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Book Selection Summaries:
The Puzzle Master, Danielle Trussoni: Once a promising Midwestern football star, Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare medical condition: Acquired Savant Syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower–he can solve puzzles, calculate equations, and see patterns in ways ordinary people can’t. What begins as a desire to crack a strange and alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with the woman who drew the puzzle. When Price reveals that there is something more urgent, and more dangerous, behind her silence, Brink is thrust into a hunt for the truth.
The Inheritance Games, Jennifer Lynn Barnes: Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s touch–and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.
Games Gods Play, Abigail Owens: Every 100 Years, the gods choose mortal champions to compete in the Crucible; a deadly contest to determine the sitting ruler of Olympus. For the first time ever, Hades has selected a champion –a clerk for the Order of Thieves who has lived by keeping her head down and going unnoticed. The other gods are unhappy, but Hades is playing by his own rules –and Death will win at any cost.
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world’s greatest and most brazen smugglers. To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, Kirsten Miller: When Lula Dean, trying to rid public libraries of “pornographic” books, starts her own lending library in front of her home, Lindsay, the daughter of Lula’s arch nemesis, sneaks in nightly, secretly filling it with banned books wrapped in “wholesome” dust jackets, changing the lives of those who borrow them in unexpected ways.
A Novel Love Story, Ashley Poston: As a professor of literature, Eileen Merriweather teaches prestigious courses on history’s greatest romantics, but one week out of the year she abandons her dusty textbooks and makes a pilgrimage to the Hudson Valley with her best friend Pru to meet their Super Smutty Book Club in person, and celebrate the romance series that brought them together–Quixotic Falls. When Pru bails last minute and Elsy winds up lost in Hudson Valley, she takes shelter from a storm in a bookstore where she immediately gets on the bad side of its grumpy (and infuriatingly sexy) owner, and finds herself in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a book… Because it is. In Eloraton nothing changes, nothing moves, trapped in the last place the late author of Quixotic Falls left them. Which must be why Elsy is here: to find an ending to this last story, the one the author never finished.
The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, Maj. Gen. Mari K Eder: The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII-in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.
Her Hidden Genius, Marie Benedict: Rosalind Franklin knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture–one more after thousands–she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who’d rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens–the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what happens next, Rosalind could have never predicted. Marie Benedict’s next powerful novel shines a light on a woman who died to discover our very DNA, a woman whose contributions were suppressed by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind
Bits and Pieces, Whoopie Goldberg: If it weren’t for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010–and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later–she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone. Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time.
Starfish, Lisa Fipps: Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies.
We are the Ashes We Are the Fire, Jon McCullough Em Morales’s sister was raped after a frat party. A jury found the attacker guilty on all counts, but victory is short-lived as the judge sentences the rapist to no prison time. While her family is stunned, Em is sick with rage and guilt. To make matters worse, Em tells a reporter the sentence makes her want to learn to use a sword–and the news clip goes viral. Em must find a new reason to fight on, and it comes in the unlikely form of the story of a fifteenth-century French noblewoman, Marguerite de Bressieux, legendary as an avenging knight for rape victims.
We are all so Good at Smiling, Amber McBride: When hospitalized for her clinical depression, Whimsy connects with a boy named Faerry, who also suffers from the traumatic loss of a sibling, and together they work to unearth buried memories and battle the fantastical physical embodiment of their depression.
Send for Me, Lauren Fox: Annelise works at her parents’ popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious at all. As Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Given the chance to leave for America, Annelise and her husband must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain. Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise’s granddaughter, Clare, stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother’s letters from Germany. Now she is faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future.
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks: In 1996, Hanna Heath, a young Australian book conservator is called to analyze the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a priceless six-hundred-year-old Jewish prayer book that has been salvaged from a destroyed Bosnian library. When Hanna discovers a series of artifacts in the centuries’ old book, she unwittingly exposes an international cover up.
The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman: A tale inspired by the massacre of hundreds of Jewish people at Masada presents the stories of a hated daughter, a baker’s wife, a girl disguised as a warrior, and a medicine woman who keep doves and secrets while Roman soldiers draw near.
Death Stalks Door County, Patricia Skalka Six deaths mar the holiday mood as summer vacationers enjoy Wisconsin’s beautiful Door County peninsula. Murders, or bizarre accidents? Newly hired park ranger Dave Cubiak, a former Chicago homicide detective, becomes embroiled in the desperate search for clues, uncovering a tangled web of greed, betrayal, bitter rivalries, and lost love beneath the peninsula’s travel-brochure veneer. Befriended by several locals but unsure whom to trust or to suspect of murder, the one-time cop tracks a clever killer.
Familiaris, David Wrobkewski It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle’s imagination has gotten him into trouble… again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin’s Northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start–and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends, to realize their dreams.
