Fiction
Simple passion
Annie Ernaux
FICTION Ernaux, Annie
Fiction
In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
The perfect couple
Elin Hilderbrand
FICTION Hilderbrand, Elin
Mystery, Fiction
It's Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom's wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate. But it's going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect.
The algorithm behind all my audiobook app recommendations chooses Elin Hilderbrand books constantly. I have to check off "thriller" from my list of unread genres, and I stumbled upon this one while hunting one down. It's more of a mystery than thriller, but I did read it compulsively over one weekend. While it had a wide range of interesting characters, I would have liked more depth to the main ones. How much do I really believe the victim's motivations? Or the husband's? Or the other husband's? Or the almost husband's? But what the novel lacked in character development, it made up for in pacing and police procedural work. Do I usually read police procedurals? No! So I can cross that subgenre off the list. I did enjoy the detective work, however, which could inspire me to pick up another, more direct piece of detective fiction. Hey, look, reading options are opening up everywhere! -Melody
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow : a novel
Gabrielle Zevin
FICTION Zevin, Gabrielle
Fiction
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
I loved the characters in this book, and also the little things it reminded me of from the 90s - like the PC game King's Quest! -Heidi K
Firekeeper's daughter
Boulley, Angeline, author.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Boulley, Angeline
Young Adult, Fiction
Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, either in her hometown or on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she reluctantly agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source of a new drug. How far will she go to protect her community, if it threatens to tear apart the only world she's ever known? -- adapted from jacket
With the next title set in this community, Warrior Girl Unearthed, coming out soon, Firekeeper's Daughter might have to be my next read. -Casey
The mysterious Benedict Society
Stewart, Trenton Lee.
jFICTION Stewart, Trenton Lee
Fiction, Kids
After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are selected for a secret mission that requires them to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.
Added by Casey
The last true poets of the sea
Drake, Julia, author.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Drake Julia
Fiction, Young Adult, Literary Fiction
Inspired loosely by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, teenaged Violet is shipped off to Maine after her brother's hospitalization, where she searches for the lost shipwreck that her great-great grandmother survived and for answers about her family's long struggle with mental illness, all while falling in love.
I'm always in for a Shakespeare retelling, and Twelfth Night is one of my favorites. I've heard The Last True Poets of the Sea is really good, but have yet to get to it. Maybe this year! -Casey
Hamnet : a novel of the plague
O'Farrell, Maggie, 1972- author.
FICTION O'Farrell, Maggie
Fiction, Historical Fiction
England, 1580. A young Latin tutor-- penniless, bullied by a violent father-- falls in love with an eccentric young woman who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer.
Added by Casey
Me (Moth)
McBride, Amber, author.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Mcbride Amber
Fiction, Young Adult
Moth, who lost her family in an accident, and Sani, who is battling ongoing depression, take a road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors, which helps them move forward in surprising, powerful and unforgettable ways.
Added by Casey
Unsheltered : a novel
Kingsolver, Barbara, author.
FICTION Kingsolver, Barbara
Fiction
At the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey two families live in the same house-- centuries apart.
I've been told that I need to branch out from the one Barbara Kingsolver book I've read, The Poisonwood Bible. This one has had my eye for a few years now. -Casey
When you trap a tiger
Keller, Tae, author.
jFICTION Keller Tae
Fantasy, Fiction
When Lily, her sister Sam, and their mother move in with her sick grandmother, Lily traps a tiger and makes a deal with him to heal Halmoni.
I tried to get into this one as an audio book a year or so ago and it wasn't sticking. I'm going to give it another go with the physical format this time. -Casey
When Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, I had to buy several of her books for our biography collection in order to meet readers' demand. I didn't get on the reserve list right away because I like to wait for the demand to die down before checking a title out. This book is a slim 61 pages, and it's totally worth the read. It will be most appreciated by those who have felt all-consumed with the romantic yearning for another human being. Even if it's been 20 years since one has last had the feeling, Ernaux's writing entices one to contemplate those feelings, what the body demands, and what the mind rationalizes. It's funny because I picked this book up expecting to find a simple passion! And it was absolutely complex and full of mindfulness. At least in my humble opinion. There were several expressive statements that forced me to pause and reflect. The book might be in our fiction section, but the writing is real. And the feeling is most definitely real. -Melody