Identity
By Dinaw Mengestu
Coming of age during an African revolution, a brilliant university student-turned-fighter eventually flees the escalating violence of his country to resettle in America, where he is haunted by his past and the memory of a charismatic leader’s devastating sacrifice.
A visit from his daughter and her fiancé from Oregon prompts Jerry Battle to reassess his life, his family relationships, his professional success, and his disengagement from those around him, as he reflects on his professional success and his love of flying solo, in a novel set in an upper-middle-class suburban Long Island community.
By Lena Mahmoud
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
After her mother is killed and her father disappears, Isra Shadi, whose parents were Palestinian and white, lives with her aunt and uncle, but when she is encouraged to leave and marry, she chooses a love from her past, as she is caught between two cultures and struggles for identity.
By Hilary Thayer Hamann
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
"Hamann's debut traces the sensual, passionate, and lonely interior of a young woman artist growing up in windswept East Hampton at the end of the 1970’s (From the Publisher)."
By Jonathan Carroll
Sharing the same hyper-realistic dream one night, five people from the same New England town wake up aware of their true identities as cosmic repairmen responsible for fixing the chaos brought about by the universe's sentient beings.
By Uzodinma Iweala
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Recruited by a unit of guerrilla fighters after the brutal murder of his father by militants, a West African student falls under the spell of his dangerous commander, and finds his new life increasingly contrasting with his former existence.
By Lisa Unger
A young New York writer, a privileged daughter of a doting father and a loving mother does a good deed which has terrible consequences and leaves her running for her life.
By S.J. Watson
Recommended By Arlene Silverman, Library Clerk, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian
An amnesiac attempts to reconstruct her past by keeping a journal and discovers the dangerous inconsistencies in the stories of her husband and her secret doctor.
A young English soldier finds a new love interest when he stays with a family in Northern France.
Became the TV Mini-Series: Birdsong
By Melissa De la Cruz
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager, Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist
When all of her secrets come to light on the night of her fabulous 40th birthday party, Ellie de Florent–Stinson, a woman greatly envied by all who know her, watches as the beautiful facade of her life crumbles in one eventful night.
By Siri Hustvedt
A provocative tale told through a series of scholarly texts draws on notebooks and conflicting accounts about the life and work of an acclaimed artist who after years of being marginalized conceals her female identity behind three male fronts.
By Sharon M. Draper
Piano–prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.
Loving her unconventional single life in 1962 Denver, a bookshop owner begins experiencing powerful, reality-challenging dreams of an alternate life where she is a wife and mother.
“A mother can't understand why the young boy in her house no longer seems like her son—and with this unexpectedly impressive debut novel of psychological mystery, Schupack boldly announces her presence at the table of writers who deserve to be heard (Kirkus Reviews).”
By Elle Feldman
Peter Van Pels hid in the attic with Anne Frank and died in the camps just before liberation. This novel attempts to answer the question: What if he survived, forged a new identity, and came to the U.S. after the war?
By Kelly Harms
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian
Forced to fake her wedding for her sponsors after her fiancé jilts her, a popular social media influencer tries to find a life offline.
By Ellen Ullman
Taking a downtown office to plot his comeback in tumultuous 1970s San Francisco, a disgraced professor eavesdrops on a woman's therapy sessions.
By Leslie Marmon Silko
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
Deeply scarred Tayo, a WWII veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation.
By Ian McEwan
A highly respected London judge hides her decision to separate from a husband who wants an open marriage, a loss that challenges her beliefs throughout a case involving parents whose faith forbids a life-saving transfusion for their son.
By Jeff Lindsay
Series Dexter
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
“Hiding a secret life as an assassin while working as a murder analyst for the Miami police, Dexter Morgan is intrigued by the work of a new serial killer whose style mimics his own (From the Publisher).”
Became the TV show: Dexter.
By Ann Packer
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
When her fiancée Mike is left paralyzed following a tragic accident, Carrie Bell begins to question her familiar world, from her everyday life in Wisconsin to her relationships, as she sets out to rediscover her own identity.
Became the TV Movie: The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
Genre Books to Screen, Coming of Age Fiction, TV Movies, Psychological Fiction, Change, Identity
Teen Genre Adult Books for Teens
A tale inspired by the tragic first-century massacre of hundreds of Jewish people at Masada presents the stories of a hated daughter, a baker's wife, a girl disguised as a warrior, and a medicine woman who keep doves and secrets while Roman soldiers draw near.
By Elizabeth Berg
A tale based on the controversial life of mid-nineteenth-century French novelist George Sand follows her separation from her husband and vibrant life in Paris, where she wore men's clothing and shared love affairs and friendships with famous intimates.
