Readers’ Advisory Committee SEPTEMBER 2018
STAFF PICKS Libraries To find book suggestions on the web go to www.nccde.org/libraries and click on “What Do I Read Next” for Staff Picks, Select Reads, and more... FICTION
OUR HOUSE BY LOUISE CANDLISH (PICKED BY BS) When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down. Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses. (416 pages)
SOUTHERNMOST BY SILAS HOUSE (PICKED BY SM & BS) In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew— and risks losing everything: his wife, locked into her religious prejudices; his congregation, which shuns Asher after he delivers a passionate sermon in defense of tolerance; and his young son, Justin, caught in the middle of what turns into a bitter custody battle. With no way out but ahead, Asher takes Justin and flees to Key West, where he hopes to find his brother, Luke, whom he’d turned against years ago after Luke came out. And it is there, at the southernmost point of the country, that Asher and Justin discover a new way of thinking about the world, and a new way of understanding love. (352 pages) SALT LANE BY WILLIAM SHAW (PICKED BY SLS) No-one knew their names, the bodies found in the water. There are people here, in plain sight, that no-one ever notices at all. DS Alexandra Cupidi has done it again. She should have learnt to keep her big mouth shut, after the scandal that sent her packing - resentful teenager in tow - from the London Met to the lonely Kent coastline. Even murder looks different in this landscape of fens, ditches and stark beaches, shadowed by the towers of Dungeness power station. Murder looks a lot less pretty. The man drowned in the slurry pit had been herded there like an animal. He was North African, like many of the fruit pickers that work the fields. The more Cupidi discovers, the more she wants to ask - but these people are suspicious of questions. It will take an understanding of this strange place - its old ways and new crimes - to uncover the dark conspiracy behind the murder. Cupidi is not afraid to travel that road. But she should be. She should, by now, have learnt. (400 pages)
DEAR RACHEL MADDOW BY ADRIENNE KISNER [TEEN] (PICKED BY KT) Brynn Haper's life has one steadying force--Rachel Maddow. She watches her daily, and after writing to Rachel for a school project--and actually getting a response--Brynn starts drafting e-mails to Rachel but never sending them. Brynn tells Rachel about breaking up with her first serious girlfriend, about her brother Nick's death, about her passive mother and even worse stepfather, about how she's stuck in remedial courses at school and is considering dropping out. Then Brynn is confronted with a moral dilemma. One student representative will be allowed to have a voice among the administration in the selection of a new school superintendent. Brynn's archnemesis, Adam, and ex-girlfriend, Sarah, believe only Honors students are worthy of the selection committee seat. Brynn feels all students deserve a voice. When she runs for the position, the knives are out. So she begins to ask herself: What Would Rachel Maddow Do? (265 pages)
New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer , County Executive STAFF PICKS FICTION
THE LOST FOR WORDS BOOKSHOP BY STEPHANIE BUTLAND (PICKED BY SH) Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look closely, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are things she'll never show you. Fifteen years ago Loveday lost all she knew and loved in one unspeakable night. Now, she finds refuge in the unique little York bookshop where she works. Everything is about to change for Loveday. Someone knows about her past. Someone is trying to send her a message. And she can't hide any longer. (352 pages) THE GUNNERS BY REBECCA KAUFFMAN (PICKED BY KT) Mikey Callahan is a thirty-year-old who is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration. He struggles to establish human connections—even his emotional life is a blur. As the novel begins, he is reconnecting with "The Gunners," his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey especially needs to confront dark secrets about his own past and his father. How much of this darkness accounts for the emotional stupor Mikey is suffering from as he reaches his maturity? And can The Gunners, prompted by Sally's death, find their way to a new day? The core of this adventure, made by Mikey, Alice, Lynn, Jimmy, and Sam, becomes a search for the core of truth, friendship, and forgiveness. (261 pages) DEAR MRS. BIRD BY A.J. PEARCE (PICKED BY BS) London 1940, bombs are falling. Emmy Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent seem suddenly achievable. But the job turns out to be typist to the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down. Mrs Bird is very clear: Any letters containing Unpleasantness—must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant letters from women who are lonely, may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men and found themselves in trouble, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding. As the German planes make their nightly raids, and London picks up the smoldering pieces each morning, Emmy secretly begins to write letters back to the women of all ages who have spilled out their troubles. (281 pages) THE MASTERPIECE BY FIONA DAVIS (PICKED BY BS & SM) Grand Central Terminal is a masterpiece of design. But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. It is 1928, and twenty-five-year-old Clara is teaching at the lauded Grand Central School of Art. A talented illustrator, she has dreams of creating cover art for Vogue. Brash, and confident, - even while juggling the affections of two men-Clara is determined to achieve every creative success. In 1974, the terminal has declined almost as sharply as Virginia Clay's life. Full of grime and danger, Grand Central is at the center of a fierce lawsuit: Is the building a landmark to be preserved, or a cancer to be demolished? Recently divorced, Virginia has accepted a job in the information booth in order to support herself and her college-age daughter, Ruby. But when Virginia stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor hidden under the dust, she embarks on a quest to find the artist of the unsigned masterpiece--a chase that draws Virginia not only into the battle to save Grand Central but deep into the mystery of Clara Darden, the famed 1920s illustrator who disappeared from history in 1931. (368 pages) MARY B BY KATHERINE CHEN (PICKED BY SM) What is to be done with Mary Bennet? She knows she is lacking in the ways that matter for single, not-so-well-to-do women in nineteenth-century England who must secure their futures through the finding of a husband. Mary pictures herself growing old, a spinster with no estate to run or children to mind, dependent on the charity of others. At least she has the silent rebellion and secret pleasures of reading and writing to keep her company. In Mary B, readers are transported beyond the center of the ballroom to discover that wallflowers are sometimes the most intriguing guests at the party. Beneath Mary's plain appearance and bookish demeanor simmers an inner life brimming with passion, humor, and imagination--and a voice that demands to be heard. (336 pages)
