Men without women is a collection of several short stories about men who are suffering from isolation due to the loss of women in their lives. Every story was different in its own way.
๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฏ๐ ๐ฆ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ซ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 It follows an actor who appoints the female driver in order to take him to the rehearsals. Initially, that in the journey can ever used to even talk to each other but gradually he reflects on his life about his wife and all the affairs she had before she died.
๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐๐๐ฒ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ๐ซ/5 โYesterday is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago.โ The story follows two charactersโ Erika and Kitaru and its a journey of their relationship.
๐๐ง ๐ข๐ง๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐๐ง๐ญ ๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐๐ง โญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 The story follows Dr. Tokai who feels that โWomen are all born with a special, Independent organ which allows them to lie.โ
๐๐๐ก๐๐ก๐๐ซ๐๐ณ๐๐๐ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ.5/5 It is a story about a man named Habara who is confined within his own house. Twice or thrice in a week, a woman comes to supply him food. The man in this story calls the women by the name โScheherazadeโ. The lady tell various stories to Habara and he is always worried whether heโll be able to see her again or not.
๐๐ข๐ง๐จ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 This story follows a man who opens a bar just to keep his mind distracted. He was continuously running away from the feeling that his wife broke up with him. He was hurt deep inside. Why I gave this story 5 star?because I got magical realism vibes the most from this particular story.
๐๐๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฏ๐ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ.5/5 This story but somewhat similar to Franz Kafkaโsโ metamorphosis. It follows a boy who wake up one morning and found that you have turned into an insect.
๐๐๐ง ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ง โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 Itโs a story about a man who receives a call in the middle of the night from his ex girlfriendโs husband who tells him that she has died.
Are you looking for some great Japanese translated novels? Keep on reading because you are at the right place.
I feel that Japanese literature has overshadowed all the other literature across the globe simply because is told from very different, rather strange. I am saying strange because some Japanese stories are told from the perspective of cat while some from the perspective that we do not find in any other literature.
Do we find such narratives in the literature from any other country?
Certainly not.
Japanese Literature makes even the most strange things happen and that is something which makes me read more. I have made a list of all the books that will make you fall in love with Japanese literature.
1. Men Without Women
Men without women is a collection of several short stories about men who are suffering from isolation due to the loss of women in their lives. Every story was different in its own way.
๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฏ๐ ๐ฆ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ซ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 It follows an actor who appoints the female driver in order to take him to the rehearsals. Initially, that in the journey can ever used to even talk to each other but gradually he reflects on his life about his wife and all the affairs she had before she died.
๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐๐๐ฒ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ๐ซ/5 โYesterday is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago.โ The story follows two charactersโ Erika and Kitaru and its a journey of their relationship.
๐๐ง ๐ข๐ง๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐๐ง๐ญ ๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐๐ง โญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 The story follows Dr. Tokai who feels that โWomen are all born with a special, Independent organ which allows them to lie.โ
๐๐๐ก๐๐ก๐๐ซ๐๐ณ๐๐๐ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ.5/5 It is a story about a man named Habara who is confined within his own house. Twice or thrice in a week, a woman comes to supply him food. The man in this story calls the women by the name โScheherazadeโ. The lady tell various stories to Habara and he is always worried whether heโll be able to see her again or not.
๐๐ข๐ง๐จ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 This story follows a man who opens a bar just to keep his mind distracted. He was continuously running away from the feeling that his wife broke up with him. He was hurt deep inside. Why I gave this story 5 star?because I got magical realism vibes the most from this particular story.
๐๐๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฏ๐ โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ.5/5 This story but somewhat similar to Franz Kafkaโsโ metamorphosis. It follows a boy who wake up one morning and found that you have turned into an insect.
๐๐๐ง ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ง โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ/5 Itโs a story about a man who receives a call in the middle of the night from his ex girlfriendโs husband who tells him that she has died.
