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Access our Top 20
Books of 2024!
The title of Hisham Matar's My Friends takes on affectionate but mournful tones as its story unfolds. For the narrator, Khaled, friendships have been both fundamentally necessary and painful. When we ...
Read ReviewAbu al-Ala al-Ma'arri and The Epistle of Forgiveness
In My Friends by Hisham Matar, the classical Arabic poem The Epistle of Forgiveness (Risalat al-Ghufran) by the Syrian writer Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri makes multiple appearances. Main character Khaled ...
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The Oscar-nominated film American Fiction (2023) and the Percival Everett novel it was based on, Erasure (2001), are about whose voices are heard and in what context. In the movie, Jeffrey Wright and ...
Read ReviewReimagining the Classics from a New Perspective
Percival Everett's James is a reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Huck's enslaved companion Jim. This kind of reconfiguration is a common source of inspiration ...
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Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl begins with the real-life disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. In March 2014, the passenger jet went missing in transit from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The ...
Read ReviewHow to Read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
In Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's novel But the Girl, the main character and first-person narrator is writing her PhD thesis on the work of Sylvia Plath. Plath is an iconic writer whose poetry is considered ...
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On the 17th of January, 2024, colleagues of Alexei Navalny posted a message to his Instagram account. Being held in a remote penal colony beyond the arctic circle, the Russian opposition leader was ...
Read ReviewThe 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis
Patriot by Alexei Navalny covers the Russian opposition leader's life from his childhood in the USSR in the 1980s to his final days in an Arctic penal colony in 2024. One important moment in the ...
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For many of us, vacations offer an escape from the everyday — a chance to explore new places, have fresh experiences, and see sites of cultural and natural beauty. But as Alain de Botton ...
Read ReviewWeike Wang's Rental House takes place during a couple's two vacations — one to Cape Cod and the other to the Catskills. Here are a few other novels in which vacations are equally illuminating ...
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"I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been doing so for years on end? Or maybe – if I am being honest – it is because these markings of...
Read ReviewMartha Ballard, the heroine of Ariel Lawhon's The Frozen River and a real-life 18th-century midwife, left behind a diary that remains one of history's best sources on midwifery in late colonial ...
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Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
Libby Lost and Found
by Stephanie Booth
Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.
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The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
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Big Holiday Wordplay 2024
At times, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
See who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
See MoreYour guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
