Multi-Cultural Fiction
By Tayari Jones
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, May 14, 2019. 7:30 PM.
When her new husband is arrested and imprisoned for a crime she knows he did not commit, a rising artist takes comfort in a longtime friendship only to encounter unexpected challenges in resuming her life when her husband's sentence is suddenly overturned.
By Danielle Jackson
Recommended By Jenn Jordan, Library Aide
When she finds herself in front of the camera for once, modeling her best friend’s new lingerie line, photographer—and proud plus-size Black woman—Cassie Harris is forced to work with her long-time competitor who wants their professional relationship to develop into something more personal.
By Jason Reynolds
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.
By Edward P. Jones
A collection of fourteen short stories is set in Washington, D.C., and follows morally complex characters caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations of modern city life.
Mary B. Addison killed a baby. Allegedly. She didn't say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: a white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine–year–old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it?
By Ayad Akhtar
A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.
By Lena Mahmoud
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
After her mother is killed and her father disappears, Isra Shadi, whose parents were Palestinian and white, lives with her aunt and uncle, but when she is encouraged to leave and marry, she chooses a love from her past, as she is caught between two cultures and struggles for identity.
By Jacqueline Woodson
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, November 14, 2017. 7:30 PM
Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile her past and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly.
Eight people become entangled in a web of relationships, doomed to become as destructive as the society which oppresses them.
By Amy Bloom
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
Arriving in America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb receives word that her daughter Sophie might still be alive and embarks on a risky odyssey that takes her from New York's Lower East Side to Siberia to find the missing girl.
By Elif Shafak
Recommended By Jenn Jordan, Library Aide
Turkish teen Asya is coming of age under the wing of her tattoo-parlor owner mother and her three aunts, befriending a cousin from America, and discovering a secret that links her family to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres.
By Dinaw Mengestu
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
In his run–down store in a gentrifying neighborhood of Washington, DC, Ethiopian immigrant Stepha Stephanos regularly meets with fellow African immigrants Ken the Kenyan and Joe from the Congo. They consider how their new immigrant expectations measure up to the reality of life in America after seventeen years and make keen observations of American race and class tensions.
By Rosanna Chiofalo
Preparing for her wedding in Venice to a man she has loved since childhood, bridal gown designer Valentina DeLuca is forced to re-evaluate her life in this magical city where she hopes her luck will change.
By Adriana Trigiani
Series Big Stone Gap Novels
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
“Big Cherry Holler, the extraordinary sequel to Big Stone Gap, takes us back to the mountain life that enchanted us in Adriana Trigiani’s best selling debut novel (From the Publisher).”
By Adriana Trigiani
Series Big Stone Gap Novels
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
“Ave Maria's life in Big Stone Gap, VA, is essentially the same as it's been for all 35 years of her life, but after her mother's will reveals that the man Ave thought was her father isn't, she begins to lose hold of her routine… In between panic attacks and shouting matches, Ave tries to figure out what all these changes mean in her life (Library Journal).”
Three mothers from New York’s Little Italy struggle to maintain their traditions while their sons chafe under the oppressive weight of their ethnic community
By Attica Locke
Series Highway 59
Forced by duty to return to his racially divided East Texas hometown, an African–American Texas Ranger risks his job and reputation to investigate a highly charged double murder case involving a black Chicago lawyer and a local white woman.
By Toni Morrison
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
The story of Pecola Breedlove profiles an eleven-year-old black girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes and the tragedy that results from her longing to be accepted.
By Tariq Ali
Series Islam Quintet
“…Ali's earthy, lusty saga about the fall of Jerusalem to Muslim forces in 1187 rewrites Eurocentric history by focusing on the historical figure Salah al-Din (better known as Saladin), the Kurdish upstart who used his position as sultan of Egypt and Syria to retake the Holy City from Crusaders (Publishers Weekly).”
By Adriana Trigiani
Series Valentine Trilogy
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
When Valentine Roncalli discovers a long-lost shoe design, a family secret unravels that helps her take control of the company from a conniving relative, but first she seeks the counsel of her ex-fiancé, Bret Fitzpatrick, to help re-boot the business.
By Junot Diaz
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
Living with an old–world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and believes that a long–standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness.
By Julie Otsuka
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, August 28, 2012. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.
Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.
By Julie Kibler
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, November 25, 2014. 1:30 PM.
“Follows the experiences of hairdresser and African-American single mom Dorrie, who while struggling with difficult family dynamics reluctantly agrees to drive an octogenarian client to a funeral several states away (From the Publisher).”
By Tomi Adeyemi
Series Legacy of Orïsha
Coming of age in a land where her magi mother was killed by the zealous king's guards along with other former wielders of magic, Zélie embarks on a journey alongside her brother and a fugitive princess to restore her people's magical abilities.
