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.