May Adult Reading Challenge
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Severance
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?
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Arsenic and Adobo
When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, she's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case. With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…
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Everything I Never Told You
“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
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The Sympathizer
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. But, unbeknownst to the general, this captain is an undercover operative for the communists, who instruct him to add his own name to the list and accompany the general to America. As the general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, the captain continues to observe the group, sending coded letters to an old friend who is now a higher-up within the communist administration. Under suspicion, the captain is forced to contemplate terrible acts in order to remain undetected. And when he falls in love, he finds that his lofty ideals clash violently with his loyalties to the people close to him, a contradiction that may prove unresolvable.
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The Swimmers
The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief. One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.
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Gold Diggers
A coming-of-age story with a Midas touch and a brilliant and inventive debut
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They Called Us Enemy
Long before George Takei braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
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Siren Queen
Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.
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Time Is a Mother
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
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Beautiful Country
In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.
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Joan Is Okay
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.
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O Beautiful
Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, is struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind. The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and the way she looks at the world.
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Crying in H Mart
With humor and heart, Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
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How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.
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Four Treasures of the Sky
Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.
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Verity
Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen Ashleigh, struggling writer, to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. When Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, she discovers an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. As Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if Jeremy were to read his wife's words. After all, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving Verity.
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The Four Winds
Texas, 1921. Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. By 1934, farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage. In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.
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It Ends with Us
Lily’s graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. When she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant but also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. But even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to Ryle's “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. When Atlas Corrigan, Lily's first love and link to the past, suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
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Nightwork
Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother's head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. He dons new identities and can't afford to get attached. Still, he can't help letting his guard down when he meets Miranda Emerson. After Harry takes a lucrative job commissioned by Carter LaPorte, LaPorte strongarms Harry into robbing a Baltimore museum. Harry abandons Miranda and disappears. But no matter what name he uses or where he goes, LaPorte casts a shadow over Harry's life. To truly free himself, he must face down his enemy once and for all.
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Going Rogue
On this particular Monday, Stephanie Plum knows that something is amiss when she turns up for work at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli, who is as reliable as the tides in Atlantic City, hasn’t shown up. Stephanie’s worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail. Unfortunately, this coin, which should be in the office—just like Connie—is nowhere to be found. The quest to discover the coin, learn its value, and save Connie will require the help of Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur, her best pal Lula, her boyfriend Morelli, and hunky security expert Ranger.
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Shattered
NYPD master homicide investigator Michael Bennett and top FBI abduction specialist Emily Parker have a history. When she fails to show at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Bennett risks venturing far outside his jurisdiction. A portrait begins to emerge of a woman as adept at keeping secrets as forging powerful connections. A woman whose enemies had both the means and the motives to silence the real Emily Parker--and her protectors.
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Mad Honey
Olivia McAfee never imagined that she and her son Asher would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. When Lily Campanello and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. Olivia and Lily's paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent but as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.
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Long Shadows
Amos Decker is called to South Florida to investigate a double homicide that appears straightforward: A federal judge and her bodyguard have been found dead, the judge's face sporting a blindfold with two eye holes crudely cut out. Not only did the judge have more enemies than Decker can count but the bodyguard presents additional conundrums. Decker must also contend with a new partner, Special Agent Frederica "Freddie" White, and a devastating event that brings Decker's own tragic past back to the present. Decker and White are inexorably pulled down a twisted tunnel of secrets at the end of which lies Decker's deadliest threat yet.
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Heart Bones
Beyah Grim finally has her hard-earned ticket out of Kentucky with a full ride to Penn State. But two months before she’s finally free, an unexpected death leaves her homeless and forced to spend the remainder of her summer in Texas with a father she barely knows. Beyah has no time or patience for Samson, the wealthy, brooding guy next door but the connection between them is too intense to ignore. The two decide to maintain only a casual summer fling. Too bad neither has any idea that a rip current is about to drag both their hearts out to sea.
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Encore in Death
It was a glittering event full of A-listers, hosted by Eliza Lane and Brant Fitzhugh, a celebrity couple who’d conquered both Hollywood and Broadway. After raising a toast, Fitzhugh fell to the floor and died, with physical symptoms pointing to cyanide, and the police, including Eve Dallas, have crashed the party. Since the champagne cocktail that killed Brant was originally intended for Eliza, it’s possible she was the real target, with a recently fired assistant, a bitter rival, and an obsessed fan in the picture. All Eve wants is to figure out who’s truly innocent, and who’s only acting that way.
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The 6:20 Man
Every day Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city's most prestigious investment firm. Then one morning Devine's tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead. Sara Ewes, Devine's coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building, prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. Devine then receives a threat to reveal grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm. This treacherous role will take him to the darkest corners of the country's economic halls of power. And there's a killer out there with Devine as the bull's-eye.
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Ugly Love
When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she doesn't think it's love at first sight. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her: 1) Never ask about the past; 2) Don’t expect a future. They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.
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Sparring Partners
In “Homecoming,” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is called upon to help old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night. Now Mack is back, but his homecoming does not go as planned. In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. The “Sparring Partners” are Kirk and Rusty Malloy, two successful young brothers who inherited a once prosperous firm. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other. As the firm disintegrates, does Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust, save the Malloys or does she try to save herself?
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No Plan B
In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away. Reacher is unaware that these crimes are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid on the run, a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. But Reacher is relentless when it comes to making things right.
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The Boys from Biloxi
Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.