Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: Siblings

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: East of Eden
Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Publishing Date: 2016 (1952)
No. of Pages: 601

Synopsis: 

East of Eden is the masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s later years – a vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. In his journal, Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence.

Title: Nothing to See Here
Author: Kevin Wilson
Publisher: ECCO
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 254

Synopsis: 

Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, more than ten years later when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.

Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust one another – and stay cool – while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her – urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?

With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet 0 a most unusual story of parental love.

Title: Such a Fun Age
Author: Kiley Reid
Publisher: Putnam
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 305

Synopsis: 

When Emira Tucker is apprehended at a local high-end supermarket for “kidnapping” the white child she’s babysitting, a small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is left furious and humiliated. Her employer, Alix Chamberlain, a feminist entrepreneur known for her confidence-driven brand, resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. And when the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Publishing Date: 2008 (1818)
No. of Pages: 249

Synopsis: 

Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her social circle and Anne finds her old feelings for him reignited. However, when they meet again Wentworth behaves as if they are strangers and seems more interested in her friend Louisa. With humour, insight and tenderness, Jane Austen tells the story of a love that endures the tests of time and society.

Title: Sing, Unburied, Sing
Author: Jesmyn Ward
Publisher: Scribner
Publishing Date: 2017
No. of Pages: 285

Synopsis: 

In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi’s past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds.

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Back grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his grandfather Big Joseph who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He, too, has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an unforgettable family story.”