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Housebreaking: A Novel

May 22, 2015

  Benjamin is forty-four and finds himself kicked out of his house and life by his wife for cheating on her yet again. With nowhere to go he moves in with his father only to discover that his high school crush Audrey just moved in down the street with her husband and their teenage daughter. Because nothing is ever as it seems Benjamin’s not-so-subtle efforts to reconnect ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, debut, Simon & Schuster

Luckiest Girl Alive

May 20, 2015

luckiest

Ani FaNelli opens Luckiest Girl Alive by being just that: Perfect hair, perfect body, perfect fiancé and the perfect prima donna attitude to go with it all. Except that underneath, Ani is really TifAni from the far end of Main Line Philadelphia—Main Line being where the upper echelon of Philadelphia society lives and TifAni does not. However, her mother is determined her ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, Simon & Schuster, social issues, suspense, women

Diamond Head

May 15, 2015

  Diamond Head is an ambitious debut from the school of Amy Tan multi-generational Chinese family drama. The Leongs are the premier family living on Oahu where they settle after leaving China prior to World War I. First time novelist Cecily Wong does an admirable job portraying the inter-generational relationships amongst the Leong women. She captures those that reflect ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: China, cultural, debut, Harper, Hawaii, historical fiction

Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

May 13, 2015

  Job’s father sends him from their homeland in Nigeria to America to study to become a doctor. Instead of doing so, Job flunks out of college but continues to tell everyone he is still studying. At twenty-four he uses some of the tuition money on a green card marriage thus ensuring he never has to move home and acknowledge his lies. This is the beginning of the quicksand ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Coffee House Press, cultural, debut, literary, nigeria

The Given World

April 27, 2015

given

When Riley is thirteen her brother Mick is declared missing in Vietnam. This news kills what little desire she has to stay in their small town and by the time she is eighteen she is gone, making her way from Montana to San Francisco to see the ocean and to escape every facet of life that might remind her of her brother. She leaves behind her parents, a boyfriend and her newborn ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, Vietnam, Vietnam War

The Sympathizer: A Novel

April 20, 2015

sympathizer

So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead. It is only fitting that the narrator in The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, is never named. He is a Communist spy, a man who has spent his entire life turned inside ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, Grove Press, historical fiction, literary, Southeast Asia, Vietnam War

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