FIU Libraries: First Thursdays @ the FIU Libraries: So what are you reading?

So, what are you reading?

"So, what are you reading?" is an informal gathering of library staff who enjoy reading and sharing their impressions of books they've recently read. We gather following most First Thursday presentations. What began as 10-15 minutes of sharing has grown to 40 minutes or more. If you don't attend the gatherings, you'll see that our tastes and interests are quite diverse, and we hope that you'll enjoy learning about some of the books that we've enjoyed and listed below.

To read publisher descriptions, click the i-ball.

So, What Are You Reading?

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

October

George Pearson recommends: Inori. I'm in Love with the Villainess. 2021. 978-1648278006

Gayle Williams recommends: Orwell, George. 1984.

November

Rebecca Bakker recommends: Steward, Patrick, Sir. Making It So: A Memoir.

Gayle Williams recommends: Moreno-García, Silvia. The Daughter of Dr. Moreau.

December

Eduardo Fojo recommends: Coates, Darcy. From Below.

Gayle Williams recommends: Lewis, Damien. Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy.

February

No meeting.

March

No meeting.

April

No meeting.

May

Rebecca Bakker recommends: Wells, Martha. All Systems Red.

Sabine Dantus recommends: Harley, Shari. How to Say Anything to Anyone.

Gricel Dominguez recommends: Baldree, Travis. Legends and Lattes.

Doug Hasty recommends: Todd, Charles. A Fearsome Doubt.

Chris Jimenez recommends: Hackwith, A.J. The Library of the Unwritten.

Gayle Williams recommends: Streisand, Barbra. My Name Is Barbra.

October

Douglas Hasty recommends: Silva, Daniel. The Portrait of An Unknown Woman. 2022. 0062834851

Ramces Marsili recommends: Hallinan, Timothy. King Maybe. 2016. 978-1616954321

Gayle Williams recommends: Rodgers, Mary, and Jesse Green. Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers. 2022 978-0374298623

November

No discussion held

December

No discussion held.

OCTOBER

Gayle Williams recommendation: Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years

Home Work by Julie Andrews; Emma Walton Hamilton (As told to) In this New York Times bestselling follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews reflects on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria. In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films -- Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring.
ISBN: 9780316349253
Publication Date: 2019-10-15

Katie Coldiron recommendation: Billionaire Wilderness

Billionaire Wilderness by Justin Farrell A revealing look at the intersection of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today's richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth, and an eye-opening and sometimes troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative--socially as well as financially. Weaving unforgettable storytelling with thought-provoking analysis, Billionaire Wilderness reveals how the ultra-wealthy are buying up the land and leveraging one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world to climb even higher on the socioeconomic ladder. The affluent of Teton County are people burdened by stigmas, guilt, and status anxiety--and they appropriate nature and rural people to create more virtuous and deserving versions of themselves. Incisive and compelling, Billionaire Wilderness reveals the hidden connections between wealth concentration and the environment, two of the most pressing and contentious issues of our time.
ISBN: 9780691176673
Publication Date: 2020-03-03

Rebecca Bakker recommendations: The Man in the High Castle and The Midnight Library

The Man in the High Castle by Philip Dick In this Hugo Award-winning alternative history classic??--??the basis for the Amazon Original series??--??the United States lost World War II and was subsequently divided between the Germans in the East and the Japanese in the West. It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In this world, we meet characters like Frank Frink, a dealer of counterfeit Americana who is himself hiding his Jewish ancestry; Nobusuke Tagomi, the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, unsure of his standing within the bureaucracy and Japan's with Germany; and Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife, who may be more important than she realizes. These seemingly disparate characters gradually realize their connections to each other just as they realize that something is not quite right about their world. And it seems as though the answers might lie with Hawthorne Abendsen, a mysterious and reclusive author, whose best-selling novel describes a world in which the US won the War...The Man in the High Castle is Dick at his best, giving readers a harrowing vision of the world that almost was. "The single most resonant and carefully imagined book of Dick's career." ??--??New York Times
Call Number: MMC General Collection: PS3554.I3 M26 2011
ISBN: 9780547572482
Publication Date: 2012-01-24
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig The New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year "A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."--The Washington Post The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book. Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
Call Number: For E-book - Click title and BBC General Collection: PR6108.A39 M53 2020
ISBN: 9780525559474
Publication Date: 2020-09-29

Stephanie Brenenson recommendations: Where the Crawdad's Sing and Personal Librarian

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a heartbreaking coming of age story and a surprising murder investigation. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens's debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
Call Number: For E-book - Click title
ISBN: 9780735219090
Publication Date: 2018-08-14
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict; Victoria Christopher Murray A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white--her complexion is dark because she is African American. The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to--for the protection of her family and her legacy--to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.
Call Number: For E-book - Click title
ISBN: 9780593101537
Publication Date: 2021-06-29

DECEMBER

Eduardo Fojo recommendation: All That Heaven Allows

All That Heaven Allows by Mark Griffin SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The definitive biography of the deeply complex and widely misunderstood matinee idol of Hollywood's Golden Age. Devastatingly handsome, broad-shouldered and clean-cut, Rock Hudson was the ultimate movie star. The embodiment of romantic masculinity in American film throughout the '50s and '60s, Hudson reigned supreme as the king of Hollywood. As an Oscar-nominated leading man, Hudson won acclaim for his performances in glossy melodramas (Magnificent Obsession), western epics (Giant) and blockbuster bedroom farces (Pillow Talk). In the '70s and '80s, Hudson successfully transitioned to television; his long-running series McMillan & Wife and a recurring role on Dynasty introduced him to a whole new generation of fans. The icon worshipped by moviegoers and beloved by his colleagues appeared to have it all. Yet beneath the suave and commanding star persona, there was an insecure, deeply conflicted, and all too vulnerable human being. Growing up poor in Winnetka, Illinois, Hudson was abandoned by his biological father, abused by an alcoholic stepfather, and controlled by his domineering mother. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hudson was determined to become an actor at all costs. After signing with the powerful but predatory agent Henry Willson, the young hopeful was transformed from a clumsy, tongue-tied truck driver into Universal Studio's resident Adonis. In a more conservative era, Hudson's wholesome, straight arrow screen image was at odds with his closeted homosexuality. As a result of his gay relationships and clandestine affairs, Hudson was continually threatened with public exposure, not only by scandal sheets like Confidential but by a number of his own partners. For years, Hudson dodged questions concerning his private life, but in 1985 the public learned that the actor was battling AIDS. The disclosure that such a revered public figure had contracted the illness focused worldwide attention on the epidemic. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with co-stars, family members and former companions, All That Heaven Allows finally delivers a complete and nuanced portrait of one of the most fascinating stars in cinema history. Author Mark Griffin provides new details concerning Hudson's troubled relationships with wife Phyllis Gates and boyfriend Marc Christian. And here, for the first time, is an in-depth exploration of Hudson's classic films, including Written on the Wind, A Farewell to Arms, and the cult favorite Seconds. With unprecedented access to private journals, personal correspondence, and production files, Griffin pays homage to the idol whose life and death had a lasting impact on American culture.
ISBN: 9780062408853
Publication Date: 2018-12-04

Gayle Williams recommendation: Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control

Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer The bestselling author of All the Shah's Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA's secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and '60s. The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA's master magician and gentlehearted torturer--the agency's "poisoner in chief." As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace--including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world. Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb's reckless experiments on "expendable" human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats. During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.
ISBN: 9781250762627
Publication Date: 2020-11-10

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Last Year of the War

The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II. In 1943,Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa-aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we've always been is called into question.
ISBN: 9780451492166
Publication Date: 2020-04-07

FEBRUARY

Gayle Williams recommendation: The Ride of Her Life

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion "The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially need now."- Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor's advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn't even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness. Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956,the three travelers pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America's big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities-from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers-a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television's influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.
ISBN: 9780525619321
Publication Date: 2021-06-01

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Buddha in the Attic

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka Finalist for the 2011 National Book Award Julie Otsuka's long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as 'picture brides' nearly a century ago. In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war. In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PS3615.T88 B83 2011
ISBN: 9780307700001
Publication Date: 2011-08-23

