Staff Picks - June 2017
By Jacqueline Woodson
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, November 14, 2017. 7:30 PM
Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile her past and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly.
By Louise Penny
Series Chief Inspector Gamache Novels
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
Taking leave during Quebec’s Winter Carnival after a case gone wrong, a disgruntled Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is unable to avoid assisting a politically charged investigation involving a historian’s murder during a search for a famous figure’s burial site.
By Charlaine Harris
Series Midnight, Texas Novels
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
Psychic Manfred Bernardo enlists the help of the enigmatic Olivia Charity when he is wrongly accused of murder.
By Mary Kay Andrews
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Her efforts to secure a job on a national cooking channel challenged by her unfaithful boyfriend, irresponsible sister, and interfering mother, television chef Gina Foxton finds her endeavor further complicated by her unexpected attraction to a rival chef with an off-putting redneck personality.
By Christopher Andersen
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
Traces the family histories and controversies that have marked the lives of Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duchess of Cambridge to illuminate their stark differences, their remarkable similarities, and their roles in an evolving monarchy.
Drawing from Gatewood’s diaries, journals, and correspondence, documents the life of the first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail alone in 1955 as well as her efforts to bring public attention to the once little-known footpath.
By Diane Hammond
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
“Having devotedly cared for a lone elephant at a dilapidated zoo for more than forty years, Samson hopes to be able to retire when he hires promising assistant Neva, who forces Samson to acknowledge that the elephant also needs the company of her kind (From the Publisher).”
By Kate Morton
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian, Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian
“This debut page-turner from Australian Morton recounts the crumbling of a prominent British family as seen through the eyes of one of its servants…. Morton triumphs with a riveting plot, a touching but tense love story and a haunting ending (From Publishers Weekly).”
By Ali Nujood
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
The true story of a Yemeni child bride describes her forced marriage to an abusive husband three times her age, her pursuit of the marriage's dissolution, and the cultural factors that place girls at risk in Yemeni society.
By Isabel Allende
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
Maya, a young American on the run, is sent to Chiloé, in a remote part of Chile, her grandmother’s homeland, where she records in her diary her adjustment to a new country, her drug problems, her romantic life, and other developments.
By Alejandro Zambra
Written in the form of a standardized test, asks the reader to respond to virtuoso language exercises and short narrative passages through multiple-choice questions that revolve around love, family, authoritarianism, and obedience.
By Paulette Jiles
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, December 5, 2017. 7:30 PM.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her family in San Antonio.
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.
By Mark Kurlansky
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
Presents a history of paper and the unexpected ways it shaped a modern world transitioning toward digital technologies, tracing the role of paper and papermaking in education, media, religion, commerce, and art.
Genre History
By Amanda Ripley
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
Following three teenagers who chose to spend one school year living in Finland, South Korea, and Poland, a literary journalist recounts how attitudes, parenting, and rigorous teaching have revolutionized these countries’ education results.
Genre Social Issues
By Khaled Hosseini
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Tuesday, January 31, 2017. 1:30 PM.
A novel set against three decades of Afghanistan’s history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban tells the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen–year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.
By Maria Semple
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
Initiating small changes that she hopes will reverse negative patterns in her life, Eleanor Flood is derailed by her family members’ unethical practices before an encounter with a former colleague triggers dramas that reveal a buried secret.
By David Sedaris
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
A collection of essays celebrates the foibles of the author’s everyday life in France and America, from an attempt to make coffee with water from a flower vase to a drug purchase in a North Carolina mobile home
By Alan Cumming
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
The award-winning actor, writer and activist presents a collection of outrageous and poignant stories from his personal life, from his awkward entertainment of Elizabeth Taylor at Carrie Fisher’s birthday party to chasing down Oprah at a glitzy gala to secure a photo for a friend.