Here are some books that have recently hit my radar and set off my alarm bells...
Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
Ruth Jefferson is a
labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty
years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a
newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned
to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want
Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital
complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into
cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey
orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing
CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy
McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected
advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a
winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep
life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as
the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and
Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've
been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be
wrong.
With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi
Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and
doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable
achievement from a writer at the top of her game.
Valley of the Moon by Melanie Gideon
In this captivating novel from the author of Wife 22,
a woman who feels lost in her own time stumbles across a California
community that has, impossibly, been marooned in the early twentieth
century perfect for readers of The Time Traveler's Wife, Time and Again, and Sarah Addison Allen.
Lux
is a single mom struggling to make her way when she discovers an
idyllic community in the Sonoma Valley. It seems like a place from
another time until she realizes it actually is. Lux must keep one foot
in her world, raising her son as well as she can with the odds stacked
against her, but every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet
simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she
feels with a man born decades before her. Soon she finds herself torn
between her ties to the modern world, her adored son and the first place
she has ever felt truly at home.
Bob Stevenson by Richard Wiley
Dr. Ruby Okada meets a
charming man with a Scottish accent in the elevator of her psychiatric
hospital. Unaware that he is an escaping patient, she falls under his
spell, and her life and his are changed forever by the time they get to
the street.
Who is the mysterious man? Is he Archie B.
Billingsly, suffering from dissociative identity disorder and subject to
brilliant flights of fancy and bizarre, violent fits? Or is he the
reincarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson, back to haunt New York as Long
John Silver and Mr. Edward Hyde? Her career compromised, Ruby soon
learns that her future and that of her unborn child depend on finding
the key to his identity.
With compelling psychological descriptions and terrifying, ineffable transformations, Bob Stevenson is an ingenious tale featuring a quirky cast of characters drawn together by mutual fascination, need, and finally, love.
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