In My Hands Today…

Beijing Payback – Daniel Nieh

Victor Li is devastated by his father’s murder, and shocked by a confessional letter he finds among his father’s things. In it, his father admits that he was never just a restaurateur—in fact he was part of a vast international crime syndicate that formed during China’s leanest communist years.

Victor travels to Beijing, where he navigates his father’s secret criminal life, confronting decades-old grudges, violent spats, and a shocking new enterprise that the organization wants to undertake. Standing up against it is likely what got his father killed, but Victor remains undeterred. He enlists his growing network of allies and friends to finish what his father started, no matter the costs.

Weekend Quotes #307

In My Hands Today…

The Storm – Arif Anwar

Shahryar, a recent Ph.D. graduate and father of nine-year-old Anna, must leave the US when his visa expires. As father and daughter spend their last remaining weeks together, Shahryar tells Anna the history of his country, beginning in a village on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman and his Hindu wife, who converted to Islam out of love for him, are preparing to face a storm of historic proportions.

Their story intersects with those of a Japanese fighter pilot, a British female doctor stationed in Burma during World War II, a Buddhist monk originally from Austria, and a privileged couple in Calcutta who leave everything behind to move to East Pakistan following the Partition of India. The structure of this riveting novel mimics the storm itself – building to a series of revelatory and moving climaxes as it explores the many ways in which families love, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another.

In My Hands Today…

This is London: Life and Death in the World City – Ben Judah

London is a global city. More than half of those who live in the UK’s capital came from somewhere else – and most arrived in the last ten years. Migration is transforming London, for better and for worse.

Ben Judah, an acclaimed foreign correspondent turns his keen reporter’s eye on home, immersing himself in the hidden world of the city’s immigrants – from the richest to the poorest – to discover the complex and varied individuals who are making London what it is today.

He’s had dinner with oligarchs and meetings with foreign royalty, spent nights streetwalking and sleeping rough; he’s heard stories of heart-breaking failure, but also witnessed extraordinary acts of compassion, hope and the triumph of love.

In My Hands Today…

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek – Kim Michele Richardson

In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry. The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government’s new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.

In My Hands Today…

Pure Heart – Rajia Hassib

Sisters Rose and Gameela Gubran could not have been more different. Rose, an Egyptologist, married an American journalist and immigrated to New York City, where she works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gameela, a devout Muslim since her teenage years, stayed in Cairo.

During the aftermath of Egypt’s revolution, Gameela is killed in a suicide bombing. When Rose returns to Egypt after the bombing, she sifts through the artifacts Gameela left behind, desperate to understand how her sister came to die, and who she truly was.

Soon, Rose realizes that Gameela has left many questions unanswered. Why had she quit her job just a few months before her death and not told her family? Who was she romantically involved with? And how did the religious Gameela manage to keep so many secrets?

In My Hands Today…

Every Little Secret: a novel – Mercedes King

Kyle Reed’s life as a pre-law college student gets muddled when a cold case investigator shows up to question her mom about an unsolved murder.

In 1980, Marty Cox was killed in her home and the culprit was never identified. Kyle, only eight years old at the time, doesn’t remember much about Marty—except her affair with Kyle’s dad. Because of the affair, Gerald and Annette Reed were considered suspects.

Twelve years have passed, but Kyle has rarely spoken to her mom, Annette, about Marty—or about her dad leaving the family—out of respect for Annette’s feelings. Kyle’s attempt to revisit and expand her patchwork of recollections gets no help—or encouragement—from her mother or brother.

Driven by a need to make sense of her past, Kyle visits her dad’s favorite old haunt, the Junkyard Lounge. The tangible reconnection with the place where her dad’s affair began, prompts memories of abuse and abandonment to the surface for Kyle.

As Marty’s case gets revitalized—and Kyle discovers new information—suspicion around Annette intensifies. Gritty revelations threaten to destroy Kyle’s relationships, and pushing certain people too far puts Kyle’s life in jeopardy. When every little secret comes to light—including Kyle’s own secrets—will she be able to live with the truth?

In My Hands Today…

House of Stone: A Novel – Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

In the chronic turmoil of modern Zimbabwe, Abednego and Agnes Mlambo’s teenage son, Bukhosi, has gone missing, and the Mlambos fear the worst. Their enigmatic lodger, Zamani, seems to be their last, best hope for finding him. Since Bukhosi’s disappearance, Zamani has been preternaturally helpful: hanging missing posters in downtown Bulawayo, handing out fliers to passersby, and joining in family prayer vigils with the flamboyant Reverend Pastor from Agnes’s Blessed Anointings church. It’s almost like Zamani is part of the family….

But almost isn’t nearly enough for Zamani. He ingratiates himself with Agnes and feeds alcoholic Abednego’s addiction, desperate to extract their life stories and steep himself in borrowed family history, as keenly aware as any colonialist or power-mad despot that the one who controls the narrative inherits the future. As Abednego wrestles with the ghosts of his past and Agnes seeks solace in a deep-rooted love, their histories converge and each must confront the past to find their place in a new Zimbabwe.

In My Hands Today…

Spiral Road – Adib Khan

Masud Alam has lived in Australia for the past 30 of his 53 years. Now his father, Abba, is dying, drifting in a haze of Alzheimer’s, and Masud has returned to Bangladesh to say goodbye and to reconnect with his family.

Unmarried, he instantly becomes the focus of his mother’s match-making, which involves a local woman, Alya, who runs a factory providing jobs for rural women in a nearby village. He also begins to realise how far his family’s fortunes have fallen, and how hard his brother Zia has had to work to keep them all afloat.

As Masud reacquaints himself with his family and with Bangladesh, he realises how little he really knows them. Haunted by his own experiences as a soldier in Bangladesh’s war of independence, he is surprised by the shifting, complex attitudes of his old friends and neighbours. He also discovers some family secrets, when a chance remark by his father prompts him to examine some old family papers. But most disturbing of all are the secrets of his young nephew, Omar, recently returned from America with a quiet steeliness in his gaze …

Weekend Quotes #306