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Lacuna, The
Kingsolver, Barbara
In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities. Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico-from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City-Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence. Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach-the lacuna-between truth and public presumption. With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist-and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
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Language of Baklava, The
Abu-Jaber, Diana
From the acclaimed author ofCrescent, called "radiant, wise, and passionate" by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana's childhood-American and Jordanian-and the richness and difficulty of straddling both....Each chapter contains mouthwatering recipes for many of the dishes described...
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Language of Flowers, The
Diffenbaugh, Vanessa
"The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past"-- Provided by publisher.
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Last Chinese Chef
Mones, Nicole
Struggling to get back on her feet in the wake of her husband's premature death and stunned by a paternity suit against her husband's estate, food writer Maggie McElroy plans a trip to China to investigate the claim and to profile rising chef Sam Liang, who introduces her to the Chinese concept of food, while drawing her into his extended family and helping her come to terms with her life.
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Last Town on Earth
Mullen, Thomas
Nestled in the quiet woods of the Pacific Northwest, the town of Commonwealth is a haven for the loggers who live there, until the flu starts striking down entire surrounding villages. When the residents of Commonwealth vote to quarantine themselves, armed guards are posted at the one road leading to town. But then a disheveled--and apparently sick--soldier approaches begging for food and shelter. Shots are fired, and soon Commonwealth is plunged into turmoil.
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Leaving
Kingsbury, Karen
Bailey Flanigan leaves Bloomington after winning an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway musical in New York City. In order to be closer to his mother in jail, Cody takes a coaching job in a small community outside Indianapolis. But new friends, distance, and circumstances expose cracks in his relationship with Bailey.
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Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
Tolan, Sandy
Describes how a simple act of faith and the relationship between two families - one Israeli, one Palestinian - represents a personal microcosm of decades of Israeli-Palestinian history and symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.
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Lemon Tree: an Arab, a Jew, and the heart of the Middle East
Tolan, Sandy
Describes how a simple act of faith and the relationship between two families - one Israeli, one Palestinian - represents a personal microcosm of decades of Israeli-Palestinian history and symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.
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Lesson Before Dying, A
Gaines, Ernest J.
What do you tell an innocent youth who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and now faces death in the electric chair? What do you say to restore his self-esteem when his lawyer has publicly described him as a dumb animal? What do you tell a youth humiliated by a lifetime of racism so that he can face death with dignity? The task belongs to Grant Wiggins, the teacher of the Negro plantation school who narrates the story. Grant grew up on the Louisiana plantation but broke away to go to the university. He returns to help his people but struggles over "whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like the nigger that I was supposed to be."
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Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Caldwell, Gail
In this gorgeous, moving memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caldwell reflects on her own coming-of-age in midlife, as she learns to open herself to the power and healing of sharing her life with a best friend.
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Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
Bryson, Bill
From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language comes a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the last century.
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Life Class
Barker, Pat
Pat Barker returns to her most renowned subject: the devastation and psychic damage wrought by WWI on all levels of British society. In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
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Life Of Pi
Martel, Yann
When 16-year-old Pi Patel finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with only a tiger for company, he quickly realizes that the only way he will survive is if he makes sure the tiger is more afraid of him than he is of it.
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Little Bee
Cleave, Chris
A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers--one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.
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Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spiritsl on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
Kalish, Mildred Armstrong
An evocative memoir of growing up in the heart of the Midwest during the Great Depression describes life on her grandparents' Iowa farm, a time of endless work, resourcefulness, no tolerance for idleness or waste, family, and kinship, in a volume that includes recipes and how-to's for everything from no-fail wart-removal spells to skinning a rabbit.
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Little Princes
Grennan, Conor
Describes how the author's three-month service as a volunteer at the Little Princes Orphanage in war-torn Nepal became a commitment for advocacy and reform when he discovered that many of his young charges were victims rescued from human traffickers.
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Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman, Alexie
A darkly comic short story collection paints a portrait of life on and around the Spokane Indian Reservation.
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Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger's
Robison, John
A moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger's Syndrome at a time when the diagnosis simply didn't exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes readers inside the head of a boy who teachers and other adults regarded as defective. It's a strange, sly, indelible account - sometimes alien yet always deeply human.
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Losing Clementine
Ream, Ashley
In thirty days Clementine Pritchard will be finished with her last painting and her life. World-renowned artist and sharp-tongued wit Clementine Pritchard has decided that she's done. After flushing away a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions, she gives herself thirty days to tie up loose ends-finish one last painting, make nice with her ex-husband, and find a home for her cat. Clementine plans to spend the month she has left in a swirl of art-world parties, manic work sessions, and outrageous acts-but what she doesn't expect is to uncover secrets surrounding the tragedy that befell her mother and sister. In an ending no one sees coming, will we lose Clementine or will we find her? A bold debut from an exciting new voice, Losing Clementine is a wonderfully entertaining and poignant novel about unanticipated self-discovery that features one of the most irresistible, if deeply flawed, characters to grace contemporary fiction in years.
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Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Grann, David
In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century: what happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?
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Lost Memory of Skin
Banks, Russell
Suspended in a strangely modern day version of limbo, the young man at the center of this morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor's motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man. When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.
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Lotus Eaters
Soli, Tatjana
Helen Adams, an American combat photographer during the Vietnam War, captures the wrenching chaos of battle on film and finds herself torn between the love of two men, one an American war correspondent and the other his Vietnamese underling. A first novel.
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Lovely Bones
Sebold, Alice
The spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder, her surprise at her new home in heaven, and her witness to her family's grief, efforts to find the killer, and attempts to come to terms with what happened.
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Loving Frank
Horan, Nancy
Fact and fiction are brilliantly blended in this compelling novel about the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the wife of a couple whose home Wright built in 1904.
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Lying Awake
Salzman, Mark
Sister John of the Cross, an elderly nun, experiences a series of dazzling visions, but in this novel she is confronted with a difficult choice between her spiritual gifts and curing the powerful headaches that accompany her visions.
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