MARCH

Lauren Christos recommendation: 20 Hrs. 40 Min: Our Flight in the Friendship

20 Hrs. 40 Min by Amelia Earhart 2014 Reprint of 1928 Edition. Earhart captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane. This book, her personal account of the historic flight, sparkles with her high-spirited charm and adventurous determination. To the story of her historic flight Earhart adds an autobiographical account of her young adult life and fascination with airplanes, and a serious-minded discussion of the future of flight and the important role of women in aviation. "20 Hrs. 40 Min." remains a classic tale of adventure to this day.
ISBN: 9781614276876
Publication Date: 2014-08-28

Gayle Williams recommendation: Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life

Hooked by Sutton Foster From the 2-time Tony Award-winner and the star of TV's Younger, funny and intimate stories and reflections about how crafting has kept her sane while navigating the highs and lows of family, love, and show business (and how it can help you, too). Whether she's playing an "age-defying" book editor on television or dazzling audiences on the Broadway stage, Sutton Foster manages to make it all look easy. How? Crafting. From the moment she picked up a cross stitch needle to escape the bullying chorus girls in her early performing days, she was hooked. Cross stitching led to crocheting, crocheting led to collages, which led to drawing, and so much more. Channeling her emotions into her creations centered Sutton as she navigated the significant moments in her life and gave her tangible reminders of her experiences. Now, in this charming and poignant collection, Sutton shares those moments, including her fraught relationship with her agoraphobic mother;  a painful divorce splashed on the pages of the tabloids; her struggles with fertility; the thrills she found on the stage during hit plays like Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, and Violet; her breakout TV role in Younger; and the joy of adopting her daughter, Emily. Accompanying the stories, Sutton has included crochet patterns, recipes, and so much more!   Witty and poignant, Hooked will leave readers entertained as well as inspire them to pick up their own cross stitch needles and paintbrushes.
ISBN: 1538734281
Publication Date: 2021-10-12

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Four Winds

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah "The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them. "My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family." Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman's only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa's tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive. In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa--like so many of her neighbors--must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family. The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it--the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
ISBN: 9781250178602
Publication Date: 2021-02-02

APRIL

Douglas Hasty recommendation: The English Spy and other novels by Daniel Elba

The English Spy by Daniel Silva #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller featuring the inimitable Gabriel Allon. First there was THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN. Then there was THE ENGLISH GIRL. Now comes THE ENGLISH SPY . . . Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with seventeen thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back--from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East. His brilliant hero, Gabriel Allon--art restorer, assassin, spy--has joined the pantheon of great fictional secret agents, including George Smiley, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Simon Templar. Following the success of his smash hit The Heist, Daniel Silva returns with another blockbuster--a powerhouse novel that showcases his outstanding skill and brilliant imagination, and is sure to be a must read for both his multitudes of fans and growing legions of converts.
Call Number: MMC General Collection PS3619.I5443 E59 2016
ISBN: 9780062320148
Publication Date: 2016-03-29

MAY

Douglas Hasty recommendation: Gainesborough's Blue Boy

Gainsborough's Blue Boy by Jacqueline Riding (Contribution by); Christine Riding; Susanna Avery-Quash (Contribution by); Melinda McCurdy (Contribution by); Imogen Tedbury (Contribution by) This richly illustrated publication explores the lasting influence of Gainsborough's Blue Boy on British art and culture Marking the return of Gainsborough's Blue Boy to the UK exactly 100 years since it left for the United States, this richly illustrated publication will explore the lasting influence of this iconic painting on British art and culture. During the nineteenth century, the painting's fame grew and full-length portraits by Gainsborough and his contemporaries became much sought after by wealthy American collectors. The sale of The Blue Boy to the American railroad magnate and collector Henry E. Huntington in 1921 was unsurprisingly viewed as a national tragedy--emblematic of a shift in economic and cultural power. However, its afterlife, as a permanent ambassador for British art, has undoubtedly fed into ideas of Britain and Britishness--its history, society, culture and character--that still resonate today. Including a select group of paintings that demonstrate the profound influence of Sir Anthony van Dyck and the old master tradition on Gainsborough's practice and identity, Gainsborough's Blue Boy will examine this masterpiece within the context of the National Gallery's collection.
ISBN: 9781857096804
Publication Date: 2022-03-29

Patricia Pereira-Pujol recommends: Not the Real Jupiter (and others in the Cassandra Reilly Mystery series) and The Grimrose Girls

Not the Real Jupiter by Barbara Wilson Join traveling translator Cassandra Reilly as she solves a new mystery in Lambda Literary Award winner Barbara Wilson’s series about the London-based, Irish-American sleuth. In Not the Real Jupiter Cassandra is translating two manuscripts from Spanish. One of them is a collection of stories of speculative fiction by her old friend, the Uruguayan writer Luisa Montiflores. When editorial complications threaten its publication by an independent press in Portland, Cassandra travels from Luisa’s apartment in Montevideo to the coast of Oregon to meet the publisher and sort things out. Only to find that those complications now include a body that fell—or was pushed—over the side of a bluff. Under suspicion herself and ordered not to leave the country, Cassandra heads to Portland to do her own investigation. Here she encounters Latina writers, a well-known children’s author, and an attractive librarian in her quest to solve the mystery and get back home to London. Not yet retired—and still game for almost anything—Cassandra finds the trail is more tangled and fraught with family secrets than she ever imagined. Barbara Wilson’s previous Cassandra Reilly mysteries include Gaudí Afternoon and The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists.
ISBN: 9780988356764
Publication Date: 2021
The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl Four troubled friends, One murdered girl... and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed. The Descendants meets Pretty Little Liars in this story of four reimagined fairytale heroines who must uncover connections to their ancient curses and forge their own paths... before it's too late. After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane's death as a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened. When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted. As the girls retrace their friend's final days, they discover a dark secret about Grimrose--Ariane wasn't the first dead girl. They soon learn that all the past murders are connected to ancient fairytale curses...and that their own fates are tied to the stories, dooming the girls to brutal and gruesome endings unless they can break the cycle for good. Praise for The Last 8: "This debut is, at times, both joyful and heartbreaking ... Pohl's characters are tough, funny, and brave as they manage to persevere despite the debilitating weight of grief."--Booklist "With its powerful world building and emotional twists, The Last 8 is a beautifully fresh take on the idea of an alien apocalypse."--Foreword Reviews "A sci-fi romp with ample intergalactic twists to keep readers satisfied."--Kirkus Reviews
ISBN: 9781728228877
Publication Date: 2021-10-26

Gayle Williams recommends: Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman--and a nation--struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She'd come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied--a family, a purpose, even love--waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight. Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn't anything this country can't do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.
ISBN: 9781250265548
Publication Date: 2022-04-12

Stephanie Brenenson recommends: The Enchanted April and The Paris Library

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim; Brenda Bowen (Introduction by) The charming, slyly comic novel of romantic longing and transformation that inspired the Oscar-nominated film Escaping dreary London for the sunshine of Italy, four very different women take up an offer advertised in the Times for a "small medieval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April." As each blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring, quite unexpected changes occur. An immediate bestseller upon its first publication, in 1922, The Enchanted April set off a craze for tourism to the Italian Riviera that continues today. Published here to coincide with a contemporary retelling, Enchanted August by Brenda Bowen, it's a witty ensemble piece and the perfect romantic rediscovery for fans of Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love as well as of Downton Abbey and the hit movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.
Call Number: For E-book - Click title
ISBN: 9780143107736
Publication Date: 2015-06-02
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles An instant New York Times, Washington Post, and USA TODAY bestseller--based on the true story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II--The Paris Library is a moving and unforgettable "ode to the importance of libraries, books, and the human connections we find within both" (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author). Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet seems to have the perfect life with her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into the city, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal. Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor's mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them. "A love letter to Paris, the power of books, and the beauty of intergenerational friendship" (Booklist), The Paris Libraryshows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest places.
ISBN: 9781982134198
Publication Date: 2021-02-09

FEBRUARY

Barbara Sorondo recommendation: Better Than Before

Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Happiness Project and "a force for real change" (Brené Brown) examines how changing our habits can change our lives. "If anyone can help us stop procrastinating, start exercising, or get organized, it's Gretchen Rubin. The happiness guru takes a sledgehammer to old-fashioned notions about change."--Parade Most of us have a habit we'd like to change, and there's no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives. Better Than Before acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits--and to change them for good. Infused with Rubin's compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation and answers the most perplexing questions about habits: * Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do? * How can we keep our healthy habits when we're surrounded by temptations?  * How can we help someone else change a habit?    Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves. When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success--even if we've failed before.    Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices, or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits--even before you've finished the book.
ISBN: 9780385348638
Publication Date: 2015-12-15