Sometimes you have to leave behind everything you know to find the place you truly belong…
Nana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he’s going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru’s old friends. He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose cat-loving wife has just left him. There’s even a very special dog who forces Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species.
But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won’t say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break…ย
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student’s romantic coming of age,ย Norwegian Woodย brilliantly recaptures a young man’s first, hopeless, and heroic love.
Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of โSmile Mart,โ she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction โ many are laid out line by line in the storeโs manual โ and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a โnormalโ person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. Itโs almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate actionโฆ A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
Tsukiko is drinking alone in her local sake bar when by chance she meets one of her old high school teachers and, unable to remember his name, she falls back into her old habit of calling him ‘Sensei’. After this first encounter, Tsukiko and Sensei continue to meet. Together, they share edamame beans, bottles of cold beer, and a trip to the mountains to eat wild mushrooms. As their friendship deepens, Tsukiko comes to realise that the solace she has found with Sensei might be something more.
What would you change if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafรฉ which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafรฉโs time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafรฉ, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Toshikazu Kawaguchiโs beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
A bestseller in France and winner of Japanโs Kiyama Shohei Literary Award,ย The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living. A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife โ the days have more light and color. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happensโฆ.
As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraideโs work “really shines.” His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for “its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae.”ย
Among the jumble of paperweights, plates, typewriters and general bric-a-brac in Mr Nakano’s thrift store, there are treasures to be found. Each piece carries its own story of love and loss – or so it seems to Hitomi, when she takes a job there working behind the till. Nor are her fellow employees any less curious or weatherworn than the items they sell. There’s the store’s owner, Mr Nakano, an enigmatic ladies’ man with several ex-wives; Sakiko, his sensuous, unreadable lover; his sister, Masayo, an artist whose free-spirited creations mask hidden sorrows. And finally there’s Hitomi’s fellow employee, Takeo, whose abrupt and taciturn manner Hitomi finds, to her consternation, increasingly disarming. A beguiling story of love found amid odds and ends, The Nakano Thrift Shop is a heart-warming and utterly charming novel from one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary novelists.ย
Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste.
But everything is about to change.
Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue’s dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences.
Sweet Bean Pasteย is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. Translated into English for the first time, Durian Sukegawa’s beautiful prose is capturing hearts all over the world.ย
On the eve of the Iraq War, a man and a woman meet in a nightclub in Tokyo. They go to a love hotel, and spend the next five days in a torrid affair. Written in a stream of consciousness, with the reader’s perceptions shifting and melting into one another, what is remarkable in this story is not what happens, but the ability of the writer to enter the minds and memories of the protagonists.In the second story, a woman living in a damp flat obsesses on the filthy state of her dwelling. She remains in bed for the duration of the narrative, but the drama and tension of her inner life – spiralling further and further into her memories and anxieties – keep the reader engrossed to the very end.The End of the Moment We Had demonstrates the fluidity and richness of this extraordinarily gifted writer’s language and ideas.
Trapped in Tokyo, left behind by a series of girlfriends, the narrator of Slow Boat sizes up his situation. His missteps, his violent rebellions, his tiny victories. But he is not a passive loser, content to accept all that fate hands him. He attempts one last escape to the edges of the city, holding the only safety net he has known โ his dreams.
Filled with lyrical longing and humour,ย Slow Boatย captures perfectly the urge to get away and the necessity of finding yourself in a world which might never even be looking for you.
A haunting, Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author ofย The Housekeeper and the Professor
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, rosesโuntil things become much more serious. Most of the island’s inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss,ย The Memory Policeย is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.ย
‘He’d come to realise that it was a mistake to grind up his father’s remains with such a thing. The mortar was lined with narrow grooves, a little too perfect for ashes to get stuck in.’
Divorced and cut off from his family, Taro lives alone in one of the few occupied apartments in his block, a block that is to be torn down as soon as the remaining tenants leave. Since the death of his father, Taro keeps to himself, but is soon drawn into an unusual relationship with the woman upstairs, Nishi, as she passes on the strange tale of the sky-blue house next door.