By Tomi Adeyemi
Series Legacy of Orïsha
After Zâelie and Amari bring magic back to the land of Orïsha, the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, forcing Zâelie to fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.
By Kevin Kwan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Feeling incomplete because her unknown birth father cannot walk her down the aisle, Rachel Chu, on the brink of marrying one of Asia's richest bachelors, is brought into the elite circles of Shanghai by a shocking revelation.
By Alice Walker
Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s.
By Angie Thomas
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
A gang leader’s son finds his effort to go straight for the sake of his child challenged by a loved one’s brutal murder, in a poignant exploration of Black coming-of-age set 17 years before the events of the award-winning The Hate U Give.
By Afia Atakora
A midwife and conjurer of curses reflects on her life before and after the Civil War, her relationships with the families she serves and the secrets she has learned about a plantation owner’s daughter.
By Kevin Kwan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
Envisioning a quality-time summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that viciously competes against other wealthy families and strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl.
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
By Abraham Verghese
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.
By Adib Khorram
A Persian–American youth who prefers pop culture to the traditions of his mixed family struggles with clinical depression and the misunderstandings of older relatives while bonding with a boy who helps him embrace his Iranian heritage.
By Thomas Mullen
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference
Hired by the Atlanta Police Department in 1948, Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith confront deep hostility from their white peers before confronting a corrupt officer who complicates their investigation into the murder of a black woman.
By James Hannaham
A young widow with an addiction is lured away to a remote farm by a shady company called Delicious Foods, where she is held captive and forced into hard labor while she struggles to be reunited with her young son.
By Angie Cruz
The award–winning author of Soledad draws on her mother’s story in a tale set in a turbulent 1960s Dominican Republic, where a young teen agrees to marry a man twice her age to help her family’s immigration to America.
Three generations of women in the del Pino family, divided over conflicting political loyalties after the Cuban revolution, are reunited in Havana by a devoted granddaughter who has refused to sacrifice her family ideals.
A multigenerational saga that opens in an Italian village in the 1900s and then crosses the ocean to New York's Lower East Side to tell the dramatic story of the heroine, Giovanna, and how she triumphs over tragedy.
After her husband, a soldier for the Irish Republican Army, is injured and can no longer work, Ellie Hogan immigrates to New York City where she, working as a maid for a wealthy socialite, becomes tempted by this glittering new world -- and by a charming suitor who can give her all she ever wanted.
Esperanza's expectation that her 13th birthday will be celebrated with all the material pleasures and folk elements of her previous years is shattered when her father is murdered by bandits.
By Thrity Umrigar
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, July 24, 2018. 1:30 PM.
An African American lawman struggles to come to terms with the moral fallout of crimes committed by his loved ones when he learns that he was wrongly taken from his biological mother and that his white foster father exploited their family's influences to retain custody.
By Celeste Ng
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tueday, July 28, 2015. 1 PM.
A story of the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family explores the fallout of the drowning death of Lydia Lee, the favorite daughter of a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio.
David Wolfe's life is thrown into turmoil when he is asked to defend a Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret love affair.
By Akhil Sharma
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, January 19, 2016. 1:30 PM.
Finally joining their father in America, Ajay and Birju enjoy their new, extraordinary life until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother incapacitated and the other practically orphaned.
By Rohinton Mistry
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
“Mistry presents a magnetic tale of family obligations that comes as close to perfect as a novel can get. The setting is the ever-hectic city of Bombay during a 1990s wave of violent religious extremism, and the focus is on an extended Parsi family suffering the long-term consequences of a Juliet and Romeo-like tragedy (From the Publisher).”
By Ann Fairbairn
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
“Returning to the South to fight for the civil rights movement, a young black lawyer finds his life complicated by a beautiful white artist (From the Publisher).”
By Rhys Bowen
Series Molly Murphy Mysteries
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
“Full of the rich detail of New York's teeming immigrant community and the colorful historical personalities of the age, For the Love of Mike is the triumphant third installment in Rhys Bowen's Agatha Award-winning series (From the Publisher).”
By Catherine Chung
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Tuesday, November 27. 1:30 PM.
Learning on the night of her sister's birth that a daughter has been lost in every generation of her Korean family, Janie assumes a protective role over her sister while learning more cautionary stories from her optimistic father and mythology-minded mother until her sister's abrupt defection years later reveals painful family secrets.
By Kate Morton
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.
By Mario Puzo
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Monday, March 14, 2011. 7 PM.
At the head of the Angeluzzi-Corbo family stands Lucia Santa, wife, widow and mother of two families. It is her formidable will that steers them through the Depression. But even she cannot prevent the violence which follows.