Recommendations based on "The Missing Pieces of Us"

From internationally bestselling author Benedict Wells, a sweeping novel of love and loss, and of the lives we never get to live“[D]azzling storytelling...The End of Loneliness is both affecting and accomplished -- and eternal.” —John Irving"An exquisitely wrought and utterly absorbing meditation upon life, loss and love." —Ian McEwanJules Moreau’s childhood is shattered after the sudden death of his parents. Enrolled in boarding school where he and his siblings, Marty and Liz, are forced to live apart, the once vivacious and fearless Jules retreats inward, preferring to live within his memories – until he meets Alva, a kindred soul caught in her own grief. Fifteen years pass and the siblings remain strangers to one another, bound by tragedy and struggling to recover the family they once were. Jules, still adrift, is anchored only by his desires to be a writer and to reunite with Alva, who turned her back on their friendship on the precipice of it becoming more. But, just as it seems they can make amends for time wasted, invisible forces – whether fate or chance – intervene.A kaleidoscopic family saga told through the fractured lives of the three Moreau siblings, alongside a faltering, recovering love story, The End of Loneliness is a stunning meditation on the power of our memories, of what can be lost and what can never be let go. With inimitable compassion and luminous, affecting prose, Benedict Wells contends with what it means to find a way through life, while never giving up hope you will find someone to go with you.

“[A] powerful, thought-provoking novel… not only important and timely, but deeply humanizing.” —Good Morning America“Remarkable.” —The Washington Post“Powerful. Dramatic. Insightful…. It’s not only a timely novel, but storytelling at its finest – a must-read.”—NPRAn NPR Books We Love selection for 2023A gripping and uplifting novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who worked in the shadows for our right to choose, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Paris Bookseller.Chicago, early 1970s. Who does a woman call when she needs help? Jane.The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground health clinic composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to embrace their futures by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, Jane’s founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others’ freedom is that she leads a double life. When she’s not at Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife—a juggling act that becomes even more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy.Two more women in Veronica’s neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects. Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at Jane as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her. Patty, who’s long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life. When her runaway younger sister, Eliza, shows up unexpectedly, Patty must come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister.In this historic moment, when the personal was nothing if not political, Veronica, Margaret, and Patty risk it all to help mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. With an awe-inspiring story and appealing characters, All You Have to Do Is Call celebrates the power of women coming together in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Philomena meets Orphan Train in this suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit—the story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other. In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility—much like Maggie Hughes’ parents. Maggie’s English-speaking father has ambitions for his daughter that don’t include marriage to the poor French boy on the next farm over. But Maggie’s heart is captured by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents force her to give baby Elodie up for adoption and get her life ‘back on track’. Elodie is raised in Quebec’s impoverished orphanage system. It’s a precarious enough existence that takes a tragic turn when Elodie, along with thousands of other orphans in Quebec, is declared mentally ill as the result of a new law that provides more funding to psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages. Bright and determined, Elodie withstands abysmal treatment at the nuns’ hands, finally earning her freedom at seventeen, when she is thrust into an alien, often unnerving world. Maggie, married to a businessman eager to start a family, cannot forget the daughter she was forced to abandon, and a chance reconnection with Gabriel spurs a wrenching choice. As time passes, the stories of Maggie and Elodie intertwine but never touch, until Maggie realizes she must take what she wants from life and go in search of her long-lost daughter, finally reclaiming the truth that has been denied them both.

"Stunning." —Entertainment Weekly"Raw and perfect." —Laura Miller, Slate"Heartbreaking yet hopeful." —Samantha Irby, Marie Claire"[Perry] is a wonderful writer...Beauty and tenderness rise up through the darkness...[She] succeeds in restoring her mother's humanity, and her own." —Bliss Broyard, The New York Times Book ReviewA fierce memoir of a mother’s murder, a daughter’s coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her mission to know the woman who gave her life.When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah’s bedroom.The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother’s life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.

"Unpredictable, fantastic. . . . It takes a charged narrative, like Dickens achieves, and as Dalton does too, to reach the heart and the brain. . . . To tell you more would spoil this complicated and surprising story. You should read it."--Sydney Morning Herald Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, an irresistible novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies. A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat and the police who want to make them pay for his death. Home is now a van with four flat tires in a junkyard by the edge of the Brisbane River. The girl has no name, because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But she has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld. A life of love with the boy who's waiting for her on the bridge above the deadly river. And once her mother can no longer protect her, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola. But she has to find her first. Internationally bestselling author Trent Dalton delivers a big, moving, darkly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love and fate, life and death, and all the things we see when we look in the mirror: all our past, all our present, and all our possible futures. Lola in the Mirror is illustrated with black-and-white line art throughout.

