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The caretakers : a novel / by Bestor-Siegal, Amanda,author.;
Paris, 2015. A crowd gathers outside the Chauvet home in the affluent suburban community of Maisons-Larue, watching as the family's American au pair is led away in handcuffs after the sudden death of her young charge. The grieving mother believes the caretaker is to blame, and the neighborhood is thrown into chaos, unsure who is at fault-the enigmatic, young foreigner or the mother herself, who has never seemed an active participant in the lives of her children. The truth lies with six women: Géraldine, a heartbroken French teacher struggling to support her vulnerable young students; Lou, an incompetent au pair who was recently fired by the family next door; Charlotte, a chilly socialite and reluctant mother; Nathalie, an isolated French teenager desperate for her mother's attention; Holly, a socially anxious au pair yearning to belong in her adopted country; and finally, Alena, the one accused of the crime, who has gone to great lengths to avoid emotional connection, and now finds herself caught in the turbulent power dynamics of her host family's household.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Au pairs; Children; Secrecy; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dinosaurs : a novel / by Millet, Lydia,1968-author.;
"A stunning new novel from the author of A Children's Bible, a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2020. Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist. Hailed as "a writer without limits" (Karen Russell) and "a stone-cold genius" (Jenny Offill), Millet makes fiction that vividly evokes the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her exquisite new novel is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, drily funny, and philosophical account of Gil's unexpected devotion to the family, Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins-what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies. Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks: In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Satirical literature.; Novels.; Friendship; Neighbors; Walking;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Olga dies dreaming / by Gonzalez, Xochitl,1977-author.;
"A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own ... until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets ... Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream-all while asking what it really means to weather a storm"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Brothers and sisters; Family secrets; Hispanic Americans; Hurricane Maria, 2017; Hurricanes; Identity (Psychology); Mother and child; Political activists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Long Island compromise : a novel / by Brodesser-Akner, Taffy,author.;
"In 1983, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of Long Island, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse for wear, and the family begins the hard work of trying to move on with their lives and resume their prized places in the saga of the American dream, coming to understand that though their money may have been what put them in danger, it is also what guaranteed them their safety in the end. But forty years later, when Carl's mother dies and the family comes home to mourn her, it becomes clear that nobody ever really got over anything. Carl's wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband's emotional health. Their three grown children are each a mess: Nathan cannot seem to advance at his law firm and may have made a terrible investment with his trust fund; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything-substance, foodstuff, women-in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she is not a product of the family's pathology that she comes to define it. Then there's Carl himself, the prickly, still-terrified father, who has been secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping for years, and the unthinkable act he commits that will alter the family's path forever"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Satirical fiction.; Novels.; Extortion; Families; Family secrets; Kidnapping; Life change events; Ransom; Rich people; Secrecy;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Triangle : a novel / by Steel, Danielle,author.;
"As she approaches the milestone birthday of forty, delicate blond beauty Amanda Delanoe finds joy in running a chic contemporary art gallery in the City of Light. The only child of a French businessman and an American model, both now deceased, Amanda lives well and adores her dog, Lulu, but so far the love of her life has eluded her. Then she meets Olivier Saint Albin, a dashing publisher. At the same time, she reconnects with Tom Quinlan, an old boyfriend from her days at NYU twenty years ago, now a lawyer on sabbatical who has come to Paris to devote himself to writing a thriller. Charming Olivier is a master at the art of flirtation, but as Amanda feels herself falling for him, she learns he is married. Providing counsel and support is her friend and co-owner of the gallery, fun-loving bachelor Pascal Leblanc. When Amanda begins to receive threatening phone calls late at night, it is Pascal she turns to. Then someone breaks into her apartment on the Left Bank, and it's all too clear she is in real danger. But from whom? An old love, a new love, or a stranger? As love enters her life, so does terror ... "--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Friendship; Man-woman relationships; Married men; Stalking victims; Stalking;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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God bless you, Otis Spunkmeyer / by Thomas, Joseph Earl,author.;
"After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life-of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; African American men; Fathers and sons; Interpersonal relations; Veterans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The wolf hunt : a novel / by Gundar-Goshen, Ayelet,1982-author.; Silverston, Sondra,translator.; translation of:Gundar-Goshen, Ayelet,1982-Riloḳaishen.English.;
"Lilach has it all: a beautiful home in the heart of Silicon Valley, a successful husband and stable marriage, and a teenage son, Adam, with whom she has always felt a particular closeness. Israeli immigrants, the family has now lived in the U.S. long enough that they consider it home. But after a brutal attack on a local synagogue shakes their sense of safety, Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of confidence and belonging. Then, tragedy strikes again when an African American boy dies at a house party, apparently from a drug overdose. Though he was a high school classmate, Adam claims not to know him. Yet rumors begin to circulate that the death was not accidental, and that Adam and his new friends had a history with Jamal. As more details surface and racial tensions in the community are ignited, Lilach begins to question everything she thought she knew about her son. Could her worst fears be possible? Could her quiet, reclusive child have had something to do with Jamal's death?"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Political fiction.; Novels.; Antisemitism; Harassment in schools; Israelis; Life change events; Murder; Parent and child;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Long Island / by Tóibín, Colm,1955-author.;
"Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town in Ireland where she grew up remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child, and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead will deposit it on Eilis's doorstep. It is what Eilis does - and what she refuses to do - in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín's novel so riveting. Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis's life are thunderous and dangerous, and there's no one defter than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest of bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she'd lost. Eilis is perhaps Tóibín's most moving and unforgettable character, and this novel is a masterpiece"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Adultery; Families; Family secrets; Irish; Married people; Secrecy; Unplanned pregnancy; Women;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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We rip the world apart / by Carr, Charlene,author.;
"A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and David Chariandy's Brother. When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion--a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily. Years later, in the aftermath of Antony's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet's efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear. Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future. Weaving the women's stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent."--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; African American women; Families; Family secrets; Identity (Psychology); Intergenerational relations; Pregnant women; Racially mixed people; Secrecy; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Good dirt : a novel / by Wilkerson, Charmaine,author.;
When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved -- and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England -- the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get. So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago -- the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history -- it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future. In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; African American families; Secrecy; Grief; Murder; Race relations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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