Helen Plum Library

With her wedding day approaching, Claire Cavenaugh prepares to confront her estranged older sister and self-absorbed mother after more than twenty years apart and find out how to transform themselves into a family

"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake,...

In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. "Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves," they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity."--

"Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Stanley Corngold. Featuring essays by Philip Roth, W.H Auden, and Walter Benjamin. This Modern Library edition collects Stanley Corngold's acclaimed English translation--long hailed as the gold standard by scholars and general readers alike--along with six critical essays by writers including Philip Roth, W.H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin, background and contextual material, and a new Introduction from...

"A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant. You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?" --Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a Rat Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one's family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan,...

"In this spiky and hilarious 21st century reboot of the iconic film Taxi Driver, a ride share driver is barely holding it together on the hunt for love, dignity and a living wage . . . until she decides she's done waiting. Damani is tired. Her father just passed away and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in the basement of her parents' old house, caring for her mom, and driving for an app to (not even) pay the bills. Protests are all the rage--everybody's...