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Literary Reference Center
Novels, short stories, poems, plot summaries and synopses, and literary criticism. Research guides, lesson plans, and citation tools support student learning.
1) Flora
Author
Language
English
Description
Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen's decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Alice Culvert is a force: passionate, independent, smart, and gorgeous, she--to her delight--attracts attention wherever she goes, even amid the buzz of mid-90s New York. In knee-high boots, with her newborn daughter, Doe, strapped to her chest, Alice is one of those people who just seem so vividly alive, which makes her cancer diagnosis feel almost incongruous. How could such a being not go on? But all at once, Alice's existence, and that of her...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging, an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared. Convinced Elizabeth is missing and in terrible danger, Maud's search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences. As this singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud's rapidly dissolving present, the clues she discovers seem to...
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named "Bagel Beach," has long been a summer destination for Jewish families. Here sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in tow and weekend-only husbands who arrive each Friday in time for the Sabbath meal. During the weekdays, freedom reigns. Ada, the family beauty, relaxes and grows more playful, unimpeded by her rule-driven,...
5) Swamplandia!
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Fantasy for Those Who Don't Like Fantasy (SCPL)
FPPL Roadtrip Through Books: South
Southern Gothic
Where the Crawdads Sing Readalikes
FPPL Roadtrip Through Books: South
Southern Gothic
Where the Crawdads Sing Readalikes
Description
Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the smamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In 1883, Thaniel Steepleton returns to his tiny flat to find a gold pocketwatch on his pillow. But he has worse fears than generous burglars; he is a telegraphist at the Home Office, which has just received a threat for what could be the largest-scale Fenian bombing in history. When the watch saves Thaniel's life in a blast that destroys Scotland Yard, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori--a kind, lonely immigrant who sweeps him into a new world...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the tradition of All The Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale, comes an incandescent debut novel about a young Dutch man who comes of age during the perilousness of World War II. Beginning in the summer of 1939, fourteen-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold...
Author
Series
Thorndike Press large print reviewers' choice
Reader's circle)
Oprah's book club volume 2017 selection
Reader's circle)
Oprah's book club volume 2017 selection
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
When Jende Jonga journeys to New York City from Cameroon in 2004 on a visitors' visa in hopes of obtaining a green card, he's sure his life will only improve. After saving up enough money to bring over Jende's wife, Neni, and six-year-old son, the family moves into an apartment in Harlem. Then Jende hits the jackpot in 2007 when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a wealthy Lehman Brothers executive. But working for the Edwardses isn't...
9) The refugees
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2023 Read Widely: Southeast Asia
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (Adult)
Asian American Authors
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Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (Adult)
Asian American Authors
More Lists...
Description
"Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was one of the most widely and highly praised novels of 2015, the winner not only of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the ALA Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Nguyen's next fiction book, The Refugees, is a collection of perfectly...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
Asian American Authors
More Lists...
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
Asian American Authors
More Lists...
Description
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...
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