Books

January Staff Pick: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Emily Miller

Our first staff pick in an ongoing series has been graciously provided by Sue. This debut novel by M.L. Stedman was a months-long New York Times bestseller and received a starred review from Booklist.

Light Between Oceans

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Stedman

After serving four years on the Western Front, Tom returns a decorated military hero. He takes a position as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island, Janus Rock. Soon after, he meets his young bride, Isabel, and brings her to accompany him. They have dreams of raising their family happily, together on the island. After years of fertility trouble and two miscarriages, a boat washes up to the shore carrying a dead man and a living baby. And this is all on page one of the book!

Sue enjoyed The Light Between Oceans for a variety of reasons. Here are her comments on what appealed to her and why you should check it out:

The writing is beautiful, and yet fast-paced enough so that you don’t want to put it down. From page one, you are hooked. This is a good old-fashioned novel: plot driven with plenty of twists, poetic descriptions, emotional conflict, and well-drawn characters. In fact, it’s impossible to read this book and not become totally drawn in by the characters. The setting is also appealing, a remote island off the coast of Western Australia on which a lone couple lives and keeps the lighthouse. But, what an emotional quandary they face! And how they unknowingly affecting the lives of others with their choices!

Sue said she highly recommends The Light Between Oceans for book club discussions due to the deep moral dilemmas faced by many of the characters.

Click the title above to find this book in the online library catalog, where you can request a copy.

Books Soon to be Movies in 2014

Emily Miller

“I’m glad I read the book first,” is a phrase I often hear people say after seeing a film based off a book. Books as inspiration for movies are more popular than ever, and 2014 is set to be a good one if you enjoy literary films.

BuzzFeed recently posted a list of “16 Books to Read Before They Hit Theaters This Year.” Here are a few that can be found at Sewickley Public Library. Click the titles to request them through the library catalog:

 

LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard – Booklist Review: Stranger danger is a concept unfamiliar to 13-year-old Henry, who befriends an injured man during one of his and his agoraphobic mother’s rare shopping excursions in town with disastrous results for all. To be fair, neither mother nor son have much worldly experience, thanks to Adele’s emotional fragility following her divorce. Yet their willingness to assist a strange man has less to do with their collective lack of judgment than it does with Frank’s infectious charm, a quality that will escalate over the coming days as the escaped convict and murderer holds the pair hostage in their own home. With remarkable ease, Adele falls in love with Frank. As she helps him plan a second escape to Canada, Henry fears losing the little stability he has ever known. Told from Henry’s point of view, Maynard’s inventive coming-of-age tale indelibly captures the anxiety and confusion inherent in adolescence, while the addition of a menacing element of suspense makes this emotionally fraught journey that much more harrowing.–Haggas, Carol Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

THE MONUMENTS MEN: ALLIED HEROES, NAZI THIEVES, AND THE GREATEST TREASURE HUNT IN HISTORY by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter – Booklist Review: This is a chronicle of an unusual and largely unknown aspect of World War II. The heroes here aren’t flamboyant generals or grizzled GIs in combat. In civilian life these men and women had been architects, museum directors, sculptors, and patrons of the arts. They were drawn from thirteen nations, although most were American or British citizens. Beginning in 1943, they were recruited into a special unit formed to protect and recover cultural treasure that had been looted by top Nazis, especially Hitler and Goring. As Allied armies liberated areas of northern Europe after D-Day, these monuments men moved into the front lines. Since they had little advance knowledge of the location of the looted art, their efforts often resembled treasure hunts. In addition to recovering stolen art, they worked tirelessly, often at personal risk, to protect and restore art damaged by the ravages of war. Edsel describes the exploits of these men and women in a fast-moving narrative that effectively captures the excitement and dangers of their mission.–Freeman, Jay Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby – Booklist Review: In his trademark warm and witty prose, Hornby follows four depressed people from their aborted suicide attempts on New Years Eve through the surprising developments that occur over the following three months. Middle-aged Maureen has been caring for her profoundly disabled son for decades; Martin is a celebrity-turned-has-been after sleeping with a 15-year-old girl; teenage Jess, trash-talker extraordinaire, is still haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her older sister years before; and JJ is upset by the collapse of his band and his breakup with his longtime girlfriend. The four meet while scoping out a tower rooftop looking for the best exit point. Inhibited by the idea of having an audience, they agree instead to form a support group of sorts. But rather than indulging in sappy therapy-speak, they frequently direct lacerating, bitingly funny comments at each other–and the bracing mix of complete candor and endless complaining seems to work as a kind of tonic. Hornby funnels the perceptive music and cultural references he is known for through the character of JJ, but he also expands far beyond his usual territory, exploring the changes in perspective that can suddenly make a life seem worth living and adroitly shifting the tone from sad to happy and back again. The true revelation of this funny and moving novel is its realistic, all-too-human characters, who stumble frequently, moving along their redemptive path only by increments. –Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2005 Booklist

 

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU by Jonathan Tropper – Booklist Review: Judd Foxman is in his late thirties when he finds himself living in a damp, moldy basement apartment, without a job and separated from his wife, who is having an affair with his now ex-boss. To make matters worse, Judd finds out his wife is pregnant with his child and that his father has just died, leaving a dying wish to have all four of his children sit shivah for seven days. What transpires over the course of that week is a Foxman family reunion like no other; filled with fistfights, arguments, sex, and a parade of characters offering their sympathies and copious amounts of food. This is a story that could be told by your best guy friend: laugh-out-loud funny, intimate, honest, raunchy, and thoroughly enjoyable. Tropper is spot-on with his observations of family relationships as each member deals with new grief, old resentments, and life’s funny twists of fate. Tropper’s characters are real, flawed, and very likable, making for a great summer read.–Kubisz, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

Happy New Year! We hope you enjoy reading and watching along with us here at Do Something @ Sewickley Public Library!

NPR Book Concierge 2013

Emily Miller

The folks over at NPR Books usually write a variety of end-of-year ‘Best Of’ lists to highlight the outstanding literary offerings of the past year. However due to the number of lists ballooning from 13 in 2008 to 20 in 2012, they decided to try a different format.

And so, NPR’s Book Concierge was born! It’s billed as ‘Our Guide to 2013’s Great Reads,’ and I encourage you to go check it out. The site allows you to choose what you’d like to read along the left-hand side (in categories such as ‘Eye Opening’ or ‘ It’s All Geek To Me’) and displays a collage of books recommended by NPR Staff that fit you chosen category or genre.

Of course, not all of the books will be available at Sewickley Public Library, but if one grabs your attention, it never hurts to give us a call or stop in to ask a librarian whether it can be requested from another library in Allegheny County.

