Recommendations based on "A Twilight Celebration"

The Vignes Twin Sisters Will Always Be Identical. But After Growing Up Together In A Small, Southern Black Community And Running Away At Age Sixteen, It's Not Just The Shape Of Their Daily Lives That Is Different As Adults, It's Everything: Their Families, Their Communities, Their Racial Identities. Ten Years Later, One Sister Lives With Her Black Daughter In The Same Southern Town She Once Tried To Escape. The Other Secretly Passes For White, And Her White Husband Knows Nothing Of Her Past. Still, Even Separated By So Many Miles And Just As Many Lies, The Fates Of The Twins Remain Intertwined. What Will Happen To The Next Generation, When Their Own Daughters' Storylines Intersect? Weaving Together Multiple Strands And Generations Of This Family, From The Deep South To California, From The 1950s To The 1990s, Brit Bennett Produces A Story That Is At Once A Riveting, Emotional Family Story And A Brilliant Exploration Of The American History Of Passing.--provided By Publisher Part I. The Lost Twins (1968) -- Part Ii. Maps (1978) -- Part Iii. Heartlines (1968) -- Part Iv. The Stage Door (1982) -- Part V. Pacific Cove (1985/1988) -- Part Vi. Places (1986) Brit Bennett. Good Morning America Book Club--cover

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK“A great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together.” —Reese WitherspoonFrom the author of the forthcoming Someone Else’s Shoes, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era AmericaAlice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.What happens to them--and to the men they love--becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic--a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY• A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.“A rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”—The New York Times Book Review“I fell in love with this family, from Joan’s fierce heart to her grandmother Hazel’s determined resilience. Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the BoneLONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR, BuzzFeed, Glamour, PopSugarSummer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

‘A fierce, big-hearted novel.’ Joe Treasure, author of The Book of Air‘Sensitive, affecting’ Francesca Rhydderch, author of The Rice Paper Diaries'A deeply felt novel' Tim Finch,author of The House of Jounalists2nd March 1975In Asmara, Eritrea, Yonas Kelati is born into a world of turmoil. At the same time, on the same day, Jude Munroe takes her first breath in London, England.Thirty Years LaterBlacklisted in his war-ravaged country, Yonas has no option but to flee his home. After a terrible journey, he arrives on a bleak English coast.By a twist of fate, Yonas’ asylum case lands on Jude’s desk. Opening the file, she finds a patchwork of witness statements from those who met Yonas along his journey: a lifetime the same length of hers, reduced to a few scraps of paper.Soon, Jude will stand up in court and tell Yonas’ story. How she tells it will change his life forever.Fearless, uplifting and compelling, The Invisible Crowd is a powerful debut novel about loyalty, kindness – and the brief moments which define our lives.

Jude Farraday is a happily married, stay-at-home mom who puts everyone’s needs above her own. Her twins, Mia and Zach, are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill enters their lives, no one is more supportive than Jude. A former foster child with a dark past, Lexi quickly becomes Mia’s best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. But senior year of high school brings unexpected dangers and one night, Jude’s worst fears are confirmed: there is an accident. In an instant, her idyllic life is shattered and her close-knit community is torn apart. People—and Jude—demand justice, and when the finger of blame is pointed, it lands solely on eighteen-year-old Lexi Baill. In a heartbeat, their love for each other will be shattered, the family broken. Lexi gives up everything that matters to her—the boy she loves, her place in the family, the best friend she ever had—while Jude loses even more.When Lexi returns, older and wiser, she demands a reckoning. Long buried feelings will rise again, and Jude will finally have to face the woman she has become. She must decide whether to remain broken or try to forgive both Lexi…and herself.Night Road is a vivid, emotionally complex novel that raises profound questions about motherhood, loss, identity, and forgiveness. It is an exquisite, heartbreaking novel that speaks to women everywhere about the things that matter most.