Gayle Williams recommendation: The Mighty Franks

The Mighty Franks by Michael Frank WINNER OF THE 2018 JG-WINGATE PRIZE A psychologically acute memoir about an unusual Hollywood family by Michael Frank, who "brings Proustian acuity and razor-sharp prose to family dramas as primal, and eccentrically insular, as they come" (The Atlantic) "My feeling for Mike is something out of the ordi - nary," Michael Frank overhears his aunt telling his mother when he is a boy of eight. "It's stronger than I am. I cannot explain it . . . I love him beyond life itself." With this indelible bit of eavesdropping, we fall into the spellbinding world of The Mighty Franks. The family is uncommonly close: Michael's childless Auntie Hankie and Uncle Irving, glamorous Hollywood screenwriters, are doubly related-- Hankie is his father's sister, and Irving is his mother's brother. The two families live near each other in Laurel Canyon. In this strangely intertwined world, even the author's grandmothers--who dislike each other--share a nearby apartment. Strangest of all is the way Auntie Hankie, with her extravagant personality, comes to bend the wider family to her will. Talented, mercurial, and lavish with her love, she divides Michael from his parents and his two younger brothers as she takes charge of his education, guiding him to the right books to read (Proust, not Zola), the right painters to admire (Matisse, not Pollock), the right architectural styles to embrace (period, not modern--or mo-derne, as she pronounces the word, with palpable disdain). She trains his mind and his eye--until that eye begins to see on its own. When this "son" Hankie longs for grows up and begins to turn away from her, her moods darken, and a series of shattering scenes compel Michael to reconstruct both himself and his family narrative as he tries to reconcile the woman he once adored with the troubled figure he discovers her to be. In its portrayal of this fascinating, singularly polarizing figure, the boy in her thrall, and the man that boy becomes, The Mighty Franks will speak to any reader who has ever struggled to find an independent voice amid the turbulence of family life.
ISBN: 9780374210120
Publication Date: 2017-05-16

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: Vox

Vox by Christina Dalcher Set in a United States in which half the population has been silenced, Vox is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter. On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her. Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words each day, but now women have only one hundred to make themselves heard. For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is just the beginning...not the end. One of Good Morning America's "Best Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer" One of PopSugar, Refinery29, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Real Simple, i09, and Amazon's Best Books to Read in August 2018
ISBN: 9780440000815
Publication Date: 2019-07-16

APRIL

Kelley Rowan recommendation: A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes

A Furious Sky by Eric Jay Dolin From the moment European colonists laid violent claim to this land, hurricanes have had a profound and visceral impact on American history--yet, no one has attempted to write the definitive account of America's entanglement with these meteorological behemoths. Now, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin presents the five-hundred-year story of American hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus' New World voyages, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the escalation of hurricane season as a result of global warming. Populating his narrative with unlikely heroes such as Benito Vines, the nineteenth-century Jesuit priest whose revelatory methods for predicting hurricanes saved countless lives, and journalist Dan Rather, whose coverage of a 1961 hurricane would change broadcasting history, Dolin uncovers the often surprising ways we respond to natural crises. A necessary work of environmental and cultural history, A Furious Sky will change the way we understand the storms on the horizon of America's future.
ISBN: 9781631495274
Publication Date: 2020-08-04

Gayle Williams recommendation: Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions

Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions by Amy Stewart Constance Kopp stands up to biased "morality" laws of 1916, defending the independent young women in her prison against dubious charges when no one else will. Deputy sheriff Constance Kopp is outraged to see young women brought into the Hackensack jail over dubious charges of waywardness, incorrigibility, and moral depravity. The strong-willed, patriotic Edna Heustis, who left home to work in a munitions factory, certainly doesn't belong behind bars. And sixteen-year-old runaway Minnie Davis, with few prospects and fewer friends, shouldn't be publicly shamed and packed off to a state-run reformatory. But such were the laws--andmorals--of 1916. Constance uses her authority as deputy sheriff, and occasionally exceeds it, to investigate and defend these women when no one else will. But it's her sister Fleurette who puts Constance's beliefs to the test and forces her to reckon with her own ideas of how a young woman should and shouldn't behave. Against the backdrop of World War I, and drawn once again from the true story of the Kopp sisters,Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions is a spirited, page-turning story that will delight fans of historical fiction and lighthearted detective fiction alike.
ISBN: 9781328497611
Publication Date: 2018-05-01

Barbara Sorondo recommends: C. Auguste Dupin Collection (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter)

C. Auguste Dupin Collection (the Murders in the Rue Morgue, the Mystery of Marie Roget and the Purloined Letter) by Edgar Allan Poe Decades before Sherlock Holmes, American author Edgar Allan Poe created the detective story in this remarkable trilogy of short stories featuring genius French criminologist C. Auguste Dupin. 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and its sequel 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' represent the beginning of crime fiction and each story has been hailed as a masterpiece. In 'Morgue' the Parisian detective investigates the savage murder of a mother and daughter. In the follow-up, Dupin is on the hunt of a killer in a case based on the true story of Mary Rogers, a saleswoman at a cigar store in Manhattan whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in 1841. 'The Purloined Letter' first appeared in 'The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1845,' in December, 1844. Poe earned $12 for its first printing. It is now considered one of the greatest short stories ever written.
Call Number: Search catalog for the individual Poe titles.
ISBN: 9781497423503
Publication Date: 2014-03-22

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Third Daughter

The Third Daughter by Talia Carner "In The Third Daughter, Talia Carner ably illuminates a little-known piece of history: the sex trafficking of young women from Russia to South America in the late 19th century. Thoroughly researched and vividly rendered, this is an important and unforgettable story of exploitation and empowerment that will leave you both shaken and inspired." --Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris The turn of the 20th century finds fourteen-year-old Batya in the Russian countryside, fleeing with her family endless pogroms. Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America. Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon she discovers that she's entered a waking nightmare. Her new "husband" does indeed bring her to America: Buenos Aires, a vibrant, growing city in which prostitution is not only legal but deeply embedded in the culture. And now Batya is one of thousands of women tricked and sold into a brothel. As the years pass, Batya forms deep bonds with her "sisters" in the house as well as some men who are both kind and cruel. Through it all, she holds onto one dream: to bring her family to America, where they will be safe from the anti-Semitism that plagues Russia. Just as Batya is becoming a known tango dancer, she gets an unexpected but dangerous opportunity--to help bring down the criminal network that has enslaved so many young women and has been instrumental in developing Buenos Aires into a major metropolis. A powerful story of finding courage in the face of danger, and hope in the face of despair, The Third Daughter brings to life a dark period of Jewish history and gives a voice to victims whose truth deserves to finally be told.
ISBN: 9780062896889
Publication Date: 2019-09-03

MAY

Barbara Sorondo recommends: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and The Annotated Secret Garden

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman "Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" --Reese Witherspoon No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . The only way to survive is to open your heart.
Call Number: MMC General Collection PR6108.O55 E43 2018
ISBN: 9780735220690
Publication Date: 2018-06-05
Annotated Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett; Gretchen Gerzina (Foreword by, Editor) Frances Hodgson Burnett was famous in her time for her adult novels and her forays into children's literature with Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. The Secret Garden, her story of an orphan girl who moves from India to the British countryside, has become a favorite book of every generation thereafter. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, the author of the definitive biography of Burnett, brings out aspects of Burnett's life that led her to write the book, details of the Victorian England time period, attitudes toward children, and Burnett's spiritual leanings. Gerzina captures the magical nature of the tale and the coming together of three children through restoring a hidden garden. With over one hundred illustrations, many in vibrant color, The Annotated Secret Garden is an enchanting gift for any child or for any adult who is still a feisty child underneath. 55 color and 46 black-and-white illustrations.
ISBN: 9780393060294
Publication Date: 2007-10-17

Gayle Williams recommendation: Anybody Can Do Anything

Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald The best thing about the Depression was the way it reunited our family and gave my sister Mary a real opportunity to prove that anybody can do anything, especially Betty.' After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.
ISBN: 9780295999791
Publication Date: 2016-08-01