First discovered by Nishi in the little-known photo-book ‘Spring Garden’, the sky-blue house soon becomes a focus for both Nishi and Taro: of what is lost, of what has been destroyed, and of what hope may yet lie in the future for both of them, if only they can seize it.
Tomoka Shibasakiย was born in 1973 in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, and was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Her first book,ย A Day on the Planet, was turned into a hit movie, andย Spring Gardenย won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2014.
Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazuโs life is tied by a series of coincidences to Japanโs Imperial family and to one particular spot in Tokyo; the park near Ueno Station โ the same place his unquiet spirit now haunts in death. It is here that Kazuโs life in Tokyo began, as a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and later where he ended his days, living in the parkโs vast homeless โvillagesโ, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.
Akutagawa-award-winning author Yลซ Miri uses her outsiderโs perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japanโs most vulnerable people.
The novel starts in the 1960s when 17 people die of cyanide poisoning at a party given by the owners of a prominent clinic in a town on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer’s, and the physician’s bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. The youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery.
The police are convinced Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisakoโs and witness to the discovery of the killings. The truth is revealed through a skillful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbors, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.ย
The tense, chilling story of four women haunted by a childhood trauma.
When they were children, Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuko were tricked into separating from their friend Emily by a mysterious stranger. Then the unthinkable occurs: Emily is found murdered hours later.
Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuko weren’t able to accurately describe the stranger’s appearance to the police after the Emily’s body was discovered. Asako, Emily’s mother, curses the surviving girls, vowing that they will pay for her daughter’s murder.
Likeย Confessions, Kanae Minato’s award-winning, internationally bestselling debut,ย Penanceย is a dark and voice-driven tale of revenge and psychological trauma that will leave readers breathless.ย
Ms Ice Sandwich seems to lack social graces, but our young narrator is totally smitten with her. He is in awe of her aloofness, her skill at slipping sandwiches into bags, and, most electric of all, her ice-blue eyelids. Every day he is drawn to the supermarket just to watch her in action. But life has a way of interfering โ there is his mother, forever distracted, who can tell the fortunes of women; his grandmother, silently dying, who listens to his heart; and his classmate, Tutti, no stranger to pain, who shares her private thrilling world with him.
Tender, warm, yet unsentimental,ย Ms Ice Sandwichย is a story about new starts, parents who have departed, and the importance of saying goodbye.
Banana Yoshimoto’s novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, andย Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine ofย Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras.ย Kitchenย and its companion story, “Moonlight Shadow,” are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.ย
The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. Later, Mari is interrupted again by a girl from the Alphaville Hotel; a Chinese prostitute has been hurt by a client, and she needs Mari’s help. Meanwhile Mari’s beautiful sister Eri sleeps a deep, heavy sleep that is ‘to perfect, too pure’ to be normal; she has lain asleep for two months. But tonight a the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the TV screen, though the television’s plug has been pulled out. Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night?
A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes
Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.
Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished…
The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals.Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooterโradicalized by the online alt-rightโattacks the school.
As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.
MY REVIEW
>>The story opens with a shooting scene that is taking place at all-girl Muslim high school in Chicago, when Afaf hears the shooting she goes back to her childhood memories. Afaf takes us to a journey of her childhood days.She was an American born child of Palestinian immigrants along with an elder sister, Nada (seventeen-year- old) and a younger brother Majeed (seven-year-old). She used to live in a small house with her parents and siblings in Chicago.
>>But the whole family falls apart when Afafโs elder sister, Nada, suddenly disappears from the house. The whole family struggled a lot after the disappearance of Nada. This incidence laid an impact on the lives of each character which was associated with Nada. Her mother started suffering from depression, Afafโs life turned upside down and started losing her identity, her father became an alcoholic. Without revealing much about the story I would suggest you to read this book.
