Widows (2019)

The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros

The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Native Son - Richard Wright

Love, Amalia - Alma Flor Ada

Pretty baby - Mary Kubica

Summary: She sees the teenage girl on the train platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head... Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal--or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home. Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.

Kirkus Reviews

Things go dangerously wrong when a middle-class wife and mother impulsively opens her home to a homeless teen and her tiny baby in Kubica's sophomore novel. When Heidi Wood, a woman who can't help herself from helping others, spots a teenage girl with a small baby on the platform of Chicago's train system, her heart goes out to them. Not only is it cold and raining, but the pair is obviously in need of help. Soon, Heidi has spotted the homeless teenager again, and, being the nurturing type, she feels compelled to reach out to her. That annoys her husband, Chris, and selfish 12-year-old daughter, Zoe. But Heidi ignores her husband's misgivings—after all, he's distracted by the new girl at work, Cassidy Knudsen, a lissome blonde who always seems to be nearby when Heidi calls. So when she brings the girl, Willow, and Ruby, her baby, into their condo, it only widens the gap between Heidi and Chris. And, through some clever foreshadowing, the reader knows, almost from the ou tset, that this isn't going to turn out so well for the Wood family. Kubica skillfully weaves the story together, with Chris, Heidi, and Willow all narrating portions of the tale. As bits and pieces of Willow's story are revealed, the other characters keep the story moving forward toward what the reader knows will be disastrous results. Kubica's debut novel, The Good Girl (2014), also employed multiple points of view and timelines, but Kubica serves up a much more cohesive tale this time around—the story is almost hypnotic and anything but predictable. The writing is compelling, but Kubica's strong point is being able to juggle a complicated plot and holding the reader's interest without dropping any of the balls she has in the air. This book will give insomniacs a compelling reason to sit up all night. Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End - Ferris, Joshua

Summary: The remaining employees at an office affected by a business downturn spend their time competing for the best office furniture left behind and enjoying secret romances, gossip, elaborate pranks, and frequent coffee breaks, while trying to make sense of their only remaining "work," a mysterious pro-bono ad campaign.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Anyone who has ever logged time in a gray cubicle with cloth walls that wouldn't hold tacks will be astounded at the accuracy of this first-novel portrait of the workplace demimonde. Set in an unnamed advertising firm in Chicago, it grabs readers on the very first page like an executive assistant who can't wait to share the latest HR rumors. The firm is laying off employees, and as the quirky staff-cum-family alternately turns to and turns on one another, the reader plays eavesdropper to the unnamed narrator (who speaks in the first-person plural). He (or she) documents Benny's wild adventures with an inherited totem pole; the full catalog of Marcia's relentlessly eighties hairdos; Jim's lame but earnest ad pitches; Joe's inflexible professionalism; office leader Lynn's breast cancer; and the riotous yet painful mental breakdowns of not one but three pink-slipped workers. At their final gathering, the coworkers discover that their intimacy is a function only of proximity; no number of e-mails, lunches, or phone calls can substitute for the binding power of office walls. While the prose veers off into amusing tangents, like an associate trying to waste as much of an unproductive afternoon as possible, the author always returns to the story at hand. It's a 375-page, 3-martini-lunch of a novel, and you'll have it read by quitting time.

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The shining girls - Lauren Beukes

The shining girls - Beukes, Lauren

Summary: "A time-traveling serial killer is impossible to trace-- until one of his victims survives. In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Working with an ex-homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery"--Publisher's web site.


Booklist Reviews
Harper Curtis isn't your run-of-the-mill serial killer. He gets to time travel from the 1920s through the 1980s, killing girls in different decades, all to satisfy a bloodthirsty Chicago bungalow. Yes, you read that correctly: the house makes him do it. In this genre-bending novel, Beukes never explains the origins of this evil house or how it manages to transport Harper from year to year. All we know is that Harper is compelled to track down and murder specific "shining girls" in gruesome ways (usually evisceration), and he gets away with it since he can escape across time. Until he leaves Kirby Mazrachi behind in 1989, that is. Kirby miraculously recovers from the vicious attack and is determined to track down her assailant, even if the police consider it a closed case. She enlists the help of Dan, a reporter at the Sun-Times, and they slowly uncover odd clues left behind in a dozen unsolved murder cases; it turns out Harper has been leaving behind items from the future. Not for all tastes, but fans of urban fantasy may be interested in this clever and detailed supernatural thriller. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The song of the lark – Willa Cather

The song of the lark - Cather, Willa

Summary: The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's musical talent sets her apart from her contemporaries. Driven by her determination to satisfy her artistic impulse, she moves to Chicago where she falls in love with a wealthy married man. The novel follows Thea's growth from provincial midwesterner to acclaimed international opera singer. Her ability to resolve the tensions between her personal and professional lives and to communicate through her art makes her an unusual and thoroughly modern heroine. - (Blackwell North Amer)

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