Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Carol Bruneau

Fiction / Cultural / Canada

But I had known since forever that it's colours that keep the world turning, that keep a person going. One glimpse of the tiny painted house that folk art legend Maud Lewis shared with her husband, Everett, in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, during the mid-twentieth century and the startling contrast between her joyful artwork and her life's deprivations is evident. One glimpse at her photo and you realize, for all her smile's shyness, she must've been one tough cookie. But, beneath her iconic resilience, who was Maud, really? How did she manage, holed up in that one-room house with no running water, married to a miserly man known for his drinking? Was she happy, or was she miserable? Did painting save or make her Everett's meal ticket? And then there are the darker secrets that haunt her story: the loss of her parents, her child, her first love. Against all odds, Maud Lewis rose above these constraints—and this is where you'll find the Maud of...
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The Finder

The Finder

Will Ferguson

Fiction / Cultural / Canada

From the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novelist of 419 comes a spellbinding literary adventure novel about precious objects lost and found.The world is filled with wonders, lost objects—all real—all still out there, waiting to be found: the missing Fabergé eggs of the Romanov dynasty, worth millions the last reel of Alfred Hitchcock's first film Buddy Holly's iconic glasses Muhammad Ali's Olympic gold medal How can such cherished objects simply vanish? Where are they hiding? And who on earth might be compelled to uncover them? Will Ferguson takes readers on a heroic, imaginative journey across continents, from the seas of southern Japan, to the arid Australian Outback, to the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquake. Prepare to meet Gaddy Rhodes, a brittle Interpol agent obsessed with tracking "The Finder"—a shadowy figure she believes is collecting lost...
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Bobby Bains Plays a Blinder

Bobby Bains Plays a Blinder

Bali Rai

Young Adult / Cultural / Contemporary Romance

A young Sikh footballer reaches out across the generational divide to help a lonely old man in an uplifting story from acclaimed author Bali Rai. When he spots a lonely old man watching his football games in the park, and then sees him again eating at the local gurdwara kitchen, Bobby wants to help. At first the man doesn't seem very friendly and he doesn't want to take part in the local walking football league for older people that Bobby tells him about. But when Bobby eventually changes his mind, it turns out that the man is a talented former professional footballer who has recently been widowed, and Bobby's invitation opens up a rewarding new opportunity for him to make connections in his local community.
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The Deadline

The Deadline

Kiki Swinson

Urban / Cultural / African American

National bestselling author Kiki Swinson always ups the ante with shocking twists, relentless characters, and a hard-edged portrait of Southern living—and dying. Now all bets are off as a newbie journalist desperate for the spotlight plunges into a killer story... Anything for the fame As an off-air TV news journalist, Khloé Mercer covers the tough Norfolk, Virginia, neighborhood she grew up in. But between a hostile boss and stiff competition, she has to break a major exclusive to save her job—and lock down the coveted anchor desk slot she feels she deserves . . . Anything for the lies When a murder takes place on her home turf, Khloé has easy access to the dirty truth behind it. But she'll have to decide whether to exploit every angle and leverage any favor to make her career explode big-time—or keep quiet and keep herself, and her family,...
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Dear Senthuran

Dear Senthuran

Akwaeke Emezi

Fiction / Cultural / Africa

FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER“A once-in-a-generation voice.” – Vulture “One of our greatest living writers.” – ShondalandA full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times-bestselling author, “a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self.” —EsquireIn three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a...
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Invented Lives

Invented Lives

Andrea Goldsmith

Cultural / Australia / Fiction

Knowing what you want is hard. Accepting what is possible is harder still ...It is the mid-1980s. In Australia, stay-at-home wives jostle with want-it-all feminists, while AIDS threatens the sexual freedom of everyone. On the other side of the world, the Soviet bloc is in turmoil.Mikhail Gorbachev has been in power for a year when twenty-four-year-old book illustrator Galina Kogan leaves Leningrad — forbidden ever to return. As a Jew, she's inherited several generations worth of Russia's chronic anti-Semitism. As a Soviet citizen, she is unprepared for Australia and its easy-going ways.Once settled in Melbourne, Galina is befriended by Sylvie and Leonard Morrow, and their adult son, Andrew. The Morrow marriage of thirty years balances on secrets. Leonard is a man with conflicted desires and passions, while Sylvie chafes against the confines of domestic life. Their son, Andrew, a successful mosaicist, is a deeply shy man. He is content...
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The Freedom Artist

The Freedom Artist

Ben Okri

Fiction / Cultural / Africa

One of 2019's most anticipated novels in THE TIMES, IRISH TIMES and GUARDIAN. 'Where fiction's master of enchantments stares down a real horror, and without blinking or flinching, produces a work of beauty, grace and uncommon power' MARLON JAMES, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015. An impassioned plea for freedom and justice, set in a world uncomfortably like our own, by the Man Booker-winner Ben Okri. In a world uncomfortably like our own, a young woman called Amalantis is arrested for asking a question. Her question is this: Who is the Prisoner? When Amalantis disappears, her lover Karnak goes looking for her. He searches desperately at first, then with a growing realization. To find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of her question. Karnak's search leads him into a terrifying world of lies, oppression and fear at the heart of which lies the Prison. Then...
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Stars of the New Curfew

Stars of the New Curfew

Ben Okri

Fiction / Cultural / Africa

To enter the world of Ben Okri's stories is to surrender to a new reality. Set in the chaotic streets of Lagos and the jungle heart of Nigeria, all the laws of cause and effect, fact and fiction, are suspended. It is a world where the lives of the powerless veer terrifyingly close to nightmare. In rich, lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose Ben Okri guides us through the fabulous and the mundane, the serene and the randomly violent. The unrelenting Nigerian heat and the implacable darkness of the black-out and the military curfew are the backdrops for his characters each finding their own ways to survive. We witness their dogged resistance to impotence, their unquenchable humour and their insistence on the possibility of love in the face of terror. Written with the lucid clarity and logic of dream, Stars of the New Curfew is a book of visionary imagination.
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The Insightful Mortal

The Insightful Mortal

Shivam

Politics / Nonfiction / Cultural

Discover your inner self on the journey to freedom. A logicalexplanation to everything you find supernatural and whyyou should start living your life, at least nowThis book is apt for people who have doubts in mind about why they pray to God and they need answers. This book will provide you answers to almost all the things happening around you which people call supernatural. From the origin of The universe to the origin of religion and the level to which it has deteriorated. If you are willing to come out of the closet to being an atheist, this is the perfect book for you
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Love Stories

Love Stories

Trent Dalton

Fiction / Contemporary / Cultural

WINNER, INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2022 BOOK OF THE YEARTrent Dalton, Australia's best-loved writer, goes out into the world and asks a simple, direct question: 'Can you please tell me a love story?' A blind man yearns to see the face of his wife of thirty years. A divorced mother has a secret love affair with a priest. A geologist discovers a three-minute video recorded by his wife before she died. A tree lopper's heart falls in a forest. A working mum contemplates taking photographs of her late husband down from her fridge. A girl writes a last letter to the man she loves most, then sets it on fire. A palliative care nurse helps a dying woman converse with the angel at the end of her bed. A renowned 100-year-old scientist ponders the one great earthly puzzle he was never able to solve: 'What is love?'Endless stories. Human stories. Love stories.Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, Trent...
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The Noh Mask Murder

The Noh Mask Murder

Akimitsu Takagi

Mystery / Cultural / Japan

A gruesome Japanese murder mystery from the author of The Tattoo Murder__________*** Praise for The Tattoo Murder ***'Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence' New York Times'This lurid mystery provides a fascinating portrait of wartorn Tokyo' The Times Crime Club, Pick of the Week'An engaging journey into a Tokyo ravaged by war and its criminal underworld... Crackles with the energy that made Takagi one of Japan's most popular crime authors' Financial Times__________Strange things are happening in the Chizurui mansion...At night, a figure clad in a Hannya mask is spotted wandering around the house. The amateur crime fiction writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate, but then tragedy strikes. The head of the Chizurui family is found dead inside his study, locked from the inside, with only a Hannya mask and the scent of jasmine as clues to his mysterious death.As Takagi delves deeper...
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A Newfoundlander in Canada

A Newfoundlander in Canada

Alan Doyle

Nonfiction / Cultural / Canada

Following the fantastic success of his bestselling memoir, Where I Belong, Great Big Sea front man Alan Doyle returns with a hilarious, heartwarming account of leaving Newfoundland and discovering Canada for the first time.Armed with the same personable, candid style found in his first book, Alan Doyle turns his perspective outward from Petty Harbour toward mainland Canada, reflecting on what it was like to venture away from the comforts of home and the familiarity of the island. Often in a van, sometimes in a bus, occasionally in a car with broken wipers "using Bob's belt and a rope found by Paddy's Pond" to pull them back and forth, Alan and his bandmates charted new territory, and he constantly measured what he saw of the vast country against what his forefathers once called the Daemon Canada. In a period punctuated by triumphant leaps forward for the band, deflating steps backward and everything in between—opening for Barney the Dinosaur at an...
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