Diane's 2020 book list

Contains a letter to Baldwin's nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Also describes his childhood, views on Black Muslims, and his visions.

"One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls -- sisters, eight and eleven -- go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional...

Offering a study of the application of the science of choice, a guide that uses examples from all aspects of life demonstrates how it is possible to design environments that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between...

An autobiography describing the author's childhood and life in Pittburgh during the fifties.

"Haunting, vivid, and wonderfully subversive, Hale's stories typically concern women recognizable to all of us--sometimes fragile, possibly wicked, deceptively ordinary, navigating their way uncertainly through life" --

"The ebullient, troubled life of a Broadway legend who became a heroine to a younger generation. Still Here is the first full telling of Elaine Stritch's life. Rollicking but intimate, it tracks one of Broadway's great personalities from her upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to her fateful move to New York City, where she studied alongside Marlon Brando, Bea Arthur, and Harry Belafonte. We accompany Elaine through her jagged rise to...

Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

An extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history by the author of the international bestseller Year of Wonders. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With"pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today),...