Rapid Readers' Advisory: Romance

Despite the medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, but when Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be rewritten. | Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life. #Cancer #YoungAdult #Death

Immerse yourself in a world devised by two masters of twentieth century fiction, Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford. Second in a series of three collaborations between the two writers, Romance combines elements of high-seas adventure with a touching love story. #English #eBook

"In "Auntland," a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of strawberry ice-cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughter "Dog." In "The Chorus of Dead Cousins," ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm-chaser. In "Xífù," a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to rid the house of her. In "Mariela," two girls explore one another's bodies for the first time while in "Virginia Slim," a woman from a cigarette ad comes to life. And in "Resident Aliens," a former slaughterhouse serves as a residence to a series of widows, each harboring her own calamitous secrets." #AsianAmerican #Women #LGBTQ

Discovering a medieval book and a cache of letters, a motherless American girl becomes the latest in a series of historians, including her late father, who investigate the possible surviving legacy of Vlad the Impaler. #Vampires #Historical #Horror #Occult #Thriller #Paranormal #Romance

When Cuban fisherman first spotted the Key West lighthouse floating in Florida waters, they called her Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. It's a beacon that draws people from everywhere seeking the end-of-the-line bohemian oasis that can still be found amidst the condo share towers, chain stores, and Redneck Riviera clientele. And it's a mecca for gay men and the women who love them. His stories wind in and out of the bars and guesthouses and lives of this singular paradise: a memorial for a drag queen held at the vicar's Victorian leads to uneasy encounters; two southern sisters on a cruise ship holiday are up against the ravages of alcohol, estrangement, and deadly weather. Newly divorced gay men (already a phenomenon) lick their wounds and bask in the island's lasting social twilight.  Stella Maris is about the verities of illness and death. The past and its prisoners, AIDS, the young and not so young man's realization of his own mortality. #ShortStories #LGBTQ #Gay #Men #Florida

"Gabriel Oak is an honest, hard-working young farmer, who falls in love with the beautiful and independent Bathsheba Everdene. After a tragic accident, Gabriel loses his farm. Bathsheba, on the other hand, becomes rich. Is there any hope for Gabriel?" #Classic #English #FarmLife #Maturation

"In the final days of World War II, four damaged lives converge in an abandoned Italian villa that is riddled with undetonated bombs the Germans have left behind and with the potentially explosive secrets of its current inhabitants. Hana, a grieving Canadian nurse; Caravaggio, a maimed former thief; and Kip, an emotionally detached Indian sapper--all three are haunted in different ways by the man they know as 'the English patient,' a nameless burn victim who lies in an upstairs room. It is this man's incandescent memories--of the bleak North African desert, of explorers' caves and Bedouin tribesmen, of forbidden love, and of annihilating anger--that illuminate the story, and the consequences of the mysteries they reveal radiate outward in shock waves that leave all the characters forever changed." #NorthAfrica #WW2 #WWII #WorldWar2 #English #American #UnitedStates #Italy #eBook

Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighborhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernizing society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated for corruption, he's forced to reconsider his role in the transformation of his country. At the same time, he receives an unexpected message from an old friend, Cha Soona, a woman that he had once loved, and then betrayed. As memories return unbidden, Minwoo recalls a world he thought had been left behind--a world he now understands that he has helped to destroy. #Architects #SouthKorea #ManWomanRelationship #eBook

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both. [A Coretta Scott King Honor Book] #BlackGirls #LGBTQ #YA

The residents of the Blithedale farm wish to make it into a modern Arcadia, free from the pollution of society. But they form such a varied, self-interested group, that their efforts are in vain. The misogynistic Hollingsworth wants to turn it into a sanctuary for reformed criminals; the exotic feminist Zenobia is helplessly attracted to Hollingsworth; and the narrator is an unreliable dandy with voyeuristic tendencies. Henry James called The Blithedale Romance the lightest and liveliest of Hawthorne's non-comedic novels. #AutobiographicalFiction #CollectiveFarm #CommunalLiving #FarmLife #Massachusetts #MismatchedLove

In this book, the French version of ""Chunhyang"" has been translated into English and is published with the 1919 English text of ""A Dead Tree Blossoms"" and a couple of other Korean love tales translated a hundred or more years ago. #SouthKorea #RepublicofKorea #Korean #Translation #eBook

Thomas Hardy's final novel Jude the Obscure explores notions of class, religion, marriage and modernization through its protagonist Jude Fawley, a working-class man who dreams of being a scholar. Provocative and daring for its day, the book was burnt publicly by the Bishop of Wakefield when it was published in 1895. #Classic #English #Tragic #eBook