Escape with these characters
Looking for an escape? Open one of these tomes, all of which are available as ebooks, and lose yourself in their worlds.
“TheHundred-Year-OldMan Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.” Jonas Jonasson’s two-book series starts on the 100th birthday of Allan Karlsson. Instead of going to the party he didn’t want, Allan climbs out the window of his bedroom in a nursing home and begins a strange journey involving a stolen identity, a large amount of cash, unsavorycriminalsandanelephant named Sonya—as well as his own amazinghistory.TheSundayTimes described it as “a mordantly funny and loopily freewheeling debut novel about aging disgracefully.”
“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” After getting a letter in the mail from a woman he hadn’t heard from in two decades, recently retired Harold Fry decides to travel 600 miles to deliver his reply in person. Along the way, he experiences profound insight into the thoughts and feelings buried deep within his heart. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin writes, “It is [a book] about all the wonderful everyday things Harold discovers through the mere process of putting one foot in front of the other.” Rachel Joyce continues the storyintheparallelnovel“TheLove Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy.”
“LillianBoxfishTakesaWalk.”
On the last evening of 1984, the titular 85-year-old strolls to a party along the streets of Manhattan, reminiscing about life as an ad woman, wife, mother, divorcée and more. According to The New York Times’reviewofKathleenRooney’s novel,“Lillian’swide-rangingmeditations are reason enough to read this charming novel, but it’s also like taking a street-level tour through six decades of New York.”
“Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.” Helen Simonson weaves a tale of friendship between the retired Major Ernest Pettigrew and Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper in the small English village of Edgecombe St. Mary, with threads of social hierarchy, spousal loss, culture, tradition and romance. Library Journal calls it “irresistibly delightful.”
“AManCalledOve.” In Fredrik Backman’s debut novel, Ove is the stereotypical curmudgeon next door: strict, principled, quick tempered, downright cranky. But that begins to change after the new neighbors accidentally flatten his mailbox with their moving truck. “In turns moving and funny. . . I wager that you’ll soon fall in love with Ove and be deeply moved by his situation, and after spending time with him, may perhaps gaze at the world around you with a little more empathy than when you turned the first page,” says author Eric Larson.