Here are a few from the site you may not have heard a lot of buzz about that can be found at Sewickley Public Library, to get you started:

FICTION

LexiconLEXICON by Max Barry – Booklist Review *Starred Review* – Words have power to persuade, to coerce, even to kill. And so they have since the days when wordsmiths were called sorcerers. Streetwise teenager Emily knows nothing of this until she is recruited to join a clandestine international organization that seems bent on taking over the world through the power of language—the reason, perhaps, that its members call themselves poets. In the meantime, a young man, Wil, is kidnapped from an airport by two mysterious men determined to unlock a secret buried deep in his brain. Yes, Wil and Emily will be brought together in due course, but in the meantime, there is a great deal, some of it abstruse, about language in this fast-paced, cerebral thriller that borders on speculative fiction, but none of it slows the nonstop action that takes readers from Washington, D.C., to a small town in the Australian desert, a town whose 3,300 residents have all died mysteriously and violently. Could the cause have been the power of words at work? The poets sometimes seem a bit too omnipotent, and the book’s chronology is occasionally a bit confusing, but otherwise this is an absolutely first-rate, suspenseful thriller with convincing characters who invite readers’ empathy and keep them turning pages until the satisfying conclusion.–Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

Night FilmNIGHT FILM by Marisha Pessl – Booklist Review *Starred Review* – When the daughter of a notorious film director is found dead in New York, an apparent suicide, investigative reporter Scott McGrath throws himself back into a story that almost ended his career. But now McGrath has his Rosebud, and like Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane, who hoped to make sense of media mogul Charles Foster Kane by understanding his last word, so the reporter sets out to determine how Ashley Cordova died and, in so doing, penetrate the heart of darkness that engulfs her reclusive father, Stanislas. Like Pessl’s first novel, the acclaimed Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006), this one expands from a seemingly straightforward mystery into a multifaceted, densely byzantine exploration of much larger issues, in this case, the nature of truth and illusion as reflected by the elusive Cordova, whose transcend-the-genre horror films are cult favorites and about whom rumors of black magic and child abuse continue to swirl. His daughter, piano prodigy Ashley (her notes weren’t played; they were poured from a Grecian urn ), is almost as mysterious as her father, her life and death equally clouded in secrecy and colored with possibly supernatural shadings. Into this mazelike world of dead ends and false leads, McGrath ventures with his two, much younger helpers, Nora and Hopper, brilliantly portrayed Holmesian irregulars who may finally understand more about Ashley than their mentor, whose linear approach to fact finding might miss the point entirely. Pessl’s first novel, while undeniably impressive, possessed some of the overindulgence one might expect from a talented and precocious young writer. All evidence of that is gone here; the book is every bit as complex as Calamity Physics, but the writing is always under control, and the characters never fail to draw us further into the maelstrom of the story.–Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

NONFICTION

Lawrence in ArabiaLAWRENCE IN ARABIA: WAR, DECEIT, IMPERIAL FOLLY AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST by Scott Anderson – Booklist Review *Starred Review* – To historians, the real T. E. Lawrence is as fascinating as the cinematic version in Lawrence of Arabia is to movie fans. The many reasons interlock and tighten author Anderson’s narrative, yielding a work that can absorb scholarly and popular interest like. Start with Lawrence’s WWI memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922). A rare-book collectible, it inspired many of the scenes in David Lean’s film and is also subject to cross-referencing interpretations of Lawrence’s veracity. For lyrical though Lawrence could be about Arab leaders and desert landscapes, he could also be enigmatically opaque about the truth of his role in events. Accordingly, Anderson embeds Lawrence and Seven Pillars in the wider context of the Arab revolt against Turkey, and that context is the British, French, German, and American diplomacy and espionage intended to influence the postwar disposition of the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence was Britain’s agent in this game, and the other powers’ agents, although none enjoy his historical celebrity, assume prominence in Anderson’s presentation. Its thorough research clothed in smoothly written prose, Anderson’s history strikes a perfect balance between scope and detail about a remarkable and mysterious character.–Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

To the End of JuneTO THE END OF JUNE: THE INTIMATE LIFE OF AMERICAN FOSTER CARE by Cris Beam – Booklist Review *Starred Review* – Whenever newspaper headlines scream about the abuse of foster children, the public is outraged, child protection agencies radically change their policies, and poor children go on living in a hodgepodge of foster care and suffering myriad unintended consequences, according to Beam, whose background includes a fractured childhood and experience as a foster mother. Here she offers a very intimate look at a system little known to most people. Beam spent five years talking to foster children, parents and foster parents, and social workers, mostly in New York. Her profiles include Bruce and Allyson, with three children of their own, taking in as many as five foster children, and Steve and Erin, fostering a child they want to adopt, whose mother signed away her rights on a napkin. Beam also writes about teens who’ve been bounced from home to home, some longing for adoption, others sabotaging their chances out of fear, many hoping for promised aging-out bonuses. Beam offers historical background and keen analysis of the social, political, racial, and economic factors that drive foster-care policies, noting the recent swing from massive removals to support for keeping families together. A very moving, powerful look at a system charged with caring for nearly half a million children across the U.S.–Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

Sources:

Best Books of 2013: NPR(http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2013/)

Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association (http://www.booklistonline.com/)

The 10 Best Books of 2013 from the New York Times

Richelle

The New York Times just released their top 10 Books of 2013. Check out the article here first, then come back and place them on hold in the catalog!

FICTION

AMERICANAH By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Booklist Review *Starred Review* To the women in the hair-braiding salon, Ifemelu seems to have everything a Nigerian immigrant in America could desire, but the culture shock, hardships, and racism she’s endured have left her feeling like she has cement in her soul. Smart, irreverent, and outspoken, she reluctantly left Nigeria on a college scholarship. Her aunty Uju, the pampered mistress of a general in Lagos, is now struggling on her own in the U.S., trying to secure her medical license. Ifemelu’s discouraging job search brings on desperation and depression until a babysitting gig leads to a cashmere-and-champagne romance with a wealthy white man. Astonished at the labyrinthine racial strictures she’s confronted with, Ifemelu, defining herself as a Non-American Black, launches an audacious, provocative, and instantly popular blog in which she explores what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome. Meanwhile, her abandoned true love, Obinze, is suffering his own cold miseries as an unwanted African in London. MacArthur fellow Adichie (The Thing around Your Neck, 2009) is a word-by-word virtuoso with a sure grasp of social conundrums in Nigeria, East Coast America, and England; an omnivorous eye for resonant detail; a gift for authentic characters; pyrotechnic wit; and deep humanitarianism. Americanah is a courageous, world-class novel about independence, integrity, community, and love and what it takes to become a full human being. –Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

The flamethrowers : a novel Kushner, RachelTHE FLAMETHROWERS By Rachel Kushner – Booklist Review *Starred Review* In her smash-hit debut, Telex from Cuba (2008), Kushner took on corporate imperialism and revolution, themes that also stoke this knowing and imaginative saga of a gutsy yet naive artist from Nevada. Called Reno when she arrives in New York in 1977, she believes that her art has to involve risk, but she’s unprepared for just how treacherous her entanglements with other artists will be. Reno’s trial-by-fire story alternates provocatively with the gripping tale of Valera, an Italian who serves in a motorcycle battalion in WWI, manufactures motorcycles, including the coveted Moto Valera, and makes a fortune in the rubber industry by oppressing Indian tappers in Brazil. These worlds collide when Reno moves in with Sandro Valera, a sculptor estranged from his wealthy family, and tries to make art by racing a Moto Valera on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ultimately, Reno ends up in Italy, where militant workers protest against the Valeras. As Reno navigates a minefield of perfidy, Kushner, with searing insights, contrasts the obliteration of the line between life and art in hothouse New York with life-or-death street battles in Rome. Adroitly balancing astringent social critique with deep soundings of the complex psyches of her intriguing, often appalling characters, Kushner has forged an incandescently detailed, cosmopolitan, and propulsively dramatic tale of creativity and destruction.–Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

