Mariam's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:21:45 -0700 60 Mariam's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Against the Loveless World 52761023 Washington Black; My Sister, The Serial Killer; and Her Body and Other Parties.

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation.]]> 384 Susan Abulhawa 1982137037 Mariam 5 favorites
“If we had not loved each other none of us would have survived.�

Bilal, a revolutionary resistance fighter expands upon this:

“I don’t see how else anyone can survive colonialism. Understanding our own condition, I think in saying ‘love each other�, Baldwin doesn’t just mean the living. To survive by loving each other means to love our ancestors too. To know their pain, struggles, and joys. It means to love our collective memory, who we are, where we come from�

I am from a small village in Palestine called Al-Mughayer. I live surrounded by so much history, so much love, and so much rage. Susan Abulhawa’s words never fail to remind me of the revolutionary act of defiance that not only our existence is, but our very joys and love. Imagine, to have a love so strong, so intergenerational, that it makes the colonizer shake.

The settlements that creep closer and closer to my village will only be met with more olive trees being planted, protests, weddings, political prisoner release celebrations, and prayers that the oppressed will find justice.

To quote my grandfather, “we will never stop planting olive trees.� Because those trees are an extension of us. We are the trees. They are burned, chopped down, and starved, but they will keep growing. And so will we. ]]> 4.52 2019 Against the Loveless World
author: Susan Abulhawa
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/15
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: favorites
review:
Susan Abulhawa quoted James Baldwin in one of the most poignant scenes I’ve ever read about resistance:

“If we had not loved each other none of us would have survived.�

Bilal, a revolutionary resistance fighter expands upon this:

“I don’t see how else anyone can survive colonialism. Understanding our own condition, I think in saying ‘love each other�, Baldwin doesn’t just mean the living. To survive by loving each other means to love our ancestors too. To know their pain, struggles, and joys. It means to love our collective memory, who we are, where we come from�

I am from a small village in Palestine called Al-Mughayer. I live surrounded by so much history, so much love, and so much rage. Susan Abulhawa’s words never fail to remind me of the revolutionary act of defiance that not only our existence is, but our very joys and love. Imagine, to have a love so strong, so intergenerational, that it makes the colonizer shake.

The settlements that creep closer and closer to my village will only be met with more olive trees being planted, protests, weddings, political prisoner release celebrations, and prayers that the oppressed will find justice.

To quote my grandfather, “we will never stop planting olive trees.� Because those trees are an extension of us. We are the trees. They are burned, chopped down, and starved, but they will keep growing. And so will we.
]]> <![CDATA[Say You'll Remember Me (Part of Your World, #4)]]> 216437557 disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong�

. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 0349442827 Mariam 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Say You'll Remember Me (Part of Your World, #4)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women ’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Mariam 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> Husbands & Lovers 199223201 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724224 Mariam 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Husbands & Lovers
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Heart for a Compass (Buccleuch Family, #1)]]> 56645935
Queen Victoria’s close friend, the Scottish Duke of Buccleuch, Lady Margaret Montagu Scott is expected to make an advantageous marriage. But Margaret is an impulsive and outspoken girl in a repressive society where women are, quite literally, caged in corsets and required to conform.


When Lady Margaret’s parents arrange a society marriage for her, she tries to reconcile herself to the match. But shortly before her betrothal is announced, Margaret flees, leaving her parents to explain her sudden absence to an opulent ballroom stuffed with two hundred distinguished guests.

Banished from polite society, Margaret throws herself into charitable work and finds strength in a circle of female friends like herself—women intent on breaking the mold, including Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise. Margaret resolves to follow her heart—a journey of self-discovery that will take her to Ireland, America, and then back to Britain where she finds the life she was always meant to lead.

A bold and thoughtful story about a rebellious woman finding herself and her voice in an age of astounding technological change and great social unrest, Her Heart for a Compass is a delicious costume drama rich in atmosphere, history, and color.]]> 549 Sarah Ferguson 0062976524 Mariam 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Her Heart for a Compass (Buccleuch Family, #1)
author: Sarah Ferguson
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pineapple Street 61246258
Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.]]> 304 Jenny Jackson 059349069X Mariam 0 to-read 3.49 2023 Pineapple Street
author: Jenny Jackson
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband (Rokesbys, #2)]]> 31931722 An alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780062388186 can be found here.

While you were sleeping...

With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, orphaned Cecilia Harcourt has two unbearable choices: move in with a maiden aunt or marry a scheming cousin. Instead, she chooses option three and travels across the Atlantic, determined to nurse her brother back to health. But after a week of searching, she finds not her brother but his best friend, the handsome officer Edward Rokesby. He's unconscious and in desperate need of her care, and Cecilia vows that she will save this soldier's life, even if staying by his side means telling one little lie...

I told everyone I was your wife

When Edward comes to, he's more than a little confused. The blow to his head knocked out six months of his memory, but surely he would recall getting married. He knows who Cecilia Harcourt is—even if he does not recall her face—and with everyone calling her his wife, he decides it must be true, even though he'd always assumed he'd marry his neighbor back in England.

If only it were true...

Cecilia risks her entire future by giving herself—completely—to the man she loves. But when the truth comes out, Edward may have a few surprises of his own for the new Mrs. Rokesby.]]> 393 Julia Quinn Mariam 0 to-read 3.84 2017 The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband (Rokesbys, #2)
author: Julia Quinn
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Because of Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys, #1)]]> 25657772 Sometimes you find love in the most unexpected of places...

This is not one of those times.

Everyone expects Billie Bridgerton to marry one of the Rokesby brothers. The two families have been neighbors for centuries, and as a child the tomboyish Billie ran wild with Edward and Andrew. Either one would make a perfect husband... someday.

Sometimes you fall in love with exactly the person you think you should...

Or not.

There is only one Rokesby Billie absolutely cannot tolerate, and that is George. He may be the eldest and heir to the earldom, but he's arrogant, annoying, and she's absolutely certain he detests her. Which is perfectly convenient, as she can't stand the sight of him, either.

But sometimes fate has a wicked sense of humor...

Because when Billie and George are quite literally thrown together, a whole new sort of sparks begins to fly. And when these lifelong adversaries finally kiss, they just might discover that the one person they can't abide is the one person they can't live without...]]> 375 Julia Quinn 0062388142 Mariam 0 to-read 3.90 2016 Because of Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys, #1)
author: Julia Quinn
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Determination (The Chaplain's Legacy, #2)]]> 205038643 One man with a secret. A family torn apart by the consequences.

Mr Bertram Atherton has one foot in the Ancient World, emerging from his library only to eat and sleep. But when the chaplain of his uncle, the Earl of Rennington, is brutally murdered, it is revealed that he was never ordained and so the earl’s marriage was invalid, and his children rendered illegitimate. Bertram’s father is now the heir to the earldom, and Bertram after him. It’s a horrifying change of circumstances for a man only interested in intellectual pursuits.

Miss Beatrice Franklyn is horrified to discover that her betrothed, the earl’s eldest son, has been disinherited and ’t make her a countess. But his cousin Bertram will inherit now, and he’ll do, won’t he? Bea sets her sights on a second betrothal, and she usually gets her way. How can unworldly Bertram resist her feminine wiles? But no matter how many tricks she tries and how determined she is to lure him into matrimony, she finds that Bertram is equally determined not to be lured. Which of them will win the battle of wills?

This is a complete story with a happy ever after. A traditional Regency romance, drawing room rather than bedroom. Book 2 of a 6 book series.]]> 359 Mary Kingswood Mariam 0 to-read 4.37 Determination (The Chaplain's Legacy, #2)
author: Mary Kingswood
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Parfit Knight (Rockliffe, #1)]]> 57648671
Oakleigh Manor is the home of Rosalind Vernon who lives alone but for her devoted servants and an ill-natured parrot, cut off from the outside world by the tragic result of a childhood accident. But Rosalind is brave and bright and totally devoid of self-pity - and it is these qualities which, as the days pass and the snow continues to fall, touch Amberley's heart.

