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160 past books matching Contemporary Fiction

Reincarnation Blues
Michael Poore
Literary Fiction · Romance
Reincarnation Blues follows Milo, who has lived nearly ten thousand lives in pursuit of wisdom, meaning, and one impossible love.

Reincarnation Blues
Michael Poore
Literary Fiction · Romance · Contemporary Fiction · Speculative Fiction
Our take
Reincarnation Blues follows Milo, who has lived nearly ten thousand lives in pursuit of wisdom, meaning, and one impossible love. With only five chances left before oblivion, he keeps returning to existence for Death herself, his constant companion between lives. Funny, tender, and cosmic in scope, this novel blends romance and philosophy in a darkly enchanting exploration of existence by Michael Poore.
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About the book
A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself.
“This book made me laugh out loud. And then a page later, it made me sob. Reminiscent of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore, Poore finds humor in the dark absurdities of life.”—Chicago Review of Books
First we live. Then we die. And then . . . we get another try?
Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything.
Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.
More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again.
But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. Darkly enchanting and wisely hilarious, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking.
Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too.
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Nesting
Roisín O'Donnell
Literary Fiction · Mystery
Ciara Fay makes a split second decision to leave her marriage, driving away with her daughters and nowhere safe to land.

Nesting
Roisín O'Donnell
Literary Fiction · Mystery · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
Ciara Fay makes a split second decision to leave her marriage, driving away with her daughters and nowhere safe to land. As she navigates fear, doubt, and a fragile new community, she must learn to trust her own reality. A tense, compassionate debut by Roisín O’Donnell about emotional abuse, resilience, and choosing freedom. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize.
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About the book
In this beautiful, urgent, and ultimately uplifting novel by a rising Irish literary star comes a heart-pounding, life-affirming story about one woman trying to leave her marriage and start over. On a bright spring afternoon, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, she straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe—and that this time, when she leaves, she must stay away. On the surface, she has a perfect life: her sometimes kind and attentive husband, Ryan, is a good provider from a nice family, and they have another baby on the way. But he also monitors Ciara's every move, flies into unpredictable rages where he convinces her she can do nothing right, and has isolated her from work, friends, and her beloved family. Was fleeing the right thing to do? With no job and no support, Ciara struggles to provide a sense of normalcy for her little girls. Facing a broken housing system, they move into a hotel room on a floor reserved for women like her, eating takeout, washing their clothes in the bathroom sink, and building a community with the other residents. Ryan, meanwhile, wages a relentless campaign to win her back, and Ciara wavers. He never hit her, after all, and don't the girls need a stable home? Suspenseful and all-consuming, Roisín O'Donnell’s extraordinary debut creates a devastating portrait of gaslighting and emotional abuse. Ultimately, Nesting is a triumphant story about self-determination, family, and resilience. Longlisted for the Women's Prize • An Instant Bestseller in Ireland and the UK
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Against the Loveless World
Susan Abulhawa
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
This will appeal to readers who want literary historical fiction centered on displacement, resistance, family, and political awakening.

Against the Loveless World
Susan Abulhawa
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Social/Political Commentary
Our take
Called “beautiful...urgent” by The New York Times, Against the Loveless World follows Nahr, a Palestinian refugee born in Kuwait, as exile, poverty, war, and love carry her through Kuwait, Jordan, and Palestine before she recounts her life from solitary confinement, with a 4.5-star average from more than 33,700 Goodreads ratings. This will appeal to readers who want literary historical fiction centered on displacement, resistance, family, and political awakening.
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About the book
Arab American Book Award Winner
2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
2020 Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner
Longlisted for Rathbones Folio Prize
“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
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Dandelion Is Dead
Rosie Storey
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Poppy never meant to fall in love pretending to be her dead sister.

