Road ends

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Kate Pullinger

"From the award-winning author of The Mistress of Nothing comes a compelling novel that explores the complexity of modern life and the tenuous, often unexpected ties that bind us together. Spring 2010. Harriet works in local radio in London, England. When a volcano erupts in Iceland and airspace shuts down over Europe, stranding most of her colleagues abroad, she seizes the opportunity to take on a larger role at the station. Her husband, Michael, stuck in New York, travels to Toronto to stay with an old flame. Their teenage son Jack, liberated from normal life by the absence of airplanes, takes an unexpected risk and finds himself in trouble. Meanwhile, a Pakistani migrant worker named Yacub is stranded in a labor camp in Dubai, and Emily, a young TV researcher, loses her father to a sudden heart attack. Two years later, their lives intersect dramatically when Yacub, a stowaway, falls out of the landing gear of an airplane and onto Harriet's car in a supermarket parking lot. Yacub's sudden arrival in the lives of Harriet, Jack, Michael, and Emily catapults these characters into a series of life-changing events, ultimately drawing them closer to one another. Winner of Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for her debut American novel, The Mistress of Nothing, which Good Housekeeping called "scorchingly powerful," Kate Pullinger draws on real-life accounts of airplane stowaways as the basis for a highly imaginative story of colliding worlds and extraordinary connections"--

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Frances Itani

The new novel from the award-winning author of Deafening is a poignant exploration of one eighty-year-old life, as its heroine lies at the bottom of a ravine where she has crashed en route to visit the queen. Born the same day as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian Georgina Danforth Witley is one of ninety-nine privileged Commonwealth subjects invited to an eightieth birthday lunch at Buckingham Palace. All she has to do is drive to the airport and board the plane for London. Except that Georgie drives off the road, her car plunging into a thickly wooded ravine. Thrown from the car and unable to move, she must rely on her no-nonsense wit, her full store of family memories, and a recitation of the bones in her body -- a childhood exercise that reminds her she is still alive. As Georgina lies helpless, she reflects on her role as a daughter, mother, sister, wife, and widow -- on lost loves and painful secrets -- offering a whimsical and profound insight into the life of one ordinary woman who, while drawing on her instincts to survive, asks herself: what has it all amounted to?

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Paul Auster

Marco Fogg, loner and dreamer, is forced from his Manhattan apartment and roams Central Park as a vagrant until he is rescued by gentle Kitty Wu. He ends up as the live-in helper to an invalid old man, the recording of whose life story becomes Marco's obsession.

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Kristin Hannah

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.