Shobha Rao

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

North Carolina

A Novel

A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, for readers of Rupi Kaur, about the EXTRAORDINARY BOND BETWEEN TWO GIRLS driven apart by circumstances but relentless in their search for one another. Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls. When Poornima was just a toddler, she was about to fall into a river. Her mother, beside herself, screamed at her father to grab her. But he hesitated: "I was standing there, and I was thinking...she's just a girl. Let her go...That's the thing with girls, isn't it...You think, Push. That's all it would take, Just one little push." After her mother's death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to take care of her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to secure for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls' perspectives as they face ruthless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them.--Amazon.

Girls Burn Brighter

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Simon Han

I have no idea where this even came from. I’m cleaning my bookshelves and found it. It’s not one I’d pick for myself.

Florida

Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar “A tender, spiky family saga about love in all its mysterious incarnations.” —Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs and Birds of America “Absolutely luminous . . . Weaves the transience of suburbia between the highs and lows of a family saga . . . Shocks, awes, and delights.” —Bryan Washington, author of Memorial From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn’t this what they sacrificed so much for? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting into motion a string of misunderstandings that not only threaten to set their community against them but force to the surface the secrets that have made them fear one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy? Nights When Nothing Happened is gripping storytelling immersed in the crosscurrents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent.

Nights When Nothing Happened

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Zoraida Cordova

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Massachusetts

"Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she's hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. When a curse she performs to rid herself of magic backfires and her family vanishes, she must travel to Los Lagos, a land in-between as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland, to get her family back"--

Labyrinth Lost

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#hardcover #youngadult #fiction #ibizoboi #haiti #bipoc #contemporary #diversereads #ownvoices

New Hampshire

American Street

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Gabriela Garcia

There are small tears from a metal bookmark on two pages pictured, other than that book is in really good condition.

California

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt. From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals—personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others—that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.

Of Women and Salt

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Cristina Henríquez

West Virginia

Miraflores has never known her father, and until now, she's never thought that he wanted to know her. She's long been aware that her mother had an affair with him while she was stationed with her then husband in Panama, and she's always assumed that her p

The World in Half

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Pennsylvania

#hardcover #youngadult #ya #lgbt #queerbooks #blackauthor #ownvoices

Indiana

A fierce coming-of-age verse novel about identity and the power of drag, from acclaimed UK poet and performer Dean Atta. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, and Kacen Callender. Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican--but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough. As he gets older, Michael's coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs--and the Black Flamingo is born. Told with raw honesty, insight, and lyricism, this debut explores the layers of identity that make us who we are--and allow us to shine.

The Black Flamingo

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#hardcover #howitallblewup #youngadult #ya #arvinahmadi #booktok #fiction #ownvoices 

Fleeing to Rome in the wake of coming out to his Muslim family, a failed relationship, and blackmail, eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi embarks on a more authentic life with new friends and dates in the Sistine Chapel before an encounter with a U.S. Customs officer places his hard-won freedom at risk.

How It All Blew Up

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#hardcover #fiction #newyork #christinekandictorres #thegirlsinqueens #comingofage #ownvoices #friendship #loyalty #queensny #race #gender #relationships 

Hawaii





A writer brimming with talent makes her exciting literary debut with a tale of two Latinx women coming of age in Queens, New York, an emotionally resonant novel infused with the insight, power, and poignancy of Angie Cruz's Dominicana, Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn, and Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends.



Best friends growing up along Clement Moore Avenue in Queens, Brisma and Kelly will do anything for each other. They keep each other's secrets, from their mother's hidden heartbreaks to warding off the unwanted advances of creepy neighbors. Their exclusive world shifts when they begin high school and Brisma falls deeply in love with Brian, the local baseball legend. Always the wallflower to the vibrant and alluring Kelly, Brisma is secretly thrilled to be chosen by the popular athlete, to finally have someone that belongs to her alone. But as she, Brian, and Kelly fall into the roles that have been set before them, they ignite a bonfire of unrealized hopes and dreams, smoldering embers that finally find some oxygen to burn.   

