Library Lovers Book Picks

Love Your LibraryWhat do Sewickley Public Library users love to read?  During Love Your Library month we asked you, and received about 100 responses on our display.  Here is a highlight of some of the responses, maybe you can find something new that would spark your interest!

 

Where’d You Go Bernadette / Maria Semple

When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her.

Where the Crawdads Sing / Delia Owens

Viewed with suspicion in the aftermath of a tragedy, a beautiful hermit who has survived for years in a marsh becomes targeted by unthinkable forces.

The Handmaid’s Tale / Margaret Atwood

Offred, a Handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in a satirical tour de force set in the near future.

100 Years of Solitude / Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town is mirrored in the family history of the Buendias.

The Godfather / Mario Puzo

The Godfather is an extraordinary novel which has become a modern day classic. Puzo pulls us inside the violent society of the Mafia and its gang wars. The leader, Vito Corleone, is the Godfather. He is a benevolent despot who stops at nothing to gain and hold power. His command post is a fortress on Long Island from which he presides over a vast underground empire that includes the rackets, gambling, bookmaking, and unions. His influence runs through all levels of American society, from the cop on the beat to the nation’s mighty.

Ten Thousand Doors of January / Alix Harrow

A woman navigating the out-of-place artifacts in her caretaker’s sprawling early 20th-century mansion discovers a mysterious book that reveals impossible truths about the world and her own past.

And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie

Ten houseguests, trapped on an isolated island, are the prey of a diabolical killer. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion: Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine–When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale?

The Thursday Murder Club / Richard Osman

Meeting weekly in their retirement village’s Jigsaw Room to exchange theories about unsolved crimes, four savvy septuagenarians propose a daring but unorthodox plan to help a woman rookie cop solve her first big murder case.

7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle / Stuart Turton

Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden Bishop must solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle in order to escape the curse in a world filled with enemies where nothing and no one are quite what they seem

Cloud Cuckoo Land / Anthony Doerr

Follows four young dreamers and outcasts through time and space, from 1453 Constantinople to the future, as they discover resourcefulness and hope amidst peril in the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author All the Light We Cannot See.

Running with Scissors / Augusten Burroughs

The author describes his bizarre coming-of-age years after his adoption by his mother’s psychiatrist, during which he witnessed such misadventures as a fake suicide attempt and front-lawn family/patient sleepovers.

President’s Club / Nancy Gibbs

Traces the history of the presidential fraternity conceived by Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover during Eisenhower’s inauguration, exploring the ways in which the nation’s presidents depended on, sabotaged, and formed alliances that had world-changing impacts.

 

 

New Books for October

New Books for October

The Shadow Murders by Jussi Adler-Olsen

On her sixtieth birthday, a woman takes her own life. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck’s desk, he can’t imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division since the cause of death seems apparent. However, his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.


Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

The #1 bestselling, award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War–a city fizzing with money, glamour, and corruption–in this spellbinding tale of seduction and betrayal.

 


The Winners by Fredrik Backman

A breathtaking new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove , The Winners returns to the close-knit, resilient community of Beartown for a story about first loves, second chances, and last goodbyes.


The Old Place by Bobby Finger

A few months into her retirement Mary Alice Roth does not know how to fill her days. At least there’s Ellie, who stops by each morning for coffee and whose re-emergence in Mary Alice’s life is the one thing soothing the sting of retirement.  But when Mary Alice’s sister arrives on her doorstep with a staggering piece of news, it jeopardizes the careful shell she’s built around her life.


Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher–for that world or ours.

 


Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

A mother and daughter find the courage to go undercover after stumbling upon a Nazi cell in Los Angeles during the early days of World War II–a tantalizing novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series.

 


Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

In a society consumed by fear, 12-year-old Bird Gardner, after receiving a mysterious letter, sets out on a quest to find his mother, a Chinese-American poet who left when he was 9 years old, leading him to NYC where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.


Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

Her life upended when her husband revealed a darker side, Olivia MacAfee and her teenage son Asher move back to her New Hampshire hometown for a new beginning, until Asher is implicated in the death of his girlfriend and she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.


Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea.


Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne

The younger sister of Victor Frankenstein embarks on her own project, resurrecting an intended beau who is more intent on uncovering his forgotten identity than in romance in the new novel from the best-selling author of The Hating Game.

 

 

 

 

 

Haunting Tales: Selections for Your Halloween Reading

Haunting Tales: Selections for Your Halloween Reading

From mysteries to supernatural stories, folklore to the macabre – we’ve got titles old & new to spark your spooky-bone this Halloween season!


Cover Image Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Agatha Christie

Legendary sleuth Jane Marple returns to solve twelve baffling cases in this brand-new collection, penned by a host of acclaimed authors skilled in the fine art of mystery and murder.