The goldfinch Tartt, DonnaTHE GOLDFINCH By Donna Tartt – Booklist Review *Starred Review* Cataclysmic loss and rupture with criminal intent visited upon the young have been Tartt’s epic subjects as she creates one captivating and capacious novel a decade, from The Secret History (1992) to The Little Friend (2002) to this feverish saga. In the wake of his nefarious father’s abandonment, Theo, a smart, 13-year-old Manhattanite, is extremely close to his vivacious mother until an act of terrorism catapults him into a dizzying world bereft of gravity, certainty, or love. Tartt writes from Theo’s point of view with fierce exactitude and magnetic emotion as, stricken with grief and post-traumatic stress syndrome, he seeks sanctuary with a troubled Park Avenue family and, in Greenwich Village, with a kind and gifted restorer of antique furniture. Fate then delivers Theo to utterly alien Las Vegas, where he meets young outlaw Boris. As Theo becomes a complexly damaged adult, Tartt, in a boa constrictor-like plot, pulls him deeply into the shadow lands of art, lashed to seventeenth-century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius and his exquisite if sinister painting, The Goldfinch. Drenched in sensory detail, infused with Theo’s churning thoughts and feelings, sparked by nimble dialogue, and propelled by escalating cosmic angst and thriller action, Tartt’s trenchant, defiant, engrossing, and rocketing novel conducts a grand inquiry into the mystery and sorrow of survival, beauty and obsession, and the promise of art. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Word of best-selling Tartt’s eagerly awaited third novel will travel fast and far via an author tour, interviews, and intense print, media, and online publicity.–Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

Life after life : a novel Atkinson, KateLIFE AFTER LIFE By Kate Atkinson – Booklist Review *Starred Review* In a radical departure from her Jackson Brodie mystery series, Atkinson delivers a wildly inventive novel about Ursula Todd, born in 1910 and doomed to die and be reborn over and over again. She drowns, falls off a roof, and is beaten to death by an abusive husband but is always reborn back into the same loving family, sometimes with the knowledge that allows her to escape past poor decisions, sometimes not. As Atkinson subtly delineates all the pathways a life or a country might take, she also delivers a harrowing set piece on the Blitz as Ursula, working as a warden on a rescue team, encounters horrifying tableaux encompassing mangled bodies and whole families covered in ash, preserved just like the victims of Pompeii. Alternately mournful and celebratory, deeply empathic and scathingly funny, Atkinson shows what it is like to face the horrors of war and yet still find the determination to go on, with her wholly British characters often reducing the Third Reich to a fuss. From her deeply human characters to her comical dialogue to her meticulous plotting, Atkinson is working at the very top of her game. An audacious, thought-provoking novel from one of our most talented writers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson’s publisher is pulling out all the stops in marketing her latest, which will no doubt draw in many new readers in addition to her Jackson Brodie fans.–Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist

Tenth of December : stories Saunders, GeorgeTENTH OF DECEMBER: Stories By George Saunders – Booklist Review *Starred Review* Saunders, a self-identified disciple of Twain and Vonnegut, is hailed for the topsy-turvy, gouging satire in his three previous, keenly inventive short story collections. In the fourth, he dials the bizarreness down a notch to tune into the fantasies of his beleaguered characters, ambushing readers with waves of intense, unforeseen emotion. Saunders drills down to secret aquifers of anger beneath ordinary family life as he portrays parents anxious to defang their children but also to be better, more loving parents than their own. The title story is an absolute heart-wringer, as a pudgy, misfit boy on an imaginary mission meets up with a dying man on a frozen pond. In Victory Lap, a young-teen ballerina is princess-happy until calamity strikes, an emergency that liberates her tyrannized neighbor, Kyle, the palest kid in all the land. In Home, family friction and financial crises combine with the trauma of a court-martialed Iraq War veteran, to whom foe and ally alike murmur inanely, Thank you for your service. Saunders doesn’t neglect his gift for surreal situations. There are the inmates subjected to sadistic neurological drug experiments in Escape from Spiderhead and the living lawn ornaments in The Semplica Girl Diaries. These are unpredictable, stealthily funny, and complexly affecting stories of ludicrousness, fear, and rescue.–Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

NONFICTION

After the music stopped : the financial crisis, the response, and the work ahead Blinder, Alan SAFTER THE MUSIC STOPPED: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead By Alan S. Blinder – Booklist Review Blinder, a corporate executive and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, sets out to tell the American people what happened during the financial crisis of 2007-09. He explains the events that are still reverberating in the U.S. and globally and will challenge public policy for years. With public policy as his focus, he considers how we got into that mess and how we got out to the extent we have gotten out. The author considers the future what have we learned both economically and politically, and will we handle future crises better? What vulnerabilities do we still have? What future problems have we accidently created? Finally, Blinder offers a host of recommendations, which include his Ten Financial Commandments, including Thou Shalt Remember That People Forget (people forget when the good times roll) and Thou Shalt Not Rely on Self-Regulation (Self-regulation in financial markets is an oxymoron). This excellent book in understandable language offers valuable insight and important ideas for a wide range of library patrons.–Whaley, Mary Copyright 2010 Booklist

Days of fire : Bush and Cheney in the White House Baker, PeterDAYS OF FIRE: Bush and Cheney in the White House By Peter Baker – Booklist Review *Starred Review* Baker, the senior White House correspondent for the New York Times, has written an ambitious, engrossing, and often disturbing study of the inner workings, conflicts, and critical policy decisions made during the eight years of Bush and Cheney governance. It is no accident that Baker consistently refers to Bush-Cheney, since Cheney was undoubtedly the most influential and powerful vice president in recent years. Baker’s portrait of him is not flattering. Cheney prided himself as a hard-nosed tough guy, to the point of ruthlessness. He fought constantly with other cabinet members, showing little respect or tolerance for their views. He was a conservative true believer with a tendency to ignore facts that got in the way of his view of reality. By the end of their eight years together, even Bush stopped listening to him. Bush is a more sympathetic figure, and Baker sees him as a man trapped by events, whose hopes for a more modest foreign policy and a compassionate conservatism domestic affairs were frustrated by the vast shadows cast by 9/11. This is a superbly researched, masterful account of eight critical, history-changing years.–Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital Fink, SheriFIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital By Sheri Fink – Booklist Review *Starred Review* As the floodwaters rose after Hurricane Katrina, patients, staff, and families who sheltered in New Orleans’ Memorial Hospital faced a crisis far worse than the storm itself. Without power, an evacuation plan, or strong leadership, caregiving became chaotic, and exhausted doctors and nurses found it difficult to make even the simplest decisions. And, when it came to making the hardest decisions, some of them seem to have failed. A number of the patients deemed least likely to survive were injected with lethal combinations of drugs even as the evacuation finally began in earnest. Fink, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her reporting on Memorial in the New York Times Magazine, offers a stunning re-creation of the storm, its aftermath, and the investigation that followed (one doctor and two nurses were charged with second-degree murder but acquitted by a grand jury). She evenhandedly compels readers to consider larger questions, not just of ethics but race, resources, history, and what constitutes the greater good, while humanizing the countless smaller tragedies that make up the whole. And, crucially, she provides context, relating how other hospitals fared in similar situations. Both a breathtaking read and an essential book for understanding how people behave in times of crisis.–Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist

The sleepwalkers : how Europe went to war in 1914 Clark, Christopher MTHE SLEEPWALKERS: How Europe Went to War in 1914 By Christopher Clark – Booklist Review The immense documentation of the origin of WWI, remarks historian Clark, can be marshaled to support a range of theses, and it but weakly sustains, in the tenor of his intricate analysis, the temptation to assign exclusive blame for the cataclysm to a particular country. Dispensing with a thesis, Clark interprets evidence in terms of the character, internal political heft, and external geopolitical perception and intention of a political actor. In other words, Clark centralizes human agency and, especially, human foibles of misperception, illogic, and emotion in his narrative. Touching on every significant figure in European diplomacy in the decade leading to August 1914, Clark underscores an entanglement of an official’s fluctuating domestic power with a foreign interlocutor’s appreciation, accurate or not, of that official’s ability to make something stick in foreign policy. As narrative background, Clark choreographs the alliances and series of crises that preceded the one provoked by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, but he focuses on the men whose risk-taking mistakes detonated WWI. Emphasizing the human element, Clark bestows a tragic sensibility on a magisterial work of scholarship.–Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

Wave Deraniyagala, SonaliWAVE By Sonali Deraniyagala – Booklist Review It was a festive time. Economist Deraniyagala, her economist husband (they met at Cambridge), and their two young sons flew from London to Sri Lanka to spend the winter holidays with her parents. They were all staying in a hotel near their favorite national park on December 26, 2004, the day of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. Deraniyagala describes their bewilderment as they flee the hotel and her terror as they are swept up by the 30-foot-high, racing wave that brutally changed everything. Only Deraniyagal survived. In rinsed-clear language, she describes her ordeal, surreal rescue, and deep shock, attaining a Didionesque clarity and power. We hold tight to every exquisite sentence as, with astounding candor and precision, she tracks subsequent waves of grief, from suicidal despair to persistent fear, attempts to drown her pain in drink, helpless rage, guilt and shame, and paralyzing depression. But here, too, are sustaining tides of memories that enable her to vividly, even joyfully, portray her loved ones. An indelible and unique story of loss and resolution written with breathtaking refinement and courage.–Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

 

Sources:

The 10 Best Books of 2013: The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/books/review/the-10-best-books-of-2013.html?smid=pl-share)

Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association (http://www.booklistonline.com/)

10 Books for Twentysomethings

Richelle

A List by Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig, Appeared in Publisher’s Weekly on Dec 14, 2012. (article)

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris1. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – One thing about the twenties is how much you want to be part of a group, even when the group consists of a random hodgepodge of the people you work with. This smart office tragicomedy is narrated in first person plural throughout, and yet Ferris manages not to make it feel like a gimmick. The result is a richer understanding of the culture of work.

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe2. The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe – If Ferris’s novel is the precursor to “The Office,” then Jaffe’s is the forerunner of “Mad Men” — with a hint of “Sex and the City” thrown in. Three young women (an Ivy Leaguer, a country beauty, and a troubled actress) try to make it in New York in 1958, struggling with the typical twentysomething woes of heartache and career laments as well as the oppressive glass ceiling of the era.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – And speaking of work, this autobiographical novel about Plath’s summer as a magazine intern is almost a cliché to mention here — except that it perfectly captures the feeling of being young and at a crossroads. So perfectly, in fact, that we actually used an excerpt from The Bell Jar as the epigraph for our book Twentysomething. In that passage, Plath writes about imagining herself sitting in the crotch of a fig tree, surrounded by juicy figs that represent all her options as writer, traveler, wife, mother, athlete, lover, dozens of different paths her life could take. Leave it to Plath to capture the essential quandary: “choosing one meant losing all the rest.”

Free food for millionaires by Min Jin Lee4. Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee – Choices about work, school, and romance are at the heart of this juicy novel about a group of young people in Manhattan and their families, many of whom are Korean immigrants. Lee (who happens to be a close friend of ours) captures their struggles, uncertainty, and heartache in vivid detail; sometimes the characters feel so real you want to shake them to make them realize how badly they’re screwing up.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – This is a sprawling family novel, dealing with crises across the age range, but the turmoil of one character in particular, the younger sister Denise, are worth the price of admission. Franzen details Denise’s evolution from slacker to restaurateur, from straight to bi, in a way that captures all the struggles inherent in the “quarterlife crisis” of someone who worries that she’s made all the wrong choices and is living someone else’s life.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler6. Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler – And speaking of living someone else’s life, Delia Grinstead thinks that’s what she’s doing, and one day at the beach she simply walks away from it. Delia is well past her twenties, but in trying to recreate a new identity, she goes through the same turmoil that twentysomethings do. The most poignant moments, to us, are the evenings she spends in her room in a boardinghouse after coming home from a lackluster job and a solitary meal: she gets into bed, reads for a while, and then switches off the lamp to “sit weeping in the dark — the very last step in her daily routine.” Change is hard.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed7. Wild by Cheryl Strayed – OK, we have to admit here that we haven’t read this one, a memoir about Strayed’s decision to hike the Pacific Trail solo at the age of 26. But everyone says we should. They say it’s a guide for life, a “just do it” for young people who are struggling with fears and uncertainty the way Strayed was after her mother died and her marriage dissolved. It’s on our to-do list for 2013.

Alice in Bed by Cathleen Schine8. Alice in Bed by Cathleen Schine – Alice is a college student whose body fails her, landing her in a hospital for a year as doctors, nurses, and a bizarrely distracted mother swirl around her. Her feelings of helplessness and confusion, combined with some weird hallucinations and paranoid fantasies, are like youth writ large; Alice is literally paralyzed, a stand-in for young people who feel metaphorically so. And she gets through it the way so many people do — by improvising.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides9. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – The genetically ambiguous character at the heart of this novel is Calliope, who grows up as girl but ends up, sort of, as a man. The situation a perfect analogy for the confusion of young people who see every path as equally alluring and can’t decide which is right for them. Many of the quandaries will feel familiar, as Callie-then-Cal struggles with choices that touch on matters of identity, sexuality, predestination, and free will. In addition, the book is hilarious.

Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage : stories by Alice Munro.10. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro – Or any collection of Alice Munro stories, really. Her stories are generally about young women choosing between two extremes: independence versus domesticity, acquiescence versus rebellion, staying put versus setting out. Since so many of the stories also bounce back and forth in time, the decisions of youth are often revisited, and their consequences over the life course are revealed.

Click on the titles to visit the catalog and order or call the Reference Desk at 412-741-6920 x3

2000s – Books for All Ages

Richelle

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 2000s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

2001: a Space Odyssey By: Clarke, Arthur C. – Two astronauts find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary computer named Hal.