“Spring features Knausgaard unbound, writing for the first time without a gimmick or the crutch of extravagant experimentation…Fall in love with the world, he enjoins, stay sensitive to it, stay in it.” -The New York Times "Poignant and beautiful…Even if you think you won’t like Knausgaard, try this one and you’ll get him and get why some of us have gone crazy for him." —Los Angeles Review of Books You don’t know what air is, and yet you breathe. You don’t know what sleep is, yet you sleep. You don’t know what night is, yet you lie in it. You don’t know what a heart is, yet your own heart beats steadily in your chest, day and night, day and night, day and night.   So begins Spring, the recommencement of Knausgaard’s fantastic and spellbinding literary project of assembling a personal encyclopedia of the world addressed directly to his newly born daughter. But here Knausgaard must also tell his daughter the story of what happened during the time when her mother was pregnant, and explain why he now has to attend appointments with child services. In order to keep his daughter safe, he must tell a terrible story, one which unfolds with acute psychological suspense over the course of a single day.   Utterly gripping and brilliantly rendered in Knausgaard’s famously sensitive, pensive, and honest style, Spring is the account of a shocking and heartbreaking familial trauma and the emotional epicenter of this singular literary series.

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

The Days of Anna Madrigal, the suspenseful, comic, and touching ninth novel in Armistead Maupin’s bestselling “Tales of the City” series, follows one of modern literature’s most unforgettable and enduring characters—Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane—as she embarks on a road trip that will take her deep into her past.Now ninety-two, and committed to the notion of “leaving like a lady,” Mrs. Madrigal has seemingly found peace with her “logical family” in San Francisco: her devoted young caretaker Jake Greenleaf; her former tenant Brian Hawkins and his daughter Shawna; and Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton, who have known and loved Anna for nearly four decades.Some members of Anna’s family are bound for the otherworldly landscape of Burning Man, the art community in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert where 60,000 revelers gather to construct a city designed to last only one week. Anna herself has another destination in mind: a lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the 16-year-old boy she once was ran away from the whorehouse he called home. With Brian and his beat-up RV, she journeys into the dusty troubled heart of her Depression childhood to unearth a lifetime of secrets and dreams and attend to unfinished business she has long avoided.

On Sarah Whitfield's seventy-fifth birthday, memories take her back to New York  in the 1930s. To a marriage that ends after a year, leaving Sarah  shattered. A trip to Europe with her parents does little to  raise her spirits, until she meets William, Duke of Whitfield.  In time, despite her qualms, William insists on giving up his distant right to the British  throne to make Sarah his dutchess and his wife. On their honeymoon, the newlyweds buy an old French chateau, but not long after,  the war begins. William joins the allied forces, leaving Sarah,  their first child, an infant, and their second child on the way,  in France. After the Nazi forces take over the chateau, Sarah  continues to survive the terror and deprivation of the Occupation,  unwavering in her belief that her missing-in-action husband is still  alive. After the war, as a gesture of goodwill, the Whitfields start buying  jewels offered for sale by impoverished war survivors. With Sarah's style and  keen eye, the collection becomes the prestigious Whitfield's  jewelry store in Paris. Eventually, their jewelry business expands  to London and Rome, as their family grows. Phillip, their firstborn,  is stubborn and proud; Julian, their second son, is charming and  generous and warm; Isabelle is rebellious and willful; and Xavier,  unusual and untamed, is the final unexpected gift of their love. They  each find their own way, but will be drawn to the great house of gems their  parents built. In Jewels, Danielle Steel takes the reader through  five eventful decades that include war, passion, international intrigue,  and the strength of family through it all.

The book that launched Di Morrissey as Australia's most popular female novelist.At 21, Queenie Hanlon has the world at her feet and the love of handsome bushman TR Hamilton.Beautiful, wealthy and intelligent, she is the only daughter of Tingulla Station, the famed outback property in the wilds of western Queensland.At 22, her life lies in ruins. A series of disasters has robbed her of everything she ever loved. Everything except Tingulla - her ancestral home and her spirit's Dreaming place...And now she is about to lose that too...An extraordinary story of thwarted love and heroic struggle, Heart of the Dreaming is the tale of one woman's courage and her determination to take on the world and win.