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Psychological fiction

  • Author:
    Hemming, Deborah
    Summary:

    In this coming-of-age story, sixteen-year-old Winnie and her three best friends-all boys-find themselves changing quickly and dramatically to impress Caleb, their strange and charismatic new companion. Under Caleb's influence, Winnie and her friends test boundaries, flirt with danger, and in the end, illuminate darkness within each other and themselves. Throw Down Your Shadows is a compelling exploration of the contours of young friendship and the development of powerful new appetites.

  • Author:
    Boyden, Joseph
    Summary:

    Cree bush pilot Will Bird lies comatose in a hospital, while his wayward niece Annie arrives to sit in silent vigil by his side. Slowly their stories reveal two people previously separated by great distances, beaten and broken, and searching for some sense of where they belong in the world.

  • Author:
    Candlish, Louise
    Summary:

    From the author of the international bestseller Our House, a new novel of twisty domestic suspense asks, "Could you hate your neighbor enough to plot to kill him?" Lowland Way is the suburban dream. The houses are beautiful, the neighbors get along, and the kids play together on weekends. But when Darren and Jodie move into the house on the corner, they don't follow the rules. They blast music at all hours, begin an unsightly renovation, and run a used-car business from their yard. It doesn't take long for an all-out war to start brewing. Then, early one Saturday, a horrific death shocks the street. As police search for witnesses, accusations start flying -- and everyone has something to hide.

  • Author:
    Smythe, Karen
    Summary:

    Part mystery, part elegy, This Side of Sad begins with an ending: the violent enigma of a man's death. Was it an accident, or did James commit suicide? In the shattering aftermath, his widow, Maslen, questions her own capacity for love and undertakes a painful self-inquiry, examining the history of her heart and tracing the fault lines of her own fragile identity. What emerges is a mesmerizing tour of a woman's complex past, rendered in the associative logic of memory and desire.A gifted storyteller reminiscent of Alice Munro or Joan Didion, Karen Smythe finds poetic complexity in the seeming trivialities of the ordinary. Meditative, philosophical, and confessional, This Side of Sad is a provocative and piercing novel that explores the disintegration of a marriage; the enduring colloquy between the living and the dead; and the meaning we find within the random architecture of despair and joy.

  • Author:
    Dangarembga, Tsitsi
    Summary:

    Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow's boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point. In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival. As a last resort, Tambudzai takes an ecotourism job that forces her to return to her parents' impoverished homestead. It is this homecoming, in Dangarembga's tense and psychologically charged novel, that culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.

  • Author:
    Malle, Mirion
    Summary:

    Clara's at a breaking point. She's got writer's block, her friends ask a lot without giving much, her psychologist is useless, and her demanding publishing job leaves little time for self care. She seeks solace in the community around her, yet, while her friends provide support and comfort, she is often left feeling empty, unable to express an underlying depression that leaves her immobilized and stifles any attempts at completing her poetry collection. In This is How I Disappear, Mirion Malle paints an empathetic portait of a young woman wrestling with psychological stress and the trauma following an experience of sexual assault. Malle displays frankness and a remarkable emotional intelligence as she explores depression, isolation, and self-harm in her expertly-drawn novel. Her heroine battles an onslaught of painful emotions and while Clara can provide consolation to those around her, she finds it difficult to bestow the same understanding unto herself. Only when she allows her community to guide her towards self-love does she find relief. Filled with 21st century idioms and social media communication, This Is How I Disappear opens a window into the lives of young people as they face a barrage of mental health hurdles. Scenes of sisterhood, fun nights out singing karaoke, and impromptu FaceTime therapy sessions show how this generation is coping, connecting, and healing together.

  • Author:
    Minot, Susan
    Summary:

    Tells the story of two extraordinary young women: Esther, a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to commit unspeakable acts, and Jane, an American journalist traveling in Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther.

  • Author:
    Ruth Rendell
    Summary:

    Mix Cellini is superstitious about the number thirteen. In St Blaise House where he lives, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms. His landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, who was born in the house, is blind to the decay around her. The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with Christie. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby - a woman who would not look at him twice. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

  • Author:
    Westhead, Jessica
    Summary:

    A collection of stories that seeks to examine the dark side of ordinary people.

