July 2024 MassBook List

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Notes on Grief
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The author presents a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father.

Emma by Jane Austen

Emma
by Jane Austen

Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who finds that it is sometimes all too easy to confuse good intentions with self-gratification.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novel’s hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney who, inspired by a woman, makes the supreme sacrifice. One of Dickens’s most exciting novels.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Klara and the Sun, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri

This novel takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans in Cambridge, MA.

The Bat by Jo Nesbo

The Bat
by Jo Nesbø

Follows Harry Hole’s efforts to solve the murder of a television celebrity whose demise is linked to a string of serial killings.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy
by J.K. Rowling

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock and the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born–a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam–and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Orlando: A Biography
by Virginia Woolf

Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores.