FICTION Staff Picks Digital and Print Edition

Readers’ Advisory Committee SEPTEMBER 2020 Staff Picks Digital and Print Edition Go to www.lib.de.us to find out how!

FICTION PLAYING NICE BY JP DELANEY (PICKED BY BS) Pete Riley answers the door one morning and lets in a parent's worst nightmare. On his doorstep is Miles Lambert, a stranger who breaks the devastating news that Pete's son, Theo, isn't actually his son--he is the Lamberts', switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they've been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again. The two families, reeling from the shock, take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents--or even each other? Stretched to the breaking point, Pete and Maddie discover they will each stop at nothing to keep their family safe. They are done playing nice. (420 pgs) LITTLE SECRETS BY JENNIFER HILLIER (PICKED BY SP) Married to her college sweetheart, Marin owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family. Up until the day Sebastian is taken. A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. She and her husband rarely speak. The only thing keeping her going is the unlikely chance that one day Sebastian will reappear. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding him, she discovers that Derek is having an affair with Kenzie Li - an artist and grad student—Instagram famous—and up to her eyeballs in debt. She knows Derek is married. She also knows he's rich. He isn't her first rich boyfriend, but she's falling for him—and that was never part of the plan. Discovery of the affair sparks Marin back to life. She's lost her son; she's not about to lose her husband, too. But as she sets a plan in motion, another revelation surfaces. Derek's lover might know what happened to their son. And so might Derek. (352 pgs) THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES BY KRISTIN HARMEL (PICKED BY SLS) Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. It’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer. As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. Along with a forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears. (400pgs)

THE DARKLING HALLS OF IVY EDITED BY LAWRENCE BLOCK (PICKED BY SLH) In recent years, colleges and universities have become known for their “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”—but as the 18 authors who penned stories for this powerful new anthology can tell you, there’s plenty of danger still lurking behind the solid stonework and thickets of ivy. Lawrence Block has assembled a Who’s Who of literary luminaries and turned them loose on the world of academia, where petty rivalries and grand betrayals inflame relations between professors and students, deans and donors. From Ian Rankin to Joe Lansdale, Seanan McGuire to David Morrell, each author reveals the dark truths and buried secrets that make institutions of higher learning such a hotbed of controversy. You’ll encounter plagiarism, sexual misconduct, and brutal competition—not to mention secret societies and cover-ups of murder. (328 pgs)

New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer , County Executive STAFF PICKS FICTION DAUGHTERS OF SMOKE AND FIRE BY AVA HOMA (PICKED BY SM) Set primarily in Iran, this debut novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through a story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Leila dreams of making films to bring the suppressed stories of her people onto the global stage, but obstacles keep piling up. Her younger brother, Chia, influenced by their father’s past torture, imprisonment, and his deep-seated desire for justice, begins to engage with social and political affairs. But his activism grows increasingly risky and one day he disappears in Tehran. Seeking answers about her brother’s whereabouts, Leila fears the worst and begins a campaign to save him. But when she publishes Chia’s writings online, she finds herself in grave danger as well. Inspired by the life of Kurdish human rights activist Farzad Kamangar, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds. (304 pgs) BRAVE GIRL, QUIET GIRL BY CATHERINE RYAN HYDE (PICKED BY SM) Brooke is a divorced single mom, financially strapped, living with her mother, and holding tight to the one thing that matters most: her two-year-old daughter, Etta. In a matter of seconds, Brooke’s life is shattered when she’s carjacked. Helpless and terrified, all Brooke can do is watch as Etta, still strapped in her seat, disappears into the Los Angeles night. Miles away, Etta is found by Molly, a homeless teen who is all too used to darkness. Thrown away by her parents, and with a future as stable as the wooden crate she calls home, Molly survives day to day by her wits. She’s stunned to find Etta, abandoned and alone. Shielding the little girl from more than the elements, Molly must put herself in harm’s way to protect a child as lost as she is. Out of one terrible moment, Brooke’s and Molly’s desperate paths converge and an unlikely friendship across generations and circumstances is formed. With it, Brooke and Molly will come to discover that what’s lost—and what’s found—can change in a heartbeat. (287 pgs) UNDERCOVER BROMANCE BY LYSSA KAY ADAMS (PICKED BY KT) Liv Papandreas has a dream job as a sous chef at Nashville’s hottest restaurant. Too bad the celebrity chef owner is less than charming behind kitchen doors. After she catches him harassing a young hostess, she confronts him and gets fired. Liv vows revenge, but she’ll need assistance to take on the powerful chef. Unfortunately, that means turning to Braden Mack. When Liv’s blackballed from the restaurant scene, the charismatic nightclub entrepreneur offers to help expose her ex-boss, but she is suspicious of his motives. He’ll need to call in reinforcements: the Bromance Book Club. Inspired by the romantic suspense novel they’re reading, the book club assists Liv in setting up a sting operation to take down the chef. But they’re just as eager to help Mack figure out the way to Liv’s heart... even though she’s determined to squelch the sparks between them before she gets burned. (352 pgs) DEATH IN HER HANDS BY OTESSA MOSHFEGH (PICKED BY TA) While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken. She is new to the area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins exploring the possibilities of who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems to be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home. (259 pgs) VANESSA YU’S MAGICAL PARIS TEA SHOP BY ROSELLE LIM (PICKED BY MG) Ever since she can remember, Vanessa has been able to see people's fortunes at the bottom of their teacups. To avoid blurting out their fortunes, she converts to coffee, but somehow fortunes escape and find a way to complicate her life and the ones of those around her. To add to this plight, her romantic life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai. After her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa sees death for the first time. She decides that she can't truly live until she can find a way to get rid of her uncanny abilities. When her eccentric Aunt Evelyn shows up with a tempting offer to whisk her away, Vanessa says au revoir to California and bonjour to Paris. There, Vanessa learns more about herself and the root of her gifts and realizes one thing to be true: knowing one's destiny isn't a curse, but being unable to change it is. (304 pgs) STAFF PICKS SEPTEMBER 2020

