Add these hand-picked titles to your June reading list.
Before We Were Yours
Avery Stafford comes across a puzzling photograph that leads her into unraveling the secrets of her picture-perfect family.
Along the way, she begins to question the groom picked for her by her family. What follows is a gripping tale of love, betrayal, and memories.
Shuttling between the 1930s and the present day, Before We Were Yours is based on one of America’s most notorious real-life human trafficking scandals.
Georgia Tann, director of the Memphis-based Tennessee Children’s Home Society, abducted needy children from their families and young babies from single mothers and offered them for sale to politicians, celebrities, and others who could afford them.
We meet the five Foss siblings who live abroad a shanty boat on the Mississippi River. Their lives change, however, on a stormy night when their father rushes their mother to the hospital and they are thrown into an orphanage.
They are promised a safe return to their home, but the children soon realize the dark truth about why they are where they are.
Author Lisa Wingate deftly weaves the two stories together and draws us into the dark mysteries of human behavior.
Author: Lisa Wingate
Published by: Ballantine Books
Price: $26
Party Girls Die In Pearls: An Oxford Girl Mystery
Plum Skye’s Party Girls Die In Pearls: An Oxford Girl Mystery is set in 1985 at the Oxford University.
It tells the tale of Ursula Flowerbutton, a charming and ambitious girl who has arrived to study history and be a part of the student-run newspaper.
When the body of the young girl is found with her throat slit, Ursula makes it her mission to unravel the mystery even if it means that she might be next.
She plunges headfirst into her investigation along with a newfound friend, American heiress Nancy Feingold.
Together the girls discover a world of secret societies and glamorous black-tie parties which could be a cover-up for something they never imagined.
A perfect mash-up of the British mystery genre and 90’s culture, the book could be termed as a chick lit, but with a totally different approach.
Plum Skye’s dry wit, entertaining plot and frank narrative will keep you delighted as you thumb through this pacy novel.
The English born Oxford-educated author was a fashion journalist with over 20 years experience.
With her knowledge of high fashion and upper-crust English society, Plum Skye does a commendable job creating interesting and well-rounded characters.
Author: Plum Skye
Published by: Harper Collins
Price: INR 915
A Good Country
Set in 2009, in Southern California, Laleh Khadivi’s A Good Country is about a boy in search of his identity in a climate of alienation and hatred.
Rez Courdee is a Muslim boy of Persian descent who identifies with typical American teen: he obsesses about losing his virginity, smokes pot and surfs, all while maintaining his grades.
A terrorist act, however, creates a rift between him and his white friends.
Isolated, he turns to other Muslim boys and begins to practice his faith, hoping to find ‘a good country’ where Muslims are accepted and live in harmony.
Khadivi’s book is moving and goes beyond a coming-of-age story.
With razor-sharp insights and a crisp writing style, she helps us witness Rez’s evolution from an out-of-control boy to a man consumed by his faith.
This book forces you to question your biases and their consequences. If you’re open to this, Khadivi provides good food for thought.
An Iranian-American novelist and filmmaker, Khadivi was born in Isfahan, but has lived in Belgium, Puerto Rico, Canada and the US.
Her debut novel The Age of Orphans was published in 2009.
Author: Laleh Khadivi
Published by: Bloomsbury
Price: $16.52
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