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This unforgettable novel puts human faces on the Syrian war with the immigrant story of a beekeeper, his wife, and the triumph of spirit when the world becomes unrecognizable.Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra s...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020The Mirror & the Light
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“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his c...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker's iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty t...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT! “[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” —Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You ...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020Between the World and Me
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“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s his...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020Bring Up the Bodies
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WINNER OF THE 2012 MAN BOOKER PRIZEThe sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son a...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020One of the most critically acclaimed books of 2004, The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel about class, sex, and money that brings Thatcher's London alive. Nick Guest has moved in with the Feddens, a family whose patriarch is a conservative Member of Parliament. An innocent in matters of politics and money, Nick becomes caught up in the Feddens' wo...
Jess Brammar
Nov 01, 2020There is so much to love in MiMi Aye's wonderful Mandalay - Nigella LawsonA flavour explosionInfluenced by its neighbours and the countries closest to it, Burmese food draws techniques and ingredients from Thailand, India and China but uses flavours of its own to make something subtle, delicious and unique.The food of Burma is little known, but MiM...
Jess Brammar
Aug 09, 2020E. M. Forster - A Room with a View
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"But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction. "You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it ..."Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes ar...
Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find—through love or through exacting maternal appraisal—a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world o...
Jess Brammar
Jul 12, 2020Also recommended by
Bethanne PatrickWolf Hall
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WINNER OF THE 2009 MAN BOOKER PRIZEWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTIONA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEREngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and mos...
Jess Brammar
Jul 05, 2020The Secret History by Donna Tartt