What I liked about the book
The story of the book was both plot and character driven. Although the story travels back and forth, still I was enjoying every bit of the story. It was complex and beautifully written. For me, It started off a little slowly, but the more I read the more I felt connected to the characters. I was drawn to this book because of the interesting blurb and I loved the story. I wish I could give all the stars to this book.ย
As the Whitworth family begin renovations on their new home, their plans are brought to an abrupt end when they discover a body buried in the back garden.
DI Isabel Blood and her team are called to investigate, but as she approaches Ecclesdale Drive, a feeling of unease settles in her gut.
The property cordoned off is number 23. The house she used to live in as a childโฆ
The forensic team estimate that the body has been in the ground for up to forty years โ coinciding with the time Isabelโs family lived in the house.
Isabelโs father vanished without a trace when she was fourteen years old. And with her mother remaining tight-lipped about her fatherโs disappearance, Isabel canโt escape the unnerving sense of dread that itโs his body, buried in the garden.
MY REVIEW
This is the first book in the D.I. Isabel Blood series.
>>The story begins when Amy and Paul Whitworthb who are siblings begin renovating their new house in Derbyshire town of Bainbridge in order to sell it when they discover a body that has been buried in the back garden. After this incident, we are introduced to the protagonist of this story- Isabel Blood who is a crime investigator. She got shocked when she came to know that the crime took place at 23 Ecclesdale Drive because she used to live there with her parents until she left the house when she was about fourteen years old. Her father left the house and never came home.
>>While investigating, the crime scene investigator told Isabel that the body is that of a male and the crime has been committed 30-40 years back. Isabel was dumbstruck because she used to live in that house during that time frame. After which, a lot of questions start arising in her mind. She started thinking that the body could be of his father who went missing.
I wish I could give this book all the starsโฆ I loved the plot and how the characters were written. I felt that the storyline was never broken throughout the book, and the suspense kept flowing strongly.
>>I love reading thrillers with female protagonists and that is why I picked the book in the first place. Another reason for picking this book was the blurb. To be honest, the story was even more chilling as compared to the blurb.
I really loved the character of Isabel and her mother who have emerged as strong characters after what happened in their lives.
Lockdown has been really hard for all of us but books were an ultimate souce of comfort, hope and connection. They are always successful in transporting us to some other land. If you want to get transported to The United States of America then, you are at the right place because I have some amazing books which are set in America.
Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldnโt, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no oneโand nothingโis what it seems.
A murder…A tragic accident…Or just parents behaving badly? Whatโs indisputable is that someone is dead.
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. Sheโs funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.
โIโve left some clues for you. If you want them, turn the page. If you donโt, put the book back on the shelf, please.โ
So begins the latest whirlwind romance from the bestselling authors of Nick & Norahโs Infinite Playlist. Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. But is Dash that right guy? Or are Dash and Lily only destined to trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations across New York? Could their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions? Or will they be a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?
Rachel Cohn and David Levithan have written a love story that will have readers perusing bookstore shelves, looking and longing for a love (and a red notebook) of their own.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes and the will to change it.
Seeking women ages 18 – 32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality. Generous compensation. Anonymity guaranteed.
When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all sheโll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave. But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what sheโs thinkingโฆand what sheโs hiding. As Jessโs paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what in her life is real, and what is one of Dr. Shieldsโ manipulative experiments. Caught in a web of deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.
When a beautiful aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and sheโll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonightโthe perfect place for a โchanceโ meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beckโs life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beckโs perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their wayโeven if it means murder.
A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation, debut author Caroline Kepnes delivers a razor-sharp novel for our hyper-connected digital age.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story is of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his new love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
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 to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.
Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcottโs most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with “womanโs work,โ including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the “girlโs bookโ her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works — and only a handful of collections — to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.
In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail โ the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase โ that opens whole worlds of emotion.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.
Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalilโs name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr doesโor does notโsay could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl’s struggle for justice.
