Librarian's Pick
Here's what our librarians are reading lately.Librarian’s Pick: The Martha Manual – Martha Stewart
” Lifestyle maven Stewart (Martha’s Flowers) offers an easy-to-navigate and attractive guidebook covering a wide array of topics, from organizing the entrance to one’s home to traveling with pets. The book addresses common and several not-so-common how-to questions (“ ‘how-to’ could be my middle name,” she writes) and is—not surprisingly—exceedingly well-organized. The dozen major sections address how to “Organize,” “Fix and Maintain,” “Refresh and Embellish” (e.g., by re-covering a chair), “Clean,” “Launder,” “Craft and Create” (embroidering a pillow), “Garden and Grow,” “Host and Entertain,” “Enjoy” (hanging a hammock or practicing sun salutations), “Cook,” “Celebrate” (birthdays, etc.) and “Care for Pets.” Accompanying visuals further clarify the instructions: for example, readers will find diagrams on how to fold “oddball fitted sheets” for neat placement in a linen closet; the utilitarian “how to fix toilets” section includes a rudimentary “anatomy of a toilet” diagram—as well as the warning, “don’t panic.” “Martha Must” comments throughout amplify Stewart’s personal touch, evoking a cozy yet pragmatic mind-set (keep a basket of nonskid socks by the entrance for visitors as part of a no-shoe policy). Visually appealing and packed with inspiring ideas and lucid instructions.”
Librarian’s Pick: Watching You – Lisa Jewell
“Tom Fitzwilliam is the new headmaster of the Melville Academy in Bristol, England, and he’s called Superhead by the local newspaper due to his many postings to failing schools and his reputation for quickly turning them around. Tom lives with his wife, Nicola, in an upscale neighborhood. Nicola is an enigmatic, unhappy woman with a troubled past. Their only child, 14-year-old Freddie, believes he has Asperger’s. He hopes to work for MI5 one day and spends all his free time spying on the neighbors from his upstairs window, documenting what he sees with his camera and keeping a logbook of the neighborhood comings and goings.
One of Freddie’s voyeuristic targets is Joey Mullen, a young woman who lives two doors down from the Fitzwilliams. Joey is newly married and drifting from job to job. She and her husband live with Joey’s older brother, Jack, a physician, and his wife, Rebecca, a “strait-laced systems analyst.” Rebecca is pregnant, but she’s apparently not overjoyed about becoming a mother. Joey is completely smitten with Tom Fitzwilliam and begins planning how to meet him “accidentally,” which is all documented by Freddie’s watchful eyes.
Sixteen-year-old Jenna, a student at the Academy, and her mother live nearby, and they’re also subjects of Freddie’s surveillance. Jenna’s mother, who increasingly shows signs of paranoia, seems to believe she saw the Fitzwilliam family on holiday years ago, and that they were involved in an unpleasant incident that she can’t quite remember.
From the novel’s early pages, Jewell includes excerpts from police interviews conducted at the Bristol police station. The reader knows someone has been murdered but not their identity. Little by little, Jewell sprinkles clues about the pasts of each of her characters, and these hidden connections to the victim may turn out to be motives to commit murder. But only near the end does one suspect emerge as the killer—and a shocking final revelation completely takes the reader by surprise.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Dakota Winters – Tom Barbash
” Anton has just returned home from the Peace Corps to heal from a case of malaria. Inadvertently joining his father’s attempt to re-enter the late-night game, Anton serves as Buddy’s “second brain” as he begins to prepare new material for an upcoming show. This role validates Anton professionally and troubles him personally, fueling a line of questions that will lead him to step into adulthood outside his father’s exuberant shadow.”
Librarian’s Pick: One Day in December – Josie Silver
“While waiting to depart for holiday travel, 22-year-old Laurie stares through the window from her seat on a London bus and glimpses the face of a stranger standing outside in the crowd. Their eyes meet, but the doors swing shut and the bus pulls away. Over the next year, perhaps lured into that age-old trap of wanting the impossible, Laurie, aided and abetted by best friend Sarah, searches everywhere to try and locate her elusive “bus boy,” but to no avail.
Fast-forward to the next holiday season, when in an ironic turn of fate, Sarah introduces Laurie to her new boyfriend. This is how Jack, the bus boy, reappears in Laurie’s life, though neither Laurie nor Jack thinks the other remembers the bus encounter, and both pretend this is their first meeting. Time passes, and there’s a marriage or two, along with deceptions and revelations that alter all of their lives.
What sounds like a garden-variety romance takes shape as an impeccably written novel. The charm’s in the telling as Laurie and Jack struggle with their private thoughts and yearnings . . . and there’s that accidental late-night kiss. Each will have to decide how—or if—they’ll be able to square their dreams with reality.”