Years later, Brisma and Kelly haven't spoken to Brian, ever since a backyard party that went wrong, but their beloved Los Mets are on a historic run for the playoffs and the three friends--no longer children--are reunited. Brisma finds herself once again drawn to her first love. But when Brian is accused of sexual assault, the two friends must make a choice. At first, both rush to support and defend him. But while Kelly remains Brian's staunch defender, Brisma begins to have doubts as old memories of their relationship surface. As Brisma and Kelly face off in a battle for what they each believe they are owed, these two lifelong friends must decide if their shared past is enough to sustain their future.  

Told in alternating timelines, The Girls in Queens is a novel for and of our time--a skillful exploration of the furious loyalty of young women, the complications of sexual abuse allegations within communities of color, and the danger of forgetting that sometimes monsters hide in plain sight.   

The Girls in Queens

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Michigan

Three Novellas

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY LITERARY HUB, BUSTLE, BOOK CULTURE, AND THE MILLIONS

Introduced by Madeleine Thien, author of the Booker finalist novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing

From one of the most highly celebrated young Chinese writers, three dazzling novellas of Northeast China, mixing realism, mysticism, and noir.

An inventor dreams of escaping his drab surroundings in a flying machine. A criminal, trapped beneath a frozen lake, fights a giant fish. A strange girl pledges to ignite a field of sorghum stalks.

Rouge Street presents three novellas by Shuang Xuetao, the lauded young Chinese writer whose frank, fantastical short fiction has already inspired comparisons to Ernest Hemingway and Haruki Murakami. Located in China's frigid Northeast, Shenyang, the author's birthplace, boasts an illustrious past--legend holds that the emperor's makeup was manufactured here. But while the city enjoyed renewed importance as an industrial hub under Mao Zedong, China's subsequent transition from communism to a market economy led to an array of social ills--unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce, suicide--that gritty Shenyang epitomizes.

Orbiting the toughest neighborhood of a postindustrial city whose vast, inhospitable landscape makes every aspect of life a struggle, these many-voiced missives are united by Shuang Xuetao's singular style--one that balances hardscrabble naturalism with the transcendent and faces the bleak environs with winning humor. Rouge Street illuminates not only the hidden pains of those left behind in an extraordinary economic boom but also the inspirations and grace they, nevertheless, manage to discover.

Rouge Street

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18 Afghan 18 Afghan Women

New York

New Fiction by Afghan Women

A landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women that are "powerful, profound, and deeply moving" (Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees, a Reese's Book Club pick)



"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream."



Eighteen Afghan women living in, speaking about, and writing from the country itself tell stories that are powerful and illuminating, unique and universal - stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity, and cultural traditions. 



A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A  teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet.  A  tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death.



These and more original, vital, and unexpected stories hail from extraordinary voices rooted in Afghanistan's two main linguistic groups (Pashto and Dari), and were developed over two years through the writer development program Untold's Write Aghanistan Project.  My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird comes at a pivotal moment in Afghanistan's history, when these voices must be heard.



With an Introduction by Lyse Doucet, BBC chief international correspondant, and afterword by Lucy Hannah, Founder and Director of Untold





 

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird

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Elizabeth Acevedo

District of Columbia

A Visual Poem

They tell me to "fix" my hair.

And by fix, they mean straighten, they mean whiten;

but how do you fix this shipwrecked

history of hair?

In her most famous spoken-word poem, author of the Pura Belpré-winning novel-in-verse The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo embraces all the complexities of Black hair and Afro-Latinidad--the history, pain, pride, and powerful love of that inheritance.

Paired with full-color illustrations by artist Andrea Pippins in a format that will appeal to fans of Mahogany L. Browne's Black Girl Magic or Jason Reynolds's For Everyone, this poem can now be read in a vibrant package, making it the ideal gift, treasure, or inspiration for readers of any age.



