Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Pachinko Author: Min Jin Lee ISBN: 978-1-4555-6393-7 Publisher: Grand Central Type of book: 1910-1989, Japan, Korea, Koreans living in Japan, faith, religion, marriage, relationships, women, suffering, multi generational, Pachinko, survival, rules, Japanese, WWII, yakuza, negative stereotypes Year it was published: 2017 Summary: Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. Characters: Oh boy, there ...

Name of Book: Long Black Veil Author: Jennifer Finney Boylan ISBN: 978-0-451-49632-4 Publisher: Crown Type of book: Transgender characters, pretentious, Maine, Pennsylvania, religion, forgiveness, 1980, staying the same, never growing, reunion, death, secrets, friendship Year it was published: 2 017 Summary: From the New York Times bestselling author of She’s Not There, a new novel about a woman whose family and identity are threatened by the secrets of her past. Long Black Veil is the story of Judith Carrigan, whose past is dredged up when the body of her college friend Wailer is discovered 20 years after her disappearance in Philadelphia’s notorious and abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary. Judith is the only witness who can testify to the innocence of her friend Casey, who had married Wailer only days before her death. The only problem is that on that fateful night at the prison, Judith was a very different person from the woman she is today. In order to defen...

Name of Book: Under the Approaching Dark Author: Anna Belfrage ISBN: 978-1-78803-509-5 Publisher: Matador Books Type of book: England, Edward III, 1327-1328, medieval life, marriage, relationships, family, loyalty, revenge, secrets, Queen Isabella, Roger Mortimer, power, Year it was published: 2017 Summary: Adam de Guirande has cause to believe the turbulent times are behind him: Hugh Despenser is dead and Edward II is forced to abdicate in favour of his young son. It is time to look forward, to a bright new world in which the young king, guided by his council, heals his kingdom and restores its greatness. But the turmoil is far from over. After years of strife, England in the early months of 1327 is a country in need of stability, and many turn with hope towards the new young king, Edward III. But Edward is too young to rule, so instead it is his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, who do the actual governing, much to the dislike of barons such a...

Name of Book: Seeing Double Author: Nancy J. Alexander ISBN: 9781512160291 Publisher: NJA Productions Type of book: Jewish main characters, Israel, modern times, secrecy, missions, spying, terrorist cult, charisma, family, siblings, relationships, Lebanon Year it was published: 2015 Summary : "A chill ran up her spine, triggering an alarm that spread through her system. Her eyes studied him as his eyes studied her. In the recesses of her mind, a fragment of a memory tingled...a tiny blip from long ago. An image spiraled, then vanished. There was something about this young man, this Ari Ben Aviv. There was something about him she couldn't pinpoint." On the heels of her last mystery, Elisabeth's new patient is more than meets the eye, and unraveling his secrets will throw her team into a desert storm of double agents and religious extremists. All that stands between love and ware are two families, two brothers, and two conflicting versions of the tr...

Name of Book: It Happens in the Hamptons Author: Holly Peterson ISBN: 978-0-06-239150-6 Publisher: 2017 Type of book: 2017, summer, New York, Hamptons, new money, old money, secrets, wealth, satire, local residents, legal dealings, single motherhood, flirting, romance, teenagers, children, scandals Year it was published: 2017 Summary: In the Hamptons, the everyday people are as complicated and fascinating as the millionaires... When Katie Doyle moves across the country to the Hamptons, she is hoping for summer employment, new friends for her young son, and a chance to explore a new love affair with a dazzling investor. What she finds is a strange cocktail of classes, where society’s one-percenters vacation alongside local, hard-working people who’ve lived in the Hamptons for generations. Though she’s looking forward to their move, Katie is wary about mingling with her boyfriends’ East Coast elite circles. She soon discovers Southampton isn’t all that it seems to ...

Name of Book: Landline Author: Rainbow Rowell ISBN: 978-1-250-04937-7 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Type of book: 2013, christmas, juvenile, marriage, "adult" family, LGBT supporting character, relationships, career, love Year it was published: 2014 Summary: Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble; it has been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems beside the point now. Maybe that was always beside the point. Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her. When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally ...

