The Girls at 17 Swann Street

The Girls at 17 Swann Street
Author: Yara Zgheib
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250202469

*A BookMovement Group Read* **A People Pick for Best New Books** Yara Zgheib’s poetic and poignant debut novel is a haunting portrait of a young woman’s struggle with anorexia on an intimate journey to reclaim her life. The chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound. Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears – imperfection, failure, loneliness – she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day. Every bite causes anxiety. Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance, and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad
Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-06-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307593622

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune). One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

A Little Life

A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804172706

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0525555269

Winner of the National Book Award A New York Times Bestseller "The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. Magazine Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day. (Cover image may vary.)

Before We Were Strangers

Before We Were Strangers
Author: Renée Carlino
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501105787

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Mercy Street

Mercy Street
Author: Jennifer Haigh
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062414747

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.”—Janet Maslin, New York Times The highly praised, “extraordinary” (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women’s clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care; for many, it is a second chance. But outside the clinic, the reality is different. Anonymous threats are frequent. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia’s days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy’s, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11—the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs. Mercy Street is a novel for right now, a story of the polarized American present. Jennifer Haigh, “an expert natural storyteller with a keen sense of her characters’ humanity” (New York Times), has written a groundbreaking novel, a fearless examination of one of the most divisive issues of our time.

The Wrong Girl

The Wrong Girl
Author: R.L. Stine
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062694286

Read the books behind Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy! Poppy Miller swears she will get payback for Jack Sabers’s cruel prank that humiliated her in front of all her friends. Then her classmates start turning up dead. All eyes are on Poppy. Is Poppy being framed? Or did the kids of Shadyside High mess with the wrong girl? In this Fear Street story, only one thing’s for sure—someone is out for DEADLY revenge. R.L. Stine's Fear Street trilogy is: You May Now Kill the Bride (Return to Fear Street, Book 1) The Wrong Girl (Return to Fear Street, Book 2) Drop Dead Gorgeous (Return to Fear Street, Book 3)

You May Now Kill the Bride

You May Now Kill the Bride
Author: R.L. Stine
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-07-24
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 006269426X

Read the books behind Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy! Two sisters, divided by time. Each with a terrible resentment she can barely contain. Two Fear family weddings, decades apart... Each bride will find that the ancient curse that haunts the Fears LIVES ON. It feeds off the evil that courses through their blood. It takes its toll in unexpected ways, and allows dark history to repeat itself. In this Fear Street story, family ties bind sisters together—till DEATH do they part. R.L. Stine's Fear Street trilogy is: You May Now Kill the Bride (Return to Fear Street, Book 1) The Wrong Girl (Return to Fear Street, Book 2) Drop Dead Gorgeous (Return to Fear Street, Book 3)

Street Girl

Street Girl
Author: N. Whittaker
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2016-02-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781505489811

This is a true story about a young black girl in South West London, raised by a single mother and an older sibling whom unfortunately became a product of her environment. This is a heartfelt explanation of how she became a young offender, resulting in that 'street life' lifestyle catching up with her. This book crosses many social issues from drug abuse, sexual assault, single parenting, gang culture and life as it is in the ''hood''. Tim Pritchard Author of Street Boy, took an interest in Nequela Whittaker and together they decided to write about how her life changed due to gang culture. Nequela wants her story to be heard in order to spread awareness to young girls and boys who have made negative lifestyle choices, or those who are thinking or doing so. She shares the truth and harsh realities about the streets first hand and readers will be made fully aware of the repercussions and consequences that come along with ''street life''. Although this book aims to highlight the truth about the lifestyle and the negativity it brings, it is no way used to glamorise or encourage gang related activity. Nequela hopes that this will ultimately inspire young people and others to make positive informed decisions. Despite the fact that this ''street girl'' experienced life 'on the road' and became a young offender, she was able to turn her life around and is currently in her final year at Goldsmiths University studying a BA Hons Degree in Applied Social Science, community Development and youth work course. Nequela is now Committed Empowered and Original (CEO), and manages her own mentoring and advocacy service company which offers direct one to one support for young people at risk.