In the Shadow of the Banyan
10 best books like In the Shadow of the Banyan (Vaddey Ratner): The Underground Railroad, Never Fall Down, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, The World We Found, The Garden of Evening Mists, Temple of a Thousand Faces, Running the Rift, White Dog Fell from the Sky, Little Century, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey
| Author | Colson Whitehead |
| ISBN | 0385542364 |
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad,...
| Author | Patricia McCormick |
| ISBN | 0061730939 |
This National Book Award nominee from two-time finalist Patricia McCormick is the unforgettable story of Arn Chorn-Pond, who defied the odds to survive the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge.
Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond,...
| Author | Maria Semple |
| ISBN | 0316204277 |
Bernadette Fox has vanished.
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox...
| Author | Thrity Umrigar |
| ISBN | 0061938343 |
Thrity Umrigar, acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven, returns with a breathtaking new novel—a skillfully wrought, emotionally resonant story of four women and the indelible friendship they share. Fans of Jennifer Haigh’s Faith, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of...
The Garden of Evening Mists
| Author | Tan Twan Eng |
| ISBN | 1905802498 |
It's Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambridge and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. There...
Temple of a Thousand Faces
| Author | John Shors |
| ISBN | 0451239172 |
In his international bestseller Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors wrote about the ancient passion, beauty, and brilliance that inspired the Taj Mahal. Now with Temple of a Thousand Faces, he brings to life the legendary temple of Angkor Wat, an unrivaled marvel of ornately carved towers and stone statues....
| Author | Naomi Benaron |
| ISBN | 1616201940 |
Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions. Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical...
White Dog Fell from the Sky
| Author | Eleanor Morse |
| ISBN | 0670026409 |
An extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat
Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story.
...
| Author | Anna Keesey |
| ISBN | 0374192049 |
In the tradition of such classics as My Ántonia and There Will Be Blood, Anna Keesey's Little Century is a resonant and moving debut novel by a writer of confident gifts.
Orphaned after the death of her mother, eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative....
| Author | Pascal Khoo Thwe |
| ISBN | 0060505230 |
Winner of the 2002 Kiriyama Prize in Nonfiction
The astonishing story of a young man's upbringing in a remote tribal village in Burma and his journey from his strife-torn country to the tranquil quads of Cambridge. In lyrical prose, Pascal Khoo Thwe describes his childhood as a member of the...
| Author | Colin Cotterill |
| ISBN | 1569476276 |
Praise for the Dr. Siri series:
“The consistently fine characterizations of the entire cast are matched by a tightly constructed plot.”—Booklist
“Glimpses of everyday life in Laos will appeal to those readers curious about a culture unfamiliar to most Americans.”—Publishers...
| Author | Corban Addison |
| ISBN | 1402792808 |
Corban Addison leads readers on a chilling, eye-opening journey into Mumbai's seedy underworld--and the nightmare of two orphaned girls swept into the international sex trade.
When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister...
| Author | Gail Tsukiyama |
| ISBN | 0312274815 |
A powerful new novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary times at the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Many intellectuals...
| Author | Anita Amirrezvani |
| ISBN | 1451660472 |
Iran in 1576 is a place of wealth and dazzling beauty. But when the Shah dies without having named an heir, the court is thrown into tumult. Princess Pari, the Shah’s daughter and protégée, knows more about the inner workings of the state than almost anyone, but her maneuvers to instill order after...
| Author | Brandon W. Jones |
| ISBN | 1616200774 |
Before she met Il-sun in an orphanage, Gi was a hollow husk of a girl, broken from growing up in one of North Korea’s forced-labor camps. A mathematical genius, she learned to cope with pain by retreating into a realm of numbers and calculations, an escape from both the past and the present. Gi becomes...
| Author | Stephen Dau |
| ISBN | 0399158456 |
An exceptional debut novel about a young Muslim war orphan whose family is killed in a military operation gone wrong, and the American soldier to whom his fate, and survival, is bound.
Jonas is fifteen when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed Muslim country....
| Author | Margaret Dilloway |
| ISBN | 0399157751 |
Thirty-six-year-old Gal Garner lives a regimented life. Her job teaching biology and her struggle with kidney disease keep her toggling between the high school, the hospital, and her home on a strict schedule.
Only at home, in her garden, does Gal come alive. It's here that she experiments...
| Author | Ru Freeman |
| ISBN | 1555976425 |
A tender, evocative novel, in the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war.
On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies...
| Author | Georgina Harding |
| ISBN | 1408821125 |
Speed dating with books 4/6
Since I am moving my books from one room to another and building a new bookcase I realized (again) that I have way too many unread books. I decided to choose 6 (for the beginning) of the ones waiting on my shelves for a long time or that I do not know if I would like, read 50 pages...
| Author | Geoff Ryman |
| ISBN | 0006552102 |
In the shadow of Angkor Wat archaeologists make an astonishing discovery: the memoir of Cambodia's greatest king, preserved on leaves of gold for centuries. When the treasure is stolen, two ordinary Cambodians, a young moto-boy and a middle-aged ex-Khmer Rouge, join forces to recover it. But the...
Children of the Jacaranda Tree
| Author | Sahar Delijani |
| ISBN | 1476709092 |
A stunning debut novel set in post-Revolutionary Iran that gives voice to the men, women, and children who won a war only to find their lives–and those of their descendants - imperiled by its aftermath.
We all have a tree inside us. Finding it is just a matter of time. Neda is born in Evin Prison,...
| Author | Jennifer Cody Epstein |
| ISBN | 0393347885 |
In this evocative and thrilling epic novel, fifteen-year-old Yoshi Kobayashi, child of Japan’s New Empire, daughter of an ardent expansionist and a mother with a haunting past, is on her way home on a March night when American bombers shower her city with napalm—an attack that leaves one hundred...
| Author | Kiana Davenport |
| ISBN | 1612183417 |
Thrust into the savagery of the U.S. Civil War, a Chinese immigrant fighting for the Union Army, a nurse turned spy, and a one-armed Confederate cavalryman find their lives inextricably entwined.
Johnny Tom, a Chinese immigrant, is promised American citizenship if he serves with the Union...
| Author | Kim Fay |
| ISBN | 0345531345 |
In 1925 the international treasure-hunting scene is a man’s world, and no one understands this better than Irene Blum, who is passed over for a coveted museum curatorship because she is a woman. Seeking to restore her reputation, she sets off from Seattle in search of a temple believed to house the...
