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10 Most Requested Books of 2023
2024 Reading Challenge: A coming of age story
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Top 10 General Fiction Books of 2023
2024 Reading Challenge: A coming of age story
November Book Picks
Top 10 General Fiction Books of 2023
Description
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2024 Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction - Shortlist
NYT - Paperback Nonfiction
Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023
NYT - Paperback Nonfiction
Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023
Description
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...
Author
Series
Publisher
Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
Scions, sonko, landlords: whatever you call them, they're the super rich, the princes of capitalism, living off the labour - and the deaths - of the swarming masses and all too happy to see the world burn to preserve their luxurious lives. In three critically-acclaimed novellas, the "British master of science fiction" (Tor.com) takes you down into the mud and horror of a future battlefield, into the dust and burning heat of a scorched equator, into...
Author
Publisher
Columbia University Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"An astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of...
Author
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Tom Lowe's identity and his pride are invested in the work he does with his back and his hands. He designed and built his family's dream home, working extra hours to pay off the adjustable rate mortgage he took on the property, convinced he is making every sacrifice for the happiness of his wife and son. Until, in a moment of fatigued inattention, shingling a roof in too-bright sunlight, he falls. In constant pain, addicted to painkillers at the...
Author
Publisher
The New Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap is a portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers-primarily women-who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without...
Author
Publisher
The Unnamed Press
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"At a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks, Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift. The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee's more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term. Dee-Dee fled the Pentecostal...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called "an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor" (People). Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by 67 million households and was Netflix's fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations....
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn't...
Publisher
Haymarket Books
Pub. Date
2023
Language
English
Description
"A collection of compelling, hard-hitting first-person essays, poems, and photos that expose what our punitive social systems do to so many Americans. Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of EHRP, gives voice to a range of gifted writers for whom "economic precarity" is more than just another assignment. All illustrate what the late Barbara...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world...
13) The gift
Author
Publisher
[Freida McFadden]
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"It's Christmas Eve and Stella Hansen is broke. She is so broke that despite working two jobs, she can't even afford a present for her husband on their first Christmas as man and wife. But then a mysterious storekeeper at a pawn shop offers Stella an intriguing trade. Stella wants more than anything to buy her husband the Christmas gift of his dreams. But will it come at a terrible price?" --
Author
Publisher
Mariner Books
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"Three of the nation's top scholars, known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America, turn their attention from the country's poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America's most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there....
Author
Publisher
Random House
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
""Florida, we got it all. Motorsports, ribs, beer. You can drive on the sand right on up to the ocean. Fireworks every night." That's how twelve-year-old CC's father, who named her after his beloved Canadian Club whiskey, describes the appeal of their new home. The man is a born grifter, a used-car salesman who burns down his dealership in southern Ohio for enough insurance money to set up a life for himself, his wife, and his two young daughters...
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