Staff Picks

New Titles – April 2018

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FICTION An American marriage by Tayari Jones.  A newlywed couple’s relationship is tested when the husband is sentenced to 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. As you wish by Jude Deveraux.  One fateful summer, three very different women find themselves together in Summer Hill, Virginia, where they find they have much more in common than they realized. Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano.  As types of amateur sleuths go, the category of lusty Bavarian widow has been woefully under-represented…until now. Bachelor girl by Kim Van Alkemade.  This is inspired by the true story …

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New Titles – March 2018

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FICTION: All the castles burned by Michael Nye.  The story of Owen Webb, a basketball player on scholarship at a private boys’ school, and his relationship with two enigmatic men: his father – whose secrets neither Owen nor this mother suspect – and Carson, an older teen. Daphne by Will Boast.  This turns the myth of Daphne and Apollo into a modern love story about social anxiety and physical debilitation.  It is at once tragic and enchanting. Death by chocolate cherry cheesecake by Sarah Graves.  While Jacobia Tiptree has moved on from fixing up houses, she still can’t resist the …

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New Titles – February 2018

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FICTION: City of endless night by Douglas Preston.  One of the best in the Pendergast series – tense and tightly wound, with death relentlessly circling, stalking, lurking behind every shadow.  A New York City detective and an F.B.I. special agent track down a killer who decapitates numerous victims. Cry your way home by Damien Walters.  This collection of subversive short horror pieces focuses on the ways girls and women, particularly mothers and daughters, intentionally or inadvertently harm one another. Death below stairs by Jennifer Ashley.  Victorian class lines are crossed when cook Kat Holloway is drawn into a murder that …

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What’s Your Favorite Holiday Movie?

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One of my favorite holiday movies is Christmas in Connecticut starring Barbara Stanwyck.  The story is about a famous food writer who lies in her column about living on a farm, raising her children and being a good cook.  In reality she is an unmarried New Yorker who can’t boil an egg.  When her editor insists she will spend Christmas entertaining him and a heroic sailor as a good publicity stunt, her job is on the line.   She quickly rounds up a cottage, husband, baby and cook before the guests arrive, but real trouble begins when ‘married’ Stanwyck begins …

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Great Books that make Great Gifts

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Wishtree – by Katherine Applegate /* Starred Review */ Gr 4–8—Newbery Award—winning author Applegate meets high expectations in this tale told by a tree named Red, a red oak who is “two hundred and sixteen rings old.” Touching on religious bigotry and the environment, Applegate keeps the emphasis on her characters, the many animals and birds who find shelter in the tree’s branches all year round. (All the birds and animals have names and the power to talk, just like Red.) Around the first of May, people write down their wishes on pieces of cloth and hang them from the …

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New Items for December!

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FICTION: After the fire by Henning Mankell.  Here is the story of an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside down when the house he lives in catches fire. Christy by Catherine Marshall.  In 1912, a 19 year old girl leaves her comfortable home to teach school on an isolated cove in the great Smokey Mountains. Deep freeze by John Sandford.  Class reunions: a time for memories – good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly. A column of fire by Ken Follett.  A pair …

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