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Vanishing Half

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9780525536970
Publication Date: 2020-06-02

OCTOBER

Rita Cauce recommendation: The Last Train to Key West

The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton Instant New York Times bestseller One of Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020; In 1935 three women are forever changed when one of the most powerful hurricanes in history barrels toward the Florida Keys. For the tourists traveling on Henry Flagler's legendary Overseas Railroad, Labor Day weekend is an opportunity to forget the economic depression gripping the nation. But one person's paradise can be another's prison, and Key West-native Helen Berner yearns to escape. After the Cuban Revolution of 1933 leaves Mirta Perez's family in a precarious position, she agrees to an arranged marriage with a notorious American. Following her wedding in Havana, Mirta arrives in the Keys on her honeymoon. While she can't deny the growing attraction to her new husband, his illicit business interests may threaten not only her relationship, but her life. Elizabeth Preston's trip to Key West is a chance to save her once-wealthy family from their troubles after the Wall Street crash. Her quest takes her to the camps occupied by veterans of the Great War and pairs her with an unlikely ally on a treacherous hunt of his own. Over the course of the holiday weekend, the women's paths cross unexpectedly, and the danger swirling around them is matched only by the terrifying force of the deadly storm threatening the Keys.
ISBN: 9780451490889
Publication Date: 2020-06-16

Sarah Hammill recommendation: En el Tiempa de las Mariposas and In the Time of Butterflies

En El Tiempo de las Mariposas by Julia Alvarez; Rolando Costa Picazo (Translator) On a deserted mountain road in the Dominican Republic in 1960, three young women from a pious Catholic family were assassinated after visiting their husbands who had been jailed as suspected rebel leaders. The Mirabal sisters, thus martyred, became mythical figures in their country, where they are known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies). Three decades later, Julia Alvarez, daughter of the Dominican Republic and author of the acclaimed How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, brings the Mirabal sisters back to life in this extraordinary novel. Each of the sisters speaks in her own voice, beginning as young girls in the 1940s, their stories vary from hair ribbons to gun-running to prison torture. Their story is framed by their surviving sister who tells her own tale of suffering and dedication to the memory of Las Mariposas.This inspired portrait of four women is a haunting statement about the human cost of political oppression, and is destined to take its place alongside Gabriela Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Allende's The House of the Spirits as one of the great 20th-century Latin American novels.
Call Number: MMC and BBC General Collection PS3551.L845 I518 1998
ISBN: 0452279968
Publication Date: 1998-05-01
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez 25th Anniversary Edition "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time." --St. Petersburg Times It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas--the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression. Julia Alvarez's new novel, Afterlife, is available now.
Call Number: ebook - click title
ISBN: 9781616200992
Publication Date: 2010-01-12

Eduardo Fojo recommendation: We are the Mods

«We Are the Mods» by Christine Jacqueline Feldman-Barrett Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and participant observation, this examination of the adoption and adaptation of Mod style across geographic space also maps its various interpretations over time, from the early 1960s to the present. The book traces the Mod youth culture from its genesis in the dimly lit clubs of London's Soho, where it began as a way for young people to reconfigure modernity after the chaos of World War II, to its contemporary, country-specific expressions. By examining Mod culture in the United States, Germany, and Japan alongside the United Kingdom, «We Are the Mods» contrasts the postwar development of Mod in those countries that lost the war with those that won. The book illuminates the culture's fashion, music, iconography, and gender aesthetics, to create a compelling portrait of a transnational subculture.
ISBN: 9781433103698
Publication Date: 2009-08-29

Kevin Triana recommendation: The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame For more than a century, The Wind in the Willows and its endearing protagonists--Mole, Mr. Toad, Badger, and Ratty--have enchanted children of all ages. Whether the four friends are setting forth on an exciting adventure, engaging in a comic caper, or simply relaxing by the River Thames, their stories are among the most charming in all English literature.
Call Number: MMC Juvenile Collection PZ10.3.G76 Wi25; for an ebook version - click title
ISBN: 9781405297820
Publication Date: Originally 1908

Barbara Sorondo recommendation: Piranesi

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke New York Times Bestseller! From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house--a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. For readers of Neil Gaiman'sThe Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
ISBN: 9781635575637
Publication Date: 2020-09-15

Stephanie Brenenson recommendations: Educated and 28 Summers

Educated by Tara Westover NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW; Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home. "Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover's] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?"--Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR
ISBN: 9780399590504
Publication Date: 2018-02-20
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand A "captivating and bittersweet" novel : When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying. Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.
ISBN: 9780316420044
Publication Date: 2020-06-16

NOVEMBER

Barbara Sorondo recommendation: Miss Buncle's Book

Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson From beloved English author D.E. Stevenson who has sold more than 7 million books worldwide! In the first heartwarming book of this classic series, D.E. Stevenson proves that one little book can be the source of all kinds of trouble when residents of a small English village start to see themselves through someone else's eyes. Barbara Buncle is in a bind. Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Maybe she could sell a novel ... if she knew any stories. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from her fellow residents of Silverstream, the little English village she knows inside and out. To her surprise, the novel is a smash. It's a good thing she wrote under a pseudonym, because the folks of Silverstream are in an uproar. But what really turns Miss Buncle's world around is this: what happens to the characters in her book starts happening to their real-life counterparts. Does life really imitate art, and can she harness that power for good? With the wit and charm of a Jane Austen novel and the gossipy, small-town delight of the Flavia de Luceseries, Miss Buncle's Bookis D.E. Stevenson at her best!
ISBN: 9781402270826
Publication Date: 2012-09-01

Patricia Pereira-Pujol recommendations: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig An instant New York Times bestseller "Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time. Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
ISBN: 9780525559474
Publication Date: 2020-09-29

Gayle Williams recommendation: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

Threads of Life by Clare Hunter A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents--from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland--to celebrate the age-old, universal, and under-explored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.
ISBN: 9781419747656
Publication Date: 2020-10-20

Christopher Jimenez recommendation: The Lincoln Conspiracy

The Lincoln Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer; Josh Mensch Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, the bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on the sixteenth president in The Lincoln Conspiracy. Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn't want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln's inauguration train passed through en route to the Capitol. The plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency, and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.
ISBN: 9781250317476
Publication Date: 2020-05-05

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: Americanah

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The bestselling novel from the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele. The story of two Nigerians making their way in the U.S. and the UK, raising universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home. Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion--for each other and for their homeland.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PR9387.9.A34354 A44 2013 ; MMC Sound and Image audiobook PR9387.9.A34354 A44 2013ab ; E-Book - search catalog for link
ISBN: 9780307455925
Publication Date: 2014-03-04

DECEMBER

Chris Jimenez recommendations: Fear: Trump in the White House and Rage

Fear by Bob Woodward With authoritative reporting honed through nine presidencies, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump's White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president's first years in office. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. Often with day-by-day details, dialogue and documentation, Fear tracks key foreign issues from North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, NATO, China and Russia. It reports in-depth on Trump's key domestic issues particularly trade and tariff disputes, immigration, tax legislation, the Paris Climate Accord and the racial violence in Charlottesville in 2017. Fear presents vivid details of the negotiations between Trump's attorneys and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, laying out for the first time the meeting-by-meeting discussions and strategies. It discloses how senior Trump White House officials joined together to steal draft orders from the president's Oval Office desk so he would not issue directives that would jeopardize top secret intelligence operations. "It was no less than an administrative coup d'état," Woodward writes, "a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful county in the world."
Call Number: BBC General Collection E912 .W66 2018
ISBN: 1501175513
Publication Date: 2018-09-11
Rage by Bob Woodward Bob Woodward's new book, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump's head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months--an utterly vivid window into Trump's mind--the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the "dynamite behind every door." At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump's responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants' notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a "fantasy film." Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. "Don't worry about it, Bob. Okay?" Trump told the author in July. "Don't worry about it. We'll get to do another book. You'll find I was right."
Call Number: BBC General Collection E912 .W67 2020; For ebook link- click title
ISBN: 9781982131739
Publication Date: 2020-09-15

Gayle Williams recommendation: Witch of Lyme Street:Seance: Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World

The Witch of Lime Street by David Jaher History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal. The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics--and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee.  Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified.  Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini. David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other's orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?
Call Number: MMC General Collection BF1283.C85 J34 2015
ISBN: 9780307451064
Publication Date: 2015-10-06