Absolute Friends By: Le Carre, John – Follows friends and fellow ex-spies, Ted Mundy and Sasha, as they attempt to change their lives and the world in which they live, covering their new escapades in Germany and the ones from their past.

The Bone Garden By: Gerritsen, Tess – The discovery of the skeleton of a woman murdered two centuries earlier sends medical examiner Maura Isles on the trail of a long-dead serial killer who terrorized Boston with crimes in which Norris Marshall, a Harvard Medical School student, had become the prime suspect.

Combat By: Stephen Coonts – A series of short novels explore the art of warfare in the twenty-first century–on the land, in the sea, in the air, and in outer space.

The Da Vinci Code By: Brown, Dan – Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close By: Foer, Jonathan Safran – Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.

The Handmaid’s Tale By: Atwood, Margaret – In a future world where the birth rate has declined, fertile women are rounded up, indoctrinated as “handmaids,” and forced to bear children to prominent men.

The Jane Austen Book Club By: Fowler, Karen Joy – Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.

Killing Time By: Howard, Linda – Twenty years after a time capsule is buried under the front lawn of a small-town courthouse, the capsule is dug up and its contents stolen, an event that coincides with the murders of the contributors to the time capsule.

The Kite Runner By: Hosseini, Khaled – Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant’s son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

Pattern Recognition By: Gibson, William – Hired to investigate a mysterious video collection that has been appearing on the Internet, market research consultant Cayce Pollard realizes that there is more to the assignment when her computer is hacked.

The Romanov Prophecy By: Berry, Steve – After the Russian people vote to bring back the Tsar, to be chosen from the distant relatives of Nicholas II, attorney Miles Lord heads for Moscow to perform a background check on one of the candidates, but his assignment turns unexpectedly dangerous.

Snow Crash By: Stephenson, Neal – In twenty-first-century America, a computer hacker finds himself fighting a computer virus that battles virtual reality technology and a deadly drug that turns humans into zombies.

State of Fear By: Crichton, Michael – An eco-thriller takes readers to such far-flung locales as Paris, Iceland, Antarctica, and the Solomon Islands.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell By: Michaels, David – Sam Fisher, a splinter cell, or top secret agent for the National Security Agency with the right to steal and kill to preserve the country’s freedom, goes after Middle Eastern terrorists who are building a highly destructive weapon and have kidnapped his daughter.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Ask Me No Questions By: Budhos, Marina Tamar – Fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents leave Bangladesh for New York City, but the expiration of their visas and the events of September 11, 2001, bring frustration, sorrow, and terror for the whole family.

Beneath a Meth Moon By: Woodson, Jacqueline – Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she’s still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel’s new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom, co-captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend. Yet Laurel is haunted by voices and memories from her past.

Bullyville By: Prose, Francine – After the death of his estranged father in the World Trade Center on 9/11, thirteen-year-old Bart, still struggling with his feelings of guilt, sorrow and loss, wins a scholarship to the local preparatory school and there encounters a vicious bully whose cruelty compounds the aftermath of the tragedy.

Cinnamon Girl : letters found inside a cereal box By: Herrera, Juan Felipe – Yolanda, a Puerto Rican girl, tries to come to terms with her painful past as she waits to see if her uncle recovers from injuries he suffered when the towers collapsed on September 11, 2001.

Dear Zoe By: Beard, Philip – On the morning planes hit the World Trade Center towers, Tess DeNunzio’s three-year-old sister, Zoe, ran into the street and was killed by a car. Fifteen-year-old Tess, who was supposed to be watching Zoe, was consumed by guilt. This novel is written in the form of a letter from Tess to Zoe, chronicling the year after Zoe’s death.

How I Live Now By: Rosoff, Meg – To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Hurricane Song By: Volponi, Paul – Twelve-year-old Miles Shaw has only been living with his father in New Orleans for two months when Hurricane Katrina hits.

Love is the Higher Law By: Levithan, David – The lives of three teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him.

A Plague Year By: Bloor, Edward – It’s 2001 and zombies have taken over Tom’s town. Meth zombies. The drug rips through Blackwater, PA, with a ferocity and a velocity that overwhelms everyone.

Sunrise Over Fallujah By: Myers, Walter Dean – In the spring of 2003, Private Robin “Birdy” Perry of Harlem is sent to Iraq, an experience that will profoundly change him.

Twilight By: Meyer, Stephenie – When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Under the Persimmon Tree By: Staples, Suzanne Fisher – During the 2001 Afghan War, the lives of Najmal, a young refugee from Kunduz, Afghanistan, and Nusrat, an American-Muslim teacher who is awaiting her husband’s return from Mazar-i-Sharif, intersect at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The Usual Rules By: Maynard, Joyce – It’s a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn–a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She’s out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

Victory By: Cooper, Susan – Alternating chapters follow the mysterious connection between a homesick English girl living in present-day America and an eleven-year-old boy serving in the British Royal Navy in 1803, aboard the H.M.S. Victory, commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson.

The Year my Life Went Down the Loo By: Maxwell, Katie – Told in a series of hilarious e-mails, a delightful novel follows sixteen-year-old Emily, who moves from Seattle to England with her family right before her junior year, as she deals with a new culture, new friends, gorgeous British boys, and a ghost who lurks in her underwear drawer.

1990s – Books for All Ages

Richelle

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1990s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

The Devil’s Teardrop: a Novel of the Last Night of the Century By: Deaver, Jeffery – An emotionless assassin programmed to wreak havok on Washington, D.C. at four-hour intervals until midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1999, is pursued by retired FBI agent and top forensic document examiner in the country, Parker Kincaid.

Gods in Alabama By: Jackson, Joshilyn – Ten years after leaving, Arlene Fleet finds she still has not escaped Possett, Alabama, when an old classmate turns up asking questions about a crime Arlene committed in her youth, forcing her into a confrontation with her past.

The Human Stain By: Roth, Philip – A college professor with a sexual indiscretion in his past is hounded from his job by academic enemies who label him a racist.

The Man of My Dreams By: Sittenfeld, Curtis – Hannah Gavener’s fantasies about family, romance, and love collide headlong with the challenges, complexities, and realities of adult life and relationships.

Prague By: Phillips, Arthur – Five American expatriates living in Budapest in the early 1990s seek to establish themselves and make their fortunes in a city still haunted by the tragedies of its Communist past.

Sex and the City By: Bushnell, Candace – Presents a collection of essays selected from the author’s column in the New York Observer, concerning the interpersonal relationships of the “young and beautiful” residents of New York City.

A Small Death in Lisbon By: Wilson, Robert – When Inspector Ze Coelho investigates the murder of a young girl living in Portugal, he discovers that the crime is somehow linked to Nazi misdeeds six decades earlier.

Time and Again By: Roberts, Nora – After time traveler Caleb Hornblower crash-lands in the twentieth century, he relies on Liberty Stone to help him survive; and Jacob Hornblower heads back into the past to rescue his stranded brother, only to find himself falling for Sunbeam Stone.

Timequake By: Vonnegut, Kurt – After the universe decides to back up ten years and all humans must live through the 1990s again, author Kurt Vonnegut finds himself trying to write a book called Timequake, which he knows he will never finish since he already did not finish it.