New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer, County Executive STAFF PICKS
SEPTEMBER 2018 Libraries
NON-FICTION
DOPESICK BY BETH MACY (PICKED BY KT & SLS) Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America's twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs and disparate cities, it's a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same distressed communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death. Through unsparing, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. (384 pages) JELL-O GIRLS BY ALLIE ROWBOTTOM (PICKED BY SMC & SLH & SLS) Rowbottom explores the lives of the women in her family, specifically her mother and grandmother, members of the family that once owned the Jell-O Company. She evaluates 100- plus years of Jell-O’s marketing campaigns through a feminist lens, exploring how Jell-O presented itself as a quick and easy dessert solution for white, middle-class women who found themselves alone in the kitchen without “maids and nannies and cooks.” Rowbottom describes Jell-O’s early campaigns and provides a history of food’s role in the American imagination. At the same time, Rowbottom explores how the women in her own family negotiated the social constructs of the times and within the family business. Throughout, Rowbottom asserts that a curse afflicted her family: “The curse was patriarchy.” Rowbottom’s memoir offers a fascinating feminist history of both a company and a family. (288 pages) CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM BY EARL SWIFT (PICKED BY SMC) Tangier Island, Virginia, is a tiny sliver of mud home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence. They are separated from their countrymen by a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world. Yet Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island -it has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times. (448 pages) YES WE STILL CAN BY DAN PFEIFFER (PICKED BY SM) On November 9th, 2016, Dan Pfeiffer woke up like most of the world wondering what just happened. How had Donald Trump won the White House? How was it that a decent and thoughtful president had been succeeded by a buffoonish reality star, and what do we do now? Pfeiffer, Obama’s former communications director and current co-host of Pod Save America, decided to tell this surreal story, recounting how Barack Obama navigated the insane political forces that created Trump, explaining why everyone got 2016 wrong, and offering a path for where Democrats go from here. Using never-before-heard stories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Pfeiffer examines how Obama succeeded despite Twitter trolls, Fox News (and their fake news), and a Republican Party that lost its collective mind. An irreverent, no-B.S. take on the crazy politics of our time, Yes We (Still) Can is a must-read for everyone who is disturbed by Trump, misses Obama, and is marching, calling, and hoping for a better future for the country. (304 pages)
New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer, County Executive STAFF PICKS NON-FICTION UNTHINKABLE BY HELEN THOMSON (PICKED BY SH) Our brains are far stranger than we think. We take for granted that we can remember, feel emotion, and understand the world around us, but how would our lives change if these abilities were dramatically enhanced--or disappeared overnight? Helen Thomson has spent years traveling the world, tracking down incredibly rare brain disorders. In Unthinkable she tells the stories of nine extraordinary people she encountered along the way. From the man who thinks he's a tiger to the doctor who feels the pain of others just by looking at them, their experiences illustrate how the brain can shape our lives in unexpected and, in some cases, brilliant and alarming ways. Discover how to forge memories that never disappear, how to make better decisions. Learn how to hallucinate and how to make yourself happier in a split second. Find out how to avoid getting lost, even how exactly you can confirm you are alive. (288 pages) BLOOD & IVY BY PAUL COLLINS (PICKED BY SLH) On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment—of Harvard’s greatest doctors investigating one of their own, for a murder hidden in a building full of cadavers—it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. (368 pages) OKAY FINE WHATEVER BY COURTENAY HAMEISTER (PICKED BY BS) For most of her life (and even during her years as the host of a popular radio show), Courtenay Hameister lived in a state of near-constant dread and anxiety. She fretted about everything. Her age. Her size. Her romantic prospects. How likely it was that she would get hit by a bus on the way home. Until a couple years ago, when, in her mid-forties, she decided to fight back against her debilitating anxieties by spending a year doing little things that scared her--things that the average person might consider doing for a half second before deciding: "nope." Things like: attending a fellatio class, spending an afternoon in a sensory deprivation tank, braving twenty- eight first dates. Refreshing and relatable, Okay Fine Whatever reminds us that even the tiniest amount of bravery is still bravery, and that it's possible to fight complacency and become bold, or at least bold-ish, a little at a time. (320 pages) THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. COUNEY BY DAWN RAFFEL (PICKED BY SMC) This is the spellbinding tale of a mysterious doctor who revolutionized neonatal care more than one hundred years ago and saved some seven thousand babies. Dr. Martin Couney's story is a kaleidoscopic ride through the intersection of ebullient entrepreneurship, enlightened pediatric care, and the wild culture of world's fairs at the beginning of the American Century. Dr. Couney used incubators and careful nursing to keep previously doomed infants alive, while displaying these babies alongside sword swallowers, bearded ladies, and burlesque shows at Coney Island, Atlantic City, and venues across the nation. How this turn-of-the-twentieth-century immigrant became the savior to families with premature infants--known then as "weaklings"--as he ignored the scorn of the medical establishment and fought the rising popularity of eugenics is one of the most astounding stories of modern medicine. (304 pages)
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES BY CAITLIN DOUGHTY (PICKED BY LZ) Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead). (272 pages)
Reviews excerpted from amazon.com and goodreads.com