 

 

Cover Image Devil House by John Darnielle

True crime writer Gague Chandler, the protagonist of Darnielle’s Devil House, jumps at the opportunity to live at the “Devil House” a building where two gruesome, possibly satanic murders took place in 1986. At once a magnetic thriller and an intriguing look at the true crime genre, Darnielle’s novel is filled with rich themes, including the slippery nature of crime reporting and the demands of the artistic process.

 

 

Cover ImageThistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

This tale explores Slavic folklore and magical realism through the lives of estranged siblings Bellatine and Isaac Yaga who couldn’t be more different in their personalities and their mysterious abilities. When they reunite to collect a family inheritance, it’s to discover their great-great-grandmother, Baba Yaga, has left them Thistlefoot, a sentient cottage with chicken legs. This story explores the folktales surround Baba Yaga – a magical crone, hidden deep in the forests of Eastern Europe, who -depending on her mood – can be friend or foe.

 

Cover ImageJackal by Erin A. Adams

A young Black girl goes missing in the woods outside her white rust belt town. But she’s not the first-and she may not be the last. . .  Adams transcends the typical hometown mystery with an effective blend of social and supernatural terrors. The author skillfully presents changing theories about the possible humans involved as characters struggle with who to trust and navigate dreamscapes that seem increasingly real. The first-person narration draws readers in as they sympathize with the character’s plight.

 

 

Cover ImageA Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782 , deep in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar’s depth to this riveting tale of magic and suspense. The story continues in the All Souls Series.

 

 

Cover ImageNettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

Nettle & Bone is the kind of book that immediately feels like an old friend. Fairytale mythic resonance meets homey pragmatism in this utterly delightful story. It’s creepy, funny, heartfelt, and full of fantastic characters.

 

 

 

Cover ImageAll the Living and the Dead: from Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work by Haley Campbell

A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people–morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners–who work in it and what led them there. A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

 

 

Cover ImageOver My Dead Body : Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville

Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors–Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States’ ambition and reach. Over My Dead Body explores everything–history, sustainability, land use, and more–and what it really means to memorialize.

 

Remembering Her Majesty The Queen

Remembering Her Majesty The Queen

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (April 21, 1926 – September 8, 2022) was the longest-reigning Monarch in British history. Discover more about her life, family, and impact on the world with these titles.


Biographies & Non-Fiction

Cover ImageThe last queen : Elizabeth II’s seventy year battle to save the House of Windsor
by Clive Irving

B ELIZABETH II 2021

 

 

Cover Image Queen of our times : the life of Queen Elizabeth II
by Robert Hardman

B ELIZABETH II 2022

 

 

Cover Image Our rainbow queen : a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and her colorful wardrobe
by Sali Hughes

746.92 HUG 2019

 

 

Cover ImageQueen of the world
by Robert Hardman

B ELIZABETH II 2019

 

 

Cover ImageYoung Elizabeth : the making of the Queen
by Kate Williams

B ELIZABETH II 2015

 

 

Cover ImageMonarch : the life and reign of Elizabeth II
by Robert Lacey

B ELIZABETH II 2002

 

 

Cover ImagePhilip & Elizabeth : portrait of a royal marriage
by Gyles Daubeney Brandreth

923.1 BRA 2005

 

 

Cover ImageGame of crowns : Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the throne
by Christopher P. Andersen

941.085 AND 2016

 

 

Cover ImageThe crown : the official companion
by Robert Lacey

941.085 LAC 2017 v.1

 

 


Documentary DVDs

Cover Image Queen Elizabeth II

DVD B ELIZABETH II 2015

 

 

Cover ImageThe Queen’s palaces

DVD 728.82 QUE 2012

 

 

 


Fiction

Cover ImageThe royal governess : a novel of Queen Elizabeth II’s childhood
by Wendy Holden

F HOL

 

 

Cover ImageThe queen’s secret : a novel of England’s World War II queen
by Karen Harper

F HAR

 

 

Cover ImageThe gown : a novel of the royal wedding
by Jennifer Robson

F ROB

 

 

Cover ImageThe crown. The complete first season

DVD CRO SEA.1

Campus Novels

Campus Novels

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?


Either/Or by Elif Batuman

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it’s sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin’s elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan’s weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel–a life worthy of becoming a novel–without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?


The Divines by Ellie Eaton

Can we ever really escape our pasts?

The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys, and chain-smoking cigarettes. They were fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued, and cuttingly humorous in the way that only teenage girls can be. For Josephine, now in her thirties, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace.


Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Tim Parks

A novel about obsessive love and madness set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy’s eerily beautiful novel begins innocently enough: “At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell.” But there is nothing innocent here. With the off-handed remorselessness of a young Eve, the narrator describes her potentially lethal designs to win the affections of Fréderique, the apparently perfect new girl. In Tim Parks’ consummate translation (with its “spare, haunting quality of a prose poem,” TLS), Sweet Days of Discipline is a peerless, terrifying, and gorgeous work.


Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night features an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

 


Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is studying for a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, he has kept a distance even from his own friends – some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defences, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community.


Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.

 


The Truants by Kate Weinberg

Jess Walker has come to a concrete campus under the flat gray skies of East Anglia for one reason: to be taught by the mesmerizing and rebellious Dr. Lorna Clay, whose seminars soon transform Jess’s thinking on life, love, and Agatha Christie. Swept up in Lorna’s thrall, Jess falls in with a tightly knit group of rule-breakers–Alec, a courageous South African journalist with a nihilistic streak; Georgie, a seductive, pill-popping aristocrat; and Nick, a handsome geologist with layers of his own. But the dynamic between the friends begins to darken, until a tragedy shatters their friendships and love affairs, and reveals a terrible secret. Soon Jess must face the question she fears most: what is the true cost of an extraordinary life?

 

 

New Mysteries for August

New Mysteries for August

The Murder Book by Mark Billingham

The latest thriller from internationally bestselling author Mark Billingham finds Tom Thorne settling into a newly content existence, but a spate of brutal murders sets him off on an investigation that may just shatter every happiness he has built.


The Hidden One by Linda Castillo

The discovery of an Amish bishop’s remains leads chief of police Kate Burkholder to unearth a chilling secret in The Hidden One, a new thriller from bestselling author Linda Castillo.


The Birdcage by Eve Chase

In the spirit of Lisa Jewell and Kate Morton, an emotional mystery set in the rugged remote landscape of north Cornwall full of dark secrets and twists, about three unusual sisters forced to confront the past.


Hatchet Island by Paul Doiron

A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast.


The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.


Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare

The glittering RMS Queen Mary. A nightclub singer on the run. An aristocratic family with secrets worth killing for. With seductive glamor, simmering family drama, and dizzying twists, Louise Hare makes her beguiling US debut.


Take No Names by Daniel Nieh

A riveting thriller about a fugitive in search of a quick payday in Mexico City who finds himself in the crosshairs of a dangerous international scheme.

 


The Swell by Allie Reynolds

Point Break meets And Then There Were None in a pulse-pounding beach read that explores the dangerous ties between a group of elite surfers who are determined to find the perfect waves at any cost…even murder.


Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

 

Keep Swimming

Keep Swimming

Trying to get cool this summer? Check out these titles featuring swimming!

FICTION

Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland

“The perfect summer read” (USA TODAY) begins with a shocking tragedy that results in three generations of the Adler family grappling with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets over the course of one summer.

 


The Lido by Libby Page

The library where she used to work has closed. The family grocery store has become a trendy bar. And now the lido, an outdoor pool where she’s swum daily since its opening, is threatened with closure by a local housing developer. It was at the lido that Rosemary escaped the devastation of World War II; here she fell in love with her husband, George; here she found community during her marriage and since George’s death.


The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

In The Night Swim, a new thriller from Megan Goldin, author of the “gripping and unforgettable” (Harlan Coben) The Escape Room, a true crime podcast host covering a controversial trial finds herself drawn deep into a small town’s dark past and a brutal crime that took place there years before.


 

NONFICTION

Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox

In this extraordinary book, the world’s most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself.

 

 


The Three-Year Swim Club by Julie Checkoway

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians.

 

 


Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsau

We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; today, swimming is one of the most popular activities in the world. New York Times contributor Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer herself, dives into the deep, from the San Francisco Bay to the South China Sea, investigating what it is about water that seduces us, and why we come back to it again and again

 

Have You Read Me Yet?

Have You Read Me Yet?

With so many good titles to come out in recent years, it could be easy to miss many great stories. Have you read these enthralling works of fiction yet?


Cover ImageThese Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card

Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

 

Cover ImageHighfire by Eoin Colfer

For centuries, he struck fear in hearts far and wide as Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie—now he goes by Vern. However…he has survived, unlike the rest. He is the last of his kind, the last dragon. Still, no amount of vodka can drown the loneliness in his molten core. Vern’s glory days are long gone. Or are they?

 

 

Cover ImageAmerican Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy―two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

 

Cover ImageKingdomtide by Rye Curtis

The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip is lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana’s rugged Bitterroot Range, exposed to the elements with no tools beyond her wits and ingenuity. Intertwined with her story is Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction and a recent divorce who is galvanized by her new mission to find and rescue Cloris.

