Selection Day

      Aravind Adiga
     Selection Day

Manju is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket -- if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented brother and is fascinated by CSI and curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know . . . Everyone around him, it seems, has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. But when Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change and he is faced by decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him. As sensitively observed as The White Tiger -- Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008 -- was brilliantly furious, Selection Day reveals another facet of Aravind Adiga's remarkable talent.

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    Citizens Creek

      Lalita Tademy
     Citizens Creek

The New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah Book Club Pick Cane River brings us the evocative story of a once-enslaved man who buys his freedom after serving as a translator during the American Indian Wars, and his granddaughter, who sustains his legacy of courage. Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his tenth birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Indians, settlers, and blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals. His talent earned him money--but would it also grant him freedom? And what would become of him and his family in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Indian Removal westward? Cow Tom's legacy lives on--especially in the courageous spirit of his granddaughter Rose. She rises to leadership of the family as they struggle against political and societal hostility intent on keeping blacks and Indians oppressed. But through it all, her grandfather's indelible mark of courage inspires her--in mind, in spirit, and in a family legacy that never dies. Written in two parts portraying the parallel lives of Cow Tom and Rose, Citizens Creek is a beautifully rendered novel that takes the reader deep into a little known chapter of American history. It is a breathtaking tale of identity, community, family--and above all, the power of an individual's will to make a difference.

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    Rush

      Nyrae Dawn
     Rush

This new adult, male/male romance will capture the audience who fell in love with Nyrae Dawn's Games Trilogy. For the love of the game. Brandon Chase has always defined himself by one thing: football. Tough and athletic, he is a great college player who enjoys the hard hits and the sweaty grind of the gridiron. But when Brandon is injured, only one person can help him get back on track-a forbidden love he's desperately tried to put behind him. Alec Andrews has never quite forgiven Brandon for walking away when their friendship turned into something more. But he can't deny help to one of his closest friends. As the two spend the long, hot summer working together, their old attraction comes flooding back. Now as Alec thinks about coming out to his conservative family and Brandon considers revealing he's a gay football player, the two men must be strong to fight for a love that could be the greatest rush of their lives. Approx. 70,000 words.

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    Wronged (Book 1)

      Sylvia McDaniel
     Wronged (Book 1)

Until the day of Jean Cuvier's death, his wives had no idea that he had promised until death do us part to more than one woman. Now, the Cuvier Widows must deal with his duplicity, while wondering who poisoned their wayward husband. Can they ever learn to trust and find love again?WrongedShock, anger and humiliation were the only emotions Marian Cuvier felt for her murdered husband, Jean, especially after the detective informed her she’s not the only woman he married. There are three Cuvier widows and each one is suspected of murder. After Jean’s death, Marian must enter the male dominated New Orleans business world and battle Jean’s handsome business partner, Louis Fournet to safeguard her children’s future and save their only source of income, Cuvier Shipping. Yet Louis has a way with women that Marian that arouses feelings she’s never experienced. Meanwhile Louis is wielding his power to sell the business without her knowledge. Can Marian learn to trust again or will Louis’ ruthless ambition shatter her heart as well as her future.

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    Homer's Daughter

      Robert Graves
     Homer's Daughter

In this innovative re-imagining of the Odyssey’s history, Sicilian princess Nausicaa recounts her story, and how she, not the poet Homer, came to write the Odyssey. Set in the eighth century B.C., it recounts the story of a determined young woman who lives an adventurous life: rescuing her father’s throne from outside threats, freeing herself from an abusive marriage, and saving her two younger brothers from certain death. Nausicaa is a passionate, religious, and dynamic heroine who is more than a match for the heroes in the epic poem she claims to have authored.

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    The Book of Daniel

      E. L. Doctorow
     The Book of Daniel

The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him. It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House. It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks. It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations. It is The Book of Daniel.

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    Gut Symmetries

      Jeanette Winterson
     Gut Symmetries

The highwire artist of the English novel redraws the romantic triangle for the post-Einsteinian universe, where gender is as elastic as matter, and any accurate Grand Unified Theory (GUT) must encompass desire alongside electromagnetism and gravity. One starry night on a boat in the mid-Atlantic, Alice, a brilliant English theoretical physicist, begins an affair with Jove, her remorselessly seductive American counterpart. But Jove is married. When Alice confronts his wife, Stella, she swiftly falls in love with her, with consequences that are by turns horrifying, comic, and arousing. Vaulting from Liverpool to New York, from alchemy to string theory, and from the spirit to the flesh, Gut Symmetries is a thrillingly original novel by England's most flamboyantly gifted young writer. "Winterson is unmatched among contemporary writers in her ability to conjure up new-world wonder...A beautiful, stirring and brilliant story."--Times Literary Supplement "Dazzling for [its] intelligence and inventiveness...[Winterson] is possessed of a masterly command of the language and a truly pliant imagination."--Elle "One of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers."--San Francisco Chronicle

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    Letter From an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

      Stefan Zweig
     Letter From an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

These four Stefan Zweig stories newly translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, are among his most celebrated and compelling work. The titular tale is a devastating depiction of unrequited love, which inspired a classic Hollywood film, directed by Max Ophüls and starring Joane Fontaine. Elsewhere in the collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves for her sister, two erstwhile lovers meet after an age spent apart, and a married woman repays a debt of gratitude to her childhood sweetheart. Expertly paced, laced with the acutely accurate psychological detail and empathy that are Zweig's trademarks, this is a powerful addition to Pushkin's growing collection of his work.

