NCW Libraries

"A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless...

"It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't...

"Nilda Carlson longs to better her community--and herself. When her ideas to help other immigrants meet resistance, she finds enjoyment in her piano lessons with the handsome schoolteacher, Fritz. But when a stylish young woman steals his attention, can she compete with such a sophisticated beauty?"--

The phenomenal Cutler series from New York Times bestselling author V.C. Andrews has held readers spellbound. Now comes the fourth and final novel in the magnificent Cutler family saga--the prequel to Dawn. Darkest Hour takes readers back to the story of Dawn's grandmother ... to a girl named Lillian, and a thriving plantation called The Meadows.

"Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left...

Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past...

"Against the backdrop of America's heartland, this stunning epic drama follows the Kusek family over fifty years, through relocation from metropolis to prairie, the panic of Communism and McCarthyism, a smear campaign, a dramatic trial, and, ultimately, murder. On Christmas Eve, 1985, Jo Kusek discovers her brother and his family have been savagely attacked. The wife has been killed, father and son barely alive. How did this happen? Cal, Jo's father,...

"From the outside, the Chengs seem like poster children for the enduring promise of the American Dream. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn't this what they sacrificed so much for, to be a family? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting in motion a string of misunderstandings that strips away their...

"A beautiful, powerful new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spies about three generations of mothers and daughters who must discover their greatest source of strength in one another--a masterful, brilliant tale of a family both united and torn apart by ambition and love. The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means...

"Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn't think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse. Losing her husband to...