There's a Book for That: Hearts!
Happy Valentine’s Day! Our bookish hearts belong to reading today and every day. Such devotion extends beyond the romance genre, of course. Thus, we invite you to take a chance on new love with the following acclaimed titles – all with more than a little heart in them!
From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong. In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.
Set in failing small town in central Ohio, The Heart of It All asks how one manages, in an America of increasing division, to find a sense of family and community. Focusing on the members of three families: the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community; the Marwats, an immigrant family that owns the town’s largest employer; and the Shaws, especially young Anthony, an outsider whose very presence gently shakes the town’s understanding of itself.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left the family when he was nine years old without a trace…For a decade, his family’s life has been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic. Bird’s journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
” [A] powerful, at once profound and charming book.” —Francine Prose
“Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die.” When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of fifty, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; eerie premonitions of Donald Trump’s presidency; the life and work of a writer; and the nature of memory and grief.
When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive national bestselling debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology.
The Mirror of My Heart is a unique and captivating collection of eighty-three Persian women poets, many of whom wrote anonymously or were punished for their outspokenness…From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, the women poets found in The Mirror of My Heart write across the millennium on such universal topics as marriage, children, political climate, death, and emancipation, recreating life from hundreds of years ago that is strikingly similar to our own today and giving insight into their experiences as women throughout different points of Persian history. The volume is introduced and translated by Dick Davis, a scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right.
Can one unlikely bookshop heal two broken souls?
It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can’t make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he’s ever met–she’s passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown’s first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife, Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy. But Hannah is a haunted woman. Twenty-four years earlier, she had been marched to the gates of Auschwitz.
A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest—this New York Times bestseller and Emma Watson Book Club pick is “an illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience . . . at once raw and achingly beautiful.” (NPR)
In 26 chapters—each with practices to cultivate an important quality like mindfulness, wonder, balance, and empathy—Meditation teacher Oren Jay Sofer shares a practical guide to developing the inner resources necessary to meet a world in crisis with a clear, balanced, and courageous outlook. Through touching stories, insightful reflections, and practical instructions, Sofer offers powerful tools to strengthen our hearts and nourish the qualities that can transform our world.
In a new edition of this classic, the renowned Zen monk and bestselling author Thich Nhat Hanh explains what real love is and how we can experience it in our daily lives, for readers of any faith. This quintessential guide to loving also introduces the four key aspects of love described in the Buddhist tradition—loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and freedom—and describes many simple and direct ways in which we can practice authentic love in our everyday lives.
For more on these and other heartfelt titles visit the Edelweiss collection heart-y reads
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