Recommendations based on "Bel Canto: A Novel"

Best friends and sisters, the four Padavano girls bring loving chaos to their close-knit Italian American neighbourhood. William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So, when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano, it's as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family: Sylvie, the family's dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. But when darkness from William's past begins to block the light of his future, it is Sylvie, not Julia, who becomes his closest confidante. The result is a catastrophic rift that leaves the family inhabiting two sides of a fault line. Can they find their way back to each other? Can love make a broken family whole?[Bokinfo].

A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club PickA Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, Elle, and WBEZ ChicagoA Must-Read: Nylon, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, BookRiot, The Christian Science Monitor, Our Culture, The Saturday Evening Post“A monumental accomplishment, a shimmering masterpiece.” ―Michael Schaub, The Boston Globe“A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life.” ―Dakota Johnson, BustleFrom the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERWinner of the Florida Book Awards Gold MedalNew York Times bestselling author and master of nonfiction spy thrillers Larry Loftis writes the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII—at the cost of losing her family and being sent to a concentration camp, only to survive, forgive her captors, and live the rest of her life as a Christian missionary.The Watchmaker’s Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that readers haven’t heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom—a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.Corrie stopped at nothing to face down the evils of her time and overcame unbelievable obstacles and odds. She persevered despite the loss of most of her family and relied on her faith to survive the horrors of a notorious concentration camp. But even more remarkable than her heroism and survival was Corrie’s attitude when she was released. Miraculously, she was able to eschew bitterness and embrace forgiveness as she ministered to people in need around the globe. Corrie’s ability to forgive is just one of the myriad lessons that her life story holds for readers today.Reminiscent of Schindler’s List and featuring a journey of faith and forgiveness not unlike Unbroken, The Watchmaker’s Daughter is destined to become a classic work of World War II nonfiction.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller listA blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). Open your eyes, and see what you can with them before they close forever. Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When she is twelve, the German Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner Pfennig grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an master at building and fixing these crucial new radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. The story Illuminates the ways, against all odds, that people try to be good to one another.At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

'a Wonderful Debut. Actually, A Tour De Force' -- Sarah Winman, Author Of Still Life 'utterly Captivating... Written With Great Heart, Humour And Humanity, It's The Kind Of Book You Want To Escape Normal Life To Read At Every Available Opportunity.' -- Elizabeth Day, Author Of Magpie 'this Is A Book That Will Be Loved Unreasonably And Life-long, I Believe, Like I Capture The Castle.' -- Francis Spufford, Author Of 'light Perpetual' 'maudie, Why Are All The Best Characters Men?' Maudie Closes The Book With A Clllump. 'we Haven't Read All The Books Yet, Miss Cristabel. I Can't Believe That Every Story Is The Same' Cristabel Seagrave Has Always Wanted Her Life To Be A Story, But There Are No Girls In The Books In Her Dusty Family Library. For An Unwanted Orphan Who Grows Into An Unmarriageable Young Woman, There Is No Place At All For Her In A Traditional English Manor. But From The Day That A Whale Washes Up On The Beach At The Chilcombe Estate In Dorset, And Twelve-year-old Cristabel Plants Her Flag And Claims It As Her Own, She Is Determined To Do Things Differently. With Her Step-parents Blithely Distracted By Their Endless Party Guests, Cristabel And Her Siblings, Flossie And Digby, Scratch Together An Education From The Plays They Read In Their Freezing Attic, Drunken Conversations Eavesdropped Through Oak-panelled Doors, And The Esoteric Lessons Of Maudie Their Maid. But As The Children Grow To Adulthood And War Approaches, Jolting Their Lives On To Very Different Tracks, It Becomes Clear That The Roles They Are Expected To Play Are No Longer Those They Want. As They Find Themselves Drawn Into The Conflict, They Must Each Find A Way To Write Their Own Story...

The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time. When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn't seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again. Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It's a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

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.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Women comes an incandescent story about the resilience of the human spirit, the triumph of hope, and the meaning of home. In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest—nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.Having retreated to her western Washington hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr. Julia Cates is determined to free the extraordinary little girl she calls Alice from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. To reach her, Julia must discover the truth about Alice’s past—although doing so requires help from Julia’s estranged sister, a local police officer. The shocking facts of Alice’s life test the limits of Julia’s faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice—and for herself.“One of [Kristin Hannah’s] most compelling and riveting novels.”—Booklist

An unforgettable, heart-wrenching story tying together past and present, from the bestselling author of The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris Avignon, France, 1941. Brave, beautiful Mathilde is helping her cousin sabotage a railway line when he's killed and she's arrested by the Gestapo. With the help of her friends in the Resistance, she manages to escape from custody, and stumbles upon an abandoned vineyard where she takes refuge.But Mathilde soon stumbles upon a monumental secret in the vineyard, and as the local Vichy official starts to pay too much attention, she must do everything she can to make sure the vineyard, and her new family, stay safe... Present Day. Juliette's relationship with her husband is already struggling, just a short time after their wedding. So when the couple have the opportunity to leave their home in Paris and travel south to investigate the story of Mathilde's war years for themselves comes along, Juliette jumps at the opportunity. A break from Paris is just when they needed - but the things they uncover might just be what breaks their marriage once and for all. A heart-wrenching, beautiful tale of love, loss and the realities of war, perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris. Readers love Daisy Wood!'Oh my!!! This is one of those books you just can't put down or stop thinking about. A must read.' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'One of my favourite reads of the year. The two timelines are seamlessly [woven] together... I loved it!' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A truly wonderful read that you will not want to put down!' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This book had me mesmerised from beginning to end. Highly recommended.' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A heck of a good story filled with hope, and heartbreaking at the same time. Brilliantly written!' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Such a stunning read! Five stars.' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The gripping saga of the Duvoisins—an extraordinary American family both blessed and cursed—reaches a stunning conclusion. . . . In the wake of heartbreaking tragedy and volatile revelations, the once-great Duvoisin family of Virginia teeters on the brink of disintegration. And trusted governess, Charmaine Ryan, suffers with them. Their world has exploded—and aging patriarch, Frederic Duvoisin, desperately tries to salvage what remains of his shattered family. His mercurial son John has left, vowing never to return, taking a piece of Charmaine's heart with him. Paul, the roguish, illegitimate son and aspiring heir to the Duvoisin shipping empire, offers love to the vulnerable Charmaine. And Agatha, Frederic's shrewish wife, plots to destroy anyone who stands in her way. Haunted by the past, John returns, inadvertently unearthing the most devastating scheme of all.