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day By: Cleage, Pearl – HIV-positive Ava Johnson returns to the Michigan town where she grew up, and finds that what she thought might be the end is, in fact, a beginning.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

After Tupac and D Foster By: Jacqueline Woodson – D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died. The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur’s rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he’s coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac’s lyrics become more personal for all of them.

The Day Gogo Went to Vote: South Africa, 1994 By: Sisulu, Elinor – Thembi and her beloved great-grandmother, who has not left the house for many years, go together to vote on the momentous day when black South Africans are allowed to vote for the first time.


Girl of Kosovo By: Meade, Alice – Although Zana, an eleven-year-old Albanian girl, experiences the turmoil and violence of the 1999 conflict in her native Kosovo, she remembers her father’s admonition to not let her heart become filled with hate.

Miseducation of Cameron Post By: Danforth, Emily M. – In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.

Peace, Locomotion By: Woodson, Jacqueline – Through letters to his little sister, who is in a different foster home, Lonnie, also known as “Locomotion,” keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.

Perks of Being a Wallflower By: Chbosky, Stephen – This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends.

The Rifle By: Paulsen, Gary – A priceless, handcrafted rifle, fired throughout the American Revolution, is passed down through the years until it fires on a fateful Christmas Eve of 1994.

Smoky Night By: Bunting, Eve and Diaz, David – During a night of rioting in Los Angeles, fires and looting force neighbors–who have always avoided one another–to come together. David Diaz was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his bold acrylic paint and photo-collage illustrations.

Solider Mom By: Mead, Alice – Eleven-year-old Jasmyn gets a different perspective on life when her mother is sent to Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War, leaving her and her baby half-brother behind in Maine in the care of her Mother’s boyfriend.

1980s Books for All Ages

Richelle

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1980s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

1984 By: Orwell, George – Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.

1Q84 By: Murakami, Haruki – An ode to George Orwell’s “1984” told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer.

American Psycho By: Ellis, Bret Easton – In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything–including murder.

Brick Lane By: Ali, Monica – Presents the story of two Bangladeshi sisters, one who chooses her destiny by opting for a “love marriage” and one who lets destiny dictate her future when she is married off to an older man and moves with him to a small, claustrophobic London flat.

The Eyre Affair By: Fforde, Jasper – In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world’s Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.

Flyy Girl By: Tyree, Omar – A year in the life of Tracy Ellison, a 16-year-old black girl, showing her evolution from a promiscuous manipulator of boys to a responsible young woman thanks to, among other things, the teachings of Louis Farrakhan. The setting is a middle-class black suburb of Philadelphia.

The Inheritance of Loss By: Desai, Kiran – In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai.

Killing Time By: Howard, Linda – Twenty years after a time capsule is buried under the front lawn of a small-town courthouse, the capsule is dug up and its contents stolen, an event that coincides with the murders of the contributors to the time capsule.

The Line of Beauty By: Hollinghurst, Alan – Moving into the attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy, politically connected Fedden family in 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest becomes caught up in the rising fortunes of this glamorous family and finds his own life forever altered by his association during the boom years of the 1980s.

The Marriage Plot By: Eugenides, Jeffrey – Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she enrolls in a semiotics course and falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Morten, a time which is complicated by the resurfacing of man who is obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil By: Berendt, John – In charming, beautiful, and wealthy old-South Savannah, Georgia, the local bad boy is shot dead inside of the opulent mansion of a gay antiques dealer, and a gripping trial follows.

No Country for Old Men By: McCarthy, Cormac – Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.

Push By: Sapphire – A courageous and determined young teacher opens up a new world of hope and redemption for sixteen-year-old Precious Jones, an abused young African American girl living in Harlem who was raped and left pregnant by her father.

See How they Run By: Patterson, James – A long-germinating plot for revenge, first conceived in the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, erupts in full force during the 1980 Olympics in Moscow when a group of terrorists delivers a shocking ultimatum.

True to the Game: a Teri Woods Fable By: Woods, Teri – Gena, a street-smart Philadelphian, finds her life turned upside down by a whirlwind romance with Quadir, a wealthy man who can give her whatever she wants but whose connections with a powerful drug cartel could threaten both their lives.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Bog Child By: Dowd, Siobhan – In 1981, the height of Ireland’s “Troubles,” eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother’s hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.

The Chicken Dance By: Couvillon, Jacques – When eleven-year-old Don Schmidt wins a chicken-judging contest in his small town of Horse Island, Louisiana and goes from outcast to instant celebrity, even his neglectful mother occasionally takes notice of him and eventually he discovers some shocking family secrets.

Everything Beautiful in the World By: Levchuk, Lisa – Toward the end of the disco era, seventeen-year-old Edna refuses to visit her mother, who is in a New York City hospital undergoing cancer treatment, and barely speaks to her father, who finally puts her in psychotherapy, while her crush on an art teacher turns into a full-blown affair.

A Girl named Disaster By: Farmer, Nancy – While journeying to Zimbabwe from Mozambique, eleven-year-old Nhamo struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! By: Winter, Jonah – In the spring of 1987, the town of Islip, New York, with no place for its 3,168 tons of garbage, loads it on a barge that sets out on a 162-day journey along the east coast, around the Gulf of Mexico, down to Belize, and back again, in search of a place willing to accept and dispose of its very smelly cargo.

Kensuke’s Kingdom By: Morpurgo, Michael – When Michael is swept off his family’s yacht, he washes up on a desert island, where he struggles to survive–until he finds he is not alone.

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story By: Park, Linda Sue – When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

Night of the Twisters By: Ruckman, Ivy – A fictional account of the night freakish and devastating tornadoes hit Grand Island, Nebraska, as experienced by a twelve-year-old, his family, and friends.

Paper Covers Rock By: Hubbard, Jenny – In 1982 Buncombe County, North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Alex Stromm writes of the aftermath of the accidental drowning of a friend, as his English teacher reaches out to him while he and a fellow boarding school student try to cover things up.

Pepperland By: Delaney, Mark – Sixteen-year-old Star is angry that her mother has died and nothing seems to make her feel better. It is not until Star finds an unsent letter addressed to John Lennon and a broken-down vintage Gibson guitar that she begins to find a way out of her grief and maybe even a way to take care of some unfinished business left by her mother.

A Stone in My Hand By: Clinton, Cathryn – Eleven-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to the Islamic Jihad.

The Summer I Learned to Fly By: Reinhardt, Dana – Drew (13) is a bit of a loner. She has a pet rat, a treasured book of lists from her dead father, and an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese from working at her mother’s gourmet cheese shop. Drew meets a strange boy named Emmett in the alley behind the shop while searching for her escaped pet. Emmett surprises Drew with his knowledge of rats and the two become friends. Emmett confides his dream of finding a legendary spring with healing powers, and Drew betrays her mother’s trust by running away with Emmett in search of the magic waters. Set in California in the 1980s, this quiet novel touches on themes of friendship, love, and sacrifice.

Watchmen By: Moore, Alan – Exceptional graphic artwork brings to life the story of the Watchmen as they race against time to find a killer, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Zayda Was a Cowboy By: Nislick, June – When a Jewish grandfather comes to live with his son’s family, he relates his experiences fleeing Eastern Europe for America, his adventures as a cowboy, and his assimilation into American culture.

