After All is Said and Done
Explore a curated literary journey through After All is Said and Done—a fiction book list featuring acclaimed authors like Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult, and Ken Follett, alongside hidden gems from Tan Twan Eng and Per Petterson. From historical sagas to intimate family dramas, this collection of compelling novels weaves themes of reflection, resilience, and life’s turning points. Discover your next favorite read in this carefully selected roundup of thought-provoking and unforgettable stories.
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The Sorrows of an American
by Siri Hustvedt
"Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erik's fascination with his new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connected to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfolds, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden father's history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husband's double life."--BOOK JACKET.
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Belong to Me
by Marisa de los Santos
The bestselling author of "Love Walked In" returns with this luminous story about neighbors, family, friends, and love.
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Chez Moi
by Agnes Desarthe
At forty-three, Myriam has been a wife, mother, and lover—but never a restauranteur. When she opens Chez Moi in a quiet neighborhood in Paris, she has no idea how to run a business, but armed only with her love of cooking, she is determined to try. Barely able to pay the rent, Myriam secretly sleeps in the dining room and bathes in the kitchen sink, while struggling to come to terms with the painful memories of her past. But soon enough her delectable cuisine brings her many neighbors to Chez Moi, and Myriam finds that she may get a second chance at life and love. Redolent with the sights, smells, and tastes of Paris, Chez Moi is a charming story that will appeal to the many readers who fell in love with Joanne Harris’s Chocolat and Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate.
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Desperation Moon
by Ken Douglas
When racecar driver Sara Hackett arrives home from a desert road race, she finds her niece and another girl have been kidnapped and a dead man has turned up in her bed. The kidnappers want a million dollars she doesn't have or they say they'll kill the kids.
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The Gift of Rain
by Tan Twan Eng
The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng's debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits. In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton-the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang's great trading families-feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He at last discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. When the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei-to whom he owes absolute loyalty-is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and must now work in secret to save as many lives as possible, even as his own family is brought to its knees.
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The Philosopher's Apprentice
by James Morrow
A philosopher-tutor is given the opportunity to impress ethical ideas on a first-class mind that is, in matters of morality, a blank slate.
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The Outlander
by Gil Adamson
In 1903 a mysterious young woman flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, Mary Boulton has just become a widow—and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive fight for life, the widow retreats ever deeper into the wilderness—and into the wilds of her own mind—encountering an unforgettable cast of eccentrics along the way. With the stunning prose and captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson's intoxicating debut novel weds a brilliant literary style to the gripping tale of one woman's desperate escape.
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So Brave, Young, and Handsome
by Leif Enger
In this stunning successor to his bestseller "Peace Like a River," Enger pens a rugged and nimble story about an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.
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The Shadow Year
by Jeffrey Ford
In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood. Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement. Not since Ray Bradbury's classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor's edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction's most fearless and inventive artists.
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Things I Want My Daughters to Know
by Elizabeth Noble
The bestselling author of "The Reading Group" returns with her most engaging novel yet, about four sisters who find hope and laughter in the wisdom their mother left behind.
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The Sugar Queen
by Sarah Addison Allen
Quiet, awkward Josey Cirrini's peaceful life caring for her elderly mother is turned upside down when Della Lee Baker, a sassy, confident, and bold waitress fleeing an abusive boyfriend, decides to hide out in Josey's home.
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River of Heaven
by Lee Martin
Boasting the largest collection of treasures in Europe, Dresden's Green Vault is also among the continent's oldest museums, founded in the early eighteenth century. Since its extensive restoration and reopening in 2006, it has attracted more than three million visitors who have come from around the world to admire the splendid architecture and opulent riches on display there. Packed with beautiful full-color illustrations, this magnificent volume highlights a selection of masterpieces from this important collection of Baroque and classical art, including the Golden Coffee Service, the Ivory Frigate, the Dresden Green Diamond, the Royal Household of the Grand Mogul, and many other fascinating objects made of gold, silver, gemstones, and other precious materials. For those with an interest in the Baroque or classical periods--or those who simply enjoy exceptional works of art--this book will be a great pleasure.
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World Without End
by Ken Follett
#1 New York Times Bestseller In 1989, Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the hundreds of lives it affected. World Without End is its equally irresistible sequel—set two hundred years after The Pillars of the Earth and three hundred years after the Kingsbridge prequel, The Evening and the Morning. World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death. Three years in the writing and nearly eighteen years since its predecessor, World Without End is a "well-researched, beautifully detailed portrait of the late Middle Ages" (The Washington Post) that once again shows that Ken Follett is a masterful author writing at the top of his craft.
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The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett
From the author of The History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, Bennett describes the Queen's transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
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Change of Heart
by Jodi Picoult
Her life shattered by a devastating act of violence, June Nealson is forced to make a pivotal choice that involves her twelve-year-old daughter and a salvation-seeking criminal. By the author of Nineteen Minutes. 1,000,000 first printing.
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Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
After a meeting with his only neighbor, sixty-seven-year-old Trond is forced to reflect upon a long-ago incident that marks the beginning of a series of losses for Trond and his childhood friend, Jon.
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Moral Disorder and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood
From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments • This brilliant collection of connected short stories strings together several decades of moments in the life of one woman—as an ambitious girl in the 1930s, as a young professional coming of age in the uncertain ‘50s and ‘60s, and as half of a couple growing old together. In a series of vividly evoked settings that span cities, backwoods, and farm country, we see this woman contending over time with an unstable sister, a married lover, aging parents, mystifying stepchildren, vulnerable farm animals, and her own changing self. By turns funny, lyrical, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Margaret Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.
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The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, but their world--and Sai's romance with her handsome Nepali tutor--is threatened by a Nepalese insurgency. By the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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Dream When You're Feeling Blue
by Elizabeth Berg
New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg takes us to Chicago at the time of World War II in this wonderful story about three sisters, their lively Irish family, and the men they love. As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play songs that offer hope and lift spirits. And now the Heaney sisters sit at their kitchen table every evening to write letters–Louise to her fiancé, Kitty to the man she wishes fervently would propose, and Tish to an ever-changing group of men she meets at USO dances. In the letters the sisters send and receive are intimate glimpses of life both on the battlefront and at home. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and a secret, and will lead her to a radical action for those she loves. The lifelong consequences of the choices the Heaney sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.
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The View from Castle Rock
by Alice Munro
From the award-winning and bestselling author of "Runaway" comes a new book of short stories that is as transporting as anything shes ever written ("New York Times").