 

 

Cover ImageGood Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison

Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond. But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.

 

Cover ImageThe Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

 

Cover ImageThe Fifth Avenue Story Society by Rachel Hauck

When five New Yorkers receive an anonymous, mysterious invitation to the Fifth Avenue Story Society, they suspect they’re victims of a practical joke. No one knows who sent the invitations or why. No one has heard of the literary society. And no one is prepared to reveal their deepest secrets to a roomful of strangers. Yet curiosity and loneliness bring them back week after week to the old library. And it’s there they discover the stories of their hearts, and the kind of friendship and love that heals their souls.

 

Cover ImageThe Girl with the Leica by Helena Janeczk

Gerda Taro was a German-Jewish war photographer, anti-fascist activist, artist and innovator who, together with her partner, the Hungarian Endre Friedmann, was one half of the alias Robert Capa, widely considered to be the twentieth century’s greatest war and political photographer. She was killed while documenting the Spanish Civil War and tragically became the first female photojournalist to be killed on a battlefield.

 

Cover ImageThe King’s Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal

London, December 1943. As the Russian army repels German forces from Stalingrad, Maggie Hope takes a much-needed break from spying to defuse bombs in London. But Maggie herself is an explosion waiting to happen. Traumatized by her past, she finds herself living dangerously—taking huge risks, smoking, drinking, and speeding through the city streets on a motorbike. The last thing she wants is to get entangled in another crime.

 

Cover ImageThe Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

 

Cover ImageMy Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past.

 

Cover ImageHave You Seen Me? by Kate White

On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives soaked to the bone at her Manhattan office, only to find that she’s forgotten her keycard. When her boss shows, he’s shocked to see her—because, he explains, she hasn’t worked there in five years.

Ally knows her name, but is having trouble coming up with much beyond that, though after a trip to the psychiatric ER, she begins to piece together important facts: she lives on the Upper West Side; she’s now a freelance journalist; she’s married to a terrific man named Hugh. More memories materialize and yet she still can’t recall anything about the previous two days.

 

 

Celebrate Pinot Grigio Day!

Everyone knows that May 17th is Pinot Grigio Day…right?  A national holiday that is celebrated by wine enthusiasts every May. Here are a few titles from our collection that pair well with a bottle of white.

pinot grigio

 

Nonfiction Books

24-hour wine expert

The 24-hour wine expert

by Jancis Robinson

In her pithy, approachable, comprehensive guide, Robinson shares her expertise with authority, wit, and approachability, tackling questions such as how to select the right bottle at retail, what wine labels signify, how to understand the properties of color and aroma, and how to match food and wine.

 

 

 


 

Wine Girl

by Victoria James

At just twenty-one, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country’s youngest sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

 

 

 


 

Shadows in the Vineyard

by Maximillian Potter

Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romance-Conti, Burgundy’s finest and most expensive wine.

 

 

 


Fiction Books

 

Decanting a Murder

by Nadine Nettmann

Katie Stillwell focuses on two things in her life: work and practicing for Sommelier Certification with her blind tasting group. The exam was supposed to be the hardest part of her week, but that was before a body was found at an exclusive Napa Valley winery party.

 

 


The Illuminated Vineyard

by Jean Moynahan

The Illuminated Vineyard explores what occurs when unresolved conflicts from the past not only haunt the present but threaten to destroy it.

 


Movies/Documentaries

Somm

Follows four candidates as they prepare for the Master Sommelier exam, which covers every aspect of the presentation and appreciation of wine.

 

 

 

 

 


A Year in Burgundy

Follows seven wine-making families in France’s Burgundy region through the course of a year. Examines the processes of making wine. Shows the centrality of the wine to the culture of the region.

 

 

 

 


 

Bottle Shock

Napa Valley, 1976. For connoisseur Steven Spurrier, there is no finer art than French wine. But rumors bandy about of a new California wine country that holds the future of the vine. Positive the small Napa wineries are no match for established French vintages, Spurrier challenges the Americans to a blind taste test. He finds the valley full of ambitious, and talented, novice vinters like Jim Barrett and his son Bo. He realizes his publicity stunt may change the history of wine forever.

 

 

 


 

Sideways

A wine-tasting road trip through California’s famed Central Coast takes an unexpected detour as Miles and Jack hit the gas en route to their mid-life crises. The comically mismatched pair soon find themselves drowning in wine, women and laughter.

 

Let This Be The Year You Catch Up on Classics

Let This Be The Year You Catch Up on Classics

Now is the time to finally check off some of the classic titles that have been lingering on your to-read list. Need some suggestions? Try these tried and true titles:


Cover Image

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

 

Cover ImageMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil : a Savannah story by John Berendt

Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt’s sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

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