1970s Books for All Ages

Richelle

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1970s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

After This By: McDermott, Alice – A portrait of an American family during the middle decades of the twentieth century evokes the social, spiritual, and political turmoil of the era as seen through the experiences of a middle-class couple and their children.

Big Stone Gap By: Trigiani, Adriana – The 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of a small Virginia village discovers a skeleton in her family’s formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, conventional life.

Breakfast of Champions: or, Goodbye Blue Monday! By: Vonnegut, Kurt – The author questions the condition of modern man in this novel depicting a science fiction writer’s struggle to find peace and sanity in the world.

The Bright Forever By: Martin, Lee – The disappearance of nine-year-old Katie Mackey, the daughter of the most affluent family in a small Indiana town, while riding her bicycle to town to return some library books, has profound repercussions for her entire family.

Divisadero By: Ondaatje, Michael – Fleeing the violence that destroyed her family and separated her from her sister Claire and Coop, an enigmatic young man who lives with them, Anna finds refuge in an isolated house in south-central France, while she struggles to reconcile the past and present.

A Gathering of Old Men By: Gaines, Ernest J. – The murder of a white Cajun farmer named Boutan unleashes a fury of buried hatred and defiance, as Sheriff Mapes tries to identify the killer–a white overseer and a group of Black farmers all claim responsibility–and prevent revenge.

Her Father’s House By: Plain, Belva – Decades after her father kidnapped her from his ex-wife’s home to save her from an unstable environment, a young woman struggles to come to terms with her father’s criminal action and the deception that forms the foundation of her entire life.

The Historian By: Kostova, Elizabeth – Discovering a medieval book and a cache of letters, a motherless American girl becomes the latest in a series of historians, including her late father, who investigate the possible surviving legacy of Vlad the Impaler.

I Am Legend By: Matheson, Richard – A lone human survivor in a world that is overrun by vampires, Robert Neville leads a desperate life in which he must barricade himself in his home every night and hunt down the starving undead by day.

The Kite Runner By: Hosseini, Khaled – Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant’s son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

The Last Juror By: Grisham, John – Convicted of the murder of a young mother in a 1970 trial that ended with his threat to seek revenge against the jurors, Danny Padgitt is paroled after nine years in prison and returns to the scene of the trial in Ford County, Mississippi.

Let the Great World Spin By: McCann, Colum – A rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Lord of Misrule By: Gordon, Jaimy – At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters, scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain, through a year and four races at Indian Mount Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia– from dust jacket.

Once a Runner By: Parker, John L., Jr. – Distance runner Quenton Cassidy is suspended from the track team for his involvement in an athlete protest and risks his future prospects to train on a monastic retreat with an Olympic medalist.

Paradise By: Morrison, Toni – Tells the story of Ruby, Oklahoma, an all Black town settled by a dozen families in the 1890s when they were turned away from other communities. But now it’s the 1970s and the men of the town blame the women and the women’s shelter for the change in their community’s character.

Restless By: Boyd, William – When someone tries to kill her three decades after being trained as a spy, Sally Gilmartin reveals the truth about her past to her daughter, Ruth, a young single mother with a growing problem with alcohol, who is given the task of finding the man who recruited Sally for the secret service.

Vinegar Hill By: Ansay, A. Manette – In 1972, Ellen Grier, her husband, and their two children return to Holly’s Field, Wisconsin. There they must live with her in-laws, in a loveless house where everyday cruelty threatens to destroy her spirit.

The Virgin Suicides By: Eugenides, Jeffrey – The narrator and his friends piece together the events that led up to suicides of the Lisbon girls, brainy Therese, fastidious Mary, ascetic Bonnie, libertine Lux, and saintly Cecilia.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! By: Flagg, Fannie – TV anchorwoman Dena Nordstrom, the pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.

White Teeth By: Smith, Zadie – Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families–the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire–as they make their way in modern England.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Accidents of Nature By: Johnson, Harriet McBryde – Having always prided herself on blending in with “normal” people despite her cerebral palsy, seventeen-year-old Jean begins to question her role in the world while attending a summer camp for children with disabilities.

Brothers, Boyfriends, & Other Criminal Minds By: Lurie, April – While living on the same block as several members of the Mafia does have the advantage of a lower crime rate, fourteen-year-old April and her brother find there are times when it is also a major disadvantage.

Dreams of Significant Girls By: García , Cristina – This story of three girls who spend summers in an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland begins in 1971. The three girls from very different backgrounds form a bond as they spend the summer as roommates and the school year apart. Shirin is a pampered Iranian, Ingrid is a sexually adventurous German-Canadian with a talent for photography, and Vivien is a Cuban-Jewish New Yorker with a flair for the culinary arts. The boarding school setting provides an intriguing background for this coming of age story celebrating the power of female friendships.

Eva Underground By: Mackall, Dandi Daley – The year 1978 has been a pretty good one for Eva Lott. She has a terrific best friend, she’s dating the best-looking guy in school, and she just made the varsity swim team. So when her widowed dad says it’s time for them to move, she’s not exactly thrilled. And when he tells her that he intends to move to Communist Poland to help with a radical underground movement . . . Well, it’s all downhill from there.

Feathers By: Woodson, Jacqueline – When a new, white student nicknamed “The Jesus Boy” joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie’s growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.

Flutter: the Story of Four Sisters and an Incredible Journey By: Moulton, Erin E. – Nine-and-a-half-year-old Maple and her older sister, Dawn, must work together to face treacherous terrain, wild animals, and poachers as they trek through Vermont’s Green Mountains seeking a miracle for their prematurely-born sister.

Half Brother By: Oppel, Kenneth – For 13 years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home his new baby brother Zan–an eight-day-old chimpanzee.

Hard Ball: a Billy Baggs Novel By: Weaver, Will – A fourteen-year-old Minnesota farm boy has to figure out how to get along with the arch-rival in his love life and on the baseball diamond, and both boys must learn how to deal with the unfair expectations of their fathers.

I Rode the Red Horse: Secretariat’s Belmont Race By: Libby, Barbara – Tells the story of Secretariat’s victory in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, the last of the three races in the Triple Crown, from the point of view of the winning jockey, Ron Turcotte.

Inside Out and Back Again By: Lai, Thanhha – No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama. For all the ten years of her life, HÀ has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by . . . and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. HÀ and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, HÀ discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.

The Liberation of Gabriel King By: Going, K. L. – In Georgia during the summer of 1976, Gabriel, a white boy who is being bullied, and Frita, an African American girl who is facing prejudice, decide to overcome their many fears together as they enter fifth grade.

Life History of a Star By: Easton, Kelly – For more than a year, fourteen-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her confused thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence and the emotional strain on her family of living with the “ghost” of her beloved older brother who was physically and mentally destroyed while serving in Vietnam.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers By: Gerstein, Mordicai – A lyrical evocation of Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers.

Night of the Howling Dogs By: Salisbury, Graham – In 1975, eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.

Revolution is Not a Dinner Party By: Compestine, Ying Chang – Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists’ Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed “bourgeois,” and people of laughter.

