Books with category 🇺🇸 USA
Displaying 11 books

April May June July

2024

by Alison B. Hart

A triumphant family story and sharply observed exploration of privilege, identity, and love in all its forms, following four estranged siblings whose lives collide in the lead-up to a family wedding, when new clues surface about their long-missing father.

April, May, June, and July Barber don’t have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated.

While the siblings’ search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other’s lives, it also intensifies their private dramas. April loves her husband, but seeks excitement outside their marriage. May had big dreams for the future, but she’s still stuck living at home. June is eager to marry her girlfriend, so why does she need a drink at every wedding-related event? And then there’s baby brother July, whose unrequited love for his straight roommate has him more confused than ever.

Confronting the past together, April, May, June, and July will find not only answers about their father, but new romance, hope, and understanding as they learn to embrace the beauty of their shared history.

Banyan Moon

2023

by Thao Thai

Banyan Moon is a sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens and buried secrets.

When Ann Tran gets the call that her beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. Ann has built a seemingly perfect life. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Hu'o'ng. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.

Running parallel to this is Minh's story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House's attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life and her family.

Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.

Survivor Song

2020

by Paul Tremblay

Survivor Song thrusts us into a chillingly prescient tale of suspense and terror. Massachusetts is overwhelmed by a rabies-like virus, spread by saliva and with a terrifyingly short incubation period. The infected are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before succumbing to the disease. Amidst the chaos, hospitals are inundated, and society crumbles as the government's emergency protocols falter.

Dr. Ramola "Rams" Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician, receives a frantic call from Natalie, a pregnant friend whose husband has been killed by an infected neighbor. Bitten herself, Natalie's only hope is to reach a hospital for the rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and her unborn child.

What follows is a desperate odyssey through a landscape twisted into a barely recognizable terrain of danger and terror. Survivor Song is an all-too-plausible novel that not only races through the pages but shakes readers to their core, showcasing Paul Tremblay's mastery of the horror genre.

Hidden Valley Road

2020

by Robert Kolker

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family unfolds the heartrending story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand—even cure—the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the dream. After World War II, Don's work with the US Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse.

By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen in one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health.

Their shocking story also offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy and the premise of the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. Unknown to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment and even the possibility of the eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.

American Dirt

2020

by Jeanine Cummins

Vivid, visceral, utterly compelling, American Dirt is the first novel to explore the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border.

Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.

The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 3: Hotel Oblivion

The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 3: Hotel Oblivion, with its inspiration leading to a hit Netflix series, marks the return of creators Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá to their acclaimed 2007 superhero narrative. The duo, known for their individual successes, reunite to continue the extraordinary exploits of the disbanded teen superhero team.

In the wake of Sir Reginald Hargreeves's death, the members of the Umbrella Academy are dispersed. Number Five is now a mercenary, Kraken hunts formidable prey, Rumor grapples with her marital collapse, Spaceboy wanders Tokyo's streets out of shape, Vanya undergoes rehabilitation post-head injury, and the enigmatic activities of Séance remain unspoken. As the team confronts a surge of superpowered adversaries, they must also face the shadows of their past that threaten to engulf them once more.

This celebrated series triumphantly returns, more bizarre and enthralling than ever, encapsulating the essence of adventure, humor, and the complex dynamics of family and friendship.

Pittsburgh Noir

2011

by Kathleen George

Pittsburgh Noir roars forth, exploring the hidden underworld of what has often been called the most livable city in America. Despite Pittsburgh being labeled the country’s most livable city, the fictional citizens populating the 14 high-quality stories in Akashic’s noir anthology centered on the Steel City have the same dreams, frustrations, passions, and vices as anyone else.

When the steel business faltered and died, ‘the smoky city’ reinvented itself as a white-collar urban site, fueled by its thriving universities. It had been a place so dark with pollution in the steel days that men carried clean shirts with them to work in order to change during the day. Now you can see the hills, the rivers, the rhythmic skyline—and as the cameras are fond of displaying at sports events, the city is now glittering and beautiful.

What is Pittsburgh to noir and noir to Pittsburgh? It certainly has its rough streets and grisly murders. But dark crime stories depend on something in addition to killing. The best examples of the genre revolve around private moralities and private law; they are the stories of people pushing against real or imagined oppression. In Pittsburgh Noir, as in most of the novels and films that gave the genre its name, the real story is the dark underbelly of existence, the fear and guilt and rebellion and denial in regular people: the woman buying groceries, the man grilling hot dogs. Their secret lives.

The Bayou Trilogy

2011

by Daniel Woodrell

The Bayou Trilogy is a hard-hitting collection of crime novels set in the gritty, atmospheric parish of St. Bruno. Sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life.

Follow Rene Shade, an uncompromising detective, as he navigates a world filled with hit men, porn kings, and a gang of ex-cons. Shade must also confront the ghosts of his own checkered past. These novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vastly different sons against a long-absent father.

Daniel Woodrell delivers a compelling exploration of the shadows of rural American life. This trilogy showcases the origins of an author who has left a lasting mark on crime fiction.

Superman/Batman

A tale of loyalty and unlikely friendship featuring two of the most recognizable and popular super-heroes on the planet, SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES pairs the Man of Steel with the Dark Knight. The iconic super-heroes unite when longtime Superman enemy Lex Luthor, now president of the United States, accuses Superman of a horrible act against mankind, and assembles a top-secret team of powerhouse heroes to bring Superman in — dead or alive. But after the Dark Knight Detective proves Luthor's accusations to be baseless, the "World's Finest" duo prepares to topple the corrupt president's reign once and for all.

Collects Superman/Batman #1-6.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

2000

by James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain, originally published in 1953, is James Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. This novel chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem. This "truly extraordinary" novel (Chicago Sun-Times) opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

All My Sons

All My Sons is a profound drama set during World War II, capturing the complex relationships and ethical dilemmas within the Keller family. Joe Keller and Steve Deever were business partners who, during the war, produced defective airplane parts leading to the deaths of many men. While Deever faces imprisonment, Keller avoids punishment and prospers.

The narrative intensifies as Keller's son, Chris, engages in a love affair with Ann Deever, Steve's daughter. George Deever returns from war only to find his father incarcerated and his father's partner free. The unfolding events and the burden of guilt bear down on the characters, culminating in a gripping and electrifying climax.

Winner of the Drama Critics' Award for Best New Play in 1947, All My Sons not only established Arthur Miller as a pivotal figure in American theater but also introduced recurring themes seen in his later works: the intricate bonds between fathers and sons, and the perpetual conflict between business interests and personal morality.

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