On his return to London, the Marquis persuades Rosalind's brother, Philip, to bring her to town for a taste of society, despite her handicap. But the course of Amberley's courtship is far from smooth. Philip Vernon actively dislikes him; Rosalind appears to be falling under the spell of the suavely elegant Duke of Rockliffe; and worse still, Amberley is haunted by a dark and terrible secret that, if revealed, may cause him to lose Rosalind forever.]]> Stella Riley Mariam 0 to-read 4.19 1986 The Parfit Knight (Rockliffe, #1)
author: Stella Riley
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Secrecy (The Chaplain's Legacy Book 4)]]> 217903224 One man with a secret. A family torn apart by the consequences.

Miss Teresa Nicholson, daughter of an earl’s chaplain, has suffered two dreadful shocks. First, her father was brutally murdered, and then his will bequeathed her his entire fortune, but only if she marries a gentleman. Tess knows the reason for that - she loves a man who works with his hands, and that’s unacceptable for the niece of an earl. But if she can marry a compliant man who won’t interfere with her life, she’ll be free to do as she pleases, won’t she? If only she could find this mysterious fortune�

Edward, Lord Tarvin has his life exactly how he wants it - his mother confined to his northern estate while he enjoys a bachelor existence in London. But when he hears that Tess Nicholson has designs on his simple minded cousin, he knows he has to do whatever it takes to stop her. If only she weren’t such an infuriating, conniving and downright beguiling woman�

This is a complete story with a happy ever after. A traditional Regency romance, drawing room rather than bedroom. Book 4 of a 6 book series.]]> 363 Mary Kingswood Mariam 0 to-read 4.44 Secrecy (The Chaplain's Legacy Book 4)
author: Mary Kingswood
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Round House 13602426 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

One of the most revered novelists of our time - a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life - Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction - at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.]]> 323 Louise Erdrich 0062065246 Mariam 0 to-read 3.96 2012 The Round House
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Mariam 5
It almost reminded me of Severance—the same feeling I get watching the innies work in their gray office, trapped in monotony yet straining for something beyond it. Stoner uses literature in that way; it frees him. And so, although he suffers, perhaps he does find happiness. As Prerna, a fellow ŷ reviewer wrote, “We have to believe Stoner, like Sisyphus, to have been happy.”]]> 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:
I wish I could eloquently explain the subtle grief that enveloped me as I turned each page—the slow, creeping sorrow that built until a final wave crashed over me when I finished. The horror and dread in Stoner come not from dramatic events but from the quiet, relentless normalcy of his life, his sheer everyman existence.

It almost reminded me of Severance—the same feeling I get watching the innies work in their gray office, trapped in monotony yet straining for something beyond it. Stoner uses literature in that way; it frees him. And so, although he suffers, perhaps he does find happiness. As Prerna, a fellow ŷ reviewer wrote, “We have to believe Stoner, like Sisyphus, to have been happy.�
]]> The Count of Monte Cristo 7131 1488 Alexandre Dumas 037576030X Mariam 0 currently-reading 4.34 1846 The Count of Monte Cristo
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1846
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Convenient Marriage 32106 272 Georgette Heyer 0099474425 Mariam 3 3.63 1934 The Convenient Marriage
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock]]> 41183866 The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism

Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.

Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.]]> 224 Dina Gilio-Whitaker 0807073784 Mariam 0 currently-reading 4.38 2019 As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
author: Dina Gilio-Whitaker
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Slow Dance 198530925
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 400 Rainbow Rowell 0063380196 Mariam 3 3.63 2024 Slow Dance
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
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]]> Venetia 32102
Then her long-absent neighbor, thirty-eight-year-old Lord Jasper Damerel, returns home to Yorkshire. In one extraordinary encounter, she meets the infamous neighbor, who she knows only by reputation - a gamester, a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character - and before she knows better, she finds friendship with a libertine whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years. Lord Damerel finds Venetia to be the most truly engaging and wittily perverse female he has encountered in all his life and determined to woo and win her, he pursues her with a passionate abandon that is soon the talk of the ton. And after her encounter with the dashing, dangerous rake, Venetia's well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon a courtship with him that scandalises and horrifies the whole community.

But Venetia has no intention of losing her heart to the rakish lord until she is sure that beneath his swashbuckling ways and shocking manners lies a tender heart belonging to her. And Lord Damerel would marry her in a heartbeat if he did not think it would ruin her. Then she discovers a shocking family secret that changes everything ... It was therefore particularly provoking to find that occasion, Lord Damerel could make up his mind to be idiotically noble....]]> 384 Georgette Heyer 0373771665 Mariam 4 4.06 1958 Venetia
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Water Dancer 43982054 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.]]> 416 Ta-Nehisi Coates Mariam 5 4.03 2019 The Water Dancer
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mountains Sing 51978471 “An epic account of Việt Nam’s painful 20th century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.� —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the H� Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore not just her beloved country, but her family apart.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.

The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Qu� Mai’s first novel in English.]]> 352 Nguyễn Phan Qu� Mai Mariam 4 4.35 2020 The Mountains Sing
author: Nguyễn Phan Qu� Mai
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:

]]> I Hope This Doesn't Find You 124932739 I Hope This Doesn't Find You is Never Have I Ever meets To All the Boys if Lara Jean wrote hate emails instead of love letters.

Sadie Wen is perfect on paper: school captain, valedictorian, and a "pleasure to have in class." It’s not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times: she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She'd never send them of course -- she'd rather die than hurt anyone's feelings -- but it's a relief to let loose on her power-hungry English teacher or a freeloading classmate taking credit for Sadie's work.

All her most vehemently worded emails are directed at her infuriating cocaptain, Julius Gong, whose arrogance and competitive streak have irked Sadie since they were kids. "You're attention starved and self-obsessed and unbearably vain . . . I really hope your comb breaks and you run out of whatever expensive hair products you've been using to make your hair appear deceptively soft..."

Sadie doesn't have to hold back in her emails, because nobody will ever read them... that is, until they're accidentally sent out.

Overnight, Sadie’s carefully crafted, conflict-free life is turned upside down. It's her worst nightmare -- now everyone at school knows what she really thinks of them, and they're not afraid to tell her what they really think of her either. But amidst the chaos, there's one person growing to appreciate the "real" Sadie -- Julius, the only boy she's sworn to hate...]]> 320 Ann Liang 1338827154 Mariam 0 to-read 4.17 2024 I Hope This Doesn't Find You
author: Ann Liang
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> If You Could See the Sun 60099660 actually invisible.

When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.

But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.

In this genre-bending YA debut, a Chinese American girl monetizes her strange new invisibility powers by discovering and selling her wealthy classmates� most scandalous secrets.]]> 346 Ann Liang 1335915842 Mariam 0 to-read 4.01 2022 If You Could See the Sun
author: Ann Liang
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rose Garden 9792287 476 Susanna Kearsley 0749009519 Mariam 0 to-read 4.01 2011 The Rose Garden
author: Susanna Kearsley
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The House of Special Purpose 15798438 The Absolutist, a propulsive novel of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the Romanovs.

Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign.

Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past—a past of death, suffering, and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to St. Petersburg, to the Winter Palace of the czar, in the early twentieth century—a time of change, threat, and bloody revolution. As Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover the story of the house of special purpose.]]> 469 John Boyne 1590515986 Mariam 0 to-read 4.14 2009 The House of Special Purpose
author: John Boyne
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> The Indigo Girl 34412073
The year is 1739. Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family's three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British, and with the Spanish in Florida, just a short way down the coast, are rising, and slaves are starting to become restless. Her mother wants nothing more than for their South Carolina endeavor to fail so they can go back to England. Soon her family is in danger of losing everything.

Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it's the key to their salvation. But everyone tells her it's impossible, and no one will share the secret to making it. Thwarted at nearly every turn, even by her own family, Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return -- against the laws of the day -- she will teach the slaves to read.

So begins an incredible story of love, dangerous and hidden friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice.

Based on historical documents, including Eliza's letters, this is a historical fiction account of how a teenage girl produced indigo dye, which became one of the largest exports out of South Carolina, an export that laid the foundation for the incredible wealth of several Southern families who still live on today. Although largely overlooked by historians, the accomplishments of Eliza Lucas influenced the course of US history. When she passed away in 1793, President George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral.

This book is set between 1739 and 1744, with romance, intrigue, forbidden friendships, and political and financial threats weaving together to form the story of a remarkable young woman whose actions were before their time: the story of the indigo girl.]]> 329 Natasha Boyd 1455137111 Mariam 0 to-read 4.13 2017 The Indigo Girl
author: Natasha Boyd
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gilded Hour (The Waverly Place, #1)]]> 24611868
Anna's workhas placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything, just as she herself once had. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make an unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life.

For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of color, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with the oath she took as a doctor—and thrusts her and Anna into the orbit of Anthony Comstock, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent and of anyone who dares to defy him.]]> 741 Sara Donati 0425271811 Mariam 0 to-read 4.02 2015 The Gilded Hour (The Waverly Place, #1)
author: Sara Donati
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> The Shoemaker's Wife 13127599
Unbeknownst to one another, they both build fledgling lives in America, Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job in Hoboken until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza, determined to forge a life without him, begins her impressive career as a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera House that will sweep her into the glamorous salons of Manhattan and into the life of the international singing sensation, Enrico Caruso.

From the stately mansions of Carnegie Hill, to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy, over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy, to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota, these star-crossed lovers meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever.

Lush and evocative, told in tantalizing detail and enriched with lovable, unforgettable characters, The Shoemaker's Wife is a portrait of the times, the places and the people who defined the immigrant experience, claiming their portion of the American dream with ambition and resolve, cutting it to fit their needs like the finest Italian silk.

This riveting historical epic of love and family, war and loss, risk and destiny is the novel Adriana Trigiani was born to write, one inspired by her own family history and the love of tradition that has propelled her body of bestselling novels to international acclaim. Like Lucia, Lucia, The Shoemaker's Wife defines an era with clarity and splendor, with operatic scope and a vivid cast of characters who will live on in the imaginations of readers for years to come.]]> 485 Adriana Trigiani 0061257095 Mariam 0 to-read 4.00 2012 The Shoemaker's Wife
author: Adriana Trigiani
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> Mary Barton 54620 480 Elizabeth Gaskell 0192805622 Mariam 0 to-read 3.75 1848 Mary Barton
author: Elizabeth Gaskell
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1848
rating: 0
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]]> Possession 41219 A beautiful hardback edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel. A romance, a literary quest, a modern classic.

A pair of young scholars investigate the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story.]]> 555 A.S. Byatt 0679735909 Mariam 0 to-read 3.89 1991 Possession
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley, #1)]]> 311182
Lord Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon, known for his coldness of manner, his remarkable omniscience, and his debauched lifestyle. Society believes the worst of Justin, who is clearly proud of his sobriquet, 'Satanas'. In a dark Parisian back alley, he is accosted by Leon, a young person dressed in ragged clothing running away from a brutal rustic guardian. The Duke buys Leon, a redheaded urchin with strangely familiar looks...]]> 352 Georgette Heyer 0099465825 Mariam 0 to-read 4.05 1926 These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley, #1)
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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]]> Cold Mountain 10920 Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.

Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.

Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.]]> 449 Charles Frazier 0802142842 Mariam 0 to-read 3.89 1997 Cold Mountain
author: Charles Frazier
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> The House on the Strand 18869972 The classic time travel novel from the legendary writer behindRebeccaand "The Birds." "The House on the Strand is prime du Maurier." --New York Times Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his scientific research. When Dick samples Magnus's potion, he finds himself doing the traveling through time while staying in place, thrown all the way back into Medieval Cornwall. The concoction wear off after several hours, but its effects are intoxicating and Dick cannot resist his newfound powers. As his journeys increase, Dick begins to resent the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before, and the home of the beautiful Lady Isolda...]]> 316 Daphne du Maurier 0316252999 Mariam 0 to-read 3.82 1969 The House on the Strand
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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]]> Rebecca 17899948 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.]]> 449 Daphne du Maurier 0316323705 Mariam 0 to-read 4.28 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)]]> 112077 543 Dorothy Dunnett 0679777431 Mariam 0 to-read 4.15 1961 The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)
author: Dorothy Dunnett
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin�-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Mariam 0 to-read 4.29 2023 Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she ’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Mariam 0 to-read 4.26 2022 Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Mariam 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Salvage the Bones 10846336 Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt, while brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that comprise the novel's framework yield to the final day and Hurricane Katrina, the unforgettable family at the novel's heart—motherless children sacrificing for each other as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—pulls itself up to struggle for another day. A wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, "Salvage the Bones" is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.]]> 261 Jesmyn Ward 1608195228 Mariam 5 3.95 2011 Salvage the Bones
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
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]]> The Sound of Stars 42185079 Don’t miss this spectacular debut novel� Can a girl who risks her life for books and an alien who loves forbidden pop music work together to save humanity? This road trip is truly out of this world! A beautiful and thrilling read for fans of Marie Lu and Veronica Roth.

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world’s population.

Seventeen-year-old Janelle “Ellie� Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. With humans deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, emotional expression can be grounds for execution. Music, art and books are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules by keeping a secret library. When a book goes missing, Ellie is terrified that the Ilori will track it back to her and kill her.

Born in a lab, M0Rr1S was raised to be emotionless. When he finds Ellie’s illegal library, he’s duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more. They’re both breaking the rules for the love of art—and Ellie inspires the same feelings in him that music does.

Ellie’s—and humanity’s—fate rests in the hands of an alien she should fear. M0Rr1S has a lot of secrets, but also a potential solution—thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous road trip with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while creating a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.]]> 400 Alechia Dow Mariam 0 to-read 3.73 2020 The Sound of Stars
author: Alechia Dow
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Punching the Air 49151299 From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys� turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

The story that I think

will be my life

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.]]> 400 Ibi Zoboi 0062996487 Mariam 0 to-read 4.40 2020 Punching the Air
author: Ibi Zoboi
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Lest We Find Gold 48750530 318 Melanie Schwapp Mariam 0 to-read 4.14 Lest We Find Gold
author: Melanie Schwapp
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> Lucky Girl 61913597 Longing for independence, a young sheltered Kenyan woman flees the expectations of her mother for a life in New York City that challenges all her beliefs about race, love, and family.

"Lucky Girl is at times tender, at times funny, at times uncomfortably frank. . . . A fresh look at racism, privilege, and the challenges of coming-of-age and falling in love between two cultures."--Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

Soila is a lucky girl by anyone's estimation. Raised by her stern, conservative mother and a chorus of aunts, she has lived a protected life in Nairobi. Soila is headstrong and outspoken, and she chafes against her mother's strict rules. After a harrowing assault by a trusted family friend, she flees to New York for college, vowing never to return home.

