Nomi Nickel, a heartbreakingly befuddled and wry young woman, is growing up in a small Mennonite town that seeks to both set her on the path to righteousness and suffocate her. When half her family disappears, Nomi is left alone with her father, attempting to avoid a career at the local chicken abattoir while daydreaming of a life elsewhere and, all too soon, finding herself on a collision course with the only community she has ever known.

A Complicated Kindness is a work of fierce originality and brilliance that fearlessly and achingly explores the ties that bind families together and the forces that tear them apart. It is among the best books to read in your 30s.

Miriam Toews, the author, is the author of seven bestselling novels: Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Irma Voth, The Flying Troutmans, A Complicated Kindness, A Boy of Good Breeding, and Summer of My Amazing Luck, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She has received the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/Timothy Findley Award. She currently resides in Toronto.

Author: Miriam Toews

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0735273952?tag=prhca-20

Briony Tallis, thirteen, witnesses her sister Cecilia stripping naked and plunging into the fountain in their country house's garden on the hottest day of the summer of 1935. Robbie Turner, who, like Cecilia, has recently returned from Cambridge, is also keeping an eye on her. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Atonement is a profoundly moving exploration of shame and forgiveness, as well as the difficulty of absolution. It is brilliant and completely enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class.

Ian McEwan is the best-selling author of eighteen books, including the novels Machines Like Me; Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the WH Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both short-listed for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets.

Author: Ian McEwan

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0676974562?tag=prhca-20

With over one million copies sold, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is the international best-seller. An enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home — a sweeping, emotionally riveting novel.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, the twins grow up as Ethiopia is on the verge of revolution, united by a preternatural bond and a shared fascination with medicine. However, it will be love, not politics, that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He travels to America, where he finds refuge as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted the least in the world when the past catches up with him and nearly destroys him: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

Cutting for Stone tell about an unforgettable journey through one man's remarkable life, as well as an epic story about the power, intimacy, and strange beauty of healing others. It is one of the best books to read in your 30s.

Author: Abraham Verghese

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0307357783?tag=prhca-20

Eat Pray Love is a transformational journey through Italy, India, and Bali in search of pleasure and devotion. It is the bestseller from the author of Big Magic and City of Girls- Elizabeth Gilbert and is among the best books to read in your 30s.

Both readers and reviewers were moved by this beautifully written, heartfelt memoir. Elizabeth Gilbert describes how she made the difficult decision to abandon all of the trappings of modern American success (marriage, country house, career) in order to discover what she truly desired from life. Gilbert spent a year studying three different aspects of her nature in three different cultures: the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. This wise and funny author is poised to gain even more adoring fans.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels City of Girls, Signature of All Things, Stern Men; the story collection Pilgrims; and the nonfiction books Big Magic, Eat Pray Love, Committed, and The Last American Man. A finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award, Gilbert began her career as a journalist. She divides her time between New York City, rural New Jersey, and everywhere else.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0670034711?tag=prhca-20

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was dubbed the "21st century daughter" of Chinua Achebe by the Washington Post Book World for her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. In her masterful, haunting new novel, she recreates a pivotal moment in modern African history: Biafra's fervent struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s.

Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade with the effortless grace of a natural storyteller. Ugwu, a fifteen-year-old houseboy, works for Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school and whose living room he hears voices filled with revolutionary zeal. Olanna, Odenigbo's beautiful mistress and a sociology teacher, is fleeing her parents' world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father's business; and Kainene's English lover, Richard, bridges their two worlds. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments, that marked this time and place as we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, Biafran secession, and the subsequent war as we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, Biafran secession, and the

Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we've seen before. It's epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized.

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0676978134?tag=prhca-20

Incendiary, a novel and an open letter to Osama bin Laden, is a shocking, hilarious, and heartbreaking debut that confronts big questions about right and wrong, good and evil, madness and sanity. It is regarded as one of the best books to read in your 30s

Incendiary is the story of a working-class woman who enjoys the simple things in life: watching Arsenal games on TV with her husband and son, eating fishsticks for dinner in their small flat, and going to the pub on occasion. One spring afternoon, the woman, only known by the nickname "Petal," stands by as her husband and their son happily make their way to Ashburton Grove, Arsenal's brand new stadium, to watch their favorite team play. A few hours later, she witnesses the horror of a terrorist bombing on television — the bombing of Ashburton Grove.

