Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is the funny, serious, and compelling new novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie).
Once
again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine
forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her
heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of
1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose
future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her
past marked by mystery.
Among the colorful cast of characters are:
Sookie,
of Selma, Alabama, Dena's exuberant college roommate, who is everything
that Dena is not; she is thrilled by Dena's success and will do
everything short of signing autographs for her; Sookie's a mom, a wife,
and a Kappa forever
Dena's cousins, the
Warrens, and her aunt Elner, of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, endearing,
loyal, talkative, ditsy, and, in their way, wise
Neighbor Dorothy, whose spirit hovers over them all through the radio show that she broadcast from her home in the 1940s
Sidney Capello, pioneer of modern sleaze journalism and privateer of privacy, and Ira Wallace, his partner in tabloid television
Several doctors, all of them taken with--and almost taken in by-Dena
There are others, captivated by a woman who tries to go home again, not knowing where home or love lie.
My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor
The
first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme
Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a
candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts
her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey
that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary
determination and the power of believing in oneself.
Here
is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who
would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and
of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her
passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was
diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized
she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself
the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a
different life. With only television characters for her professional
role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she
determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an
unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the
highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County
District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the
Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how
she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the
modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends
and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s
infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book,
destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.
And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
An unforgettable novel about finding a lost piece of yourself in someone else.
Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns,
has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one
another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In
this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers
and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in
which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one
another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest
to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the
ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from
Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story
expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and
powerful with each turning page.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis
The arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
A
debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the
children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable
family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old
Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a
chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her
nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins
succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives
birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not
an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the
calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to
meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind.
Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the
story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly
uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing
page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of
insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of
the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream.
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
National Book Award Finalist
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes
an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands
the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of
two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by
her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past
death.
Born just fifteen months apart,
Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken
for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they
are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the
1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the
Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty;
he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the
dutiful son, does not share his brother’s political passion; he leaves
home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner
of America.
But when Subhash learns
what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family’s home,
he goes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered
family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind—including those seared
in the heart of his brother’s wife.
Masterly suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate, The Lowland is
a work of great beauty and complex emotion; an engrossing family saga
and a story steeped in history that spans generations and geographies
with seamless authenticity. It is Jhumpa Lahiri at the height of her
considerable powers.