New York in the 1990s is not what Soila imagined it would be. Instead of finding a golden land of opportunity, Soila is shocked by the entitlement of her wealthy American classmates and the poverty she sees in the streets. She befriends a Black American girl at school and witnesses the insidious racism her friend endures, forcing Soila to begin to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the blind spots afforded by her Kenyan upbringing. When she falls in love with a free-spirited artist, a man her mother would never approve of, she must decide whether to honor her Kenyan identity and what she owes to her family, or to follow her heart and forge a life of her own design.

Lucky Girl is a fierce and tender debut about the lives and loves we choose--what it meant to be an African immigrant in America at the turn of the millennium, and how a young woman finds a place for herself in the world.]]> 336 Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu 0593133900 Mariam 0 to-read 4.07 2023 Lucky Girl
author: Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent]]> 60165392 Africa Is Not A Country is a bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story.

You already know these stereotypes. So often Africa is depicted simplistically as an arid red landscape of famines and safaris, uniquely plagued by poverty and strife.

In this funny and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective. He examines each country's colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture.

By turns intimate and political, Africa Is Not A Country brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before.]]> 385 Dipo Faloyin 0393881539 Mariam 0 to-read 4.43 2022 Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent
author: Dipo Faloyin
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1) 25893693
On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.]]> 487 Martha Hall Kelly 1101883073 Mariam 0 to-read 4.27 2016 Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1)
author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Dew Angels 13501728 Dew Angels is Melanie Schwapp's first novel. It follows the story of Nola Chambers, a Jamaican girl who lives in the fictional village of Redding. Nola suffers from the affliction of being born with black skin within a family and community that prides itself on successfully 'washing out the black.' Nola stumbles through her life until, eventually, she lands on a path of self-discovery. The book introduces many dynamic Jamaican characters and explores elements of Jamaican culture and lifestyles; the contrast between the deeply rural experiences of Redding and the bustling life in Kingston city.]]> 384 Melanie Schwapp 9768230479 Mariam 0 to-read 4.31 2011 Dew Angels
author: Melanie Schwapp
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done]]> 35397160 Year after year, readers pulled me aside at events and said, “I’ve never had a problem starting. I’ve started a million things, but I never finish them. Why ’t I finish?

According to studies, 92 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. You’ve practically got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your goals.

For years, I thought my problem was that I didn’t try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly.

Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite� they took the pressure off.

Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. We’re our own worst critics, and if it looks like we’re not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. That’s why we’re most likely to quit on day two, “the day after perfect”—when our results almost always underper­form our aspirations.

The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they’re based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc­cessful just by following a few simple principles.

If you’re tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent finisher, you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder, since this time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.]]> 206 Jon Acuff 0698184807 Mariam 0 to-read 4.13 2017 Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done
author: Jon Acuff
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Mariam 0 to-read 4.08 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> Red at the Bone 43697186
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.]]> 196 Jacqueline Woodson 0525535276 Mariam 0 to-read 3.96 2019 Red at the Bone
author: Jacqueline Woodson
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> Come Let Us Sing Anyway 34525246 Ranging from flash fiction to intense psychological drama, magical realism, horror and erotica, these strange, clever, frank and sometimes very funny stories have a serious side too. Carefully crafted over 15 years, they explore unbounded sexualities, a vision of the fluidity of the person, and politics � from the deaths of black people at the hands of the police, to the deep shifts that signal the subtle changes in the nature of capitalism and much more. These stories may sometimes tickle, sometimes shock; but will always engage both the intellect and the heart.]]> 190 Leone Ross 1845233344 Mariam 0 to-read 3.98 2017 Come Let Us Sing Anyway
author: Leone Ross
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> Dear Edward 49379738 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today � A “dazzling� novel that “will break your heart and put it back together again� (J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions) about a young boy who must learn to go on after surviving tragedy

“A reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better . . . Don’t miss this one.”—Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light

What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?

Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
--penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 352 Ann Napolitano 1984854798 Mariam 0 to-read 4.32 2020 Dear Edward
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Love After Love 52028751 An electrifying novel of an unconventional family in Trinidad mended by their individual, and collective, quests for love

After Betty Ramdin's husband dies, she invites a colleague, Mr. Chetan, to move in with her and her son, Solo. Over time, the three become a family, loving each other deeply and depending upon one another. Then, one fateful night, Solo overhears Betty confiding in Mr. Chetan and learns a secret that plunges him into torment.

Solo flees Trinidad for New York to carve out a lonely existence as an undocumented immigrant, and Mr. Chetan remains the singular thread holding mother and son together. But soon, Mr. Chetan's own burdensome secret is revealed, with heartbreaking consequences. Love After Love interrogates love and family in all its myriad meanings and forms, asking how we might exchange an illusory love for one that is truly fulfilling.

In vibrant, addictive Trinidadian prose, Love After Love questions who and how we love, the obligations of family, and the consequences of choices made in desperation.]]> 336 Ingrid Persaud 0593157567 Mariam 0 to-read 4.05 2020 Love After Love
author: Ingrid Persaud
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> With the Fire on High 42357635
Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions—doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela.

The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.

Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

Plus don't miss Elizabeth Acevedo's Clap When You Land!]]> 395 Elizabeth Acevedo Mariam 0 to-read 4.24 2019 With the Fire on High
author: Elizabeth Acevedo
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son]]> 38914864 A Trinidadian-American writer and activist explores motherhood, migration, and identity—and how it relates to land, imprisonment, and genocide for Black and Indigenous peoples. Having moved to Copenhagen, Denmark from Brooklyn over 18 years ago, Brown attempts to contextualize her and her son’s existence in a post-colonial and supposedly post-racial world, where the very machine of so-called progress has been premised upon the demise of her lineage. Through letters to her son, Brown writes the past into the present—penned from the country that has been declared “The Happiest Place in the World”—creating a vision that is a necessary alternative to the dystopian one currently being bought and sold.]]> 231 Lesley-Ann Brown 1912248107 Mariam 0 to-read 4.15 2018 Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son
author: Lesley-Ann Brown
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> How to Love a Jamaican 35395301 An The Oprah Magazine "Top 15 Best of the Year" - A Well-Read Black Girl's Pick

Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret--Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.

In "Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands," an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In "Mash Up Love," a twin's chance sighting of his estranged brother--the prodigal son of the family--stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment. In "Bad Behavior," a couple leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In "Mermaid River," a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In "The Ghost of Jia Yi," a recently murdered student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in "Shirley from a Small Place," a world-famous pop star retreats to her mother's big new house in Jamaica, which still holds the power to restore something vital.

Alexia Arthurs emerges in this vibrant, lyrical, intimate collection as one of fiction's most dynamic and essential authors.]]> 256 Alexia Arthurs 1524799211 Mariam 0 to-read 3.86 2018 How to Love a Jamaican
author: Alexia Arthurs
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Manchester Happened 54819813 Let's Tell This Story Properly features characters both hyper-visible and unseen—they take on jobs at airport security, care for the elderly, and work in hospitals, while remaining excluded from white, British life. As they try to find their place, they drift from a home that feels further and further away. In an ambitious collection by the critically acclaimed author of Kintu, Let's Tell This Story Properly explores what happens to those who leave.]]> 320 Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi 1786077760 Mariam 0 to-read 3.99 2019 Manchester Happened
author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> Questions for Ada 26141400 202 Ijeoma Umebinyuo Mariam 0 to-read 4.31 2015 Questions for Ada
author: Ijeoma Umebinyuo
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Daylight Come 54166963
Sorrel can take no more and she persuades her mother, Bibi, that they should flee the city and head for higher ground in the interior. She has heard there are groups known as Tribals, bitter enemies of the Domins, who have found ways of surviving in the hills, but she also knows they will have to evade the packs of ferals, animals with a taste for human flesh. Not least she knows that the sun will kill them if they ’t find shelter.

