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Open Water

Caleb Azumah Nelson · 2021

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin · 2022

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006

The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos)

Samantha Shannon · 2019

Get ready for Samantha Shannon's new novel, A Day of Fallen Night, coming in February 2023! The New York Times bestselling "epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones" (Bustle). NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: AMAZON (Top 100 Editors Picks and Science Fiction and Fantasy) * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY * BOOKPAGE * AUTOSTRADDLE A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

You Exist Too Much: A Novel

Zaina Arafat · 2020

<b>A “provocative and seductive debut” of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life (<i>O, The Oprah Magazine</i>).</b><br><br>On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12–year–old Palestinian–American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.<br><br>Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East—from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine—Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought–after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.<br><br>Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, <i>You Exist Too Much</i> is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings—for love, and a place to call home.

Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin · 1956

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison · 1970

Maurice

E. M. Forster · 1971

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 1890

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray<br/><br/>The Picture of Dorian Gray is a 1891 gothic and philosophical novel by Irish writer and playwright Oscar Wilde. First published as a serial story in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, the editors feared the story was indecent, and without Wilde's knowledge, deleted five hundred words before publication.<br/><br/>Despite that censorship, The Picture of Dorian Gray offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding the public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press.<br/><br/>Wilde revised and expanded the magazine edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) for publication as a novel; the book edition (1891) featured an aphoristic preface — an apologia about the art of the novel and the reader. The content, style and presentation of the preface made it famous in its own literary right, as social and cultural criticism. In April 1891, the editorial house Ward, Lock and Company published the revised version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.<br/><br/>A True Classic that Belongs on Every Bookshelf!

Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)

Jane Austen · 1813

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley · 1932

Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit<br/>"A masterpiece. ... One of the most prophetic dystopian works." —Wall Street Journal<br/>Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.<br/>"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie · 1939

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf · 1925

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf · 1927

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2014

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Mikki Kendall · 2020

<b>A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER<br><br> “<b>The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.”</b> <b>—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 <i>New York Times-</i>bestselling author of  <i>How to Be an Antiracist</i>, in <i>The Atlantic</i></b><br><br>“One of the most important books of the current moment.”—<i>Time</i></b><br>  <br> <b>“A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone.”—Gabrielle Union, author of</b> <i><b>We’re Going to Need More Wine</b></i><br> <br> <b><br> <b>A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism</b></b><br><br>Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? <br><br>In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, <i>Hood Feminism</i> delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.

Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

Joanne Limburg · 2021

The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 1992

<b><b><b><b>ONE OF <i>TIME MAGAZINE</i>'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • </b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "a<b>n accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (<i>Village Voice</i>)</b>, f<b>rom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>The Goldfinch.<br><br></i></b></b></b>One of <i>The Atlantic</i>’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years</b><br><br>Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.<br><br><b>“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b>

Lies We Sing to the Sea

Sarah Underwood · 2023

An instant New York Times bestseller—and a legendary YA debut!<br/>This dazzling sapphic fantasy inspired by Greek mythology will captivate fans of Circe and The Song of Achilles.<br/>Each spring, Ithaca condemns twelve maidens to the noose. This is the price vengeful Poseidon demands for the lives of Queen Penelope’s twelve maids, hanged and cast into the depths centuries ago.<br/>But when that fate comes for Leto, death is not what she thought it would be. Instead, she wakes on a mysterious island and meets a girl with green eyes and the power to command the sea. A girl named Melantho, who says one more death can stop a thousand.<br/>The prince of Ithaca must die—or the tides of fate will drown them all.<br/>Sarah Underwood weaves an epic tapestry of lies, love, and tragedy, perfect for fans of Madeline Miller, Alexandra Bracken, and Renée Ahdieh.

Seven Days in June

Tia Williams · 2021

Find Me: A Novel

André Aciman · 2020