Librarian’s Pick: Red At The Bone – Jacqueline Woodson
“The story opens in 2001 at a coming-of-age party at a Brooklyn brownstone. Sixteen and outfitted in her mother’s lace dress with a matching corset, garters and stockings, Melody plans to enter the party to an instrumental version of Prince’s “Nikki,” much to her grandparents’ discomfort.
But there’s another catch to both the day and the dress. At 15, Melody’s mother, Iris, was pregnant and unable to wear the carefully made dress. Iris’ own coming-of-age birthday was left unmarked, and after her dismissal from private school, the family opted to move to another part of Brooklyn where they could also join a new church. But despite the shame and disruption of baby Melody, Iris was determined to move forward, ultimately getting her high school diploma, enrolling at Oberlin College and moving, almost permanently, out of Melody’s life.
Over 21 brief chapters, Red at the Bone, which draws its title from the romantic feelings Iris has for another woman at Oberlin, moves backward and forward in time, examining the effect Melody’s birth had on each character, from her disappointed but loving grandparents to her devoted father and his resolute yet fragile mother. Along the way, the reader learns more about the history of the family’s losses, from 9/11 to the Tulsa Race Riots of 1912.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Beekeeper Of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
“Like the beehives he tends, Nuri Ibrahim exists at the mercy of forces larger than he. When war encroaches on him and his wife, Afra, they are forced to leave their lives in Syria behind and become refugees.
Entrusting themselves to strangers, they journey toward England, where Nuri’s cousin Mustafa waits with his family, but it takes a long time to reunite with Mustafa. Bridging the distance between husband and wife, a rift forged by profound loss, will take just as long. The war has blinded them both: Afra has lost her sight, and Nuri often sees only what he wants to see.
In The Beekeeper of Aleppo, author Christy Lefteri draws from her experiences volunteering with refugees in Athens, Greece, to build a moving examination of how people make sense of who they were and who they have become. Through Syria, Turkey and Greece, Afra and Nuri move and wait while the pull of the past, both its dark tragedy and its former sunlit joy, travels with them.
Hope is a thread Nuri loses, picks up and loses again. But no matter how bleak the present in which they find themselves, hope surfaces when it is most needed—in dreams, in visions, in emails, in an injured bee, in the blue sky, in memory. Not all memories are shadows; some are full of light.”
Librarian’s Pick: Tidelands – Philippa Gregory
“Midsummer’s Eve, 1648, England is in the grip of a civil war between renegade king and rebellious parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even the remote tidelands —the marshy landscape of the south coast.
Alinor, a descendant of wisewomen, trapped in poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life.
Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbors. This is the time of witch mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands.
It is dangerous for a woman to be different.”
Librarian’s Pick: A Better Man – Louise Penny
“Once the Superintendent of Sûreté du Québec, Armand Gamache has been demoted to a position leading the homicide department. It was a demotion few believed he would accept, but he surprised the naysayers and took the job. As A Better Man opens, the spring thaw is beginning in the St. Lawrence River, and the elements are conspiring to spawn a 100-year flood, the river overflowing its banks as ice dams the flow at every bend. It’s not a propitious time to be investigating a murder, but a young woman’s body turns up in a small but volatile tributary of the St. Lawrence. Her husband is the prime suspect; no surprises there, as he is a mercurial and abusive man. But there are other possibilities, too: a pair, or perhaps a trio, of spurned lovers, as well as a high-ranking police official bent on tanking the investigation if doing so will shed a bad light on Gamache. All the while, the floodwaters rise inexorably. Louise Penny’s latest offers suspense galore, well-drawn characters we’d like to know (even the crotchety poet Ruth and her “fowl-mouthed” duck), a return to the fictional village of Three Pines—where we would all like to live—and some of the finest prose to grace the suspense genre.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Ten thousand Doors of January – Alix E. Harrow
“Set in the early 1900s, The Ten Thousand Doors of January is the story of January Scaller, whose father travels around the world to find unique curiosities for his wealthy employer, Mr. Locke. January remains behind with Locke, who keeps her dressed in finery, storing her as carefully as the other specimens he possesses.
On the day before she turns 17, January discovers a mysterious book that smells of sea and spices in one of the many rooms of Locke’s house. As she reads the book, she learns that certain locations in the world are doors to other worlds—and that her entire life is tied to those doors. With the help of a few friends, January decides to escape Locke and his strange society of archaeologists and try to find her father before she no longer can.
Part-time historian Alix E. Harrow has written a stunning debut novel with inventive worlds, sumptuous language and impeccably crafted details. Several of Harrow’s characters challenge traditional stereotypes in interesting ways, and January in particular is a refreshingly fierce female protagonist. Harrow paces this action-packed novel beautifully, slowly revealing the truth as the reader races through the pages to discover the ultimate conclusion.”
Librarian’s Pick: Thrills & Chills
“Joe Hill’s attitude toward the craft of writing could not be more different from Benjamin Percy’s. Hill eats genre fiction like junk food, chewing up the whole disreputable tradition of horror into a new, unique pulp and spitting it out with massively entertaining mastery. He comes by this skill honestly: I mean, gosh, if your dad is Stephen King and your mom is Tabitha King, you’re as good as doomed (read: saved). For us fans, good fortune is dealt in spades in Full Throttle, Hill’s latest collection of stories. Framing a baker’s dozen of tales are Hill’s beautiful essay of appreciation for his parents at the front and story notes at the back, the kind that horror geeks like me drool over, just because they’re so wonderfully self-indulgent. Best of all are the inclusion of two stories Hill co-authored with his father, whose famous love of motorcycles and road trips gone wrong have corrupted his son just right, making these the best tales in the collection.”
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“Romance takes a contemporary turn in Kate Racculia’s wonderful new novel, set in present-day Boston. The title—Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts —captures both the book’s dynamic spirit and its delightful ambiguity. Does heroine Tuesday Mooney really talk to ghosts? Is the ghost in question her childhood friend Abby, who disappeared when they were both 16, taken one night from the ocean wharf where she and Tuesday used to hang out together? That’s the awful shadow that hangs over Tuesday’s life, the memory that keeps her from true friendship and true love. But fate has other things in store, arriving in the form of an elderly, eccentric billionaire who establishes a treasure hunt in the terms of his will. It turns out that Tuesday is the one person holding all the pieces of the puzzle, which she puts together with her deliciously campy friend Dex, her precocious teenage neighbor Dorry and the secretive Archie Arches, the key to the old man’s riddles and (naturally) the person made in heaven for Tuesday. As it turns out, the treasure hunt is a bid for these characters’ very souls. Abby’s ghost has something to say about it, too—something much more than “Boo!”