Diana McCaulay takes the reader on a tense, threat-filled odyssey as mother and daughter attempt their escape. On the way, Sorrel learns much about the nature of self-sacrifice, maternal love and the dreadful moral choices that must be made in the cause of self-protection.]]> 196 Diana McCaulay 1845234707 Mariam 0 to-read 3.69 2020 Daylight Come
author: Diana McCaulay
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Aftershocks 52766142 This poetic, genre-bending work—blending memoir with cultural history—from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu grapples with the fault lines of identity, the meaning of home, black womanhood, and the ripple effects, both personal and generational, of emotional trauma.

Nadia Owusu grew up all over the world—from Rome and London to Dar-es-Salaam and Kampala. When her mother abandoned her when she was two years old, the rejection caused Nadia to be confused about her identity. Even after her father died when she was thirteen and she was raised by her stepmother, she was unable to come to terms with who she was since she still felt motherless and alone.

When Nadia went to university in America when she was eighteen she still felt as if she had so many competing personas that she couldn’t keep track of them all without cracking under the pressure of trying to hold herself together. A powerful coming-of-age story that explores timely and universal themes of identity, Aftershocks follows Nadia’s life as she hauls herself out of the wreckage and begins to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one she writes into existence.]]> 299 Nadia Owusu 1982111224 Mariam 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Aftershocks
author: Nadia Owusu
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> How Beautiful We Were 51794532 From the celebrated author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, comes a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an America oil company.

"We should have known the end was near."

So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company.

Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle would last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

"The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthrall you, appall you, and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say this is not right. A masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day.”—David Ebershoff, bestselling author of The Danish Girl]]> 364 Imbolo Mbue 0593132424 Mariam 0 to-read 3.92 2021 How Beautiful We Were
author: Imbolo Mbue
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Pleasantview 56186509
Written in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, Pleasantview reveals the dark side of the Caribbean dream. In this novel-in-stories about a fictional town in Trinidad, we meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, while his rival candidate beats his “outside-woman,� so badly she ends up losing their baby. On the night of a political rally, the abused woman exacts a very public revenge, the trajectory of which echoes through Pleasantview, ending with one boy introducing another boy to a gun and to an ideology which will help him aim the weapon.

Merging the beauty and brutality of Trinidadian culture evoked by writers such as Ingrid Persaud and Claire Adam with the linguistic experimentation of Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, Pleasantview is a landmark work from an important new voice in international literary fiction.]]> 240 Celeste Mohammed 1632462028 Mariam 0 to-read 4.29 2021 Pleasantview
author: Celeste Mohammed
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> What Storm, What Thunder 56889469


Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.]]> 313 Myriam J. A. Chancy 1951142764 Mariam 0 to-read 3.93 2021 What Storm, What Thunder
author: Myriam J. A. Chancy
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Selfless Act of Breathing 56898266 Transcendent Kingdom meets A Man Called Ove in this heartwarming novel about a Congolese-British Londoner who decides to go on one last adventure in the United States, determined to end his life once his savings run out.

As a charismatic teacher living in London, Michael Kabongo strives to alleviate the injustices he sees around him: for the students who long for better lives, in memory of his father’s tragic death, and to end the violent marginalization of Black men around the world.

But after a devastating loss, he decides to embark on an adventure in the land of the free—the United States of America. From Dallas to San Francisco, Michael parties with new friends, engages in fleeting romances, splurges on thrilling escapades, all with the intention of ending his life once all his savings run out.

As he makes surprising new connections and faces old prejudices in odd but exciting new settings, Michael alone must decide if his life is worth living after all...]]> 272 J.J. Bola 1982175567 Mariam 0 to-read 3.58 2021 The Selfless Act of Breathing
author: J.J. Bola
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Brown Girls 57717412
We live in the dregs of Queens, New York, where airplanes fly so low that we are certain they will crush us...

This remarkable story brings you deep into the lives of a group of friends--young women of color growing up in Queens, New York City's most vibrant and eclectic borough. Here, streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple across sidewalks, and the briny scent of the ocean wafts from Rockaway Beach. Here, girls like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and many others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture they come of age in. Here, they become friends for life--or so they vow.

Exuberant and wild, they sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs and roam the streets of The City That Never Sleeps, pine for crushes who pay them no mind--and break the hearts of those who do--all the while trying to heed their mothers' commands to be dutiful daughters, obedient young women. As they age, however, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, drawn to the allure of other skylines, careers, and lovers, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots.

In musical, evocative prose, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, motherhood, and beyond, and is an unflinching exploration of race, class, and marginalization in America. It is an account of the forces that bind friends to one another, their families, and communities, and is a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world. For even as the dueling forces of ambition and loyalty, freedom and marriage, reinvention and stability threaten to divide them, it is to each other--and to Queens--that the girls ultimately return.]]> 209 Daphne Palasi Andreades 0593243420 Mariam 0 to-read 3.90 2022 Brown Girls
author: Daphne Palasi Andreades
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
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]]> Black Girl, Call Home 54359466
With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.

Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.]]> 245 Jasmine Mans 0593197143 Mariam 0 to-read 4.44 2021 Black Girl, Call Home
author: Jasmine Mans
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
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]]> Wahala 57797679 An incisive and exhilarating debut novel of female friendship following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group—the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda.

Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one� (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends.

Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be.

Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.� Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not.

When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Hong Kong! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi, and Boo’s close friendship begins to crack.

A sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal, Wahala (trouble) is an unforgettable novel from a brilliant new voice.]]> 384 Nikki May 0063084244 Mariam 0 to-read 3.59 2022 Wahala
author: Nikki May
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2022
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]]> A Broken People's Playlist 52500819
The stories are also part-homage and part-love letter to Port Harcourt (the city which most of them are set in). The prose is distinctive as it is concise and unapologetically Nigerian. And because the collection is infused with the magic of evocative storytelling, everyone is promised a story, a character, to move or haunt them.]]> 255 Chimeka Garricks Mariam 0 to-read 4.34 2020 A Broken People's Playlist
author: Chimeka Garricks
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Violeta 57933338 The epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .

She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Told through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.]]> 322 Isabel Allende 0593496205 Mariam 0 to-read 3.97 2022 Violeta
author: Isabel Allende
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
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]]> Maame 60784605 Shortlisted for the TikTok Book Awards in the Book of the Year, 2023 and the ŷ Debut and Fiction Book of the Year, 2023.

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts�: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her life on the line.

Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.]]> 320 Jessica George Mariam 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Maame
author: Jessica George
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
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]]> Late Bloomers 61151272 An Indian American family is turned upside down when the parents divorce thirty-six years into their arranged marriage� in this witty, big-hearted debut.

I have a soft spot for underdogs. And late bloomers. You've told me a lot of things about yourself, so let me tell you something about me.

After thirty-six years of a dutiful but unhappy arranged marriage, recently divorced Suresh and Lata Raman find themselves starting new paths in life. Suresh is trying to navigate the world of online dating on a website that caters to Indians and is striking out at every turn--until he meets a mysterious, devastatingly attractive younger woman who seems to be smitten with him. Lata is enjoying her newfound independence, but she's caught off guard when a professor in his early sixties starts to flirt with her.

Meanwhile, Suresh and Lata's daughter, Priya, thinks her father's online pursuits are distasteful even as she embarks upon a clandestine affair of her own. And their son, Nikesh, pretends at a seemingly perfect marriage with his law-firm colleague and their young son, but hides the truth of what his relationship really entails. Over the course of three weeks in August, the whole family will uncover one another's secrets, confront the limits of love and loyalty, and explore life's second chances.