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Forgotten Room

The Forgotten Room by Karen White; Beatriz Williams; Lauren Willig 1945- When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room? The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers. Praise for The Forgotten Room
ISBN: 9780451474636
Publication Date: 2016-10-25

MARCH

Kelley Rowan recommendations: Desert Solitaire and Coding of the American Mind

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey "A passionately felt, deeply poetic book. It has philosophy. It has humor. It has its share of nerve-tingling adventures...set down in a lean, racing prose, in a close-knit style of power and beauty." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKREVIEW Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again.
Call Number: MMC General Collection PS3551.B2 Z463 1988
ISBN: 9780345326492
Publication Date: 1985-01-12
The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt; Greg Lukianoff A finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction; A New York Times Notable Book; Bloomberg Best Book of 2018; The New York Times bestseller! Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.
Call Number: BBC General Collection JC599.U5 L85 2018
ISBN: 9780735224919
Publication Date: 2019-08-20

Katharine Labuda recommendation: Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world--and in the process created modern environmentalism. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the most famous scientist of his age, a visionary German naturalist and polymath whose discoveries forever changed the way we understand the natural world. Among his most revolutionary ideas was a radical conception of nature as a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. In North America, Humboldt's name still graces towns, counties, parks, bays, lakes, mountains, and a river. And yet the man has been all but forgotten. In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt's extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt's ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism--and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.
Call Number: MMC General Collection Q143.H9 W85 2015
ISBN: 9780345806291
Publication Date: 2016-10-04

Gayle Williams recommendation: The Library of Lost and Found: A Novel

The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick A librarian's discovery of a mysterious book sparks the journey of a lifetime in the delightful new novel from the international bestselling author of The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper. Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people--though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she's invisible. All of that changes when a book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep. Inside, Martha finds a dedication written to her by her best friend--her grandmother Zelda--who died under mysterious circumstances years earlier. When Martha discovers a clue within the book that her grandmother may still be alive, she becomes determined to discover the truth. As she delves deeper into Zelda's past, she unwittingly reveals a family secret that will change her life forever. Filled with Phaedra Patrick's signature charm and vivid characters, The Library of Lost and Found is a heartwarming and poignant tale of how one woman must take control of her destiny to write her own happy ending.
ISBN: 9780778309826
Publication Date: 2020-02-11

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Day the World Came to Town

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede The True Story Behind the Events on 9/11 that Inspired Broadway's Smash Hit Musical Come from Away, Featuring All New Material from the Author. When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held on board for nearly 24 hours while security checked all of the baggage, they were greeted with a feast prepared by the townspeople. Local bus drivers who had been on strike came off the picket lines to transport the passengers to the various shelters set up in local schools and churches. Linens and toiletries were bought and donated. A middle school provided showers, as well as access to computers, email, and televisions, allowing the passengers to stay in touch with family and follow the news. Over the course of those four days, many of the passengers developed friendships with Gander residents that they expect to last a lifetime. As a show of thanks, scholarship funds for the children of Gander have been formed and donations have been made to provide new computers for the schools. This book recounts the inspiring story of the residents of Gander, Canada, whose acts of kindness have touched the lives of thousands of people and been an example of humanity and goodwill.
Call Number: BBC General Collection HV6432 .D44 2002
ISBN: 9780060559717
Publication Date: 2003-08-14

MAY

Rebecca Bakker recommendation: Sugar Calling (podcasts)

Lauren Christos recommendation: A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Walker Percy (Foreword by) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor,Chicago Sun-Times).
Call Number: MMC & BBC General Collection PS3570.O54 C66
ISBN: 9780802130204
Publication Date: 1994-01-21

Gayle Williams recommendation: Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen: A Novel

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers. "Here's the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it." Though born into bondage on a "miserable tobacco farm" in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams was never allowed to consider herself a slave. According to her mother, she was a captive, destined by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her chance at freedom presents itself with the arrival of Union general Phillip Henry "Smash 'em Up" Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war's end, having tasted freedom, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army's legendary Buffalo Soldiers. Alone now in the ultimate man's world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she also vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman's fight for freedom, respect and independence.
ISBN: 9781250193179
Publication Date: 2020-02-04

JULY

Ramces Marcilli recommendations: Timothy Hallinan's Junior Bender mysteries including Crashed and Little Elvises

Crashed by Timothy Hallinan "INTRODUCING JUNIOR BENDER, THE FAVORITE BURGLAR-TURNED- PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR OF HOLLYWOOD CROOKS; Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he first started breaking into houses when he was fourteen years old, he's never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years of an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey's porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging. The star Trey has lined up to do all that's unwholesome on camera is Thistle Downing, America's beloved child star, who now lives alone in a drug-induced stupor, destitute and uninsurable. Her starring role will be the scandalous fall-from-grace gossip of rubber-neckers across the country. No wonder Trey needs help keeping the production on track. Junior knows what that he should get Thistle out and find her help; but doing the right thing will land him on the wrong side of LA's scariest mob boss. With the help of his precocious twelve-year-old daughter, Rina, and his
ISBN: 9781616952761
Publication Date: 2013-04-23
Little Elvises by Timothy Hallinan "JUNIOR BENDER UNTANGLES ONE OF THE WEIRDEST MYSTERIES IN TINSELTOWN LA burglar Junior Bender has (unfortunately) developed a reputation as a competent private investigator for crooks. The unfortunate part about this is that regardless of whether he solves the crime or not, someone dangerous is going to be unhappy with him, either his suspect or his employer. Now Junior is being bullied into proving aging music industry mogul Vinnie DiGaudio is innocent of the murder of a nasty tabloid journalist he'd threatened to kill a couple times. It doesn't help that the dead journalist's widow is one pretty lady, and she's trying to get Junior to mix pleasure with business. Just as the investigation is spiraling out of control, Junior's hard-drinking landlady begs him to solve the disappearance of her daughter, who got involved with a very questionable character. And, worst news of all, both Junior's ex-wife and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Rina, seem to have new boyfriends. What a mess.
ISBN: 9781616952792
Publication Date: 2013-05-14

Douglas Hasty recommendation: Book of Common Prayer and St. Augustine's Prayer Book

The Book of Common Prayer As essential to the canon as the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare, The Book of Common Prayer has been in daily use for centuries. Originally produced for the Church of England in the sixteenth century by Thomas Cranmer, who was burned at the stake upon the accession to the throne of the ardently Catholic Queen Mary, it contains the entire liturgy as first presented in English-as well as some of the oldest phrases to be used by modern English speakers. H ere are daily prayers, scripture readings, psalm recitals, and the services marking such religious milestones as baptism, confirmation, and marriage, all from the 1662 edition, whose influence can be seen in the work of some of the greatest writers in English literature, from Donne and Swift to Austen and the Brontës. This beautiful deluxe edition includes a new introduction by The New Yorker's book critic James Wood, discussing how The Book of Common Prayer has influenced the English language and literature. Its small trim size allows for easy portability as a daily devotional.
Call Number: See the FIU Libraries catalog for numerous print and online editions
Saint Augustine's Prayer Book Saint Augustine's Prayer Book is a book of prayer and practice--with disciplines, habits, and patterns for building a Christian spiritual life. It will help readers to develop strong habits of prayer, to thoughtfully prepare for and participate in public liturgy, and to nurture a mind and soul ready to work and give and pray for the spread of the kingdom. Saint Augustine's Prayer Book features "Holy Habits of Prayer," devotions to accompany Holy Eucharist, Stations of the Cross, and Stations of the Resurrection, and a wide range of litanies, collects, and prayers for all occasions.

