Lists and Suggestions

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi's unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?"--

When an ultra-glam chain salon opens across the street from their family nail salon, Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran devise some good old-fashioned sabotage, but when the line between right and wrong gets blurred, they must choose between keeping their family together or fighting for their salon.

When she discovers a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, Vera Wong, a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, calls the police but not before swiping the flash drive from the body, setting a trap for the killer that becomes complicated by unexpected friendships with her customers.

With three hit shows on television and three children at home, Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say NO when an unexpected invitation arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No. And there was the side-benefit of saying No for an introvert like Shonda: nothing new to fear. Then Shonda's sister laid down a challenge: just for one year, try to say YES to the unexpected invitations that come your way. Shonda reluctantly agreed, and the result was nothing short of transformative. In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying yes had on every aspect of her life -- and how we can all change our lives with one little word: Yes.

What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then, toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family? You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue! When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate--especially when it is accidentally shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding that Meddy, her Ma, and her aunties are working, at an island resort on the California coastline. It is the biggest job yet for their family wedding business--"Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!"--and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her aunties' perfect buttercream-cake flowers. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love--and biggest heartbreak--makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding, all in one weekend?

A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life. As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules... with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and... Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat. As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for...

For two women generations apart, going home will change their lives. Four years into her marriage, Jenna is blindsided when her husband asks for a divorce. With time on her hands and her life in flux, she agrees to accompany her eccentric grandmother Evelyn on a road trip to the seaside Massachusetts town where much of their family history was shaped. When they hit the road, Evelyn spins the tale of the star-crossed teenage romance that captured her heart more than seventy years ago and changed the course of her life. She insists the return to her hometown isn't about that at all--no matter how much she talks about Tony, her unforgettable and forbidden first love. Upon arrival, Jenna meets Tony's attentive great-nephew Joe. The new friendship and fresh ocean air give her the confidence and distance she needs to begin putting the pain of a broken marriage behind her. As the secrets and truths of Evelyn's past unfold, Jenna discovers a new side of her grandmother, and of herself, that she never knew existed--and learns that the possibilities for healing can come at the most unexpected times in a woman's life.

When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.

Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did? From the New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project, a heartwarming novel about unexpected friendships and the joy of connecting. Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He'd have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you--and even more about yourself.

Patrick O'Hara is a bit out of his league. Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for week-long visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. So when tragedy strikes and Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian, he is, honestly, overwhelmed. Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled acting career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine- year old. But when his waggish set of "Guncle Rules" no longer appease Maisie and Grant's parental void, Patrick's eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you're unfailingly human.

A wildly entertaining road trip novel featuring a college dropout and an eighty-four-year-old woman off on the adventure of their lives, full of tremendous heart, wit, and wisdom from the USA Today bestselling author of The Invisible Husband of Frick Island. Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it. One slip on the rug. That's all it took for Louise Wilt's daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Tanner wants nothing to do with the uptight old woman until she starts to notice things-weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on an international jewelry thief that looks eerily like Louise? This is the (mostly) true story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman who may have perpetuated one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history and an aimless young woman who-if they can outrun the mistakes of their past-might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.

After forty years of being madly in love, Ana and Zeno are finally retiring and giving their romance a chance to bloom while they both still have time left. A unique but relatable love story told in reverse, with each chapter stepping further back through the decades of touch and go courting, showing both the heartbreaking moments that kept the two lovers apart and the beautiful moments that kept their flame alive.

Nada Syed is stuck. On the cusp of thirty, she's still living at home with her brothers and parents in the Golden Crescent neighborhood of Toronto, resolutely ignoring her mother's unsubtle pleas to get married already. And while Nada has a good job as an engineer, it's a far cry from realizing her dreams for her tech baby, Ask Apa, the app that launched with a whimper instead of a bang because of the double-crossing of he-who-must-not-be-named. Something needs to change, but the past is holding on to Nada too tightly to let her move forward. One thing Nada is excited about is her friend Haleema's recent engagement. Haleema insists they meet, and what better opportunity than at the massive Muslim conference in downtown Toronto run by her fiancé Zayn's family? And did Haleema mention Zayn's handsome brother, Baz? What Haleema doesn't know is that Nada and Baz have crossed paths many times before--from when Nada bullied Baz when he was a scrawny kid to the times they met accidentally-on-purpose at the campus library. At the conference, secrets from the past come hurtling at Nada, complicating everything even further and bringing a moment of reckoning. Can Nada truly say goodbye to what once was, or should she hold tight to her dreams?