Charming, funny, and moving, Late Bloomers introduces a delightful new voice in fiction with the story of four individuals trying to understand how to be happy in their own lives--and as a family.]]> 368 Deepa Varadarajan 059349802X Mariam 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Late Bloomers
author: Deepa Varadarajan
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Welcome to Lagos 31525607
As they strive to find their places in the city, they become embroiled in a political scandal. Ahmed Bakare, editor of the failing Nigerian Journal, is determined to report the truth. Yet government minister Chief Sandayo will do anything to maintain his position. Trapped between the two, they are forced to make a life-changing decision.

Full of shimmering detail, Welcome to Lagos is a stunning portrayal of an extraordinary city, and of seven lives that intersect in a breathless story of courage and survival.]]> 368 Chibundu Onuzo 0571268943 Mariam 0 to-read 3.72 2017 Welcome to Lagos
author: Chibundu Onuzo
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh]]> 202940665 From the award-winning author of Love After Love, comes an epic of wonder, danger and risk.

This is the tale of four women.

Popo: brilliant, vulnerable and stuck. She's determined to free herself from the traps of her past.

Mana Lala: a devoted mother - her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them close.

For Doris, well he's glorious and once she's licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder. She's heard the awful stories, but she's sure they won't be hers.

Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store.

Four lives, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.]]> 577 Ingrid Persaud 0571386520 Mariam 0 to-read 4.28 The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh
author: Ingrid Persaud
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.28
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]]> <![CDATA[For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings]]> 71402691 "A herald of literary wonders to come." - Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, author of Dust

"The vibrant intensities of Onyango's deftly crafted characters makes this collection of stories come alive." - TJ Benson, author of The Madhouse

Troy Onyango’s For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings is a collection of twelve short stories that have a quickening pulse and pages crackling with sharp observations and gentle revelations about love, loneliness, loss, longing, and the infinite intricacies of daily human life.

In the opening story, The Transfiguration a trans woman tries to find herself and a sense of belonging in the unkind streets of Nairobi. A sister relives two decades of sibling rivalry when the brother disappears in a lake in the titular story For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings. Two friends grow apart as they grow older and realise their paths diverge in Goodbye, So Long.

In these beautiful stories that straddle the breadth of Kenya, Troy's characters navigate the daily lived experiences that shape them, as they learn to cobble together an existence alongside a society with rules that do not quite fit.

"With accomplished perceptive prose and a voice that is all his own, Onyango transports the reader towards and beyond the unexplored frontiers and territories of the self. This debut collection of short stories is a crucial and long-awaited entry into the African literary tradition." - Rémy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One]]> 236 Troy Onyango 9789987870 Mariam 0 to-read 3.83 For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings
author: Troy Onyango
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.83
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]]> <![CDATA[I Do Not Come to You by Chance]]> 8175576 345 Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani 0753826976 Mariam 0 to-read 3.89 2009 I Do Not Come to You by Chance
author: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> The Mother Act 195430713
Sadie Jones, a larger-than-life actress and controversial feminist, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this more deeply than Jude, the daughter Sadie left behind. While Jude spent her childhood touring with her father’s Shakespearian theater company, desperate for validation from the mother she barely knew, Sadie catapulted to fame on the wings of The Mother Act —a scathing one-woman show depicting her maternal rage.

Two decades later, Jude is a talented actress in her own right, and her fraught relationship with Sadie has come to a head—bitterly and publicly. On a December evening in New York City, at the packed premiere of Sadie’s latest play, the two come face-to-face and the intertwined stories of their lives unravel. With years of love, resentment, and misunderstanding laid bare, the questions What are the costs of being a devoted mother and a devoted artist, and who gets to decide if the collateral damage is justified?

Compelling, insightful,and cleverly conveyed as a play in six acts, The Mother Act is equal parts stylish page-turner and provocative exploration of womanhood.]]> 400 Heidi Reimer Mariam 0 to-read 4.12 2024 The Mother Act
author: Heidi Reimer
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Bird Summons 52634103 New York Times Notable author Leila Aboulela delivers a lively portrait of three women who embark on a journey of self-discovery while grappling with the conflicting demands of family, duty, and faith.

When Salma, Moni, and Iman--friends and active members of their local Muslim Women's group--decide to take a road trip together to the Scottish Highlands, they leave behind lives often dominated by obligation, frustrated desire, and dull predictability. Each wants something more out of life, but fears the cost of taking it. Salma is successful and happily married, but tempted to risk it all when she's contacted by her first love back in Egypt; Moni gave up a career in banking to care for her disabled son without the help of her indifferent husband; and Iman, in her twenties and already on her third marriage, longs for the freedom and autonomy she's never known. When the women are visited by the Hoopoe, a sacred bird from Muslim and Celtic literature, they are compelled to question their relationships to faith and femininity, love, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Brilliantly imagined, thoughtful and wise, Bird Summons confirms Leila Aboulela's reputation as one of our finest contemporary writers.]]> 290 Leila Aboulela 0802149154 Mariam 0 to-read 3.26 2019 Bird Summons
author: Leila Aboulela
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2019
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]]> Elsewhere, Home 38681904 Elsewhere, Home offers us a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad, attempting to navigate the conflicts of assimilation and difference in an unfamiliar world.

A young woman's encounter with a former classmate elicits painful reminders of her former life in Khartoum. A wealthy Sudanese student in Aberdeen begins an unlikely friendship with a Scottish man. A woman experiences an evolving relationship to her favourite writer, whose portrait of their shared culture both reflects and conflicts with her own sense of identity.

Shuttling between the dusty, sun-baked streets of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint, the profound feelings of yearning, loss and alienation that come with leaving one's homeland in pursuit of a different life.]]> 256 Leila Aboulela 1846592119 Mariam 0 to-read 3.65 2018 Elsewhere, Home
author: Leila Aboulela
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2018
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]]> Minaret 1751470 276 Leila Aboulela 0747579423 Mariam 0 to-read 3.39 2005 Minaret
author: Leila Aboulela
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> The Beauty of Your Face 45894170
A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter—radicalized by the online alt-right—attacks the school.

As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.

The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals.]]> 312 Sahar Mustafah 1324003383 Mariam 0 to-read 4.17 2020 The Beauty of Your Face
author: Sahar Mustafah
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
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]]> When Life Gives You Mangos 51342422 The story about a young girl who can't remember anything from her previous summer after a hurricane.

Twelve-year-old Clara lives on an island that visitors call exotic. But there's nothing exotic about it to Clara. She loves eating ripe mangos off the ground, running outside in the rain with her Papa during rainy season, and going to her secret hideout with Gaynah--even though lately she's not acting like a best friend.

The only thing out of the ordinary for Clara is that something happened to her memory that made her forget everything that happened last summer after a hurricane hit. Sometimes things come back to her in drips like a tap that hasn't been turned off properly. Other times her Mama fills in the blanks...only she knows those aren't her memories and it is hard feeling like she is not like everybody else.

But this summer is going to be different for Clara. Everyone is buzzing with excitement over a new girl in the village who is not like other visitors. She is about to make big waves on the island--and give Clara a summer she won't forget.]]> 208 Kereen Getten 059317397X Mariam 0 to-read 3.94 2020 When Life Gives You Mangos
author: Kereen Getten
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
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]]> The Island of Forgetting 58671491
Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, but the baby is not enough to save him from himself—or his family’s secrets.

Seventeen years later, Iapetus’s son, the stoic Atlas, lives in a loveless house, under the care of his uncle, Cronus, and in the shadow of his charismatic cousin Z. Knowing little about the tragic circumstances of his father’s life, Atlas must choose between his desire to flee the island and his loyalty to the uncle who raised him.

Time passes. Atlas’s daughter, Calypso, is a beautiful and wilful teenager who is desperate to avoid being trapped in a life of drudgery at her uncle Z’s hotel. When she falls dangerously in love with a visiting real estate developer, she finds herself entangled in her uncle’s shady dealings, a pawn in the games of the powerful men around her.

