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Shanghai Girls (May 2009) is a New York Times bestselling historical novel by Lisa See. It is the first of a two-book series that concludes with Dreams of Joy (2011). The author’s paternal great-grandfather emigrated from China, and many of See’s books examine the Chinese immigrant experience in America. Other titles that cover similar subject matter are Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007), China Dolls (2014), The Tea Girl of... Read Shanghai Girls Summary

Silver Sparrow, written by Tayari Jones and published in 2011, is a family drama set in 1980s Atlanta. The novel was a Women’s National Book Association 2011 Great Group Read and was chosen as one of the top 10 books of the year by Library Journal. Plot Summary Silver Sparrow revolves around Dana Lynn Yarboro and Chaurisse Witherspoon, who are half-sisters, although only Dana knows this.  Dana, 16, narrates the first half of the novel. Dana has... Read Silver Sparrow Summary

Sing, Unburied, Sing is author Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, and her second (following 2011’s Salvage the Bones) to win the National Book Award for Fiction. Published in 2017, Sing, Unburied, Sing touches on many of the same issues Ward’s other novels do, including the racial and class divisions of the contemporary American South; the novel takes place against the backdrop of events like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as well as societal trends like... Read Sing, Unburied, Sing Summary

In the novel Sister of My Heart, the Indian-born American author and poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores issues of family, womanhood, and diasporic experience, constantly affirming and exploring the redemptive power of storytelling. Divakaruni’s first collection of stories, Arranged Marriage, won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her novel The Mistress of Spices was released as a film of the same name in 2005. Sister of My Heart was made into a television series... Read Sister of My Heart Summary

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Skipping Christmas is a 2001 satirical novella by John Grisham. It tells the story of Luther and Nora Krank, a married couple whose adult daughter, Blair, moves to Peru a month before Christmas. Facing their first Christmas without their daughter, and disillusioned by the holiday’s excesses, they decide to forego Christmas that year and go on a cruise instead. However, their decision brings them into conflict with their friends and neighbors, who expect them to... Read Skipping Christmas Summary

Small Great Things, Jodi Picoult’s 2016 novel, takes its title from a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” The book takes its major section titles from the stages of childbirth, beginning with “Stage One: Early Labor” (1). This short opening section takes place in 1976, with Ruth Jefferson narrating an incident from her childhood in which she and her... Read Small Great Things Summary

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a frame tale, a story within a story, as told by an eighty-year-old Chinese woman, reflecting on her life and preparing for her death. In the first and last chapter, the narrator Lily reveals that she is dictating the story to Peony, the wife of her grandson, as a form of confession to her friend Snow Flower who is now in the afterworld. Lily was born to a... Read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Summary

Best-selling author Kristina McMorris’s historical fiction novel Sold on a Monday (2018) is inspired by a real life event: A photograph published in a 1948 magazine of four siblings standing on their apartment steps with their mother (who is trying to hide her face from the photographer), and a sign advertising the children for sale in the foreground. The overarching theme of the novel is how one person’s poor decision can have many unexpected, and... Read Sold on a Monday Summary

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Song Yet Sung by James McBride is a 2008 historical fiction novel that takes place in 1850 on the eastern shore of Maryland. The central character, Liz Spocott, is a runaway slave who experiences strange dreams of the future with disturbing images that the reader can recognize as twentieth-century scenes. The novel employs magical realism and weaves historically accurate details with supernatural elements. Themes of race, class, gender, geography, and the consequences of the institution... Read Song Yet Sung Summary

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The novel begins at the Vogel Medical Research Campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the news of Dr. Anders Eckman’s death. This news is delivered in the form of a cryptic Aerogram sent by Dr. Annick Swenson, the Vogel Corporations’ lead scientist on a research mission in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil. Eckman’s colleagues, including fellow pharmacologist and former lab partner, Dr. Marina Singh, and her boss and covert lover, Vogel CEO Jim Fox, struggle to... Read State of Wonder Summary

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is a memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen that tells the story of her childhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a young Vietnamese refugee. Bich’s family, made up of her father; her grandmother, Noi; her sister, Anh; and her uncles, Chu Anh, Chu Cuong, and Chu Dai; flee to the United States from Vietnam in April 1975, just as Saigon is falling to the North Vietnamese. Her mother is left behind, and the... Read Stealing Buddha's Dinner Summary

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, tells the story of a Harvard cognitive psychology professor, Alice Howland, and her descent into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. When the novel opens, Alice is unaware of her disease; although she recognizes that she has become a touch more forgetful lately, she chalks this up to getting older and keeping a busy academic schedule. However, her lapses soon become worse, and a series of tests confirm that she has early-onset Alzheimer’s... Read Still Alice Summary