Book cover of Fieldwork: A Novel

Book description

When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, planning to enjoy himself and work as little as possible. But one evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story: a charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead -…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Fieldwork as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

If the subtitle of Fieldwork wasn’t A Novel, I might have tagged it differently, because Mischa Berlinski is the name of both the author and the first-person narrator of this intricately woven tale.

The story, a murder mystery with cross-cultural dimensions, spans generations and continents and includes a fictional Thai hill tribe, early 20th-century American missionaries, mid-century Western anthropologists, and Mischa, a contemporary American journalist.

I loved that Mischa and his girlfriend move to Thailand on a whim after she learns online that all one needs to teach abroad is “a native command of English and a healthy pulse.”…

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Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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