It is now 2019. Calypso’s son, Nautilus, is on a path of self-destruction as he grapples with his fatherless condition, his mixed-race identity and his complicated feelings of attraction towards his best friend, Daniel. Then one night, after making an impulsive decision, Nautilus finds himself exiled to Canada.

The Island of Forgetting is an intimate saga spanning four generations of one family who run a beachfront hotel. Loosely inspired by Greek mythology, this is a novel about the echo of deep—and sometimes tragic—love and the ways a family’s past can haunt its future.]]> 320 Jasmine Sealy 1443465208 Mariam 0 to-read 4.06 2022 The Island of Forgetting
author: Jasmine Sealy
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
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]]> <![CDATA[They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us]]> 142601047
How do we understand ourselves when the story about who we are supposed to be is stronger than our sense of self? What do we stand to gain—and lose—by taking control of our narrative? These questions propel Prachi Gupta’s heartfelt memoir and can feel particularly fraught for immigrants and their children who live under immense pressure to belong in America.

Prachi Gupta’s family embodied the American a doctor father and a nurturing mother who raised two high-achieving children with one foot in the Indian American community, the other in Pennsylvania’s white suburbia. But their belonging was predicated on a powerful that Asian Americans have perfected the alchemy of middle-class life, raising tight-knit, ambitious families that are immune to hardship. Molding oneself to fit this perfect image often comes at a steep but hidden cost. In They Called Us Exceptional, Gupta articulates the dissonance, shame, and isolation of being upheld as an American success story while privately navigating traumas invisible to the outside world.

Gupta addresses her mother throughout the book, weaving a deeply vulnerable personal narrative with history, postcolonial theory, and research on mental health, to show how she slowly made sense of her reality and freed herself emotionally and physically from the pervasive, reductive myth that had once defined her. But, tragically, the act that liberated Gupta was also the act that distanced her from those she loved most. By charting her family’s slow unraveling and her determination to break the cycle, Gupta shows how traditional notions of success keep us disconnected from ourselves and one another—and passionately argues why we must orient ourselves toward compassion over belonging.]]> 288 Prachi Gupta 0593442989 Mariam 0 to-read 4.35 2023 They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us
author: Prachi Gupta
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.35
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]]> The Light We Lost 32956365 He was the first person to inspire her, to move her, to truly understand her. Was he meant to be the last?

Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story—their story—at the very beginning.

Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated—perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East and Lucy pursues a career in New York. What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.]]> 328 Jill Santopolo 0735212759 Mariam 0 to-read 3.80 2017 The Light We Lost
author: Jill Santopolo
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
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]]> Unsteady (The Undone, #1) 198853583
During last year’s Frozen Four, the Waterfell University hockey captain, and NHL legacy, took a brutal hit that left him with a concussion and a new discomfort on the ice. Plagued by nightmares and panic attacks every time he attempt to skate, Rhys wonders if he’ll ever play again � if he’ll ever want to.

Sadie Brown is staying focused this semester � no matter what.

Currently drowning in debt, custody hearings for her younger brothers and skating practices, she's just trying to make it to the next day. A spitfire figure skater known for her bad attitude and frequent disappearing acts, she has a reputation on campus. And it’s not a pretty one.

When she accidentally witnesses one of the golden boy hockey captain’s panic attacks and attempts to help him, a strange sort of understanding strikes up between them.

No questions asked. Just comfort.

But Rhys finds himself drawn to Sadie. Where he feels empty, a shell of the man and player he was before, Sadie is so full of everything it bursts from her; every emotion she feels seems like it’s blasted at max. Rhys is desperate to feel anything, Sadie wants to stop feeling so much.

But healing doesn’t mix with secrets, and they’re both skating a thin line, unsteady .]]> 384 Peyton Corinne Mariam 0 to-read 3.82 2023 Unsteady (The Undone, #1)
author: Peyton Corinne
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
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]]> <![CDATA[Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist, #1)]]> 23308087
So, at just seventeen years old, Mariko is sent to the imperial palace to meet her betrothed, a man she did not choose, for the very first time. But the journey is cut short when Mariko’s convoy is viciously attacked by the Black Clan, a dangerous group of bandits who’ve been hired to kill Mariko before she reaches the palace.

The lone survivor, Mariko narrowly escapes to the woods, where she plots her revenge. Dressed as a peasant boy, she sets out to infiltrate the Black Clan and hunt down those responsible for the target on her back. Once she’s within their ranks, though, Mariko finds for the first time she’s appreciated for her intellect and abilities. She even finds herself falling in love—a love that will force her to question everything she’s ever known about her family, her purpose, and her deepest desires.]]> 392 Renée Ahdieh 0399171630 Mariam 0 to-read 3.85 2017 Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist, #1)
author: Renée Ahdieh
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
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]]> <![CDATA[Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness, #1)]]> 13831 From now on I'm Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I'll be a knight.

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page.

But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna's first adventure begins - one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.

]]> 274 Tamora Pierce 0689878559 Mariam 0 to-read 4.28 1983 Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness, #1)
author: Tamora Pierce
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1983
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wolf of Oren-Yaro (Chronicles of the Bitch Queen, #1)]]> 46207682 A queen of a divided land must unite her people, even if they hate her, even if it means stopping a ruin that she helped create. A debut epic fantasy from an exciting new voice.

"I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me."

Born under the crumbling towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves that nearly tore her nation apart. Her upcoming marriage to the son of her father's rival heralds peaceful days to come.

But his sudden departure before their reign begins fractures the kingdom beyond repair.

Years later, Talyien receives a message, urging her to attend a meeting across the sea. It's meant to be an effort at reconciliation, but an assassination attempt leaves the queen stranded and desperate to survive in a dangerous land. With no idea who she can trust, she's on her own as she struggles to fight her way home.]]> 496 K.S. Villoso 0316532665 Mariam 0 to-read 3.63 2018 The Wolf of Oren-Yaro (Chronicles of the Bitch Queen, #1)
author: K.S. Villoso
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2018
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]]> Jane of Lantern Hill 149543 274 L.M. Montgomery 077106165X Mariam 0 to-read 4.17 1937 Jane of Lantern Hill
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1937
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]]> Kilmeny of the Orchard 65769 A sweet and moving romance from the author of the beloved Anne of Green Gables series!

Eric Marshall, recent college graduate, has the world at his feet. He’s handsome, popular, wealthy, and surprisingly, single. Living the bachelor lifestyle with his widowed father, he’s never given much thought to romance. When an old school friend asks Eric to substitute teach for him on Prince Edward Island while he recuperates from an illness, Eric thinks, why not? He’s got some time to kill before diving into the family business with his father, and the rustic island may be a good diversion for him.

Eric falls into the easy routine of island life, and his status as eligible bachelor endears him to the locals. Eric is still not thinking of romance, but he’s about to find it in a most unexpected place�

Kilmeny Gordon is sweet and smart and beautiful, perfect in every way but one: she ’t speak. She’s been sheltered all her life due to her disability and the scandal surrounding her birth. She wiles away her hours helping her aunt and uncle on the farm and playing her violin in her favorite secluded spot. When Eric stumbles into her hidden orchard, he brings a whole new world with him, and a friendship that both frightens her and thrills her. As the summer days grow longer and their friendship blossoms, sweet, silent Kilmeny, with her sunny enthusiasm and haunting music, manages to do what neither the co-eds of Queenslea College nor the village lasses of Lindsay have been able to do—capture Eric’s heart.

