Books with author Lori Sherman

“Bengali Girls Don’t” by L.A. Sherman shares the author’s journey from her birth in a remote village during Bangladesh’s liberation war to her rebellious days in England as a young girl in the 1980s to her eventual forced marriage.The story, which reads like a cultural exposé on Bengali culture, starts in the summer of 1971, in East Pakistan, with the author still inside her mother’s womb. With the Pakistani soldiers closing in, Sherman’s parents and two brothers had to flee through the forest when the soldiers raided their village to survive. After liberation, Sherman’s parents moved to England where she grew up wanting to be like the English girls, able to go out here and there, have friends over and have boyfriends. But when her parents caught on to her un-Islamic ways, they tricked her into going to Bangladesh so that they could marry her off. At fifteen, she was forced to marry a man old enough to be her father, had his baby, and suffered for four years under a domineering mother-in-law until unexpectedly winning the OP-1 visa lottery for America. “The book is unique in that it really gives to the western reader an idea of what Bangladeshi home life is really like and how easy it is to get caught between two cultures.”She was inspired to write the story due to the lack of English language books on Bengali lifestyles. “Sure, some authors have written about our way of living,” she says, “but those are by people who’ve never lived it; I lived it, I breathed it, my heart was emptied out because of it.”She goes on to say that the book is about heartache and irony. About broken dreams. And how the life we choose is not always the life that chooses us. “It’s like ‘Brick Lane’ on steroids,” Sherman says. “Or the Bengali version of ‘East is East.’"Gripping . . . sort of reminds you of Elizabeth Smart or Jaycee Dugard."--Zakariya Mikal, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

While Callista Sunders recovers in a hospital room from an unexpected accident, hopelessness fills the crack in her heart and only love can repair the fissure. Love is something she never thought she would find outside of her Grandma Anne, her mother, and her twin brother—until she met Lord Triton. But now he is missing and Callista fears the worst. All she has is his sigil that she wears around her neck and the hope that one day they will be reunited. Callista never thought she’d be spending her eighteenth birthday in the hospital, but when she receives Triton’s journal as a gift, everything changes. While studying it with Grandma Anne, Callista finds a spell designed for time travel. Anne, along with her coven attempt to send Callista back in time to the island they know as Pitcairn. If it works and she survives, Callista will know Triton, but to him, she will be a complete stranger. In this continuing tale, a young woman must use her special abilities and a time travel spell to find Triton, a merman deity who needs her help, and she, his.

While Callista Sunders recovers in a hospital room from an unexpected accident, hopelessness fills the crack in her heart and only love can repair the fissure. Love is something she never thought she would find outside of her Grandma Anne, her mother, and her twin brother—until she met Lord Triton. But now he is missing and Callista fears the worst. All she has is his sigil that she wears around her neck and the hope that one day they will be reunited. Callista never thought she’d be spending her eighteenth birthday in the hospital, but when she receives Triton’s journal as a gift, everything changes. While studying it with Grandma Anne, Callista finds a spell designed for time travel. Anne, along with her coven attempt to send Callista back in time to the island they know as Pitcairn. If it works and she survives, Callista will know Triton, but to him, she will be a complete stranger. In this continuing tale, a young woman must use her special abilities and a time travel spell to find Triton, a merman deity who needs her help, and she, his.

While Callista Sunders recovers in a hospital room from an unexpected accident, hopelessness fills the crack in her heart and only love can repair the fissure. Love is something she never thought she would find outside of her Grandma Anne, her mother, and her twin brotheruntil she met Lord Triton. But now he is missing and Callista fears the worst. All she has is his sigil that she wears around her neck and the hope that one day they will be reunited.Callista never thought shed be spending her eighteenth birthday in the hospital, but when she receives Tritons journal as a gift, everything changes. While studying it with Grandma Anne, Callista finds a spell designed for time travel. Anne, along with her coven attempt to send Callista back in time to the island they know as Pitcairn. If it works and she survives, Callista will know Triton, but to him, she will be a complete stranger.In this continuing tale, a young woman must use her special abilities and a time travel spell to find Triton, a merman deity who needs her help, and she, his.