Book Titles with The Life or Lives of…

Book Summary

Eudora has lived a long, full life, but at the age of 85 she’s decided she’s done with it all. She’s already witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age, and she wants the end – her end – to be on her own terms. She’s called a clinic in Switzerland to set her plan into motion. But then she meets 10-year-old Rose.

Rose is rainbows and sparkles and cheer. And as much as Eudora just wants to be left alone, she can’t help but be drawn into her young neighbor’s world of adventure. Along with her affable and recently widowed neighbor Stanley, they join Rose for afternoon teas, shopping sprees, trips to the beach, and birthday celebrations. As they all await the arrival of Rose’s new baby sister, Eudora is secretly waiting for approval to go ahead with her plan.

As this unlikely trio grows closer, the joy that her new friends bring to her life forces Eudora to reconsider whether she’s really ready to say goodbye.

Book Summary

Three years ago, Amy’s husband left on a business trip and just decided not to come back. Forced into single parenthood and with no child support, she did what she had to do – cutting back expenses and taking a job as a school librarian. Now, her husband has shown back up out of the blue, wanting to reconnect with his teenagers. Amy is reluctant to let him have them over the summer, but she finally gives in.

With her newfound freedom, Amy decides to escape rural Pennsylvania to attend a librarian conference in NYC. Overworked and underappreciated, Amy describes herself simply as “a 40-year-old mom-shaped-librarian.” But her old friend Talia, a fashion magazine editor in the city, wants to help her see herself in a new light. A makeover, a few blind dates, and a trending hashtag later, Amy gets a glimpse of what her life could have been if she had chosen different priorities.

Just as Amy is struggling with whether to stay in this exciting new chapter of her life or return to the life she left behind, a crisis brings her two worlds crashing together.

Book Summary

In 1714 France, a desperate young woman, Addie Larue, made a Faustian bargain to live forever to avoid marrying a man she doesn’t love. Unfortunately, as part of the agreement, she is also cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

For 300 years, she’s been on an adventure around the globe. Then, in 2014, she stumbles on a man in a bookstore who remembers her name. Is this her chance to find normality within her immortal life?

Book Summary

Born with ocular albinism, Sam Hill is a young boy whose rare red eyes cause problems from the moment his mother enrolls him at the Our Lady of Mercy school. 

Labeled “Hell Boy,” he is bullied not only by his classmates but also given a hard time by the nun who is the principal at his elementary school. Eventually, Sam finds the new best friend he desperately needs in Ernie Cantwell, the only African American boy in his class, and years later in a fiercely individual girl named Mickie.

As an adult, Sam is a respected ophthalmologist moving through life with Ernie and Mickie still by his side. His world is about to be upturned when he’s unexpectedly reunited with the biggest schoolyard bully from his past.

Book Summary

Mirielle West lives a glamorous life in LA as the wife of a silent film star. When a doctor sees a small spot on her hand, she’s whisked across the country to what feels like a different world. She hopes to have only a brief visit to the Louisiana Leper Home, but when she arrives, there is barbed wire, a curfew, and little chance of ever returning to her everyday life.

As Mirielle is assigned work inside the home, she must come to terms with both the illness and its perception in the outside world.

Book Summary

In 1924, when Cecily was only 4, her mother reluctantly left her at an orphanage and promised to return when she had money to support her. However, three years later, her mother hasn’t returned, and Cecily is “adopted” by a traveling circus. She’s assigned to be the “little sister” of a glamourous bareback rider and believes she’s found the family she has always dreamed of. By the time Cecily is a teenager, she’s seen the problems in her traveling world. When she falls in love with a roustabout named Lucky, her life changes again in a dangerous way.

In 2015, Cecily is 94 and has a quiet Minnesota life with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. When her great-grandson has a project for school, the family takes DNA tests, and the results reveal a tragic story Cecily has kept secret for decades. Four generations are forced to reevaluate what “family” really means.

Book Summary

Nina Hill adores her life as an introvert. She was an only child, raised by a nanny, and finds comfort in life with a good book and her cat. She works at a bookshop, leads several book clubs, and is devoted to her trivia league. Life is good. 

Then, she finds out about her complicated family on her father’s side, the bookshop she works at has financial struggles, and she develops a crush on a trivia competitor. 

Should she take the safe route and continue relying on her books, or is exploring her new family and potential relationship worth the risk? 

Book Summary

Albert Entwistle is a 64-year postal worker in the UK. He has no plans of retiring but receives a letter informing him that his mandatory retirement is just around the corner on his 65th birthday.

Albert’s only friend is his cat, and although he isn’t chatty with others at work or on his routes, he still dreads being home alone without a job. When he’s reminded of his only romantic relationship, which happened 50 years prior, something begins to stir in Albert. Perhaps it’s not too late to find happiness after all?

With the help of some unexpected new friends, Albert sets off to find George, the man he hasn’t seen since they were teenagers.

Book Summary

Alice Island bookstore owner A.J. Fikry is having a terrible year. His wife has died, the store isn’t making enough sales, and his beloved book of Poe poems has been stolen. As a result, he’s cranky and pushing those around him away more than ever. Luckily, he has a few people who look past his curmudgeonly attitude. 

His depression reaches the point that he no longer enjoys books. But, sometimes, life gives you second chances in unexpected ways. For A.J., it’s a small, but heavy, mysterious package that arrives at his shop. As he begins to see the world around him in a new way, those around him can see him in a new way, too.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law.

Johanna was a 28-year-old widow with a baby living in 1890s Paris when she inherited Van Gogh’s paintings. They weren’t worth anything then, but despite barely speaking French, she managed to introduce Van Gogh’s legacy to the world.

In the present day, Hollywood auctioneer Emsley comes across an old diary while cleaning out her famous grandmother’s New York brownstone. But it turns out that the diary didn’t belong to her grandma. Johanna Bonger wrote it, giving Emsley the inspiration she needs at the right time.

Book Summary

It was not easy to be a female scientist in 1914. Violet Schuyler Grant endures her much older, philandering husband because he makes her role as a physicist in prewar Germany possible. When Lionel, a captain in the British Army, meets Violet, he encourages her to escape her husband’s hold. However, with WW1 on the horizon, Lionel’s motives are suspect.

Fifty years later, Vivian Schuyler is a recent Bryn Mawr graduate in New York City but is not content to be a socialite. Instead, she’s trying to break into the glamorous world of magazine publishing. She uses her investigative skills when she receives a package of information about a mysterious aunt she never knew.

Book Summary

For more than half a century, scientists knew her only as HeLa, but the full story of Henrietta Lacks deserves to be heard. 

When Henrietta fell ill, she was treated in the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. While hospitalized, she had a tissue sample taken, without her consent. Those cells became the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture. Still alive today, the HeLa cells have been used to develop the polio vaccine, discover cancer treatments, advance gene mapping, and much more. 

It wasn’t until more than 20 years after Henrietta’s death that her family learned of her “immortality.” With the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the news was devastating to the Lacks family.

Book Summary

Winnie lives a privileged life on her father’s sugar cane plantation in British Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America. Life is very easy when Winnie follows society’s rules. However, she can’t help falling in love with George, the black post office boy from the other side of town.

Winnie begins living a double life and then fights to prove her love for George in a world determined to keep them apart.

Book Summary

It’s the 1940s, and Euridice has a typical life of a woman from that era. She is expected to be an obedient and traditional housewife. While passionate about cooking and sewing, her dreams go far beyond caring for her family. She starts several secret projects, like making recipe books, as she tries to create a business for herself. However, her husband forbids her from using her talents. On top of that, a gossipy neighbor is spreading rumors about Euridice.

Her sister, Guida, also has challenges despite escaping her family’s expectations and eloping with a medical student years earlier. Suffering and pain eventually cause her to return home with her young son. Euridice takes them in, and together, the sisters learn to be independent and make the most of their lives.

Book Summary

After her mother passes away, 14-year-old Lily Owens runs away with her friend and nanny, Rosaleen. The two escape to Tiburon, South Carolina, where an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters takes them in. 

Lily is introduced to the world of bees and honey, the Black Madonna, and the town that holds the secret to her mother’s past.

Book Summary

Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. He was born with physical deformities but is mentally keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong intellect, and a voracious appetite for books.

Forced to interact with the world through the vivid prism of his mind, most of Ivan’s days are exactly the same. As a result, he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement.

In this heart-wrenching and powerful debut novel, Ivan’s monotonous world is upended when a new resident named Polina arrives at the hospital. At first, he resents Polina because she steals his books and challenges his routine. But soon, he finds that he is drawn to her. The two forge an unusual romance.

Before, Ivan merely survived, but now he wants something more.

Book Summary

When a half-Apache boy named Edgar is run over by a mail truck, he miraculously survives, but the incident changes the path of his life. When authorities discover that he’s mostly orphaned, he’s sent to a boarding school for Native American orphans, which is not a nice place to be. 

Eventually, he’s sent to foster care with a dysfunctional Mormon family. Despite his difficulties and lack of consistent family, Edgar’s goodness remains. He’s determined to find and forgive the man driving the mail truck. 

Book Summary

Although this book is classified as historical fiction, it’s based on a larger-than-life real woman with an equally large heart. In her childhood, Majorie worked on gluing cereal boxes together for her father, the creator of Grape-Nuts, followed by the successful Post cereal empire. His company led the family to extreme wealth, but Majorie wasn’t content to sit at home as American royalty.

While entertaining the rich and famous was part of her life, she also wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Her extraordinary life included everything from outrunning Nazis to serving the homeless during the Great Depression. She was also married four times and built impressive real estate along the way, including now-infamous Mar-a-Lago.

Book Summary

This father-daughter epic weaves back and forth through time and across America, from Alaska to the Adirondacks. Samuel Hawley has been on the run for years, but is moving to settle down with his teenage daughter in Olympus, Massachusetts, his late wife’s hometown. Daughter Loo struggles to fit in at school and is becoming more curious about her mother’s mysterious death.

The twelve scars on Samuel’s body haunt him, especially when his past reappears in his daughter’s present. The novel is told in an alternating past-present format as we see Loo’s challenges being different from the other kids today, but we also learn the stories of how her father received each of his scars.

Book Summary

This entertaining and eye-opening novel is the fiction debut of an African-born poet. The book takes you into a modern-day polygamist household in Nigeria. Baba Segi has four wives, and the newest wife, Bolanle, is anxiously waiting to become pregnant for the first time.

Bolanle is well-educated, and her mom is furious that she has chosen life as a 4th wife, but she has her secrets and reasons. The addition of Bolanle has thrown the family into a bit of chaos, and you’ll find yourself laughing and crying as you read their story from multiple points of view.