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Staff Pick
Roxanne says: Vacuum in the Dark is a irreverent, touching, a no holds barred look at the house cleaning industry and the strange voyeurism and relationships that develop when someone sees your ‘dirty side’.
Bryn says: Let's add this to the "required reading" list for grown-ups. The research studies described within will tickle your spine and really stick with you, as will the wisdom. These authors make big concepts seem so simple and make goodness, so attractive.
Georgia says: And After the Fire, a novel by Lauren Belfer, uses a fictional cantata as a device to reveal the story of Johann Sebastian Bach and his actual extreme anti-semitism, which was shared by his compatriots. This is a beautifully told story that weaves the present day with the past--part mystery and part love story.
Scott says: Where else can you enjoy the clear and compelling writing of two celebrated cultural critics and philosophers in a single volume all for the price of lunch? "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" alone is a priceless, piercing essay for our time and all time.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST
"Bennett's tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it's especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison's 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye." --Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal
"A story of absolute, universal timelessness ...For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be...." - Entertainment Weekly
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, 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. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.Elsie says: Really fascinating!
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
TIME Magazine・NPR・Library Journal・The Globe and Mail・Lilith・Forward Magazine・Toronto Star・The New Yorker
Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest's The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques--all killed at Auschwitz.
Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.
Elsie says: A great translation about a difficult subject. Stunning!
Instant New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Thriller of 2021
A Washington Post Top 10 Thriller or Mystery of 2021
"If you love a mystery, then you'll devour [Northern Spy] . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book." --Reese Witherspoon "A chilling, gorgeously written tale . . . Berry keeps the tension almost unbearably high." --The New York Times Book Review The acclaimed author of Under the Harrow and A Double Life returns with her most riveting novel to date: the story of two sisters who become entangled with the IRA A producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in Belfast one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground in the two decades since the Good Friday Agreement, but they never really went away, and lately bomb threats, security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the news reporter requests the public's help in locating those responsible for the robbery, security footage reveals Tessa's sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland. And besides, Marian is vacationing on the north coast. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth about Marian comes to light, Tessa is faced with impossible choices that will test the limits of her ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn. Riveting, atmospheric, and exquisitely written, Northern Spy is at once a heart-pounding story of the contemporary IRA and a moving portrait of sister- and motherhood, and of life in a deeply divided society.
Nora says: Supremely suspenseful tale of two sisters, set in the real world of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The fictional kin of the brilliant non-fiction “Say Nothing” by Patrick Keefe. The author of the huge hit “Under the Harrow,” Flynn Berry is only getting better with each book!
Instant New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Thriller of 2021
A Washington Post Top 10 Thriller or Mystery of 2021
"If you love a mystery, then you'll devour [Northern Spy] . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book."--Reese Witherspoon "A chilling, gorgeously written tale . . . Berry keeps the tension almost unbearably high." -The New York Times Book Review The acclaimed author of Under the Harrow and A Double Life returns with her most riveting novel to date: the story of two sisters who become entangled with the IRA A producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in Belfast one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground in the two decades since the Good Friday Agreement, but they never really went away, and lately bomb threats, security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the news reporter requests the public's help in locating those responsible for the robbery, security footage reveals Tessa's sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland. And besides, Marian is vacationing on the north coast. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth about Marian comes to light, Tessa is faced with impossible choices that will test the limits of her ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn. Riveting, atmospheric, and exquisitely written, Northern Spy is at once a heart-pounding story of the contemporary IRA and a moving portrait of sister- and motherhood, and of life in a deeply divided society.
Nora says: Supremely suspenseful tale of two sisters, set in the real world of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The fictional kin of the brilliant non-fiction Say Nothing by Patrick Keefe. The author of the huge hit Under the Harrow, Flynn Berry is only getting better with each book!
Scott says: Berry left academia and the literary world to return to his native Kentucky to farm and write about culture, agriculture, and humanity's impact on the natural world. Truly one of our greatest critics of the post industrial, postmodern society.