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Recommendations based on Her Body and Other Parties: Storiesby Carmen Maria Machado
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
A family's journey through the Mississippi Delta, confronting a traumatic past.
It is Jojo's thirteenth birthday. To step into his new role as a man, Jojo tries to bravely help his grandfather, Pop, kill a goat. Jojo ends up throwing up at the sight although Pop is sympathetic. ... (Wikipedia)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Spanning centuries, the intertwining stories of two African sisters, their descendants, and the legacy of slavery.
Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but ... (Wikipedia)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
There There
by Tommy Orange
A powerful novel that follows the lives of twelve Native Americans living in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow.
The book begins with an essay by Orange, detailing "brief and jarring vignettes revealing the violence and genocide that Indigenous people have endured, and how it has been sanitized over the ... (Wikipedia)
Difficult Women
by Roxane Gay
A collection of stories exploring the complexity of womanhood through the eyes of diverse characters.
Award-winning author and powerhouse talent Roxane Gay burst onto the scene with, An Untamed State, and the, New York Times, bestselling essay collection, Bad Feminist, (Harper Perennial). Gay returns ... (Goodreads)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
A group of people investigating a mysterious and haunted house, uncovering its secrets.
It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted ... (Goodreads)
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
A modern woman is thrown back in time, forced to confront the harsh realities of slavery.
Kindred scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main ... (Wikipedia)
Children of Blood and Bone
by Tomi Adeyemi
In a world where magic has been suppressed, a young girl fights to bring it back and overthrow the oppressive monarchy.
The novel takes place in the fictional land of Orïsha, inhabited by two distinct people: divîners, who have the capability to become magical maji and are marked by white hair, and non-magical ... (Wikipedia)
The Mothers
by Brit Bennett
An exploration of motherhood, faith, and identity in a close-knit Black community.
Living in Southern California, 17-year-old Nadia, grieving her mother's suicide, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Luke, a local pastor's son. She has an abortion and leaves her hometown to attend ... (Wikipedia)
Winter
by Ali Smith
A novel set in the winter season, exploring family relationships, politics, and the impact of technology on society.
A family gathers in a large Cornwall house for a Christmas reuinion. With matriarch Sophia and her estranged sister Iris are her son Art and who they believe is his girlfriend Charlotte. Art has paid ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
The Story of a New Name
by Elena Ferrante
Two young women's search for identity and independence in a patriarchal society.
In 2012, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New ... (Goodreads)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
A family isolated from society, struggling to cope with prejudice and tragedy.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two ... (Goodreads)
The Story of the Lost Child
by Elena Ferrante
An exploration of the complexities of motherhood and female friendship, spanning four decades.
"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a ... (Goodreads)
Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer
A team of four women venture into a mysterious, surreal landscape in search of answers.
A team of four women cross the border into an uninhabited area known as "Area X", an unspecified coastal location that has been closed to the public for three decades. The group consists of a ... (Wikipedia)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (Wikipedia)
Call Me By Your Name
by André Aciman
A tender story of first love, exploring the complexities of identity, sexuality and desire.
The narrator, Elio Perlman , recalls the events of the summer of about 1987, when he was seventeen and living with his parents in Italy . Each summer, his parents would take in a doctoral student as ... (Wikipedia)
The Water Cure
by Sophie Mackintosh
Three sisters are raised on an isolated island by their parents, who teach them to fear men. When men arrive, their world is turned upside down.
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men. King has tenderly staked out a territory for his ... (Goodreads)
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
A world where women have the power to control electricity, and use it to fight against gender-based oppression.
In a matriarchal society, a gushing male writer writes to an influential author about his fictional account of how the matriarchy came to be. Five thousand years earlier (in our current time), men ... (Wikipedia)
The Idiot
by Elif Batuman
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, learning to navigate the complexities of life.
Selin Karadağ is a freshman studying linguistics at Harvard University . She meets an older Hungarian mathematics student, Ivan, in a Russian language class and the two begin corresponding over ... (Wikipedia)
Red Clocks
by Leni Zumas
In a dystopian future, women's reproductive rights are abolished. Four women navigate the consequences of this law.
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every ... (Barnes & Noble)
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
A mosaic of characters, lives, and relationships as they intertwine and evolve over time.
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. ... (Goodreads)
Uprooted
by Naomi Novik
A young woman's battle to save her home from a magical force, while uncovering secrets of her past.
“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human ... (Goodreads)
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
A post-apocalyptic story of survival, hope, and the power of community.
This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with, 1984, or, The Handmaid's Tale," (John Green,, New York Times,)–now with a ... (Barnes & Noble)
Juliet Takes a Breath
by Gabby Rivera
A young Puerto Rican woman's journey of self-discovery, exploring her identity and sexuality.
Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, ... (Goodreads)
Freshwater
by Akwaeke Emezi
A powerful novel about a young Nigerian woman with multiple personalities, struggling to find her place in the world.
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result ... (Goodreads)
Borne
by Jeff VanderMeer
In a post-apocalyptic world, a scavenger finds a mysterious creature named Borne and raises it, but soon discovers its dangerous potential.
In the ruins of a nameless city of the future that is dominated by a giant grizzly bear called Mord, a woman named Rachel lives as a scavenger, collecting genetically engineered organisms and ... (Wikipedia)