Gayle Williams recommendation: Circe

Circe by Madeline Miller "A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times). In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world. #1 New York Times Bestseller -- named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, People, Time, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Newsweek, the A.V. Club, Christian Science Monitor, Refinery 29, Buzzfeed, Paste, Audible, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Thrillist, NYPL, Self, Real Simple, Goodreads, Boston Globe, Electric Literature, BookPage, the Guardian, Book Riot, Seattle Times, and Business Insider.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PS3613.I5445 C57 2018 and click book title above for ebook link
ISBN: 9780316556323
Publication Date: 2020-04-14

Patricia Pereira-Pujol recommendations: Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery and One Hundred Names

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl The mesmerizing New York Times bestseller by the author of Night Film Marisha Pessl's dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center o Special Topics in Calamity Physics is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some--a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel--with visual aids drawn by the author--that has won over readers of all ages.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PS3616.E825 S67 2007
ISBN: 9780143112129
Publication Date: 2007-04-24
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley WINNER OF THE AGATHA * ARTHUR ELLIS * DILYS *DEBUT DAGGER AWARDS "Wonderfully entertaining . . . sure to be one of the most loved mysteries of the year . . . [Flavia is] a delightful, intrepid, acid-tongued new heroine."--Chicago Sun-Times It is the summer of 1950-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."
ISBN: 9780385343497
Publication Date: 2010-01-19
One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern Internationally bestselling author Cecelia Ahern's One Hundred Names is the story of secrets, second chances, and the hidden connections that unite our lives--a universal tale that will grip you with its emotional power and mesmerize you with its magic. Scandal has derailed Journalist Kitty Logan's career, a setback that is soon compounded by an even more devastating loss. Constance, the woman who taught Kitty everything she knew, is dying. At her mentor's bedside, Kitty asks her--what is the one story she always wanted to write? The answer lies in a single sheet of paper buried in Constance's office--a list of 100 names--with no notes or explanation. But before Kitty can talk to her friend, it is too late. Determined to unlock the mystery and rebuild her own shaky confidence, Kitty throws herself into the investigation, using her skills and savvy to track down each of the names on the list and uncover their connection. Meeting these ordinary people and learning their stories, Kitty begins to piece together an unexpected portrait of Constance's life. . . and starts to understand her own.
ISBN: 9780062248640
Publication Date: 2014-05-06

Barbara Sorondo recommendations: Night Film and The Art of Showing Up

Night Film by Marisha Pessl NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR * Cosmopolitan * Kirkus Reviews * BookPage A page-turning thriller for readers of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Stieg Larsson, Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy--the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker. On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more. Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense until you turn the final page. Praise for Night Film "Night Film has been precision-engineered to be read at high velocity, and its energy would be the envy of any summer blockbuster. Your average writer of thrillers should lust for Pessl's deft touch with character."--Joe Hill, The New York Times Book Review "Mysterious and even a little head-spinning, an amazing act of imagination."--Dean Baquet, The New York Times Book Review nbsp; "Maniacally clever . . . Cordova is a monomaniacal genius who creeps into the darkest crevices of the human psyche. . . . As a study of a great mythmaker, Night Film is an absorbing act of myth-making itself. . . . Dastardly fun . . . The plot feels like an M. C. Escher nightmare about Edgar Allan Poe. . . . You'll miss your subway stop, let dinner burn and start sleeping with the lights on."--The Washington Post "Haunting . . . a suspenseful, sprawling page-turner."--USA Today "Entrancing and delightful . . . [a] whipsmart humdinger of a thriller . . . It feels, above all things, new."--The Boston Globe nbsp; "Gripping . . . a masterful puzzle . . . Pessl builds up real suspense."--Entertainment Weekly "A very deeply imagined book . . . sprints to an ending that's equal parts nagging and haunting: What lingers, beyond all the page-turning, is a density of possible clues that leaves you leafing backward, scanning fictional blog comments and newspaper clippings, positive there's some secret detail that will snap everything into focus."--New York "Hypnotic . . . The real and the imaginary, life and art, are dizzyingly distorted not only in a Cordova night film . . . but in Pessl's own Night Film as well."--Vanity Fair
Call Number: Click title for link to ebook
ISBN: 9780812979787
Publication Date: 2014-07-01
The Art of Showing Up by Rachel Wilkerson Miller If you're having trouble connecting with those around you, know that you're not the only one. Adult friendships are tricky!!! Part manifesto, part guide, The Art of Showing Up is soul medicine for our modern, tech-mediated age. Rachel Wilkerson Miller charts a course to kinder, more thoughtful, and more fulfilling relationships--and, crucially, she reminds us that "you can't show up for others if you aren't showing up for yourself first." Learn to fearlessly . . . define your needs, reclaim your time, and commit to self-care ask for backup when times are tough--and take action when others are in crisis meet and care for new friends, and gently end toxic friendships help your people feel more seen (and more OK) overall!
ISBN: 9781615196616
Publication Date: 2020-05-12

Christopher Jimenez recommendation: Harry Potter series

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling; Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Call Number: MMC Juvenile and BBC Young Adult PZ7.R79835 Har
ISBN: 9780439362139
Publication Date: 1998

Stephanie Brenenson recommendations: Vintage Affair and Next Year in Havana

A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff What makes this book stand out is Wolff's passion for vintage fashion; velvety, silken prose describes the clothes and their history, with several pieces telling rich stories that develop into compelling sub-plots. -Easy Living Romance in a vintage clothes shop-we were sold from line one. Luckily, this book lives up to its hype, and is filled with all the sensory goodness that leads to inevitable comparisons to Joanne Harris-this is an author to bookmark. -Irish Tatler What a lovely book! -Daily Mail
ISBN: 9780553807837
Publication Date: 2010-06-29
Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Call Number: MMC General Collection PS3603.L455445 N49 2018
ISBN: 9780399586682
Publication Date: 2018-02-06

OCTOBER

Gayle Williams recommendation: Unmasked

Unmasked by Andrew Lloyd Webber "You have the luck of Croesus on stilts (as my Auntie Vi would have said) if you've had the sort of career, ups and downs, warts and all that I have in that wondrous little corner of show business called musical theatre." One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera--Broadway's longest running show--and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him. The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific's "Some Enchanted Evening," to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini's Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion--a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments. A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation. Lloyd Webber looks back at the development of some of his most famous works and illuminates his collaborations with luminaries such as Tim Rice, Robert Stigwood, Harold Prince, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn. Taking us behind the scenes of his productions, Lloyd Webber reveals fascinating details about each show, including the rich cast of characters involved with making them, and the creative and logistical challenges and artistic political battles that ensued. Lloyd Webber shares his recollections of the works that have become cultural touchstones for generations of fans: writings songs for a school production that would become his first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; finding the coterie of performers for his classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar; developing his first megahit, Evita, which would win seven Tonys Awards, including Best Musical; staking his reputation and fortune on the groundbreaking Cats; and making history with the dazzling The Phantom of the Opera. Reflecting a life that included many passions (from architecture to Turkish Swimming Cats), full of witty and revealing anecdotes, and featuring cameo appearances by numerous celebrities--Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, David Frost, Julie Covington, Judi Dench, Richard Branson, A.R. Rahman, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Richard Rodgers, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Plácido Domingo, Barbra Streisand, Michael Crawford, Gillian Lynne, Betty Buckley, and more--Unmasked at last reveals the true face of the extraordinary man beneath the storied legend.
Call Number: MMC General Collection ML410.L78 A3 2018
ISBN: 9780062424204
Publication Date: 2018-03-06

Molly Castro recommendation: Hello World

Hello World by Hannah Fry "A beautifully accessible guide.... One of the best books yet written on data and algorithms."--Times (UK) Shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society Investment Science Book Prize Shortlisted for the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize When it comes to artificial intelligence, we either hear of a paradise on earth or of our imminent extinction. It's time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we'll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.
ISBN: 9780393357363
Publication Date: 2019-09-24

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: In Pieces

In Pieces by Sally Field In this intimate, haunting literary memoir and New York Times Notable Book of the year, an American icon tells her own story for the first time -- about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother. One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen. From Gidget's sweet-faced "girl next door" to the dazzling complexity of Sybil to the Academy Award-worthy ferocity and depth of Norma Rae and Mary Todd Lincoln, Field has stunned audiences time and time again with her artistic range and emotional acuity. Yet there is one character who always remained hidden: the shy and anxious little girl within. With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring and important account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.
Call Number: MMC General Collection - In Process
ISBN: 9781538763025
Publication Date: 2018-09-18

DECEMBER

Kelley Rowan recommendation: Giver of Stars

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK "I've been a huge Jojo Moyes fan. Her characters are so compelling. . . It's such a great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together." -Reese Witherspoon From the author of Me Before You, the perfect holiday gift for booklovers, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond. Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England.  But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.  What happens to them--and to the men they love--becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they're committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives. Based on a true story rooted in America's past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic--a richly rewarding novel of women's friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.  SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!
ISBN: 9780399562488
Publication Date: 2019-10-08

