Readers’ Advisory Committee STAFF PICKS JANUARY 2018 Libraries To find on the web go to www.nccde.org/libraries and click on “What Do I Read Next” FICTION TTTHEHEHE SSSTORY OFOFOF AAARTHUR TTTRULUV BYBYBY EEELIZABETH BBBERGERGERG (((PICKED BYBYBY SHSHSH ))) A moving novel about three people who find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of happiness. Arthur, a widow, meets Maddy, a troubled teenage girl who is avoiding school by hiding out at the cemetery, where Arthur goes every day for lunch to have imaginary conversations with his late wife, and think about the lives of others. The two strike up a friendship that draws them out of isolation. Maddy gives Arthur the name Truluv, for his loving and positive responses to every outrageous thing she says or does. With Arthur’s nosy neighbor Lucille, they create a loving and unconventional family, proving that life’s most precious moments are sweeter when shared . (240 pages) MMMANHATTAN BBBEACH BYBYBY JJJENNIFER EEEGANGANGAN (((PICKED BYBYBY SLSSLSSLS ))) Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief career as a Ziegfield girl, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have been murdered. (438 pages) HHHERERER BBBODYODYODY ANDANDAND OOOTHER PPPARTIES BYBYBY CCCARMEN MMMARIA MMMACHADO (((PICKED BYBYBY KTKTKT ))) In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous”, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction. (248 pages) A SA S INGLE SSSPYPYPY BYBYBY WWWILLIAM CCCHRISTIE (((PICKED BYBYBY KSKSKS ))) Aleksi Smirnov, an orphan and a thief, has been living by his wits surviving below the ever- watchful eye of the Soviet system until, at the age of 16, Aleksi is caught by the NKVD and transported to Moscow. There, in the headquarters of the secret police, he is given a choice: be trained and inserted as a spy into Nazi Germany under the identity of his best friend, the long lost nephew of a high ranking Nazi official, or disappear forever in the basement of the Lubyanka. Over the course of the next seven years, Aleksi has to live his role - all the while acting as a double agent—reporting back to the NKVD and avoiding detection by the Gestapo. In 1943, Aleksi is chosen by the Gestapo to spearhead one of the most desperate operations of the war—to infiltrate the site of the upcoming Tehran conference between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, and set them up to be assassinated. (400 pages). New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer , County Executive STAFF PICKS FICTION SSSWEET BBBEANEANEAN PPPASTE BYBYBY DDDURIAN SSSUKEGAWA (((PICKED BYBYBY SMSMSM ))) Sentaro has failed: he has a criminal record, drinks too much, and hasn't managed to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer. Instead, he works in a confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with a sweet paste made of red beans. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days listlessly filling the pastries. Until one day an elderly, handicapped woman enters the shop. Tokue makes the best bean paste imaginable, and begins to teach Sentaro her art. But as their friendship flourishes, societal prejudices become impossible to escape, in this quietly devastating novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. (224 pages) TTTHEHEHE CCCOTTINGLEY SSSECRET BYBYBY HHHAZEL GGGAYNOR (((PICKED BYBYBY SMSMSM ))) 1917 … When two young cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright from Cottingley, England, claim to have photographed fairies at the bottom of the garden, their parents are astonished. But when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle becomes convinced of the photographs’ authenticity, the girls become a national sensation, their discovery offering hope to those longing for something to believe in amid a world ravaged by war. Frances and Elsie will hide their secret for many decades. But Frances longs for the truth to be told. One hundred years later … When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather’s bookshop she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls’ lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present, and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself? (383 pages) SSSLEEP NNNOOO MMMOREOREORE BYBYBY P.D. J AMES (((PICKED BYBYBY SLSSLSSLS ))) It's not always a question of "whodunit?" Sometimes there's more mystery in the why or how. And although we usually know the unhealthy fates of both victim and perpetrator, what of those clever few who plan and carry out the perfect crime? The ones who aren't brought down even though they're found out? And what about those who do the finding out—who witness a murder or who identify the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the mysteries that we follow through six stories as we are drawn into the thinking, the memories, the emotional machinations, the rationalizations, the dreams and desires behind murderous cause and effect. (208 pages) SSSTATION EEELEVEN BYBYBY EEEMILY SSSTTT. J. J OHNOHNOHN MMMANDEL (((PICKED BYBYBY KSKSKS ))) One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains - this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self- proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it. (336 pages) SSSPYPYPY OFOFOF THETHETHE FFFIRST PPPERSON BYBYBY SSSAMAMAM SSSHEPARD (((PICKED BYBYBY KTKTKT ))) In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard’s narrative leaps off the page with its immediacy and power. It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator’s memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment—for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust. But at the book’s core, and his, is family—his relationships with those he loved, and with the natural world around him. (96 pages) New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Matthew Meyer, County Executive STAFF PICKS JANUARY 2018 Libraries NONNON----FICTIONFICTION AAASKSKSK ANANAN AAASTRONAUT BYBYBY TTTIMIMIM PPPEAKE (P(P(P ICKED BYBYBY SMCSMCSMC ))) Ask an Astronaut is Tim Peake’s personal guide to life in space, based on his historic Principia mission, and the thousands of questions he has been asked since his return to Earth. Tim shares his thoughts on every aspect of his mission. From training to launch, from his historic spacewalk to re-entry, he reveals for readers of all ages the cutting-edge science behind his ground-breaking experiments, and the wonders of day-to-day life on board the International Space Station. The public was invited to submit questions using the hashtag #askanastronaut, and a selection are answered by Tim in the book, which are accompanied with illustrations, diagrams and never-before-seen photos. (272 pages) TTTHEHEHE NNNEWCOMERS BYBYBY HHHELEN TTTHORPE (P(P(P ICKED BYBYBY SMCSMCSMC ))) The Newcomers follows the lives of 22 immigrant teenagers throughout the course of the 2015-2016 schoolyear as they land at South High School in Denver, Colorado, in an English Language Acquisition class created specifically for them.