Heterick Summer Book Bingo 2019

The place is Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition, and forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps a young woman, Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist sent by a human rights group to discover the source of organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, family, identity, the unknown enemy, and the quest to unlock the hidden past--all propelled by a riveting mystery.

There has been a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko must battle the KGB, FBI, and the NYPD as he pursues an American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything. A wonderfully textured, vivid look behind the Iron Curtain, "Gorky Park" is a tense, atmospheric, and memorable crime story.

While caring for her ailing mother, LuLing, Ruth Young comes across a clipped stack of papers in the bottom of a desk drawer. Written in Chinese by LuLing years earlier, the papers contain a narrative of LuLing's life as a girl in China, and the life of her own mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the village of Xian Xin--Immortal Heart. Within the calligraphed pages Ruth finds the truth about a mother's heart, what she cannot tell her daughter yet hopes her daughter will never forget.

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant caught in the tragic sweep of history, "The Kite Runner" transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons--their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt, and her family's final flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, which keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to the West Bank, the fights with her father, and the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday.

The year is 1969. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. This brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

After WWI, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia. He takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on an isolated island and marries the bold Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, Isabel hears a baby's cries. A boat has washed up carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom wants to report them immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a "gift from God," and against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and discover the devastation their choice has caused.

In "The Summer Book," Jansson distills the essence of the summer--its sunlight and storms--into the story of six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother as they spend the summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. Together they amble over coastline and forest, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. "On an island," thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete."

This magical love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Bolivia in the near future. Cryptanalyst Miguel "Turing" Saenz is the most famous code-breaker in the secret government organization the Black Chamber. He is leading the pursuit of the Chamber's latest target: Kandinsky, a "cyberhacktivist" leader who is staging a war against both the government and transnational corporations as part of an antiglobalization revolution. As Turing finds himself drawn into a web of murder, intrigue, and deception, he begins to suspect that his work is not as innocent as he once believed.

Nhamo is a Shona girl living in a traditional village in Mozambique in 1981. When her family tries to force her into a marriage with a cruel man, she flees. But what was supposed to have been a short boat trip across the border into Zimbabwe, where she hoped to find her father, turns into an adventure filled with challenges and danger that lasts a year.

Finally, Amira is twelve. Old enough to wear a toob, for new responsibilities, and maybe to go to school--Amira's one true dream. But life in her peaceful Sudanese village is shattered when the Janjaweed arrive. The terrifying attackers ravage the town and unleash unspeakable horrors. After she loses nearly everything, Amira must find the strength to make the long journey--on foot--to safety at a refugee camp. Her days are tough at the camp, until the gift of a simple red pencil opens her mind--and all kinds of possibilities.

Inspired by his Uncle Salim, a teenage boy living in the turmoil of 1980s Damascus begins a journal to record his thoughts and impressions of family, friends, life at school, and his growing feelings for his girlfriend, Nadia. Soon the hidden diary becomes more than just a way to remember his daily adventures; on its pages he explores his frustration with the government injustices he witnesses. His courage and ingenuity finally find an outlet when he and his friends begin a subversive underground newspaper.