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead. But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.

We live in a culture where most of us suffer from feeling "time poor": the feeling of sprinting from morning to night-stressing over too much to do and not enough time to do it. Cassie Holmes has made this question her life's work: How do we optimally spend our time so that we feel satisfied in the day-to-day and with life overall? With clear, actionable advice from how to be confident in choosing how to spend your time, to how to sidestep distractions and be present, HAPPIER HOUR gives you all the tools you need to feel time rich and confidently design your schedule as a beautiful and colorful mosaic with you as the artist. We're each allotted 24 hours per day and a lifetime of years to optimally invest. How we spend our time comprises our constant stream of experiences, the lives we live, and the memories we leave behind. With this book, you'll learn how to craft the time of your life. It all starts with a happier hour.

Jobless and forced home to Wisconsin, journalist Sabrina Monroe can tolerate reunions with frenemies and kisses from old boyfriends but not the literal ghosts that greet her in this heartwarming tale of the power of love and connection from acclaimed author Amy E. Reichert. For Sabrina Monroe, moving back home to the Wisconsin Dells--the self-described Water Park Capital of the World--means returning to the Monroe family curse: the women in her family can see spirits who come to them for help with unfinished business. But Sabrina has always redirected the needy spirits to her mom, who is much better suited for the job. The one exception has always been Molly, a bubbly rom-com loving ghost, who stuck by Sabrina's side all through her lonely childhood. Her personal life starts looking up when Ray, the new local restaurateur, invites Sabrina to his supper club, where he flirts with her over his famous brandy old-fashioneds. He is charming and handsome, but Sabrina tells herself she does not have time for romance--she needs to focus on finding a job. Except the longer she is in the Dells, the harder it is to resist her feelings for Ray. Who can turn down a cute guy with a fondness for rescue dogs and an obsession with perfecting his deep-fried cheese curds recipe? When the Dells starts to feel like home for the first time and with Ray in her corner, Sabrina begins to realize that she can make a difference and help others wherever she is.

Recent MBA grad Bronwyn Crewse has just taken over her family's ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and she's going back to basics. Wyn is renovating Crewse Creamery to restore its former glory, and filling the menu with delicious, homemade ice cream flavors--many from her grandmother's original recipes. But unexpected construction delays mean she misses the summer season, and the shop has a literal cold opening: the day she opens her doors an early first snow descends on the village and keeps the customers away. To make matters worse, that evening, Wyn finds a body in the snow, and it turns out the dead man was a grifter with an old feud with the Crewse family. Soon, Wyn's father is implicated in his death. It's not easy to juggle a new-to-her business while solving a crime, but Wyn is determined to do it. With the help of her quirky best friends and her tight-knit family, she'll catch the ice cold killer before she has a meltdown.

A young Indian woman falsely rumored to have killed her husband finds a way to make her unfortunate reputation surprisingly useful--but complications arise when other village women seek her help offing their husbands--in this provocative, razor-sharp debut. "The Bandit Queens heralds a prodigious and sophisticated literary talent." Téa Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of Inland In the five years since her husband's disappearance, Geeta has become accustomed to a solitary life; you'd be surprised how difficult it is to make friends when your entire village believes you're a witch who murdered your husband. And since she can't convince anyone that she didn't murder him, she figures she might as well use her fearsome reputation to protect herself as a woman on her own. But when other women in the village decide that they, too, want to be "self-made" widows and rid themselves of their abusive husbands, Geeta's reputation becomes a double-edged sword--the very thing that's meant to keep her safe is now threatening everything she's built as she unwittingly becomes the go-to consultant for village husband-disposal. Unfortunately, Geeta finds that even the best-laid plans of would-be widows tend to go awry, and the women find themselves caught in a web of their own making--and long-estranged friendships will have to be re-formed if they hope to make it out of their mess alive.

When you climb a tree, the first thing you do is to hold on tight...Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the US Forest Service. When his wife dies suddenly, he is unable to cope. Leaving his job and his old life behind, Harry makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, determined to lose himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She and her mother, Amanda, are struggling to pick up the pieces from their own tragedy--Amanda stoically holding it together while Oriana roams the forest searching for answers. And in Oriana's magical, willful mind, she believes that Harry is the key to righting her world. Now it's time for Harry to let go...After taking up residence in the woods behind Amanda's house, Harry reluctantly agrees to help Oriana in a ludicrous scheme to escape his tragic past. In so doing, the unlikeliest of elements--a wolf, a stash of gold coins, a fairy tale called The Grum's Ledger and a wise old librarian named Olive--come together to create a golden adventure that will fulfill Oriana's wildest dreams and open Harry's heart to a whole new life. Harry's Trees is an uplifting story about the redeeming power of friendship and love and the magic to be found in life's most surprising adventures.

Bernadine Brown is a woman with money to spend. Henry Adams is a town in desperate need of cash. But after Bernadine puts up the money, she has some ideas about how the town should be run. Will the townspeople be willing to shake up their comfortable lives to share the gift they’ve been given with others who really need it?

Eudora Honeysett has lived a full life, and witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age. At eighty-five, her end will be on her terms. A call to a clinic in Switzerland sets the plan in motion. Then she meets ten-year-old Rose Trewidney, a pint-sized rainbow of color and sparkling cheer. Eudora finds herself embarking on a series of adventures with Rose and their neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley. Eudora is reminded of her own childhood-- and realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead.

Lillian and Madison were unlikely, yet inseparable friends at their boarding school. Then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they have barely spoken since. Years later, Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison's twin stepkids are moving in, and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth. Thinking of the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other while also staying out of the way of Madison's uptight husband. Surprised by her intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her. Could this be the start of the amazing life she'd always hoped for?

Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist--even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory. All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town. Reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this is a warm, witty book about friendship, stories, and love.

When she discovers that her late husband enrolled her in a dating service, which he set up to go into effect a year after his death, Robin Lindstrom puts herself out there and finds herself meeting new people, trying new things, and getting a second chance at love--and at loving life.

At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own? Rules For Visiting is a woman's exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way--afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones. Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story--and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.

Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people--though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she's invisible. All of that changes when a book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep. Inside, Martha finds a dedication written to her by her best friend--her grandmother Zelda--who died under mysterious circumstances years earlier. When Martha discovers a clue within the book that her grandmother may still be alive, she becomes determined to discover the truth. As she delves deeper into Zelda's past, she unwittingly reveals a family secret that will change her life forever. Filled with Phaedra Patrick's signature charm and vivid characters, The Library of Lost and Found is a heartwarming and poignant tale of how one woman must take control of her destiny to write her own happy ending.

Tom Putnam, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, has resigned himself to a quiet and half-fulfilled life. For more than ten years, his wife Marjory has been a shut-in, a fragile and frigid woman whose neuroses have left her fully dependent on Tom and his formidable mother-in-law, Agnes Tattle. Tom considers his unhappy condition self-inflicted, since Marjory's condition was exacerbated by her discovery of Tom's brief and misguided affair with a visiting poetess. But when Tom and Marjory meet Rose Callahan, the campus bookstore's charming new hire, and Marjory invites Rose to dinner, her first social interaction in a decade, Tom wonders if it's a sign that change is on the horizon. And when Tom returns home that evening to a letter from the poetess telling him that he'd fathered her son, Henry, and that Henry, now ten, will arrive by train in a few days, it's clear change is coming whether Tom's ready or not. For readers of Helen Simonson and Anna Quindlen, Small Blessings is funny, heart-warming and poignant, with a charmingly imperfect cast of cinema-ready characters. Readers will fall in love with the novel's wonderfully optimistic heart that reminds us that sometimes, when it feels like life is veering irrevocably off track, the track changes in ways we never could have imagined.

The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters--Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia--were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she's always been a dutiful daughter, and cannot, even now, refuse her mother's request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina's in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey, or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time. Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives--and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago--a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.--

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Standing up to the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated ideas about women, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for innovation, all the while raising her six sons and four daughters with the belief that miracles are an everyday occurrence.

Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe-- many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy's original inventions.