Showing results by narrator "Emily Zeller" in All Categories

Princeton University, 1980. A young and unambitious librarian named Anna Roth is assigned the task of retrieving the records of Kurt Gödel - the most fascinating and hermetic mathematician of the 20th century. Her mission consists of befriending and ultimately taming the greatman's widow, Adele, a notoriously bitter woman set on taking belated revenge against the establishment by refusing to hand over these documents of immeasurable historical value.

Twenty-five, Chinese-American, and agoraphobic, Marcy Chen navigates love, sex, gourmet food, family and a desperate fear of people and intimacy. Living in the trendy Fremont district of Seattle, Washington, Marcy has created a life insulated from the people around her. Slowly she realizes that she must make a choice between seclusion and safety, or living the life she wants - in fear.

Judy Chicurel's exquisitely written debut evokes the atmosphere of a 1970s summer in a close-knit working class community on Long Island. For readers of Jennifer Egan and Anne Tyler. Katie and her young friends face a changing world, with prospects very different from those presented to their parents. The Vietnam War seems pointless to many but has devastated lives that remain broken even after the fighting is over.

Faithless is a work of experimental fiction weaving through various scenes and memories of being in love, out of love, and abused by love as told and experienced by Grace, a troubled 20-something-year-old struggling with her identity as a bisexual Korean-American. Everything is recounted as experienced - in fragments.

It hasn't been long since Fennel, a Sightless Groundling, and Peree, her Lofty Keeper, fell in love and learned the truth: the Scourge, and their world, are not what they seem. Fenn and Peree are determined to guide their people to the protected village of Koolkuna, but first they must convince them that everything they believe is a lie. An impossible task, especially when someone seems hell-bent on trying anything - even animal sacrifice and arson - to destroy the couple's new bond and crush the frail truce between the Groundlings and the Lofties.

We quickly became the typical I-must-talk-to-you-every-night-and-drive-over-to-your-house-at-10-p.m.-because-I-absolutely-cannot-go-to-sleep-if-I'm-not-in-the-same-bed-as-you couple falling in love...But just as quickly our honeymoon period came to an end. At first it wasn't clear. And then it was very clear. And then it was so fucking clear that John and I found ourselves driving to Beverly Hills for couples therapy.

American biologist Chris Harmon finds the old repressive powers are still at work in modern Russia. He finds himself pitted against the Russians in an effort to protect the magnificent Siberian tiger against the encroachment of loggers.

Cross and Crescent continues the story of the Empire of Byzantium, once the center of the world. After centuries of power, the Imperial Throne is in danger. The citizens of that great nation must play a dangerous game to save their land, from infidel and barbarian Christian both - and the things done in God's name may condemn an entire generation.

Sophy Dunbarron - the illegitimate daughter of a king who never was - has always felt like an impostor. Separated from her birth mother, raised by parents mourning the loss of their true daughter, and unacknowledged by her father, Sophy desires only a place and a family to call her own. But fate has other ideas. Caught up in Elanna Valtai’s revolution, Sophy has become the reigning monarch of a once-divided country - a role she has been groomed her whole life to fill. But as she quickly discovers, wearing a crown is quite a different thing from keeping a crown.

Meet nine courageous young adults who have lived in the United States with a secret for much of their lives: they are not U.S. citizens. They came from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea. They came seeking education, fleeing violence, and escaping poverty. All have heartbreaking and hopeful stories about leaving their homelands and starting a new life in America. And all are weary of living in the shadows.

The past never really leaves us. Crime reporter Julia Gooden sees proof of this every day in her stories. A dark childhood, a negligent parent, early abandonment - any one of them can seal a person's fate as either a villain or victim. Julia, who experienced all three, seems to have beaten the odds, finding happiness raising her two sons and a blossoming relationship with detective Raymond Navarro. But now, after three decades of absence, Julia's conman father has resurfaced to throw her life into turmoil again.

Looking forward to her girls-only college reunion vacation, Jaymie's on cloud nine at the idea of lazy trips to the beach, dinner cruises on the nearby river, and snug sleeping in the vintage trailer she's renovated. But no sooner does the group reconnect than her hopes turn to tension as petty squabbles and old acrimonies surface, along with tagalong friends, unexpected guests, and stalkerish ex-husbands. And when a local tool belt Romeo with an eye for one of the women is found murdered, his home ablaze, the simmering hostility in the group suddenly shifts to secrecy.

Vintage cookware enthusiast Jaymie Leighton is thrilled at the prospect of meeting an elderly descendant of her town's founding father, not least because she's known to possess an enviably large collection of antique spice graters. But the curmudgeonly woman also has substantial real estate holdings, and at the moment she's engaged in a fierce battle with a property developer who wants her to sell off her old buildings in the name of progress.

Seventeen-year-old Ali Chu knows that as the only Asian person at her school in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, she must be bland as white toast to survive. This means swapping her congee lunch for PB&Js and ignoring the clueless racism from her classmates and teachers. Her autopilot existence is disrupted when she finds out that Chase Yu, the new kid in school, is also Taiwanese. Ali and Chase soon spark a chemistry rooted in competitive martial arts, joking in two languages, and, most importantly, pushing back against the discrimination they face.

From the author of book-club favorite The Salt House comes a deeply affecting novel about a teenage girl finding her voice and the military wife who moves in downstairs, united in their search for the true meaning of home.

Things I will never forget: my name, my made-up birthday...the dark of the hospital at night. My mother’s face when she was young. Things other people will forget: where they come from, how old they are, the faces of the people they love. The right words for bowl and sunshine...what is a beginning and what is an end. Joy spends her days working the graveyard shift at a store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past.

Lin Zhe is one of China’s foremost authors. In this gripping novel, Zhe incorporates the War of Resistance against Japan, New China's arduous journey from Liberation in 1949 through Mao's Cultural Revolution, and up to the present day to form a compelling backdrop for her portrayal of three generations of a Chinese family struggling to survive war, revolutionary politics, the demands of a timeless patriarchal social order, and the conflict between family obligations and individual aspirations.

Vintage cookware collector Jaymie Müller is stunned when an irate woman accuses her pharmacist friend Val of tampering with her prescription. When more unfounded accusations follow, it seems clear the woman has a personal grudge against Val. But before they can figure out why, Jaymie and Val stumble upon the woman's dead body on the steps of Val's pharmacy. Given her altercations with the woman and the location of the body, the police naturally suspect Val.

One extraordinary night, Esta dreamed of a mysterious gray mare named Lava Lady, who spoke to her so rapidly that she was difficult to understand. When Esta woke, she was unable to shake the name Lava Lady, and wondered whether there were horses in “real life” by that name.

Fresh from their victory over the frightening chimerae monsters, Kie and N'Rah are looking forward to a quiet life on her uncle's orchard, far from the turmoil of the capital city. They miss the friends they made there, but as sky couriers, their job keeps them busy. Then Kie unexpectedly receives a message from the emperor himself! He has an urgent mission for Kie and N'Rah—they need to find the Sky King, the elusive ruler of the wild skysteeds that soar across the land.