But Kilmeny knows he’ll soon have to go back to his life on the mainland, a world of business meetings and parties and prejudicial people—a world in which she’ll hold him back and never fit in. None of that matters to Eric, but how can he get her to accept that she’s the only woman he’ll ever love, when she is convinced that the only way to love him is to let him go?]]> 144 L.M. Montgomery 0553213776 Mariam 0 to-read 3.63 1910 Kilmeny of the Orchard
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1910
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]]> A Tangled Web 3577
In the next twelve months beautiful Gay Penhallow's handsome fiancé Noel Gibson leaves her for sly and seductive Nan Penhallow; reckless Peter Penhallow and lovely Donna Dark, who have hated each other since childhood, are inexplicably brought together by the jug; Hugh and Joscelyn Dark, separated on their wedding night ten years ago for reasons never revealed, find a second chance—all watched over by the mysterious Moon Man, who has the gift of second sight. Then comes the night when Aunt Becky's wishes will be revealed...and the family is in for the biggest surprise of all.]]> 257 L.M. Montgomery 0770422454 Mariam 0 to-read 3.87 1931 A Tangled Web
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1931
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]]> Out on a Limb 124950295 397 Hannah Bonam-Young 1778027784 Mariam 0 to-read 4.25 2023 Out on a Limb
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
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]]> Out of the Woods 209220944
But Sarah has begun to wonder... Who is she without her other half?

When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable.

That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly steps in to save the day.

The rift that follows unearths a decade of grievances between them and doubts begin to grow. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen? Are they supposed to be?

In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is near breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches.

What follows is a life-affirming comedy of errors as two nature-averse people fight their way out of the woods in order to find their way back to their roots.]]> 336 Hannah Bonam-Young 0593871863 Mariam 0 to-read 3.99 2025 Out of the Woods
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
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]]> If It Makes You Happy 210521813
I, on the other hand, don’t–at all–have anything figured out.

Trust me, I didn’t think taking over my mom’s dream bed and breakfast in Copper Run Vermont was going to be easy. It should be a good place to heal after my divorce. But apparently my scones belong in the garbage with my small talk skills. As pointed out by none other than Cliff.

Cliff is inescapable. He knows exactly what people need–always. His charm, the way he wears flannel, and even his pastries, make not wanting to be friends with Cliff and his daughters pretty hard.

Friends? I can make friends. That’s safe.

Except I’m leaving in three months to pass the inn off to my little sister and get the promotion in Seattle I’ve been working towards.

So ask me why I’m thinking about kissing my hot neighbor.]]> 510 Julie Olivia Mariam 0 to-read 4.36 2024 If It Makes You Happy
author: Julie Olivia
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.36
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]]> <![CDATA[The Year We Fell Down (The Ivy Years, #1)]]> 46019039 Alternate cover for this ASIN can be found here

The sport she loves is out of reach. The boy she loves has someone else. What now?

She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead.

Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He's way out of Corey's league.

Also, he's taken.

Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in McHerrin Hall. Over tequila, perilously balanced dining hall trays, and video games, the two cope with disappointments that nobody else understands.

They're just friends, of course, until one night when things fall apart. Or fall together. All Corey knows is that she's falling. Hard.

But will Hartley set aside his trophy girl to love someone as broken as Corey? If he won't, she will need to find the courage to make a life for herself at Harkness -- one which does not revolve around the sport she can no longer play, or the brown-eyed boy who's afraid to love her back.]]> 274 Sarina Bowen Mariam 0 to-read 3.85 2014 The Year We Fell Down (The Ivy Years, #1)
author: Sarina Bowen
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
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]]> People In Trouble 203492
The importance of Karl Marx's work and its distortion by communist politicians plays an important role in Reich's account, as does the political activity in the International Psychoanalytic Association which led to his expulsion from that organization in 1934. The Norwegian press campaign against his biological experiments is also discussed.

People in Trouble is the story of one man's courageous struggle to understand the political activity of his fellow men.]]> 304 Wilhelm Reich 0374510350 Mariam 0 to-read 3.85 1953 People In Trouble
author: Wilhelm Reich
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1953
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]]> <![CDATA[The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind]]> 6892290
In 1968, Safiya Bukhari witnessed an NYPD officer harassing a Black Panther for selling the organization’s newspaper on a Harlem street corner. The young pre-med student felt compelled to intervene in defense of the Panther’s First Amendment right; she ended up handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.

The War Before traces Bukhari’s lifelong commitment as an advocate for the rights of the oppressed. Following her journey from middle-class student to Black Panther to political prisoner, these writings provide an intimate view of a woman wrestling with the issues of her time—the troubled legacy of the Panthers, misogyny in the movement, her decision to convert to Islam, the incarceration of outspoken radicals, and the families left behind. Her account unfolds with immediacy and passion, showing how the struggles of social justice movements of the past have paved the way for the progress—and continued struggle—of today.

With a preface by Bukhari’s daughter, Wonda Jones, a forward by Angela Y. Davis, and edited by Laura Whitehorn, The War Before is a riveting look at the making of an activist and the legacy she left behind.]]> 320 Safiya Bukhari 1558616101 Mariam 0 to-read 4.47 2010 The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind
author: Safiya Bukhari
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2010
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]]> <![CDATA[Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn]]> 200300090
Western How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn is a paradigm-shifting book that provides a trenchant critique of the Western left intelligentsia. It reveals how its dominant ideological orientation―characterized by defeatism, utopianism, and anti-communism―is rooted in the political economy of imperialism. Internationally acclaimed theorist Domenico Losurdo thus provides a fresh and challenging perspective on purportedly radical thinkers who have been widely promoted in the imperial core, including those affiliated with the Frankfurt School, French Theory, and operaismo , as well as Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, and Slavoj Žižek, among others. His critique also has wide-reaching implications for trend-setting discourses inspired by this coterie of intellectuals, from postcolonial and decolonial theory to subaltern studies and beyond. Far from being a negative undertaking, however, this book is grounded in the positive project of reigniting anti-imperialist Marxism.

As a complement to the Italian edition of Western Marxism , this first-ever English translation also features the unprecedented publication of a major lecture that demystifies “Western Marxism� and its role in imperialists� efforts to denigrate the achievements of actually existing socialism. Raising the stakes of what it means to produce critical theory, Western Marxism will surely provoke wide debate and a reevaluation of hallowed canons.]]> 352 Domenico Losurdo 1685900623 Mariam 0 to-read 4.49 2017 Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn
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name: Mariam
average rating: 4.49
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]]> Forest of Noise: Poems 211809097 A candid, horrific, and deeply touching new collection of poems about life in Gaza by an award-winning Palestinian poet.Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety. Not for the first time in their lives.Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime. Here are directives for what to do in an air raid; here are lyrics about the poet’s wife, singing to his children to distract them. Huddled in the dark, Toha remembers his grandfather’s oranges, his daughter’s joy in eating them.Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely livable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination—even as it is watched live. AbuToha's poems introduce readers to his extended family, some of them no longer with us. This is an urgent, extraordinary, and arrestingly whimsical book. Searing and beautiful, it brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering.]]> 96 Mosab Abu Toha 0593803973 Mariam 0 to-read 4.73 2024 Forest of Noise: Poems
author: Mosab Abu Toha
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.73
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]]> <![CDATA[Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader]]> 176777 372 John Womack Jr. 1565844521 Mariam 0 to-read 3.68 1999 Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader
author: John Womack Jr.
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1999
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]]> Love of Worker Bees 351373 232 Alexandra Kollontai 0897330013 Mariam 0 to-read 3.76 1924 Love of Worker Bees
author: Alexandra Kollontai
name: Mariam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1924
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]]> The Scorpio Races 10626594
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition � the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.]]> 409 Maggie Stiefvater 054522490X Mariam 0 to-read 4.09 2011 The Scorpio Races
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Mariam
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]>