Instead of focusing on just one book this week, I thought I’d look at several of the new additions to our collection for New Title Tuesday. We have such a wide variety of authors, topics, settings, and genres that I couldn’t choose which way to go.
That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam deals with race, motherhood, and nannies.
Publisher’s Summary: Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations, Rebecca Stone asks Priscilla Johnson to be her son’s nanny. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.
Small Country a novel by Gaël Faye is an international bestseller and has been translated from French.
Publisher’s Summary: Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana, is something close to paradise. These are carefree days of laughter and adventure — sneaking Supermatch cigarettes and gorging on stolen mangoes — as he and his mischievous gang of friends transform their tiny cul-de-sac into their kingdom. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country, and soon their peaceful existence will shatter when Burundi, and neighboring Rwanda, are brutally hit by civil war and genocide.
In the Distance With You by Carla Guelfenbein is also set in the past and translated from Spanish.
Publisher’s Summary: This Chilean literary thriller tells the story of three lives intertwined with that of an enigmatic author, whose character is inspired by the groundbreaking Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Vera Sigall, now eighty years old, has lived a mysterious, ascetic life far from the limelight of literary circles. This powerful character has a profound effect on those around her–Daniel, an architect and her neighbor and friend, unhappy in his marriage and career; Emilia, a Franco-Chilean student who travels to Santiago to write a thesis on the elusive Vera; and Horacio, an acclaimed poet with whom Vera had a tumultuous, passionate affair in her youth. As Daniel, Emilia, and Horacio tell their stories, they reconstruct Vera’s past, spanning from modern-day Chile to the 1950s, 60s, and through the years of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton is a modern-day thriller set in New York.
Publisher’s Summary: Louise Wilson is an expert at just barely making it. She’s mastered the tricks and shortcuts that a penniless small-town girl needs to survive in New York City. When she meets the beautiful, wealthy, eccentric, and aimless Lavinia Williams, she thinks her dreams of a cosmopolitan existence may be coming true. Lavinia introduces her to a rarified life of beauty and indulgence: private opera boxes, secret bookstores in brownstones, Shakespearean masked balls, underground cabarets, closets full of hundreds of dresses, and the finest champagne money can buy. The more Louise tastes, the more she wants. She can speak with the right affectation, wear the best makeup, drop the appropriate references, but she is always afraid people can see her true nature, which is darker than anyone can imagine.
All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin is a novel about family relationships among the elite in Nashville Tennessee.
Publisher’s Summary: Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. Her husband’s tech business is booming and her son is bound for Princeton. Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs. His daughter, Lyla, recently earned a scholarship to attend Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school. Then one devastating photo snapped at a drunken moment at a party changes everything. The photo spreads quickly, and before long, an already divided community takes sides, throws blame, and implodes. And in the midst of it all, Nina, Tom, and Lyla are forced to question all their assumptions about love and loyalty.
Hopefully, you will find something on this list that you can’t wait to read. If not, you can find more suggestions on our website. Or simply come in and browse the new titles in both fiction and non-fiction in the Marketplace on the first floor.
Happy Reading, Susan C.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 