On The Shelves Today!

by Rana Asfour

Here's a quick look at the books that hit the shelves today and that BookFabulous is adding to its 'To Read' list for 2019

Non Fiction

'PARKLAND SPEAKS: SURVIVORS FROM MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS SHARE THEIR STORIES' BY SARAH LERNER

The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School share their emotional journeys that began on February 14, 2018, and continue today. This revealing and unfiltered look at teens living in the wake of tragedy is a poignant representation of grief, anger, determination, healing, and hope.

The intimate collection includes poetry, eyewitness accounts, letters, speeches, journal entries, drawings, and photographs from the events of February 14 and its aftermath. Full of heartbreaking loss, a rally cry for change, and hope for a safe future, these artistic pieces will inspire readers to reflect on their own lives and the importance of valuing and protecting the ones you love.
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'MAID: HARD WORK, LOW PAY AND A MOTHER'S WILL TO SURVIVE' BY STEPHANIE LAND

At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly.

​'Maid' explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless ghost," Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients' lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path. Her compassionate, unflinching writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line.
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'ALL THE LIVES WE EVER LIVED: SEEKING SOLACE IN VIRGINIA WOOLF' BY KATHARINE SMYTH

Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece 'To the Lighthouse' in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death—a calamity that claimed her favourite person—she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief. 

Smyth’s story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf’s Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss, and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of 'To the Lighthouse', and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf’s most demanding and rewarding novel—and crafts an elegant reminder of literature’s ability to clarify and console.
 
Braiding memoir, literary criticism, and biography, 'All the Lives We Ever Lived' is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.

FICTION

'THE SUSPECT' BY FIONA BARTON

​When two eighteen-year-old girls go missing in Thailand, their families are thrust into the international spotlight: desperate, bereft, and frantic with worry. What were the girls up to before they disappeared?

Journalist Kate Waters always does everything she can to be first to the story, first with the exclusive, first to discover the truth—and this time is no exception. But she can’t help but think of her own son, whom she hasn’t seen in two years, since he left home to go travelling. 

As the case of the missing girls unfolds, they will all find that even this far away, danger can lie closer to home than you might think...