Martha Anne Toll
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Margarita Liberaki's novel, first published in 1946, follows three young women growing up in the Athens countryside alongside a colorful cast of family members, secret-keeping servants and local boys.
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Author Massoud Hayoun has Moroccan, Egyptian and Tunisian heritage — and is also Jewish. He weaves in his family history with the politics that shaped their lives, including European oppression.
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Gregory Spatz is both a creative writing professor and a fiddler, which gives depth to these stories about high-end stringed instruments and the people who play, love and sometimes steal them.
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As Lorene Cary tells the story of her Nana and the stress and sadness all too common for caregivers, it's her recounting of her upbringing and ancestry that is most engaging and captivating.
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Author Anna Merlan's recitations are chilling, as are her warnings that fringe beliefs tend to go mainstream — and how their rise is seen against a resurgence in nationalism and white supremacy.
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Writer and gallery owner Jean Frémon inhabits artist Louise Bourgeois as if she herself were writing this novel-cum-memoir, opening up our understanding of both the artist and her art.
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There is a universality to Édouard Louis' story — the child's longing for acceptance contrasted with the mature son's painful journey to understand why his father behaved as he did.
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In Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman's debut, she doesn't shrink from the systemic issues of an unfair economic system, but her personal story, with its unexpected twists, makes this memoir memorable.
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Stephanie Allen's novel creates a microcosm of America in 1919 in the form of a travelling medicine show, packed with people from all walks of life, trying to get along in the show's close confines.
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Sarah McColl unstintingly puts her heart on the page as she reflects on caring for her dying mother, with whom she is unimaginably close, as her marriage fails.