"Petal" tells her own story in an extraordinary voice, both desperate and sharply funny, speaking directly to the bomber. She transports the reader to a fantastic world, a London that isn't quite real, in a time that isn't quite our own. And as the reader becomes more immersed in her reality, a tiny, persistent doubt begins to creep in about what is reality and what is a manifestation of her bereaved and distraught imagination.

Author: Chris Cleave

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0385671296?tag=prhca-20

In Julie & Julia, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul, with the wit of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs!

Julie Powell is 30 years old, lives in a run-down Queens apartment, and works a soul-sucking secretarial job that isn't going anywhere. She needs something to break up the monotony of her life, so she devises a bizarre task. She will cook all 524 recipes from Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which her mother has dog-eared. Over the course of a year.

She initially believes it will be simple. But as she progresses from the straightforward Potage Parmentier (potato soup) to the more complex realms of aspics and crépes, she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads with Julia's stern warble in her ear. She sends her husband out late at night to get more butter and almost never serves dinner before midnight. She learns how to make the ideal Orange Bavarian, how to extract marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.

And somewhere along the way, she realizes she has transformed her kitchen into a work of art and cuisine. She has surpassed the ordinariness of her life through extraordinary humor, hysteria, and perseverance.

Author: Julie Powell

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031610969X/ref=x_gr_mw_bb_sout

Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, reignited the conversation about women in the workplace. Sandberg is Facebook's chief operating officer and coauthor of Option B with Adam Grant. She gave an electrifying TED talk in 2010 about how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her speech, which has received over six million views, encouraged women to "sit at the table," seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with zeal.

Lean In expands on that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to shift the conversation away from what women can't do and toward what they can. Sandberg offers practical advice on negotiation skills, mentorship, and establishing a fulfilling career. She outlines specific steps women can take to balance professional success with personal fulfillment, as well as how men can benefit from supporting women both at work and at home.

Lean In is a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth written with humor and wisdom that will empower women all over the world to reach their full potential.

Author: Sheryl Sandberg

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0385349947?tag=prhca-20

Do you feel like you're fighting your body to lose even one pound, let alone keep your current weight? Jillian Michaels, a well-known health and wellness expert and bestselling author, was also present. So she consulted top metabolism experts and discovered that she'd been inadvertently abusing her endocrine system for years. She decided to share what she learned after "fixing" her own metabolism by developing this simple, three-phase plan that engages all of the weight-loss hormones (including the friendly HGH, testosterone, DHEA; and the not-so-friendly: insulin, cortisol, and excess estrogen).

In Master Your Metabolism, discover how to:

• REMOVE "anti-nutrients" from your diet
• RESTORE foods that speak directly to fat-burning genes
• REBALANCE your energy and hormones for easy weight loss

Throughout the book, Michaels provides a wealth of information, including: shopping lists and online shopping resources, hormone-trigger food charts, how to eat "power nutrient" foods on a budget, smart strategies for eating out, quick and easy recipes, and mini-programs for addressing PMS, andropause, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, and menopause.

Author: Jillian Michaels, Mariska Van Aalst and Christine Darwin

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0307450740?tag=prhca-20

Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz's dazzling New York Times bestseller, is a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.

"The dead don't speak." "I'm not sure why." They do try to communicate, with a reluctant confidant serving as a short-order cook in a small desert town. Sometimes the silent souls who seek Odd are looking for justice. Occasionally, their otherworldly advice assists him in preventing a crime. This time, however, things are different.

A stranger arrives in Pico Mundo, accompanied by a swarm of hyena-like shades warning of impending disaster. Odd will race against time to thwart the gathering evil, aided by his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of these tumultuous hours, in which past and present, fate and destiny collide, is a testament to live by—an unforgettable fable that will go down as one of Dean Koontz's most enduring works.

Author: Dean Koontz

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0553384287?tag=prhca-20

Stories I Only Tell My Friends is a wryly funny and unexpectedly moving account of an extraordinary life lived almost entirely in public.

Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood as a teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day.

