The story begins with two little girls, mistress and servant, one with every luxury and opportunity that money can buy and the other with nothing but her yearning for a better life. Together, they grow up bound by love, betrayal, resentment, and an impossible secret. Then there is Biso, a devoted mother of three, who risks everything to escape from the hands of her tyrannical husband. But her journey, which begins with such hope, takes her on a disastrous path that ultimately leads her to give her life over to strangers she never imagined she would have reason to know, binding her story with that of the girls in the most unexpected and heartbreaking of ways.
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Summer reading at Burnaby Public Library
For the complete list: Summer Reads 2010 [PDF]
Fiction
Georgia dropped out of college, married young, and raised her two boys in the town where she grew up. Beth is a high-rolling TV personality with a fancy apartment in Manhattan and a long string of ex-boyfriends. Then something unexpected compels the sisters to trade places.
Fiction
Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but—aware that the sultan’s advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting— decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.
Non-fiction
A narrative account of the author's forays into some of the world's coldest regions describes his encounter with an Arctic swimming hole, investigations into ancient and more recent ice ages, and examinations of animal hibernation habits.
Fiction
The lives and dreams of four vital, engaging, women revolve around mysterious events at a Fort William military aircraft factory in 1941. Loyalty and betrayal, love and worthiness, friendship and ambition are the themes which connect the characters in this lively, quirky, fast-paced novel. Wrapped around the stories of these four women, is a mystery. Something''s gone wrong with the Mosquitos being built for the war effort -- they keep crashing in flight tests, for no apparent reason. Is the problem with their design, or are they being sabotaged?
Fiction
Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe
Non-fiction
To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes her arthritic, incontinent, and domineering mother, Valeria - a cross between Queen Victoria and Hyacinth Bucket of the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances — on a tour of Italy. As they wander along the winding Amalfi Coast, traverse St. Peter’s Square in Rome, and sample the wines of Tuscany — walkers, biscuits, shawls, and medications in tow — they revisit the bickering and bitterness of years past and reassess who they are and how they might reconcile their differences.
Fiction
Mr. and Mrs. Ali live in Vizag, on India's eastern coast. Several years into his retirement, Mr. Ali grows bored, so he opens a marriage bureau, where the city's well-to-do can come to find the perfect match for their offspring based on their unique requirements as to caste, religion, dowry amount, age, and height. The business flourishes, forcing Mr. Ali to hire an assistant, Aruna, a young woman whose family's financial collapse forced her to give up her postgraduate studies and go to work. Aruna has a knack for making even the most difficult matches--failing only to find a young woman for a wealthy young doctor with especially picky parents.
Fiction
A hilarious and moving memoir--in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron--about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.
Non-fiction
In My Booky Wook, Russell Brand leads readers on a rollicking journey through his disastrous school career, his infamous antics on MTV, and his multifarious sexual adventures. But this irreverent memoir is a story not simply of struggle but also of redemption, a testament to the difficulty of discovering what you want from life and the remarkable power of a bloody-minded determination to get it. My Booky Wook is a giddy trip through the brilliant mind of one of Britain's most valuable exports.
Non-fiction
This book integrates psychology and archaeology, linguistics and education, history and neuroscience in a truly path-breaking look at the development of the reading brain-a complicated phenomenon that Wolf seeks to chronicle from both the early history of humanity and the early stages of an individual's development ("unlike its component parts such as vision and speech... reading has no direct genetic program passing it on to future generations").
Fiction
In the comfort of her Brooklyn basement bra shop, Sima Goldner teaches other women to appreciate their bodies, but feels betrayed by her own. Shamed by her infertility and a secret from her youth, she has given up on happiness and surrendered to a bitter marriage. But then Timna, a young Israeli with enviable cleavage, becomes the shop seamstress. As the two serve the colorful customers of the orthodox Jewish neighborhood, Sima finds herself awakened to adventure and romance. Years after giving up on their marriage, Sima and her husband, Lev, must decide if what they have is worth saving.
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