Arcadia Public Library

"WINNER OF THE 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE A playful, feminist, and utterly original epic about a family-especially its inimitable octogenarian matriarch-in northern India. An eighty-year-old woman, Ma, slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Despite her family's cajoling, she refuses to get up from bed. Her responsible eldest son, Bade, and dutiful, Reebok-sporting daughter-in-law, Bahu, flit around trying to attend to Ma's...

Paloma San Basilio’s first novel is both moving and exciting. Her book is based on her memories, her childhood, her first loves; on how she got her start, on Eurovision and Evita. It also reveals dark times in her life. It will cause controversy and excitement. “My name is Alba Monasterio. I was born in ’36, in the middle of the war. My mother nursed me until I was three years old, and my father was taken prisoner simply for baptizing me. ...

"Set in a small Nova Scotia town settled by former slaves, [the novel] depicts several generations of one family bound together and torn apart by blood, faith, time, and fate. Structured as a triptych, Africaville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family--Kath Ella, her son Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner--whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through...

"Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India's holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the...

"Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to "America's Playground" and move into the apartment above their bakery. The apartment is where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and, despite the cramped quarters, it still feels like home. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again...

"When a single dad meets the former rock star crush of his youth, everything they thought they knew about happiness and love is thrown into chaos in this hopeful, heartwarming romantic comedy Billy Perkins is happy. No, for real. It's kind of his thing, actually. And why wouldn't he be? He loves his job as an independent music teacher and his apartment in Baltimore above a record shop called Charm City Rocks. Most of all, he loves his brainy teenage...

"A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for--and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting, supportive mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--Violet...

The Garden Café, next to Lissbeg library, is a place where plans are formed and secrets shared, and where, even in high tourist season, people are never too busy to stop for a sandwich and a cup of tea. But twenty-one-year-old Jazz--daughter of the town's librarian Hanna Casey--has a secret she can't share. Still recovering from a car accident, and reeling from her father's disclosures about his long-time affair, she's taken a job at The Old Forge...

"A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters. When Anna's sister calls with an urgent message, Anna doesn't return the call. She knows it's about their mother. Growing up in working class Boston in an Italian American family, Anna's childhood was sparse but comfortable-filled with homemade pasta sauce and a close-knit neighborhood. Anna and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the...

"In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana, home. At the bustling intersection of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. Suzette, a pampered twenty-year-old, has been sheltered from the outside world since a dangerous childhood encounter. Now, a budding romance with a sweet mechanic allows Suzette to seek...