Stranger Care: a memoir of loving what isn't ours by Sarah Sentilles

After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system's goal is reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their family--even if it means most likely having to give them back. After years of starts and stops, and endless navigation of the complexities and injustices of the foster care system, a phone call finally comes: a three-day old baby girl, named Coco, in immediate need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home.

"You were never ours," Sarah tells Coco, "yet we belong to each other."

A love letter to Coco, and to the countless children like her, Stranger Care chronicles Sarah's discovery of what it means to mother--in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but the birth mother who loves her, too. Ultimately, Coco's story reminds us that we depend on family, and that family can take different forms. With "fearless, stirring, rhythmic" (Nick Flynn) prose, Sentilles lays bare an intimate, powerful story, with universal concerns: How can we care for and protect each other? How do we ensure a more hopeful future for life on this planet? And if we're all related--tree, bird, star, person--how might we better live?

404 pages (May 2021)

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Title Read-alikes: Rock Needs River: a memoir of a very open adoption by Vanessa McGrady; A Love-Stretched Life: stories on wrangling hope, embracing the unexpected, and discovering the meaning of family by Jilana Goble; Intertwined: a mother's memoir by Kathleen English Cadmus; The Girl in the Red Boots: making peace with my mother by Judith Ruskay Rabinor; You Carried Me: a daughter's memoir by Melissa Ohden; American Baby: a mother, a child, and the shadow history of adoption by Gabrielle Glaser; When the Bough Breaks: true stories of hope and encouragement of mothers who have had to reinvent their relationships with their children by Nancy Ferraro; Don't You Ever: my mother and her secret son by Mary Carter Bishop; Raising Abel by Carolyn Nash; Little Bandaged Days by Kyra Wilder; House of Sticks: a memoir by Ly Tran; Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison; and Why Didn't You Tell Me?: a memoir by Carmen Rita Wong.

The Dictionary of Lost Words: a novel by Pip Williams

 

In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, the daughter of one of them decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means "slave girl," she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

376 pages (April 2021)

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Title Read-alikes: The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams; Book of Colours by Robyn Cadwallader; The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow; Vox by Christina Dalcher; The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine; Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar; The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish; Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner; Miss Austen by Gill Hornby; Portable Magic by Emma Smith; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer; Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell; and The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner.

Come Fly the World: the Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke

Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up

Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire. Julia Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life.

Cooke brings to life the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.

266 pages (March 2021)

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Title Read-alikes: The Jet Sex: airline stewardesses and the making of an American icon by Victoria Vantoch; Fly Girl: a memoir by Ann Hood; The Great Stewardess Rebellion: how women launched a workplace rebellion at 30,000 feet by Nell McShane Wulfhart; The Good Girls Revolt: how the women of Newsweek sued their bosses and changed the workplace by Lynn Povich; Cockpit Confidential: everything you need to know about air travel : questions, answers, & reflections by Patrick Smith; The Great Air Race: glory, tragedy, and the dawn of American Aviation by John Lancaster; Inside Broadside: a decade of feminist journalism by Philindra Masters; Twelve Years of Turbulence: the inside story of American Airlines' battle for survival by Gary Kennedy; Confessions of a Qantas Flight Attendant: true tales and gossip from the galley by Owen Beddall; The Barbizon: the hotel that set women free by Paulina Bren; The Secret History of Home Economics: how trailblazing women harnessed the power of home and changed the way we live by Danielle Dreilinger; The Woman They Could Not Silence: one woman, her incredible fight for freedom and the men who tried to make her disappear by Kate Moore;  and West with the Night by Beryl Markham.

Daughter of the Boycott: carrying on a Montgomery family's civil rights legacy by Karen Gray Houston

In 1950, before Montgomery, Alabama, knew Martin Luther King Jr., before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger, before the city’s famous bus boycott, a Negro man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a white police officer in a confrontation after he tried to board a city bus. Thomas Gray, who had played football with Hilliard when they were kids, was outraged by the unjustifiable shooting. Gray protested, eventually staging a major downtown march to register voters, and standing up to police brutality.

Five years later, he led another protest, this time against unjust treatment on the city’s segregated buses. On the front lines of what became the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray withstood threats and bombings alongside his brother, Fred D. Gray, the young lawyer who represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the rarely mentioned Claudette Colvin, a plaintiff in the case that forced Alabama to desegregate its buses.

An incredible story of family in the pivotal years of the civil rights movement, Daughter of the Boycott is the reflection of Thomas Gray’s daughter, award-winning broadcast journalist Karen Gray Houston, on how her father’s and uncle’s selfless actions changed the nation’s racial climate and opened doors for her and countless other African Americans.

241 pages (May 2020)

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Stories from the Daughter of the Boycott | Karen Gray Houston | TEDxPearlStreet (from TEDx Talks) :

Title Read-alikes: Buses Are A Comin': memoir of a freedom rider by Charles Person;  The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow by Donnie Williams & Wayne Greenhaw; The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis; The Dead Are Arising: the live of Malcolm X by Les Payne; Alabama v. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the criminal trial that launched the Civil Rights Movement by Dan Abrams; Ida B. the Queen: the extraordinary life and legacy of Ida B. Wells by Michelle Duster; Julian Bond's Time to Teach: a history of the southern civil rights movement by Julian Bond; The Lost Education of Horace Tate: uncovering the hidden heroes who fought for justice in schools by Vannessa Siddle Walker; Mighty Justice: my life in civil rights by Dovey Johnson Roundtree;  Black in Selma: the uncommon life of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.: politics and power in a small American city by J.L. Chestnut Jr. & Julia Cass; Ready for Revolution: the life and struggles of Stokely Carmichael by Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Ture, & John Edgar Wideman; Turn Me Loose: the unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X Walker; and The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: a white southerner in thefreedom movement by Bob Zellner & Constance Curry.

Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

In this one-of-a-kind retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry - until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider.

A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won't make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more.

When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys's lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad "Bungles" Bingla, the wildly successful - and single - entrepreneur. But Bungles's friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal - and Alys begins to realize that Darsee's brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance.

Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen's beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood.

352 pages (January 2019)

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40 Great Book Club Discussion Questions for Any Book from Book Riot

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Title Read-alikes: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan; The Matchmaker's List by Sonya Lalli; Ayesha at Last by Usma Jalaluddin; Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld; The Hating Game by Sally Thorne; Polite Society by Mahesh Rao; Duty Free by Moni Mohsin; Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev; Love Marriage by Monica Ali; The Marriage Clock by Zara Raheem; The Other Man by Farhad J. Dadyburjor; Would I Lie to You? by Aliya Ali-Afzal; and Lucie Yi is Not a Romantic by  Lauren Ho.

A Woman of No Importance: the untold story of the American spy who helped win WWII by Sonia Purnell

The never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine: the life of Mrs. Winston Churchill

in 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.

Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.

Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.

352 pages (April 2019)

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 Virginia Hall: The Courage and Daring of "The Limping Lady" from the CIA

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Wolves at the Door : the true story of America's greatest female spy by Judith Pearson; The Double Life of Katharine Clark: the untold story of the fearless journalist who risked her life for truth and justice by Katharine Gregorio; D-Day Girls: the spies who armed the resistance, sabotaged the Nazis, and helped win World War II by Sarah Rose; Code Name: the true story of the woman who became WWII's most highly decorated spy by Larry Loftis; Code Name Madeleine: a Sufi spy in Nazi-occupied Paris by Arthur J. Magida; Madame Fourcade's Secret War: the daring young woman who led France's largest spy network against Hitler by Lynne Olson; The Last Goodnight: a World War II story of espionage, adventure, and betrayal by Howard Blum; Agent Jack: the true story of MI5's secret Nazi hunter by Robert Hutton; D-Day girls: the spies who armed the resistance, sabotaged the Nazis, and helped win World War II by Sarah Rose; The Splendid and the Vile: a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the blitz by Erik Larson; Flames in the Field: the story of four SOE agents in occupied France by Rita Kramer; and Code Girls: the untold story of the American women code breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy.

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to get an education so that she can escape and choose her own future.

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a "louding voice"—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.

When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.

But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can—in a whisper, in song, in broken English—until she is heard

371 pages (February 2020)

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Title Read-alikes: The Color Purple by Alice Walker; A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi; Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao; Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan; Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo; The Impatient by Djaili Amadou Amal; Vagabonds by Eloghosa Osunde; The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia; A Mercy by Toni Morrison; The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: a memoir by Wayétu Moore; We Kiss Them with Rain by Futhi Ntshigila; Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremga; and His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Meadie.

Inheritance: a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love by Dani Shapiro

A new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets--a real-time exploration of the staggering discovery Shapiro recently made about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden story of her own life.

What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?

In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her.

Inheritance is a book about secrets--secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in--a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.

Timely and unforgettable, Dani Shapiro's memoir is a gripping, gut-wrenching exploration of genealogy, paternity, and love.

247 pages (January 2019)

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Title Read-alikes: Before My Time: a memoir of love and fate by Ami McKay; The Forgetting River: a modern tale of survival, identity, and the Inquisition by Doreen Carvajal; Go Ask Your Father: one man's obsession with finding his origins through DNA testing by Lennard J. Davis; Wild Game: my mother, her secret, and me by Adrienne Brodeur; Futureface: a family mystery, a search for identity, and the truth about belonging by Alex Wagner; When I Was White: a memoir by Sarah Valentine; Aftershocks: a memoir by Nadia Owusu; Why Didn't You Tell Me?: a memoir by Carmen Rita Wong; The Family Outing: a memoir by Jessi Hempel; Unorthodox: the scandalous rejection of my Hasidic roots by Deborah Feldman; Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain; A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias; and The Tiny One by Eliza Minot.

The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani

She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her.

One of the “10 Best Books of the Year” of The New York Times Book Review, by the author of Adèle, Sex and Lies: true stories of women's intimate lives in the Arab world, and In the Country of Others.

“A great novel . . . Incredibly engaging and disturbing . . . Slimani has us in her thrall.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger.

“One of the most important books of the year. You can’t unread it.” —Barrie Hardymon, NPR’s Weekend Edition

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer.  

228 pages (January 2018)

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13 Book Club Questions to Energize Any Meetup from Bustle

 

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We are all monsters: interview with Leïla Slimani, author of Adèle and Lullaby (UK title of The Perfect Nanny) | from Bookanista:

This title is available for download as an eBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.ed on a true story

 

Title Read-alikes: Rust & Stardust by T. Greenwood; The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy; Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan; A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne; The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan; The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham; Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain; The Push by Ashley Audrain; The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks; Mrs. March by Virginia Feito; Her by Harriet Lane; This Little Family by Inès Bayard; Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hail; and A Mouthful of Air by Amy Koppelman