Best reads / listens / watches in 2019Like this list

36 items

• Akin

  a Novel

  Donoghue, Emma, 1969-

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  Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Boy Who Fell

  Spain, Jo

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  Kids can be so cruel. They'll call you names. Hurt your feelings. Push you to your death. In the garden of an abandoned house, Luke Connolly lies broken, dead. The night before, he and his friends partied inside. Nobody fought, everybody else went…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Fallen

  Álvarez, Carlos Manuel, 1989-

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  A powerful, unsettling portrait of ordinary family life in Cuba, and masterful portrayal of a society in free fall, it offers a poignant reflection on contemporary Cuba and the clash of the ardent idealism of the old guard with the jaded pragmatism…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Fugitive Pieces

  Michaels, Anne, 1958-

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  Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Great Believers

  Makkai, Rebecca, 1978-

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  In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• He Forgot to Say Goodbye

  Sáenz, Benjamin Alire, 1954-

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  Ramiro Lopez and Jake Upthegrove don't appear to have much in common. But Ram and Jake do have one thing in common: They are lost boys who have never met their fathers. This sad fact has left both of them undeniably scarred and obsessed with the men…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An Honest Man

  Fergusson, Ben, 1980-

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  In West Berlin in 1989, eighteen-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Invisible Boys

  Sheppard, Holden

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  In a small town, everyone thinks they know you: Charlie is a hardcore rocker, who's not as tough as he looks. Hammer is a footy jock with big AFL dreams, and an even bigger ego. Zeke is a shy over-achiever, never macho enough for his family. But all…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Last Train to London

  a Novel

  Clayton, Meg Waite

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  Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss Hitler's annexation of Austria…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Lie With Me

  a Novel

  Besson, Philippe, 1967-

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  Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he's never forgotten

• Lights All Night Long

  Fitzpatrick, Lydia, 1982-

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  Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. But all is not right in Ilya's world: he's consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Madeleine

  Cameron, Euan (Translator)

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  Family history has always been a mystery to Will Latymer. His father flatly refused to talk about it, and with no other relatives to consult, it seems that a mystery it shall always remain. Until of course, Will meets Ghislaine, his beautiful French…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Nickel Boys

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  1960s Florida. Kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood Curtis is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South, one mistake is enough to destroy the future. He is sentenced to a juvenile…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Nirvana Is Here

  a Novel

  Hamburger, Aaron, 1973-

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  For Ari Silverman, the past has never really passed. After 20 years, the trauma from a childhood assault resurfaces as he grapples with the fate of a colleague accused of sexually harassing a student

• November

  a Novel

  Galán, Jorge, 1973-

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  1989. Salvadorian society is immersed in the horror of civil war. On a fateful November dawn, a group of armed men entered the Universidad Católica and murder six Jesuits priests and two women in cold blood. Survivor of the massacre Father Tojeira…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Tempest

  a Story

  Sem-Sandberg, Steve, 1958-

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  After many years away, Andreas returns to his childhood home on a small island off the Norwegian coast. He is there to sort through the belongings of his late foster father in their decaying old house, the Yellow Villa. But he soon finds himself…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Time of Our Singing

  Powers, Richard, 1957-

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  Jonah, Ruth and Joseph are the children of mixed-race parents determined to raise them beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. Yet they cannot be protected from the world forever

• The Tristan Chord

  Skwerer, Glenn

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  An upholstery apprentice by day and fledgling violist by night, Eugen Reczek meets the fifteen-year-old Adolf Hitler at the local opera house in Linz in 1905 and for the next four years they see each other almost daily. Salzburg, 1945: Eugen, a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Wanderer

  Léon, Sarah, 1995-

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  Hermin, a composer and instructor, leads a secluded life near the Bourbonnais Mountains in France, composing a homage to Schubert

• Your Fault

  Cowan, Andrew

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  Set in a 1960s English new town, Your Fault charts one boy's childhood from first memory to first love