  • Author:
    Labozzetta, Marisa
    Summary:

    Births mark beginnings, while funerals toll in endings. Yet there resides so much in-between drama in the timeline of an extended family: moments of intense joy, times of heart-wrenching grief, and the day-to-day plodding of ups and downs that color the struggle with loss in all of human existence. In a series of linked short stories that superbly capture the emotions her characters' experience, the author deftly chronicles the personal episodes that transform the lives of five Italian-American cousins during the final years before the death of one of the family patriarchs.

  • Author:
    Zola, Émile
    Summary:

    In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Thérèse Raquin is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness, and ghostly revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence.

  • Author:
    Gudenkauf, Heather
    Summary:

    Once the golden child of tiny Linden Falls, Iowa, Allison Glenn watches her reputation crumble as she is sent to prison for five years--convicted of a terrible crime. But what really happened that fateful night? Allison's younger sister is the only other person who knows the truth. Now out of prison, Allison is more desperate than ever to set the record straight, but the revelation of the truth could have far-reaching consequences.

  • Author:
    El-Wardany, Salma
    Summary:

    A razor-sharp debut novel of three best friends navigating love, sex, faith, and the one night that changes it all. It's always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they've learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. Staying over at a boyfriend's place is disguised as a best friend's sleepover, and tiredness can be blamed on studying instead of partying. They know they're existing in a perfect moment. With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. Malak wants the dream: for her partner, community, and faith to coexist happily, and she wants this so much she's willing to break her own heart to get it. Kees is in love with Harry, a white Catholic man who her parents can never know about. When he proposes, she must decide between her future happiness and the life she knows and family she loves. Jenna is the life of the party, always ready for new pleasures, even though she's plagued by a loneliness she can't shake. Through it all, they have always had each other. But as their college years come to a close, one night changes everything when harsh truths are revealed. As their lives begin to take different paths, Malak, Kees, and Jenna--now on the precipice of true adulthood--must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family, and tradition with their own needs and desires. These Impossible Things is a paean to youth and female friendship--and to all the joy and messiness love holds.

  • Author:
    Mofina, Rick
    Summary:

    Janie Klassyn was only fourteen when she made the blood pact with her friends. But twenty years later, she finds a threatening note on her car, and it becomes harder to keep up the deception.

  • Author:
    Richmond, Michelle
    Summary:

    Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco fog. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger's van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt and haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches for clues about what happened that morning and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.

  • Author:
    Fisher, Tarryn
    Summary:

    Juno was wrong about the Crouch family. She thought that they had the perfect life. But after overhearing a chilling conversation, she knows this could be her chance to make a few things right.

  • Author:
    Rubio, Gwyn Hyman
    Summary:

    The Woodsman's Daughter is set in 19th-century rural Georgia. Dauntless teenaged beauty Dahlia is plagued by her hard-drinking father and his terrible secrets. Determined to make a better life for herself, Dahlia strikes out to raise her own family. But her life is haunted by tragedy, and she is never out of reach of fate's cruel hand.

  • Author:
    Savage, Vanessa
    Summary:

    Two girls went down to the woods... But only one came back. There's a lot from Tess's childhood that she would rather forget. The family who moved next door and brought chaos to their quiet lives. The two girls who were murdered, their killer never found. But the only thing she can't remember is the one thing she wishes she could. Ten years ago, Tess's older sister died. Ruled a tragic accident, the only witness was Tess herself, but she has never been able to remember what happened that night in the woods. Now living in London, Tess has resolved to put the trauma behind her. But an emergency call from her father forces her back to the family home, back to where her sister's body was found, and to the memories she thought were lost forever...

  • Author:
    Hannah, Kristin
    Summary:

    From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women - at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided. Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets - and becomes one of - the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

  • Author:
    Delacourt, Grégoire
    Summary:

    There are those who never grow old because they are taken too soon.There are those who grow old without worries, enjoying everything life has to offer. There are those who desperately try to slow down the ticking clock. And then there's Betty-Betty, who mysteriously stops growing old on her thirtieth birthday, the same age at which her mother died. The years leave no trace on Betty's face, but as everyone around her is transformed by the relentless march of time, her once golden life begins to come apart. Because an ageless face is a face without history, without passions, without memories-a blank canvas others will slowly, inexorably forget...

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