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    A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

      Taylor Caldwell
     A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

New York Times * Bestseller: A magnificent novel of ancient Rome and the tragic life of Cicero*, who tried in vain to save the republic he loved from tyranny. In this riveting tale, the Roman Empire in its final glory is seen through the eyes of philosopher, orator, and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero. From his birth in 106 BC in the hill town of Arpinum, Cicero, the educated son of a wealthy member of the equestrian order, is destined for greatness. At a young age, he discovers the legend of the Unknown God, the coming Messiah, and it propels the rising lawyer on a journey of spiritual conflict and self-discovery. From his tumultuous family life to his tenuous alliance with Julius Caesar to a fateful love affair with the Roman empress Livia and, finally, to the political role that will make him a target of powerful enemies, A Pillar of Iron is the story of Cicero’s legacy as one the greatest influences on Western civilization. Based on hundreds of speeches, voluminous private correspondence, and ancient texts and manuscripts, this bestselling epic brings into focus Cicero’s complicated relationships with his contemporaries, including Caesar, Mark Antony, and Crassus, and brilliantly captures the pageantry, turmoil, and intrigue of life in ancient Rome. According to legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, author “Taylor Caldwell is a storyteller first, last and foremost, and once you begin reading one of her books, you can’t help finishing it.” This ebook features an illustrated biography of Taylor Caldwell including rare images from the author’s estate.

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    Norma

      Sofi Oksanen
     Norma

Laiturilla hän istui penkille, jolle äiti ei ollut istunut. Metro oli syöksynyt asemalle saman tien. Äiti oli viskannut penkin alle kengät ja käsilaukun, sitten hän oli ollut poissa. Sofi Oksasen uutuusromaani on maaginen kertomus Normasta, joka joutuu vaaraan harvinaisten ominaisuuksiensa vuoksi. Norma kietoutuu petoksen ja paranoian verkkoon, josta hänen on pyristeltävä irti.

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    Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans

      Thomas Keneally
     Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans

Jehannette, an illiterate peasant girl of seventeen, hears voices that tell her she must help the Dauphin become king. But this proves hard to accomplish in 15th century France as the British occupy parts of the country, including Rheims where the crowning must take place. Jehannette must first convince the Dauphin of her mission and then help lead his army to push back the occupiers. Will this tough, radical yet vulnerable girl be able to triumph without questioning her own sanity? Thomas Keneally’s interpretation of Joan of Arc contains a new vigor and authenticity not before seen in the Maid of Orleans stories. Capturing with incredible detail the realities of 15th century life, Blood Red, Sister Rose imaginatively portrays one of history’s most inspiring passages with immediacy and drama.

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    Falling Fast

      Aurora Rose Reynolds
     Falling Fast

Colton Allyster is relieved to be back home. After a year of rehabilitation, losing his career as a Marine along with his fiancé, he’s had to learn quickly what’s really important. Colton grew up wanting to serve his country. Managing his parents’ biker bar was never part of his plan, but after meeting Gia Caro, he’s beginning to think that’s exactly where he’s meant to be. Ever since Gia Caro arrived in the small, sleepy town of Ruby Falls, Tennessee, her life has spiraled out of control. Between losing her grandmother a little more each day to dementia, and her hot boss’s constant attention, her once quiet existence isn’t so quiet anymore. After weeks of sidestepping Colton, things get out of hand, and before Gia knows what’s happening, she’s spending her nights in his bed and her mornings in his kitchen. And as he cleans out drawers and makes room in his closet, she starts to wonder if she’s falling too fast.

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    Birdsong

      Sebastian Faulks
     Birdsong

Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come. Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come.

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    Always Watching

      Chevy Stevens
     Always Watching

She helps people put their demons to rest. But she has a few of her own… In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire—healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years. When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her—and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island. What happened to Nadine? Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today? And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most…and fight back. Sometimes you can leave the past, but you can never escape. Told with the trademark powerful storytelling that has had critics praising her work as “Gripping” (Kirkus), “Jaw-dropping” (Publishers Weekly) and “Crackling with suspense” (People magazine), ALWAYS WATCHING shows why Chevy Stevens is one of the most mesmerizing new talents of our day.

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