Fiction

Description: Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children--four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family--knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future. Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. It is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect. -- Provided by publisher.

Description: "A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing in the same corner of the Cherokee Nation. Cherokee America Singer, known as "Check," a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check's mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community--and painfully expel one of their own. Cherokee America vividly, and often with humor, explores the bonds--of blood and place, of buried histories and half-told tales, of past grief and present injury--that connect a colorful, eclectic cast of characters, anchored by the clever, determined, and unforgettable Check." -- Provided by publisher

Description: "A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He's young, but he's seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he's not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he's not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption. It's 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society's most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets. As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to inflitrate the Alex, Berlin's central office, just as the shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich. It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theater and Bernie's no exception. As he gets deeper into the city's sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world. But even this space can't remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you're man enough to kill for it"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "P.R. Chandrasekhar, the celebrated professor of economics at Cambridge, is at a turning point. He has sacrificed his family for his career, but his conservative brand of economics is no longer in fashion, and yet again he has lost the Nobel Prize to a rival. His wife has left him for a free spirited West Coast psychiatrist and relocated to Boulder, Colorado. His son, a capitalist guru with a cult following, mocks his father's life work; his middle daughter, the apple of his eye, has become a Marxist and refuses to speak to him; and his youngest daughter is struggling through her teenage years with the help of psychedelic drugs. And then, the final indignity: He is hit by a bicycle and forced to confront his mortality. Professor Chandra's American doctor instructs him to change his workaholic ways and "follow his bliss"--and so he does, right to the coast of California, and into the heart of his dysfunctional family. Witty, charming, and all too human, Professor Chandra's path to enlightenment will enchant and uplift readers from all walks of life"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: What is considered a family, and who gets to define it? In 1964, despite the racial tension occurring in a post-WWII America, Catherine and Jonathan adopt a baby girl from Korea. This unconventional choice brings disapproval from Catherine's family, which creates an even closer bond between her and her daughter. Narrated in alternating chapters by Catherine, her adopted daughter Min, and Min's best friend Laura, Scissors, Paper, Stone spans twenty years of love, loss, and the complex reality of female relationships. By 1985 Catherine is living a risk-free life of her own accord, Laura is dating her way through college, and Min is a massage therapist who has come out as a lesbian and is learning to embrace her Korean heritage. After Min and Laura take a summer road trip together, the shifts of their friendship force all three women to examine the assumptions they've been living by and to make choices about the roles they want to play in each other's lives. -- from back cover.

Description: Henri Skinner is a hardened ex-war reporter on the run from his past. On his way to see his son, Sam, for the first time in years, Henri steps into the road without looking and collides with oncoming traffic. He is rushed to a nearby hospital where he floats, comatose, between dreams, reliving the fairytales of his childhood and the secrets that made him run away in the first place. After the accident, Sam, a thirteen-year old synesthete with an IQ of 144 and an appetite for science fiction, waits by his father's bedside every day. There he meets Eddie Tomlin, a woman forced to confront her love for Henri after all these years, and twelve-year old Madelyn Zeidler, a coma patient like Henri and the sole survivor of a traffic accident that killed her family. As these four very different individuals fight--for hope, for patience, for life--they are bound together inextricably, facing the ravages of loss and first love side by side.

Description: "In the chaos of early-1990s Russia, the wife and stepdaughter of a paralyzed veteran conceal the Soviet Union's collapse from him in order to keep him--and his pension--alive until it turns out the tough old man has other plans. After her stepfather's stroke, Marina hangs Brezhnev's portrait on the wall, edits the Pravda articles read to him, and uses her media connections to cobble together entire newscasts of events that never happened. Meanwhile, her mother, Nina Alexandrovna, can barely navigate the bewildering new world outside, especially in comparison to the blunt reality of her uncommunicative husband. As Marina is caught up in a local election campaign that gets out of hand, Nina discovers that her husband is conspiring as well--to kill himself and put an end to the charade. Olga Slavnikova's The Man Who Couldn't Die tells the story of how two women try to prolong a life--and the means and meaning of their own lives--by creating a world that doesn't change, a Soviet Union that never crumbled. " -- Back cover

Description: In the 1830s, Maire O'Farren and her brother, Seanin, flee Ireland's poverty and political strife for a better life in America. Because of hostility to immigrants, Maire changes her name to Mary Ballard and assumes a British accent to secure a job as lady's maid to the rich and beautiful Charlotte Walden. Seanin, now calling himself Johnny Prior, gets a position in the Walden family's stables so he can stay close to Mary. When Seanin falls for Charlotte, Mary facilitates their trysts even though she's also in love with Charlotte. Liddie, a black prostitute who frequents the Hibernian, an Irish bar, provides sensual comfort to soothe Mary's heartache and the two embark on an affair. Charlotte's commitment to Johnny is tested when her mother forces her to choose an appropriate husband. As Charlotte struggles with life-changing decisions, Mary learns the secret of the connection between her brother and what really goes on at the Hibernian.

Description: Mildred is dying of Alzheimer's Disease. As her memories fade, she requires the aid of a full-time android to assist her in her everyday life. The android's duty: to tend to Mildred as Alzheimer's steals her away one memory at a time, and to pretend to be her absent family. Soon, Mildred passes away, and the android Carey must find a new purpose in the world--and in its new family: Paul Owens, the overworked businessman. Susan Owens, the dedicated teacher. And Millie, a curious little girl who will grow up alongside her android best friend. As the humans around it age and change, Carey struggles to understand life's challenges and to make its own path. Carey must learn to live. To grow. To care. Today I Am Carey is a story about life... and an android's memories.

Description: "One year after the president has plunged the world into nuclear war, a journalist takes refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. On assignment, she documents internet humor at the end of the world, hoping along the way to find the final resting place of her wife and daughter. What she uncovers, hidden amid spiraling memes and twitter jokes in an archive of the internet's remnants, are references to an enigmatic figure known only as Birdcrash, who may hold the key to an uncertain future."--Back cover