Dandelion Is Dead
Rosie Storey
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Women's Fiction
Our take
Poppy never meant to fall in love pretending to be her dead sister. But when grief, impulse, and a dating app collide, she finds herself living a borrowed life with a man who feels heartbreakingly real. Tender, funny, and quietly devastating, this modern romance explores love after loss and the terrifying bravery it takes to start living again.
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About the book
“Dandelion is Dead is breathtakingly original. A brilliant premise, smart, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. I adored it.”
—Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
Jake has fallen head over heels for Dandelion. The only problem? Dandelion is dead.
When Poppy discovers unanswered messages from a charming stranger in her late sister's dating app, she makes an impulsive choice: She'll meet him, just once, on what would have been Dandelion's fortieth birthday. It's exactly the kind of wild adventure her vivacious sister would have pushed her toward.
Jake is ready to find something real—and not least because his ex-wife's twentysomething boyfriend has moved into their old family home. When he meets the intriguing woman who calls herself Dandelion, their connection is undeniable, and he can think of little else.
As their relationship deepens, Poppy finds herself trapped in a double life she never meant to create. Every moment with Jake feels genuine, electric, and totally right—despite the fact they're tangled in deceit. As the lines between grief and love blur, Poppy faces a choice: keep her sister's memory alive through her lies, or risk everything for a chance at her own happiness?
With sparkling wit and aching tenderness, debut author Rosie Storey gives us a modern love story about the courage it takes to live again after loss and finding hope in the most unexpected places.
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The Hand That First Held Mine
Maggie O'Farrell
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Across fifty years in London, two women navigate love, art, and the disorienting force of motherhood.

The Hand That First Held Mine
Maggie O'Farrell
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction · Women's Fiction
Our take
Across fifty years in London, two women navigate love, art, and the disorienting force of motherhood. Lexie Sinclair forges a daring life in post-war Soho, while new mother Elina struggles to recognize herself in the present day. As memories surface and secrets entwine their stories, The Hand That First Held Mine reveals how lives are shaped by connection and loss. A tender, haunting novel by Maggie O’Farrell.
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About the book
From the best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait comes a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.
"An exquisitely sensual tale of love, motherhood, and other forms of madness, The Hand That First Held Mine will unsettle, move, and haunt you." —Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself.
Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own.
Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place.
As Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories—these two women—something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.
Praised by The Washington Post as a “breathtaking, heart-breaking creation,” The Hand That First Held Mine is a gorgeous and tenderly wrought story about the ways in which love and beauty bind us together. It is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.
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Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame
Olivia Ford
Literary Fiction · Romance
After nearly sixty years of marriage, Jenny Quinn secretly auditions for Britain Bakes, craving a purpose all her own.

Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame
Olivia Ford
Literary Fiction · Romance · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
After nearly sixty years of marriage, Jenny Quinn secretly auditions for Britain Bakes, craving a purpose all her own. As she navigates cameras, competitions, and new friendships, long-buried memories rise with every recipe—threatening the one secret she has never confessed to her husband. Warm, charming, and deeply heartfelt, Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame celebrates courage, love, and second chances.
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About the book
“As cozy as a cup of tea and cake.”—People
“One of those books you just want to hug to your chest. I loved it so much.”—Jasmine Guillory, New York Times bestselling author of While We Were Dating
A huge-hearted, redemptive coming-of-old-age tale, a love story, and an ode to good food
Nothing could be more out of character, but after fifty-nine years of marriage, as her husband Bernard’s health declines, and her friends' lives become focused on their grandchildren—which Jenny never had—Jenny decides she wants a little something for herself. So she secretly applies to be a contestant on the prime-time TV show Britain Bakes.
Whisked into an unfamiliar world of cameras and timed challenges, Jenny delights in a new-found independence. But that independence, and the stress of the competition, starts to unearth memories buried decades ago. Chocolate teacakes remind her of a furtive errand involving a wedding ring; sugared doughnuts call up a stranger’s kind act; a simple cottage loaf brings back the moment her life changed forever.
With her baking star rising, Jenny struggles to keep a lid on that first secret—a long-concealed deceit that threatens to shatter the very foundations of her marriage. It’s the only time in six decades that she’s kept something from Bernard. By putting herself in the limelight, has Jenny created a recipe for disaster?
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In the Midst of Winter
Isabel Allende
Literary Fiction · Romance
A Brooklyn snowstorm brings together Richard, a solitary professor, Evelyn, a frightened immigrant seeking help, and Lucia, a Chilean academic with her own buried grief.

In the Midst of Winter
Isabel Allende
Literary Fiction · Romance · Contemporary Fiction · Historical Literary Fiction
Our take
A Brooklyn snowstorm brings together Richard, a solitary professor, Evelyn, a frightened immigrant seeking help, and Lucia, a Chilean academic with her own buried grief. As their lives intersect, shared histories of violence, loss, and resilience surface, revealing the courage needed to claim love and belonging. Isabel Allende delivers a sweeping story of memory, justice, and home.
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About the book
New York Times and worldwide bestselling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil that offers “a timely message about immigration and the meaning of home” (People).
During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his sixties, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice.
As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of—and our need for—love.
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Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
A strong match for readers who like World War II historical fiction, women entering dangerous wartime work, family mysteries, and noir-inflected crime.

Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · World War 2
Our take
A New York Times bestseller called “a magnificent achievement” by The Boston Globe, Manhattan Beach follows Anna Kerrigan from Depression-era Brooklyn to wartime work as the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s first female diver as she investigates her father’s disappearance and his ties to gangster Dexter Styles. It has a 4.0-star rating from more than 24,500 Amazon reviewers. A strong match for readers who like World War II historical fiction, women entering dangerous wartime work, family mysteries, and noir-inflected crime.
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About the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad comes a sweeping historical novel set in the Depression-era and wartime New York, where a young woman’s courage transforms her life on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY, and Time
Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a Booklyn gangster who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
?Years later, America enters World War II and her father has disappeared. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
“A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” (The Boston Globe), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.
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March
Geraldine Brooks
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Geraldine Brooks reimagines the life of Mr.

March
Geraldine Brooks
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Historical Literary Fiction
Our take
Geraldine Brooks reimagines the life of Mr. March from Little Women, tracing his journey into the Civil War as he leaves his family to serve the Union. Confronting brutal realities that test his ideals and reshape his marriage, March returns a changed man. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is a richly detailed, deeply human portrait of love, conviction, and the cost of war.
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About the book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord.
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.
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Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
After losing her job and facing yet another rejection, Zelu writes a strange, far-future novel that unexpectedly propels her to literary fame—and threatens to consume both her life…

Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Magical Realism · People of Color · Speculative Fiction
Our take
After losing her job and facing yet another rejection, Zelu writes a strange, far-future novel that unexpectedly propels her to literary fame—and threatens to consume both her life and the story she meant to tell. From Chicago to Lagos and beyond, she confronts identity, autonomy, and the cost of creation. An instant national bestseller praised for its ambition and emotional depth.
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About the book
THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Recommended by New York Times Book Review• People • NPR • Rolling Stone• Los Angeles Times• Reader's Digest• and more!
“This one has it all.” — George R.R. Martin • “As delicious as it is disorienting.” — Zakiya Dalila Harris • “Suspenseful, timely, and heartfelt.” — People • “Mind-bending.” — New York Times Book Review
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.
The future of storytelling is here.
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.
“An ambitious, inventive tribute to the power of storytelling itself.” — Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure
“A deeply felt dazzle. A blaze. It is true deep to the bones.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
"There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes." — Ursula K. Le Guin
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2666
Roberto Bolaño
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Roberto Bolaño’s final novel follows academics, reporters, fugitives, and a haunted young woman whose lives converge in Santa Teresa, a border city marked by the unsolved disappearances of…

2666
Roberto Bolaño
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Postmodern Fiction
Our take
Roberto Bolaño’s final novel follows academics, reporters, fugitives, and a haunted young woman whose lives converge in Santa Teresa, a border city marked by the unsolved disappearances of factory workers. Through shifting voices and unsettling beauty, the story traces obsession, violence, and the search for meaning. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and acclaimed as Bolaño’s masterwork.
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About the book
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW)
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
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Mary Jane
Jessica Anya Blau
Literary Fiction · Coming of Age
In 1970s Baltimore, quiet, dutiful Mary Jane takes a nanny job in what appears to be a respectable home—only to discover it is hosting a rock star and…

Mary Jane
Jessica Anya Blau
Literary Fiction · Coming of Age · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
In 1970s Baltimore, quiet, dutiful Mary Jane takes a nanny job in what appears to be a respectable home—only to discover it is hosting a rock star and his movie-star wife in secret. Immersed in their chaotic, lively world, she begins to rethink everything she believed about family and freedom. Mary Jane is a charming, music filled coming-of-age story.
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About the book
"The best book of the summer." -- InStyle
"I LOVED this novel....If you have ever sung along to a hit on the radio, in any decade, then you will devour Mary Jane at 45 rpm." —Nick Hornby
Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones & The Six in this "delightful" (New York Times Book Review) novel about a fourteen-year-old girl’s coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies for—who happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer.
In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house.
The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job—helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.
Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she’s always known and the future she’s only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she’s going to be.
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