South of Luck, Jim Guhl: It’s the summer of 1945, and sixteen-year-old ruffian Milo Egerson has been shipped from his Minneapolis home to his great-uncle Ham’s farm in rural northwestern Wisconsin. Milo sets about trying to make the most of life without running water and electricity while trying to better understand his own place in the world and what it all means. His tough-guy act softens as he blends into the community and befriends an endearing group of small-town folks. And that’s lucky for him, because to stay safe, he’s going to need all the help he can get.
Summer of ’69, Elin Hilderbrand Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother’s historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha’s Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. And thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, while each of them hides a troubling secret.As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country.
French Braid, Anne Tyler: The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family’s orbit, for reasons none of them understands. Yet as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influence on one another ripples unmistakably through each generation, much like French-braided hair keeps its waves even after it is undone.
The Power Couple, Alex Berenson: The Unsworths’ marriage isn’t as perfect as it seems. After two decades together, they’ve drifted apart, talking little and having sex even less. Seeking to revive their strained relationship, they decide for their twentieth wedding anniversary to take their two kids, Kira and Tony, on a European getaway. They have a blast…until one night in Barcelona when Kira doesn’t come home from a dance club. She’s gone. Abducted. Over the course of a single weekend, the Unsworths will do everything possible to find her–as Kira herself discovers just how far she’ll go to break free of the trap that’s been set for her. And even as Rebecca and Brian come together for Kira, they realize their marriage is more tenuous than they realized.
Before I Met You, Lisa Jewel: Betty forfeited everything in order to care for her grandmother Arlette in their dilapidated home on the English island of Guernsey. But her will included a beneficiary unknown to her family, a woman named Clara Pickle, at a London address. Flashback to 1920s bohemian London, where Arlette De La Mare is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she is soon drawn into a hedonistic world. But when tragedy strikes, she flees back to her childhood home. Will the secrets of Arlette’s past help Betty find her own way to happiness in the present?
The Bones Beneath My Skin, TJ Klune: In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he’s been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family’s summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It’s not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn’t exactly as she appears. Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.
Akin, Emma Donoghue: Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is days away from returning to France for the first time since he was a child when he receives a call from social services. Noah is the closest available relative of an eleven-year-old great-nephew he’s never met. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip. The unlikely duo, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, bicker about everything from steak fries to screen time. But Noah gradually comes to appreciate the boy’s truculent wit, and Michael’s ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.
Class Mom, Laurie Gelman Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom-or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max, this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the “wisest” candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree. From recording parents’ response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of “special” brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen’s methods win approval from the other moms. Throw in an old flame from Jen’s past, a hyper-sensitive “allergy mom,” a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.
Normal People, Sally Rooney: At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers–one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other
My Year Abroad, Chang-Rae Lee Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
Olga Dies Dreaming, Xochitl Gonzlez Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can’t seem to find her own…until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets… Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Every Note Played, Lisa Genova A once accomplished concert pianist, Richard now has ALS. As he becomes increasingly paralyzed and is no longer able to live on his own, Karina becomes his reluctant caretaker. As Richard’s muscles, voice, and breath fade, both he and Karina try to reconcile their past before it’s too late. This is a masterful exploration of redemption and what it means to find peace inside of forgiveness.
The First State of Being, Erin Entrada Kelly When Ridge, a time-traveling teenager from the future, gets trapped in 1999, he befriends Michael, a lonely twelve-year-old boy, changing the course of their lives forever.
The Sea in Winter, Christine Day It’s been a hard year for Maisie Cannon, ever since she hurt her leg and could not keep up with her ballet training and auditions. Her blended family is loving and supportive, but Maisie knows that they just can’t understand how hopeless she feels. With everything she’s dealing with, Maisie is not excited for their family road trip along the coast, near the Makah community where her mother grew up. But soon, Maisie’s anxieties start to hurt as much as the pain in her knee. How can she keep pretending to be strong when on the inside she feels as roiling and cold as the ocean?
One Big Happy Family, Susan Mallery Julie Parker’s kids are her greatest gift. Still, she’s not exactly heartbroken when they ask to skip a big Christmas. Her son, Nick, is taking a belated honeymoon with his bride, Blair, while her daughter, Dana, will purge every reminder of the guy who dumped her. Again. Julie feels practically giddy for one-on-one holiday time with Heath, the (much) younger man she’s secretly dating. But her plans go from cozy to chaotic when Nick and Dana plead for Christmas at the family cabin in memory of their late father, Julie’s ex. She can’t refuse, even though she dreads their reactions to her new man when they realize she’s been hiding him for months. As the guest list grows in surprising ways, from Blair’s estranged mom to Heath’s precocious children, Julie’s secret is one of many to be unwrapped. Over this delightfully complicated and very funny Christmas, she’ll discover that more really is merrier, and that a big, happy family can become bigger and happier, if they let go of old hurts and open their hearts to love.
Five Tuesdays in Winter, Lily King Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter intriguingly subverts expectations as it explores desire, loss, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs.