Book of Clouds
Chloe Aridjis, 2009Chloe Aridjis' haunting debut novel, is a masterfully wrought tale of a young woman adrift in Berlin, where a string of fateful encounters leads to romance, violence and, ultimately revelation.
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IZ
The Black Girl Next Door: a Memoir
Jennifer Baszile, 2009The Baszile family's move to an exclusive white suburb in Palos Verde, California, was the culmination of parents' striving for a racially integrated, middle-class life. For their daughters, it meant isolation and coping with the occasional racial slurs that went along with the advantages of suburban life. This is an absorbing look behind the facade of one black family's striving for integration and the American dream.
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FW
Sarah's Key
Tatiana de Rosnay, 2007De Rosnay fictionalizes the roundups and deportations in Paris in 1942, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Velodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Sixty years later, a young journalist becomes interested in the prior residents of her apartment. Her investigation starts to unravel a long held family secret. This book, the author's first written in English, has been translated into 15 different languages. It keeps the reader spell-bound.
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FW
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz, 2007Set in Patterson, NJ and the Dominican Republic, this book travels back and forth in time as the reader meets Oscar, a ghetto nerd, and his family, trying to cope with life in America during and after the reign of Trujillo. This title won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2008.
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MC
Pomegranate Soup
Marsha Mehran, 2005 A delightful tale of three Persian sisters and their adventures as immigrant restauranteurs in rural Ireland. It is a touching and humorous story full of eccentric characters, the clash of cultures and family loyalty. It depicts how good food can bridge almost any divide.
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JA
The Double Bind
Chris Bohjalian, 2007 When a college sophomore is attacked while riding her bike through rural Vermont, her life is forever changed. She withdraws, finds works at a homeless shelter, and befriends a man with a history of mental illness. His death leads her to look for the truth about his former life. This is a riveting novel that challenges readers to separate apparent fact from imagined fiction. The Double Bind has been chosen for Great Neck reads, a community-wide reading event April 19-May 31, 2009.
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JA
Lush Life
Richard Price, 2008A murder occurs on the Lower East Side -- a "mugging gone bad" as the police term it. The investigation depicts the culture clash between those living and working in the neighborhood bodegas and public housing units, and the more recent newcomers living in gentrified lofts and habituating expensive restaurants. Price's writing is cinematic, with memorable dialog and characters.
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MM
Lipstick Jihad:a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran
Azadeh Moaveni, 2005As is evident from its title, this book is about spanning cultural differences. Thanks to her dual citizenship, Moaveni spent two years in Tehran working as a stringer for Time Magazine. The result is this upbeat and humorous account of coming to terms with her dual cultural background.
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IZ
Caspian Rain
Jina Nahai, 2007This coming-of-age story combines family drama and historical fiction.. Yaas is the product of an unlikely marriage between a mother who grew up in Tehran's Jewish ghetto and a father from a well-to-do Jewish family. Her compelling tragic story offers a glimpse of Persian life before the Islamic Revolution, when women were hampered by gender, religion and custom.
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