose, Success is a firecracker revenge story for the ages.