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Recommendations based on 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange Worldby Elif Shafak
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The Forty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak
A story of romance and spiritual enlightenment, exploring the teachings of a Sufi master.
Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy , a novel written by a ... (Goodreads)
The Bastard of Istanbul
by Elif Shafak
Exploring the shared history between Turkey and the US while uncovering secrets of a family’s past.
From one of Turkey’s most acclaimed and outspoken writers, a novel about the tangled histories of two families. In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country’s violent ... (Goodreads)
The Architect's Apprentice
by Elif Shafak
A young boy becomes the apprentice of the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, and navigates through love, war, and the construction of Istanbul's most iconic buildings.
From the acclaimed author of, The Bastard of Istanbul, a colorful, magical tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire In her latest novel, Elif Shafak spins an epic tale spanning nearly a ... (Goodreads)
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
A world where women have the power to control electricity, and use it to fight against gender-based oppression.
In a matriarchal society, a gushing male writer writes to an influential author about his fictional account of how the matriarchy came to be. Five thousand years earlier (in our current time), men ... (Wikipedia)
A Ladder to the Sky
by John Boyne
A young writer's ambition leads him to steal stories from others, ultimately leading to his downfall.
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find ... (Goodreads)
The First Phone Call from Heaven
by Mitch Albom
Small town receives messages from beyond the grave, as a mysterious force brings closure to the living.
The First Phone Call from Heaven tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest ... (Goodreads)
Sweet Bean Paste
by Durian Sukegawa
An elderly woman's story of redemption, exploring life's hardships and joys.
Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, ... (Goodreads)
We the Animals
by Justin Torres
A coming-of-age story of a young boy growing up with a Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn, NY.
The young, unnamed narrator, a boy, grows up in a tight-knit family with two older brothers, Manny and Joel. His parents, who were teenagers when the boys were conceived and they married, have an ... (Wikipedia)
And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini
Interconnected stories of family and love, tracing the consequences of decisions made throughout life.
The novel opens in the year 1952. Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. ... (Wikipedia)
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
A modern woman is thrown back in time, forced to confront the harsh realities of slavery.
Kindred scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main ... (Wikipedia)
Stones from the River
by Ursula Hegi
A dwarf girl navigates life in a small German town during WWII, facing discrimination and secrets.
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780684844770 From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Floating in My Mother's Palm comes a stunning novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary ... (Goodreads)
They Both Die at the End
by Adam Silvera
Two strangers, united by fate, explore life and death while forming a unique bond.
Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable ... (Goodreads)
Autumn
by Ali Smith
A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.
Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)
A God in Ruins
by Kate Atkinson
An exploration of the life of a World War II pilot and the effects of trauma on his family.
The novel is about the life of Teddy Todd (younger brother of Ursula Todd, the protagonist of the companion work,, Life After Life, ). Events in his life are not revealed in chronological order. The ... (Wikipedia)
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
by Kate Atkinson
A young girl's exploration of her family's history, unravelling their secrets and lies.
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn ... (Goodreads)
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
by Lisa See
A woman's search for identity in the face of cultural expectations and familial secrets.
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for ... (Goodreads)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
Bloodlust
by L.J. Smith
A young girl discovers her vampire heritage and must navigate the dangerous world of bloodthirsty immortals.
The second book in the, New York Times, bestselling series by L.J. Smith.,, Bloodlust, is the second book in L.J. Smith’s bestselling Stefan’s Diaries series, which reveals the backstory of brothers ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
An outrageous satire of race and civil rights in modern America.
The novel concerns a narrator, referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me," who attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles ... (Wikipedia)
The Secrets We Kept
by Lara Prescott
A thrilling tale of secretaries turned spies, who smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR during the Cold War.
Secretaries turned spies, love and duty, and sacrifice—inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love ... (Goodreads)
Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
A story of generational divide, exploring the differences between fathers and sons.
Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg . He returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolay, gladly ... (Wikipedia)
Wyrd Sisters
by Terry Pratchett
A fantastical adventure of three witches determined to overthrow an evil tyrant.
Wyrd Sisters features three witches : Granny Weatherwax ; Nanny Ogg , matriarch of a large tribe of Oggs and owner of the most evil cat in the world; and Magrat Garlick , the junior witch, who firmly ... (Wikipedia)
Sword of Destiny
by Andrzej Sapkowski
Epic fantasy adventure of a witcher on a quest to protect the world from dark forces.
The anthology consists of several stories, loosely linked in a chronology. The short stories in this collection take place before the events of the novels and introduce characters that become major ... (Wikipedia)
There There
by Tommy Orange
A powerful novel that follows the lives of twelve Native Americans living in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow.
The book begins with an essay by Orange, detailing "brief and jarring vignettes revealing the violence and genocide that Indigenous people have endured, and how it has been sanitized over the ... (Wikipedia)
Celestial Bodies
by Jokha Alharthi
A family saga set in Oman, exploring the lives of three sisters and their relationships with men, tradition, and modernity.
In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a ... (Goodreads)
Blood of Elves
by Andrzej Sapkowski
A young orphan embarks on a quest, struggling to accept their destiny as a Witcher.
About a year before the beginning of the novel (as chronicled in the preceding short story " Much More "), the Empire of Nilfgaard attacks the Kingdom of Cintra. Queen Calanthe, mortally wounded, ... (Wikipedia)
This Is How You Lose the Time War
by Amal El-Mohtar
Two time-traveling agents from warring factions fall in love through letters, risking everything to be together.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the ... (Goodreads)
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
by Haruki Murakami
A man's journey of self-reflection to address his past and understand his place in the world.
A mesmerising mystery story about friendship from the internationally bestselling author of, Norwegian Wood, and, 1Q84, Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names ... (Goodreads)
The Shadow King
by Maaza Mengiste
Set during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, a young woman joins the fight against Mussolini's army.
Ethiopia. 1935., With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's ... (Goodreads)
Rogue Protocol
by Martha Wells
Murderbot investigates a corporation's illegal experiments on humans while protecting a group of scientists.
SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions ... (Goodreads)