Tales of the Madman Underground: an Historical Romance, 1973 By: Barnes, John – In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be “normal,” despite his chaotic home life with his volatile, alcoholic mother and the deep loyalty and affection he has for his friends in the therapy group dubbed the Madman Underground.

When You Reach Me By: Stead, Rebecca – As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, “The $20,000 Pyramid,” a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town By: Holt, Kimberly Willis – During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

Wild Girls By: Murphy, Pat – When thirteen-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods. After winning a writing contest together, they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.

Wonderstruck By: Selznick, Brian – Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben’s story is told in words; Rose’s in pictures.

 

1960s Books for All Ages

Richelle

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1960s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

American Pastoral By: Roth, Philip – A former athletic star, devoted family man, and owner of a thriving glove factory, Seymour “Swede” Levov finds his life coming apart during the social disorder of the 1960s, when his beloved daughter turns revolutionary terrorist out to destroy her father’s world.

Bad Boy Brawly Brown: an Easy Rawlins Mystery By: Mosley, Walter – Set in 1964, Easy is on a mission to lure Brawley Brown back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he’s big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers. Add to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you’ve got Easy behind the eight ball once again.

Hearts in Atlantis By: King, Stephen – Composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the Sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

The Help By: Stockett, Kathryn – Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project.

I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive By: Earle, Steve – Wracked by guilt and addiction ten years after administering a fatal morphine overdose to Hank Williams, Doc Ebersole performs illegal medical services in the red-light district of San Antonio before meeting a young Mexican immigrant who seems to heal others with her touch.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century. 1969 By: Moore, Alan – Features the adventures of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen set in a dark version of swinging London, as Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, and Lando deal with the possible return of Haddo and the moon-child cult.

Matterhorn: a Novel of the Vietnam War By: Marlantes, Karl – Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood, confronting external obstacles as well as racial tension, competing ambitions, and underhanded officers.

Nora, Nora By: Siddons, Anne Rivers – A young woman with a troubled past comes to visit her cousin and widowed uncle for the summer, and stuns the residents of their small Georgia town.

Replay By: Grimwood, Ken – Through a bizarre cycle of dying and coming back to life again and again, Jeff Winston receives six chances to change his life, correct previous mistakes, and find the happiness that has long eluded him.

The Secret Life of Bees By: Kidd, Sue Monk – After her “stand-in mother,” a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.

Songs in Ordinary Time By: Morris, Mary McGarry – A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man.

South of Broad By: Conroy, Pat – After his brother’s suicide, Leopold Bloom King struggles along with the rest of his family in Charleston, South Carolina, until he begins to gather an intimate circle of friends, whose ties endure for two decades until a final, unexpected test of friendship.

The Stones of Summer By: Mossman, Dow – This stream-of-consciousness novel is the story of Dawes Williams, who grows up in Iowa and enters the world of the ’60s as a hell-raising counterculture figure. In the process, he grows as a writer.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being By: Kundera, Milan – After the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a married surgeon, Tomas, becomes a window washer while trying to reconcile himself to decisions that he and his wife must make about their relationship.

Valley of the Dolls By: Susann, Jacqueline – Three women seek escape as they learn about the bitterness, corruption, and falsehoods of the show-business world.

While I was Gone By: Miller, Sue – Having moved on with her life after a friend was brutally murdered, Jo Becker is now married with a grown family, but when an old housemate moves into the neighborhood, Jo rekindles a relationship that takes her back to the past and threatens her future.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Bliss By: Myracle, Lauren – When Bliss’s hippie parents leave the commune and dump her at the home of her aloof grandmother in a tony Atlanta neighborhood, it’s like being set down on an alien planet. The only guide naïve Bliss has to her new environment is what she’s seen on The Andy Griffith Show. But Mayberry is poor preparation for Crestview Academy, an elite school where the tensions of the present and the dark secrets of the past threaten to simmer into violence. Openhearted, naïve Bliss is happy to be friends with anyone. That’s not the way it has ever worked at Crestview, and soon Bliss is at the center of a struggle for power between three girls—two living and one long dead.

Blue Skin of the Sea: a Novel in Stories By: Salisbury, Graham – Growing up in Hawaii between 1953 and 1966, Sonny tries to come to terms with his feelings for his fisher father and the vast sea that dominates his life.

A Corner of the Universe By: Martin, Ann M. – The summer Hattie turns 12, her predictable smalltown life is turned on end when her uncle Adam returns home for the first time in over ten years. Hattie has never met him, never known about him. He’s been institutionalized; his condition invovles schizophrenia and autism. Hattie, a shy girl who prefers the company of adults, takes immediately to her excitable uncle, even when the rest of the family — her parents and grandparents — have trouble dealing with his intense way of seeing the world.

Countdown By: Wiles, Deborah – It’s 1962, and it seems everyone is living in fear. Twelve-year-old Franny Chapman lives with her family in Washington, DC, during the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Amidst the pervasive threat of nuclear war, Franny must face the tension between herself and her younger brother, figure out where she fits in with her family, and look beyond outward appearances. For Franny, as for all Americans, it’s going to be a formative year.

Criss Cross By: Perkins, Lynne Rae – Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love.

Dancing in Cadillac Light By: Holt, Kimberly Willis – In 1968, eleven-year-old Jaynell’s life in the town of Moon, Texas, is enlivened when her eccentric Grandpap comes to live with her family.

Dead End in Norvelt By: Gantos, Jack – In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

Glory Be By: Scattergood, Augusta – In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory’s town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.

Here Today By: Martin, Ann M. – In 1963, when her flamboyant mother abandons the family to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, eleven-year-old Ellie Dingman takes charge of her younger siblings, while also trying to deal with her outcast status in school and frightening acts of prejudice toward the “misfits” that live on her street.

Letters from Wolfie By: Sherlock, Patti – Certain that he is doing the right thing by donating his dog, Wolfie, to the Army’s scout program in Vietnam, thirteen-year-old Mark begins to have second thoughts when the Army refuses to say when and if Wolfie will ever return.

My Mother the Cheerleader By: Sharenow, Rob – Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans.

Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me By: Marino, Nan – Tamara dreams of the day when ten-year-old Muscle Man McGinty’s constant lies catch up to him, but when an incredible event takes place in the summer of 1969, her outlook on life is altered in the most surprising way.

One Crazy Summer By: Williams-Garcia, Rita – In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Shooting the Moon By: Dowell, Frances O’Roark – When twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter’s brother joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam, Jamie is plum thrilled. She can’t wait to get letters from the front lines describing the excitement of real-life combat: the sound of helicopters, the smell of gunpowder, the exhilaration of being right in the thick of it. After all, they’ve both dreamed of following in the footsteps of their father, the Colonel. But TJ’s first letter isn’t a letter at all. It’s a roll of undeveloped film, the first of many. What Jamie sees when she develops TJ’s photographs reveals a whole new side of the war. Slowly the shine begins to fade off of Army life – and the Colonel. How can someone she’s worshipped her entire life be just as helpless to save her brother as she is?

The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963 By: Curtis, Christopher Paul – The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Wednesday Wars By: Schmidt, Gary D. – During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker’s classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.