Gayle Williams recommendation: Volver: A Persistence of Memory

Volver by Antonio C. Márquez Born on the eve of World War II into a family of Mexican immigrants in El Paso, Antonio C. Márquez remains a child of the border, his life partaking of multiple cultures, countries, and classes. Here he recounts his life story, from childhood memories of movies and baseball and friendship with his Chinese Mexican American neighbor, Manuel Wong, to the turbulent events of his manhood. Márquez recalls the impact of immigration and war on his family; his experiences of gang conflict in El Paso and Los Angeles in the 1960s; enlisting in the Marine Corps; his activism in the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era, and the Crusade for Justice; and his travels to crisis-ridden Latin American countries. From a family where no one had the luxury of higher education, Márquez became a professor when universities hired few Chicanos. His is a story of survival and courage.
Call Number: MMC General Collection E184.M5 M3566 2017
ISBN: 9780826358110
Publication Date: 2017-05-01

Katharine Labuda recommendation: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language and Rebecca

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch The internet isn't the first technology to alter how we communicate, but it is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. The programmers behind the apps and platforms we use decide how our conversations are structured, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive niche online communities spread slang and jargon exponentially faster than in the days when new dialects were constrained by physical space. What's more, social media provides a fascinating laboratory for watching language evolve in real time.
Call Number: For E-Book check catalog for link
ISBN: 9780735210936
Publication Date: 2019-07-23
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again." With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten--a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife--the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca. This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more.
Call Number: MMC General Collection PR6007.U47 R3 1938
ISBN: 9780380730407
Publication Date: 1938

Molly Castro recommendation: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction; An instant New York Times Bestseller; Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal!; Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. "A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently universal...Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning."--Ron Charles, The Washington Post Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
ISBN: 9780525562023
Publication Date: 2019-06-04

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Sweetness of Forgetting

The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristin Harmel A baker in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, must travel to Paris to uncover a family secret for her dying grandmother--and what she learns may change everything. The Sweetness of Forgetting is the book that made Kristin Harmel an international bestseller. At thirty-six, Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her for a twenty-two year old, and her bank account is nearly depleted. Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer long gone, she's running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen. Now, Hope's beloved French-born grandmother Mamie, who wowed the Cape with her fabulous pastries for more than fifty years, is drifting away into a haze of Alzheimer's. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in Paris. And then, arming her with a scrawled list of names, she sends Hope to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery. Hope's emotional journey takes her through the bakeries of Paris and three religious traditions, all guided by Mamie's fairy tales and the sweet tastes of home. As Hope pieces together her family's history, she finds horrific Holocaust stories mixed with powerful testimonies of her family's will to survive in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she'll need is a dash of courage, and the belief that God exists everywhere, even in cake...
ISBN: 9781451644296
Publication Date: 2012-08-07

FEBRUARY

Eduardo Fojo recommendations: Ten Restaurants that Changed America, and Serious Play: Midcentury design in America

Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freedman; Danny Meyer Combining a historian's rigor with a foodie 's palate, Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco's fabled The Mandarin, evoking the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone's, or chronicling the rise and fall of French haute cuisine through Henri Soulé's Le Pavillon, food historian Paul Freedman uses each restaurant to tell a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. Freedman also treats us to a scintillating history of the then-revolutionary Schrafft's, a chain of convivial lunch spots that catered to women, and that bygone favorite, Howard Johnson's, which pioneered midcentury, on-the-road dining, only to be swept aside by McDonald's. Lavishly designed with more than 100 photographs and images, including original menus, Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a significant and highly entertaining social history.
Call Number: BBC General Collection TX909 .F697 2016
ISBN: 9780871406804
Publication Date: 2016-09-20
Serious Play: Design in MidCentury America by Monica Obniski; Darrin Alfred; Amy Auscherman; Steven Heller; Pat Kirkham; Alexandra Lange (Contribution by) A lively exploration of eclecticism, playfulness, and whimsy in American postwar design, including architecture, graphic design, and product design  This spirited volume shows how postwar designers embraced whimsy and eclecticism in their work, exploring playfulness as an essential construct of modernity. Following World War II, Americans began accumulating more and more goods, spurring a transformation in the field of interior decoration. Storage walls became ubiquitous, often serving as a home's centerpiece. Designers such as Alexander Girard encouraged homeowners to populate their new shelving units with folk art, as well as unconventional and modern objects, to produce innovative and unexpected juxtapositions within modern architectural settings. Playfulness can be seen in the colorful, child-sized furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, who also produced toys. And in the postwar corporate world, the concept of play is manifested in the influential advertising work of Paul Rand. Set against the backdrop of a society that was experiencing rapid change and high anxiety, Serious Play takes a revelatory look at how many of the country's leading designers connected with their audience through wit and imagination.
Call Number: BBC General Collection NK1404 .S47 2018
ISBN: 9780300234220
Publication Date: 2018-10-02

Gayle Williams recommendations: My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name (Books 1 & 2 of the Neapolitan Quartet)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator) Now an HBO series. Book one in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy's most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson,The New York Times) Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Ferrante's four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its protagonists, the fiery and unforgettable Lila, and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflictual friendship. Book one in the series follows Lila and Elena from their first fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists. "An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends," writes Entertainment Weekly. "Spectacular," says Maureen Corrigan on NPR's Fresh Air. "A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman," writes James Wood inThe New Yorker. Ferrante is one of the world's great storytellers. With My Brilliant Friend she has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PQ4866.E6345 A8113 2012
ISBN: 9781609450786
Publication Date: 2012-09-25
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator) Now an HBO series, the follow-up to My Brilliant Friend in the New York Times; bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy's most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times) In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her enterée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging. Ferrante is one of the world's great storytellers. With the Neapolitan quartet she has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.
ISBN: 9781609451349
Publication Date: 2013-09-03

Katharine Labuda recommendation: The Poisoner's Handbook: murder and the birth of forensic medicine in Jazz Age

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum follows New York City's first forensic scientists to discover a fascinating Jazz Age story of chemistry and detection, poison and murder. Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook--chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler--investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work. From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.
Call Number: MMC General Collection HV6555.U62 N373 2010
ISBN: 9781594202438
Publication Date: 2010-02-18

MARCH

Ramces Marcilli recommendation: Out on the Rim

Out on the Rim by Ross Thomas; Donald E. Westlake (Introduction by); Ross Thomas Would you be wary if someone gave you the assignment of delivering five million dollars to a Philippine terrorist--never mind from whom or why? Booth Stallings, a terrorism expert just fired from his job at a bashful organization that never admitted its mount in the Washington merry-go-round, is wary. So wary that he cuts in con man "Otherguy" Overby, who in turn involves Artie Wu, pretender to the throne of China, and his partner, Quincy Durant. Obviously, good patriots don't want to hand over all that money to bad guys. Better they keep it for themselves. Which inevitably raises the question: Who among them will end up with the money?
ISBN: 9780312290597
Publication Date: 2003-01-03

Barbara Sorondo recommendation: Etiquette Rules: A Field Guide to Modern Manners

Etiquette Rules! by Nancy R. Mitchell Etiquette Rules! succinctly explains everything you need to know to successfully maneuver the world today; from properly serving high tea, to giving the perfectly tasteful toast. We need only to look around our communities or visit social media to know there is an etiquette crisis. With rudeness rampant and civility on life support, it's time for of us to take a hard look at ourselves to determine if we are contributing to the problem or combating it.   Enter: Etiquette Rules! A Field Guide to Modern Manners, a common-sense examination of etiquette as an operating system for living life with kindness and courtesy while we work, play, drive, dine, and shop in our physical and virtual communities. Etiquette Rules!jettisons the old-school notion that etiquette is nothing but stuffy rules on how to properly hold a teacup. Modern etiquette is a powerful tool that can help everyone feel comfortable and confident in a variety of situations, whether you're building personal and business relationships, demonstrating respect for others, or trying to live a life that flow more smoothly.
ISBN: 9781577151630
Publication Date: 2017-10-17

Gayle Williams recommendation: Decolonizing the Caribbean Record: An Archives Reader