Name of Book: The Half Wives Author: Stacia Pelletier ISBN: 978-0-547-49116-5 Publisher: HMH Books Type of book: San Francisco California, 1897, death, life, cemetery, grief, second person narrative, mistress, marriage, wife, families, secrets Year it was published: 2017 Summary: Over the course of one momentous day, two women who have built their lives around the same man find themselves moving toward an inevitable reckoning. Former Lutheran minister Henry Plageman is a master secret keeper and a man wracked by grief. He and his wife, Marilyn, tragically lost their young son, Jack, many years ago. But he now has another child—a daughter, eight-year-old Blue—with Lucy, the woman he fell in love with after his marriage collapsed. The Half Wives follows these interconnected characters on May 22, 1897, the anniversary of Jack’s birth. Marilyn distracts herself with charity work at an orphanage. Henry needs to wrangle his way out of the police station, where he has...

Book Title: Middle South Author: Maya Nessouli Abboushi Publisher: Lanier Press ISBN/ASIN:  9781610058636 Summary: Layla has recently moved out of her parents’ home in the Atlanta suburbs and into an apartment in the city to assert her independence. Between her job as a feature writer for a small newspaper and her social life, Layla has little time to think about marriage and children, much to the dismay of her Lebanese parents. On a hilarious journey that takes Layla from the Southeast to the Middle East and back, she finds out a little more about herself and what she is looking for in life and in love. Buy the Book:   Amazon   ~   Barnes & Noble  ~  BookLogix   Add on Goodreads About the Author: Meet the Author: Maya Nessouli Abboushi is a Lebanese American born and raised in the United States. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children. This is her first novel. ​ Connect with the author:  ...

Title of the book: In a different Key; the story of autism Author:   John Donovan, Caren Zucker Publisher: Broadway Books Publishing Date: 2016 ISBN: 978-0-307-98570-5 Summary: Finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction An extraordinary narrative history of autism: the riveting story of parents fighting for their children 's civil rights; of doctors struggling to define autism; of ingenuity, self-advocacy, and profound social change Near seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett of Forest, Mississippi, became the first child diagnosed with autism. Beginning with his family's odyssey, In a Different Key tells the extraordinary story of this often misunderstood condition, and of the civil rights battles waged by the families of those who have it. Unfolding over decades, it is a beautifully rendered history of ordinary people determined to secure a place in the world for those with autism--by liberating children from dank institutions, campaigni...

Title of the book: A Dark journey into the Light Author: Josef Publisher: I ndie Publishing Date: 2016 ISBN : 9780646963822 Summary: Josef is lost in a secret world of sexual gratification, a true-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, unable to halt the “roller coaster of conflicting emotional extremes that never stopped long enough for me to get off.” He traces the beginnings of his obsession to his childhood, where his natural innocent curiosity and need for exploration were at odds with his Catholic upbringing and the view of his extremely repressed mother, both of whom regarded the human body as ‘dirty’ and ‘shameful’. For sixty years, Josef lived a secret double life. The only people who knew about this other life were the mistresses, transgender women, and sex workers with whom he indulged every conceivable fantasy. No one in his ‘other’ life had any idea of who he really was or the things he did. Yet his secret life claimed a terrible toll. The failure of his first...

Seeing double- Nancy j alexander SR: April 30th 2017 FR: May 18th, 2017 Under the Approaching dark- Anna Belfrage SR: April 26th 2017 FR: May 22nd 2017 Long black veil- Jennifer finney Boylan SR: May 16th 2017 FR: May 24th, 2017 A House Divided-Pearl S Buck SR: March 11th, 2016 FR: N/A Marion Hatley- Beth Castrodale SR: May 23rd 2017 FR: Eye of the storm- frank Cavallo SR: May 13th, 2017 FR: Sarah's key- Tatiana de Rosnay SR: May 11th 2017 FR: May 18th, 2017 The Republic of uzupis- halJi SR: January 4th 2017 FR: Waiting for Aegina-Effie Kamenou SR: May 24th, 2017 FR: Pachinko- Min Jin Lee SR: May 18th, 2017 FR: May 29th, 2017 Horizon- Tabitha lord SR: May 28th, 2017 FR: The Woman behind the waterfall-Leonora Muriel SR: May 9th, 2017 FR: May 16th 2017 It happens in the hamptons- holly peterson SR: May 6th 2017 FR: May 13th, 2017 The service of the dead- Candace Robb SR: May 29th, 2017 FR: Fatal Rivalry- Mercedes Rochelle SR: January 30th 2...