Emily X.R. Pan
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Hebah A.H. One of the things that draws me to young adult books is their handling of serious issues. When I saw this title dealing with both depression/suicide and the search for roots and answers to family secrets, I was intrigued. The Astonishing Color of After handled both beautifully. Leigh's search for answers and connection to the Taiwanese grandparents she never knew after her mother's death is a painful one that reaches no easy answers but still ends with hope and an implied sense that healing can finally begin.
Ubisoft
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Rachel C. The latest in the Assassin's Creed juggernaut, Origins (available for PS4 and XBoxOne) is immediately striking due to the sheer amount of pretty. The vast expanses of desert, the detail in the cities, the shining pyramids, the stars in the sky...this game is gorgeous. Happily, it's more than just a pretty face!
Antoine Laurain
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Maryana K. The Portrait follows the journey of Pierre-François Chaumont, a married Parisian attorney. As a boy, Pierre is influenced by his uncle to become a collector of objects. He begins with scented erasers, but quickly raises the level of sophistication and moves on to antiques. By the time the reader finds Pierre in present day, his collection is massive and a point of contention between him and his wife. It is his latest purchase, a portrait of a man, which really puts their marriage on shaky ground.
Mohsin Hamid
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Stefanie E. Exit West offers an opportunity to understand the refugee experience on a powerful level through the eyes of two university students.
Hamid, in brief poetic prose, shows us just how quickly a country can be thrown into a wartime scenario and a people forced to displace themselves as refugees.
Howard Frank Mosher
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Maryana K. “They lived in a house at the end of the road and were friends to mankind”- Kinneson family motto.
Haruki Murakami
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Megan C. Haruki Murakami is not for everyone, but he’s one of my favorite authors. His indescribable blend of post modernism, magic realism, and surrealism set in his native Japan never fail to provoke rumination on topics ranging from existential to mundane. This novel is translated by the prize-winning J. Philip Gabriel.
A. S. King
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Amy F. I was lucky enough to hear AS King speak when she visited our Library in August 2015. Eventually, after much fascinating talk, one of the moderators got around to asking her about her newest book, I Crawl Through It. "What's it about?" We all laughed, as we had earlier established how difficult it can be to neatly summarize a King novel. But then King's expression turned serious and she said, "It's about the way teens have to deal, daily, with both intruder drills and standardized tests - and how messed up that is." I had already been planning on reading King's new book, but now I knew, I had to read it now.
Sarah Addison Allen
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Octavia V. The Waverley family, Claire and Sydney, both have the gift of helpful magic. They live in the charming town of Bascom, North Carolina where it’s autumn and as temperatures fall, everyone and everything grows restless and problems flourish.
Claire runs Waverley’s Candies out of her kitchen, making handcrafted confections. Business is so good she can’t keep up with demand on her own. When someone offers to buy the business, Claire is stuck in a quandary.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
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Hannah Jane C. While the protagonist, Victoria, is incredibly flawed in The Language of Flowers, it is unlikely you will ever feel anger towards her. Trapped in the uncaring hands of foster care her entire life, she is socially inept, volatile and completely mired in grief and rage.
Erin Morgenstern
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Josh N. Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is a wonderful, mysterious, enchanting novel, as magical as the circus it tells the story of. Two wizards challenge each other to a contest, pitting their two students, a boy called Marco and a girl named Celia, against each other, with a surreal, avant garde circus, Le Cirque de Rêves, as the battleground.
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