Inheritance

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Ananya Devarajan

Arkansas

"A warm, feel good read." --Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis



"A gorgeous debut." --Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling authors of The Unhoneymooners 



In this charming YA debut, a girl who's determined to prove her star chart wrong ropes her longtime best friend into an experimental relationship--not knowing that he has been in love with her for years.

 

Is it possible to change your fate?

 

Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family curse.

 

Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she'll never fall for: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun's feelings for her are a variable she didn't account for.

 

As Madhuri starts to fall for her experimental boyfriend, she'll have to decide if charting her own destiny is worth breaking Arjun's heart--and her own.

Kismat Connection

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Esi Edugyan

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Mexico

- TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, Slate - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Boston Globe, NPR, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Economist, Bustle - WINNER OF THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE - FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE, THE ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE "Enthralling" --Boston Globe "Extraordinary" --Seattle Times "A rip-roaring tale" --Washington Post A dazzling adventure story about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world. George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as his manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning--and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Christopher and Wash must abandon everything. What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic. What brings Christopher and Wash together will tear them apart, propelling Wash even further across the globe in search of his true self. From the blistering cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, from the earliest aquariums of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black tells a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again, and asks the question, What is true freedom?

Washington Black

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Naima Coster

Oregon

Instant New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna Today Show book club pick, a multigenerational novel of motherhood, race and the American family. A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next twenty years. On one side of the integration debate is Jade, Gee's steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he'll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle's headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half‑Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn't protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie. When Gee and Noelle join the play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers--each determined to see her child inherit a better life--will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come. As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What's Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.

What's Mine and Yours

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Rajani LaRocca

Red, White, and Whole

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Virginia

Angeline Boulley

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB YA PICK An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller Soon to be adapted at Netflix for TV with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground. “One of this year's most buzzed about young adult novels.” —Good Morning America A 2021 Kids' Indie Next List Selection An Amazon Best Book of the Month for March Selection An Entertainment Weekly Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Selection A PopSugar Best March 2021 YA Book Selection With four starred reviews, Angeline Boulley's debut novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, is a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, perfect for readers of Angie Thomas and Tommy Orange. Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug. Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims. Now, as the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

Firekeeper's Daughter

aff1adaf-a1af-4861-a9bd-4532586770f0

#hardcover #fiction #pulitzerprize #historicalfiction #colsonwhitehead #hardback #nonfiction #ownvoices 

Wisconsin

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

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Colson Whitehead

Connecticut

#paperback #bipoc #fiction #middlegrade #ownvoices 

Illinois

An extraordinary new novel from Jasmine Warga, Newbery Honor-winning author of Other Words for Home, about loss and healing--and how friendship can be magical.

Cora hasn't spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year.

Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did.

On the day of Cora's twelfth birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever--and stop him.

In spite of herself, Cora wants to believe. And so the two former friends begin working together to open a wormhole in the fabric of the universe. But as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of time travel to save their siblings, they learn that the magic of their friendship may actually be the key to saving themselves.

The Shape of Thunder is a deeply moving story, told with exceptional grace, about friendship and loss--and how believing in impossible things can help us heal.

Save this search

Shobha Rao

Girls Burn Brighter

Simon Han

Nights When Nothing Happened

Zoraida Cordova

Labyrinth Lost

Ibi Zoboi

American Street

Gabriela Garcia

Of Women and Salt

Cristina Henríquez

The World in Half

Gabriela Garcia

Of Women and Salt

Dean Atta

The Black Flamingo

Arvin Ahmadi

How It All Blew Up

Christine Kandic Torres

The Girls in Queens

Shuang Xuetao; Jeremy Tiang (Translator)

Rouge Street

18 Afghan 18 Afghan Women

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird

Elizabeth Acevedo

Inheritance

Ananya Devarajan

Kismat Connection

Esi Edugyan

Washington Black

Naima Coster

What's Mine and Yours

Rajani LaRocca

Red, White, and Whole

Gabriela Garcia

Of Women and Salt

Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper's Daughter

Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Jasmine Warga

The Shape of Thunder

Shobha Rao

Girls Burn Brighter

Naima Coster

What's Mine and Yours