Lowe was present at the birth of the modern youth movement in the entertainment industry, according to The Outsiders. He witnessed the surreal nexus of show business and politics both on the set and in the White House during his time on The West Wing. In between are deft and humorous stories of the wild excesses of the 1980s, which led to his quest for family and sobriety.

Lowe, who is never mean-spirited or salacious, provides unexpected glimpses into his successes, disappointments, relationships, and one-of-a-kind encounters with people who have shaped your world over the last twenty-five years. These stories are both entertaining and unforgettable.

Author: Rob Lowe

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080509329X/ref=x_gr_mw_bb_sout

Aminata Diallo, who was kidnapped from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, dreams only of freedom—and the knowledge she needs to return home. Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War after being sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence. Aminata works in Manhattan on the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks rewarded for their service to the king with safe passage to Nova Scotia. Aminata discovers a life of hardship and stinging prejudice there. When British abolitionists arrive in Sierra Leone looking for "adventurers," Aminata assists in moving 1,200 Nova Scotians to Africa and aiding the abolitionist cause by exposing the realities of slavery to the British public. This enthralling account of one woman's extraordinary journey spans six decades and three continents, bringing to life an important chapter in world history.

Aminata is transformed into a master storyteller over the course of this epic novel. She tells the incredible story of her incredible journey from Africa to America and back. Along the way, a stop in Nova Scotia sheds light on a long-forgotten chapter in Canadian history.

Aminata's autobiography — or "ghost story," as she calls it — begins with her idyllic childhood in West Africa. At the age of 11, she is kidnapped, placed in chains, transported across the sea, and forced into slavery on an indigo plantation in South Carolina. But Aminata is a survivor, and this is just one chapter in her extraordinary life. Aminata discovers, in a fitting twist for a book featured on Canada Reads, that literacy may be her ticket to a new life.

Lawrence Hill's compelling blend of history and fiction won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2007 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in 2008.

Author: Lawrence Hill

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Hill-Book-Negroes-Paperback/dp/B00SCV986Q/ref=mp_s_a_1_2

Walker Brown was born with an orphan syndrome, a genetic mutation so rare that only about 300 people in the world have it. Walker turns twelve in 2008, but he weighs only 54 pounds, is still in diapers, can't speak, and must wear special arm cuffs to prevent him from hitting himself. "Sometimes watching him is like looking at the man in the moon – but you know there is actually no man there. But if Walker is so insubstantial, why does he feel so important? What is he trying to show me?" Brown writes in The Boy in the Moon.

Brown sets out to answer that question in a book that owes its origins to Brown's original Globe and Mail series, a journey that takes him into deeply touching and troubling territory. "All I really want to know is what goes on inside his off-shaped head," he writes, "but every time I ask, he somehow persuades me to look into my own.”

Author: Ian Brown

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0679310096?tag=prhca-20

The End of Your Life Book Club is a beautiful celebration of literature and a profound testament to the ways we remember our loved ones. It is an inspiring memoir for fans of Joan Didion, Annie Lamott, and Mitch Albom.

Mary Anne Schwalbe was a well-known educator who held positions such as Director of Admissions at Harvard and Director of College Counseling at the prestigious Dalton School in New York. She also saw it as her responsibility to educate the less fortunate, and she spent the last ten years of her life building libraries in Afghanistan. But her story begins with a mocha, dispensed from a machine in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's waiting room. Will casually asks his mother what she's been reading over coffee. The conversation they have becomes a tradition: they mutually agree to read and share the same books as Mary Anne awaits her chemotherapy treatments. Their conversations reveal how books become increasingly important to the bond between a remarkable woman whose life is coming to an end and a man who is becoming closer to his mother than he has ever been.

Author: Will Schwalbe

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0307399672?tag=prhca-20

The Help is the #1 New York Times bestselling novel and the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film—a timeless and universal story about the lines we follow and those we don't—and has been named one of PBS's The Great American Read's best-loved novels.

Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who has always taken orders quietly, but she has recently become unable to suppress her resentment. Her friend Minny has never been one to hold her tongue, but she is now forced to keep secrets about her employer that have rendered her speechless. Skeeter, a white socialite, recently graduated from college. She has a lot of ambition, but she's considered a failure because she doesn't have a husband.

Together, these seemingly disparate women collaborate on a tell-all book about working as a black maid in the South, which could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town.

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0399155341?tag=prhca-20