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Recommended contemporary fiction books (110)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you are into contemporary fiction here are some contemporary fiction books from United States of America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.

81.

The Idiot by Elif Batuman EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
"The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings"--Dust jacket flap.

82.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Description:
Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while at the same time an old friend of hers resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

83.

The Middle of Everywhere : Helping Refugees Enter the American Community by Mary Pipher EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
The New York Times's best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher connects us with our greater family--the human family. Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family--refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the hope and desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ... continue

84.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives. History is a flood. The mighty red . . . In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Ki... continue

85.

The Overstory by Richard Powers EN

Rating: 5 (5 votes)
Description:
THE MILLION-COPY GLOBAL BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 'Radical and exciting' Jessie Burton 'Breathtaking' Barbara Kingsolver 'It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it' Barack Obama 'Really, just one of the best novels, period' Ann Patchett A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life b... continue

86.
The River Is Waiting

The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
"From the New York Times bestselling author of Oprah Bookclub Picks I Know This Much Is True and She's Come Undone comes the heart wrenching story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the possibility of atonement for the unforgivable"--

87.
The Skin and Its Girl

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harken... continue

88.

The Sluts by Dennis Cooper EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to ... continue

89.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Description:
Ernest Hemingway's quintessential story of the Lost Generation With a new introduction by Maria Hinojosa, Emmy Award-winning journalist and anchor of Latino USA “A truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame. . . It is magnificent writing, filled with that organic action which gives a compelling picture of character. This novel is unquestionably one of the events of an unusually rich year in literature.”--New York Times Book Review First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises displays the full flower of Hemingway's unique style, ... continue

90.

The Swimmers : A novel by Julie Otsuka EN

0 Ratings
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE WINNER • From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel that "starts as a catalogue of spoken and unspoken rules for swimmers at an aquatic center but unfolds into a powerful story of a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s love" (The Washington Post). The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cas... continue