Books with author Jennifer Adan

* Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction * New York Times Bestseller * A San Francisco Chronicle Top 10 Book of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2017 * A Time magazine and USA Today Top 10 Novel of 2017 * Winner of the Booklist Top of the List for Fiction * Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction * Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, Esquire, Kirkus Reviews, Philadelphia Inquirer, BookPage, Bustle, Southern Living, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Immensely satisfying...an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer...Egan is masterly at displaying mastery...she works a formidable kind of magic." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have vanished. "A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft" (The Boston Globe), "Egan's first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you're reading historical fiction at all" (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

Spanning four generations and three continents, Acker brings us the story of the Chandarias: Sunil, a struggling philosophy doctoral candidate, and his parents Urmila and Premchand.Sunil's sudden marriage to his Jewish American girlfriend Amy compels a tumultuous family reunion in Nairobi, his parents' birthplace. After learning a long-buried family secret, and enduring a severe trauma, Sunil and Amy try to sustain their love as they wrestle with the weight of difference.With utmost respect for an endless mosaic of cultural divisions, Acker brings a stunning empathy to the limits that prevent us from truly understanding the people we are closest to.