By Edmund White
A fictional account of one man’s struggle to succeed as a writer and to discover what it means to be gay offers a journey of remembrance that ranges from the 1960s to the present.
By Sherri L. Smith
During World War II, a light–skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
By Mohja Kahf
“Beautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. It is a riveting debut from an important new voice (From the Publisher).”
By Lori Lansens
A novel told from two viewpoints: that of Rose and that of Ruby Darlen, 29-year-old conjoined twins. Rose and Ruby are about to go down in history as the oldest surviving twins to be joined at the head. A recent medical diagnosis has spurred them to write their autobiography, remembering the joys and challenges of their lives.
By Ali Land
Milly, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a serial killer, is given a fresh start with a new identity and placement in an affluent foster family, but wrestles with the decision not to follow in her mother's violent footsteps.
By Joyce Carol Oates
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
“The daughter of a German high school teacher who was forced to work as a gravedigger after immigrating to upstate New York, Rebecca begins a life-changing pilgrimage throughout America in the wake of a prejudice-motivated tragedy (From the Publisher).”
By Alan Brennert
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Chronicles the lives of Asian immigrants in and around Hawaii's early 20th-century glamor days.
The spirit of Virginia Woolf permeates the lives of several American readers as evidenced in this trio of tales about the author Woolf, a New Yorker planning a party to honour a writer, and a young mother reading Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
Became the movie: The Hours.
By Caitlin Moran
Recommended By Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director
After she shames herself on local television, Johanna Morgan reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde, a fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero, until two years later, while eviscerating bands as a music critic, she realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw.
By Markus Zusak
The dull and drab life of Ed, an underage cab driver with a coffee-addicted dog, takes an unexpected turn when he accidentally stops a bank robbery and finds himself being placed in charge of watching out for the entire town per a visit from the mysterious Ace.
By Ariel Lawhon
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
In Germany in 1920, the unexplained appearance of a traumatized, badly scarred young woman who claims to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, launches a half–century of questions and accusations.
By Andrew Sean Greer
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, October 20, 2015. 1:30 PM.
To alleviate her suffocating depression after the death of her twin brother and the break-up with her long-time lover, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment that has an unexpected side effect, which transports her to the lives she might have had if she had been born in a different era.
By John Irving
Tells the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual man who struggles with his identity and attraction to men, women and transgendered individuals, as the world changes around him.
She’s a fashion model who has everything – until a sudden freeway “accident” leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better.
By Lottie Moggach
Discovering an online chat forum for ethical debate, Leila, a sheltered young misfit, believes she has finally met people who understand her and falls under the spell of the website's charismatic founder, who entices her into assuming the stolen identity of a glamorous but desperate woman.
By Nora Roberts
Devastated to learn that her unfaithful husband had actually married her using an alias, Shelby returns with her young daughter to her Tennessee hometown and pursues a new relationship before her husband's past poses dangerous threats.
By Marilynne Robinson
Abandoning her homeless existence to become a minister’s wife, Lila reflects on her hardscrabble life on the run with a canny young drifter and her efforts to reconcile her painful past with her husband’s gentle Christian worldview.
By Chris Cleave
A confrontation between a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan, called Little Bee, and a wealthy British couple on vacation, has life-changing consequences for everyone involved.
By Ava Dellaira
A troubled teen writes poignant letters to influential celebrities who died young, confronting in the process her own efforts to fit in, navigate her splintering family and come to terms with a past trauma.
By Jennine Capo Crucet
Upsetting her family by attending an elite college far from home, Cuban-American Lizet struggles with identity issues and her father’s abandonment before meeting a young boy whose mother’s death enmeshes Lizet’s family in Florida’s heated immigration debates.
By Colm Toibin
Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity.
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41–year–old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this mesmerizing saga of a near–mythic Greek American family.
By Nathan Englander
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Tuesday, August 25, 2015. 1:30 PM.
In 1976 Buenos Aires, Kaddish Poznan, the outcast son of a whore, and his wife, Lillian, are devastated by the disappearance of their own son, Pato, which forces them into the bleak corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases in search of the truth.
Mourning the death of her father and reeling from an astounding secret, Nina Gregory finds herself caught between the world of her longtime boyfriend and her passionate boss.
By Jo Walton
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist
Remembering two different pasts that reflect contrasting historical events and relationships with different people, and elderly Patricia Cowan wonders about her identity.
By Kazuo Ishiguro
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Monday, March 5, 2012. 7 PM
The students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them. Only, slowly, do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny.
By Nathan Hill
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
Astonished to see the mother who abandoned him in childhood throwing rocks at a presidential candidate, a bored college professor struggles to reconcile the media depictions of his mother with his memories and decides to draw her out by penning a tell– all biography.