Shelfology Book Pairing

by Amor Towles

"In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the working farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother is long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett intends to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the working farm have hidden in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles' third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling, while providing an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes."--Container.

by Elif Shafak

1974, on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In 'The Island of Missing Trees', prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.