The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom. Pecola’s life does change- in painful, devastating ways. What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child’s yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrisons’s most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunneโs fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nickโs clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isnโt doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wifeโs head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the mediaโas well as Amyโs fiercely doting parentsโthe town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and heโs definitely bitterโbut is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didnโt do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.
One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work โdraws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.โ Gone Girlโs toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.
15. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her motherโs side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her ageโand has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn’t stick out more if she tried.
Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book – he thinks he’s made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor… never to Eleanor.
Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you’re young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.
Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn’t right at the Sun Down, and before long she’s determined to uncover all of the secrets hiddenโฆ
A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both housesโthe loneliness of Francisโs wife, Lena, and the instability of Brianโs wife, Anneโsets the stage for the explosive events to come.
Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Francis and Lenaโs daughter, Kate, and Brian and Anneโs son, Peter. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthoodโvillains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peterโs love story, while tested by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.
For years, rumors of the โMarsh Girlโ haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life’s lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling worldโuntil the unthinkable happens.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owensโs debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned–from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren–an enigmatic artist and single mother–who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood–and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
I’m assuming, since you’ve decided to read this article, you’ve read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides and absolutely loved it. But now you are wondering what to read next? Don’t worry! You are at the right place because if you have read The Silent Parient then, you should definitely read these 10 books.
On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, sheโs forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.
Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.
Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?
There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?
Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a childโs life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.
But who can she trust?
With exquisitely controlled pacing, Taylor Adams diabolically ratchets up the tension with every page. Full of terrifying twists and hairpin turns, No Exit will have you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless.
Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldnโt, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no oneโand nothingโis what it seems.
No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost storyโuntil the next day, when Ingrid disappears.
Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew’s dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.
When she stumbles across the ad, sheโs looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to missโa live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smittenโby the luxurious โsmartโ home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
What she doesnโt know is that sheโs stepping into a nightmareโone that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasnโt just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasnโt just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasnโt even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.
It was everything.
She knows sheโs made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasnโt always ideal. Sheโs not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, sheโs not guiltyโat least not of murder. Which means someone else is.
THEN She was fifteen, her mother’s golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.
NOW Itโs been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.
And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a cafรฉ and sweeps Laurel off her feet.
Before too long sheโs staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.
Poppy is precocious and pretty – and meeting her completely takes Laurel’s breath away.
Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.
A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors–a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all–a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.
What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family–a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.
Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran fromโa place to which she vowed she’d never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surfaceโyou never know what lies beneath.
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement โ a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle. Assume nothing.
Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage – and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.
Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do.
Youโd like to get to know Grace better.
But itโs difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart.
Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesnโt work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows.
Sometimes, the perfect marriage is the perfect lie.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ฉ๐๐ง ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ BY ๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐จ๐ง
๐๐ฒ ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ - โ โ โ โ โ
๐๐๐ง๐ซ๐- Mystery/Thriller
๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ- 384 Pages
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The story revolves around Amber who has separated from his husband Nick and is now living with her two sons at the family property. She falls in love with Richard and was looking forward to moving in with him but before moving she thought of selling the house. Her real estate agent, Carl suggested that she should organize an Open House at their place and she agreed to the idea.
She was watching the open house event throughout from an app which is connected to the camera at her door. She counted 13 people entering her home but found out that only 12 people had left. Initially she thought that she must have made a mistake while counting but later then strange things started to happen at her place she started questioning herself.
The story is told from two perspective- Amber and Barb (Nickโs Mother)
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This was my first Sam Carrington book but definitely not the last. I think this book would be great for readers who want a quick read with plenty of plot twists.
I really liked the character of Nick because when Amber finds out that strange things are happening at her place and someone might be there, she calls Richard and Nick but Richard says that he has some work and he wonโt be able to come and check and on the other hand Nick agrees immediately. Apart from what he did to Amber, I feel that he is very caring and protective towards his family and that is why he is my favourite character.
A Book and A Dream 