Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher

Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when she was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that’s why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her --- and always will be, whatever happens.

Then one day, Faye gets her heart’s desire when she is whisked back into the past and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self.

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Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, 13-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices that belong to the things in his house. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. Benny tries to ignore them, but the voices follow him outside the house, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book --- a talking thing --- who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

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Anderson Cooper, author of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

When 11-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the 19th century, no one could have imagined that one day he would build two empires --- one in shipping and another in railroads --- that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson, Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence.

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