Agnes, who lives in 1960s Philadelphia far away from her past, receives a letter from her mother in her hometown of Saint-Rémy, France, that Fabienne has passed away while giving birth. Agnes was once a well-known writer and escaped from her small…
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November 2022 eBook Staff Picks
Check out this month's recommendations from Chicago Public Library. Visit our eBooks page for previous lists of recommendations.
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Chicago Public Library
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19 items
- Recently jilted, Gil moves from New York to Arizona where he becomes friends with the family next door who live in a modern contraption of glass architecture that allows him, whether he wants it a not, a glimpse into their domestic lives. Gil…
- In her first full-length graphic novel, Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant) shares her post-graduate experiences working in the Alberta oil industry. Beaton's memoir touches on many things both natural and unnatural, including isolation, trauma, and the…
- Concert pianist Jeremy Denk crafts a beautiful memoir out of a lifetime of music lessons. As a child prodigy (both musically and academically), he was tracked into a regimen of long hours of practice and study. With so much of his life devoted to…
- When high-school student Charlie hears a dog's frantic barking in his neighborhood and goes behind a creepy old house to find that the old man who lives there has fallen off a ladder, he unknowingly sets an epic quest into motion. As he helps the…
- This imagined backstory of Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the story of Isobel, a young seamstress from Scotland who emigrates to 19th century Salem, Massachusetts. Arriving in a New England still haunted by its past with witch trials and its ties to…
- Legendary entertainer, actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein has many stories to tell. Funny, tender and a little bit bawdy, Fierstein describes the trials and triumphs of a life fully lived. He describes coming of age in New York City as a Jewish…
- "Was it harder to be a woman? Or an immigrant? Or a Chinese person outside of China? And why did being a good any of the above require you to edit yourself down so you could become someone else?" Joan isn't really okay, but she would be if everyone…
- Already loved as a master of the short story form with a unique style that blends humor with dystopia-tinged surrealism and social commentary, Saunders still manages to impress with his latest collection in almost a decade. Part of his uncanny skill…
- Rojas Contreras (Fruit of the Drunken Tree) returns with a vibrant mix of biography and family history steeped in Colombian culture. Her grandfather was a curandero, a kind of shaman who practiced traditional medicine. Traditionally such practices…
- Best-selling author Ng returns with a new novel illuminating the deep roots of family separation in American history. Set in the aftermath of the rise of a xenophobic and authoritarian government regime, a renowned poet and dissident is forced to…
- Bobby works as a salvage diver on the Gulf coast near New Orleans, living out a lonely existence when a new job puts him on the radar of the authorities who start coming around and asking the kinds of questions that stir up difficult memories of the…
- Readers will enjoy this glimpse into a post-revolutionary society in this dystopian mystery. Sonya was unflappably loyal to the Delegation regime. She viewed the behavior monitoring chip in her head more as a comforting parent rather than any kind…
- In eight jewel-like short stories, author Sindya Bhanoo gracefully captures the immigrant experience of diaspora in a collection bursting with fresh story ideas and executed with masterful skill and fluid prose. A widow in Tamil Nadu adjusts to life…
- Rita grew up with her beloved grandmother on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. For as long as she can remember, she has been able to see ghosts. Usually they do not bother her, but when she takes a job as a forensic photographer for the police…
- Poet Zamora's memoir details the frightening journey from his hometown in El Salvador to Tucson, Arizona, for seven weeks during 1999. At age 9, Zamora's family arranges for him to join his parents in "La USA" by being smuggled through Guatemala and…
- At Berkeley in the 90s, Hsu was the kind of student who poured love into his zine, labored over mixtapes as the ultimate expression of love for friends, and obsessed over punk and indie music as he cultivated an outsider identity. He first wrote off…
- Isaac has the mysterious ability to change his physical appearance, a power he uses to con and trick his way across America. His sister Bellatine is a seemingly normal woodworker who lives in fear of the power in her magic hands. Although over time…
- It's Paris, 1917, and painter Chaim Soutine is walking in a weighted diving suit on the bottom of the Seine. He's reluctantly agreed to do this for his only friend, fellow artist Amadeo Modigliani. The men are both Jews, drawn to Paris like so many…
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