Published in 1995, The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle tells the story of two couples living parallel lives in Southern California: Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, affluent white Americans with a home in the upper-middle-class subdivision of Arroyo Blanco; and Cándido and América Rincón, undocumented immigrants from Mexico living in a makeshift camp at the bottom of the canyon. Rotating among the perspectives of the four protagonists, the novel explores the inequality inherent in the United States... Read The Tortilla Curtain Summary

Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) was an Australian novelist and United Nations worker who settled in the United States. The Transit of Venus (1980) is Hazzard’s third novel and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It draws upon Hazzard’s own experiences of an Australian childhood, emigrating abroad, and being part of the first generation of working women. Critics responded to the juxtaposition of intimate, personal narratives with a broader examination of what... Read The Transit of Venus Summary

The Turning is Tim Winton’s 2004 collection of short stories set primarily in the small Western Australia town of Angelus. The book won the Christina Snead Prize for Fiction and the Queensland Fiction Book Award. The seventeen linked stories in this collection explore themes of generational change, socioeconomic anxieties, and the lingering effects of trauma using the modes of 21st century realism.Plot SummaryThe stories in The Turning take place over several decades of life in... Read The Turning Summary

Ayana Mathis’s 2012 novel The Twelve Tribes of Hattie follows the lives of the Shepherds, a black family struggling to succeed in Philadelphia between 1925 and 1980. At the center of the family is their inscrutable matriarch, Hattie, who remains an enigma to her children even as they grow into adulthood. With only two exceptions, each of the book’s chapters delves into the mind of one of Hattie’s children (and one granddaughter) over a span... Read The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Summary

The Underground Railroad, a 2016 historical fiction novel by Colson Whitehead, chronicles the life of protagonist Cora, who is enslaved in antebellum Georgia. Interspersed in the narrative are chapters that follow other characters in the same way. These diverse characters—including Cora’s mother Mabel, an enslaved man named Caesar, and an enslaver named Ridgeway—have meaningful roles in Cora’s story. The novel won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and its exploration of the US’s white supremacist roots... Read The Underground Railroad Summary

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You is a 2019 memoir by novelist Dina Nayeri. It is her first nonfiction book and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. While Nayeri chronicles her childhood escape from post-revolution Iran and her struggle to build an identity, she interweaves modern tales of refugees mired in uncaring asylum systems.SummaryThe author and first-person narrator of... Read The Ungrateful Refugee Summary

The international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012) is the first novel by author Rachel Joyce and the first in a trilogy, followed by The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (2014) and Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North (2022). The novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Young also wrote the screenplay for the novel’s film adaptation, which stars Jim Broadbent as Harold... Read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Summary

Maggie O’Farrell’s novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, published in 2006, is the author’s fourth novel and tackles the grim history of forced incarcerations of women and the devastating effects of family secrets. O’Farrell’s work often focuses on women trapped physically, emotionally, and psychologically by forces over which they have no control, and this novel is no exception. Through a twisted entanglement of three different perspectives, O’Farrell tells the story of not only Esme... Read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Summary

The Vanishing Half, published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The... Read The Vanishing Half Summary

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The Water Dancer is the debut novel of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a journalist known for his award-winning essay collections on race, his contributions to The Atlantic, and his work on Marvel’s The Black Panther comic book series. A New York Times bestseller and selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, the novel centers on Hiram Walker, a fugitive slave who becomes an agent in the Underground, an organization devoted to the destruction of slavery in the... Read The Water Dancer Summary

The Weight of All Things, written by esteemed American author Sandra Benitez, is a lyrical novel portraying the effects of the civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s. This war between conservatives and communists is portrayed through the eyes of a child; detailing the brutality of both sides and showcasing the futility of war. Written in the third person omniscient style, the events of a brutal war are depicted with graphic detail, yet the... Read The Weight of All Things Summary

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The Whistling Season is one of 13 novels written by the late Ivan Doig. As with many of his other works, the story is set in Montana in the first half of the 20th century. Written in the first person, the narrative primarily takes place over the 1909-10 school year of the main character, 13-year-old Paul Milliron. Paul’s widowed father hires a housekeeper, Rose, who arrives with her brother, Morrie Morgan. Morrie, who becomes the... Read The Whistling Season Summary

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger was published in 2008. Adiga’s first novel, The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize and was adapted into a movie in 2021. Born in Chennai, India, Adiga has lived in India and Australia, and attended Columbia University in New York and Oxford University in England. A coming-of-age story told through a first-person narrator and letters addressed to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, The White Tiger examines the conflict between tradition... Read The White Tiger Summary

First published in 1908, The Wind in the Willows by Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame is a story for young readers that recounts the adventures of three animals: Mole, Rat, and Badger. In the woodlands where they live, the trio must deal with various problems—which include frequently rescuing their friend Mr. Toad, who loves thrills and often causes trouble.Widely considered one of the greatest literary works for children, The Wind in the Willows has been reprinted... Read The Wind in the Willows Summary

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The Woman Warrior (1976) is an experimental memoir by Chinese-American author Maxine Hong Kingston. The book weaves together stories of Kingston’s childhood in California and her mother’s youth in rural China with folklore, legend, and myth, defying easy genre classification.The book is divided into five parts. In the first, “No-Name Woman,” Kingston imagines different life stories for an aunt she never met—a woman who drowned herself and her baby after being expelled from her village... Read The Woman Warrior Summary

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