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French braid [text (large print)] / by Tyler, Anne,author.;
"The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understands. Yet as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influence on one another ripples unmistakably through each generation, much like French-braided hair keeps its waves even after it is undone. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close--yet how unknowable--every family is to itself"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Large type books.; Novels.; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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French braid [sound recording] / by Tyler, Anne,author.; Farr, Kimberly,narrator.; Random House Audio Publishing,publisher.;
Read by Kimberly Farr."The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understands. Yet as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influence on one another ripples unmistakably through each generation, much like French-braided hair keeps its waves even after it is undone. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close--yet how unknowable--every family is to itself"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The arrangement : a novel / by Dunn, Sarah,1969-author.;
Lucy and Owen, ambitious, thoroughly-therapized New Yorkers, have taken the plunge, trading in their crazy life in a cramped apartment for Beekman, a bucolic Hudson Valley hamlet. They've got a two hundred year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic, and 17 chickens, at last count. It's the kind of paradise where stay-at-home moms team up to cook the school's "hot lunch," dads grill grass-fed burgers, and, as Lucy observes, "chopping kale has become a certain kind of American housewife's version of chopping wood." When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they've made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There's a part of her, though--the part that worries she's become too comfortable being invisible--that's intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked. When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily-ever-after she's known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy--"real life," or the "experiment"?
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Married people; Open marriage;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Alice Network / by Quinn, Kate,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."It's 1947 and American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a fervent belief that her beloved French cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive somewhere. So when Charlie's family banishes her to Europe to have her "little problem" take care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister. In 1915, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance to serve when she's recruited to work as a spy for the English. Sent into enemy-occupied France during The Great War, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents, right under the enemy's nose. Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launching them both on a mission to find the truth ... no matter where it leads"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Spy fiction.; War fiction.; Women spies; World War, 1914-1918;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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No one can know / by Marshall, Kate Alice,author.;
"The author of What Lies in the Woods returns with a novel about three sisters, two murders, and too many secrets to count. Emma hasn't told her husband much about her past. He knows her parents are dead and she hasn't spoken to her sisters in years. Then they lose their apartment, her husband gets laid off, and Emma discovers she's pregnant-right as the bank account slips into the red. That's when Emma confesses that she has one more asset: her parents' house, which she owns jointly with her estranged sisters. They can't sell it, but they can live in it. But returning home means that Emma is forced to reveal her secrets to her husband: that the house is not a run-down farmhouse but a stately mansion, and that her parents died there. Were murdered. And that some people say Emma did it. Emma and her sisters have never spoken about what really happened that night. Now, her return to the house may lure her sisters back, but it will also crack open family and small-town secrets lots of people don't want revealed. As Emma struggles to reconnect with her old family and hold together her new one, she begins to realize that the things they have left unspoken all these years have put them in danger again"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Family secrets; Murder; Parents; Secrecy; Sisters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Confessions with Keith : extracts from the journals of Vita Glass / by Holdstock, Pauline,1948-author.;
"An outrageously comic novel documents a middle-aged writer and mother's grappling with mid-life crisis--her husband's and her own. Preoccupied with her fledgling literary career, intent on the all-consuming consolations of philosophy, and scrambling to meet the demands of her four children, the acutely myopic and chronically inattentive Vita Glass doesn't notice that her house and her marriage are competing to see which can fall apart fastest. Meanwhile, Vita's eldest son is embarking on his professional career as a teenaged stoner, her eldest daughter can't be seen in public with her lest she succumb of mortal embarrassment, her younger son's gerbils won't stop having babies, and the baby of the family suffers debilitating grief over certain memories, including the thought of the Cats soundtrack and that one time she stepped on a hornet's nest. Plus the family dog is a Greek chorus of puke. Vita can barely find time for her writing career, and just when her newfound success in vegetable erotica is beginning to take off. Our heroine's only tried and trusted escape is the blissful detachment of Keith's hairdressing salon, but when her husband leaves the country, unannounced, she decides to do likewise--in the opposite direction, and with their children. Drawn from the pages of Vita's journal, this outrageously comic novel documents Vita's passage through a mid-life crisis and explores all the ways we deceive each other and ourselves."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Novels.; Families; Middle-aged women; Midlife crisis; Women authors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The compound [text (large print)] : a novel / by Rawle, Aisling,1998-author.;
"Lily -- a bored, beautiful twenty-something -- wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she'll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams -- but what will she have to do to win?"--
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Large print books.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Beauty, Personal; Contests; Reality television programs; Social isolation; Survival;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Unsheltered : a novel / by Kingsolver, Barbara,author.;
Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it's so unnerving that she's arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development. In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland's past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Middle-aged women; Families; Life change events; History; Dwellings;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
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Anxious people / by Backman, Fredrik,1981-author.; Smith, Neil(Neil Andrew),translator.;
"This is a story about a hostage drama. But more than that, it’s a story about idiots. That’s why, from the very outset, I need to say that it is always very easy to declare people idiots, but only if you forget that it is also almost always idiotically difficult to be human. Anxious People is an unreasonably riotous comedy about a hostage drama during an open house that all begins when a failed bank robber locks himself in with six strangers who have come to view the apartment. In captivity we meet Roger and Anna-Lena, a recently retired couple who are on a manic hunt for fixer-uppers because they don’t know how to fix their own marriage. They have the distinction of shopping at every Ikea in Sweden—and those are some of the most romantic moments they ever shared. Then there is Zara, a wealthy director of a bank who has never cared for poor people or their problems (and isn’t shy about saying so). But when tragedy strikes in her life, she becomes addicted to visiting real-estate open houses to see how the middle-classes live – and possibly to find a suitable place to commit suicide. Julia and Danijela are a young lesbian couple with a newborn baby who can’t agree on anything. Their opposite and idiosyncratic home preferences are making them increasingly anxious about their chances of spending a lifetime together. And Estelle, an eighty year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by some bank robber waving a gun in her face. Despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car. As police surround the premises and television channels are broadcasting live, the pressure of an increasingly tense situation mounts, causing each person to reveal more and more about themselves to each other. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people. In the end, the hostages are released, but when the police storm the apartment to capture the robber, it is...empty. In a series of interviews afterwards, the witnesses all tell their version of what happened that day, whereupon it becomes clear to the police that one person is lying, and that none of the others are telling the whole truth. This is a story about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and a group of very anxious people who experience the same events in wildly different ways."--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Detective and mystery fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Bank robberies; Thieves; Hostage negotiations; Witnesses; Small cities; Bank robberies.; Hostage negotiations.; Small cities.; Thieves.; Witnesses.;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Tell me everything [sound recording] : a novel / by Strout, Elizabeth,author.; Farr, Kimberly,narrator.; Random House Audio Publishing,publisher.;
Read by Kimberly Farr."With her "extraordinary capacity for radical empathy" (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst; fall in love and yet choose to be apart; and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it: What does anyone's life mean? It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known -- "unrecorded lives," Olive calls them -- reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Friendship; Love; Man-woman relationships; Murder; Retirement communities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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