If You Feel Inside Out Maybe You Should Read These
Discover the perfect books to help you navigate your emotions and find clarity. Explore our curated list of reads for when you're feeling inside out and need guidance or comfort.
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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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Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
Fact and fiction blend in a historical novel that chronicles the relationship between seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, from their meeting, when they were each married to another, to the clandestine affair that shocked Chicago society
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The Double Bind
by Chris Bohjalian
NATIONAL BESTSELLER âą From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant, here is a gripping psychological novel of obsession and consequence. When Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermontâs back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography, spending all her free time at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he wonât let anyone see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers a deeply hidden secretâa story that leads her far from her old life, and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her. In a tale that travels between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century, between Jay Gatsbyâs Long Island and rural New England, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian has written an extraordinary novel. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
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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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Peony in Love
by Lisa See
âI finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.â For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Peonyâs mother is against her daughterâs attending the production: âUnmarried girls should not be seen in public.â But Peonyâs father assures his wife that proprieties will be maintained, and that the women will watch the opera from behind a screen. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a caveâand is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peonyâs unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrowâas Lisa Seeâs haunting new novel, based on actual historical events, takes readers back to seventeenth-century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and placeâeven the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence, a vividly imagined place where oneâs soul is divided into three, ancestors offer guidance, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth. Immersed in the richness and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even death, Peony in Love explores, beautifully, the many manifestations of love. Ultimately, Lisa Seeâs new novel addresses universal themes: the bonds of friendship, the power of words, and the age-old desire of women to be heard.
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The Soul Thief
by Charles Baxter
A graduate student in upstate New York, Nathaniel Mason is drawn into a tangle of relationships with the people around him--alluring but elusive Theresa, fickle Jamie, and Jerome Coolberg, an enigmatic figure who seems to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past.
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His Illegal Self
by Peter Carey
Brought up in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, Che, a precocious seven-year-old boy, yearns for his parents, radical activists wanted by the FBI, until a woman claiming to be his mother arrives to help him escape.
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Certain Girls
by Jennifer Weiner
Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine. Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel -- a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life -- became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable -- knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception -- the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy. Radiantly funny and disarmingly tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family.
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Love the One You're With
by Emily Giffin
Believing her marriage to Andy to be perfect in every way, Ellen runs into former flame Leo and wonders why she has been unable to forget him even though they brought out the worst in each other.
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot DĂaz
Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the FukĂșâthe curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. DĂaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot DĂaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.
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Playing For Pizza
by John Grisham
Rick Dockery was the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. With a 17-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provided what was arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he became a national laughingstock and, of course, was immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams. But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent, Arnie, find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds Arnie finally locates just such a team and informs Rick that, miraculously, he can in fact now be astartingquarterback. Great, says Rick--for which team? The mighty Panthers of Parma, Italy. Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player--any former NFL player--at their helm. So Rick reluctantly agrees to play for the Panthers--at least until a better offer comes along--and heads off to Italy. He knows nothing about Parma--not even where it is--has never been to Europe, and doesn't speak or understand a word of Italian. To say that Italy--the land of opera, fine wines, extremely small cars, romance, andFootball Americano-- holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement.
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The Gathering
by Anne Enright
A large Irish family is haunted by the past -- something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968.
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The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
In this rousingly good ghost story, Setterfield's debut novel rejuvenates the genre with a closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths.
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Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel GarcĂa MĂĄrquez
Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.
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Moral Disorder and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood
From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments âą This brilliant collection of connected short stories strings together several decades of moments in the life of one womanâas an ambitious girl in the 1930s, as a young professional coming of age in the uncertain â50s and â60s, 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 Atwoodâs 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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An Irish Country Village
by Patrick Taylor
Sequel to the beloved New York Times bestseller An Irish Country Doctor
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The Welsh Girl
by Peter Ho Davies
Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, Daviess profoundly moving first novel traces a perilous wartime romance.
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The Emperor's Children
by Claire Messud
A bestselling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their wayâand notâin New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaiteâan âItâ girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalistâand her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murrayâs nephew, Frederick âBootieâ Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootieâs unexpected decisionsâand their stunning, heartbreaking outcomeâthat will change each of their lives forever. A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortuneâof innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promiseâThe Emperorâs Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment. A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
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History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
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Every Last Cuckoo
by Kate Maloy
A seventy-five-year old widow, Sarah finds new meaning brought to her life after her home becomes a kind of refuge for her restless granddaughter, an Israeli pacifist, a homeless mother and son, and a victim of domestic violence.
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The Painter of Battles
by Arturo PĂ©rez-Reverte
Faulques, a war photographer, witnessed most of the wars of the end of the 20th Century, but he was never able to capture the photo that would explain the chaos of the universe. Now, as continues to try to understand it, he starts painting a grand circula
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A Golden Age
by Tahmima Anam
As she plans a party for her son and daughter, Rehana Haque's life will be transformed forever in a story of one family caught in the middle of the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence, as they face changes and decisions that will have a profound impact on their lives forever.
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The Collaborator of Bethlehem
by Matt Rees
The murder of a leader of the Palestinian Martyrs Brigade leads to the arrest of George Saba, a Palestinian Christian accused of collaborating with the Israelis. Omar Yussef, a modest history teacher at a United Nations school in the West Bank, is impelled to investigate the murder to exonerate his former pupil, whom he knows is innocent. As he struggles to save George, Omar Yussef is drawn into a complex plot where it is impossible to tell friend from enemy.
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The Jewel Trader of Pegu
by Jeffrey Hantover
Adventure, treasure, and forbidden love are interwoven in this beautiful and original debut novel set in the lush land of 16th-century Southeast Asia.
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River
by Lowen Clausen
From a remote corner of a vanishing American landscape, a bereaved father begins a journey down the river that has been all but inseparable from his life. At the riverâs origin the shallow stream courses through the ranch where he was born. It is where he fell in love the first time and where the ashes of his son have been poured. âNow, before itâs too late, before I lose the will to do anything, I am leaving this land to follow the sticks I dropped into the river so long ago.â But this manâs passage along the interlacing rivers to the ocean will not be simple or disconnected from the life he leaves behind. His estranged sonâs last angry words echo in his memory, and despite moments of pure concentration on the waters ahead, the solitary voyager finds the past seeping into his thoughts and dreams. InRiver,novelist Lowen Clausen has created a story of deep beauty and seriousness, in which he weaves together the complex threads of one manâs search for wholeness. Clausenâs rich, elegiac prose becomes its own landscape and river, transporting the reader on a journey through despair and doubt into discovery.