"When Emma discovers the first spot, 'like a tiny bright moon' on her left foot, she's at the funeral of her grandmother, who had been her best friend as well. The diagnosis is vitiligo, a skin condition triggered by stress. Creating a large multigenerational cast, Standish knits an absorbing story of loss, identity, and human connections. A rewarding, realistic novel, illuminated by magical elements." --Booklist (starred review) Wonder meets Some Kind of Happiness in this powerful tween novel from Ali Standish, author of the Carnegie Medal nominee The Ethan I Was Before and August Isle. While her grandmother was alive, Emma's world was filled with enchantment. But now Gram is gone, and suddenly strange spots are appearing on Emma's skin. Soon, she's diagnosed with vitiligo--a condition that makes patches of her skin lose their color--and the magic in her world is suddenly replaced with school bullies and doctor appointments. But when Emma writes one last story in the journal she shared with Gram, something strange happens. Someone writes back to her, just like Gram used to. Who's writing to Emma? And just what is her story going to be, now that everything is so different? Award-winning author Ali Standish explores the ways life transforms us, and how we learn to let go of what we must while still holding fast to who we are. "Seamlessly blending childhood wonder with the slow lessons of maturity, this tale succeeds in celebrating curiosity, thoughtfulness, and collaboration, centering on relatable characters who welcome readers into their world." --Publishers Weekly

Title In This Set:1. The Seven Sisters2. The Storm Sister3. The Shadow Sister4. The Pearl Sister5. The Moon Sister6. The Sun Sister7. The Missing SisterDescription:The Seven SistersMaia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved adoptive father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died.Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . . .Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Époque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. But Izabela longs for adventure, and convinces him to allow her to accompany the family of a renowned architect on a trip to Paris. In the heady, vibrant streets of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.The Storm SisterAlly D'Aplièse is about to compete in one of the world's most perilous yacht races, when she hears the news of her adoptive father's sudden, mysterious death. Rushing back to meet her five sisters at their family home, she discovers that her father – an elusive billionaire affectionately known to his daughters as Pa Salt – has left each of them a tantalizing clue to their true heritage.Ally has also recently embarked on a deeply passionate love affair that will change her destiny forever. But with her life now turned upside down, Ally decides to leave the open seas and follow the trail that her father left her, which leads her to the icy beauty of Norway . . .There, Ally begins to discover her roots – and how her story is inextricably bound to that of a young

Discover the captivating story of courage, daring and love from the No. 1 international bestseller Lesley Pearse'Evocative, compelling, told from the heart' Sunday ExpressWith her reputation in tatters, 17-year-old Mari needs to get away from the gossip of her small town.So the chance to leave for London seems like the perfect fresh start.But war is brewing . . .And when London is overwhelmed by the Blitz, Mari's glamorous new life is blown apart.Lost and alone, she must learn what it means to survive . . .____________'Utterly riveting, brilliant' Closer'Characters it is impossible not to care about' Daily Mail'Full of love, passion and heartbreak' Best'Glorious, heartwarming' Woman & Home

A beautiful scarf connects two women touched by tragedy in this compelling, emotional novel from the author of As Bright as Heaven and The Last Year of the War.September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries...and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. What she learns could devastate her—or free her.September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers...the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. But a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf may open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life.“[Meissner] creates two sympathetic, relatable characters that readers will applaud. Touching and inspirational.”—Kirkus Reviews

The middle-grade answer to Christina Baker Kline's New York Times bestselling Orphan Train, this is a shockingly timely historical adventure.   Imagine being taken from your home. Imagine your mother is the one who lets it happen.   This is the fate that befalls the Kelly children. It’s 1856, and their widowed mother has sent them west from New York City because she’s convinced that she can’t give them the life they deserve.   The Kellys board an “orphan train” and are taken to St. Joseph, Missouri, where their problems only grow worse. It was bad enough that they had to say goodbye to their mother, but now they’re forced to part ways with their fellow siblings as well. Thirteen-year-old Frances won’t stand for it. She’s going to protect her brothers and sisters, even if it means dressing up like a boy and putting herself in danger.   Will Frances be able to save her siblings? And what about her mom—was splitting up their family really her greatest act of love? Ride the rails with Frances and her siblings to find out!   “This is as close to a perfect book as you’ll buy this year.” –VOYA