Librarian’s Pick: Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners – Gretchen Anthony
“Violet needs structure, certainty and, above all, advance plans. But what’s a deeply loving and controlling mother to do when her daughter, Cerise—happily partnered up with a woman named Barb—becomes pregnant? The father’s name is known only to Cerise and Barb, and they’re not telling.
This is hard to take for Violet, whose controlling arm is long. However, leave it to this determined lady to find a way to return order to her world. She’s used to micromanaging events at home and at the Faithful Redeemer Church holiday fair, as well as the ongoing issues in her friend Eldris’ life, so what could go wrong here? What’s a little fraud, some missing eyeglasses, an early labor, an unfinished family tree and a food fight with roast lamb, among friends?
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners is a charming, often hilarious story about people whose sticky jealousies, insecurities and small joys are remarkably similar to the ones that mark our own lives. Anthony offers readers a chance to savor and appreciate the joys of the commonplace as well as that strange but remarkable pride we have in our own family bonds.”
Librarian’s Pick: Museum of Modern Love – Heather Rose
“Arky Levin, a 50-year-old film score composer, has reached a strange moment in his life. Recently separated from his wife under disconcerting circumstances and estranged from his only child, Arky finds himself alone in a new apartment in New York and purposefully cut off from friends. This should provide the silence he craves to write his latest film score, but instead he just feels lost. In this frame of mind, he visits the Museum of Modern Art and discovers a performance piece called The Artist Is Present, based on a real 2010 performance by renowned artist Marina Abramović. In this piece, Abramović sits for 75 days at a table as throngs of visitors stand for hours to take turns sitting across from her, still and silent.
Using Abramović’s seven steps for creative projects—awareness, resistance, submission, work, reflection, courage and the gift—as an organizational device for her novel, author Heather Rose details the performance’s almost mystical effect on Arky and an array of other characters as they return to the piece day after day. Other characters include Abramović herself, a young Ph.D. student from Amsterdam, a recent widow from the South, a radio personality and even Abramović’s late mother, each of whom brings his or her own unique experiences and responses to the piece.”
Librarian’s Pick: My Sister, The Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
“Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead.
Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.
Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.”
Librarian’s Pick: Family Trust – Kathy Wang
“Patriarch Stanley Huang is dying of pancreatic cancer. His imminent passing is mourned by his two grown children, Kate and Fred; their mother and Stanley’s ex-wife, Linda; and his current wife, Mary. At the same time, each wonders just how their finances might be affected by his will, which has always remained a mystery. Stanley has hinted to Mary that he’s worth millions, but Linda is skeptical since she was the money manager during their marriage and knows that Stanley is clueless when it comes to investing.
Fred, though graduating with honors from Harvard Business School, is mired in a huge investment firm with little room for advancement. He begins to imagine the perks a few million would bring, though his discreet questions about the will are completely ignored. Kate also works for a tech company as a middle manager—and at the moment is the sole breadwinner in her family, as her husband has been on the verge of launching a startup for what seems like an endless number of months. An infusion of funds from her father’s will would obviously be most welcome.
Linda has invested wisely over the years since her divorce from Stanley. She’s financially stable, but she wants to make sure Fred and Kate get their fair share and don’t lose out to Mary, whom Linda knows expects to be handsomely rewarded for caring for her dying husband.
An intriguing side plot explores Linda’s involvement with an online dating site that harbors a global financial scam—one that, coincidentally, Fred barely escapes investing in himself.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Kinship of Secrets – Eugenia Kim
“In 1948 Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges ahead, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her.
But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia, under the shadow of the daughter left behind, as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn’t remember. Najin and Calvin desperately seek a reunion with Inja, but are the bonds of love strong enough to reconnect their family over distance, time and war? And as deep family secrets are revealed, will everything they long for be upended?
Told through the alternating perspectives of the distanced sisters, and inspired by a true story, The Kinship of Secrets explores the cruelty of war, the power of hope, and what it means to be a sister.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Sisters of the Winter Woods – Rena Rossner
“In a remote village surrounded by vast forests on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, sisters Liba and Laya have been raised on the honeyed scent of their Mami’s babka and the low rumble of their Tati’s prayers. But when a troupe of mysterious men arrives, Laya falls under their spell – despite their mother’s warning to be wary of strangers. And this is not the only danger lurking in the woods.
As dark forces close in on their village, Liba and Laya discover a family secret passed down through generations. Faced with a magical heritage they never knew existed, the sisters realize the old fairy tales are true…and could save them all.”