Decolonizing the Caribbean Record by Jeannette A. Bastian (Editor); Stanley H. Griffin (Editor); John A. Aarons (Editor) Decolonizing the Caribbean Record: An Archives Reader is a compendium of forty essays by archivists and academics within and outside of the Caribbean region that address challenges of collecting, representing and preserving the records and cultural expressions of former colonial societies, exploring the contribution of these records to nation-building. How the power of the archives can be subverted to serve the oppressed rather than the oppressors, the colonized rather than the colonizers, is the central theme of this Reader. This collection seeks to disrupt traditional notions of archives, instead re-imagining records within the context of Caribbean cultures and identities where the oral may be privileged over the written, the creative design over text, the marginal over the mainstream. Envisioned initially as a foundational text that supports the archives education program at the University of the West Indies and documents the history and development of archives and records in the Caribbean, this volume addresses such issues as oral traditions, records repatriation, community archives, cultural forms and format and diasporic collections. Although focused on the Caribbean region, the essays, ranging from the theoretical to the practice-based to the personal are applicable to the global archival concerns of all decolonized societies.
Call Number: MMC General Collection CD3861 .D43 2018
ISBN: 9781634000598
Publication Date: 2018-11-01

Katharine Labuda's Recommendation: Underground Airlines

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters What would present-day America look like if the Civil War never happened? A New York Times bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; and named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and Amazon A young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service in exchange for his freedom. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. As he works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines, tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child--who may be Victor's salvation. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost. Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.
ISBN: 9780316261258
Publication Date: 2017-07-18

APRIL

Elizabeth Lightfoot recommendation: Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Instant New York Times Bestseller New York Times Notable Children's Books of 2018 TIME Top 10 Best YA and Children's Books of 2018 NPR's Book Concierge 2018 Great Reads List Buzzfeed's 24 Best YA Books of 2018 Bustle's Top 25 Best Young Adults Books of 2018 2018 Kirkus Prize Finalist YALSA William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist Paste Magazine's 30 Best YA Novels of 2018 Newsweek's 61 Best Books from 2018 Boston Globe's Best Children's Books of 2018 Publishers Weekly Best YA Books of 2018 School Library Journal Best Books of 2018 2019 YALSA Teen's Top Ten List With five starred reviews, Tomi Adeyemi's West African-inspired fantasy debut, and instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, conjures a world of magic and danger, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir. They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise. Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy. "A phenomenon." --Entertainment Weekly "The epic I've been waiting for." --New York Times-bestselling author Marie Lu "You will be changed. You will be ready to rise up and reclaim your own magic!" --New York Times-bestselling author Dhonielle Clayton "The next big thing in literature and film." --Ebony "One of the biggest young adult fiction debut book deals of theyear." --Teen Vogue This title has Common Core connections. #1 New York Times bestseller, March 14, 2018
ISBN: 9781250170972
Publication Date: 2018-03-06

Ramces Marcilli recommendation: Bad Monkeys

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She says she's a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil. She says she's working with the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons--aka "Bad Monkeys." Her confession lands her in the jail's psychiatric wing and earns her countless hours of poking, probing, and questioning by a professional. But is Jane crazy or lying? Or is she playing a whole different game altogether?
ISBN: 9780061240423
Publication Date: 2008-08-12

Barbara Sorondo recommendation: The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910.

The Suffragette by E. Sylvia Pankhurst (Preface by) By 1903, more than fifty years of peaceful campaigning had brought British women no closer to attaining the right to vote. In that year activist Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant organization dedicated to achieving women's suffrage. The union's motto, "Deeds not words," reflected its radical approach, consisting of stone-throwing, window-breaking, arson, and physical confrontation with authorities. The Suffragette, written by Emmeline Pankhurst's daughter, Sylvia, offers an insider's perspective on the union's growth and development as well as the motives and ideals that inspired its leaders and followers. She chronicles the protesters' tactics as well as the consequences of their actions: arrests, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and the mental and physical ordeals of forced feeding. Vintage photographs illustrate the demonstrations, courtroom trials, and other dramatic incidents from the history of the women's militant suffrage movement.
Call Number: For E-book versions of the original, check catalog
ISBN: 9780486804842
Publication Date: 2015-09-16

Katharine Labuda recommendations: My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Good and Mad

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh Entertainment Weekly's #1 Book of 2018 "One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound." -- Entertainment Weekly  From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers. Named a Best Book of the Year by:  The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible
ISBN: 9780525522133
Publication Date: 2019-06-25
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister ***NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** "In a year when issues of gender and sexuality dominated the national conversation, no one shaped that exchange more than Rebecca Traister. Her wise and provocative columns helped make sense of a cultural transformation."--National Magazine Award Citation, 2018 "The most brilliant voice on feminism in this country."--Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement. In the year 2018, it seems as if women's anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's March, and before the #MeToo movement, women's anger was not only politically catalytic--but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women's slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men. With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel--from suffragettes marching on the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Here Traister explores women's anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is perceived based on its owner; as well as the history of caricaturing and delegitimizing female anger; and the way women's collective fury has become transformative political fuel--as is most certainly occurring today. She deconstructs society's (and the media's) condemnation of female emotion (notably, rage) and the impact of their resulting repercussions. Highlighting a double standard perpetuated against women by all sexes, and its disastrous, stultifying effect, Traister's latest is timely and crucial. It offers a glimpse into the galvanizing force of women's collective anger, which, when harnessed, can change history.
Call Number: MMC General Collection HQ1421 .T73 2018
ISBN: 9781501181795
Publication Date: 2018-10-02

MAY

Chris Jimenez recommendation: Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan Soon to be a major motion picture from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland. Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours. Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager--obsessed with music, food, and girls--but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino's parents force him to enlist as a German soldier--a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler's left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich's most mysterious and powerful commanders. Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share. Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.
Call Number: BBC General Collection PS3569.U3482 B46 2017
ISBN: 9781503943377
Publication Date: 2017-05-01

Stephanie Brenenson recommendation: The Hamilton Affair: A Novel

The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs For fans of Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, here is the New York Times bestselling novel that Cosmopolitan called, "A juicy answer to Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton." Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Revolution, and featuring a cast of legendary characters, historian and master storyteller Elizabeth Cobbs tells the sweeping, tumultuous, true story of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, from passionate and tender beginnings of their romance to his fateful duel on the banks of the Hudson River. Alexander Hamilton was a bastard and orphan, raised in the Caribbean and desperate for legitimacy, who became one of the American Revolution's most dashing--and improbable--heroes. Admired by George Washington, scorned by Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton was a lightning rod: the most controversial leader of the new nation. Elizabeth Schuyler was the wealthy, beautiful, adventurous daughter of the respectable Schuyler clan--and a pioneering advocate for women. Together, the unlikely couple braved the dangers of war, the perils of seduction, the anguish of infidelity, and the scourge of partisanship that menaced their family and the country itself. With flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and fill with politics, scandal, adultery, and true love, this historical novel tells a story of love forged in revolution and tested by the bitter strife of young America, and will take its place among the greatest novels of American history ever written.
ISBN: 9781628728552
Publication Date: 2017-06-06

Gayle Williams recommendations: Story of the Lost Child (Book 4 of the Neapolitan Quartet) and Tom Sawyer

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator) Nothing quite like this has ever been published before; proclaimed The Guardian newspaper about the Neapolitan Novels in 2014. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third book in the series, was an international best seller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Its author was dubbed one of the great novelists of our time; by the New York Times Book Review. This fourth and final installment in the series raises the bar even higher and indeed confirms Elena Ferrante as one of the world’s best living storytellers. Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery uncontainable Lila. In this book, both are adults; life’s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship, examined in its every detail over the course of four books, remains the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. But now, she has returned to Naples to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from Naples. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Yet somehow this proximity to a world she has always rejected only brings her role as unacknowledged leader of that world into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable! Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, this story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty. Lila and Elena clash, drift apart, reconcile, and clash again, in the process revealing new facets of their friendship. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and, like Elena and Lila themselves, every return will bring with it new discoveries. Four starred reviews for Book 3 in the series 14 best-of-the-year appearances for Book 3
ISBN: 9781609452865
Publication Date: 2015-09-01
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived.Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid. Tom dirties his clothes in a fight and is made to whitewash the fence the next day as punishment. He cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He then trades the treasures for Sunday School tickets which one normally receives for memorizing verses, redeeming them for a Bible, much to the surprise and bewilderment of the superintendent who thought "it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises-a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt."Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.
ISBN: 9781503215672
Publication Date: 2014-11-29

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