NON-FICTION

A FURIOUS SKY BY ERIC JAY DOLIN (PICKED BY SLH & SMC) With A Furious Sky, Dolin has created a sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’s New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Dolin draws on a vast array of sources as he melds American history with the history of hurricanes, showing how these tempests frequently helped determine the nation’s course. Dolin traces the corresponding development of hurricane science, from important discoveries made by Benjamin Franklin to the breakthroughs spurred by the necessities of the World War II and the Cold War. Despite remarkable leaps in scientific knowledge and technological prowess, there are still limits on our ability to predict exactly when and where hurricanes will strike, and we remain terribly vulnerable to the greatest storms on earth. A Furious Sky is, ultimately, a story of a changing climate, and it forces us to reckon with the reality that as bad as the past has been, the future will probably be worse, unless we drastically reimagine our relationship with the planet. (432 pgs) MEMORIAL DRIVE BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY (PICKED BY SLS) At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead -up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. (224 pgs) THE NEXT GREAT MIGRATION BY SONIA SHAH (PICKED BY SLS) The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet's migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. In other words, migration is not the crisis--it is the solution. Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today's anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope. (400 pgs) SIX DAYS IN AUGUST BY DAVID KING (PICKED BY SLH) On the morning of August 23, 1973, a man wearing a wig, makeup, and a pair of sunglasses walked into the main branch of Sveriges Kreditbank, a prominent bank in central Stockholm. He ripped out a submachine gun, fired it into the ceiling, and shouted, "The party starts!" This was the beginning of a six-day hostage crisis that would mesmerize the world. Inside the building complicated emotional relationships developed between captors and captives that would launch a remarkable new concept into the realm of psychology, hostage negotiation, and popular culture. Based on a wealth of previously unpublished sources, Six Days in August captures the surreal events in their entirety. It is a rich human drama that blurs the lines between loyalty and betrayal, obedience and defiance, fear and attraction—and a ground- breaking work of nonfiction that forces us to consider "Stockholm syndrome" in an entirely new light. (288 pgs) New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer, County Executive STAFF PICKS NON-FICTION

THE UNIDENTIFIED BY COLIN DICKEY (PICKED BY SLH) In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs and investigates how theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. (320 pgs) YOU LOOK SO MUCH BETTER IN PERSON BY AL ROKER (PICKED BY SMC) In his first-ever series of essays, Al Roker details his childhood in Brooklyn and Queens and his start on a local channel in Syracuse while still in college, before making the move back to his NYC hometown and prime-time weather casting. Al's trademark good humor and keen reportage have made him one of the country's most trusted faces on television, but in this book, Al gives readers an all-access pass to his life beyond the screen. From co-parenting with his award- winning journalist wife, Deborah Roberts, and starting up his own production company, to his latest stint on Broadway in Waitress, Al has built up a wealth of knowledge and guidance. He has plenty to say about the good times and the bad; being mentored by Willard Scott; what he's learned from working with news legends from Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel to contemporaries like Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Lester Holt; and moments where he held his tongue--and wishes he hadn't. (304 pgs)

BUTCH CASSIDY BY CHARLES LEERHSEN (PICKED BY SMC) Born into a Mormon family in Utah, Robert Leroy Parker grew up dirt poor and soon discovered that stealing horses and cattle was a fact of life in a world where small ranchers were being squeezed by banks, railroads, and cattle barons. A charismatic and more than capable cowboy— even ranch owners who knew he was a rustler said they would hire him again—he adopted the alias “Butch Cassidy,” and moved on to bank robbery. Butch was a smart and considerate thief, refusing to take anything from customers and insisting that no one be injured during his heists. His “Wild Bunch” gang specialized in clever getaways so they could outrun any posse. Eventually Butch and his gang graduated to train robberies, which were more lucrative. But the railroad owners hired the Pinkerton Agency, whose detectives pursued Butch and his gang relentlessly, until he and his then partner Harry Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid) fled to South America, where they replicated the cycle of ranching, rustling, and robbery until they met their end in Bolivia. (304 pgs)

LET’S NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN BY SARA FAITH ALTERMAN (PICKED BY BS) 12-year-old Sara enjoyed an G-rated existence in suburban New England, filled with over-the-top birthday cakes, Revolutionary War reenactments, and nerdy word games invented by her prudish father, Ira. But Sara's world changed for the icky, when she discovered that Ira had been shielding her from the truth; that he was a campy sex writer who'd sold millions of books in multiple languages. For decades the books remained an unspoken family secret, until Ira developed early onset Alzheimer's disease...and announced he'd be reviving his writing career. With Sara's help. In this cringe-worthy, hilarious, and moving memoir, Sara shares the profound experience of discovering new facets of her father; once as a child, and again as an adult. (272 pgs)

DECODING YOUR CAT BY AMERICAN COLLEGE OF VETERINARY BEHAVIORISTS (PICKED BY BS) In the United States, one of the predominant reasons that owners abandon or give up their pets (often leading to euthanasia) is because of unwanted behaviors. Many have tried to instruct proper cat training, but this is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth understanding of the underlying reasons for a cat’s problem behavior, the essential key to unlocking the best for your cat and avoiding pitfalls. Decoding Your Cat gives owners new insight on promoting their cat’s physical and psychological health and wellness and maintaining a long and fulfilling relationship together. (368 pgs)

Reviews excerpted from amazon.com and goodreads.com